Different from You

by Traitor of All Traitors

We all know that Shinji and Gendo are like water and oil, light and dark, kind and cruel, right? So what would happen if Shinji had a situation that made him more different from Gendo than anticipated? What if Shinji had a responsibility that he viewed with more acceptance than Eva and the war against the Angels? Read at your own volition and review with honesty.

16. In the End

Creation began on 01-22-16

Creation ended on 03-10-16

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Different from You: In the End

A/N: Here it is, the last chapter of the story. I hope you like it.

He felt heavy in his limbs. The last thing he could remember were his daughter's cries for help and being hit on the back of his head and everything went dark. When he came to, he found himself inside a large space that was bare and made of metal.

"…Quick…put him back to sleep…" He heard a voice say to someone, and before his vision had a chance to correct itself and show him where he was, an obscured figure came near him and grabbed his face with something that felt like cloth with a foul scent.

He felt disoriented again, and his hearing was drowned out.

"…Daddy…" A voice called out to him, but he couldn't do anything.

-x-

"Doctor Akagi," the faux-blond turned away from her computer and faced Fuyutsuki, who seemed troubled by something.

"Commander Fuyutsuki," she responded.

"It has just come to my attention that, recently a few hours ago in the New York area, several buildings were burned, one of which was where Mr. Ikari and his daughter were known to live in."

"And what has that to do with NERV?"

"Do you not find it curious as to why this building among the buildings was set on fire, forcing the residents to vacate, leaving them homeless until they can find a new residence? Or that it was set on fire after the recent order was made to leave the boy and his daughter alone?"

"No, sir," she lied. "It is New York after all. Nothing ever sleeps there."

Fuyutsuki sighed and responded, "As you were."

When he left her alone, Ritsuko frowned at the suspicion he might've had on her. It didn't matter if it went against his orders on interfering in the lives of the Third Child and his daughter, the faux-blond knew she was in the right and everyone else was in the wrong.

-x-

"…Hard to believe that they're all hot for this boy and his little tyke…" Shado, as disoriented as her father probably was, heard a man's voice as she was moved somewhere.

"…Most people that have children would choose not to get involved with the girls, but not this boy…" She heard other voices.

"…She's his only child, and he throws his life away for hers…"

"…Her mother was a kidnapper and a child molester…"

"…He was raped?"

"…So she's a bastard…"

"…They're bad luck is what they are…"

A hard shake came, and the girl's head hit something cold and smooth. Her blurred vision corrected itself, and she saw her father, heavily dazed and handcuffed in front of her.

"Daddy," she tried to speak out, but her voice was low. "Daddy?"

He gave no indication that he heard her.

When she looked around her, she saw several men in suits, similar to the ones that her father injured or killed when they showed up to take them back to Japan.

They turned to face her, and one had a piece of cloth in his hand that he poured some sort of substance onto it.

"No, we've already used a lot on the both of them," one of the men beside him said. "They're no good to NERV if they're dead."

NERV? Shado thought, realizing that they were likely on their way back to Japan again, and tried to move, but found her arms and legs bound. No.

-x-

"…Yeah, I know," went Misato as she drove down the road to NERV HQ. "I can see it right now in front of me."

Across the vast expanse of wilderness outside the city, a giant, floating ring of light was present, reminding the woman of those halos that were said to appear over people when they die and ascend to the heavens.

Another Angel, she thought, speeding up and wondering how NERV was to deal with this, and that was assuming that those two creatures that disposed of the previous two Angels didn't appear.

-x-

"…Where's Dr. Akagi?" Hyuga asked Maya on the bridge in Central Dogma.

"I'm not sure," she answered him. "She left a while ago."

On the screens were the Angel, floating around, as if waiting for NERV to try something against it.

-x-

Awakening from what felt like a hangover (having never drank alcohol before), Shinji found himself strapped to a chair with chains.

"Hello again, Shinji Ikari," he heard a female voice say to him from the shadows of the room he was in. "You're a hard person to get a hold of."

"What…do you…want?" He slurred, his voice weakened due to being drugged.

"The same thing you did last year when you showed up the first time."

Shinji then saw someone emerge from the shadows, revealing themselves to be the same woman with the fake, blond hair on her head that he saw the previous year.

"You…have some nerve," he told her, getting agitated.

"Believe me, if there were others more qualified, NERV would go after them," she told him. "But you were the only one to make Unit-01 move. Besides the First Child, that is."

"Don't you mean something completely different from what you're saying? It sounds more like you mean convenience, not qualification. And it sounds like there aren't any others qualified to do whatever it is you call piloting the Eva. So you come after me and my daughter, even after I had to tell you more than once, even through violence, that we want nothing to do with it. Are you hard at hearing or are you simply so stupid that you have no idea how stupid you truly are when people say no?"

"It's either you…or your daughter that will pilot the Eva," Ritsuko told him. "Either way, that's the hand you've both been dealt with."

"By people like you. By people like that man that dared to put his hands on my daughter. You hurt her in any way that impedes her…don't think I won't kill you." Shinji told her.

"Is that a threat?"

"Oh, believe me, when it's a threat, you'll know."

Ritsuko then walked away from him and out of the room. After this conversation with the boy, she was convinced that it was better to use the girl over him. While it might've been detrimental for her due to several factors, including her age and mental faculties, she suspected that it would've made no difference to the Eva in particular, as they were better off with three Evas instead of two.

Walking down the hall to an elevator, she was joined by several members of the research staff assigned to the Eva's functionality that her protege wasn't affiliated with.

"Where is the girl?" She asked an older man.

"She's been placed in the Unit-01 Entry Plug," he answered her.

"Begin the procedure immediately."

"But, doctor, we're not sure if the Eva will recognize a five-year-old girl."

"It's a risk, but there's no choice."

"And what of the boy?" A younger man asked.

"We'll keep him locked up. For now, he's to be out of sight. The girl, too." Ritsuko ordered.

-x-

Evas Unit-00 and Unit-02 appeared in front of the Angel and were instructed to wait and see what it would do.

We got this, I got this, thought Asuka, hoping that nothing unexpected happened to endanger her chances of defeating an Angel on her own.

Suddenly, the Angel changed from a ring of light to a thread of light…and attacked the Evas!

Shiest! Asuka reacted and jumped out of the way, and saw the Angel pierce Unit-00 in the abdomen.

"Aaaurgh!" Rei gasped, grabbing the Angel by its thread-like form and using her rifle on it, blasting at it, but it felt like she was shooting at something made of elastic metal.

-x-

Since they couldn't drug her any further because of the chloroform used on her earlier, the scientists tasked with putting Shado inside the Entry Plug and inside Unit-01 had to use a ball gag to keep her quiet. It was either that or duct tape, which would've been more harmful to the girl since she was so young. And the girl refused to stay quiet, even after she was sealed inside the plug. She even banged as hard as she could on the walls on the inside, not that anyone could hear her.

"Very willful and defiant," Ritsuko uttered, looking at Shado from an internal camera as the plug was inserted into the Eva. "Prepare to fill the plug."

The technicians did as instructed, though it left a bitter taste in their mouths as the girl found the inside of the plug filling up with LCL.

Unable to remove the ball gag from her mouth, Shado held her nose and covered her mouth as the LCL had completely filled the Entry Plug.

Daddy, she thought, unsure of how long she could hold her breath, where are you?

-x-

GASP! Shinji shuddered, feeling like a knife had been stabbed through his heart.

Shado, he thought, as though his child had been placed in danger. Oh, no!

He struggled to get free of his restraints, but he was unable to break through chains and his feet were tied with ropes.

She could be in danger, they could be doing inhumane things to her! He suspected, trying with all his might to at least bend the metal of the folding chair forward, which could give him some slack to try and rise up.

Boom. He heard and felt an explosion's shockwave as it shook the room, and knocked his chair to the ground as a result.

"Aaurgh!" He groaned; this was going to be a problem.

-x-

Shado couldn't hold her breath, anymore, and had to let go of her nose and mouth, letting the orange liquid into her body. She thought she was going to choke on it as she drowned due to the ball gag, and she felt like that was what she was doing right now.

"Oh, be calm," she heard Ritsuko's voice inside the plug. "Once your lungs have been saturated with LCL, your blood will oxygenated directly. You'll get used to it like your father did."

Except Daddy didn't get used to it, she thought, now back to removing the gag from her mouth. He smelled awful for a while after that day. He needed a lot of shampoo to get rid of the bad smell.

When she finally freed herself of the gag, she voiced her contempt at this insult to both her and her father by NERV.

"Let me out of here!" She shouted, banging on the sides of the plug. "Let me out! Let me out!"

-x-

Unit-00 was gone, but the Angel had survived the attempted kamikaze assault on it. This left only Unit-02 to deal with the maimed enemy. The Entry Plug containing Rei had been shot out to a safe distance, but she was likely to be found injured later on.

What the Hell?! Asuka thought, wondering how the Angel was able to survive the destruction of an Eva, which was seemingly equal to that of an N² explosive, but without the EMP…and contained by an AT-Field to keep the city intact.

The Angel, reduced to a minute ring of light, quickly levitated towards the red Eva, the goal of revenge for its maiming the only thing on its mind.

-x-

"Where is Dr. Akagi?" Fuyutsuki demanded, needing to know where she was and what was the progress of the Dummy System.

"Found her," went Maya, locating her sensei. "She's in the Unit-01 cage… Oh, my God."

On the holographic displays, Ritsuko and a few men and women were working on Unit-01, but the person inside said Eva was anything but working with them.

Fuyutsuki saw the person inside the Entry Plug…and was repulsed.

"Isn't that the Third Child's daughter?" Shigeru asked.

"Major Katsuragi," Fuyutsuki uttered to the purple-haired woman, "stop her immediately."

Misato understood what the former Sub-Commander meant, and left the bridge. Apparently, Ritsuko had crossed a serious line at some point, and now she had to answer for it.

-x-

Running through the halls, Shinji searched for his daughter, wanting to get her and get as far away from here as possible before that fake blond caused bigger problems. His gunshot wounds, the one in his shoulder and the one in his leg, ached as he recalled the last two times he was here. The first time, he and his daughter were able to simply walk away without so much as a bruise and a weight lifted off his shoulders, but the second time, these people he didn't trust tried to force a different weight upon not only him, but his daughter…and that it was his father that was behind it all. But he hadn't seen his father since the day he simply disappeared in his building, so he wasn't sure why NERV had come after them again…and who had put them up to it.

"Either way, that's the hand you've both been dealt with," the words of the fake blond echoed in his mind. "That's the hand you've both been dealt with."

He sighed and had to consider that she was somehow responsible for his and Shado's presence back in Japan against their will.

"Shado!" He called out for his daughter. "Shado!"

-x-

"…What is the meaning of this, Ritsuko?!" Misato demanded to know from Ritsuko, barging into the room where her college friend and the other technicians were. "What is she doing in the Unit-01 Entry Plug?!"

"Misato, stay out of this," Ritsuko responded.

"Get her out. Now!" Misato ordered, but nobody did anything.

"We can't stop the synchronization now," Ritsuko told her.

"Do you not see her?! She's not even old enough to sync with the Eva! Get her out of the plug! Now!"

Within the plug, Shado continued to hit her hands on the walls, wanting to get out. Her very mind begging, screaming for her father. If she had quieted down for a moment, she would've heard a woman trying to reach out to her, to calm her down, just so that she could talk to her. But for this girl, the only person she really wanted to be spoken to by was her teenage father, the only person in her life that she trusted and believed in more than anyone else in the world.

-x-

Nobody ever came down to the lowest level of Terminal Dogma. Nobody except Gendo, Ritsuko, Misato and Ryoji. But now that everyone that could access the chamber of Lilith was occupied at the moment, this allowed the two beings that appeared in the chamber to do away with her like they had with her counterpart and equal, Adam.

Stepping in front of the crucified and impaled creature, the blue phoenix and the mechanical dragon prepared to dispose of it.

"Iiiiiee!" The phoenix shrieked, and inhaled, becoming a vortex that began sucking in the LCL.

"Grr!" The mechanical dragon growled, its chest emblem beeping and its claws fired missiles at the cross, destroying the bindings on Lilith's hands.

Lilith fell…and was immediately absorbed into the phoenix's vortex. And then, she was no more, beyond the reach of mortal hands.

-x-

"Let me out!" Shado continued shouting, banging her hands against the side of the plug. "Let me out of here! Let me out!"

"If you don't let her out of the Eva, Ritsuko," Misato threatened her friend, "God help me, I will shoot you in both your legs until you let her out."

"I'm afraid I can't let her out, Misato," Ritsuko told her, unwilling to allow the child out of the Eva.

"Uh, Dr. Akagi, we have another problem," one of the men announced, looking at a different monitor. "The Third Child's no longer in containment and is now wandering the halls."

"You brought the girl AND her father back here after Commander Fuyutsuki ordered that they be left alone?!" Misato yelled at Ritsuko.

"Misato, stay out of this," the faux-blond responded.

"If he comes in here and finds out what you're doing to his daughter, there's a chance he'll kill us all because of you."

"I want my Daddy! I want my Daddy!" Shado continued to shout as she continued to bang on the side of the plug. "Please, let me out!"

"Would you listen to her? She can't even think of syncing with the Eva!" Misato told Ritsuko. "Let her out now."

"We can't, Misato."

"Can't…or won't?"

Ritsuko bared her teeth and uttered that she wouldn't let the girl out of the Eva.

The rest of the crew inside the room were conflicted by her decision to keep the child inside the Eva against her will.

Misato then took out her pistol…and aimed at Ritsuko's legs.

"It's your last chance, Rits," she warned her, already fearing the response.

-x-

Even before Asuka could make the choice to self-destruct Unit-02 to make sure that the Angel was defeated, the very enemy started disappearing from sight.

"What the Hell's going on here?!" She asked the bridge in Central Dogma.

"The Angel's blue pattern disappeared," one of the technicians informed. "It just faded away."

Asuka looked around the battlefield, hoping to find a trace of the Angel, but there was nothing. No sign, a mere hint of it still lingering around. The Angel had been like a light bulb or something…and it had blown out…and the light it represented was no more.

"We're not getting any residual trace of the blue pattern," another technician told Asuka. "The Angel's gone. Return to base."

-x-

"…Urgh!" Shinji threw a man against a wall with enough force that he knocked the guy out, leaving a bloody smear on the wall as he slid down. "I don't have time for any of you. I want my Daughter back now."

He searched the unconscious man and relieved him of his gun.

BANG, BANG! He heard gunshots, and worried more for Shado.

"Aaaahh!" A woman's scream was heard, and Shinji ran towards it, finding an open room…and saw Ms. Katsuragi with a smoking gun…and the faux-blond woman on the floor with two bloody holes in her legs.

He looked up at large monitor screen and saw his daughter banging her hands against the inside of a familiar setting that he had hated being inside of.

"You put my daughter in that abomination?!" He raised his voice, and everyone within the room saw him…and the gun in his hands. "Get her out of there."

Misato saw the seriousness in his eyes and backed away from Ritsuko.

"You heard the girl's father," she told the people at their consoles. "Let her out of there."

One of them obliged and entered the necessary codes to authorize the Unit-01 Entry Plug to eject from the Eva. The plug expelled the LCL and its hatch opened up, and the little girl emerged, breathing in real oxygen.

"I'm taking my daughter…and we're leaving this godforsaken place," Shinji informed them, and slowly turned to vacate the room. "Don't try to follow me."

But before he could walk through the door, a bang was heard, and he felt a stinging sensation in his back, just below his left shoulder. Somehow, he managed to continue running for a while, but he eventually stopped and slumped against a wall, taking a breather for ten seconds before resuming his path towards where his daughter was waiting for him.

Little did he realize that his parental concern for his child blinded him to the torment his body was currently under…or the red smear he left on the wall.

-x-

"My God," one of the male technicians uttered, unable to believe that the Third Child had continued to walk out of the room, either working through it to go get his child or completely ignorant of the new injury he had received from Dr. Akagi's revolver that she took out and used on him.

Misato had immediately disarmed Ritsuko and knocked her out.

"Dammit, Ritsuko," she grunted, looking at the large droplets of blood Shinji left when he ran out…along with the gun. "You didn't have to do that. You didn't have to shoot him."

She knew Shinji said not to follow him, but if his injury was that bad, he would need medical attention. And so, she rushed out of the room to find Shinji; it wasn't hard to do so, as he left path for her to follow him with.

"Commander Fuyutsuki," she spoke with the former Sub-Commander over the phone. "Doctor Akagi shot the boy as he left to go retrieve his daughter. He may be have been shot in the liver of the left lung and is bleeding along the route he took to the Unit-01 cage. Requesting medical assistance."

"Request granted," Fuyutsuki responded.

On the other end, in Central Dogma, Fuyutsuki couldn't believe that it had gotten this bad and this ugly.

"Send a medical team to the Unit-01 cage," he ordered the bridge crew, "and deal with Dr. Akagi."

"Yes, sir," Maya obliged, as she couldn't believe that her sempai had shot a boy that had been looking for his little girl.

-x-

While she might've been relieved to have her lungs full of air, Shado was facing a different predicament at the moment. She was likely a few hundred feet above the ground, and there was no robe, latter or stairway for her to use to get out of the Eva's Entry Plug. There was not even a jumping option in mind…or trying to climb off using the Eva itself.

"Daddy," she sighed, looking around the large chamber, seeing nobody around that she was willing to accept help from in place of her father.

-x-

Forcing a door open, Shinji finally entered the chamber where Unit-01 resided and saw his daughter, still in the plug, looking around the entire place.

"Shado!" He called to her, and she looked down at him.

"Daddy!" She called back, but then noticed something wrong with him; there was a series of red puddles or splotches behind him and the left side of his shirt and pants were of a darker shade of red. "Daddy, are you alright?"

Against his better judgment, Shinji went over to what had to be a console for controlling the Eva's mechanics to the Entry Plug and responded, "It's nothing I've not experienced before."

Turning a switch, he saw the a series of mechanical claws lower down from the ceiling and grab onto the plug, removing it completely from the Eva's back and lowering it to the ground above him. But before he could climb up a nearby latter, he coughed, and his right hand was covered in blood. Looking down at his left side, Shinji finally took notice of his latest injury…and the trail of blood behind him. He hadn't even felt much pain after the minor sting he felt when he ran out that room to get here.

Up above, Shado was closer to the ground, and climbed out of the plug, falling onto her bottom.

"Ow!" She groaned; the floor was hard metal. "I'm okay."

Shinji, once he caught his breath again, climbed up the ladder and scooped up his daughter as she got up on her feet.

"Are you alright, baby?" He asked her.

"I'm fine, but you're hurt again," she told him.

"This is nothing," he assured her that he himself was fine. "Not even an army would keep me away from you, baby."

Holding her in a comfortable position in his arms, Shinji turned towards a door and walked out the cage, having abandoned the gun he had picked up off the guy from earlier. He would have to rely on his feet and his teeth to leave the place now, as his arms were occupied.

-x-

Ritsuko came to on a bed and found herself in a medical room with her legs wrapped in bandages, and Misato and Fuyutsuki in front of her.

"I hope you can explain your actions, Ms. Akagi," Fuyutsuki told her, "and why we can't find a fifteen-year-old boy and his daughter within the base right now."

"I was merely following orders," she defended her actions.

"Whose orders?" Misato questioned. "Nobody ordered for the Third Child and his daughter to be brought back here! After what happened to Commander Ikari, Commander Fuyutsuki ordered that they be left alone!"

"You had them brought back here," Fuyutsuki realized. "You had those buildings burned down, rendered all those residents homeless, all in order to have the two captured."

"I had no choice," Ritsuko continued to defend her actions. "I was doing what I felt was necessary to ensure mankind's survival."

"You shot a little girl's father in the back, Ritsuko," Misato informed her of the severity of her actions. "We can't find him because his blood trail ended at the Unit-01 cage. If he turns up dead because of what you did, you will face the death penalty."

But Ritsuko had one last trick up her sleeves. She sighed and took out a small PDA and presses a button on it.

Seconds later, the alarms went off.

"What did you do, Ritsuko?" Misato demanded.

"What I had to," she calmly stated. "You should have about thirty minutes to get away from the base."

Misato and Fuyutsuki then realized that she had activated the base's self-destruct system.

"And I made sure to change the codes to stop the countdown sequence without telling anyone."

-x-

Shado could barely hear her father breathing now as he carried her outside of Tokyo-3 on the same road they had taken the previous year.

"Daddy?" She spoke to him, and his face looked paler than it had been when he found her again. "Daddy, put me down. You need to see a doctor."

He stopped and looked at her; even his eyes were paler.

"I'm fine, really," he told her.

"Daddy, please," she begged him. "Someone hurt you back there, and you need help. You could… It might be worse than your shoulder or leg. And our home was burned. We have nowhere to go."

"Anyplace with you is enough." Shinji told her, and took another step forward, wanting to them away from Tokyo-3.

"But anyplace without you will be bad, Daddy," she told him, crying.

A tear fell from his left eye onto her forehead…and he fell to his knees.

"Daddy!" She gasped, looking at his injury and seeing that it was worse than his last two. "Daddy!"

"It's okay, Shado," he told her, trying to catch his breath. "I'm not going to fall here and leave you alone for the rest of your life. Even if that means I have to crawl."

"Daddy," she cried even more and hugged him.

He coughed again before he could make another move…and fell to his right side, falling onto his back.

If I knew that this was going to happen this way, he thought, looking up at his weeping daughter's face, I would've suggested that we go on vacation somewhere in a peaceful wilderness or some little town and not some large city.

He raised his left arm up to caress her face, showing a tattooed sticker that she had put there the day before, shaped like bear holding a heart from some cheap bubblegum Shado liked.

The ground started to rumble…and what he saw next paled in comparison to the beauty of his child in front of him. A large pillar of flame, assuming the shape of a mushroom, and an additional cloud that appeared to be full of debris…coming their way. He focused on Shado and her sad face.

Shado held onto her father as she heard the explosion approaching them; there was no way she was going to leave her father behind. And there was no way to run. She shut her eyes and tried to pretend that they weren't there right now, that they were someplace else.

"Daddy," he heard her say, but his hearing was starting to fade. "Daddy… Daddy… Daddy…"

He couldn't even hear the sounds of a bird shrieking or a dragon roaring. Not even the shinning light as his vision faded to black.

-x-

"…Daddy!" A girl's voice shouted.

"Gah!" A young man gasped, waking up from a light slumber and seeing a little girl in front of him.

She was dressed in a blue skort and a green coat, with short, ebony hair and palish-brown eyes.

"Daddy, are you okay?" She asked him.

The young man. A teenager, in fact, dressed in a school uniform consisting of a white shirt and black pants, the same ebony hair as the girl and a darker shade of brown eyes. He looked at her with a confused look on his face.

"I don't…" He started, but hesitated from finishing that response…and looked at his left arm, seeing a tattooed sticker of a bear holding a heart. "Was I asleep just now?"

"For a while," the girl answered him. "I tried poking you, but you wouldn't wake up."

"I'm sorry, sweetie," he apologized to her, and then realized that they were on a train.

Thinking further back, he remembered why they were on a train: Shinji had received a letter from his father, telling him to come to Tokyo-3…and how his aunt and uncle just packed his bag and had him go…but not before he packed Shado's bag because he wasn't going to leave his daughter alone with them, as he didn't trust them at all with her.

Was that all before…just a dream? He wondered, feeling like he had a big experience plow through him like there was no tomorrow. "Hey, Shado, do you ever feel like something just happened to you, but you don't know what it was exactly?"

"Not unless it was a dream of fire and wind," she told him. "We were walking somewhere, but then you fell down…and you couldn't get up."

Thinking about what she just said, Shinji did feel like the last part of his daydream had mirrored the girl's dream of fire and wind. An explosion and a cloud of debris…and he himself having fallen, unable to get back up because of something terrible had happened to him earlier.

"Attention, passengers," they heard a female voice above their heads. "Our next stop will be Tokyo-2. Please, note that this train does not stop at Tokyo-3. Last stop will be Tokyo-2 and then the train will turn around. Have your tickets and belongings ready. Thank you."

Shado sighed and looked at her father. It would be her first time seeing her grandfather, but it seemed like something that was to be dreaded because of her nonexistent relationships with her father's aunt, uncle and cousin, who didn't like her at all.

"Daddy, what is a…bastard?" She had once asked her father, who then held her close to himself, never answering her question, but knowing where she heard that word from.

Shinji sighed, as well. Ever since he had been kidnapped and raped by his daughter's mother, he had given up thinking about any attempts at having even a civil conversation with his absent father who left him a long time ago. There was just no point in trying to speak to a man that wanted nothing meaningful to do with you and would clearly want nothing to do with his granddaughter. He couldn't have Shado be hurt emotionally by his father like they had been verbally and emotionally by their other relatives ever since before the letter came in.

"Are you ready to see Grandfather, Daddy?" Shado asked him, reaching over to grab her bag.

With what felt like a dream or maybe a memory of his father being harmed by someone and left on the floor, Shinji uttered, "Let's not go through with this, baby."

She looked back at him and questioned, "What?"

"Let's not go see him," he answered her. "Let's go somewhere else. Just you and I."

"Really?" She asked.

"Yeah."

"But where?"

"Anywhere but where we were supposed to go."

"Won't we get in trouble?"

"As far as I know, our nicknames might as well be trouble. What do you say?"

Shado looked out the window and then back at her father.

"Will it be an adventure, like those people with the colored costumes?"

"Nothing like that, but an adventure all the same."

"Okay, Daddy. Let's go."

-x-

"…All the train station said was that when the train arrived, the boy went and had the tickets reversed so that he could take the train back," Misato explained to Gendo Ikari in his office.

"Tickets?" He asked, and then coughed. "I had only sent him one ticket."

"Yeah, this is the part that is interesting. He had a little girl with him. I asked Dr. Akagi to check his background, and it turns out the girl is his illegitimate daughter. They just took the train backwards and left the moment they arrived in Tokyo-2."

And this was something Gendo hadn't known about, having spent the majority of his son's childhood living and working underground. He wouldn't have known his son was kidnapped and raped unless someone else that live above ground told him.

"There's something else you should know," Misato told him. "It doesn't appear that your in-laws have heard from either Shinji or his daughter since they left three days ago."

Looking down at an old photo of himself with his wife and son, Gendo sighed and requested that Shinji and his daughter be found…and a clearer explanation to why he wanted to see them. Ever since he got sick in the aftermath of Yui's experiment, he left Shinji with his in-laws because he was incapable of taking care of him while working and getting treatment for his illness. The worst part of all of this was that he feared they would've done to Shinji exactly what he wanted to refrain from doing himself, which was to treat him like garbage.

What have I done? He questioned himself.

-x-

It was just another day at the beach for Shinji and Shado, who loved to run towards the retreating waves and run away from the waves as they came close to her feet.

"Ah-ha-ha!" She laughed at her father, who sat on a flat rock and watched her play. "Daddy, this is the best day of my life!"

Shinji smiled at her and thought of nothing else but how impressionable she was around him.

"Iiiiiieee!" He looked up and saw a blue bird flying high into the air.

"Grraah!" He saw a mechanical dragon following it, disappearing from sight.

I think I'm done with Power Rangers after Lost Galaxy, he thought, unsure if he had imagined what he had just seen or that he was simply trying to be a good father to his little girl that he was trying make sure that she had a childhood because he didn't have much of one.

He decided to get off the rock and join his daughter.

"Hey, show me how you run from the water after chasing it," he said to her as he chuckled.

She showed him when to run from the wave and when to chase it when it retreated.

"Whoa!" He gasped as he mistimed a wave and got washed to the ground.

"Ah-ha-ha-ha!" Shado laughed at him, but was then washed with him by a following wave. "That wasn't funny."

"Oh, it was funny," he told her.

She looked at him and accepted that it was a little funny. Then, she picked up a handful of sand…and threw it lightly at his feet.

"Hey," he reacted humorously, picking up a small handful of sand did the same to her feet.

-x-

Misato found the two at the beach, just having fun. The sight of the boy spending quality time with his child made him seem very different from what he was believed to be like when she read over his file. He seemed to have moved past the trauma of his kidnapping and sexual abuse, but he didn't seem at all interested in the world around the one with just his kid. How he could deal with raising a kid that was brought into the world by his rapist was beyond her, but she couldn't see the girl as anything beyond her father's responsibility.

And she looks more like him than her mother, who wasn't much to look at. She thought as she decided to let them enjoy themselves a while longer.

In the end, nothing else mattered at the moment. In the end, she figured this boy deserved his quality time with his daughter, and it didn't need to be disturbed by something that he could told about later. This was a family moment, even if it was only just the two of them.

The End

A/N: Well, here you have it. Even Shinji's not sure if what had transpired was nothing more than a figment of his imagination, but the one thing he didn't fantasize was his daughter. Maybe it was a dream…or a type of vision of the future if he had gotten off at Tokyo-2 with Shado that day. Whichever way you choose to see it is whichever way you choose to see it…until someone suggests an epilogue. Still, it's gotta be quite an impressive story by far for you, right? And Shinji was definitely different from his father…and as different from any teenage parent that puts their child or children before themselves. It's an inescapable truth.