Creation began on 12-29-14
Creation ended on 01-05-15
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Different from You: We'll protect you
The mechanical, dinosaur-like creature that threw Unit-01 aside was now facing the Angel alongside the bird creature, both looking like they had a score to settle against it.
Eva Units-01 and 02 were forced to watch from the sidelines.
NERV HQ was in suspense at what was going to happen.
"Why would two unidentifiable creatures show up to fight an Angel?" Kaji asked Ritsuko.
"Why would a mechanical creature show up at all?" Ritsuko responded.
-x-
The chest emblem on the mechanical dinosaur blinked red lights and its claws fired another series of rockets at the Angel.
BLAST! The rockets all hit their mark on the Angel's body, forcing it to the ground against a hill.
"Aiieeeee!" The bird shrieked, taking flight and attacking the Angel with its taloned feet. "Aiieeee!"
Now sporting gashes on its upper body, Zeruel tried to attack the creature with its toilet paper-like limbs again, but the mechanical creature came by and grabbed the closest pair of limbs belonging to the Angel…and pulled so hard that they tore off, exposing a red, blood-like substance to the atmosphere.
"Gruargh!" Zeruel growled in pain.
SLASH! The bird's talons caused a crack in the Angel's exposed core; not even the protective membrane that Zeruel possessed could keep out the attack, causing a measure of injury to him.
"Gruaaaurgh!" He growled, just as the same substance that spilled from his limbs seeped out of his mouth. "Gruaaaurgh!"
The mechanical creature's chest emblem blinked again, and then its tail's drill-like end began to spin like an actual drill…and whipped it towards the core.
With it being possibly hopeless, Zeruel willed his protective membrane to cover his damaged core, but the drill rammed against the membrane with enough force to pierce through it, driving into the core and sending chips and fragments flying allover. He felt his soul fading from his body, and a bright light ahead of him.
-x-
"…Incredible," Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki expressed, and then saw the damaged core of the Angel light up like a Christmas tree.
"Self-destruct?!" Ritsuko gasped.
And then, the Angel blew up, bathing everything in white fire.
-x-
"Daddy, I'm scared!" Shado cried to Shinji, who shielded her face from the explosion.
Suddenly, the young father heard the sounds of a vacuum cleaner around them, and opened his eyes to an unbelievable sight. It was the blue bird, sucking in the fire and destroyed remains of the Angel through its beak.
"Aiieeee!" It shrieked as the last traces of the Angel's attempted murder-suicide were absorbed into itself, removing whatever was left of the explosion. "Aieeee!"
"Rrrraaurgh!" The mechanical dinosaur roared; it seemed they were cheering their victory over the powerful Angel.
-x-
"…The target has been defeated," Maya Ibuki declared.
"And the Evas?" Ritsuko asked.
"Unharmed."
"Can they still fight?" Gendo asked.
"Yes."
"It doesn't look like they'll get a chance, though," went Hyuga, pointing to the screens and at the two creatures that took out the Angel.
They were slowly approaching the buildings of Tokyo-2.
-x-
The giants stopped in front of the building that Shinji and Shado were on, standing in front of the two.
Shinji let go of his daughter and stood up in front of the two, wondering what was going to happen.
The bird placed its left claw on the rooftop, in the same gesture it had used earlier, meant for the two climb aboard.
Then, Shinji had the slightest of a realization of all that had happened.
"Shado," he uttered, picking his daughter up, "do you think you had something to do with these two?"
"Me?" She asked. "Why would I have anything to do with them?"
"Just a question."
Somehow, the little girl suspected that her father knew what he was asking her about, but wanted her to say more than he was trying not to.
"Last night," she started, "I made a wish on a shooting star. I was worried about you because you're not a superman or whatever it is they call people in the movies. I asked the deities for a pair of guardians to look after the both of us."
"I guess the deities really came through with your wish. Though, they could've probably turned the wish into something else a little bit."
"Not what I truly expected, but they still did what I had expected of them to do."
"Which is?"
"They watched out for us and protected us."
Shinji sighed and expressed, "Yeah… Yeah, they did."
"Though, one thing still puzzles me: What exactly are these two?"
Shinji then picked her up and walked onto the bird's claw, which immediately closed up to protect the two. If these two creatures were the guardians Shado had wished for on a shooting star, then he was putting his faith in their ability to do their newly-appointed task without fail.
The bird then took flight into the air, while the mechanical creature walked away from the city, disappearing behind the hills.
-x-
"They left," went Shigeru, "just like that?"
"They showed up, they fight the Angel, and then they leave," Misato expressed.
Yet, while much of NERV was in mixed awe over what happened, Gendo was furious. Something or someone other than his paramilitary organization may have shown an interest in facing the Angels, and the defeat of this particular Angel now made things difficult for him. Another facet to this new wrinkle was that whatever these two creatures were, they had to belong to somebody, some other agency with resources that rivaled or were superior to NERV's…and they might've been the same people that could've been aiding the runaway Third Child and his bastard daughter.
Ring-ring-ring! Fuyutsuki answered the phone.
"Yes?" He spoke with whoever it was. "Understood."
He hung up and turned to Gendo.
"That was the Committee," he told him.
-x-
Ring-ring-ring! A phone rung, and the elderly man that helped Shinji and Shado picked it up.
"Sakuraba residence," he greeted the caller. "Shinji?"
His wife, who was surfing the television channels available, heard him say Shinji's name and muted the television to listen.
"Where are you? Are you and Shado alright? You're in New Jersey? How'd you get there so fast?"
On the other side of the planet, calling from outside a small store through the use of a prepaid phone, Shinji had called the Sakurabas and informed them that he and Shado had returned to the States and were going home. He decided to leave out how they got back, insisting that the less they knew, the better. But he would call them again one day, once a few days, or weeks…or months had passed by.
"…Thank you again for all your help," he told them, and then hung up before he shoved the phone into his pants' left pocket and got into a taxi with his daughter.
Shado had fallen asleep on the way into the Manhattan borough.
-x-
"…And all attempts to track these…creatures have been met naught?" SEELE 05 asked Gendo in the meeting.
"We're not impressed, Ikari," added SEELE 09. "First, you lose the Third Child and his bastard child, and then you're unable to deal with the latest Angel, which was beaten by a pair of unknowns."
"NERV will find these creatures and the Third Child and his daughter," Gendo assured the council.
"One week, Ikari," SEELE 01 declared. "If the Third Child is not reacquired by NERV or continues to refuse, you are ordered to consider both him and his child a lost cause. We have more pressing concerns to work with."
"The Human Instrumentality Project," SEELE 12 expressed. "We will not have this project halted any further by the Angels or any outside interference."
When the meeting concluded, Gendo was again enraged. He had the Third Child and his bastard child right where he wanted them, but then the boy had gotten free somehow (and the investigation on how was still ongoing) and escaped with her. And now, he was being given a deadline to cease going after his son and granddaughter in favor of other interests. If he couldn't reacquire them, or they continued to hinder his authoritarian abilities, he would have to (and by "have to", he would be forced to) consider them unobtainable, meaning that Unit-01 would be stuck with Rei until the Dummy System was within the limits of operational.
Damn you, boy, he thought, unwilling to address Shinji as anything with familiar ties. Damn you!
-x-
As he walked down the hall to their apartment door, Shinji felt the drowsiness get to him. But when he reached their door, he put his sleeping daughter on his left shoulder as he rotated a combination lock in front of a compartment that had been built into the door to retrieve the emergency key. All he had to do was enter the proper combination and remove the lock, open the compartment and remove the key, which was a simple task because his lock was basic.
Click! The lock undid itself, and he removed it to retrieve the key.
"Shado," he spoke to his sleeping daughter, who moaned as she was being awoken. "We're home."
He unlocked all eight locks on their door and stepped inside, closed the door and relocked the locks.
Shado opened her eyes to the bright lights her father turned on, and saw the familiar furniture of their home that they had been in for almost a year.
Shinji took her to her room and changed her out of the hand-me-down clothes from the Sakurabas and into her footed pajamas based off the tiger and put her in her futon.
"Goodnight, Shado," he told her as he tucked her in.
Shado didn't say anything, as she had fallen asleep again; Shinji assumed it was a form of jet lag due to flying back to Japan and then back to the States in such a short time.
He left out her room and went into the kitchen to put on a pot of tea. As he sat down at the table, he rubbed his temples as he tried to clear his mind of unnecessary thoughts from the last three hours.
I hope we don't go through that experience ever again, he thought, and ate a saltless cracker.
Hiss! The kettle started to whistle, and he got up to retrieve it before it woke his daughter up.
"Should you ever be in danger," the voice of what had assumed to be the blue bird after they arrived in New Jersey in the cloak of the night, "we shall come to your aid. Should you ever be in danger."
"We're always near," the second voice he heard that he assumed was the mechanical creature's, also using a form of telepathy, said to him.
Adding jasmine to the boiled water, the young teen parent let the tea soothe his less-than-calm soul and nerves that were still affected by the remnants of adrenaline he had when he rescued his daughter. It had been about two years after he got Shado that he started drinking tea, and he had to admit that it helped his nerves when it came to either having to deal with either his daughter, which was tolerable, or anyone else that gave him a hard time, which was intolerable. If he didn't have anything else to do with his life, he would've probably tried to become a teashop owner.
"Heh," he chuckled slightly. "It's a lot better than coffee."
Five minutes later, when he had finished his tea, he turned in for the remainder of the night. Too tired to change into his pajamas, he simply removed his shirt and got into his futon. But what he didn't see on account of the lights being off and the window blinds closed was what was now on his back. Just under his nape and above the small of his back was a circular mark, shaped like the taijitu or yin/yang symbol…but with the opposing sides of light and darkness replaced by the two creatures Shado had wished for, perfectly rendered in the ink, with the blue bird representing the dark side and mechanical, dinosaur-like creature representing the light side, soaring and swimming around one another in an eternal dance, balancing out the universe.
"The dragon and the phoenix," he yawned, drifting to sleep. "The dragon…of the sea…and…the phoenix…of the sky."
To be continued…
A/N: To those that still aren't sure what the two creatures are, the blue bird is the Phoenix Galactabeast from Power Rangers Lost Galaxy,resurrected after its destruction and restored to its original state, which has adapted, and the mechanical, dinosaur-like creature is the Dragonzord from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, re-energized with new power to ensure it can do its newfound duty as a protector.