Creation began on 08-27-23
Creation ended on 10-06-23
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Days in Recovery
It was not something Misato or Asuka expected to bear witness to, but ever since Shinji returned from his time in the other dimension, it was within the realm of possibility. And now it was a fact that they were meeting one of the two people that had saved Shinji's life when he ended up there and found his way back.
"Kind of hard to believe, though, huh?" Shinji asks as he sits in the living room with them. "Misato, Asuka, this is Vambre Warrior of Warriors for Hire. Vambre, this Misato and Asuka, my roommates. Heh."
Misato and Asuka were surprised to meet the woman in person after seeing her in Shinji's memories recorded by his personal Magisword. She looked like someone cosplaying as a heroine, with a cape and everything, with the exception of a mask because she wanted the world to know who she was.
"How do you do?" Vambre greeted them.
Wow, thought Asuka as she bowed her head, even her accent is as Shinji described it.
And this is the woman that helped save Shinji from dealing with being stuck in another world, Misato thought as she bowed her head to Vambre. "Welcome, Ms. Warrior. It's an honor to meet you. Shinji has mentioned you a lot."
If there was one thing they couldn't say about Vambre, it was her attire; this was Japan, and it was stuck in perpetual summertime. And if they had to agree with it, the leotard was as close to a swimsuit as Vambre could get in a hot environment.
-x-
Keeping him locked up in holding was getting annoying real fast. If they were going to charge him with anything, they would've done so by now instead of waiting for news on the victim he attacked. And if Gendo had to go to prison for his actions, he would at least go with the knowledge that his son had been dealt with severely.
Bang-bang! A guard tapped on the bars of his holding cell with his baton, getting his attention.
"You have a visitor, psycho," he told Gendo.
"Who?" Gendo responds.
"Wouldn't you want to know?"
Gendo was escorted to the section of the building where those in custody could speak with this visitor behind glass dividers and phones. He sat in the chair and watched as a door opened on the opposite end of the room…and his eyes widened at the sight of his son stepping inside, looking like he had never been attacked at all.
Shinji sat on the other end and picked up the phone.
Gendo had no choice but to engage in conversation with his son and picked up the other phone.
"How have you been?" Shinji asks him, masking his spite towards him a little. "I heard they held you in here for four days."
"Irrelevant," Gendo responds. "This is nothing more than a setback."
"Is that so? How can it be a setback…when nothing went the way you wanted them to go? How is this irrelevant…when you're the one looking at attempted manslaughter?"
"I can say that I lost control of my car, that it was an accident."
"You can say one thing, but witnesses can say another."
"Witnesses can be unreliable. Witnesses can disappear, forget what they saw, misinterpret what they think they know."
"Only if they've been threatened by someone that doesn't want them to testify. That would be witness tampering through intimidation, which is also a crime. You also left out something else."
"And what is that?"
"Me. My own testimony against you, the man that nearly killed me with his car."
"You have no proof that my actions were deliberate. Like I said, it could've been an accident, that I had no intention of actually harming you."
"I think we both know we're past the point of being able to tolerate one another based on our mutual disinterest in each other's life. Unlike you, however, I don't have an intolerance towards other people to the point where I make an actual attempt on their lives; I simply walk away and never look back at what could've been…or what should've been…but never was. You, on the other hand, you made it clear that you have an intolerance toward others to the point that you try to harm them…or worse. There's nothing left to say…and nothing left to care about that relates to you two."
Two? Gendo thought as Shinji started to get up. "What do you mean by 'you two'?"
Shinji looks at him and gives an expression that clearly spoke volumes. It was as if he spoke, "You know exactly what I mean by that, Father. Don't try to lie to me like you have since that day you told me to come to Tokyo-3." And then, he hung the phone up and turned to leave the room on his side.
"Come back here!" He shouted at his son, but he was already too far away to hear him. "Shinji!"
-x-
"How'd he take it?" Misato asks Shinji as he steps out of the police station.
"Oh, he didn't like how I sold him down the river," he tells her as he stretches his arms and back. "He was already at rock bottom and thought I'd be intimidated by what he did. I can be intimidating myself when necessary, but when it comes to crossing that line, I don't want to unless there's no other choice…and I made another choice. Even if I wanted to cross that line, I'd be haunted by the repercussions…and I can't have that on my conscience."
"At least he knows that he failed in harming you," said Asuka as she was present, along with Vambre, who was wearing a teal dress that was a contrast to her usual outfit.
"Yeah, he definitely knows that."
"So, what happens now?" Vambre asks them.
"He gets a lawyer," Misato states, "and tries to cut the best deal he can get. But he will have to do time. Lawyer could try to appeal for his release or a reduction in his prison sentence, both of which seem unlikely to prevail. But in the end, based on how he was during the time he committed the attempt on Shinji's life, the guy can't walk away from this scot-free."
Then, Vambre had to ask a question that was slightly critical and related to the issue.
"What if he tries for an insanity defense?" She asks them, which surprised even Shinji to hear her say. "He could claim that he wasn't himself during the time of the attempt and get incarcerated at a hospital instead of prison."
"It's possible," Shinji found himself responding to her possibility of his father walking away based on such a defense, "but would he really try to do time in a hospital when he should do it behind bars?"
"He'd have to be crazy if he tried to avoid prison by going to a mental institution," Asuka claims, but it was anyone's guess as to whether or not Gendo would stoop that low to avoid serving his penance the way it had to be served.
"Hey, enough about my father," Shinji tells them. "We have a whole day to entertain ourselves with whatever it is we do."
-x-
Of course, even a whole day seemed like less than a day for Shinji, who had something else on his mind than what he should've been focusing on in front of him. It wasn't the likelihood that his father might try to plea temporary insanity or something along that path. His small concern was the last Angel that had yet to reveal itself. Even with the displacement of Adam and Lilith and the defeat of the previous Angels, so long as the last one still wandered around, waiting for a chance to strike, nobody was safe to live a full life of their own choosing.
Vambre noticed his lack of attention and had to wonder if he would ever be okay. Unlike she and her brother, who were able to have fun when not doing anything else, she could understand the seriousness of what Shinji was doing and felt sympathy for him not being able to enjoy himself most of the time. And then, there was the attempt on his life; not everyone could go back to the way they were before such an ordeal…and it seemed as though Shinji, despite his recovery…couldn't see the world the way he had tried to see it before.
"My perception of the world was very gray," he had once said, "mired in shades of people being whatever they were, whatever society had condemned them to be. There was no light or darkness, no good or evil, no right or wrong. Just today, yesterday, tomorrow and the day after. And then I got dragged into a nightmare I wanted to wake up from, only to find that even with the next time I woke up, I was still in that nightmare that was so deep that I couldn't wake from it of my own volition. And now, my perception is…black and red instead of black and white or colored. Black for the violence…red for the pain. I'd rather see color than black and red."
It was a strange thing to say, but Shinji's position in such a situation that his parents forced upon him was one of struggle that they didn't have the will to deal with themselves, probably thinking they were above the law, only to find that they were not. There was a play happening in Tokyo-2 that they went to see, but it seemed as though Shinji was only half as present as he wanted to be during the hour-and-a-half event. This wasn't lost on Asuka and Misato, wondering what was on his mind at the moment.
-x-
There wasn't much to do at NERV HQ, as Rei found there wasn't much of a reason to continue doing Eva-related tests; because of the Mysterious Protector's actions against the Angels, the use of the Evas had become unlikely to be a primary defense. This and Shinji's resignation were a cause for questioning what was to happen. As she walked down the halls, she came across Fuyutsuki, who seemed bothered by something.
"Rei?" He went. "What are you doing here?"
"Synchronization testing," she answers.
"Oh. I suspended the tests for the time being. The last Angel attack seemed like an unusual occurrence for the Mysterious Protector, as was the previous three times they appeared."
"The Mysterious Protector… Still, nobody is taking credit for their actions in defeating the recent Angels?"
"Nobody. Whoever they are and however they came to acquire such a mecha capable of facing the Angels greater than the Evas, they're a conundrum. There is no reason or method to their presence or ability to do what they do. However, there is a theory in a series of theories that people suggest or suspect around here."
"Which is?"
"One such theory…is that the Mysterious Protector is someone from another dimension that may have appeared at around the same time the Twelfth Angel was defeated."
Then Rei had to ask a question that was just another possibility.
"Sir," she spoke, "what if the Mysterious Protector…is really Ikari-Kun?"
"What would make you think that?"
"He has disliked piloting the Eva ever since he arrived in Tokyo-3. If he somehow came upon some means to substitute the Eva with something else, he would be likely to exploit such means in facing the Angels without the drawbacks of piloting the Eva."
"Except he was questioned about it. He said he wasn't involved in anything relating to the mecha. We were monitoring his behavior during the entire interview, and there was no indication that he was lying about anything he said during the questioning."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive. Still, Shinji hasn't been the same since the Twelfth Angel incident. It's hard to tell what he's really been through."
That was a truth that couldn't be denied. Because none of them were able to know for sure, Shinji's time away from NERV after the Twelfth Angel was a mystery that only he had the answers to. But because he resigned from the paramilitary agency, those tidbits of information were secrets that he took with him. And then, there was his attack by his father, which landed him in the hospital and his father is police custody on attempted manslaughter.
"Do you think Ikari-Kun is capable of deception?" Rei asks him.
"After whatever happened to him following the Twelfth Angel, I would think Shinji is capable of anything like everyone else is," Fuyutsuki answers her.
And if Shinji was capable of anything, this included lying with a straight face…and being the Mysterious Protector…or at least knowing something about them that they didn't. But because this was only speculation, not a proven possibility, Rei couldn't just say that the former Third Child was hiding something from them. All she could do was wait for the next Angel to appear, and when it did, she would find a way to know for sure.
-x-
Whack! Vambre found that Shinji was still practicing his swordsmanship like before he left, as she found his previous bokken along with the new ones.
Even training with him was the same, despite his age regression back to his fourteen-year-old self, something she didn't expect had changed. But something was different with this exercise; he held back against her.
"You're holding back," she grunted, blocking his bokken.
"Yes, that's true," he responded.
"Don't. I can't take this serious if you can't take it serious."
"It wouldn't be even if I went all-out. I'm a lot stronger than you think. Even going after my father in the dead of night had to be a calculated move. If I go too far, I risk causing unnecessary harm when I aim only to harm someone just enough to make them see that I mean business."
"Show me, then. Show me that you mean business."
Then, Vambre felt Shinji push her back a little more than she had expected from him. It was like he was a completely different person now. Even the look on his face showed that he was a lot more into the practice fight than he had been a few moments ago.
"That's good," she told him, and pushed him back. "Take this!"
Whack! She nearly got him on his left leg, but he blocked her strike.
"Nice try," he replied, and then struck her on the right shoulder, forcing her back.
"Ock!"
She managed to land a strike on the back of his head.
"Ooh!"
This time, he got her on her right leg, dropping her to one knee. Within two seconds, both had their bokken aimed in different areas of each other's bodies, Shinji's at Vambre's chest, Vambre's at Shinji's waist, like a Mexican standoff.
"Is this serious enough for you?" Shinji asks her.
"Very serious," she responds.
"You two fight like a newlywed couple that get along quite well," they heard someone say to them, and turned to Shinji's left, seeing Toji and Kensuke on the roof with them. "Whoa, man. This is Vambre? She's really beautiful."
Vambre recognized these two from Shinji's memories of his past history and was surprised to see them here.
"Nice to meet you," she greeted.
"Wow," Kensuke reacted to her accent.
"What brings you two here?" Shinji asks them.
"To see how you were doing after getting out of the hospital," Toji explains. "You're a lot tougher than you seem with a wooden sword."
"Thank you."
Then the two looked at Vambre again and were, beyond words, stunned by her presence. She was exactly as Shinji had remembered her, down to the hair and leotard.
"Uh, question, Ms. Warrior," went Kensuke. "Is it true that you still use a sword with the power to produce tomatoes?"
Vambre then showed her prized Magisword to the two.
"You mean, this sword?" She asks them.
"Wicked," Toji utters, and Vambre smiles.
-x-
"Ikari was arrested for attempting to murder his son?" SEELE 01 spoke to the other members of the council during their next meeting. "There seems to be no limit to how far he will fall in the face of defeat."
"It appeared that he couldn't handle the loss of his position at NERV and blamed his son for his dismissal, viewing him as the direct cause when all the son did was resign from NERV," said SEELE 05. "Witnesses state that he deliberately ran his car towards his son on the street with no sign of stopping or swerving out of the way."
"Even if he cuts the best deal he can get," SEELE 10 utters, "he may have to do twelve-and-a-half-twenty-five years for such an attempt. Maybe twenty-five if his son testifies against him. This may present a potential opportunity for us to reinstate the Third Child."
"Reinstate?" SEELE 04 questions. "He outright stated that he wouldn't pilot the Eva again due to it conflicting with his beliefs and conscience when given an order he can't follow."
"That was, however, when his father was in charge. Perhaps now that Fuyutsuki is the one I charge, we may be able to make use of him again."
It was only a possibility, nothing more than a sliver of hope that they could exploit the former Third Child and make use of Unit-01 against the Angels and achieve their goal.
"Very well," SEELE 01. "Contact Fuyutsuki and see if Ikari's son is willing to return to NERV's employ now that his father's facing time behind bars."
"And if he declines?" SEELE 07 asks.
"He's doom like the rest of the human race, anyway."
-x-
"…Wow, he went out the second he hit his pillow," Asuka expressed as Shinji had collapsed on his futon in front of Vambre.
"Well, he did get out of the hospital and had quite a day," Vambre responded, and they left him to rest up for the rest of the day.
"Even though I saw his past from when he was in Lyvsheria," Asuka went, "it still feels like he was living in a dream world compared to now."
"How so?" Vambre asks as they returned to the living room where Pen-Pen sat reading a newspaper, minding his own business.
"These Magiswords of his. He picked up the fad from you and Prohyas, which ended up being how he managed to survive for five years as you helped him find a way back here, but every time I think of him using one of them, it's like someone's imagination running so wild that everyone can see it without question. And…he brought you back to life with one of them, something most would dream of being able to do for someone they know."
They sat down and found the news on television, something Vambre was puzzled by when she saw it, to be mundane; all they talked about was the weather, the mysterious carnival that appeared outside a school, and the Mysterious Protector.
"So, nobody knows that the mecha was Shinji?" Vambre asks Asuka as they notice brief footage of the mecha created by Shinji to face the Angels in place of the Eva.
"No," she answers. "Believe me, not everyone would be happy to know it was him. There'd be no end to the list of people that would want to possess what he has for their own interests. Some suspected, but we kept the truth quiet. There's one Angel left to face, and once they're defeated, once every possible threat to the world is removed, nobody will ever have to know that it was Shinji that gave them a future."
"But we'll know that it was him," Vambre states as the truth.
"And that's enough," they heard Misato say as she stepped into the living room and sat next to the two. "Wealth and fame are things he'll often ignore."
"A life and future of his choosing is his reward."
"Yeah," Asuka says. "When the violence and danger has passed, everyone will be able to live their lives."
Misato then held up Shinji's Toothbrush Magisword, produced a toothbrush and put it down.
"I'm guessing that you rarely have time to do minor tasks?" Vambre asks Misato.
"With NERV, most minor tasks are the things we take for granted," she explains, picking up the new toothbrush. "One rarely has the time to do their laundry or go to the grocery store. I'm actually starting to see why Shinji loves these Magiswords as much as you do. They make certain tasks easier to do."
"If a Magisword will get the same job done, why not use them?"
"Exactly!" Asuka admitted, something she heard from Shinji's memories of his time with the Warriors. "I can not believe I just agreed with that quote."
"Yarp!" Pen-Pen went.
-x-
It was an unlikely scenario, but Fuyutsuki didn't have any other choice. The Committee wanted him to try and reinstate the Third Child, but only if he was willing to return to NERV and pilot the Eva now that Gendo was facing ridicule and jail time for his attempt on his son. While Fuyutsuki thought it was next to impossible to get Shinji to pilot the Eva once more, he had to give it a try just to say that he tried, and if Shinji declined, that was that. It wasn't like they could attempt brainwashing him back into their service; methods of such a sort were professionally and personally unethical and questionable over the concept of one's free will and right to refuse something or someone.
"…So, the Committee wants the Third Child back under NERV's thrall?" Ritsuko questions.
"They want me to try and get him to return to service," he corrected her. "They think that since his father is facing prison for trying to kill him, he'll likely pilot again now that he's no longer in charge. Their order is to try and convince him to return of his own volition."
"And if he refuses?"
"Leave him be."
"But are we really going to do that?"
"Ikari's not the one in charge, anymore. If he doesn't want to pilot again, he doesn't have to…and we can't force him to do so if he doesn't want to."
Ritsuko found this choice to be ridiculous, but Fuyutsuki wasn't going to search for loopholes. In the end, it all came down to the choice between piloting or not. If Shinji refused or accepted, that was the outcome they had to live with and couldn't make him reconsider his decision. There was no likelihood of reconsideration for NERV if he refused to cooperate.
-x-
It was just a small dream that Shinji often found himself in every now and then. Maybe it was just a repressed feeling of desire that he had during the time he was living in Lyvsheria, or just a guilty fantasy he felt entitled to for the sake of maintaining a semblance of his stability in the worst-case scenario that he would be stuck there forever. But here he was again, walking down a small path in a forest of sorrow, exiting out into a clearing…where he found a bed in the open. He was dragging his Magisword that represented his past, his face stained by some kind of grief, his eyes red with tears.
If only there was hope for the three of us, he thought (A/N: Cue to A Stray Child by Yuki Kajiura) as he approached the bed. But there was never any chance of us ever getting back together. People say that family is forever…but you two failed to embrace the belief…and I can't see a solution when we're going down different paths that don't lead to the way things could've been before you made your choices.
He fell onto the bed, his Magisword on the left side in his hand, just dangling on the edge, his head on the pillow.
What is family…to one who has none? He wondered as he looked out the world on his right, seeing two illusions of his parents looking at him from a distance. You two are no longer an influence in my life. You failed to do right by me…and you failed each other because you're not involved in each other's present. I am free…and you are imprisoned.
There was a feeling of angst in this picture; the parents couldn't get anywhere near their son…and the son no longer felt anything for his parents that was anywhere remotely close to love or longing. No, it was a picture of angst in this recurring dream of Shinji's. Here, it was his representation of how he had been made aware of what his parents had done…and what he chose to do in order to make it so that neither got what they were after. Even if there was a promise of their so-called family being whole once more, Shinji didn't want it if it came at the cost of so much pain and suffering that had been caused long before he was born. None of them deserved to be together if their individual goals were derived from some measure of unforgivable sorrow inflicted upon others in the world.
Outside his dream, a tear escaped from Shinji's eyes. Despite his decision to continue deviating from his parents' ambitions, he still felt grief over the fact that nothing any one of them could or would ever bring them back together. For him, it was a cruel decision, but one that had to be made to ensure that no one else paid for his parents' mistakes…unless they were in league with his parents. If that were so, then any bets were off of them avoiding the consequences of their involvement in whatever they were involved in.
-x-
He had to have known. As Gendo sat in his holding cell, he had to come to the conclusion that Shinji had known for some time about everything his parents had done…and had made steps to impede them since his return from where he ended up. The truth behind the Evas, the Angels, the Human Instrumentality Project, everything. If Shinji knew, it made manipulating him next to impossible and a risk to any goal that he could've perceived as a threat to mankind. And the mere fact that it took him now to realize this was what made Gendo even more resentful towards his son for being the cause of his incarceration.
He knew all this time, he thought, bitter over his predicament. All this time, he was aware of what we were doing at NERV…and he stood against our progress! He betrayed us!
But even if he got anyone to believe him, his credibility was nonexistent after trying to run Shinji down on the street. Not even SEELE would buy for a second that a fourteen-year-old boy would be capable of taking down a paramilitary agency. Taking down his father, maybe, but not an agency tasked with defending the human race against the threat of the Angels. He saw no way out of this predicament for himself.
"Aaaaaurgh!" He yelled in defeat. "Damn you, Shinji! Damn you!"
To be continued…
A/N: I think the next chapter of this story will be with SEELE's suspicions and their plans to deal with the Mysterious Protector in the hopes of getting revenge for their ruined goals. The only new detail from this chapter was the idea of the song used in .Hack/Sign because of its sounding depressing to me back in the day, which seemed to go well with Shinji's failed relationship with his parents because of their choices. The bokken practice session between Shinji and Vambre seemed like a date; they were both enjoying the time spent together. What did you think?
