Creation began on 09-18-23
Creation ended on 10-02-23
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Alternative Therapy
A/N: There is a practice for everyone that tries to recover from a harrowing experience.
Running. He was running in the woods again, carrying his Eevee in his arms, his back sporting four slash marks. It was night out, and he couldn't recall why he was even out here to begin with. Sweat was pouring down his face as he ran behind a tree.
"Eee," Misato whined slightly as he poked his head out from behind the tree to see what was chasing them.
Shinji's eyes widened at the sight of the ghostly Ursaring, looking vicious and full of spite.
"Rrrrraurgh!" It roared as it slashed at a tree on its left, reducing it to bits. "You can run, but you can't hide!"
Hiding behind the tree, Shinji pondered his options on how to deal with this creature he thought had been made a thing of the past. Of his past and everyone that had been a witness to its secondary demise. He found himself feeling like he was slipping between what he knew…and what he thought he knew…over and over again. And why he was here to begin with.
"…Shinji…Shinji…Shinji…" He hears a voice calling out to him. "Shinji!"
He opens his eyes and looks up at Hanmyo, who was shaking him; he had been asleep the whole time, making the scenario with him in the woods a nightmare.
"Huh? What?" He went.
"You were talking in your sleep," Hanmyo explains.
"Eee," went Misato as she sat down in front of him, looking worried.
"What was I saying?" He asks them.
"You were saying things like, 'You will not kill me again!', 'You're nothing more than a memory!', 'I'm moving past you!' and every other choice of words that seem to add up to something serious," Hanmyo tells him, and he looks around the tent they're in and sighs; it had been a day since their friends had left back to his world to recover from their sojourn before returning again.
"I was dreaming about Urasaring," he reveals, and Hanmyo sits down beside her Meowstic duo.
"Shinji, even though it's only been a little over a week since Laverre City," she says to him, "don't you think it's safe to say that you're…traumatized…by what happened?"
"Yes, I'm traumatized, but I'm getting over it. I'll be fine."
Except there is one thing wrong with what you say, they heard the male Meowstic, Mata, say telepathically. You don't believe that.
Shinji reacted by widening his eyes in disbelief. To have someone say that he didn't believe what he had said was a shocker to him.
"What do you mean, Mata?" Hanmyo asks him.
He doesn't believe that he'll ever be entirely over the Ursaring incident because he was dealing with someone that despised him simply because he made a choice to capture them due to the harm they were causing to the ecosystem. Or rather, he was dealing with a creature that was supposed to provide a service to the ecosystem, but instead chose to disrupt its order, which prompted him to capture it in order to preserve the order. In the process, Ursaring became more resentful and incorrigible towards anyone that was associated with Shinji, which led to its eventual demise and return as a wandering ghost with a grudge against its former trainer, which it still felt bound to because of the would-be master/servant relationship that it felt existed between them.
"I was never its master, and it was never a servant," Shinji states calmly.
That is true, went the female Meowstic, Kemi, but in the Ursaring's mind, however twisted and resentful, that was what it believed. What it chose to believe. In the end, it was that choice of belief that led to its hatred, its death, and its eventual eternity of inescapable agony. However, it is likely that, even though it was captured and is now bound to the Old Chateau, it wouldn't go down without either taking you with it…or leaving you unable to move past its existence, which is why it tried to attack you for the last time. If it couldn't kill you…
"Then it could at least scar me," Shinji concludes. "Physically, mentally, emotionally."
"Someone that chooses to become a threat to someone else will find a way to torment them," Hanmyo states, "even in death. Even after death."
But Shinji still had to remain confident that what he chose to do would assist in his continued recovery from the incident. Before he left the Pokémon Center, he had contacted Prof. Sycamore and exchanged his Charizard and Gyarados for one of his Phantump and Tyrunt to train and introduce to the team. He would train primarily with his Phantump and get used to its presence; it was his hope that, while around this Pokémon, he would become used to its ghostly nature that existed alongside its plant nature…and not develop an irrational phobia of ghosts when they were a part of this world. Or rather…an irrational fear of ghosts with vendetta-based motives.
-x-
"I don't believe this," went Kensuke as he and Toji were browsing the posts made of Shinji's most recent gym match against Valerie during recess in the classroom.
"What is it?" Asuka asks him as she comes over with Rei and Hikari.
"Someone has been trolling him and leaving derogatory comments."
Rei looks at one of the comments and swears she heard them from somewhere before.
"It sounds like someone we know and loathe," she utters in response to the comment.
"What do you mean?" Hikari questions. "It could've been anyone."
"They use these words here: 'Irrelevant', 'petulant', 'useless', and 'spare'. In addition, there's this line here: 'He uses the Pokémon world as an escape from what he should really be focusing on, which is finding his way back to this world'. Also, check out the username."
Someone calling themselves NERVismy2015 had left nothing but derogatory comments, and Rei was certain that they were someone they knew and disliked.
"Who do you think it is, then?" Toji asks her.
"His father, Commander Ikari," she reveals her suspicion.
"Yeah, it has to be him," Kensuke agrees with her. "Most of the other people that watch these videos have been supportive of Shinji and admire his passion and tenacity as a Pokémon Trainer. This NERVismy2015 fellow is just someone with nothing nice to say about Shinji at all, something that sounds a lot like his father."
Reviewing the other comments, they found that several people were chastising the troll for being disrespectful and negative towards Shinji, with several of them threatening to do whatever was necessary to block him from posting, with the response being that they wouldn't like Shinji so much if they learned that one of his Pokémon tried to murder him and nearly succeeded in doing so, which indicated that this troll was aware of some of the Ursaring incident, something nobody was made aware of online just yet.
"It is his father," Asuka realized due to one crucial tidbit of information: Commander Fuyutsuki had told Gendo of the incident…loosely, meaning that he only knew that Shinji was nearly killed, but not by which Pokémon.
Not even Kensuke posted information of the rogue Ursaring that Shinji caught dying.
"We gotta block him," he tells the others. "If he has nothing nice to say about Shinji, he has no right to troll him on social media. And this is just complaining about the fact that he isn't here to pilot the Evas or face the Angels, neither of which even matter, anymore."
"Plus, Shinji wouldn't pilot again, even if he could still do it," Rei adds in. "Not Unit-01 or any other Eva, for that matter."
Kensuke then made a comment to the troller: "You gave yourself away, NERVismy2015. We're moving to have you blocked from posting any more comments about Shinji Ikari. If you have nothing nice to say about him, then you shouldn't be here talking about how much you don't like him. It's not his fault." He then went to his settings and typed in the commands to block the user from posting any more spam on the account.
"All that seems left to do is confront the guy later," he tells them.
"Really?" Asuka asks him. "You wanna confront the guy that can't say out loud that he hates his son, so he does it online?"
"I wouldn't go meet the guy on my own," Toji confesses. "Even with a bodyguard, I don't want to see him."
"And if the bodyguard in question were to be Brute-Chan?" Kensuke suggests.
"I'd feel a little safer," Hikari states.
"Commander Ikari has never demonstrated any interest in the martial arts or any self-defense practices," went Rei. "He does have a mild history of brawling, however."
"So, he knows how to get into trouble," says Asuka.
"I can have Brute-Chan bear hug him into submission," Kensuke declares.
"Then we'll go confront him after school gets out," Toji suggests.
"Yes," the rest agree.
-x-
Like the children, Ritsuko, Misato, Hyuga, Shigeru, Maya and Fuyutsuki had also discovered Gendo's trolling of his son on social media.
"He's the only one I ever told about Shinji getting attacked by a violent Ghost Pokémon," Fuyutsuki informs them.
"He's a real bastard," Misato expresses. "Look at half of what he posted."
"Words can't describe how much I dislike this guy right now," added Maya. "This won't make Shinji rush what he's doing, and it can't rush what the Giovanni Corporation has made progress on, either. This is just negative venting."
"Worse than that," Ritsuko declares. "Since Shinji knows the truth about the Evas, his father is more than aware that he can't forgive his parents for what they did, but his father feels it's like he abandoned them."
"I wouldn't call Shinji being displaced some form of abandonment," stated Hyuga. "It's hard to run away when you don't choose where you want to relocate, and ending up in the Pokémon world was as random as you can get with an Angel that was a link to a different dimension."
"Plus, the guy's a complete absentee parent," went Shigeru. "He doesn't even know Shinji. How can he feel like he's been abandoned by him when he and his wife did it first?"
"It's the choices they made that resulted in the repercussions that didn't make themselves known until much later on," Fuyutsuki says.
"And what of the choices we've made since we returned?" Misato asks, wanting to know what ramifications they could face from the Committee if they were to learn of some of the issues that needed to be addressed because of Shinji's displacement and unexpected procurement of knowledge due to his Psychic Pokémon easing the pain of his recollection.
"Since we're not following Ikari's scenario or theirs," he tells them, "if the Committee, SEELE, ever found out that we had Lilith disposed of, they'd shut us down in an instant and remove all traces of our existence."
While it was a risk that felt very high, the greater risk was not doing anything to impede whatever beliefs that led to the world's end. So, upon returning from their mental sojourn in the Pokémon world, due to Fuyutsuki making it an order and request for Tama Pāru to aid in saving their world, they disposed of Lilith in Terminal Dogma, displacing her on Mars. It wasn't easy due to Tama Pāru needing an image of the red planet before it could open a rift in space between the two planets and dumping the being that was said to be the source of all life on Earth, but they made it happen with access to authenticated images of Mars and Tama Pāru's own disgust towards the being that, while having seen her before, felt she was a threat only because of how humans could or would exploit her to corrupt ends, which would include jeopardizing its own hopes of returning to the Pokémon world.
"I knew I was starting to like you humans for a benevolent reason," Tama Pāru expressed once Lilith had been disposed of.
Truth be told, their relationships were getting better each time they met Shinji and learned more about Pokémon.
"How goes your work on creating a version of the Hyper Potion for human use, Rits?" Misato asks Ritsuko, changing the subject.
"I would say it's going well," she responds. "All I'm missing is a volunteer to see if it works."
"Later. What about the status of the Fifteenth Angel?"
Ritsuko typed down a command and a monitor switched over to the chamber housing the Angel in the rift prison that Tama Pāru made to house it, still showing no signs of having escaped.
"Still locked up," she reveals.
-x-
He just wanted his Phantump to have a nickname that had meaning, so Shinji chose Yūrei-Shiryō for it, two different designations for a spiritual being. If anything, it was to help Shinji overcome his trauma of his most recent near-death experience that was, beyond any doubt, the most extreme so far. Even Hanmyo had to consider that when someone like Shinji came so close to dying, it was an experience that none was able to return from unaffected. But despite this shift…or maybe because of this shift, she also saw a little more of this strength Shinji possessed.
Those that can come close to death and still manage to come back from it become stronger and more capable, she thought as she saw Shinji training with Yūrei-Shiryō, doing pushups with the Pokémon on his back with his Eevee. But Shinji… The look in his eyes. The sense of woe that he's trying to overcome. I'm actually worried that he might be overdoing it.
In Shinji's mind, having Yūrei-Shiryō on his back was reminding him of the time Ursaring had impaled him in his back.
"I got you!" Its brutal words echoed in his head before he was thrown against the tree.
"Phantump?" Yūrei-Shiryō utters to Misato.
"Eee," she responds; they were conversing about Shinji's mental health and how Yūrei-Shiryō was needed to help him overcome his trauma. "Eee, eevo."
"Tump. Phantump, Phantump. Tump?"
"Eevo (Misato then stomps her right paw on Shinji's left shoulder). Eevo!"
"Oh, you're lucky I care about you, Misato; otherwise, I'd shake you off my back," he tells the Eevee as he finished his thirtieth push-up. "Could one of you sit on my head as I finish the remaining ten, please?"
"Phantump," Yūrei-Shiryō expresses as it moves to Shinji's head. "Tump!"
"Thank you."
Hanmyo was getting their lunch ready while the trio were training.
"How are you feeling so far, Shinji?" She finally asked him.
"Hopelessly coping," he tells her.
Then, Yūrei-Shiryō moved to look Shinji in his eyes, stopping his exercise.
"Phantump!" It utters, causing Shinji to shudder. "Phantump!"
This close proximity between faces was making him think back to his fear of the Old Chateau.
"Phan…tump," it continued.
Shinji inhaled a new breath and tried to steel himself against the Pokémon that he wanted to get up in his face.
"I refuse to let you scare me," he tells it. "I refuse to let you break me. You're not going to break me. Not in a hundred years."
Then, his Eevee hugged his back with all four of her legs.
"Eee, wee," she utters in a way that was supposed to sound angry as her paws extended their tiny talons through his shirt.
With this tactic employed by his Pokémon, Shinji had to endure this as he still had five more pushups to go.
"Thirty-seven…thirty-eight…thirty…nine…forty. Urgh!" He groans as he drops to the ground. "This is…stressful. Thank you, Misato. Thank you, Yūrei-Shiryō."
"Eevo."
"Phantump."
Getting off him, the two looked down at him and noticed that he was sweating a little differently from any other time he worked out with them.
"Phantump?" Yūrei-Shiryō asks Misato.
"Eevo," she responds.
Mata and Kemi look over and knew that Shinji was sweating from the mild terror he felt from having Yūrei-Shiryō be up in his face. It had been causing him to think about the Ursaring and coming to terms with its brutal behavior. But he refused to back down.
Shinji got up to his feet and stretched his arms out.
"That wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be," he expresses.
"Oh, really?" Hanmyo asks him.
"If I can't handle fear, what does that make me? What does that make anyone that can't handle fear from even the most minor or trivial of things or situations?"
"Someone ruled by their regret of being unable to overcome what scares them."
"Yeah."
"And violent Ghost Pokémon…or rather…anyone with violence, with a vendetta and a willingness to act on it, to come after you or someone you care about…scares you?"
Shinji looks at her with a tenseness in his eyes as he inhales a new breath.
"Yes," he answers her. "Yes, that scares me now. It scares me just as much as the thought of anyone in my world treating Pokémon like they're expendable or have no feelings when they do. It's a nightmare you want to keep from having, but it's relentless because you can't get rid of it."
She then gestures for him to sit down and eat as she sets two bowls down for her cats.
"Well, among the first steps to recovery is admitting that you're terrified," she says as she sits down. "My worst fear…is believing that my displacement into this world was not because of a coincidence…but because my ship blew up, killing me."
"I hope that you're not dead in your world," Shinji tells her. "At your age, at any age, any good person dying is just…hurtful."
"Yeah."
-x-
"I don't like this," Hikari tells Toji and the others as they walked down the hall to where Gendo stayed. "I mean, he's a troll and everything, but approaching him is so…"
"Because he creeps the Hell out of you?" Kensuke asks her.
"More or less."
"That's why we have Brute-Chan, in case he tries anything."
"Machamp!" Brute-Chan expresses, flexing his four arms. "Champ!"
"We got this, we got this," went Toji as he approaches the door. "You sure this is the place, Rei?"
"Yes," Rei responds, and then he presses the doorbell.
They waited for a response. It took about a minute before a response came.
"Who is it?" They heard Gendo's voice over the intercom.
"Friends of Shinji's," Asuka answers.
"What do you want?"
Even the way he spoke to them was awful. It was as though he couldn't address anyone with any degree of civil socialism. A person that couldn't speak without sounding like a terrible person was someone that would be alone for a long time until they got their act together.
"We want to talk to you about you trolling Shinji on social media," Hikari says.
"I don't have time for some childish nonsense."
"You're the one who's childish right now, sir," Toji calls him out on. "We know that it's you. You're the only one who would have a username related to what you used to do before you got fired. You've been disrespecting Shinji ever since the world found out about his displacement into the Pokémon world."
"He abandoned his moral responsibilities in favor of some creatures that he has come to collect and hoard away."
"But you being upset about him not being here isn't going to change anything right now, sir," Kensuke adds. "You can't make him feel any less than he already did when he found out the truth and made his own decisions in response to his revelations. You failed him when you left him. You both failed him when you left him. The only thing different about him leaving was that he didn't have a choice; the Angel was blown up and he ended up getting displaced. He didn't choose to end up where he currently is…and you two made a choice to be where you are."
They could hear footsteps and backed away from the door. It opened up and revealed Gendo, who looked ticked off.
"You take that back," he demanded.
"No," Kensuke told him.
Gendo looks at the teens and sees Rei with them. In addition, he saw the Machamp that belonged to the Fourth Child, which looked at him with a frown, as if trying to intimidate him. If this was an intervention, it was very pathetic.
"He refused to come back when he learned of what he needed to do," he told them. "He's a coward, and only cowards are useless."
"You're the coward," Asuka responds. "You both are. We just didn't realize how much you were until we found out what you did years ago. Who chooses to do what you and his mother did…and not expect for there to be consequences? Negative reactions? Even if he's taking his time to return, he can't make the world stop and start of his own volition. He's not a deity…or some falsehood deity made by people that were looking for something to believe in. He's just a young man that got swept into an unforgiving situation by his absentee parents who, rather than do right by him, failed him at every turn because they chose something else over him…and then he gets displaced during a situation and has to adapt and move on. But he can't forget what you did. Even when I hated him before I even met him, I didn't believe he'd be troubled by something like this, this…unforgivable predicament that his parents created. Even if it's discovered that it's hopeless to expect a quick solution and we have to wait longer because he's still out of our reach, at least he won't be hurt any further by you two."
"How dare you," Gendo grunted, but Brute-Chan raised his upper arms up, letting him know that force would be used if he tried anything.
"It is the truth," says Rei, "and for one like Shinji, the truth is painful. The truth is…traumatic. You have been saying nothing but terrible things about Shinji, and your actions will have consequences if you don't stop."
Gendo really wanted to redress this imbalance of him not having any control over anything due to these people no longer under his command, but he didn't want to risk getting thrashed by the Machamp with them.
"Everything one does has consequences, Rei," he tells her. "Everything he chooses to do has repercussions for everyone else."
"Only when you make a choice to do something you shouldn't. Only when you choose to cause pain. You create suffering…and it becomes a poison that needs to be removed."
"What are you doing here?"
"We want you to stop trolling and badmouthing Shinji just because he's not here," Toji told him.
"Or else what?"
"Or we make you stop," Kensuke decides to threaten the man, "by any means within morality."
"Is that a threat, boy?"
Kensuke frowns and responds, "You bet your ugly glasses it is."
"Champ," went Brute-Chan, cracking his upper arms' knuckles, augmenting the intimidation.
Then the teens turned to leave.
"Have a nice day," said Asuka to Gendo as they left him with the warning they came to give him.
But Gendo refused to be bullied by some kids that didn't know how serious the issue was between saving the human race from the Angels and being eradicated. At least, that was what he believed because he was no longer in the loop on whatever occurred at NERV HQ.
"You've been disrespecting Shinji ever since the world found out about his displacement into the Pokémon world." He remembers the Fifth Child saying to him, and he balled his fist.
-x-
It was a chance encounter that led to this new match between Shinji and a fellow Pokémon Trainer that came from to Kalos from Johto, and Shinji needed to get more practice with Otome and his Tyrunt, who he nicknamed Bitā (meaning "Biter"), which stemmed from its spoiled and unnecessarily aggressive nature that he would need to work on. While he fought against the rival trainer with his Gogoat and Tyrunt, they used an Audino and Umbreon.
"Go, Audino," said the rival trainer as he was facing Shinji's Tyrunt. "Use Attract!"
Hanmyo got worried; she had learned of Attract during her time in Johto and knew that if it affected Bitā, it would affect Shinji's chances of winning this battle. But it would enable Shinji to learn from his own mistakes, as well. As the Audino used the requested technique, yellow hearts formed out of thin air and were launched towards Bitā, who was hit by them, but for some reason…just shook them off.
"Huh?!" The trainer gasps. "Oh, no."
Shinji suspected that Attract wasn't going to work on Bitā and moved to attack.
"Go, Bitā," he ordered, "counter with Tackle!"
Bitā obeyed and charged towards Audino, ramming it with its head and sending it crashing backwards onto the ground, losing the match in favor of Shinji.
"Audi…" It groaned, dizzy.
"Another victory for Shinji," Hanmyo expresses.
"That makes forty-eight-seventy-seven," Shinji utters.
Huh?! Hanmyo's cats reacted.
Had Shinji battled other trainers over four-thousand times?
"You weren't too bad out there," Shinji praised the trainer.
"I was hoping for a simple win against the Sinnoh League Champion," he responded, "but I guess it's true. There's hardly anything simple about facing a champion that has gone up against the best of the best and got better over the years."
"I still consider myself to be a regular trainer when facing other trainers. Your Audino, though. It used Attract, but nothing happened."
"I was expecting your Tyrant to be male, but that isn't the case here."
This was a surprise to Shinji. It was mere luck to have encountered the Tyrunt in the wild when he caught it, but because of the time he spent between traveling, training and facing the gym leaders for the badges to get into the Kalos League, he didn't expect to learn right here and now that his Tyrunt, due to a failed attempt to make it fall for an enemy Pokémon, was female.
"My apologies, Ms. Bitā," he said to his Tyrunt. "You surprised me today."
"Tyrunt!" Bitā grunted in response.
"Eevo," went Misato and she came over to confirm for herself…and knew from scent alone that this Tyrunt was from her side of the fence.
"Forty-eight-hundred-seventy-seven wins?" The trainer questioned Shinji. "How many losses have you racked up?"
"One-hundred-ten," he answered, and the trainer's eyes widened. "I learn from my past mistakes and build on them."
Reasonably, Hanmyo didn't really see what the fuss was about. Everyone had to make mistakes in order to become better at something. Not even an assassin was perfect at their craft on the first hit and had to build themselves up before becoming the skill subject of hire. Then again, Shinji was someone that had to lose a few times before rising up to where he was and developing the winning streak that he had.
-x-
"…I gotta say, Tama Pāru," went Antonio to the Palkia as it was eating from two barrels of fruit, "I'm impressed that you're able to consume fruits."
"I'm guessing that, because I am a dragon, you and others assumed that I was carnivorous due to the belief of dragons being carnivorous?" Tama Pāru asked him.
"Yeah. Yeah, we assumed. Sorry."
"Don't be. The truth is that the majority of Pokémon are omnivorous; put us anywhere in the world…and we will do whatever it takes to survive. But as humans have come to understand, the majority of us are as friendly as any other creature and prefer cooperation over confrontation."
It placed the first barrel down and picked up the second barrel.
"Electrode," went Boomer as it rolled over to Antonio. "Electrode."
"A storm is coming," Tama Pāru states, translating for Boomer. "Boomer is excited for it."
"Why?"
"Storms mean electricity, and Boomer is an Electric Pokémon, meaning it feeds on electricity."
"Oh… Should I be worried about this?"
"Electric-Type Pokémon will get electricity however they can when they need it. And thunderstorms, however rare, provide several times the charge that electricity generated artificially does. To harness that energy is one thing, but to harness it for the sake of consumption for one that needs it, that is a benevolent sign."
"The one thing I don't want to do is anything that would endanger Boomer, like…what Benjamin Franklin did when he discovered electricity."
"Who's Benjamin Franklin?"
"A man that discovered electricity over two-hundred years ago by flying a kite with a key tied to it during a storm."
"Electrode!"
"You just inspired Boomer with the details."
"Oh, no."
"I hope you have a kite."
-x-
Because a storm was coming, they didn't want to risk doing another sojourn when a blackout was likely to affect them. This left everyone affiliated with NERV world-bound until the storm passed.
"Well," went Asuka as she tried again to cook something decent after watching Shinji do it more times than she cared to admit, "a little bad weather never bothered anyone."
"I wouldn't call this upcoming storm a little bad weather," said Rei to her, reminding her that the albino was spending time at Misato's rather than be alone at her place after Gendo was found waiting there for her.
"Well, what would you call it?"
"Bad weather."
Simple and to the point.
Asuka sighs and accepts her answer and then returns her attention to the stirring pan of broth she saw Shinji show her how to prepare. It was one of the simplest of dishes that Shinji had shown them how to cook because it only had three ingredients and was meat-free, something Rei could enjoy without an issue.
"Hold on," they recalled Toji say when Kensuke revealed something to them one time during their time in Unova, "you're saying that some companies in Johto, Hoenn and even here in Unova are in the business of growing meat?"
"Well, yeah," said Shinji as he explained what he knew about it. "The only difference is that they're literally growing meat from Petri dishes and large tanks with chemical solutions to encourage growth. One of the names for it is lab-grown meat."
"There has been some work on that in our own world," expressed Antonio to them, albeit with some disappointment. "Research is still ongoing due to lack of funding and interest by the majority of the scientific community. But it's actually booming here?"
"Not just booming," Kensuke stated. "It's thriving. Almost every store in every region has lab-grown meat on the shelves somewhere. Shinji and I didn't realize it until we passed a building in Goldenrod City where a protest was taking place against one of the labs that was putting other businesses out of business."
"What is the difference between lab-grown meat and regular meat?" Rei had asked them, her curiosity made heard.
"Regular meat, that is meat that comes from a cow, chicken or fish," Shinji explained, "was acquired by people in the business of hunting or farming, meaning everything has a face and a life. Lab-grown meat, while essentially meat, grown from the same kinds of animals, is made using their DNA to create artificially. It didn't come from the animal directly because the animal is elsewhere, not in some processing plant somewhere. Also, it has a different texture and taste from regular meat."
"Basically, lab-grown meat is similar to how the Evas' biological components were made, only meant for consumption."
"Yeah, like that."
"You know, not everything related to science and technological advances can be compared to the Eva," Asuka told Rei.
"Still trying to get out of my rut," Rei explained. "Before these…revelations, my life was nothing but the Eva. Now that it's been made a secondary concern, it's a challenge to put it aside and think of something more…interesting to think of."
Asuka couldn't fault her for it; it wasn't every day that one found out more than they expected to learn from someone that initially suffered from traumatic experiences and repressed memories. That and a near-death experience that was too close to the heart, there were revelations that left them all feeling like there were too many secrets and those that once hid them were trying to profit from them before they were exposed and the shift between order and control came around.
"Maybe when we go back, you should give lab-grown meat a try," she suggested to Rei. "If it's grown in a tank and not from an animal, it can't be all that bad."
CLASH! They heard the thunder outside, and the storm had arrived.
-x-
A surprise storm had occurred, forcing Shinji and Hanmyo to take shelter in a cave close by until it passed. As he started a fire, Shinji looked out at the pouring rain that wasn't even half as bad as the thunder and lightning that was present.
"How far are we from Anistar City now?" Hanmyo asks.
"Another day's walk," he tells her, setting up pot to prepare dinner. "Or less if we run every now and then. But the rain's going to make the ground too wet to run much of the time."
CLASH! The thunder and lightning made Hanmyo jump as she moved further back in the cave.
"The only issue I have with being in a cave right now is the fact that it was occupied by other Pokémon before we showed up," she tells Shinji as they were in the presence of several small Pokémon that had taken shelter in the cave to wait out the storm.
"They were here before we were, so we're the guests, Hanmyo," he responds. "Be nice."
"Eevo," went Misato as she sat on a rock beside Shinji as his other Pokémon were outside their Poké Balls waiting to eat.
Leo grunted as he went over to Hanmyo and sat behind her.
"Huh?" She reacted as she felt like she was beside a heater. "Oh, thank you, Leo."
"Grr," he grunted.
It took eight minutes, but Shinji had managed to prepare a quick meal for them. Another flash of lightning came and he noticed, just for a brief moment, a figure in the distance.
"Saw something again?" Hanmyo asks him.
"Just a stranger in the storm," he admits, setting a bowl down for Leo and another for Komadori.
"Phantump?" Yūrei-Shiryō speaks to Shinji.
"Seeing things that aren't there?" He responds, making sure he understood what his Ghost Pokémon was asking him.
"Tump!"
"A little."
-x-
"…Dammit, Boomer!" Antonio yelled as he was fortunate enough to have a full-body rain poncho, but he still felt like he was getting soaked to the bone in this rain atop the roof of the city's tallest building. "This is insane!"
"Electrode!" Boomer responded; it had been struck by lightning at least eight times, feeding on the electrical currents that surged through the night sky. "Trode!"
"Yeah, you're enjoying yourself! I'm very happy for you!"
A kite was in the air, tied to Boomer by a cable to send the electrical surges to the Ball Pokémon in order to feed it.
"Are you two out of your minds?!" They heard Ritsuko say to them when she arrived atop the roof. "This is crazy!"
"Electrode!" Boomer told her.
"It's an electrical buffet line for Boomer," Antonio tells her.
Clash! Another bolt of lightning hit the kite and sent the surge to Boomer, fueling it with more energy and feeding its need for electricity.
"Electrode!" Boomer then moved off the platform it was standing on, elevating it higher so that the kite could be struck by the lightning, letting it fly off into the wind.
"I guess Boomer's had his fill of electrical power from the sky," Ritsuko states as they head back into the building. "What possessed you to do that, Mr. Giovanni?"
"Boomer needed to eat…and I opened my mouth when I should've kept it closed."
Ritsuko then noticed that Boomer was now levitating four feet off the ground.
"Show-off," she called it out, and it rotated in the air.
"How'd you come to find us here, anyway?" Antonio asks her.
"I went to the research station, and Tama Pāru told me where to find you two," she reveals. "It is pandemonium with the research crew having difficulty monitoring Shinji. The storm's potential to affect the power grid puts a strain on the generators."
"Your protégée wanted to be a test subject in going to the Pokémon world during the storm, but I told her that wasn't happening."
"You can't take a lawsuit, even if someone's volunteering?"
"No, because I don't want to risk anyone's safety during this storm…or any other storm, for that matter, just to advance the research that will open new doors for everyone. Even if it's voluntary, even if we threw caution to the wind, I couldn't risk anyone's life during a case of bad weather. I'm willing to put my life on the line…so long as it's my life."
"We could be looking at two days of this weather."
"Can you live with it?"
"No choice."
They reached the elevator and went down.
"Can I ask a hypothetical question?" Ritsuko asks Antonio.
"Feel free," he responds, shivering from the rainwater that managed to get through his poncho.
"What do you suppose are the chances of there being an alternate universe where everyone has an A.I. assistant?"
"That…would be both likely and unlikely. Likely because it would be in an alternate existence, and unlikely because there are factors that we don't know were likely to have been involved during the process of creating A.I.-based assistants for people."
"And the chances of an alternate universe where the entire world is run on A.I.?"
"I'd be creeped out if it were worse than the movies than the films portray it. But if there were another universe where lab-grown meat has completely replaced the slaughterhouse business, I'd be impressed."
"Yeah, that would be impressive."
"Electrode!"
-x-
The storm didn't let up, but so long as the fire burned, they had heat along with light in the cave. Dinner had been quiet, but sleep seemed to elude Shinji, who stared at the cave ceiling.
"I'll find you! I'll put you in the ground!" The dead Ursaring's voice echoed in his mind as he sighs. "I'll put you in the ground!"
"Eee?" He hears Misato and looks over at her, seeing that she was looking at him.
"It's just one of those nights," he tells her.
"Rrarh," they heard Leo as he comes over and sits down on Shinji's right side. "Rrah."
Shinji looks at Leo and sees that has that look on his face from when he was a Litleo, when he was testing him to see if he could handle the issue that was yet to come. If this was his way of reminding him of what he needed to do later, it was pretty moot; Shinji had no intention of letting his post-traumatic issues impede him from facing the danger that would show itself in the Kalos Region.
I'm not letting this break me, he thought as he consciously reached up to his chest, feeling his heart beat a little uneasy. Damn.
For some time, he felt like his heart was beating differently from its usual rhythm, trying to get back into its former rhythm over this uneasy one. Then, it slowed down and began to beat like it used to. After a minute, he got up from his sleeping bag and walked away from the campfire and Pokémon; he had to answer the call of nature. His Eevee and Pyroar followed him.
In a small space that was out of sight, albeit outside the cave in the rain, Shinji relieved himself.
"Phantump!" Yūrei-Shiryō's voice could be heard, despite the rainfall being loud enough to muffle out the other sounds around them, and Shinji jumped as he readjusted his pants.
"What are you doing out here?" He asked it.
"Phantump!" It gestures with its arms and points over to the trees in the background. "Phantump!"
"Rrrah!" Leo growled.
"Eee!" Misato added.
Shinji was at a lost in the communication between the four of them, but could only assume that Yūrei-Shiryō was telling him to follow him into the forest. Then Yūrei-Shiryō floated towards the trees, coming back to tug as Shinji's right leg.
"Phantump! Phantump!"
"Eevo!" Misato went as she then got behind Shinji and pushed his left foot forward.
Whatever was going on, they likely knew something he didn't know. Either way, Shinji had to put his faith in them, that they were helping to get him to something. He followed Yūrei-Shiryō as it floated around the trees.
"Phantump! Phantump!"
Shinji had to climb over the exposed roots and branches as he chased after his Ghost Pokémon that led the way to wherever they were.
"Rrrah!" Leo roared as he and Misato were right behind them.
For some reason, the forest felt more like a jungle now because of the heavy rain, making travel through it difficult, but Shinji didn't let this impede his advances. Wherever he was being led, he had to get there. He had lost sight of Yūrei-Shiryō, but could still hear it somewhere in front of him, calling out to him.
"Phantump!" Its voice seemed close by, but it was physically out of sight. "Phantump!"
Where…where are you? Shinji wondered as he ran as fast as he could, swiping away branches and leaves that were in his way.
"Phantump!" Yūrei-Shiryō appeared in front of him, causing him to halt as his Eevee and Pyroar caught up to him.
Yūrei-Shiryō then slowly led them to a clearing in the forest where they saw a pond. A crystal clear pond; the rain around them didn't touch the surface, like they were in the eye of the storm, enabling them to see a small patch of whatever beauty was present here. The Ghost Pokémon led Shinji to the edge of the pond in front of them and floated over the water, pointing down.
"Phantump," it says, and Shinji looks down at the water, seeing his reflection.
He was about to say something about it, but then his reflection shifted into something else entirely, startling him. His reflection had assumed the appearance of an Ursaring, with burning red eyes. As much as he wanted to turn away, he kept his gaze on it.
"You scare me," he told the dead Pokémon, admitting his fear, "but you're in the afterlife where you're locked up in a dark place where you can't get out."
"I still haunt your every moment," he heard the Ursaring say to him. "You will never escape me."
Shinji felt his heartbeat becoming uneasy again.
"One day, you will meet your end…and there will be no way to get around it. Everything you know, everyone you care about, you will lose it all. You can't escape from your fate."
"You know, you're not the first person to tell me something I hear from someone else in one way or another, and you won't be the last one to tell me, either, but I grow weary of people telling me what they believe to be my fate. The ones that say that, the ones that try to get me to believe it, thinking they know anything about my fate…are beyond feeble and all things geriatric, and that's a word I barely make use of. First, my parents…then some lackeys from Team Rocket, then Team Magma, Team Aqua, some bandits, thieves, kidnappers, they're all the same, thinking they can tell how my story…when I'm the one that gets to decide how my story ends. You tried to write the final chapter…and make it a sad adventure…because you let your hatred of me consume you. That's on you. In the end, your fate was all on you. I caught you to stop you from distorting the natural order of your environment. If I had to make the choice all over again, I'd catch you again…and take extreme measures to keep you in check."
"Is that so?"
"Yes."
"Do you honestly believe that?"
"I'm the one that writes my story here, and you…you're just a sad and miserable chapter that got closed. You decided how to end your story when you got your end handed to you, and your epilogue was so depressing that I would give it a bad review. A Pokémon trying to kill its own trainer out of hatred is no different from a rotten-heart parent trying to murder their own kid because they want to go live their own life instead of the one they want them to live…or some other reason that is not to their benefit."
The Ursaring reflection then emerged from the water, appearing as an actual figure before Shinji.
"I may not be around to witness it, but I will always be hoping that you suffer," it told him.
Shinji sighs and responds, "Hope all you want. Even in death, in the end, it's all you can do. You may haunt me for a time, but only for a time. I will move past this and come out stronger because of it because I put my faith in my Pokémon and friends that encouraged me to keep going. A violent storm eventually dies out if you wait for it to pass. I've gone through plenty…and I'll go through more to continue on the path I'm taking. So haunt me all you want, Ursaring. I will persevere. You won't stop me. I refuse to let you or anyone stop me."
The Ursaring growled at him, raising its claws up, as if to strike him. But then…it lowered them back down to its sides. It snarled and fumed at Shinji, but the young man didn't back away.
"Then…even if the midst of adversity and fear," it utters, "you have chosen to continue without regrets over your choices, knowing everything you've done, everyone that has either hurt you…or lost you, in one way or another. You should've died that day, letting the darkness claim you, but you chose to continue living, to carry the weight of your past that you can't change, to bury the pain you were dealt with, letting it be bitter…and brief. And your willingness to do so in order to protect or cherish others that help you. Such a selfless choice was what led Arceus to guide Xerneas to you…to ensure that your life continues to have meaning and purpose."
Ursaring turned to walk away, but turned back to face Shinji.
"You refuse to be ruled by fear…and won't lament the life you can't have back in that world you were displaced from. Lament…is not in the cards for you, Shinji Ikari. Not like it was for me. Not like it was for me."
It then turned to walk away, fading from sight as the light of the pond dimmed. In front of Shinji was his Phantump, which floated over to him.
"Phantump?" It spoke.
Shinji smiles and nods his head.
"Thank you, Yūrei-Shiryō," he praises the Ghost Pokémon. "You helped me out more than I had expected of you to. Thank you."
"Phantump!"
The eye of the storm then disappeared, leaving the place covered in rain and cold winds, and the four returned to the cave.
-x-
Gendo found his social media account frozen because of the harassment he was doing towards his son, being warned by dozens of users that even if he left unsigned comments about Shinji's success as a Pokémon Trainer, they would know it was him and make it so that any unsigned comments or reviews would be impossible to post, requiring people to make accounts if they wanted to express their feelings and opinions about any of the video posts relating to Pokémon. It infuriated him that he was being limited, even when all he said was how he felt towards the boy that had made no attempts to return to this world and how he was using his displacement as an excuse to keep from facing his responsibilities and obligations. In fact, several posts directed towards him were listed as threats, with a few actually suggesting that they were going to find him and give him a world of hurt. While he didn't believe any of these due to the world of social media being a place where people could express themselves without the fear of reprisal, he did feel the intimidation from earlier when the pilots came to see him and warned him to stop, otherwise they'd put an end to him.
Why can't they see? He wonders to himself, watching a post of Shinji facing this woman that specialized in Dragon-Type Pokémon. Why can't any of them see? We're facing a catastrophe that endangers us all, and they're preoccupied with a useless brat that knows what he needs to do in order to get back, but he makes no effort to do so. It doesn't matter if we have a Pokémon helping us a little; unless the Angels are defeated, we have no future. As long as the pilots survive, that must be their only understanding.
"You create suffering…and it becomes a poison that needs to be removed." Rei's words echoed in his mind.
-x-
It was a small miracle that their taste buds were able to handle the attempt to prepare a cooked dish. Even Misato had to applaud Asuka for following Shinji's recipe.
"…This almost tastes as though it were made by Shinji," she told the redhead. "Well done."
"Thanks," Asuka replied, though her attention was on the storm outside.
It wasn't even ten in the evening, and it felt like the storm was getting worse out there. Only an hour ago, the lights dimmed for a second, a sign that the power grid was nearly affected.
"What do you think are the chances that Shinji will be back to his previous self when we get back to Kalos?" Rei asks them. "Before the attempt on his life?"
"PTSD affects people differently," Misato states. "I mean, he could take a few weeks to maybe a month to get over."
"No," Asuka went. "No, you said it wrong."
"What?" Misato asks her.
"Not PTSD. PTSI. That's what happened to him. He was injured. His alternative therapy by having a Ghost Pokémon in his roster is his way to treat his injury. He can't let one ghost keep him from wanting anything to do with Ghost Pokémon in general, especially since it was a violent one that was stubborn."
Ring! Misato's phone rang, and she answered it.
"Katsuragi speaking," she went, putting it on speaker.
"This storm is not letting up," spoke Antonio to her, "but we recorded something that was impressive in the Pokémon world. I don't want to jinx it, but Shinji might be doing better because of his alternate therapy attempt with that Phantump of his."
"Really?" Rei asks. "What happened?"
"It led him down to a pond in the forest during a storm, likely similar to the one we have here right now, and he talked down an illusion of his fear of the Ursaring. I thought they were going to duke it out right then and there, but when the talking was over, the illusion was gone."
"It definitely sounds like Shinji is recovering from what happened," Asuka expresses, and then a lightning bolt outside flashed with the thunder roaring, causing the lights in Misato's apartment to go out. "Aw, verdant!"
"The grid took a nasty hit," Antonio utters. "I jinxed it."
"No, you didn't," Rei told him. "We needed to know how Shinji was doing, and you gave us some good news. A little darkness isn't going to sour down how I feel right now."
Asuka's phone received a text from Hikari, saying that the lights went out at her place along with Toji's and Kensuke's. The entire city was in a blackout. But she responded with the update that Shinji was likely going to be back to his old self by the time they went back to see him. News like that was sure to lift people's spirits.
-x-
Hanmyo awoke to the sound of the storm still raging outside, uncertain of when it would end and how long she could stand being inside a cave.
"We could be looking at another few hours before it lets up," she heard Shinji say to her as she turned to face him, seeing him by the campfire, cooking another meal, sounding better than before the previous day.
"Did you have a good dream last night?" She asks him.
"No," he tells her. "My therapy with Yūrei-Shiryō yielded good results."
"Then…you were able to exorcise your demons?"
"No. Not exorcise. That isn't always possible. But I was able to bury them for the time being. Just deep enough to not let them get to me. I finally found a name to go with Ursaring that works with its bad behavior, too."
"Oh?"
"Nageku."
"Nageku?"
"It means 'lament'. Ever since I caught it, that's what it did up until the end of its life. It lamented over what it thought I took from it."
"Lament. Not a word I ever heard before, and in any language. I don't think I've ever even heard you say in the length of time I've known you."
"Always something new to learn each day."
You actually do seem better today than you were the days before, they heard Hanmyo's cats say as they awoke to the smell of the dish being prepared. Quite the recovery, Shinji Ikari.
"Thank you."
"Question, though: What is your strategy to acquire the seventh badge?" Hanmyo wanted to know, since their journey to Anistar City was not going to be impeded by a storm.
"Yūrei-Shiryō will be part of the strategy to face the gym leader. And maybe I'll have to develop an unexpected ace."
"Besides a Ghost Pokémon, you have no idea how to proceed, do you?"
"Like I said, always something new to learn each day."
Hanmyo smiled and chuckled. It did seem like Shinji was back to his old self, no longer suffering from what happened to him. Even during a storm, it seemed like the stars were shining on them right now.
-x-
Deep within Anistar Gym, the leader had foreseen her next opponent and smiled at their confidence in facing her for the Psychic Badge.
"Well, well, Shinji Ikari," she expressed, "your tenacity doesn't disappoint. I look forward to your arrival."
To be continued…
A/N: And here we are. I'll be honest, the scene in which Shinji has to follow his Phantump came from the original Lion King film I lost interest in growing up where Simba is running through the jungle, and his outcome with the memory of his Ursaring from the Hellraiser remake, which is where I got the idea for Shinji to finally nickname his Ursaring, even after its death. The idea of a storm running the risk of compromising the research that enables the characters to travel subconsciously to the Pokémon world is due to the risk of an outage, so the dangers were only similar to what they experienced before and could not risk it again. So, what did you think?