Creation began on 09-14-21
Creation ended on 01-18-23
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Sword of Destruction, Sword of Life: Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword
A/N: If you choose the path of bloodshed, you must be prepared to face one that is prepared to shed your blood.
Clash! Clash! Clash! The four demonic swords wielded by father and son were backed up by their respective drives to either destroy or save.
Gendo, further enraged by the fact that his son was resurrected by these replaceable women…and Shinji, who needed to stop his father for good, needing to put everything he had on the line in order to succeed.
"I killed you once!" Gendo yelled as he brought Sō'unga down on the diamond-covered Tessaiga. "I'll kill you again!"
"Not this time, Father!" Shinji replied, reflecting light off his sword onto his father's face, blinding him. "All that hatred you have, it'll be your undoing!"
"Aaurgh!" Gendo groaned, annoyed by the light reflected off this sword his son was using.
Kill him, he heard Sō'unga's voice tell him. Kill him so that he will never interfere with our plans ever again!
Gendo swung Tōkijin after pulling away Sō'unga in order to cut Shinji in half, but Shinji dodged and rolled across the ground, getting back to his feet as he swung his Tessaiga horizontally, releasing a streak towards him!
"Urgh!" He grunted and he defended himself with Tōkijin, which received a few nicks and his waist slashed, showing a red mark to indicate blood. "Was that supposed to hurt me?!"
The Tessaiga switched from its diamond form to its dragon-scaled form as Shinji stood up.
"We both may access the power of demons through these swords, but we're still human," he told his father, "and we still have the frailties that come with being human. You and I can only go on for so long before we realize that we're at our limits and can go no further. We cross a line we can't uncross…and we find ourselves dealing with repercussions beyond our imagination."
"You seem to have your repercussions under control."
"My only repercussion…is that I took too long to deal with you. Look where we are. Look at what you've become. A man that lets his drive for revenge consume him has no hope in a hopeless environment. A man whose hope was restored to him in a hopeless environment can give hope to others in need of it."
"Hope…is only an illusion."
"And vengeance…is nothing more than a poison."
Standing away from them, Misato, Rei and Asuka watched as the two prepared to engage in their fight once again, wondering how Shinji aimed to defeat Gendo. They figured that since he was revived that he had to have had a strategy that he didn't have previously, but it looked as though he was still facing difficulty with his father.
Clash! The two swords made contact again, but this time…something was different from before.
Tōkijin's demonic energy seemed to be dissipating in front of the Tessaiga. But it looked as though Shinji was having a hard time holding the Tessaiga in its dragon-scaled form.
Rōyakan took notice of this and could see what was happening.
"He's trying to exhaust his father, but he has to work with the yōki the swords are giving off," he informed the ladies. "He can't withstand the yōki because he's still just a human, so he needs the Tessaiga to expel the yōki elsewhere."
"But it doesn't look like he's having an easy feat of doing so," Asuka told him.
"It's because he's human, but he's trying to outlast his father. Neither can withstand the immense demonic energy their swords give off for too long before it overwhelms them."
"It's a battle of attrition," Misato realized; so long as Shinji was absorbing and dispelling the demonic energy, he was likely to last longer than than Gendo could. But why does it look like Shinji's having a harder time holding his sword?
Gendo looked how Shinji seemed to be suffering a little from the demonic energy the swords were giving off.
He can't handle the yōki because it'll kill him, Sō'unga informed him. Burn him out.
Burn him out? Gendo questioned.
Burn him out. He can't handle the pressure.
Gendo applied pressure on Tōkijin's hilt and made the demon sword unleash more yōki against Shinji, intent on bringing him down to his knees.
Don't die again, Shinji, thought Asuka as she saw Shinji take a step back.
-x-
There had been no white light when he felt his life end for the first time. He never saw any angels like how people described them from the old tales of life after death. No golden doors, no city of silver, no lush garden that spans as far as the eye could see, not even the notion of your questions, all of your questions, being answered in an instant. It was just a swift end…and nothing else after, like someone just put them on indefinite pause, leaving them in the darkness to focus on something else. If this was what was to be expected upon death, it wasn't something Shinji really wanted to experience again, no matter what happened to him.
His body, despite having access to some of the demonic powers of the Tessaiga and Tenseiga's previous owners, was still human, limitations and all. You punch him with a hard enough fist, he would bleed, break his bones, cause some sort of rupture of his internal organs, just cause him pain that he couldn't cope with like any other young man. It didn't matter if he possessed demonic weapons that he used to protect himself and others or was even a yōkai or hanyō. And there was a rule regarding swordsmanship that applied to all that chose to pick up a blade that was being expressed between Shinji and his father in this battle. If they were putting everything on the line in what could be called a mere sword fight, then they were prepared to have it all brought to an end in front of them.
Live by the sword, die by the sword, Shinji thought as he took two more steps backwards from his father.
"Coward," Gendo called him. "Cowards are useless at everything!"
"Then what does that make you?" Shinji questioned. "Every time you say something directed towards me, I'm getting the impression that you're the one who's the coward."
"You had one purpose when you arrived, and you questioned everything. You can't even stay down when expected to. You're as useless as you are worthless!"
"Now, that's funny. That's what I keep thinking about you; you are useless and not worth even a migraine, and I get those from you all the time. And what should happen when someone deems you useless and worthless? If you base everything off who's useful and who's not useful, just because of something you consider a survival necessity, then that's not living…and you don't have a life that has anything or anyone waiting for you at the end. What do you have waiting for you at the end?"
"Your death will be my reward."
"Except you already reaped that reward."
"And I'll reap it again."
"Not if I stop you."
Shinji raised the Tessaiga higher…and the yōki it was absorbing from Tōkijin became less than what it had been moments ago.
Gendo noticed this and suspected that, even though he had only been revived a while ago, Shinji was still weak from earlier.
"Heh-heh-heh! You're weak!" He told Shinji. "That sword of yours has limits like you do!"
Shinji then raised it over his head completely…and Tōkijin's yōki stopped emanating from its blade, reduced to looking like a large sword with no other features.
"What?!" He gasped.
"You think this is weak?!" Shinji asked as he brought the Tessaiga down to strike, hitting the blade of Tōkijin…and causing his father's sword to fracture and break into pieces!
"Aaaurgh!" Gendo groaned, his face getting cut by the broken blade pieces.
"Aaaaaurgh!" Shinji yelled, taking advantage of his father's distraction, changing the Tessaiga from its dragon-scaled form into its red form…and thrusting the blade into Gendo's chest. "Aaurgh! Gaaurgh!"
Were it not for Sō'unga keeping him alive, Gendo would've died from this critical blow.
Shinji pulled the sword out and left a bloody wound the size of a small box in Gendo's torso.
"When you have someone to protect," he told his father, "someone you want to protect, despite the dangers you could face, your limitations become meaningless. And when you have the means to protect them, you will find a way to overcome the obstacles in your way!"
Gendo brandished Sō'unga and charged towards his son.
Shinji blocked with Tessaiga, only being pushed back a few inches.
"You can't win," his father told him.
"Where there's a will, there's a way," the son replied, "and there's a way because of the will."
-x-
The portal to Hell in Tokyo-3, still present and gaining strength, had torn away the skyscrapers with its otherworldly tentacles. And beneath it, in the Geo-Front, people were trying to keep clear of its dangers until they could get help or close it themselves. But the portal was expanding, and Ritsuko Akagi suspected that so long as it remained opened, it would continue to expand until it consumed everything around it.
Strange creatures also appeared to be emerging from its darkness, but never straying far enough to attack anyone that got close enough to be ripped to pieces. It appeared that so long as the portal was still in a state of expansion, the creatures couldn't wander far.
"…I didn't think it would take this long to deal with someone like this to close a portal to another dimension of danger," Ritsuko expressed to Fuyutsuki as the portal expanded a little more as more civilians came from the city above seeking shelter.
"Except that Ikari isn't someone that is making things easy for anyone right now," he responded as the ceiling of the Geo-Front cracked open as more tentacles ripped away at the ceiling, dragging the pieces into the other dimension.
"What if the Third Child can't stop him?"
"Then we're all doomed."
Ritsuko couldn't believe that the sub-commander would just state the obvious of their current situation so bluntly. If Shinji was still alive, she hoped that he was at least putting in the effort to stop his father if he was becoming a living hazard to everyone.
-x-
Even if Shinji were to use the Meidō Zangetsuha on his father and Sō'unga, it would be moot because they were already in Hell. Any ability that relied on sending someone or something to Hell was useless if they were already in Hell. All he could really do was brutalize his father until he could separate him from the Sō'unga. There was no way that either himself or Gendo could do this forever, even if they wanted to.
Crack. Shinji wedged his Tessaiga into the ground, panting as he caught his breath, looking at his father, whose face had seen better days because of the disfigurement caused by the destruction of Tōkijin…and was likely at half his original strength without the Sword of Hatred to back up his drive for causing death.
"Just give up, boy," Gendo told him, the ruins of his armor provided by Sō'unga regenerating it. "You're heading to your grave again. Only this time, it's permanent."
"I told you already," Shinji responded. "I have people to protect, so I can't stop. I will not stop. Everyone you killed, everyone you endanger… They all go home tonight."
"Everyone except you."
Shinji glares at him.
"Home…doesn't really include people like you, Father."
With his breath caught, Shinji gripped Tessaiga's hilt and pulled the sword out of the ground.
Gendo aimed Sō'unga at Shinji, who responded in turn by aiming Tessaiga at them.
"It ends here," he told Shinji.
"Yes, it does," Shinji responded.
Whatever ties that existed between these two were not going to make a difference in which one lived to see the next day…and which one fell from all manner of grace. Even as those still lingering in Hell watched from a safe distance, the living, the dead, the damned and the demonic, it was still anyone's guess as to who would survive. It was live by the sword and die by the sword; there would be no glory, no forgiveness…and no mercy.
Their eyes locked on each other, seeing nothing but the intense dislike they felt towards each other. If either had anything else to say about each other from the past, it would've been how the father saw his son as nothing more than a weak, little boy crying not to be left alone…and the son angry at his father for leaving him alone. There were no more tears to be shed, no words of understanding. It was just retribution…and fury.
Shinji exhaled a breath…and Gendo made the first move, leaping towards him!
"DIE!" He yelled.
Clash! Shinji blocked with Tessaiga's diamond form and pushed his father back.
Warp! In that moment, their entire surrounding changed from the unforgiving landscape of Hell on Earth…to a bamboo forest that seemed ordinary.
"What?!" Asuka gasped, looking around and seeing trees and scenery that seemed like an actual forest. "How'd we get here?!"
"We're not really in a forest," said Rōyakan. "We're still in the underworld. Somehow, these two have caused the terrain to shift into a familiar setting."
"But…Shinji's never seen a bamboo forest," Misato stated, but this was only as far as she understood it due to his NERV record; nowhere was it mentioned that Shinji had ever gone to a bamboo forest, not even on a field trip.
"Hell doesn't reshape itself to the memories of the living, but to the memories of the departed," the friendly demon explained. "Memories belonging to the fallen, the damned, they shape and reshape the terrain into familiar terrain."
Slash, slash, slash! Tessaiga and Sō'unga were swung with more ferocity towards their holders, but each time they were intended to cut through flesh and bone, they only ended up slicing through bamboo stalks.
"Just accept your death and be done with running away!" Gendo yelled at him.
"Oh, you wish I would just do that!" Shinji yelled back, blocking his sword strike with Tessaiga again. "Even without Tōkijin to augment your hatred towards me, you're still dangerous. The sooner you surrender or are dealt with, the better it will be for everyone else!"
"I was better off without you living in my life!"
"And you made a conscious choice to drag me into your madness?"
"You were useless until I had a use for you!
"You really are a horrible person."
Slash! Their swords crossed blades again and Gendo had Shinji pinned against a tree.
Warp! The terrain shifted again, now resembling the interior of a grand hall, and Shinji put both his legs on the wall behind himself to push his father back.
"Now, this is a nice place," he expressed. "Very grandiose. Very theatrical."
"I wouldn't know! I never been in such a place. Most don't exist because of Second Impact."
"When this is over, I should make a bucket list for places like this to go see."
"Whoa," went Asuka, mesmerized by the beauty of where they were.
Warp! The place was soon replaced by the interior of a warehouse, filthy and dark.
"Aww!" Asuka groans; she really liked the previous setting.
"What is it with humans of the modern world?" Rōyakan questions.
"We're not perfect," Misato says.
"Nobody is."
"Not even demons?" Rei asks.
"Nobody."
Clash/Warp! When Tessaiga and Sō'unga crossed blades again, the terrain shifted to resemble a beach, with white sand and blue ocean.
"Beautiful," Rei expresses.
Shinji was pushed into the water by Gendo, and he found himself sinking.
"Waaahh!" He gasped as he tried to swim.
This is the underworld, he heard Inuyasha say to him. The water's not real. It's all an illusion.
Shinji looked around himself and found that the water was basically no different from the air around him; he was still breathing and moving around as freely as he could always do.
Alright, Shinji, he thought as he regained his calmness. Get your act together…and take down your old man.
Gendo soon showed up and brandished Sō'unga with more animosity than previously shown. Even his face was starting to look less and less like it often did, replaced by unchecked maliciousness directed towards him.
Always in my way, Gendo thought as he crossed blades with his son again. He isn't even useful, anymore…and continues to be persistent in everything he does to impede me! Why can't he just die?! Why can't you just die?!
Sō'unga's blade erupted into dark flames that caused the water around the two to shift away as their terrain changed to reflect a new environment. Instead of a forest or a grand hall, they were now standing in…a representation of Gendo's office in the Geo-Front.
"Die!" Shinji heard Gendo say to him. "Do me one last thing…and die!"
"Never," he responded, and pushed his father away from him, slamming him against the illusion of his desk. "Aaaurgh!"
Pierce! Tessaiga's blade was thrust into Gendo's torso!
"Urgh!" He groaned.
"Aaaaaurgh!" Shinji, with all of his might, pushed Gendo past his desk and against the wall behind him, causing cracks to form as he wedged his sword through it.
The blade changed into its dragon-scaled form and absorbed the residual yōki the man may have possessed from holding Sō'unga. Then, less than twelve seconds after, the blade changed into its Meidō form…and exhibited signs of having the diamond form incorporated into its current state, as well.
"How?" Gendo demanded, looking at Shinji, barely able to lift his arms up to persist. "Why?"
"Because…I have people I want to protect," Shinji answered, "and when I have someone to protect that matters more to me than my own ambitions…I come out on top, even in Hell. Goodbye…Father."
Shinji thrust the sword into Gendo deeper…and it unleashed a multitude of dark shards that tore through his body, leaving nothing behind.
"Aaaaaaaaaaurgh!" Gendo howled as he felt himself being ripped to pieces, scattered across wherever, with his final image being that of his son, standing in front of a pair of long, white-haired men with golden eyes…as his own eyes shifted to a golden state themselves, only for a moment. Why…Yui?
Slash! There was nothing left of Gendo Ikari, not even his glasses or bloody tatters.
Shinji pulled Tessaiga out of the wall and dropped the blade to the ground as the environment shifted to resemble the hillside overlooking Tokyo-3 during a sunset.
"Shinji?" Misato spoke as he turned to face the ladies and friendly demon. "Is he…"
"I ripped him to pieces," he revealed, "and scattered the pieces across the underworld. Even if he is still alive because of Sō'unga, he will take a long time to recover from his grievous injuries…and we'll have moved on."
"So, then…it's over?" Asuka asked him.
"Yes, it is."
Whoosh! That feeling of dread, the same feeling of woe that should've dissipated as soon as Gendo was defeated by his son…still lingered.
"Ikari-Kun?" Rei went.
"I may have spoken too soon about it being over just yet," he told them.
"It's over for your father," said Rōyakan to them, also feeling the looming presence of dread, "but that sword he had, Sō'unga, is still out there…and it's probably not going to stop until it gets what it's after."
"And what does it want?" Shinji asks him.
"To kill. It's just an ancient and demonic dragon from the deepest depths of the underworld that possesses an insatiable appetite for death and destruction. When it was wielded by your father, it must've fed off his own drive to cause harm towards other humans. Evil, unchecked, unbound and fueled further by any degree of animosity, even unnecessary rage…only furthers its drive to kill until there is only death everywhere."
Shinji feared the worst. If Sō'unga was still intact, and worse, still had the means to possess any that were unfortunate enough to cross paths with it, the end of their time down here in this dreadful place was far from over. But he had to get the women and his father's remaining victims out. He had to save them before the demonic sword returned to finish what it started.
"We need to go," he told them. "We need to go now."
-x-
Gendo wasn't dead, but he was no shape to further serve Sō'unga so long as he was in pieces so scattered that the demonic sword could regenerate him. Worse was that Sō'unga didn't really need all of Gendo to pick up where it left off; so long as it had an arm strong enough to withstand its Dragon Twister, the rest of the body was of no consequence. The demonic sword had managed to salvage enough of Gendo's right hand from the vicious attack that reduced the man to shreds. As Sō'unga levitated, Gendo's severed head looked up as the sword made its move to leave.
"Wait," the severed head spoke. "I can still fight."
With what body? Sō'unga questioned him. Your son reduced you to pieces and scattered them across this unforgiving domain. I don't know what is worse: The fact that you lost to your son…or the fact that I sought you out to carry out my vengeance against the world of humanity, despite the fact that you, a lowly human with lesser value than one of noble birth, only felt hatred towards a being you've never even met…and was matched only by your hatred towards your own son, whose only real crime against you, in your mind, was merely existing. Now that I think about it, it's actually strange and pathetic, a human that hates his own son…with the same animosity they feel towards a divine being they have never met. Even I have never met this God you loathe, but he is indifferent to all matters concerning the affairs of mortals; everything you humans do…is whatever it is you do to make yourselves feel like you matter…when you don't. You're not special in any sense, just useful in one way or another…but isn't that how you treat each other on a regular basis, anyway? You use each other to try and get what you want…and care very little about how your actions affect the people hurt by your actions and inactions. You abandoned your son shortly after his mother passed. You forced him into a merciless life of violence with very little hope of a future beyond what you had intended. You even condemned one of his friends to death, the same friend that he restored to life with Tenseiga, returning him to his family and giving him some peace of mind. Oh, but what really fascinates me about your hatred towards your son…is how far you were willing to go to make him suffer…until he severed his bond with you after realizing that all you wanted from him…was his obedience and his death if it became necessary. But you didn't expect him to die because of this Evangelion your wife worked on protecting him from the very worst of fates…but there are fates far worse than death, to the point that death itself, no matter how awful, no matter how wretched…is the lesser of many fouls. And now, Gendo…you will suffer a fate worse than the death you dealt your son with…and the death you tried to escape from. As you're in so many pieces scattered across many parts of Hell, I can't find them all…and I see no point in taking my time regenerating your body. You…are now useless to me. You are irrelevant. Except for your arm, at least; that's the only part of your body that can still serve me.
The demonic sword took Gendo's arm and fashioned a body for its own use. Unlike the last time it made a body for its own use, this new one was more humanoid, wearing dragon-themed samurai armor, tailored similar to the sword itself, with a head and face that, possibly due to the hand it was forged around, resembled Gendo's.
"This will do just nice," Sō'unga uttered, sounding similar to Gendo, but only more malicious. "So long Gendo Rokubungi-Ikari. I'll send everyone your way."
The demon sword then walked away, abandoning Gendo to his fate.
Gendo couldn't believe this! He had been used and discarded by a sword! No, he hadn't been discarded by a sword. He had been discarded by a demonic entity that had been trapped inside the sword…and left to lay scattered across Hell. To be used and cast aside…forced him to recall how Shinji felt when he did the same thing to him.
Then…his severed head slowly sank into the ground, condemned by his own failings as he was continually reminded of his mistakes and how he now had to pay for them.
So, this is my retribution, he realized as he was now under the hellish soil. Live by the sword, die by the sword…or worse.
To be continued…
A/N: This chapter was long overdue. Will get to the next one in due time.