Creation began on 01-11-15
Creation ended on 02-13-15
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Different from You: One day at a time
Shinji found himself in a vast cosmos that he only knew about in picture books or whenever he looked up at the night sky. Above him were the two guardians that his daughter had wished for out of her concern for him, looking down at him.
"The dragon and the phoenix?" He questioned.
The mechanical creature then lowered its right claw down in front of the young man, and Shinji climbed onto it.
Explore our past…and shape the future, he heard that voice that sounded like it was coming from the mechanical creature.
Suddenly, his perception shifted from the numerous stars and gaseous bodies of the vast reaches of space to what looked like a theater of sorts with a film comprised of clips from various times. He saw the mechanical creature living most of its time in the water by a city, appearing only when it was called upon to face giants, serving the will of several kids no older than he was at the moment, sometimes prevailing on its own or aiding another giant robot that used a sword and shield. Then, it wasn't summoned as much as it used to be when the enemies got stronger, requiring newer, more stronger, mechanical beings to aid the young heroes, rendering it obsolete in the face of great adversaries.
Then, he saw the past of the phoenix, referred to as the Phoenix Galactabeast, and how it, along with several other creatures of different varieties, like the animal kingdom itself, only larger and colorful. It, along with a red, horned creature and a bluish-silver, shark-like creature were involved in a vicious battle…and when it was over, all three beasts were rendered powerless and almost dead, left to drift aimlessly in the abyss of space. The Phoenix Galactabeast, while capable of returning to life like the mythological counterpart it represented, was unable to do so because it wasn't dead, only close to it, meaning it couldn't until it past away. Then, an uncertain amount of time later, a mercenary of evil found it and its allies…and converted them into mechanical soldiers, and they served until they were set free by another group of youngsters tasked with saving the people…up until they were defeated by suicide bombers, which, while destroying the Phoenix Galactabeast, also freed it from its mechanized state, and it returned to life sometime later.
Do you see now? The voice of the mechanical creature, now identified as the Dragonzord, asked Shinji.
"Yes," he answered.
-x-
Shado awoke to the sunlight that snuck into her room, and yawned as she got up. She found herself in one of her footed pajamas, and looked at her surroundings, realizing that she was in her room. And as she stepped out her room and into the hallway, she took in more of her surroundings, recognizing the meager furniture her father had gotten shortly after they found a place for themselves. There was a smell of warming bacon and pancakes in the air, and she followed it to the kitchen, where her father was right now.
"Daddy?" She spoke up, and he turned to face her.
"Good morning, Shado," Shinji greeted her. "Are you okay?"
"Yes. How long was I asleep?"
"All night. Are you hungry?"
"Very."
As she sat down at the table, her father set her plate of breakfast, and she noticed how he was using his left arm again.
"How's your arm?" She questioned him, and held onto his shoulder with his right hand.
"It only hurts when I raise it up to grab something from the cabinets," he explained how much pain he still had in his recovering injury. "I took a painkiller when I woke up and showered. Hot water actually numbed the stinging."
He sat down across the table from her to eat his own breakfast, Shinji poured himself and Shado two cups of orange juice to go with their meal.
And so began their first day home.
-x-
"…The weather reports indicate it might rain later today," Hyuga expressed to his fellow Bridge Bunnies as he read an old comic book.
"A little rain never hurt anyone," went Shigeru, tuning his guitar.
"Rain washes away all filth," added Maya as she read a romance novel. "Has there been any whereabouts on those two non-Angels?"
"It's only been less than a day, Ibuki," Hyuga responded. "Satellite and sonar systems haven't been able to pick up anything. The mechanical one looked like something far more advanced than the Evas themselves. And the organic one looked as though it belonged to some place in mythology."
"Why would such creatures show up to face an Angel?"
"What if it wasn't the Angel they came for?"
"Shigeru?"
"What if the Angel was just an obstacle?"
"If that were true, then what would they come here for?"
"Who knows."
-x-
"…Later this afternoon, we're heading to the doctor," Shinji informed Shado as he cleaned off the table. "I just want to make sure our unwanted trip back to Japan didn't have any unexpected or unintended side-effects."
"Aside from the jet lag, you mean?" She asked him, putting the carton of orange juice back in the refrigerator. "I'm just trying to forget about the bad man and those people we saw."
"Eh-heh," the young father chuckled, placing the plates into the sink. "Yeah, same here. It's a bad memory that needs to be forgotten."
Shado nodded at that agreement.
-x-
Gendo despised that he had been given a deadline to work with on reacquiring the Third Child and his daughter. If he couldn't get them within a week, he would be forced to stop and focus on the Instrumentality Project. But he wasn't one to just give up.
If he's not in Japan, then he must've returned to the States, he suspected, as the boy and his bastard child were likely to want to return to their lifestyle in a place that they were not viewed as outcasts. I'll have Section Two return to the United States and search for them.
-x-
"…Okay, now say 'ah'," went the male doctor to Shado, in the presence of Shinji.
"Ah," Shado did as instructed, sticking her tongue out as the doctor stuck in the wooden tongue depressor to examine the inside of her mouth.
Then, he felt the front of her neck.
"And the both of you were in Japan for less than two days?" He asked Shinji.
"That's right," Shinji answered him.
As he checked Shado's left ear and then her right ear, the doctor expressed, "Well, aside from the minor jet lag, your daughter is in good health."
"Thank you, doctor." Shinji praised him, and picked his daughter up off examination table.
"Another flu season is almost upon us," the doctor told them. "I trust you two have been vaccinated."
"Not yet, but we will," Shinji told him; ever since he had read up on nasal sprays that were used to vaccinate children, he had opted for that over the traditional shot after his and Shado's history with the doctors in Japan, who seemed to want to stick his daughter with needles ever since it became a common truth that he had fathered a child before he even reached puberty, like he was cursed.
"Ahh…" He heard Shado yawn; the jet lag was affecting her again, so he decided to stop by the local pharmacy to pick up the vaccination nasal spray and take her home.
-x-
"…It's only natural that they'd want to keep their distance after the last time they went after them," said Kaji to Misato, discussing Section Two's secondary search and apprehension of the Third Child and his daughter.
"They were armed with pistols, but he had managed to take out three of them with a knife?"
"A karambit knife, to be precise."
"Kaji…"
"He was probably given basic lessons in the art of knife-based combat and expanded upon it."
"The last thing I want to see is the young man wielding a gun at me."
"He seemed less interested in using a gun than he seemed to be using a knife."
-x-
"…Third Child has just left a pharmacy with the little girl," Gendo heard one of his Section Two lackeys inform him over the phone, as the men in black had found his son and granddaughter, keeping a distance from the pair. "Looks like he was picking up a prescription."
With greater advancements in visual technology, Gendo was able to observe the urban environment that the Third Child and his daughter were in.
Then, Shinji turned around and stepped back into the pharmacy, as if forgetting something. When he stepped back out, he had put something in his coat pocket and carried his daughter down the street.
"Follow him," Gendo ordered, and the men in black obeyed, but kept a safe distance because they didn't want to endanger their own lives.
The boy stepped onto a bus at a nearby stop, but lost him and his daughter in a crowd that got off the bus at one of the other stops.
"The Third Child's in the wind," another agent said.
-x-
When the bus stopped down the street from their building, Shinji carried Shado down the sidewalk and into the building.
"Hello, Mr. Spera," he greeted the man at the counter. "Have I received any mail today?"
"Not today, sir," the man, Mr. Spera responded.
"Thank you."
He stepped into the elevator and got off on their floor. It was still light out, but with the minor jet lag, he might as well let his daughter sleep earlier after he gave her the nasal spray to keep her health up from the upcoming flu season.
"Hmm?" He stopped and turned his head around to look down the hall, thinking he heard someone behind them. "Hmm… I'd better take additional precautions."
"What, Daddy?" Shado, waking up in his arms, asked.
"Nothing, sweetie."
He reached their door and entered their apartment, locking the locks and arming the security system.
"Come on, Shado," he told her. "Let's get your nasal spray and forget about it."
Shado sat on one of the kitchen chairs and raised her head up so that her father could apply the nasal spray to immunize her against the flu.
"Inhale," he instructed her, and sprayed the left nostril, and then applied the spray to the right nostril. "Again."
In less than a minute, Shado was another healthy girl prepared for the flu season. And then Shinji, as a precaution, took out another capsule of flu vaccine and immunized himself.
"Ah," Shado yawned, and Shinji picked her up and carried her to her room.
"Last stop: Slumber Land," he joked a little, and set her on her futon and began to undress her and put on her footed pajamas.
"Ursa Guardian," she said, pointing toward a stuffed bear on a small chair away from them, dressed in a green tutu and blue tunic.
He went and got it for her. He remembered the day after they moved into the building (which had been sometime after he received his payment for participating at that pharmaceutical company's testing of various new treatments, that he took his daughter to a place called Build-A-Bear Workshop to get her first stuffed animal; he'd promised her that he would get her one as soon as they were settled. Sure, some people that saw them there had misinterpreted that the two were either siblings or that he was a babysitter for some couple's daughter, never knowing that the pair were blood, but he paid them no mind because he put her before anyone else, even himself.
"Thank you, Daddy," she praised him, and then fell back to sleep.
He kissed her forehead and then left her room to go relax in the living room.
-x-
The front door to the lobby opened up, and Mr. Spera saw several men in black entering.
"Not you fellows again," he sighed, reaching for the phone, just in case he needed to dial the police for potential harassment issues.
"We really need to know where we can find this young man, sir," one of them expressed, showing him a picture of Shinji.
"I've told the last few of you the last time you barged in," Mr. Spera responded, "I wouldn't tell you, even if I could. The people that live here value their privacy. Some of them don't even have neighbors."
"We have full authority to search the building allover again, if necessary," another of the men told him.
"And I have full authority to call the police for harassment. Whatever reasons you have to come here, you'll have to take it up with the landlord and landlady. You just show up unannounced, no warrant, no nothing, and expect the people to cooperate. Now, you can either leave quietly…or leave forcefully."
Section Two then decided to persist…and two of its members jumped Mr. Spera and incapacitated him.
"Check the records," the primary agent ordered them.
One other agent picked up a book nearby that served as a record book of each tenant that lived in the building, past and present, and searched for names. Unfortunately, each tenant's identity wasn't listed on the pages, just numbers and letters, like segments of computer code next to their apartment number.
"These records are worthless," he told the others, "unless someone speaks in code."
"Search the building again," the primary agent ordered.
-x-
Ten minutes after laying down on the couch, Shinji fell asleep, having dropped a book on cooking recipes that he was reading. All those Asian meals he had been used to growing up had become something of a dull and stale piece of their past. Among the different dishes he and Shado had been introduced to in the past year, his daughter had taken a fancy to tuna casserole and meatloaf.
Shinji, due to being out cold for the time being, was completely oblivious to the potential danger that he and his daughter were nearing.
Fortunately, for their sake, the tattoo on Shinji's back, which he hadn't noticed yet, was missing its mechanical dragon of the sea.
-x-
"We're on the seventh floor now," a Section Two agent uttered on his walkie-talkie, as another agent just barged into an apartment belonging to a family of four, frightening a pair of children and assaulting their father. "Nothing so far."
"Rrrraaurgh," several people heard something that was neither a dog or a cat.
"Aaaaahhh!" One agent gasped, running from something further down the hall. "Monster!"
"What? A monster?" Another questioned, seeing something approaching him from down the hall.
It was the mechanical creature that was seen in Japan that attacked and defeated an Angel, only human-sized and sleeker.
"Rrraurgh!" It growled, raising its claws up. "Leave! Leave now! Never come back!"
"Aaahh, aaaahh! Aaaaahh!" The agent ran for his life.
-x-
"What are they running from?" Gendo wondered, unable to see or hear anything Section Two was running from.
-x-
Shado awoke to the sight of the night, feeling rested for the time being. She got out of bed and entered the hallway, heading towards the kitchen, smelling something hot and delicious.
"Daddy?" She called out as she entered the small kitchen. "Are you cooking?"
"Awake already, Shado?" Shinji, who was finishing the pasta recipe he was following from the book he read earlier. "How was your rest?"
"Great," she answered him, sitting down at the table. "What is that?"
"A spaghetti-type pasta, but with macaroni instead of the noodles. Plus, some vegetables thrown in with the tomato sauce."
"Sounds as good as it smells."
"It wasn't when I started making it, but after I added the additional ingredients, it tasted better."
Eight minutes later, the two were eating dinner.
"Is it any good?" Shinji asked her.
"It's delicious," Shado answered him.
"Heh-heh."
-x-
"You sure you want to know what I know about Shinji Ikari and the little girl that was with him, Asuka?" Misato asked the redhead in the NERV cafeteria.
"I honestly don't believe everything on what people say about that kid," went Asuka.
"I saw them last year, and I can't forget what the girl said when Shinji was hurt in the initial attack with the Third Angel."
And Misato revealed everything she knew about Shinji and Shado from the previous time she saw them to Asuka, right from the revelation of the little girl unintentionally revealing that the Third Child was her father…right to the revelation that Shinji had been raped by a woman old enough to be his mother and then having his child in prison, even revealing what she only found out shortly after Shinji and Shado left the base.
However, Asuka still seemed to be in denial about it all. She found it impossible for a little boy to father a child with a woman far older than them, let alone getting raped by a woman older than them; she would view any boy involved with a grown woman as getting lucky enough to be with anyone. And then, there was the little girl; she didn't see it at first because of the fact that the girl was backing away from her and running around, and also because the boy that threatened to harm them was armed, but she saw some resemblance between the girl, the boy, and the commander.
"…Some boys would consider themselves lucky just to be with a woman," she told Misato.
"Not Shinji," Misato defended. "It's likely what had happened to him damaged whatever trust he had in adults. He, more or less, came from a broken home. His father left him shortly after his mother passed away, and from what Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki discovered, his relationship with his aunt and uncle was as poor as his relationship with his father is. The only meaningful relationship that he seems to have is with his daughter. He once claimed that she was the only good thing that ever happened to him in his life."
"Yet he refuses to pilot the Eva and protect the human race."
"His only concern is his daughter; he puts her before himself and everything else. In his mind, she comes first. Shado always comes first."
"And if the Angels attacked again?"
"He stood by his refusal to pilot the Eva a second time. For him, once was enough. And I can't forget the concern Shado had in her voice for her father when the Eva was attacked by the Angel. She must've thought her father was going to die."
-x-
"Urrgh!" Shado burped, finishing her dinner.
"I guess you really liked the pasta," Shinji expressed, picking up his daughter's plate and putting it in the sink.
Shado got up and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She wondered if her father would ever get a letter that would say whether or not he'd be able to attend a cooking class to expand his chef skills.
Daddy is a great cook, she thought as she brushed her teeth in the mirror. Even some of our neighbors say so. Daddy deserves to have his skills known to others.
Spitting into the sink and washing the remains of the toothpaste with mouthwash, the little girl stepped off the stool and returned to her room.
Still in the kitchen, Shinji stored the leftover pasta for either another time or for the local food drive.
"Daddy?" He heard Shado call out to him.
"Yes, dear?" He responded, shutting the refrigerator, hearing scuffing of tiny feet.
"There's some men in black suits outside across the street from our building," she told him.
Shinji then went with her to her room and she showed him through her window the men in black.
It looked like the same type of men in black that they saw the last time they were outside, only they were arguing and pointing at their building.
"Come on, Shado," he told his daughter. "You'll sleep in my room tonight."
-x-
"…There's no way we're going back in that crazy building again," one of the agents said to another. "I don't care if that was a monster or even an optical illusion. That… Whatever that thing was, it was clearly targeting us! It told us not to come back, and I'm sticking by that!"
And across the street, unbeknownst to the people that walked past the building, the smaller and sleeker, mechanical dragon stood watch over the entrance, keeping a firm glare at the Section Two agents.
Nobody, not even a young couple that were hopelessly in love, could see it.
A/N: I'll stop here for now to work on the next chapter. But for those that wish to see something more, here's an omake/AE on how the story could be finished with an extremist perception. Also, this is because I hate Friday the Thirteenth!
Omake/Alternate Ending
As Shado sat beside her comatose father, who risked a lot of blood and adrenaline to rescue her from NERV and Gendo, the commander of the paramilitary agency was about to go into the room to assert his authority over the girl and make her pilot the Evangelion in place of the Third Child.
But then several police officers arrived and stood in front of him.
"Gendo Rokubingi-Ikari?" One of them asked him.
"Yes," he answered him.
"You're under arrest for custodial interference, endangering the welfare of a child, child neglect, child abandonment and child abuse."
Gendo tried to explain that he was the boy's father and the girl's grandfather, but the police handcuffed him and led him away, unwilling to listen to him.
Shado felt alone right now, waiting for her father to revive from his coma.