Creation began on 07-30-16
Creation ended on 08-02-16
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Welcome and Goodbye
A/N: Kensuke's presence in the Pokemon world has interests and problems.
While the loss of Unit-03 was within negligible acceptance, the inclusion of Unit-04 would suffice. The only drawback was the comatose Kensuke Aida, the Fourth Child.
"…Suppose he doesn't wake up?" Asuka asked Kaji, looking out the room holding the incapacitated boy. "Bad enough that Unit-03 was an Angel, but worse that he was picked to pilot an Eva. I mean, he's an otaku, a kid obsessed with wanting to pilot an Eva. He kept asking Shinji to pull strings."
"The only other two potential pilots were considered, but were looked over in favor of Mr. Aida," Kaji explained. "The reason for this was because the Marduk Institute was looking for a pilot of whom the very prospect of piloting an Eva was…desirable."
"Oh, really? That's insane."
"Can you think of anyone besides yourself that would actually want to pilot one?"
-x-
Sitting in front of a small fire, using it to prepare dinner for the night, Shinji looked over where Kensuke laid, wondering how he ended up here. As his Eevee and Charmeleon kept watch over him, this left the young trainer to suspect that something had happened during his journey in the Kanto Region. And judging from only his own state of mind, not a lot of time went by while he was here, since the boy looked as he had the last time he was seen.
"Char," Asuka went, poking at the boy's right arm.
"Asuka, you really shouldn't do that," Shinji told her. "We don't want to harm him."
"Eevo," agreed Misato with him. "Eee."
"Charmeleon." Asuka obliged and sat down beside the boy.
"Ahh…" The boy groaned as he came to.
"Kensuke?" Shinji asked him. "Kensuke Aida?"
"Ah, yeah," he responded, and looked over at Shinji, feeling like he had seen a ghost in front of him. "Shinji? Shinji Ikari, is it truly you?"
"Who else would I be, Kensuke? What happened to you? How was everyone doing before you ended up here?"
"What are you talking about? Where's here?"
"Eevo!"
"Char!"
Kensuke looked over to the two animals that were there…and only recognized the small, fox-like creature that he had seen in the footage he had obtained when he filmed of the S.S. Rocket. But the red reptile frightened him.
"Aaaahh!" He panicked, jumping to his feet and backing away from the two.
"Calm down, Kensuke," Shinji told him, putting the lid back on the pot over the fire. "They're friendly. They won't hurt you."
"Who… What are they?"
"My Pokemon. Meet Misato, my Eevee, and Asuka, my Charmeleon."
"Eevo!" Misato greeted him.
"Char," Asuka added.
"You named them after Misato and Asuka?"
"Helps me to stay sane, really."
Kensuke was unsure of what to ask him about how naming these creatures after people he met, but then Shinji took out a ball and opened it, unleashing a bright light that diminished to revealed a large bird, adorned with silver ascot.
"Pidgeo!"
"Kensuke Aida," said Shinji to them, "meet Kensuke, my Pidgeotto."
"Kensuke… Um…hello there," Kensuke greeted the bird that had his name as a nickname.
"Pidgo," Kensuke responded.
Shinji then unleashed his other Pokemon in front of him, surprising him with the different types.
"My God!" Kensuke gasped.
"This is Kenji, my Pikachu."
"Pika."
"Rei."
"Karp."
"And Toji."
"Larvitar."
"Whoa," Kensuke was in awe of these creatures; they were unlike anything he had either seen or read about back home.
-x-
"…This is what's been bothering me so far about the Fourth Child," went Ritsuko to Misato, looking at a computer screen with graphs and numbers.
"What do you mean?" Misato asked her.
"His brainwaves don't exactly read like someone that's in a coma," she explained. "But the thing of it is, I've seen these patterns in the brain all the time."
"Where?"
"From the pilots when they're inside the Evas."
Misato then looked over the computer and at the unconscious boy that was in front of them.
Ring-ring! Her cell phone rang, and she picked up.
"Yes?" She asked.
"It's Antonio Giovanni," the caller responded. "My team just recorded some footage that you need to see. I'm sending it to your tablet right now."
Whoosh! Her tablet received the new video footage and she started playing it.
"No way," she reacted to the footage being displayed.
On her screen was Shinji, walking down a wilderness path with the small fox creature and the red dinosaur, but was now accompanied by another boy that looked exactly like the Fourth Child, dressed in similar clothes as he was dressed in; she could only assume that this was either a stranger he had met…or he loaned a similarly-displaced Kensuke Aida some spare clothes he had until he could get more.
"When did you get this footage?" She asked Antonio.
"This morning," he answered her.
-x-
"Thank you again for the spare clothes, Shinji," Kensuke praised him as he came with the trainer and his Pokemon as they made the journey to Celadon City to shop for clothes and necessities for Kensuke (since Shinji had some to spare on such needs).
"Hey, you're the first familiar face I've seen in months since I became a Pokemon Trainer," Shinji responded, chuckling a little. "I'm glad to know that I haven't been forgotten about. So you finally got to be a pilot?"
"Yeah, but the strangest thing of it is I can't remember anything after this explosion that occurred just after I synced with Unit-04. Rei was inside Unit-03 when this happened."
"Ayanami was inside a new Eva?"
"Yeah, it was just to test it, but then they were going to pair her with Unit-01 and find a new pilot for Unit-03. I am hoping that she's alright, though."
"What about Misato and Asuka? Are they alright?"
"I think they really miss you. It was my camera that gave them the sliver of hope that you were still alive, though. I was filming a ship when footage of you was suddenly there when I was editing. I couldn't believe it myself."
"And if you somehow ended up here, then it's likely the only way you'll get back is if you capture a lot of Pokemon, too."
"How many have you caught so far?"
"Less than twenty, but I will make progress in the future."
As they continued on the path, a new creature popped out of the ground in front of them. It looked like a large, yellow mouse, but not like a Pikachu. It looked like it mimicked a brick wall or ground.
"Shrew!" It went.
"Oh!" Kensuke gasped. "Is that one, too?"
"Yep," Shinji answered, taking out his Pokedex to identify the new Pokemon.
"Sandshrew, the Mouse Pokemon," Dexter addressed. "Because they hates moisture and humid environments, Sandshrew can mostly be found in dry deserts and canyons. Sandshrew can defend themselves against larger enemies by rolling into a ball."
"It's a Ground-Type, as well," Shinji discovered, and decided that he would capture it to show Kensuke what Pokemon Trainers had to do. "Stand back, Kensuke."
-x-
"…Theoretically, the coma the Fourth Child is in as a result of the blunt trauma from the Thirteenth Angel's attack caused the boy's consciousness to travel to the same dimension the Third Child's currently in," Ritsuko explained to Gendo, having 'borrowed' Misato's tablet to quickly copy the footage she had received from the Giovanni Corporation. "The activation test of Unit-04 occurred at around the same time as one of the Giovanni Corporation's experiments in filming through the other dimension."
"It may just be a coincidence," went Fuyutsuki, who didn't feel this was going in a good direction. "It could be a look-alike stranger that has decided to travel with him or they're both just going down the same path for different reasons."
"We won't know for sure until the Fourth Child regains consciousness," said Gendo.
"One of the medical staff is going to try and wake the boy up from his coma," Ritsuko revealed.
-x-
Because he didn't have his Chikorita and his Magikarp was still not a challenge against anyone, Shinji had to resort to his Eevee and Larvitar, as they were experienced and could handle the Sandshrew.
"Okay, Toji, use Stone Edge!" He ordered.
"Tar!" Toji responded, and summoned several stones from the ground and hurled them at the Sandshrew. "Tar!"
"Shrew!" It fell to the ground, but then got back up, only slightly injured.
It turned around and kicked up a stream of dirt at Toji and Misato.
"Sand Attack!" Shinji realized. "Use Swift, Misato!"
"Eevo!" Misato responded and jumped high into the air, did a somersault as her tail glowed and released several, star-shaped energy constructs at the Sandshrew.
"Shrew! Shrew!" The Sandshrew gasped and fell back to the ground again. "Shrew…"
"And when the Pokemon's weak enough, you throw a Poke Ball at it," Shinji told Kensuke, throwing a Great Ball at the Sandshrew. "And now you wait."
Sandshrew became a form of light as it was contained in the Great Ball. The shook on the ground for a few moments…until it stopped, followed by a pinging sound.
"When you hear that sound, that means the captured Pokemon has been successfully caught," Shinji told him, and then picked up the ball. "And Sandshrew is now one of my Pokemon."
"Incredible," Kensuke awed, wishing he seriously had a camera with him.
The Great Ball glowed in Shinji's hand and then vanished from his hold.
"Huh?! Where did it go? The ball exploded?" He asked him.
"No, nothing of the sort," Shinji explained further what he knew. "As a Pokemon Trainer, you're only allowed to have six Pokemon on hand with you at any time. Whatever Pokemon you have caught that are over the six-limit are automatically transported to wherever you got your Pokedex from. Since I got mine from Pallet Town, that's where the Sandshrew was transported."
"Amazing. I'm starting to want one of my own."
"There's a wide range of Pokemon to choose as a starter in the trainer profession."
-x-
"…Except he's in the trauma ward back at NERV HQ," Misato explained to Antonio in the research facility in front of the secured Palkia. "How can he be with Shinji in that dimension if his body's still in this one?"
"That's something we have no answer to at the moment," he responded, and then looked at the monitor showing new footage being recorded that detailed the displaced Shinji about to approach a city with Kensuke. "Probably something to do with mental faculties being displaced or able to travel across space and time."
"Sounds like science-fiction to me."
"A long time ago, what we do was considered science-fiction, Ms. Katsuragi."
Suddenly, the boy that looked like Kensuke Aida started to keel over and fall to the ground.
"Kensuke!" Shinji gasped, seeing him start to become see-through. "Kensuke!"
"Shinji? What's going on?" The boy asked him.
"Eevo!" The fox whined.
"Charmeleon!" The red dinosaur added.
A moment later, the boy had vanished from sight, leaving no trace that he had been there.
"Kensuke?" Shinji called out. "Kensuke!"
The footage then ceased displaying and Misato's phone rang.
"Katsuragi," she responded. "What?"
-x-
"…They injected him with an adrenaline solution and he slowly came to," said the male nurse to Misato shortly after she arrived in revelation of the Fourth Child awakening from his coma. "But after he revived, he demanded to be left alone. He became agitated."
Outside his room, Misato saw Kensuke sitting on the hospital bed, looking out the window nearby, looking rather depressed.
"I want to see him," she told the nurse, and stepped inside the room.
Asuka, who was present, as well, stayed out of the situation.
"Hey, there," she heard Misato greet the otaku.
"Miss Katsuragi," she heard him respond.
"How are you feeling?"
"Why did they wake me?"
"You were in a coma as a result of the explosion at Matsushiro."
"But…why did they wake me now? I was there."
"What do you mean?"
"Wherever Shinji was. That world he's in, with those animals with all these abilities that he catches. I was there. I saw him. I was with him when he showed me how to catch one of them."
"Are you sure?"
"As I sit here and breathe."
"I believe you, then."
This was something Asuka found unlikely. Even though the boy had been in a coma for less than two days, she found it impossible for anyone to be elsewhere that resided in another dimension while incapacitated. Nothing about it just added up.
"What type of creature did he catch while you were with him?" Misato asked him.
"A mouse called a Sandshrew," Kensuke answered. "He introduced me to the creatures he had with him. A Pidgeotto with my nickname, a Charmeleon after Asuka, a Magikarp after Rei, a Larvitar after Toji and even an Eevee he named after you. He's caught less than twenty of them so far, but he's made progress."
-x-
He wasn't sure why, but Shinji decided to buy extra essentials if he ever met anyone else while on his journey through the Kanto Region in the future.
"Misato…I didn't dream any of that, did I?" He asked his Eevee, stocking up on more food.
"Eee," she answered him, nodding in the negative.
He then stopped in front a display of electronics and looked at a camcorder, thinking of Kensuke.
It couldn't hurt to have other reminders than nicknamed Pokemon, he thought, and picked up the camcorder after checking the price. "Next stop, Fuchsia City."
To be continued…
A/N: Don't worry, you'll definitely see Kensuke in the world of Pokemon again.