Creation began on 07-21-17
Creation ended on 07-24-17
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Shinji in Dream Land
A/N: A reviewer to Evangelion APB by the name of Chu asked if I could try something like this, except since they're not a registered user of the site, I couldn't really respond to their suggestions. But this is a minor attempt that may or may not relate to the multiverse system my other Eva stories fall into. Here's an attempt at something that is, as usual, different.
His father abandoned him. His aunt was supposed to be by to come and get him, but that was a long time ago (he didn't know that three hours had passed since his father left him at the train station). All Shinji knew was that something terrible had happened a few days ago…and nothing else was the same for him. And all he wanted now was some sort of friend or companion, someone that wouldn't abandon him.
"Poyo," he heard something on the train tracks. "Poyo."
He went over to the edge and looked down at the tracks, seeing something that was unlike anything he had seen before. It looked like a person, but they were completely pink and roundish, with red shoes, like some sort of blob. Their eyes were much bigger than a regular person's, but they were a nice shade of blue.
"Poyo," it said, opening its mouth and inflating itself to float up to the platform beside Shinji. "Poyo."
Shinji gave no indication that he was intimidated by the creature. If this creature was some sort of threat, it didn't do anything to make itself dangerous to the boy.
"Hello?" Shinji asked it.
"H…h…hello," it responded, sounding similar to a boy.
-x-
Fuyutsuki knew that Gendo was a terrible father, but this was beyond the most irresponsible thing he did so far. To leave his son at a train station for his sister-in-law to pick up, only to discover, five hours later, that by the time she bothered to show up, only Shinji's bag was there…and nobody could tell where he went or who might've been seen with him.
This…was three days ago.
Shinji Ikari had just disappeared off the face of the Earth.
-x-
Shinji awoke sometime later to the sight of a beautiful setting. The place wasn't anything like where he'd been; there were few buildings and more grass, trees and water, and the only roads he could see were made of dirt. What was more was that he felt an air of total calmness all around him; no sense of difficulty, no feelings of hurt, not even the pain of what happened to him was in his mind. Just the feeling of happiness.
"What is this place?" He asked.
"This…is Dream Land," someone answered him, and he looked to his left and saw someone who seemed like a lady person, but she looked like a living piece of fruit or something; she had blond hair with an orange ponytail, orange feet and a green and pink dress. "Dream Land of Planet Popstar."
"Who…who are you?" Shinji asked her.
"I am Tiff…and it looks like you've met Kirby earlier."
"K…Kirby?"
Tiff pointed over towards a dome-shaped house near a tree and at the pink individual that Shinji met at the train station.
"He saw what happened to you and brought you here. Here, nobody hurts, nobody's suffering from something terrible. Here, everything's tranquil."
"Poyo," they heard Kirby say, floating in the air.
"I don't understand why he speaks the way he does," Shinji told Tiff.
"No one here really does, but we don't complain about it," Tiff explained to him. "He's probably a really young soul like you are. And since he's always helping everyone in trouble, Kirby is an unusual hero all over Popstar."
-x-
Eleven Years Later
Ring-ring-ring! Gendo's phone rang and he answered.
"Yes?" He asked, receiving a response that left him rather rattled. "What was that?"
He then hung up and looked up at Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki.
"What was that about?" The aged man questioned.
"That was the police in Tokyo-2," he explained. "They said they found a boy matching the description of the Third Child."
"You mean your son, Shinji," Fuyutsuki frowned; ever since the day the boy just dropped off the face of the Earth, he refused to let the disgraceful father forget to address his son by his name. "And how can the police be certain that they found him?"
"They used the records they had from when he was last seen."
-x-
The police were stunned, but DNA was no liar…and neither was the description of what Shinji was wearing when he disappeared: A striped shirt and shorts. The craziest thing about finding him was that he was three when he was declared missing…and the police found a three-year-old boy that was him, exactly as he was eleven years ago.
Shinji, unchanged from the time he was taken to Popstar, was starting to regret his choice to come back and visit the place he really couldn't call his home, anymore.
"Can I get you anything?" A male police officer asked him as he sat on a bench, handcuffed to it like he did something wrong to deserve it when all he did was sit down and look at a map detailing where the train was supposed to go.
Shinji didn't speak a word to the policeman and nodded his head in the negative.
"Where is he?" He heard that voice, that cold, hardened voice that he only heard in his nightmares every other night, and saw his father. "Is this a joke?"
"No, sir, we checked his prints, hair, DNA," said a policewoman to him, "and he's Shinji Ikari, right down to his dental records."
"But he's…small."
"Because he's still three years old, physically. Somehow, he hasn't aged a day in eleven years."
Gendo looked at Shinji, but then noticed his expression being that of pure rage; his son was outright upset about something…or someone.
-x-
"…This is insane," went Ritsuko Akagi, going over the Third Child's test results for the seventh time. "There's no explanation for any of this."
"He's the same age when his mother died," said Fuyutsuki, who stressed that there was absolutely no reason or need to treat Shinji like a laboratory specimen because of his circumstances. "Has anyone even tried talking to him?"
"He hasn't spoken a word since he was found at the train station. He just nods his head in response to whatever is asked of him. But he's been checked of any injuries. There's no medical reason for why he doesn't speak. He just…won't."
"Has his father spoken to him?"
"No, sir."
"I'm going to go speak with him, then."
"But Commander Ikari gave specific orders that nobody talk to him until he does."
"The day he does that will most likely be never!"
Fuyutsuki walked into the room that Shinji was being kept in and took a closer look at him. He was exactly the same as he was the day his mother died, but something seemed off with him, like he wasn't as cheerful as he used to be.
"Hello, Shinji," he greeted the boy. "How are you doing?"
Shinji merely waved his right hand.
"Not big on talking, are you?"
"If one has nothing worth saying, they shouldn't speak," Shinji responded, surprising Fuyutsuki with his speech fluency. "And if one doesn't have anything nice to say, then they aren't worth speaking."
"Who told you that?"
"I think you know who."
And somehow, Fuyutsuki had the feeling that he did know who. Not only was Gendo a bad father, he gave bad advice.
"So…where have you been…and…how are you still…little?"
"Dream Land," Shinji explained. "Dream Land of Popstar."
"Dream Land? Popstar?"
As Ritsuko observed the conversation, she wrote down what the boy said for reference. It surprised her that his speech was rather mature for a three-year-old, but she had to suspect, along with the police, that wherever Shinji disappeared to, he might've been harmed by someone, despite the fact that he had no reported injuries, external or internal.
"Where is this…Dream Land?" Fuyutsuki asked Shinji. "Is it…someplace you go to when you fall asleep somewhere?"
"No," Shinji answered, pointing up to the ceiling. "It's a happy place on Popstar, way out there."
"And Popstar is an…island? A neighborhood? Clubhouse?"
Shinji then removed something from around his neck. It was a large, five-pointed star.
"Popstar looks like this," he explained. "It's been the only place I was able to call home due to its tranquility. No one fights over anything. No wars, no tragedy. The people there are very kind and accepting, except for a former king. He was a troublemaker."
"And…how did you end up getting to…Popstar?"
"Kirby took me there."
"Kirby?"
"He's everyone's favorite hero. The jolliest fellow you'll ever meet."
-x-
"You think he's damaged?" Gendo asked Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki later that day.
"Personally, I believe him," said Fuyutsuki to him. "If he says this…Popstar exists, then it must exist. It's not some type of fantasy for him. Maybe it explains why he hasn't aged in eleven years."
"We can't give him a polygraph test, but he seems to know the difference between telling the truth and telling lies," added Ritsuko. "This, along with there being no evidence of any sort of abuse, can't suggest any degree of mental instability. There's something else, too?"
"What is it?" Gendo asked again.
"He says that he really hates you for what you did to him that day?"
"Did what to him?"
"You left him, Ikari," Fuyutsuki reminded him. "Being gone for eleven years didn't make him forget about you leaving him at that station, which he says is where he met this…Kirby, who then took him to Popstar to live in Dream Land. He still had the pain of the abandonment, but it was tempered by the large degree of peace he had while there. It's only because he came back here that his anger towards you returned."
"And who is this…Kirby?"
"According to Shinji, he's everyone's favorite hero. The jolliest fellow you'll ever meet."
Now Gendo was starting to doubt that he could even use his son to pilot the Eva at all. What's more was that news of his return was spreading faster than NERV could put a lid on it, with people as far as Hokkaido wanting to know where he was found, when he was found, where he was all this time, what he did to survive and who was with him. His son had become an overnight celebrity for his ageless appearance and safe return.
Fuyutsuki then took out a folded piece of paper and handed it to Gendo.
"This is what Kirby looks like most of the time," he explained to him, and Gendo felt like someone was playing games with him.
"I'm guessing this means we shouldn't try to see if he can sync with the Eva," went Ritsuko.
-x-
On the far side of the moon, observing the Earth from a grand distance, Kirby, deciding to stick around if Shinji's people needed assistance, wondered how the unchanged child was doing after being away from his original world for so long.
A/N: I'll stop here for now and let it get some traction. I don't really expect it to get heard by everyone, but this is just an attempt because someone suggested it and I gave it a try.
