Creation began on 12-19-23

Creation ended on 03-11-24

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Evangelion Malevolence: Loss of Righteousness

Godzilla may have lacked the advantage King Ghidorah possessed in the air, but King Ghidorah lacked the advantage Godzilla possessed in the water, putting them both at a disadvantage against each other for the moment. But Godzilla intended to drag Ghidorah down into the abyss and end it for good. A creature that could fly well most likely couldn't swim at all, and that was what this three-headed hindrance was to Godzilla.

-x-

It all happened in an instant when she saw him face the monster that she disbelieved from the very beginning. In the end, he was forced to go up against a creature considered by some to be a god, and to others, a devil. To herself, it was both, a god and a devil…full of nothing but hate, reminding herself of the hate that their son had towards their family…or rather, their lack of familial ties that mattered. And not only did the Eva fail to stop it, she failed to see that her son was unwilling to believe whatever it was that his parents believed in, having lost any faith in any of what they did with their lives.

"I fail to see how you're anything like your parents, Shinji," she had explored his memories and found a stranger saying to him as he spent his time working inside a temple.

"I don't even remember anything about my parents," he had responded to the man. "What parents? I might as well say that I don't have any. When your mother is nothing more than a name without a face and your father is a jerk that walks out on you for most of your life and only sends for you to work for him, they're pretty much, for all intents and purposes, as dead as my feelings toward them are."

"That's a lot of anger towards two people you barely know of," went this girl that Shinji particularly close to. "No chance of reconciliation at all?"

"You wouldn't last three days in my shoes with those people I have had to live with for most of my life."

"Coming from you, I don't think I would last five hours. What about if a catastrophe did hit the nation, would you feel anything towards them?"

"If a catastrophe did occur? They wouldn't even try to call me. How do I know this? Because my uncle up and told me never to show my face in his house again before I left to meet my old man."

"That's harsh."

"Tell it to the Ikaris, the worst family in all of the history of Japan."

At first, she wanted to blame her relatives for this revelation, but she knew that deep down, it was hardly their fault. The fault was hers. Hers and Gendo's. She had dedicated her life to a brighter future for all of mankind, and she failed to see that the goal had cost their son a happy childhood. Instead of this happy-go-lucky boy, he was this disheartened youth that grew to despise his family in every sense and would rather do anything other than what they had believed in doing, even if it meant running towards his own, early grave. Even if his life had been spared in the aftermath of facing Godzilla, Shinji was bound to still seek his own end…of his own volition…just to escape from the unhappiness of his past and the near-emptiness of his life.

"I don't see any of their so-called greatness!" She hears his voice as he yells out at nobody while wandering the streets of an empty city after getting off a train. "My father dedicated to the duty of defending humanity?! What a load of bull! He sends me a letter that simply tells me to come see him, and my uncle packs a bag and kicks me out! Why do I even need to see that man?! Why do I need to see any of these people?!"

He hated us for leaving him, she understood his pain. He wasn't told anything…and he hated us for leaving him.

Even in the end, when she gave it her all just to save him from the monster, she feared it was in vain because he had all of this…resentment towards them. While he didn't take his resentment out on others, part of him just kept hoping for some sort of absolution that would end his misery. Maybe not in the form of Godzilla, whose absolution stemmed from the arrogance of mankind's violent behavior committed in the past, but some sort of reprieve from the unforgiving future that he felt existed for him that he would rather escape from. What was the point of a brighter future if her own son no longer believed in such a thing…and wanted no part of what she had worked for, what she had given her life for?

In the end, she heard a voice say.

He didn't want a brighter future, a second voice said. He wouldn't know what to do with one, even if you did nothing but talk about one that may not even be possible.

All he ever wanted…was for the two people he used to know and love to really want to be around him, a third voice uttered, similar to the other two. But in the end, they chose not to be around him, and he suffered from their negligence.

-x-

King Ghidorah knew that as long as Godzilla stayed in the water, he couldn't touch him, but as long as he was in the air, he couldn't touch Godzilla, leaving them at a stalemate. But it couldn't last forever; sooner or later, one of them would have to give up or press on. Giving up would mean leaving the other alone…and pressing on would mean leaving their home field advantage and facing the enemy on their turf…and Ghidorah made the next move.

"Haaaurgh!" His heads cackle as he lowers toward Godzilla in the water, using his legs to land whatever slashes he could with his talons.

"Rrrraurgh!" Godzilla roars as he sees Ghidorah not even trying to make a retreat from the water. "Rrrraurgh!"

Losing his buoyancy as he went under, the beast of destruction witnessed the three-headed dragon descending into the ocean with him.

Ghidorah's heads latched onto Godzilla wherever they could reach and bit as deep into his hide as they could get, releasing their electrical discharges however they could in order to harm him.

-x-

"…With any luck, Godzilla was wounded in the last attack," a soldier informs Misato and the teens when they asked what the current status of the two monsters was. "What the leaders want to do is have a soldier shoot a D-03 missile into Godzilla's would."

"Blow him up from the inside?" Rumiko questions.

"His hide is too thick for the missiles to penetrate, causing them to detonate before they can get through to cause any serious damage."

"But if he's wounded and the wound hasn't regenerated, it's not as thick as the rest of him is," Shinji realizes. "Who's going to do it?"

"Most likely Yomiko Mafune."

"What?" Misato reacts, as though bothered by this revelation. "Yomiko Mafune? Soldier lady? Rose up the ranks to become a submarine commander?"

"Yeah, that's her."

"Why her?"

"You know this Mafune person?" Shinji asks her.

"She was among the people who found me after Second Impact," Misato explains. "Why would she do this?"

"Because I have the most experience in using a submarine with nothing left to lose," they heard a female voice over the radio the soldier had on him. "In times like this, a commander has to lead by example."

Shinji turned away and thought about how this woman seemed to know exactly what she was saying, wondering why someone like his father couldn't do the same before he met his maker, whoever they were.

"…And what is this I've been hearing about a kid from NERV running towards his death by chasing after Godzilla?" He hears her voice question.

"My life, my choice," he utters.

"And you have nobody to go home to?"

"Ma'am, I don't even have a home to go back to. Even if I did, I wouldn't really be welcomed."

"So, you have nobody? No dreams or ambitions? You sound like someone that got dealt a bad hand and is running towards their end."

"What do you want me to say? Even if I'm not the only one that feels that way, my life went from happy to Hell the day my mother died and my old man up and left me with people that didn't give me joy. And if I gotta go out this year, it might as well be doing something I actually want to do instead of what others tell me to do that I may not agree with doing."

"Amen, kid. Amen. Maybe we'll see each other on the other side of this."

"Maybe. Make sure to give Godzilla everyone's regards."

-x-

As much as Fuyutsuki wanted to say that Gendo deserved this fate, that he expected too much after doing too little and showing too little concern for his own son, who, in turn, demonstrated nothing but resentment and disobedience much of the time he was in NERV HQ, the elder held his emotions in check as he sat in front of the dying man whose life amounted to the same as everyone else's in the end.

"I don't think he's coming to see you at all," he tells Gendo of his suspicions about his son's unlikelihood of returning to the Geo-Front to see him.

At this point, Gendo found himself too weak to make any attempt at small talk about anything.

"Of course, I don't blame him if he decided not to. He never did fit in while around here. Even when he knows about what happened to you, he makes a conscious decision to avoid you, probably under the assumption that you didn't ask to see him. What would be the point of seeing someone if they didn't ask to see them? It wastes the time of the person that still has time."

"I…wouldn't want to see him…either," Gendo finally utters.

"Oh, really? While I wonder how he's going to feel later on, it's probably going to haunt you two because you didn't reconcile while you were still alive to do so."

"There's…nothing…left to…say."

"There's always something left to say, Ikari."

Even so, Gendo was a man that had very little to say that was actually worth saying; all of his ambitions had been for naught, and he was dying an agonizing death because of an irradiated dinosaur that had a grudge against the whole of Japan and its people. He saw absolutely nothing in trying to reconcile with Shinji, who was out there probably making the most of what little time he had left…or maybe trying to escape the country if Godzilla only had it out for this small cluster of islands that had been involved in the last World War that cost many, many lives. Still, he saw no point in even trying to talk with his son.

You despise him that much to the point where the feeling is mutual, his hallucination of Godzilla, standing just beside Fuyutsuki on the man's left, utters to him. Tick-tock, Gendo. Tick-tock. The sand continues to pour out of the hourglass for everyone. Who will die? Who will remain…only to die later on? How long do you have left before you're down to your final seconds? Will you leave your feelings toward Shinji unresolved? Will you let this puny arrogance of yours weigh you down? Pity is reserved for the deserving…and you have done nothing to deserve any pity. Maybe it's why you won't recover from this poisoning that slowly kills you as it eats away at your body. Oh, how you must find it agonizing, to suffer in both body and mind.

"You know, I almost felt compelled to tell him everything before he left," Fuyutsuki expresses to Gendo. "I would've told him everything that was going on, that was expected to happen before he showed up that day. Not that it would've changed anything, but it would've absolved me of my own guilt at seeing him be exploited when the Evas were still around and believed to be our salvation. Whether he still chose to leave or not, I can't say for certain, but at least he'd know why he was here to begin with and what was really expected of him. Unlike you, who couldn't even give him the courtesy of such a revelation."

Gendo's hallucination of Godzilla turned to face the elder and then back at Gendo.

Oh, how it must scorn you to hear this from him, it says to him. But in the end, he speaks the truth; he wouldn't be able to say for certain that your son would choose to leave or not. Of course, you would've made certain that he couldn't leave, even if he wanted to. But your son found his excuse to get away from you the second he realized that he was finally free to pursue his own interests now that your wife's artificial tomb was destroyed. Not as smart as any of you think you are most of the time, but smart enough to see an opportunity to escape when it presents itself to him.

"Oh, shut up!" Gendo yells, surprising Fuyutsuki.

"It's only an opinion," he tells the dying man, "and you're used to being negatively opinionated."

"Not you," Gendo responds. "That damn animal."

Fuyutsuki looks around himself, but sees nobody else present, implying that Gendo was hallucinating; as Gendo's condition was terminal, his mind was losing its touch with reality, causing him to see and hear things that weren't there, likely its own way to reflect upon whatever issues he never reconciled with anyone before, including his son.

"Who are you seeing, Ikari?" He asks him.

"That…damn…animal," Gendo repeats, which made him suspect that he was seeing and hearing Godzilla talk to him.

-x-

Before Sendai had been abandoned due to the devastation caused by Second Impact, there had been work on an observational walkway leading towards the open ocean, and despite the years that passed by, what had been built before its abandonment continued to cling to existence. Even as Godzilla and Ghidorah's underwater royale persisted, the military had gathered their remaining forces to make their final stand against the vengeful beast of destruction. This was where Shinji, Rumiko and Misato were right now, watching as a small submarine was being lifted into the water; the soldiers there wanted to remove them to a shelter somewhere, but Shinji pointed out that there was nowhere left to go if Godzilla defeated Ghidorah. Maybe escaping the country to some other part of the world, but there was always the chance that Godzilla would just go after someone in another country because of how it was driven by the souls of anyone that died in the last World War, making running a waste of time when a creature was out to take vengeance upon them for what the people before them did.

Rumiko, as much as she felt she had to wring Shinji by his neck for his sense of fatalism and lack of interest in self-preservation, couldn't fault him for just having that acceptance of the hard reality of life. If he was just a little more self-conscious and desperate, she'd probably consider him as something more than a simple-minded young man that was alone in the world. But she was already with him this far into what was happening around them, so she may as well stay with him till the very end. Not that she had anyone left to go back to, even if she did see the next sunrise that was still hours away.

"This is crazy, Shinji," she tells him. "You didn't have faith in the Eva, or NERV or your father, but you're willing to have faith in Ghidorah?"

"If Ghidorah's a true guardian, then what I think or believe doesn't even matter in the end," Shinji tells her. And I want to believe in something that gives me hope. Gives me real hope. Not some stupid thing my parents made or some craziness they tried to drag me into. Please, King Ghidorah… Give hope to one that has lost his faith in the people that used to matter.

Rumiko, probably because she was just scared of what was to come, reached down and held Shinji's left hand. Maybe she was scared of the end of her life, but she hoped that Shinji would mind this small bit of solace she sought. She felt his fingers crossing over hers and turned to face him, seeing that he was looking at her.

"I guess we're both not going anywhere," he says.

"Yeah, I guess not," she replies.

-x-

Flash! Ghidorah's electrical bites were barely harming Godzilla, but they annoyed him as he tried to get away from the three-headed monster that blocked his every attempt.

"Grrrr!" Godzilla growls as he sinks deeper into the water with Ghidorah. "Grrraurgh!"

If only Ghidorah had access to even a fraction of the total sum of power it once possessed prior to its original defeat over two-thousand years ago, it might have had a greater chance of defeating Godzilla. But due to its premature awakening, everything about it was underdeveloped and made it barely formidable. Still, the only thing that made it persist was the drive of the righteous dead that awoke it from its slumber to protect the homeland from this unforgiving terror of death and destruction. That alone would at least make it fight for as long as it could.

Shine! Godzilla's dorsal spines glowed as he charged his atomic breath again.

"Rrrrraaurgh!" He roared as he fired upon Ghidorah's body, causing smaller explosions across its torso as its heads shrieked and cackled in agony.

Then, after another hit from his atomic breath, the three-headed Guardian Monster fell to the lower depths, either unconscious or dead. Either way, Godzilla was no longer impeded by this distraction and could resume its mission to destroy Japan.

-x-

Shinji, still in possession of the fragment of Ghidorah's statue fragment, saw a brief glimpse of its past where it was slain by the people it once threatened before being buried under Mt. Fuji and prayed for in the hopes that it would one day return to protect the people. Suddenly, he saw the ocean water bubble and saw Godzilla's head surface in front of them.

"Oh!" He gasps, feeling the urge to run, but his feet were stuck where he stood.

Rumiko wanted to flee just as much as he did, but even her feet wouldn't budge.

Godzilla looked at them…or rather…looked at him. At the boy. There was a moment of recollection from before this, where it did battle with that humanoid abomination that dwelled within that underground chamber above that waste of a city. This was a man that had lost his faith in the majority of people and had difficulty putting his faith in beings he never met before at any part of his life. And a man that had lost his faith…was among those that were already halfway into the grave, and Godzilla was the one to make sure he was buried like the rest of the people that had forgotten the sins of the past committed. Opening his mouth, he charged up his atomic breath again.

If Shinji had been able to see his life flash before his eyes, he would have seen it before his life ended. But he didn't see anything beyond the fact that he was just seconds away from meeting his fate.

"Close your eyes, Rumiko," he utters as he does so, unwilling to go into that silence kicking and screaming as the wrath of the past undid his present.

Rumiko did the next best thing, which was to grab Shinji by his face and kiss him on the lips.

Oh, I'm gonna go to Hell for this! She thinks, unsure of what drove her to commit this crime against her friend.

Shinji, still holding onto the fragment, dropped it to the ground as he raised his arms up to Rumiko's shoulders to hold her close to himself. It was strange to him, reacting this way, but not like was unexpected or even expected of them to do this. For Shinji, it was unusual because Rumiko, the only girl among girls that he met in Tokyo-3 since he found employment at a shrine to detach himself from the agony of his miserable existence, had kissed him, a nobody with nobody that gave an actual damn about him enough to be around him…and he didn't try to break it off or shove her away. If he had to die this night, he didn't mind going out kissing a girl that he actually liked, that followed him as he did the craziest thing of chasing Godzilla after the defeat of the Eva, something he hated just as much as he hated his relatives.

Godzilla was about to unleash his wrath upon the three humans…when suddenly, a missile struck him in his face, forcing him to turn his head to the left and fire his atomic breath upon some aircraft that were in the night air, destroying at least four of them, but not before they fired at least six missiles that collided against his head and back.

Blast! A few dozen other missiles had struck Godzilla from the right as a battle cruiser opened fire upon the beast of vengeance.

The shockwaves caused Shinji and Rumiko to fall to the ground on the walkway as Godzilla opened fire upon the cruiser, only managing to damage it before charging his atomic breath again to finish the job.

"Son of a…" Shinji groans as he reaches over for the stone fragment. "Could this night get any more hectic?"

Rumiko, who had fallen on top of him, responds, "We're still alive to complain about our bullshit, so, yes, it could get more hectic."

Boom! The battle cruiser that had attacked Godzilla was now completely destroyed.

"At least the afterlife will have no surprises," Rumiko tells Shinji.

Shinji sighs, gets up to his feet and grips the stone fragment in his hand.

"Since we're already bound for it, there's no point in holding onto this piece of a statue that only seems to show us things from Ghidorah's perception! I'm sorry, Ghidorah, but we're as beaten as this godforsaken country! Aaaurgh!" He yells as he throws the fragment into the water.

"Do you feel any better?" Rumiko asks him.

"Not even close," he answers her.

The fragment of Ghidorah's statue sank further than any piece of stone that would normally sink, undeterred by the ocean water around it, as it aimed towards its target, the incapacitated Ghidorah who still seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the depths below.

Chink! It connected to Ghidorah's torso…and the three-headed dragon's middle head regained consciousness as it looked up to the surface above it.

Just seconds before the fragment had been thrown, the Guardian Monster had felt the emotional outburst of the young man that felt the life he had been dealt was so awful that it was inescapable for him, that he had nobody to believe in that wouldn't let him down. And then he hears of Ghidorah and the other monsters that lived in ancient times and had been prayed upon by the people that killed them to return as protectors. Oh, how the boy wanted someone to believe in, that wouldn't betray him like he felt those of his own blood had long ago, that wouldn't walk out on him the way everyone that despised him for simply existing had done so. And then, there were his feelings for the young woman that had kissed him when they both thought they were going to die, only to have a few more seconds of life. He yearned for someone to believe in, for people to care about him, to not see him as either a waste of space or as a resource…and Ghidorah could sympathize; not too long ago when he was in his true form and reigned havoc upon the lands, it had only been due to the hatred he felt towards the belief that he was of no personal worth towards anyone, including the people that had tried to kill him and failed.

Mankind had lost its right to be considered righteous in anything they did when they decided to dabble in forces that they had no right to dabble in, but those sins fell upon the ones that chose to commit their crimes. The loss of righteousness shouldn't have been carried by those who had nothing to do with their ancestors' arrogance, and that was something that needed to be set right. Even if there was a degree of destruction that lingered from the aftermath of these unforgiving attacks, so long as the people left persisted, there was still hope for a better world.

Everything their ancestors' cruel hearts ever forged will shatter in disgrace! Ghidorah thought as he used his wings to propel himself back up to the surface. And from the ashes of the fallen world shall those that remain forge a better one!

Just under Godzilla's feet and tail, the three heads bit hard into the tail and yanked Godzilla down, just long enough for the golden dragon to surface and return to the sky where it had the advantage against the beast of vengeance.

Burst! Ghidorah surface from the ocean and flew high enough that Godzilla was unable to reach it without its atomic breath.

"Haaaurgh!" The three heads roared as Godzilla resurfaced and glared at the golden dragon that refused to stay down.

-x-

The doctors carted Gendo's lifeless body out of the room, just in time for Fuyutsuki to return from having gone to a restroom, seeing the leader of NERV…or rather, the former leader of NERV…having succumbed to his radiation poisoning. He didn't leave him for that long, just less than ten minutes. And during that time, nothing had been resolved between father and son…and now, nothing would ever be resolved between them. Ever.

"What happened?" Fuyutsuki asks a male nurse.

"We heard a yelling from his room," he explains, "and he was going through convulsions. We tried to stabilize him, but his heart gave out. All attempts to revive him failed."

"Was he yelling about something?"

"Something about Godzilla burning in Hell or something like that. Nothing that really made any sense. Was his son notified about his condition?"

"As far as I know, his son was informed…but there was doubt that he was coming back to see him. There was doubt that he was coming back at all to see his father."

"So, nothing was resolved between them? No reconciliation? No absolution? Nothing?"

"I doubt that there was anything that could have been resolved between the two."

As Gendo's corpse was taken away for disposal, Fuyutsuki wonders how Shinji was going to react to the fact that his father was no longer around. And as far as the elder knew, neither Gendo or Yui ever had the forethought to ever plan ahead in case something went wrong with what they were doing. This meant that, despite being geniuses in their own right, they had left their son with nothing in the likelihood that he would one day be on his own, and now he was alone.

"Then again, I'm always by myself," he recalls Shinji saying to him once. "Not a choice I made, but a fact of life I was dealt by others. Who wants anything to do with some strangers' kid outside of some nonsense like saving the world? You tell me."

Fourteen years old…and with a lot of anger towards his relatives, he thought as he wonders if Shinji was even alive.

To be continued…

A/N: I bet none of you were expecting that! I have Fuyutsuki go to the bathroom and Gendo just dies, and nothing was resolved. Then again, nothing usually ever gets resolved with the Ikari family that is mainly targeted towards Shinji, but this is more extreme due to the fact that even if Shinji survives something like this, he has nothing because his parents, despite being geniuses, didn't leave him anything. Not that he would probably accept anything they left if it related to what they were after. What will come next?