Creation began on 06-21-16

Creation ended on 08-31-16

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Evaflowne: Light and Pain

More than half the time, Yui Ikari had a hard time looking at her adult son that wasn't as quiet or as easy to be around as he used to when he was fourteen. It was the prosthetic arm, the burns that didn't fully heal yet, the scars from the excessive violence he had to put an end to, and his emotional distance towards everyone he used to know. This included his resentment towards her. And she couldn't fault him for any of it, either; she and Gendo tried to manipulate him before he was even born, and their actions had a heavy, soul-maiming consequence for him.

And now, here she was, trying to talk to Shinji, wanting him to talk to her.

Shinji, having left the ruins of a building that was once a library, assisting in gathering the bodies of those that didn't make it to the shelters in the last attack, carrying the body of a little boy he pulled from the debris, and taking him to the truck that was being used to store the salvaged copses until they could be identified and returned to their families. His reasons for doing this being because he wanted to actually do something useful for those who were less fortunate; he didn't want to feel useless to the good people.

"Shinji?" Yui spoke to him, and he turned to face her after giving the boy's body to another man that wrapped him up in a sheet and put him in the back with the other bodies found.

"What do you want?" He asked her, clearly uninterested in having a conversation with her.

"I just want to talk to you."

"There's nothing to talk about."

"Yes, there is."

"Then you're the only one that wishes to talk about whatever it is you want to talk about."

"Shinji, can't we put this behind us and start over?"

Shinji sighed and responded, "No, Yui. I rather keep it distant. If there's one thing I have learned from our time on Gaea, it's that you are capable of anything except genuine honesty and love. You…you play the role of the caring mother…but we both know that Ummi is more of a mother than you could have ever been to one that has outgrown you…and I don't care that you're wearing a wire so that others can hear this. What I say is the truth from my point of view."

-x-

"How does he know she's wearing a wire?" Fuyutsuki asked Gendo in the latter's office.

"He shouldn't know unless he searched her," Gendo explained.

"I'm not wearing a wire, Shinji," they heard Yui say to Shinji on the transceiver device.

"And do you think I would actually believe you?" Shinji responded. "You know as well as I do that I stopped believing in anything people like you and your husband say a long time ago. I believe in what my heart, what's left of it, anyway, tells me, and it told me that you can't be trusted, no matter what you say or do. I gave up an arm to save my wife and children, and I'd give up my other limbs if it means seeing them again when this unnecessary vendetta with the Angels is done with."

"But you won't resolve it without what has to happen, eventually," Yui told him.

"Says you because you want the end of the world to happen," Shinji responded. "If I wasn't the merciful man that I am, you wouldn't be here right now to irritate me. However, Ummi is the only reason it was decided that you would be returned here, and you will never see her or our kids again."

"Yet, you don't know if you will, either."

Gendo and Fuyutsuki heard something rough occur and Yui yelping.

"Are you threatening me?" Shinji's voice was colder. "You're lucky I don't have my sword on me right now, otherwise, you would have another scar to go with the two Ummi gave you."

"Yui, get out of there," Gendo told her.

"Okay, I'm sorry, Shinji," she told their son.

"Go…go bother someone else with your beliefs and actually believes in them," Shinji told her, sounding like he was trying to calm down. "I gotta go help find more people that didn't make it and pay my respects to the deceased innocent."

-x-

Yui couldn't forget how Shinji's face looked whenever he lost his temper towards people he didn't like. He almost always looked like a deteriorating corpse because the blood drained away from his cheeks. She had to deduce that this was a side-effect of him having a prosthetic heart integrated over what remained of his natural one. Every time he lost himself to his emotional outrages, he became a violent-repressed man that really wanted to lash out without any type of restraint.

As she walked away, she saw him return to the ruins of the building and come back with another body of a child. This one was a girl.

-x-

Welcome to Gaea

Shinji awoke from what had to be the most reinforced incapacitation he had ever experienced, and saw violence in front of him.

"What the…" He expressed, seeing large, humanoid machines much smaller than an Evangelion, probably eight-ten meters in height (he saw some that were probably close to fifteen meters in height), facing a large, flying serpent that was attacking them.

He could hear the people screaming as he saw them running away from the serpent. Men and women screaming for someone, children crying for their parents or guardians, and he saw people that looked like animals in many respects (mostly wolves, bulls and cats). Checking the Eva's power reserves, the young man had at least three minutes of electrical energy left…and felt like he had to do something to help the people he didn't even know beyond the fact that they were being attacked and probably driven away from their homes.

Unit-01 got up from where it likely fell and slowly approached the large, city-like setting that the flying serpent and the giant robots were fighting. Shinji made certain that every step he made the Eva take be careful, as to avoid stepping on the people that ran his way.

It was a miracle that, despite the Eva's audio systems being damaged (probably from however it arrived here), the people seemed to see that this thing that was bigger than the giant robots facing the serpent was trying to avoid harming them, running beside the buildings to give the purple behemoth some space to put its feet down.

Shinji saw one of the giant robots melted away by the serpent's fire, breathed out from its mouth, setting fire to some of the buildings, and took out the Progressive Knife.

"You're not an Angel," he declared to himself, "but I can't stand by and let you continue hurting these people."

-x-

The first injury I ever received from facing that dragon was getting my left arm broken, thought Shinji, looking down at his prosthetic replacement that he didn't receive until he was in his twenties, sitting atop the left shoulder of Evaflowne. Even to this very day, they called the dragon Retribution. The people of the country it would periodically attack, formerly called Zaibach, had been the cause of much death and suffering over four-hundred years ago, before I showed up, and had since cast aside their previous ruler's beliefs, but had lost any semblance of an ideal worth believing in. They said I changed things when I arrived with Unit-01, that I was an answer to their prayers for salvation and hope.

He reached into his trousers' right pocket and pulled out an old, folded photograph he had with him. Unfolding it, he looked down at the image of what he did all that he did for. There was himself, shortly recovering from the operation to save what was left of his heart, a woman with ebony and emerald-colored hair and gold eyes, dressed in a blue dress with red manacles, and two small children, a boy and a girl, with ebony hair and blue and gold eyes, just like their parents, but in a form of heterochromia, with their left eyes being blue like their father's and their right eyes gold like their mother's. He then reached into his left pocket and pulled out a small, silver chain attached to a jade octahedron; his wife gave it to him before he left to return Yui to this dimension and preserve mankind's future without smashing people's souls together to remove any gaps that represented unhappiness or weakness. So far, the jewel hadn't changed from jade to ruby or sapphire, not even yellow, so he still had plenty of time to get back to Ummi, and he was hoping to get back home in time.

"We're still connected, Ummi," he sighed.

-x-

"…Whenever he's not with others, he's either by himself or with Evaflowne," said Misato to Gendo and Yui, looking down at Shinji from the room atop the Eva cage he was in. "Beyond that, I don't know what else to tell you."

"Does he ever mention having a family from this other world he ended up in?" Yui asked her.

"Hardly, but I've seen this photo of what has to be his family. Himself, a woman with black and green hair, and two children that look like them."

"He's intent of going back to them when he's done here."

Misato looked down at the man on Evaflowne and expressed, "I had a feeling that his return was only temporary."

"There have been three attempts to study Unit-01…or Evaflowne, as he calls it," went Gendo, "but for some reason, nobody can get close enough to it without getting a second-degree burn or worse. Nobody has died, but we can't fully understand how the Eva become this way."

"He did explain that it had to adapt as he had," Misato recalled. "It's likely this world they ended up in was more extreme than this one, which could explain his prosthetic arm and other injuries."

"He nearly died a few times over there," Yui expressed, getting their attention. "One of his most recent, near-death experiences was during an attack on his home by marauders that didn't view his beliefs on simple living…and got severe chest trauma protecting his wife. It's only because he had doctors versed in cybernetics that he survived with a prosthetic heart integrated into what was left of his natural one."

Misato shuddered and looked back down at Shinji, who was still looking at one of his jeweled trinkets that he brought with him. It was almost terrifying to know that he had gone through a lot of difficulty in his past, a past that they scarcely understood because he didn't speak much about himself to any of them. But to know that he had an artificial heart…and a family waiting for him to return home… She really wanted to feel sympathy for him.

-x-

To fall and rise

The Guymelefs present and left to face Retribution witnessed the Eva stab the beast in its long neck and drag it onto a building where it started punching its head so that it couldn't spit fire or fly away. They hadn't expected to face a dragon much larger than any other dragon that had existed before…or one that carried a hatred against them for actions committed in the past over three-hundred years by their ancestors. And they didn't expect aid from a giant that just showed up after falling from the sky…or that seemed to demonstrate an unwillingness to harm the people when it tried walking around them to get to the fight.

Unfortunately, Retribution had the advantage of not being reliant upon some sort of external energy requirements, and knocked Unit-01 aside as it sustained its neck injury and felt like its head was about to fall. It shrieked and flew away from the ruins of Zaibach, now being protected by a new enemy.

The Guymelef pilots carefully approached the Eva as its back opened up and revealed the Entry Plug, which expelled its LCL and opened up to release its own pilot.

"Aah," Shinji groaned as he breathed in the fresh air he hadn't had in over fifteen hours.

"Oh, my God, it's a kid!" He heard someone say, looking down at one of the Guymelefs and saw their face.

"He drove the Retribution away!" Another man uttered.

Shinji looked at each of them as they surrounded him. He wasn't sure what they were going to do to him. A part of him was starting to wonder if he was just dreaming due to not eating for over ten hours.

One of the Guymelefs that resembled a armored knight opened up and revealed a man in a simple shirt and trousers, strapped in some sort of body brace (Shinji suspected that it was meant to keep the guy inside from accidentally falling out.

"Who are you?" Another man questioned him.

-x-

"Hey, Shinji!" Shinji heard Ryoji Kaji on the bridge in front of Evaflowne. "How are you doing today?"

Putting his family picture away, Shinji responded, "Go bother Misato or be bothered by Asuka, Mr. Kaji. I don't have the time to be bothered for unnecessary reasons or hidden objectives."

"Aw, come on, Shinji. Is that any way to treat a friendly face?"

"You're not what I would call a friendly face, Mr. Kaji. There will always be people that have hidden agendas. The governments, the secret societies, my parents. It never ends. It will never end. But it doesn't matter. It never mattered to begin with. And it won't matter later on."

"What are you talking about?"

"Like I said, it doesn't matter."

Kaji suddenly found that he didn't think this Shinji, older and scarred, hadn't had his own agenda and was far from being talkative about what he planned on doing. He then decided to leave the man alone and find Misato.

-x-

"…It's hard to believe, though," said Toji to Hikari and Kensuke at school the next day, still talking about the older, scarred Shinji Ikari that saved Toji's life. "I mean, he was declared M.I.A., and then he comes back, older and looking like he spent most of his life in another world beyond this one, and is very distant and…bitter."

"Whatever happened to him, wherever he ended up," went Hikari, "it must've took a heavy toll on him just to cope."

Across the classroom from the three, Asuka and Rei, as Shinji didn't come to school at all, being older and out of place among the other students, looked out the window and at the damaged city. Neither said it, but the lack of presence from the Third Child left them wondering if there were such a possibility of just going back to before the Twelfth Angel incident and preventing Shinji from getting sucked into the shadow body of the Angel and sent to another universe. It wasn't that they felt cut off from the guy, but rather that they just couldn't relate to him with him being older and… To them, it just would have been simpler if Shinji was fourteen again instead of thirty-three, with two or three prosthetic pieces and a disposition that left him estranged from his parents and unwilling to forgive them for whatever they did to him years ago.

Suddenly, their cell phones went off, and they answered.

"Yeah/Yes?" Asuka and Rei questioned, respectively.

-x-

The Angel that appeared resembled a ring of light, hovering over the mountainous terrain as it approached the city.

-x-

"…Have we tried persuading Shinji to stay out of this battle?" Ritsuko asked Misato in Central Dogma, observing the newest Angel as Units-00 and 02 were being prepped for sortie.

"He's not going to listen," Misato explained. "He's older and prefers to do things his own way."

True to her words, the entire bridge crew saw Evaflowne in the air, in the same form it was in when it arrived to stop the possessed Unit-03.

"How is he able to get it fly like that?" Hyuga questioned, never imagining something that used to be an Evangelion being capable of a semblance of flight.

"Do we have contact with the pilot?" Gendo demanded, displeased with the boy's disobedience.

"Yes, sir," Shigeru answered.

"Order him back to the cage."

"You can sit in a pool of lava, old man," they heard Shinji's voice over the intercom. "I'm dealing with this Angel…and the problem that still resides in your base's basement if you haven't dealt with it yourself."

Yui, who was on the bridge with her husband and sensei, sighed as Shinji meant what he said; if Lilith hadn't been dealt with by the time of the next Angel, he would deal with her himself.

"Shinji," she spoke up, "please, don't do this."

"Everything happens as it must," he responded, echoing her choice of words in a different tone. "And this is something that needs to happen…for the good of the people."

On the screens, they saw Evaflowne fly over the Angel, which suddenly changed from a ring into a noodle of light, reshaping into a type of spiral around Evaflowne.

"Have Units-00 and 02 ready to assist Evaflowne in case he is unable to get away," Misato ordered, watching the Angel continue to spiral around Evaflowne.

"Rrrrraaurgh!" They heard a strange, metallic growling noise. "Grrraurgh!"

-x-

Within the safety confines of Evaflowne, Shinji surrendered control to the Eva/Guymelef hybrid, letting it choose how to deal with the Angel. The core-like energist glowed bright pink as Evaflowne changed into its humanoid form, unsheathing its sword and swung it at the bottom of the Angel's light-like body.

Slash! The sword pierced through the body of light, causing the Angel to emit a shriek-like noise, almost like those of a bat's, as it changed from a spiral into a sphere-like cage that ensnared Evaflowne.

-x-

"…Permission to attack the Angel, Major Katsuragi," went Rei to Misato over the intercom, watching as the Angel had trapped Evaflowne.

"Permission granted," Misato responded, and Unit-00 raised its rifle up to fire at the sphere of light; if the creature was some sort of organic construct of light, then the pellet rounds should have some sort of effect on it that would harm it, just like the sword Evaflowne used.

Rei had to hope that the pellet rounds wouldn't cause harm to Shinji, even if there was a chance that it was unlikely to happen.

Asuka, in Unit-02, raised her pellet rifle up and took aim at the Angel, as well. She just needed one shot at the Angel. With her AT-Field spread out, there was little chance that the Angel could defend itself from her.

"Aaaaaaurgh!" The two pilots heard the Angel shriek again, seeing its body of light shine brighter. "Aaaurgh! Aaaaurgh!"

"What the Hell is going on here?!" Asuka questioned, confused by what was happening.

"It's Evaflowne," went Ritsuko over the intercom. "It's absorbing the Angel into itself."

-x-

A foreign guardian, a new king

Once he had received medical treatment for his arm after his assistance in repelling Retribution, Shinji was shown around the ruins of the old Zaibach empire, which looked worse than it had been prior to his arrival.

"As you can see, we're at a standstill," the man escorting him explained the disrepair of the buildings and streets. "For almost four-hundred years, this once-powerful nation has been met with misfortune by the dragon we call Retribution."

"Retribution? As in punishment? Penalty?"

"Judgment. Ever since it appeared, it's been a sign of our undoing. For the actions made centuries ago by our ancestors."

"But that's terrible. It shouldn't be attacking you because something your ancestors did."

"Try telling that to Retribution. It's completely indifferent to what we do today. In its mind, we're no better than the people that came before us. The whole sins of the past or something like that, which I don't understand."

"I think you mean the sins of the father, sir."

"Sins of the father?"

"It's a term, an old one, that states that the people of the past that have committed atrocities have them carried on by the people of the present."

"Sins of the father, huh? But…is it only our fathers that are to blame for Retribution's attacks on us? What about our mothers? Don't they share some of the guilt?"

"Yes, they do."

Shinji wasn't sure why he decided to say that, but from what he had once read through the power of the Internet, both mothers and fathers that committed wrongs were equally to blame for the crimes committed against their children and their children's children. And he might as well as included himself as an example of the belief because of his own parents; he could no longer just excuse the absence of a woman that he had no memory of just because she was dead (as far as he'd been led to believe).

"We want to move past this all, but we don't have the means to do so," the man told him, and Shinji saw a cat woman nearby, cradling a little cat boy with a gash on his head; he didn't know for sure if the child was injured or dead. "With every attack, the madness escalates."

Just like with the Angels and Eva, he realized, seeing the comparison between the two situations. Every attack just makes everything more difficult for everyone else.

And it was during that day, just because one of the fortunate survivors asked him a question about what he was going to do while he was here (since Shinji was unsure of ever getting back to Tokyo-3 and his world), the boy who operated a giant had taken his first step toward being the king these people needed.

-x-

The Angel had screamed its final scream as Evaflowne had absorbed it completely.

The bridge in Central Dogma were left in awe at what the enhanced Eva had done.

"The Angel's…gone silent," Maya declared.

On the screens, Evaflowne then levitated back towards where Unit-00 had emerged from the ground and entered the catapult system.

"What is he doing?" Hyuga questioned.

"Evaflowne is returning to base," Shigeru explained.

"No," went Yui, knowing what was going to happen next. "He's coming to tie up a loose end."

If he disposed of Lilith, then everything that the Angels (and the people that desired to end the human race) tried to achieve would be for naught. He would willingly leave all of mankind at an evolutionary standstill until they went extinct from a different outcome, and that would be that. No unity, no merging of all human souls. Just an endless cycle of a scattered existence.

"I'm ordering you to stand down, Shinji," she heard Gendo say to their son over the intercom.

"I'm afraid I'm not going to obey that order," Shinji responded, just as Evaflowne came back to the cages and bypassing the security sections that were meant to halt unwanted advances deeper into the base. "If anyone says differently, I say this is because no one else has the moral fortitude to do what is actually necessary."

"He's bypassed the blockades and is now heading towards Terminal Dogma," Maya informed the others. "What is down there that he's going after?"

"Something he clearly perceives as a threat," went Hyuga.

"Rei, stop him!" Gendo ordered Unit-00, who had returned to the cages and followed Evaflowne. "Do not let him get any further!"

-x-

"…Just remember, Shinji, that your family supports your endeavor to help the people you were separated from in the world you're from," Shinji recalled Ummi's words from the day before he took Evaflowne and Yui with him back to the other world that, while some understood as Earth, most referred to as the Blue Moon. "And we'll be waiting for your return. I do hope that you come back before I'm outnumbered, though."

Oh, I will return, Ummi, he thought as he reached the final doors to the chamber where Lilith resided. I will return to you and this will be nothing but a memory.

He had Evaflowne rip into the large doors and began pulling them apart to expose the chamber where Lilith was crucified and impaled with the Spear of Longinus.

"Ikari-Kun," he heard Ayanami behind him, but he continued with his agenda to remove Lilith from the equation that was mankind's survival. "I have orders to stop you."

"You didn't choose to be this way, Ayanami," he told her as the doors began to give in to Evaflowne's strength. "You say the Eva's your link to everyone, but it's a flawed link. No one can be connected to everyone. Even if you could, there's such a thing as spiritual privacy. Invading the personal space of any soul is a violation of the harmony within the spirit. And to have your soul smashed together with countless others and calling it eternal salvation for all of mankind, that is an irresponsible and unforgivable act upon everyone everywhere."

When the doors finally gave way to the enhanced Eva, Shinji took back up his sword and turned to face Unit-00.

"I don't want to fight you, Ikari-Kun," Rei told him.

"Then stay back and let me end this madness that should've been ended long ago."

"I still have my orders to follow."

"Ayanami…you know as much as I do that any order you follow has no moral logic behind it…and is from a man that can't be trusted."

Unit-00 slowly raised its pallet rifle up at Evaflowne, but didn't unleash a barrage of bullets at it. Its albino pilot couldn't find the will to pull the trigger.

"Oh, come on, Wonder Girl!" They all heard Asuka's voice as Unit-02 stepped up from behind Unit-02. "Just shoot him!"

Evaflowne raised its sword at the red Eva and waited for the first sign of hindrance from its red-haired narcissist.

"You do realize that if any Angel makes contact with Adam, Third Impact will occur and we're done for, Third?!" Asuka asked him.

"Except that's not Adam," Shinji retorted; ever since Unit-01 became Evaflowne, the enhanced bio-mechanical had done much that was never intended for it to do, including confiding in its operator many secrets and possibilities that weren't meant to be. "You want to know where Adam is, check the arrogant man's hands. You already know which one I'm referring to, Asuka."

"It doesn't matter. I still have orders, Third."

"I may have pitied you a lifetime ago, Asuka, but don't mistake my wanting to be merciful for hesitation. Stand aside."

"It's not going to happen."

Unit-02 then opened fire on Evaflowne, but was unable to injure the purple behemoth with its bullets, something that Asuka contributed to the fact that the Evas all had over ten-thousand plates of armor covering their bodies. So she had to deduce that Evaflowne's armor was much stronger than the standard armor.

Evaflowne then raised its sword up and unleashed a stream of green energy from its blade, right at Unit-02, forcing it to fall down.

"Unit-02 has gone silent!" Shinji heard Maya's voice over the intercom system.

But Shinji didn't lie about wanting to be merciful towards Asuka, and that's why he and Evaflowne simply de-powered her Eva, not damage it with her still attached to the mediocre nervous system. Then, he turned to deal with Lilith, ignoring Unit-00.

"Rei, stop him!" Gendo commanded the albino to act. "Rei!"

But Rei had to accept that there was a serious problem right now, and that was her inability to follow her order to stop Evaflowne.

"I can't do it, sir," she told him, and Unit-00 dropped its rifle.

To be continued…

A/N: Sorry to leave you hanging, but you'll see the fall of Lilith and Adam in the next chapter later on.