Creation began on 10-31-15
Creation ended on 12-21-15
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Sword of Destruction, Sword of Life: Threat
He was fortunate enough to find a motel that didn't require so much as an identification card or a name. So long as he paid up front, Shinji was able to hide out for a few days in the remnants of Tokyo-2, reduced to a meager town that not even much of the Japanese government would touch.
"What's the antique swords for, kid?" The guy in charge of the motel had asked him once as he went to his room.
"You ever danced with the Devil on a bloody battlefield and live to tell about it?" Shinji found the spine to ask him back. "I consider myself lucky to have lived and have these two swords as proof of my efforts. I fought the Devil, and he's not as tough as you would believe him to be."
As he slept in the solitude of his room, the young swordsman-in-training dreamed of the two swords' former masters and their battles. The guy in red had used the Tessaiga in its form that looked like someone had managed to take some of the night or the cosmos and shaped it into a blade and used it on a creature that appeared to be made of many dozens of other creatures in the shape of a giant spider. And the other guy that wielded the Tenseiga used another sword that had been made from the head of a strange creature to face another large creature…and it shattered in half; this left Shinji to suspect that their father's swords were of a much greater status in that they weren't capable of being shattered, no matter how much damage they took. What intrigued him the most right now was that the two swordsmen had also been made to work together against a former man that was using a sword that contained an ancient creature that could open a gateway to the underworld itself and possessed similar abilities to the Tessaiga and Tenseiga.
Waking up to the new day, he was drenched in sweat and panting from shock. It was as though what had happened to the two brothers in his dream had actually happened to him.
-x-
"…If he left, then he must've had a reason to run," Toji told Kensuke during class.
"I just wished he had told us that he was going," Kensuke responded. "You think it has something to do with the last Angel? Or his father?"
"My lunch money's on the latter. No way this absence would have anything to do with an Angel."
They had discovered that Shinji had gone missing after the last Angel attack the day before, and both had suspected that the reason he had left included the protection of the Tessaiga and Tenseiga from NERV. After being confided in by Shinji, they took the secret seriously and didn't divulge on the matter with anyone else. Unfortunately, they were hoping that NERV didn't think to ask anyone that knew Shinji if they knew where he went.
-x-
"Exactly, what are we going to ask him if we even find him?" Misato asked Ritsuko.
"Questions should include where he got the sword, how he got the sword, and who gave it to him, if someone even gave it to him," the faux-blond explained.
"You honestly think he'll even tell us if we continue to treat him like he has no right to keep secrets of his own?"
"Secrets like this could have a cost to our agency."
"Except he did defeat the Angel on his own, so I wouldn't call that a cost at all."
Walking down the hall outside Central Dogma, the two women bickered back and forth about the importance of finding Shinji and discovering the secret of this sword he had used against the Angel. While Misato suggested that they shouldn't press the matter and back Shinji into a corner where he felt he didn't need to tell them anything, Ritsuko insisted that it was a necessity in order to make sure there were no other obstacles between NERV and the Angels, even if one such, potential obstacle was the very boy that used to pilot one of their Evas against the Angels prior to the Unit-03 incident.
Meanwhile, in his office, Gendo was being questioned by Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki on the reason why he wanted his son questioned over a mere sword.
"If he could use a sword like that to defeat an Angel, then he must know where other such weapons can be obtained," Gendo told him.
"Or maybe, just maybe, you want the sword for yourself, Ikari," Fuyutsuki suggested.
Gendo didn't respond to that suggestion, but couldn't deny that he wanted the sword Shinji had. If it gave the boy a sense of freedom from the Eva, he wanted to remove that freedom and redirect the boy back to piloting the Eva. He hated to admit it, but he needed his son close by…and broken.
-x-
"'Tenseiga'?" Shinji read on his left wrist, seeing that it was tattooed with the Sword of Life's name on his skin. "What in the name of…"
The swords have merged with you, a voice uttered in his head. They are now a part of you. They can't be taken from you.
He looked at his right wrist and saw 'Tessaiga' tattooed on it, meaning the Sword of Destruction had been put in that arm, just as the Sword of Life had been infused with his left arm. Along with the tattooed names, there were the detailed pictures of the swords, though the Tessaiga was shown in all five forms, from the decrepit sword that housed the power to the sword with the black blade. Sighing, he covered his hands with a pair of finger-less gloves and long, wrist coverings so as to not draw too much attention to himself as he prepared to step out and move further away from Tokyo-3.
Knock, knock, knock! A knocking came at the door, and Shinji quickly gathered his bag.
"Yes?" He spoke up.
"You have some visitors that say they're from Tokyo-3," the motel manager expressed.
"I'm not here," he told him.
"Come again?"
"I'm not here!"
Suddenly, the door opened, but not all the way due to the chain on the door; Shinji was fortunate for that to keep whoever he didn't want coming in. The sight of one of them in black suits and glasses caught his gaze, and Shinji immediately ran to the window.
"Cease and desist, Third Child!" The man shouted at him, but Shinji climbed out onto the fire escape and closed the window before the guy broke the door open.
Shinji ran up the fire escape to the roof. Looking back, he saw the agent accompanied by another, and ran across the roof to another roof.
-x-
"He's in Tokyo-2?" Misato asked Ritsuko, who discovered this fact an hour ago.
"Section Two found him shacked up in a motel and attempted to apprehend him before he could skip." Ritsuko explained.
"I'm sorry. Attempted to apprehend him?"
"He's in the wind right now. They lost him in a crowd of people."
"He knows his father's trying to find him and won't make it easy for him."
"Misato, you know as well as I do that it's important that we find him and question him about the sword. We have no choice."
"There's always a choice. We can choose not to question him about the sword."
-x-
Hiding in an abandoned building that had been partly demolished from the N² mine against the Third Angel, Shinji decided to wait until dark to make any attempt to leave the ruins of town. However, if another Angel decided to show up, he would handle the matter before people got hurt.
"I wonder if I can use Tessaiga to build a small fire," he told himself, crouched in a small corner in the back of the building, waiting for the sun to go down.
-x-
Back in the Entry Plug again, Asuka was being tested for synchronization ratio with Unit-02. So far, everything was stable and clear of any signs of instability within the plug.
Outside the plug, however, Ritsuko and Misato saw that Asuka's synchronization ratio was higher than it had been prior to the last Angel attack, before it was revealed that Shinji was the cause of the defeat of the last two Angels. It was almost at one-hundred percent.
"Asuka, are you feeling alright in there?" Misato asked her over the intercom.
"I'm fine," she responded.
"Your sync ratio's a little higher than normal."
"How high?"
"Almost one-hundred percent."
"Are you joking?"
"I wish."
Within the other Entry Plug assigned to the First Child, Rei's synchronization ratio was the same as it had always been…until it dropped by eight percent.
"Rei, your score just dropped eight percent," Ritsuko informed the First Child.
While the pilots were being tested, the core of Unit-02 was being examined, just to ensure that there weren't any abnormalities associated with the Fifteenth Angel's defeat. So far, all they could find wrong with the core was that it was no longer red. It was now white with a golden glow.
"Someone get Dr. Akagi down here!" A man shouted.
-x-
As day became night, Shinji was out on the street, heading further south to get away from Tokyo-3 and NERV. He found a bus that was heading away from Tokyo-2 to Niigata and boarded it.
"What's your reason?" The driver asked him. "Business or pleasure?"
"Um, survival," Shinji told her as he sat in the back.
"I've heard worse."
When the bus started moving, he was hoping to get as far from here as possible. The faster he got away, the better off he'd be. He wasn't sure how he was going to survive out there, but he would be sure to find a way.
-x-
"…And you suspect that the Third Child is responsible for the destruction of at least two Angels without the use of an Eva, Ikari?" SEELE 06 asked during the next meeting, as it came to the council's attention that NERV was operating poorly against the children of Adam.
"We won't know for sure until he's brought back and questioned," Gendo explained.
"We should consider the Third Child to be more than capable of dealing with the remaining Angels if he can do so without the Eva," went SEELE 02 to the rest of the council. "If this sword he has is capable of defeating two of the Angels, he could become an invaluable ally if bargained with."
That made Gendo worry over the scenario. He wanted Shinji handled forcefully, not allowed to run wild and outside of his control.
"A sword is a primitive weapon that has no place in NERV," Gendo responded to the council member's suggestion. "It is the Eva that will suffice against the Angels."
"Which hasn't done so in the last two incidents, Ikari," SEELE 01 uttered to them. "Should the Third Child be found and questioned, we should see for ourselves what he is capable of with the sword he used against the Angels. If this sword has existed far longer than the Angels have been around to wipe out mankind and the Third Child had only acquired it recently, then it's likely that someone else had it before he came into possession of it…and he may know of who."
"And if he knows who, then maybe the sword isn't unique," added SEELE 07.
-x-
"…Asuka?" Misato spoke, finding the Second Child in Shinji's room. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing," Asuka responded, sitting on Shinji's bed, holding onto his pillow. "Why do you think he didn't tell anyone about those swords of his?"
"Swords? He had another one?"
"Yeah, two of them. You didn't notice?"
"No."
"He has two swords, said he got them off the street from somebody. He didn't elaborate on who and why, but he kept them close."
"Maybe he told his friends about them. He would've felt the need to confide in someone he trusted."
"And if he didn't?"
"Then NERV is back to square one, needing to find him and get the truth from him. Though, honestly, it's probably better if we don't find him. I'd probably ask him to be the ring bearer, though."
Asuka was then reminded that Misato had been proposed to by Kaji. The two had planned to get married as soon as the remaining Angels were defeated. It just made her wish she had someone.
"His father thinks he's a threat, doesn't he?" She asked Misato.
"Maybe," she responded. "How he can be considered a threat is uncertain. If he wanted to hurt people with his swords, he would've done so."
"He never seems the type to want anything relating to world domination or some sort of sadism."
-x-
Screech! Shinji heard the bus stopping as he awoke in his seat.
"Okay, people, this is a search and apprehension," he heard a male voice in front of the bus. "We're looking for a fourteen-year-old boy."
He looked up ahead and saw one of the men in black suits, accompanied by a police officer.
Oh, no, he thought, uncertain of how he was going to get out of this situation.
As they looked at everyone they came across, the boy tried to look inconspicuous as he kept his face turned to the window.
"Excuse me, sir?" He heard the man in black asked him, showing him a picture of himself. "Have you seen this young man recently?"
He turned to face the agent and uttered, "No, sir?"
"As you were," the man said and he walked away.
This had Shinji feeling confused. He stood out in the picture, so anyone could see who he was. How could the guy just look at him…and not see that it was him? He hadn't even tried to change his appearance in any way besides covering his arms to conceal his swords.
"Sorry, people," the police expressed to the bus passengers. "Enjoy the rest of your trip."
Shinji sighed as the bus started moving again. Whatever deity had made it possible for NERV's dogs to look for him and miss him, he was grateful.
-x-
Gendo had looked over the translated versions of the Dead Sea Scrolls that were never made public, trying to see if there was anything about any swords being used against the Angels…and found nothing of such that had been translated. All he found were the situations in which an Eva went up against an Angel and, one way or another, defeated the Angel. He found where it said that Unit-02 was supposed to suffer at the methods of the Angel of Birds and that was when he was supposed to have Rei dispose of the Spear of Longinus, but then the Third Child came and messed things up. Even the translations on where the Fourth Child was supposed to be disposed of to break his son were there, but even that hadn't occurred. The Angel of Might was supposed to have been devoured by Unit-01 for its S² Engine and made completely independent of the Umbilical Cable and more useful to his scenario, and even that didn't happen.
Damn you, Third Child, he thought, really wanting to blame his son for messing with his plans as nothing he had read happened at all. You've ruined everything I've worked so hard to achieve! I'm supposed to have everything! You're supposed to have nothing!
On his desk was a photograph of his son wielding the sword he had used against the Angel of Birds, making him curious as to where and how he learned to use a sword when he had never even learned to use a knife before until after he was forced into the Eva against the Fourth Angel. If he ever found the boy, he would make sure to have this sword disposed of. Crushed, melted, whatever methods were used to dispose of a piece of steel. He didn't want anyone or anything beneath of the Eva to have any sort of degree of power or freedom affordable to the Third Child. He was a threat and he needed to be put back into his place.
To be continued…
A/N: Here's the next chapter until later next year.