Creation began on 12-21-23

Creation ended on 12-23-23

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Different from You: Ultimateblade

A/N: What if Shinji became someone that could make a difference in a different universe where he obtains something that was meant to be possessed by men, but it wasn't effective in the beginning? And what if he had a reason to do what he does like someone else who has someone important to them?

In the beginning

In a storage facility located within the Doji Group Headquarters, in the room where the company kept the unused stock of Cloneblades for their X-Con and I-Weapon production, a rip in space opened up…and out, like someone had shot them out of a cannon, came two people. One of them was a little girl with ebony hair, dressed in a cat-themed dress, and the other was a teenage boy with the same shade of hair, dressed in a strange bodysuit that resembled a modified diving suit. They fell against a wall and the boy had knocked over a glass container containing a Cloneblade that appeared different from the rest. The container shattered on the floor…and the boy slowly moved to get to the little girl.

"S…Shado," he utters weakly. "Are you…are you… Ugh!"

He passes out in front of the unconscious girl. About three minutes later, a door to the room opens and security guards enter to find the pair…and the rip in space closing up in front of them…along with the ruins of a glass container.

-x-

The Twelfth Angel might've been defeated, but the cost was higher than NERV could've admitted due to the personal loss they just received. It was bad enough that they were forcing a young man that didn't know anything about their objective initially because his father was a creep, but it was worse to know that the young man had a little girl of his own…and wasn't willing to leave her alone with them due to the animosity between himself and his father…and only agreed to help them so long as he was able to keep his kid close by at all times. This was the situation NERV had with Shinji Ikari and his illegitimate daughter, Shado Ikari, who were both disliked by Gendo Ikari to the point of the older man threatening his estranged son to have his granddaughter taken from him simply for existing. While NERV had found a reasonable compromise, it was more or less a temporary solution because the commander of the paramilitary agency made it no hint that he possessed a massive degree of resentment towards the two for some unexplained reason; it wasn't clear why the commander despised the both of them, but it was clear that the disgust was almost always one-sided.

Misato Katsuragi, the tactical strategist of NERV, reminded of how one-sided the hatred towards Shinji and Shado seemed to be by Gendo, was at a loss over how the Evangelion, damaged significantly by the repeated barrage of N² detonations to destroy the Angel from the inside out, had no trace of the Entry Plug that had been altered to provide a safe space for the little girl to be with her father during situations with the Angels. The mere that the plug wasn't recovered left the possibility that the two were still alive somewhere, but it also meant that the plug could've been obliterated by the repeated explosions and left no trace to be recovered.

"Because each explosion created intense heat, the plug wouldn't have been able to endure such devastation," Ritsuko Akagi had explained to her in the aftermath. "Even if by some chance the plug did survive, there's no way the pilot and child could've. The heat alone would've killed them, along with the oxygen deprivation it caused."

This would paint NERV in a bad light because they were unable to keep two lives safe. Even if they were to try and spin this as a necessary loss and how the pilots were aware of the likelihood that they wouldn't survive, there was no way that everyone would buy into this. Not even she could believe this when it was her job to make sure that the pilots went home alive at the end of each battle.

"If I had to choose between Daddy and the world if I could only have one," she remembers the four-year-old girl telling her after the Third Angel attack and her reaction to how NERV just went and sprung the reason why they wanted her father there to begin with, "I would choose Daddy over the world…because Daddy is my world. Daddy is…the only good thing in my world. Can you keep him safe for me if I ask? Can you really keep him safe?"

I'm sorry, Shado, Misato apologized to the girl. I couldn't keep him safe.

-x-

Because Masaya Wado was in no position to address the matter security found, Hiroki Segawa was called in to see what the discovery was with Doji, finding the two children.

"And they were found in the storage facility?" He asks a guard.

"Yes," the guard responds; his and four other guards had left a statement, which was confirmed by at least two security cameras that were in the room at the time, that the two children were found near a tear in space in the room that suddenly closed up. "We're doing a DNA test and trace to see if they have any relatives that can explain what led to them appearing in the facility."

A male doctor came by and gave his medical analysis of the two.

"Just mild malnutrition and dehydration, but otherwise not in any serious danger," he informs Segawa, but then had to reveal something else. "However, we found traces of a foreign substance mixed into the boy's blood when we removed the suit that he was wearing the guards brought them in. It matches the traces found on the suit, but that wasn't the most concerning part of his evaluation. This was."

He took his tablet and showed Segawa what had him concerned about the boy, revealing images of his wrists. They were adorned by two ornate black bracelets with a pink gem inside them.

"Doctor?" Segawa questions.

"Our specialists confirmed that these are the Ultimateblade," he explains.

Segawa had thought that, because of the situation with the Ultimateblade that resulted in Wado's assistant, Yagi's death, all information concerning the Ultimateblade had been shelved. But then he had to consider that Wado, because he wanted to upstage Reiji Takayama, likely had made additional Ultimateblades when he had the prototype used as a contingency. However, something didn't add up because of this new predicament.

"Wait, you said that the boy wasn't in any danger because of whatever was affecting him to cause hunger and dehydration," he says to the doctor, "but what about this? Is it affecting him just by wearing it?"

"We ran seven scans when we noticed it on his arms, and they all came back negative for any hint of activity," the doctor reveals. "If it was active at all, it was sometime before security found them. Beyond that, there's nothing. No signs of cellular enhancement or degeneration, organ or nervous system impairment, responses to internal or external stimuli. It's completely inactive. But we can't remove it from his wrists; they're stuck."

Soon, another doctor came over with another tablet.

"DNA search came back, but we have a problem with the results," he tells them.

"Go on," Segawa responds.

"For the boy, we have Shinji Ikari, age fourteen, born on the first of June to Yui and Gendo Ikari, but where it gets problematic is that he shouldn't even be here."

"Why?"

"Because he's dead. He died in a traffic accident last year."

"And what of the girl?"

"Shado Ikari, age four. Same birthdate as her father. She's an illegitimate child; her father was sexually assaulted by a woman almost five years ago, after the Great Quake. She got incarcerated shortly after he was found and rescued by the police, but it was learned she was pregnant as a result of the attack on the boy. She had the baby in prison and died shortly after her birth due to a complication. The girl was placed in the care of the Ikaris up until the same traffic accident that killed her, as well."

"So, these two are deceased?"

"Yes, sir."

"And yet, they're here in Doji. What about the boy's parents?"

"The boy's father, Gendo Ikari, passed away earlier this year because of a work-related illness. The mother, Yui Ikari, relocated Sapporo shortly after, unable to handle the loss of her family. We're trying to get in touch with her now to explain this discovery."

Beep! The first doctor's tablet received an alert and he tapped on it to respond.

"Ah, the little girl, Shado, is conscious," he reveals to them.

-x-

Conscious was one thing, but prepared to be shoved in the face with a series of questions she didn't know how to even answer was another, and the only thing going on in Shado's mind was where her father was. Sometimes, it was easy for adults to forget that sometimes, some people involved in unusual situations were nothing more than children not even old enough to stand up for themselves.

"How is she?" Segawa asks as he stands outside the room Shado was in.

"Scared, confused," the doctor assigned to her explains. "Right now, everything and everyone around her is completely unfamiliar to her. I don't blame her for feeling this way. She wants to know where her father is, though, and I can't give her an honest answer."

Beep! The doctor assigned to the teen tapped on his tablet and sighs.

"You should be able to give her an answer now," he tells them. "He's finally regained consciousness. He's confused, too. Wants to know where his daughter is."

"Has there been any change in the Ultimateblade?" Segawa asks.

The doctor checks his tablet and responds that the Ultimateblade was still inactive.

"Then it shouldn't be a risk to let them see each other," Segawa tells them. "Set them in a room."

-x-

Despite not feeling like he needed a wheelchair, Shinji complied with the protocol that required him to be pushed around in a wheelchair since he still needed an IV feeding his body the nutrients he lost due to being deprived of sustenance for over twelve hours. Turning his head slightly every once in a while, he took in his surroundings and couldn't recognize where he was, and saw different writing on the walls.

"Stop, please," he says to the woman pushing his chair, just so he can read a sign on the wall on their left. "What is Doji?"

"That's where we are," she explains to him. "It's a company."

"Military?"

"Weapons manufacturing and distribution."

"Oh."

"I take it you've never heard of Doji before?"

"No."

The wheelchair was pushed again, taking Shinji to the room he was told his daughter was waiting in for him.

"Is there anything you do remember?" The woman asks him.

"I remember facing an Angel that was an odd-looking sphere, black and white, floating above the streets. I was about to shoot it when it disappeared and then Shado and I were sucked into this darkness under us. After that, I woke up in a strange room after feeling like I had been thrown against a wall. The next thing I know, I'm waking up in another room in a place I don't recognize, seeing people I don't recognize, trying to understand what's going on around me."

"Well, I'm sure my superiors will have questions for you later on, but for now, the goal is to help you and your kid recover. Here we all."

The woman pushed his chair into a small room with couches and a coffee table. Sitting on one of the couches was a little girl dressed in a pink hospital gown, a contrast to the teen boy's blue gown. She looked over towards them and slowly got up so she didn't lose her IV drip.

"Daddy," she greeted the boy as the wheelchair stopped so he could get up. "I don't know where we are. Do you?"

"Some place called Doji," he answers her. "How are you feeling?"

"Tired and hungry, but they said I couldn't eat anything yet because I have this on my arm (she raises her left arm up to show the IV tube)."

Shinji raises his left arm up to show his tube.

"Yeah, these are…so we don't have to eat right now," he tried to explain their significance in way she could understand. "It stinks a little."

Shado then tilts her head a little in curiosity.

"Why are you wearing those things on your arms?" She asks, taking notice of the black manacles on his wrists.

"These? They're…just something I need for the time being," he says; he wasn't sure why, but when he asked about them earlier, the people that were examining him seemed to be afraid of him because of these bracelets he found on his wrists.

Shado reached up to his right hand and looked at the bracelet.

"They…look kinda nice," she tells him. "Do they make you feel happy?"

That was a question he wasn't sure how to answer for her. He didn't know what these bracelets were or why they were on him. He felt like he should've removed them if they didn't even belong to, and he actually tried to before a female nurse gestured for him not to, putting emphasis on what seemed to be concern towards him attempting to remove them.

"I don't know yet," he says instead of an actual answer. "Being with you, however, that makes me happy."

"Being with you makes me happy, too, Daddy."

-x-

Whoosh! In the dead of night, Maria, the second-generation Neogene and Dual Cloneblade wielder, awoke to a feeling of a newfound power.

Unfortunately, it was only a brief feeling…and the power itself felt like a second of euphoria; there wasn't much to be gained from just a second of ecstasy. But if she had experienced it a second time, and for a longer duration, she probably would've desired this power like she desired power from everything else that existed.

-x-

Whoosh! Masane Amaha awoke to a feeling of confusion from the Witchblade, which glowed for a moment before ceasing.

What was that? She wondered.

It was only for a second, but it felt…almost familiar to her.

To be continued…

A/N: Okay, this is the first chapter of the new crossover I thought of. I want it to take place near to the end of the Witchblade anime, but allow time for Shinji to adjust to his new setting and predicament. So, instead of having to pilot an Evangelion, he'll have to wear an Ultimateblade that was shown to be unstable in the beginning, and at the same time rebuild his life with Shado in a world where they no longer exist, and that will also take a while to do. Want to hear from you about what you expect to see later. Happy holidays.