Creation began on 02-22-19
Creation ended on 03-30-19
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Infinity Redemption: Rage in the Night
It felt like passing through a small hallway of water and air, with the floor being made of a thick rubber or jelly as she stepped out of the portal Shinji made that led to the orphanage their children were in. And while Rumiko felt elated to be getting her son back, there was a feeling in her heart that kept telling her that something was wrong.
"How good is your control over your pendant, Shinji?" She asked him as they stood in front of the gate that kept them out of the grounds used as a recreational yard for the children.
"I'm an amateur at best, but this should be a quick in and out, Rumiko," he answered her; just because his power was bestowed upon by wearing the Space Stone, it didn't make him a master of it right away.
The stone had only recently awakened in his possession and bonded with him, sharing with him its history and unwillingness to be used in unethical ways like how the last owner and wielder did long ago.
"I have a bad feeling right now," she explained to him.
"How bad is it?"
"Like something is wrong with Toya, as though he's been hurt or worse than that by someone."
"Rumiko…I believe that's your maternal instincts alerting you that he's close by and waiting for you to come get him."
"I'm guessing that there's no such thing as paternal instincts?"
"Maybe not, but I always worry about Shado, regardless of the distance between us. And right now, we're about to become part of the things that go bump in the night."
As his pendant glowed again, the gate in front of them disappeared, and they stepped onto the empty yard.
"Rumiko," Shinji uttered.
"Yes?"
"We didn't think this through at all."
"Damn right. We're just walking out here on the yard…and right towards the front door."
"At least we're not ringing the bell."
-x-
As Shado got up from off the floor, she got the strangest feeling that something was afoot, like someone was up and about.
"I'll be right back, Toya," she told her friend behind the locked door. "I'm going to get Ursa Guardian from where I hid her."
"Be careful," Toya warned her as she left down the hall outside his solitary cell.
As she quietly ran down the hall, the feeling Shado got a moment ago…got bigger.
What is going on here? She wondered as she ran past a corner where a guard was walking away.
"…Hey, what are you two doing here?!" She heard the guard suddenly yell, stopping in her tracks. "Put your hands in the air where I can…"
Shado never heard the guy finish his demand, for she heard what sounded like a…hit and a fall.
"Okay, that didn't go well," she heard a male voice that wasn't the guard; it was younger…and more welcoming than any of the adults she saw here. "Where'd you learn to kick like that?"
"Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan films," she heard a female voice; there weren't any women that worked here at night.
"Really? That's…amazing."
"As much as wanting to be a damsel in distress felt like a dream when we were younger, I couldn't be fully dependent upon others when it became necessary to rely on your own decisions, for better or for worse. But you're the exception; you came to see me…and now we're doing this, even though others will hate us for it when and if they find out."
"But…in the end, getting our children back…will be worth it, right?"
Shado wasn't sure what was going on, but it seemed like the two voices talking were that of people that were here to take their kids back. It felt almost sad…but there was something about these two that made her…sympathetic to them.
"Shinji, it'll always be worth it if we get our kids out of here," she heard the female voice say, and Shado gasped at the sound of the name being uttered. "What was that?"
Shado turned around and slowly walked back to the corner, stepping into the limited light that was available…and saw two people no older than older kids, one boy and one girl. The boy had a blue gem hanging from his neck that glowed, highlighting his features.
He gasped at the sight of Shado, who looked on the verge of tears herself as she stepped closer.
"Hello," he greeted her. "What is your name?"
Shado responded with, "Daddy calls me Shado because the name a lady that hurt him gave me wasn't nice."
"Fuyona, which meant 'unwanted' when translated. He preferred Shado because…it was better to be his shadow than to be unloved by others."
"I would always be Daddy's shadow…because he would keep me close."
"Because he had someone to love that loved him back."
"Daddy…" The girl cried happily as she ran into her father's embrace. "But…what are you doing here? How are you here?"
"It's a long story, but to be short on it, Rumiko and I are taking you and Toya out of this place and getting as far away as we can."
Shado let go of her father and looked at him and Rumiko, who was tying up the guard they had taken out.
"Toya's locked in solitary confinement down the hall," she revealed to them. "The people in charge of this place aren't nice to anyone. One tried to take Ursa Guardian from me, but Toya intervened. I hid Ursa Guardian and they threw Toya into the room for three days."
"They threw my son in a box?" Rumiko uttered, tying a rope around the guard's mouth. "Okay, we're leaving this place, and we're never looking back."
"But what about the other kids here?" Shado asked them; she didn't deny her distrust of most the children here, being protective of her teddy bear, but she sympathized with the fact that they were unwanted by the majority of people they didn't know, all passengers on the same boat heading towards nowhere.
"How many other kids?" Rumiko questioned.
"Forty-three," Shado answered her. "They've been hurt, too."
Shinji and Rumiko looked at one another and knew they'd be no better than the people that hurt these orphans if they left them to suffer any further by an uncaring bunch of adults that were no different from abusive prison guards.
"Freedom to those that desire it," Shinji uttered. "Go wake them up if they're asleep and explain to them what's going on."
Shado nodded in the positive and ran off with Rumiko while Shinji went to get Toya.
-x-
Toya didn't like the silence outside his cell. It was too long and he didn't think it'd take so long for Shado to get Ursa Guardian from wherever she hid her. But as long as the door to his cell was locked, he couldn't get out and find her.
Knock-knock-knock, he heard a knock on the door, getting his attention.
"Toya," he heard someone say his name out there; they sounded younger, not so vicious or cruel towards others, "are you in there?"
"Who's there?" He uttered, but then realized that he should've stayed quiet since he didn't know who was out there.
Clank! The door knob made a strange sound and fell to the floor in front of Toya as the door slowly opened up; there had been a bright flash of blue light in the darkness that surrounded the knob that Toya had noticed.
The person revealed themselves to be a boy much older than the other boys here, but was younger than the adults here, with dark hair and brownish eyes like those of Shado's, wearing a glowing, blue pendant around his neck.
"Hey, Toya," he greeted kindly. "I'm Shinji, Shado's father."
"I can see some resemblance," Toya responded, getting off the cot he was sitting on. "What's going on? What are you doing here?"
"Your mother and I are here to get you and Shado out of here, though we have to take everyone else here, too."
"Everyone else here? You mean, the other kids that are here?"
"Yeah, all the other kids here. There's forty-three of them, plus you and Shado, which adds up to forty-five children."
-x-
"…I gotta hand it to you, Shado," went Rumiko to the little girl as she pulled Ursa Guardian out from a hole in the wall that was made long ago, "even I wouldn't think to hide something I love in a place like that."
"What better place to hide something than in a space that was broken and nobody bothers to fix?" Shado expressed, hugging the stuffed bear. "Nobody in charge here ever seems to want to fix anything they know is broken or breaking, even when they should. All they do is cover things up…or throw them away."
The little girl then led Rumiko to the middle floor of the building where the children were kept. This left Rumiko feeling uneasy about the way Shado stated that the second floor was where the children were kept.
"Shado…how are you and the other children here treated, exactly?" She asked her.
"The adults are hard," Shado explained. "They always yell at us, tells us we're bad, that we're evil, dirty or how nobody will want us and how we're going to die on the streets when we're older. They don't really pay attention to us, and everyone else can be…well, we're all left to do whatever we can do to make the day hurt less…when we're not being yelled at or told what to do, like wash dishes with a bar of soap or carry out large garbage bags that weigh more than we do. They even try to get rid of our personal possessions as a way of informing us that we're just wastes of space that nobody else will take interest in."
"Shado," Rumiko stopped her in the hallway, "that's terrible. You and Toya…and the other children… None of you deserve to be treated like this. Do they even feed you right?"
"We barely get enough to get through an entire day. The adults keep most of the food they want to themselves while we get the bad leftovers."
Rumiko balled her left hand into a fist. Not only did her mother and Shinji's maternal aunt and uncle send their children to a lousy orphanage, the people in charge of said orphanage themselves were deliberately cruel to them for apparent reason. Even if she hated her parents and elder brother, she wouldn't have wished this on any child, no matter who they were. She wouldn't even wish this on Shinji just because his father was a good-for-nothing failure.
"What about when you're sick?" She asked Shado. "Have any of you gotten sick while you were here? I mean, sore throat, the flu, a fever?"
Shado seemed reluctant to answer Rumiko when asked that question.
"Shado," she spoke again, kneeling down to meet her gaze, "please, I need to know. How do these people treat you when you're sick?"
Shado clutched her teddy and looked up at her.
"There used to be three boys and a girl here that got sick," she explained. "They had the flu. We were told they would get better after a few days, but they never got better. One day, they didn't wake up. They were cold and pale. One of the boys' eyes was open the whole time, but he didn't move. The adults came and took them away and told us never to talk about them. This was five months ago."
Rumiko couldn't believe this. If what Shado told her was true, then these four children were dead and the people in charge of this place just disposed of them like they were garbage.
Do orphan and bastard children mean so little to the people that are supposed to be taking care of them? She wondered, and then hugged Shado closely. "I'm sorry, Shado. I'm sorry all of you have to suffer this way."
"It's not your fault," Shado told her. "You didn't give us up. We were taken from you."
-x-
When Shinji and Toya made it upstairs to where the other children slept, Shinji's pendant started glowing like a rapid heartbeat, as if trying to tell him something.
What is this? He wondered.
Trouble, he heard a man's voice in his head and turned to the opposite end of the hallway…where he saw a man with a purple glow on his right hand.
"Ahh!" Toya gasped, and Shinji looked down at him, seeing his frightened expression.
"Is that him, Toya?" Shinji asked. "Is he the man that locked you up when he tried to take Shado's bear?"
"Yes, Shinji, that's him," Toya answered. "He's the one in charge."
"Who the Hell are you and what are you doing here?" The man asked, making no hint that he was anything but a social person.
Suddenly, from out the door behind Shinji and Toya, Rumiko, Shado and several other children started coming out into the hallway.
"We're just two concerned parents here to take our children…and now we have a reason to take everyone else here, too," Shinji uttered to the man. "Actually, our kids have told us things that make us see why being here was the worst mistake our parents and guardians made."
"Oh, yeah, I remember your face in the girl's file. You're the preadolescent father that was raped by her mother five years ago."
Shado clutched her teddy after hearing that.
"Must you state half of an obvious sore point in my past?" Shinji questioned. "And I wouldn't call that woman my daughter's mother. She never deserved that status, even if she did have Shado, who deserves better than her."
"And you call her that when her name's clearly…"
"Hey, don't you dare correct him, you jerk," Rumiko cut him off. "If he says her name's Shado, then that's her name, no matter what it says on her birth certificate."
"Oh, this is pointless. You two come here without any rights, no authorization, and you say you're here to take your bastards away, along with all these other bastards? And then what happens? What, you think you can just return them to whoever gave them up? They're just undesirables, wastes of space that nobody will ever want. Why else would their parents and guardians give them up? Some of them don't even have much to live for, anyway. Nobody needs them and they won't be missed."
Shinji looked at his daughter, his friend's son and the other children that heard what he said about them, and then looked back at the man.
"If they're hopeless, then they don't deserve to be in a place like this…watched after by people like you," he told him. "You treat them like garbage…and all for money. You say nobody wants them, and I say that you're wrong. I came here tonight because my aunt and uncle made a mistake…and I'm ending that mistake."
"Oh, you want to take your kid away from here? Do that, and you're a wanted man. The police will be after you, no matter where you go."
"Is it really kidnapping when we're here take back our children?" Rumiko asked. "Are we really kidnapping anyone when it appears that you people treat them like they're something to be ashamed of? No, I don't think it's kidnapping when we take back our own. And I don't think it's kidnapping when it's more like liberation from child abuse…and you're the abuser…who should never lay his hands on another child again."
The man raised his right hand up…and Shinji got a better look at the glowing object on his middle finger.
That gem, he realized, knowing only one thing that could make his pendant glow the way it did, as though warning him. He has one of the Infinity Stones. It's gotta be the Power Stone.
I see the way you're looking at my ring, boy. Shinji heard the man's voice in his head. You want it, don't you? You want my ring so you can be a top dog, the big man? Oh, I think I'll use the stone to reduce you to ash so that you're nothing more than a memory.
Shinji had to suspect that those wielding the stones had some degree of telepathy towards one another, able to feel their presence as though they were right next to each other rather than at a distance. If this were true, then there was no reason to try and hide his own understanding of the Infinity Stones that he was granted by the Space Stone.
"Did that stone choose you…or did you find it and decided that you needed to have it?" He asked the man.
"Oh, wouldn't you like to know," the man responded, having no interest in sharing how he came to possess such a relic, "but why don't you hand over that stone around your neck?"
"I'm gonna have to refuse that idea. I've become accustomed to its abilities."
The man's hand then began to glow a brighter shade of purple as he came over.
"I'll tell you what, boy, I'm gonna beat you half to death in front of your kid and then take that stone off your bloody neck, and you're not gonna do anything to stop me," he told Shinji as the children started to cower behind the two teens. "Come here!"
But Shinji frowned as he clutched his pendant.
"You want to fight, let's take it outside!" He told the man, and they both disappeared in a blue ring of light that formed around them.
"Daddy!" Shado gasped.
"It's okay," Rumiko told her. "He didn't go too far."
-x-
The portal dropped them out onto the yard in front of the building, and the man looked at the boy as he quickly got up to his feet.
"Teleportation," he uttered in realization. "Someone I once knew mentioned there was a power of that sort that could be bestowed upon people destined to have it. One of six powers that make up existence: Reality, Mind, Time, Soul, Power…and Space. To think that such a power like one of those ended up in your hands."
Shinji looked at him like he'd been judged all over again by someone older than he was, first as an unfit parent, and now as someone unfit to have a little piece of power that had sentience and chose him over countless millions that lived around him.
"My daughter has always been my blessing," Shinji uttered, and then ran towards the man, "and you tried to hurt her!"
BASH! He kicked him in between his legs and then punched him in the face.
Damn, he thought, this kid has a serious right hook.
Getting his footing, the man punched Shinji in the stomach, shoving him backwards onto the ground. Then, he grabbed his left leg.
"You're dead, kid," he uttered as the Power Stone on his ring started to glow like fire.
Shinji, the Power Stone reacts violently to anything organic, the consciousness of the Space Stone yelled to him. This man is going to reduce you to ash!
"Gaah!" Shinji gasped and kicked the man with his right leg, freeing himself before the Power Stone could cause harm.
His pendant glowed and he fell through portal underneath him…and he was now eight feet away from the guy's ring.
"You can't beat me by running away," he told Shinji.
"And you can't kill me if you can't touch me," Shinji retorted. "You know that stone you have is dangerous if you ever thought of using it on the ground. You'd kill us all."
"You think I'd believe in that pathetic lie? All I've ever done with this stone is get rid of the human debris that takes its last breath here because the last guy wouldn't do what was best for the orphanage."
"Get rid of the human debris? Because that stone is dangerous, you purposely… The last guy… That stone doesn't belong to you. It doesn't belong to you…but you're abusing what it can do to hurt people. You're not a chosen stonekeeper like I am. You're just a pretender. There will be a price to pay for wielding a power you're not supposed to have."
"Oh, and you would know?"
"Do you know the difference between a pretender and the real thing? The stonekeeper has intimate knowledge on how the stone in their possession works, to the point where it becomes second nature. But a pretender, all they can do is what they know, basically, unable to truly grasp the full power of the stone. You could've only gotten your stone from the real owner through some form of deception, and I think you silenced him so he couldn't take it back. You will never understand how powerful it truly is."
"I know it's powerful enough to level a building if it's pressed against even a door!"
Shinji saw him run towards the orphanage building, intending to use the Power Stone to damage it with Rumiko and the children still inside it.
"No!" He yelled, and conjured a portal in front of the man that sent him running towards himself.
Kick! He kicked him in the balls again.
"You little bastard!" He yelled at Shinji and jumped him to the ground. "I'll kill you right now!"
FLASH! Their stones flared like crazy between them, surrounding them in swirls of purple and blue light.
"Die, boy!" The man yelled at him.
"Daddy!" Shinji heard his daughter's voice as he turned his head towards the building, seeing her and the others outside. "Daddy!"
"Why?" The man questioned; normally, his victims turned to ash right after he touched them, but Shinji hadn't even started to show signs of being affected by the stone on his ring. "Why aren't you burning away?!"
But Shinji couldn't answer as he was being choked by him. He looked at his hand, the Power Stone still flaring…and got an idea.
This will teach him, he thought, imagining a portal forming around the man's wrist.
Suddenly, a small portal began to form around his wrist.
"What the Hell are you doing?!" He demanded.
SNAP! The portal snapped closed into nothingness…and severed his hand.
"Aaaah! Aaaaurgh!" He screamed as he pulled back, his severed appendage cauterized by the energy given off by the portal Shinji used against him. "Aaaaurgh!"
Shinji picked up the severed hand and tossed it back at him.
"That's what you get for not keeping your hands to yourself," he told him.
"I'll kill you," he groaned, picking up his hand. "I'll kill you!"
Suddenly, the Power Stone started flaring up again, but this time against the man. It broke free of the ring and surrounded him in its energy.
"Aaaauurgh! Help me! Help me!" He yelled, and Shinji saw what was happening to him.
The energy radiating from the stone was burning him away slowly. It looked like a ring of fire starting from his middle and began expanding across the rest of his body. Judging from his reactions, the process was agonizing.
"Aaurgh! No! Please!" He screamed, falling to the ground as he tried to crawl towards Shinji. "Please! I don't want to die!"
"Coward," his father's voice echoed in his mind.
The Power Stone now began to glow with a pulsating ring to it, attracting Shinji's Space Stone as it resonated with one another.
Show mercy, even to those that don't deserve it, he thought; the stones were telling him to be merciful to this madman that hurt his child…just because they knew Shinji wasn't without mercy. Nobody, even the unworthy and unappreciative of life…deserves to die like this.
He summoned another portal under the man and dropped someplace with a lot of water, removing him from the location, leaving the Power Stone behind.
"I hope you appreciate how close you came to paying the ultimate price for wielding a power that would kill you," he uttered.
-x-
Splash! The man on fire fell into the cooling waters of Lake Ashi.
"Gaah!" He gasped as he broke the surface of the water and waded to shore…where he dropped in relief at being shown mercy. "I…I lived."
-x-
"…Is it…safe for you to hold that?" Toya asked Shinji as he held the Power Stone in his bare hands.
"For now," he answered. "This stone is one of the more dangerous objects in existence because it's without a chosen wielder. Anyone with the means to possess it can possess it, but unless you're chosen by it, it's as dangerous to you as it is to those around it."
"Then…what are you going to do with it?" Rumiko asked him. "You wield a stone like it. If you have two of them…well, you'd be stronger than ever."
"Yeah, I could…but it wouldn't mean anything to me if I couldn't protect the people I love with it…and wanting the Power Stone for the sake of power…is pure greed, a god complex without any restraint."
His pendant glowed and the Power Stone…was absorbed into it.
"What happened, Daddy?" Shado asked her father. "Where'd the stone go?"
"I hid it someplace far from here…and devoid of life so that nobody could exploit it," he explained, and then picked her up off the ground. "I missed holding you, Shado."
The girl hugged her father and responded that she missed him, as well.
-x-
The next morning, the news was spinning a crazy tale of an orphanage being attacked in the middle of the night and ransacked in the most unusual of ways. Somehow, someone had demolished it by…quartering it, reducing it to rubble across the property. The people that worked there that were removed before it was destroyed claimed that two teens came by and took the orphans from it, claiming that two of them were theirs…and a burnt man with a severed hand backed up the story by identifying the boy that took his hand off.
"…So," went Ritsuko to Gendo that morning in his office, "it looks like the Third Child decided to take back his daughter and free some orphans with her."
"Have the MAGI monitoring every possible location the Third Child could be hiding in," Gendo ordered her. "Use any surveillance means we have: Pod cameras, street cameras, building security cameras, cell phones and tablets, whatever."
"Assuming that it was even him, how could the boy be capable of reducing a building to rubble? Or sending one of the orphanage attendees to Lake Ashi while burning him and severing his arm? It doesn't seem like him?"
All Gendo wanted right now was the boy found so that he could pilot the Eva again. Whatever means Shinji had that enabled him to do what the media was claiming he did, he didn't really care about it because he'd take them away from him. Nothing except his scenario needed to be focused upon.
Where are you? He wondered, looking down at a picture of the boy and his illegitimate daughter.
To be continued…
A/N: I'm not sure when the next chapter of anything will be posted after this, but at least this one got worked on. Peace out, people!
