Creation began on 04-19-23

Creation ended on 05-16-23

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Evangelion: The Angel of Suffering

Three Evas prepped to face the Angel, but no pilots available to face it for them. This put NERV in a bind of the worst sort. But what shocked the personnel was how this Angel looked; unlike the previous Angels, which were bizarre and creature-esque in their appearance, this one had a more demonic feel to it. It was another humanoid, but it looked as though it was dressed in dark leather, resembling a robe, with these bindings that resembled large chains and straps, similar to what you would find at an underground club catering to desires that were unpleasant. Its head resembled an octopus' with needle-like protrusions covering it.

"What are we looking at here?" Hyuga questions.

"This Angel looks like it came right outta Hell," went Shigeru.

But Maya had her concerns that this Angel was likely associated with the Cenobites, based solely on the way it looked. Even without the leather-like aesthetic elements, this Angel could've been a member of their ranks, which meant it was a servant of Leviathan. Looking down at the bag where the Lazarus Configuration resided, unsolved and waiting for its victim, she pondered the craziest idea she had right now. Because it was proven that the Angels could be taken as sacrifices for the Cenobites, all they needed to do was cut this Angel and draw blood, then it would be taken by them to their domain where it would be subjected to whatever torment they had in mind for it.

"This is bad," went Misato as she knew they couldn't send out any of the Evas without a pilot.

-x-

Asuka found this little boy to be unlike most people she had met in her life; not once in the brief time they were wandering around in this strange place they were in did he ask her what she was doing before she ended up here. Either he didn't know…or simply didn't care much about it.

"So…who are you?" She asks him.

"I'm…just another face in the crowd," he responds, "a nobody. But I'm okay with that status; I don't have any desires to be known by the world, to prove that I exist or to obtain some sort of recognition from people I don't know. Who are you?"

"Asuka Langley Soryu. I'm the Second Child in accordance with the Marduk Institute and NERV pilot of Evangelion Unit-02."

The boy looks at her like she said something he was supposed to understand…and understood none of it.

"Okay," he utters and continues on with walking her down a street.

"You…don't know what any of that means, do you?" She questions.

"I do not," he responds, "but it shouldn't matter so long as you're here, waiting for something that may never change unless you search for it yourself."

"Have you been searching for something?"

"All my previous life. It felt like a long time ago, but it also felt very recent. I met this person in the darkness one day…and they asked me what I wanted."

"And what did you want?"

"I wanted to be loved."

"Love? That's what you wanted?"

The boy turns to face her.

"In the end, it was all I really wanted because I had people who didn't love me," he explains to her. "They never said anything kind to me and meant it. People who don't feel loved will always have the need to obtain it, whether it's from a dream they escape into or from some stranger that offers your heart what it is you long for. Is there something you want more than anything else in the world? Something you really want that you don't have, that you never felt you had?"

"It's complicated."

"No. Not really. You either desire something that you don't have…or you simply don't know what it is that you want…and people that don't know what they want…are people that may end up getting something that isn't what they want at all…or worse than they think."

"And if they simply don't know what it is they want?"

"Then they're lost in their confusion…and need to find their way out of their own labyrinth before they can say what it is they long for."

As they turned a corner, Asuka noticed that the surroundings of the street…were identical to the last seven blocks they had walked down. Either they were lost…or they were going in circles.

"What is this place?" She questions.

"This is your labyrinth," the boy tells her. "We're wandering around in your mind's puzzle, trying to find the exit…if it even exists."

"You believe the exit doesn't exist?"

"That's for you to discover, not for me to know."

"What do you mean?"

"This is your mind, therefore, your maze. You have to decide whether or not you wish to leave."

It felt like every time he said something to her, he was being cryptic, like he couldn't give a straight answer, even when asked.

-x-

"No way," Ritsuko utters as she sees Lilith descending down into a large space within the labyrinth, suspended by large chains reaching into the dark sky. "This is crazy."

"Four down," she heard the gasping voice of the Cenobite with the expose throat, "and one to go. Time to start saving your breath…for screaming."

Ritsuko looks behind herself to see the Cenobite and immediately runs down a flight of stairs. It didn't matter where she ran or tried to hide; this was their domain, and they had eternity to find her, to capture her and to torture her.

"Release yourself," she heard the voice of the dark Cenobite with the split arms. "Release yourself. Release…"

-x-

The JSSDF were tasked with stalling the Angel until NERV could send an Eva out to repel its advancement towards Tokyo-3, but NERV was at a loss on how to proceed without any capable pilots. And as this attempt to find a solution inched to its few remaining moments, Fuyutsuki had managed to rendezvous with Maya under a stairway.

"…Why does he want the box?" She asks him.

"Because he wants his ultimate desire fulfilled by the Cenobites' god," he explains to her. "My best guess is that he either wants power…or to bring back someone who's dead."

"But we need to get back Dr. Akagi. If this new Angel had been bound or restrained, even for just a minute, we could stab it with the box and then the Cenobites can have it. We'll have met the sacrificial requirement and can get her back."

"I don't think we'll be able to offer up this Angel with the way things are progressing. And then, there's the loophole that can be exploited."

"What loophole?"

"Remember what we learned? Whoever possesses the box in its final configuration is the one granted an audience with Leviathan. It doesn't necessarily have to mean the people that originally had the box and made the offerings to the Cenobites, just whoever manages to possess it in its final form. Let me have the box, Ibuki. We need to have that blade ready."

Maya reached into her bag and removed the Lazarus Configuration and gave it to the sub-commander to solve.

"If we can't use this Angel, what can we use?" She asks as he twists a small portion of the box around, locking it into place. "Please, tell me you're not considering anyone here, are you?"

"Not unless I absolutely have to," he responds as he twists another portion around, locking it into place. "I would honestly offer up Ikari if it meant depriving him of his demand to have the box, but if this Angel manages to get inside the base…I'll risk my life trying to cut it."

Then, he twists the box in the middle of its configuration, causing the top and bottom portions to push outward by an inch. He holds it from the sides and pushes them back in, solving it as the blade protruded from the middle of its prism-like shape.

"Do you have an emergency code to get out of the base?" He asks her.

"Yes," she answers.

"We might need it."

-x-

"…Why do I feel like you're enjoying this?" Asuka asks the boy as she sits on the sidewalk beside a red car.

"I'm not enjoying this," he responds to her accusation. "I don't like pain and suffering. Pain and suffering are the pleasure and currency of those that see no difference between agony and bliss. For them, they are one and the same: Indivisible. I prefer happiness over despair. Which of them do you prefer?"

"I have never taken the time to even consider due to living in a world where monsters exist and want to eliminate the human race."

"Really?"

"You must have been sheltered from such a truth to not know about the Angels."

"Why would angels want to hurt people when they're supposed to watch over and protect them?"

"Not these Angels. They're monstrous and seek the end of mankind at all costs."

"If that's truth, then why haven't I seen these people?"

"What? No, the Angels aren't people. They don't look like people at all. They look like monsters and are able to do dangerous things. One of them defeated me and now I'm in the hospital."

"Or you're here in this place."

"Are you trying to suggest that I'm dead?!"

"I'm not suggesting anything. I'm just saying that you're here, not in a hospital. I'm not a big fan of hospitals; the last time I was ever in one was when I was seven. I don't want to go back to the bad place again."

"You think hospitals are bad?"

"The one I went to was bad. Nobody there was really nice."

"Hospitals aren't supposed to be nice; they just find out what's wrong, fix you up and spit you out until something happens to make you come back."

"That's harsh."

"That's reality."

"And the way you just said it, you make it seem like the world you're from is nothing but harsh, even when it shouldn't be."

Asuka was about to say something to him when she noticed him holding a strange cube in his hands, all intricate and beautiful.

"What is that you got there?" She wants to know.

"Puzzle box," he answers, turning a piece of it over. "It was given to me by the people that made my wish come true. They told me it was mine until I choose to give it to someone else, someone that would desire it. After that, I would have to choose whether or not to give it to them."

"Why would anyone want it?"

As he pressed a button inside the hole on the side of the box, the boy responds, "When people want something, they will go to great lengths to obtain it, whatever it is. Desire, obsession, lust, lies, deception, despair, betrayal, greed, envy, grief. It is because of these that there is such a thing as suffering. Not everyone likes to suffer, but there are those that create it for the sake of creating it. And it is these people that incur the attention and curiosity of another people that have gone further than anyone else alive to achieve personal satisfaction."

"So, then…you're, what, a guardian of the puzzle box?"

"Yeah, I…guess you can say that. I must protect the box from those that don't seek it…until I can give it to one that wants it. Upon doing so, the box is no longer mine. It belongs to the one that wants it, making it theirs. In the end…it will always be theirs."

She watched as he closed the expanded pieces into each other, the box suddenly changed its shape, going from a block to a completely different shape that was geometric to her.

"How did you do that?" She wanted to know.

"The box is mine…until I give it to someone that wants it," he stated, not answering her exactly.

Asuka sighs and then gets back up to walk again.

"And if I were to just say I know I want?" She asks him.

"I would ask if you're being honest to yourself," he tells her. "Are you being honest with yourself? There is the truth, the whole truth…and nothing but the truth…and the lies we tell ourselves more than we tell others."

Asuka couldn't believe this boy was saying this all. It was like every time something was said to him, he would try to find a way to make the conversation go further and deeper than intended. And his way of talking was more than a boy his age should've been. She suspected that he was nine or ten years old, based on his size and appearance, and yet he was talking well enough to be in junior high or a college-level institution someplace where intelligence was valued over age.

"My mother died in Two-Thousand-Five when I was barely four," she revealed to him. "She hung herself…sometime after she tried to kill me. I don't think she ever really loved me. In fact, I'm convinced that her perception of love was not right; she kept saying that I needed to be be better than someone else's daughter. Her ex-husband's daughter, actually. But what is the point of any of what I've done when she killed herself? Is it a desire to want someone who is dead and gone back?"

"It is," he says, twisting a side of the puzzle in his left hand, "but is it your truest desire? Is it what you're actually after? Only the purest of desires can be free from all suffering."

"My mother died. I've never felt loved by her after her accident. How can it be wrong to want her back in my life and have her care about me? To actually care about me?"

He looks up at her…and smiles.

"To be loved by someone, to be truly, genuinely, loved by someone…is not a selfish desire when it is what the heart longs for. There are those that would choose power or knowledge for their ultimate desire, but for those to choose love or life…are the ones that often have the purest of hearts and have untainted souls that long for what was denied to them. Stay true to your heart…and you may get a chance to receive your wish free from suffering."

Asuka then noticed that his puzzle box was now in the shape of two triangles merging into each other, forming a six-sided star of sorts.

"You need to wake from this labyrinth of a nightmare before you can reach your objective," he tells her, and points to her left down the street. "You have to go back to the Hell that is reality, the waking world, and remove the impediments that stand in your way. I had an audience with some special people that were the servants of a great being. Maybe you can receive one from them, too. Raise Hell for your adversaries…but protect Heaven for your allies. Go. Do this now. Release them from their false fate. Release yourself from your false fate! Do this now. Go!"

Asuka then ran down the street.

-x-

Gendo saw Maya in the elevator clutching the strap of her bag as the doors closed before he could approach, and the woman sighed as she pressed against the wall.

"And he thinks I have the box," she utters. "He won't get it. We're going to get you back from the Cenobites, Senpai."

As the elevator went up, Fuyutsuki, who was the one with the box, had entered Maya's passcode to unlock the door and exit the base.

"Attention," a woman over the P.A. system announced to the personnel. "Prepare to launch Evangelion Unit-02."

"What?" He questions; the Second Child was still in the hospital, so launching the Eva seemed impossible to do, and there was no Dummy System available to substitute the pilot.

-x-

It was an act of the gods that Asuka had suddenly awoken from her coma and was willing to pilot the Eva, despite not being in any shape to do so.

"How'd you wake up from your coma, Asuka?" Misato asked her as she was rushed to the Eva pens, forgoing the plugsuit and just keeping on her hospital gown.

"You wouldn't believe me, even if I told you, Misato," she told her, getting into the Entry Plug. "Just how bad is this new Angel?"

"It's bad, and you're the only one we have who stands between us the end of the world right now. Are you sure you're up for it?"

"Is there even a choice?"

It was only because she had awakened and found out that an Angel was approaching the base that Asuka knew that things were serious. Even if her synchronization with Unit-02 was low, it would have to suffice until later. If there was ever to be a later. As the plug began filling up with LCL, Asuka sighs as she thought of the little boy who might've ended up being the only reason that she was here right now to do something.

Who was he? She wonders as the synchronization process began.

"Synchronization is holding steady at sixty-two percent," said a man to Misato as they looked at the graphs showing Asuka's current link with the Eva.

"Well, that's to be expected," she responds; the synchronicity between the pilot and Eva wasn't as high as it could've been, even without a plugsuit, but it would have to do for now. "Prepare to launch Evangelion Unit-02."

The Eva was moved across the pens to the catapult system.

"Are you ready, Asuka?" Misato asks the girl.

"No," she replies to her over the intercom, "but it's either fight or die. Do it."

"Launch."

BOOM! The Eva was catapulted up the shaft.

-x-

Fuyutsuki couldn't believe his eyes when he saw Unit-02 emerge from the Geo-Front and onto the streets of Tokyo-3. It was an honest miracle at the last moment in a desperate hour. It also made him think that if his chances were fortunate, all the Second Child would have to do is keep the Angel restrained for just a moment…and he could stab it with the box. He took out his phone and called Katsuragi.

"Just pick up," he utters as he gets the ringtone. "Just pick up."

"Katsuragi, speaking," he got her voice.

"It's Fuyutsuki," he responds. "I have no time to explain it, but can Unit-02 try to hold the Angel for just a moment?"

"Maybe, but why?"

"Trust me when I say I have a crazy idea that might deal with this Angel, but I need to be present and close by."

-x-

Misato hung up her phone and directed Asuka to get the sub-commander, who claimed to have a way to dispose of this Angel.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Hyuga asks her.

"At this rate, I'm open to any ideas as long as they work," she tells him.

-x-

"…Restrain the Angel long enough for the sub-commander to make contact with its hide," Asuka utters to herself as she finds Fuyutsuki in the middle of the street. "Not exactly something you tell someone who just got out of the hospital less than half an hour ago."

Reaching down with Unit-02's left hand, she picked up the aging sub-commander and placed him on the Eva's shoulder pylon.

"I hope you know what you're asking of me," she told him, and saw him nod his head.

Unit-02 approached the Angel, which looked at it and fired a chain-like limb from its body at the red Eva's right leg, latching onto it. It fired another chain-like limb, this one latching onto its left arm…and then lifting it off the ground.

"No way!" Asuka gasped, and had Unit-02 extract its Prog. Knife from its left shoulder pylon and hurled it at the Angel's head.

The blade wedged into its head, but that didn't seem to stop it. There wasn't even an indication that it was injured; there was no bleeding, no shrieking of any kind, not even a reflexive reaction. It just threw the Eva away from the city onto the ground.

Fortunately, it didn't throw the Eva far or rough, as the red behemoth landed on its feet and got back up.

Fuyutsuki was fortunate that he had secured himself to the Eva's pylon using a secure strap that was available.

"If I live to see next month," he expresses, "I'm putting in my papers when this is over. Urgh!"

He was also fortunate that he still had the Lazarus Configuration in his bag.

One more…and our god awaits, he could hear the Cenobites talking to him again, urging him to complete the puzzle with a final offering. Feed it. Blood and pain…all for us.

"Pilot Soryu," he told Unit-02, "ram it."

"What?" Asuka questions.

"Ram it! Run into it!"

It was a reckless move, but Asuka was being ordered to by the sub-commander, whose authority was greater than Misato's right now. But what did she have to lose…besides her life? Besides the world she lived in?

Unit-02 charged towards the Angel, spreading its AT-Field as wide as possible, and letting the chips of fate fall wherever they would.

SLAM! The collision was quick and messy, with the Angel trying to latch onto the Eva with its chain-like protrusions again, and they fell to the ground beside a hill.

"Aaurgh!" Asuka grunted as she made Unit-02 punch the head of the Angel, feeling like she was trying to bash a wad of dough.

She then saw the sub-commander undo his secure strap and fall towards the Angel's body.

"What are you doing?!" She yells.

"Aaaurgh!" He yelled, holding the box in his hands.

-x-

Leviathan's dark lights suddenly turned red and intensified, causing the environment that was the Labyrinth to shift from its dreary and stonework design…into a streamlined, metallic and pristine variation as Ritsuko looked around while trying to avoid the Cenobites for a little longer.

"Rrrrrrrraaurgh!" She heard a roaring noise as her heart felt like it was being gripped from behind herself.

"Aaugh!" She gasped.

"Aaaaurgh!" She heard another voice as she looked up and saw the Cenobite that had its face stretched out to resemble a mask. "Aaaaurgh! The sweet suffering!"

Ritsuko fell to her palms and knees as a creature, the likes of which she had never seen before, like the stuff of nightmares, moved past her on the walls, blood spraying out of its eyes and mouth. It looked like some sort of twisted, mutated infant spliced with a scorpion, with bloody fangs and claws. It just went past her like she was meaningless to it.

"What's going on?!" She questions.

"Urgh!" The mask-like Cenobite approached her and then, unlike what she had been expecting from it earlier, helped her up to her feet. "The traitor has been marked!"

"The traitor?!"

"Behemoth! It was supposed to serve Leviathan as a protector! But it betrayed Leviathan and escaped the Labyrinth! It has been marked by the box, and now we have to bring it back to the Labyrinth to deal with its treachery!"

The Cenobite then left her alone as it walked away.

Ritsuko stood against the wall as her heart was starting to feel a little better. A red light shined on her…and she saw…herself…with Gendo…being watched by a little boy…who looked angry, holding an object eerily similar to the puzzle box she and Fuyutsuki had been researching, only it was shaped like Leviathan.

"You and that man are awful!" The boy shouted, and he then left into the air. "You're awful! You don't deserve what you have!"

When the red light faded from her, the vision of rage disappeared, leaving her wondering why she saw it to begin with. But the boy she saw, she recognized him; he looked exactly as Shinji Ikari looked prior to his disappearance, except she had never expected him to show such hatred towards what he had seen of her doing with his father. It was as though the dark light given off by Leviathan showed people's darkest secrets…and the red light showed their angriest fears. What she feared…was Gendo's son discovering her affair with his father…and reacting with hostility towards her.

"Behemoth," she utters.

"Behemoth," she hears the Cenobite with the open throat as she saw it slowly walk out from around a corner. "Leviathan will be most pleased with its return. It will know our finest pleasures…and it has received the greatest of suffering."

Seconds later, the Labyrinth returned to its previous state of being, dreary and made of stone.

"Can you…can you explain why the maze changed for a moment?" She asks the Cenobite.

"One of Behemoth's duties as Leviathan's protector was to clean the Labyrinth," they explained to her. "When it left, it left a mess of chaos that permeated throughout the Labyrinth. Once Behemoth has returned, it will clean the Labyrinth for Leviathan as it should've."

-x-

Fuyutsuki didn't have the safest of crashes onto the ground, but he was alive and in one piece as he looked up at the Angel that pushed the Eva away, sporting a thin line that represented the cut he made with the box's blade. Looking at the Lazarus Configuration, he saw that it was covered in a purple substance, identical to the blood-like substance slowly oozing out from the Angel's minor wound.

Did I do it? He wonders as the Angel started to levitate away from the city and into the cloudy sky above. It's escaping.

"It has been marked by you," he heard the voice of the pinheaded Cenobite. "It can't escape us. Not anymore."

Getting up from off the ground, Fuyutsuki looked at them got suspicious. The way they just said that the Angel couldn't get away from them…sounded as though it had gotten away from them before…and now they were getting it back.

"That wasn't an Angel, was it?" He asks.

"That was Behemoth. The traitorous protector of Leviathan. It abandoned its duty to serve our god…and now it will be ours to punish back into our service."

The blood-like substance started to seep into the box's layers as Fuyutsuki, fortunate to still be able to walk, staggered out of the gathering of trees as he managed to enter the streets of the city.

-x-

"…The blue pattern has disappeared," Hyuga informs Misato.

"What do you mean, it disappeared?" She questions him.

"It was in the sky, and now it's gone," he explains, "like it was never there. We were still tracking, but it just dropped off the map."

"What did the sub-commander do to that Angel?" Shigeru went, reminding the entire bridge that the elder had leapt from Unit-02 and used something to carve a line into the Angel as he fell to the ground below before the Angel made a retreat.

But Gendo, who had also seen the phenomenon take place, had his own suspicions of why the Angel was no longer being detected. If Fuyutsuki had used the Angel as a final offering to the Cenobites, then he had made his necessary sacrifices to receive an audience with their god. But he had to make sure that the man couldn't achieve his goal because he wanted an audience with the god himself; all he had to do was possess the final configuration of the box and he could receive his ultimate desire.

"Unit-02 and the sub-commander are returning to the base," a woman informed them as Unit-02 returned to the catapult system with the sub-commander.

Gendo then left to the Eva pens; he would take the box from Fuyutsuki, even if it mean ripping his hands off to do so.

To be continued…

A/N: I hope this chapter leaves you all wondering what will transpire next. This is one of those scenarios in which the plot takes on a life of its own to further itself. Your responses about what transpired are appreciated because more delights await those that continue down this path.