Creation began on 11-03-22

Creation ended on 05-13-24

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Infinity Redemption: Can We trust You?

A/N: The votes were in and this is the result of the choices.

Disappointment and outrage. This was what Gendo Ikari felt towards his son that abandoned them all shortly after the Third Angel attack. The guy that was injured and spared by the Third Child the night he went to take his back bastard daughter from that orphanage she was dumped at had revealed what he knew, and now he was trying to think of a way to capitalize on this discovery. To find out that there were these six stones, each with a different power that related to the universe itself, made him ponder how his only son managed to get his hands on just one of these stones and keep it secret.

"The very essence of these stones predates the beginnings of the universe itself," the former orphanage head explained to him. "They lost their true forms over the ages after the Big Bang, forged and reforged into whatever form they were chosen to be in. To wield just one stone is to be chosen by the stone. To exploit just one stone for wrongful purposes that go against the stone's will is to be met with its eventual retribution in due time, and there's no escaping it, no matter how hard you try. But to wield all six? You wield all six stones, even for just one day…then you're practically invincible. Whatever you say, whatever you do, even whatever you can think of…is absolute. Nobody can go against you."

If you can wield all six of these…Infinity Stones…then you become God, he thought as he left the hospital; the guy that was relieved of one of his hands and burned was no longer necessary, and whatever happened to him later on was not his problem. Where did you go? How many of these stones do you have…and how do I take them from you?

-x-

"Ginseng tea?" Sister Rosetta asks Shinji as she pours a cup in front of Shado.

"Yes, please," Shinji responds, accepting a cup. "Thank you."

"What is Rumiko doing over there?" Sister Rosetta wants to know, seeing Rumiko sitting against a wall, the Time Stone around her neck active, her upper body moving around in distorted directions while she was speaking.

"All she told Daddy was that she wanted to see where finding the stones you have will take us all when you use them," Shado explains as she picks up her cup. "Mmm! This is tasty! Thank you again, Sister Rosetta!"

The nun smiles and nods her head in praise to the young girl.

"Are you sure that my mother isn't being hurt by that stone she has on?" Toya asks, concerned about his mother.

"Positive," Shinji assures him.

Seconds later, Rumiko stopped doing what she was doing and got up from her seat.

"Just how much did you see?" Rosetta asks the young woman.

"Obtaining the Mind Stone will be a simple feat," she reveals to them, "but what comes after is odd by several factors. I based the temporal factors on which to search the timelines on people we could trust with the stones we don't use ourselves, and it kept branching off into alternate possibilities based on new factors."

"How many did you see?" Shinji asks; because he didn't want to jeopardize their future, he kept his questions simple and only expected Rumiko to answer with short answers.

"Less than eight-thousand-thirty-seven potential outcomes where all six stones are wielded."

"How many of these have people we can trust with the Reality, Power and Mind Stones?"

"Six-hundred-seventeen."

"And just how many where we're able to pull this off and move on with our lives?"

"Eighty-eight."

Shado and Toya raised their hands up and held out all their fingers.

"More than our fingers put together?" They ask their parents.

"That's right," Shinji told them, and they smiled. "Eighty-eight different outcomes out of even just one-hundred possibilities are still good odds. It's just a matter of finding three people we can trust with the stones."

"But Shinji…there's something you need to know," Rumiko utters. "In the four-hundred-four alternate timelines I surveyed leading to the last scenarios in which we are able to achieve this…I kept seeing your father…and he kept demanding that we hand him over the stones."

"Miss Gaidoku, are…are you saying that…it's possible that…that his father…knows about the stones now?" Rosetta asks, concerned for the safety of the children under her protection.

"Yes," she answers. "When I realized this, I had to confirm if he knew…and he does. The head of the orphanage who had the Power Stone, Shinji? Your father went to see him…and he told him what he knew about the stones. He told him about that night we came for our children. He knows about the Space Stone and now he's going to be after the other stones for himself."

Shinji looks down at his cup of tea.

"Please," he spoke, "tell me that he doesn't get his hands on any of them, even for a moment."

"I wish I could…but I can only say this: If you can't stain your hands or soul with his end, can you at least sully them with putting him someplace where he has only himself to blame for his faults?" She tells him.

Shinji sighs as he finishes his tea. The very last thing he wanted to think of was the possibility that his father would try to come after them for any number of reasons, including the Space Stone and taking his daughter away from him. He couldn't stop thinking of the likelihood that once they had created a world for themselves to live one that was separate from this one, he and Shado wouldn't have to see any of his other relatives for as long as they lived. Not his father, not his mother, none of them.

"What does that word mean, 'sooly'?" Shado asks them.

"That means…to dirty my hands," Shinji explains.

"What will you do?" Sister Rosetta questions.

"Your God wrote these…commandments that people followed in the past," Shinji responds, "and one of them was Thou shall not kill. I care not for my father…or any of my paternal or maternal relatives who aren't Shado…but would it be a sin…to send him elsewhere where he can do no further harm to others?"

"Although you are Japanese, you don't have a heart for bloodshed or any measure of violence. And…despite your resentments toward what your parents have done with their lives…and, in essence, try to manipulate your own life…so this commandment is also one you can't follow: Honor thy father and thy mother… No, I don't suppose that it would be a sin, Shinji. The Lord says that we cannot take a life, but he does not say that we cannot send a life elsewhere…so long as we do not take the life we aim to displace."

Sister Rosetta, because of the Soul Stone, knew of Shinji's resentment towards his mother, this Yui Ikari, because of her involvement with this Evangelion, this…false deity that was an insult to the Lord's own standing. She knew that he found it difficult to forgive her for her transgressions and wouldn't let her or his father go anywhere near his daughter, but despite his resentment, his soul remains pure because he doesn't want to stain his hands or his heart with bloodshed and the taking of a life when he could simply walk away with his child and never look back. If one were to look at this nonexistent relationship between the parents and the son, they could see it as two lives having lost their right to this third life that was forever out of their reach. And if Shinji couldn't honor either parent…then it meant both mother and father were dishonorable and not worthy of his admiration or devotion.

"Is it a sin," went Rumiko, "to be unable to forgive those that hurt us?"

"To forgive those who have hurt you is to forgive them only for your own sake," Sister Rosetta explains to her. "Your forgiveness is not for them…but for you and you alone."

"I have made many mistakes in my past…but my friendship with Shinji…and my Toya…are not among any my faults. They and Shado…are the goodness I keep precious to my heart."

Toya smiles at his mother, just as Shado smiles at her father.

"Then I guess this question is the next step in moving on," Sister Rosetta tells them. "Where…and when…will we meet these people who we can trust with the Power, Reality and Mind Stones?"

"There are three people that Shinji and I can go meet right now," Rumiko reveals. "They're all in Tokyo-3, our age…and seem to have no idea what's really going with that NERV agency."

-x-

Tokyo-3 Memorial Hospital had seen little activity in the days that followed the so-called invasion of an unknown enemy that appeared for a moment only to disappear shortly after. But because of the fact that the unknown creature that appeared resulted in every patient having to be removed to a shelter, it made the recovery rates of several patients take longer due to carelessness. Especially so for one such patient that someone was coming to see.

"…He comes here almost every day to see her," a male nurse said to a female nurse.

"Yeah," she replies. "They said nobody was hurt during the fiasco from several days ago, but that P.R. reveal was B.S. because at least forty people were injured. NERV… Who are they trying to fool around here?"

The young man in question, Toji Suzuhara, stopped in front of the room where his sister, Sakura Suzuhara, resided. It was only for a second, but he felt like the world had stopped and resumed. He wasn't sure of why, but he chalked it up to mild heartburn and entered the room where she was laying down right now. It caused him grief to no end to see her like this every time; her legs in casts, her head bandaged up, hearing from the doctors that her spleen and liver were slightly ruptured. While the doctors all said that it was a miracle she was alive, Toji didn't see much of the miracle when Sakura was still in the hospital instead of at home.

"Uh, excuse us, sir," he hears a voice say to him from behind in a corner, "but are you Toji Suzuhara? Are you this young lady's brother?"

It was a girl, around his age, accompanied by a boy. In his mind, the girl seemed to be more mature than her companion was. But this maturity didn't seem to be…the kind of maturity that he was supposed to be demonstrating, even for a teenager. And her companion seemed unusually uncomfortable with being in the room around them.

"Who are you?" He asks them.

"My name is Rumiko Gaidoku," the girl says, bowing her head to him. "This is my friend, Shinji Ikari. We're here to see you about something."

"Me?"

"Yes," the boy, Shinji, expresses. "If you haven't found out anything about me, I'm sort of wanted by my father for leaving the city a few days ago."

"Sorry, but no, I haven't heard anything about you, Ikari."

"Shinji, please. My family name is something of an omen right now because of my parents who have done some things that are unforgivable to me. Are you familiar with NERV?"

"NERV? My father works for a company called NERV, but he doesn't say anything about it."

"My father runs NERV. Do you know anything about the monster that attacked the city a few days ago?"

"A friend of mine mentioned something about a robot that rose from the ground at night and went crazy."

"That was Shinji here, manipulated by his father to operate a robot he had no knowledge or memory about. He left the next day and hasn't been back ever since because he doesn't want to do it again, no matter what anyone tells him about why he should."

Toji looks at Shinji and asks, "It was you that fought that monster?"

"Not by choice…but yes," Shinji answers him, bowing his head to him. "Rumiko tells me that…she got hurt because the fighting."

"Because of you."

"He didn't know," Rumiko reiterates. "Shinji didn't know anything until after he showed up to see his father, who just told him tidbits of information that was less than half of what he should've been told years ago. His father might as well have lied about everything to him. After he left, Shinji came to see me and confided in me about what he went through…and how he didn't want to go through with it again. If there is anyone to blame for what happened to your sister and anyone else that got hurt that day, it's his father and anyone else involved for withholding need-to-know information for years. Do you really think Shinji would knowingly go into a battle with anyone with little details about the situation and endanger people that he may not know is still in the city?"

Toji looks at Shinji again…and sees that he looks more like an embittered youth than some overzealous jerk looking for attention or even glory.

"If I had met you earlier, I'd try to put you in the ground," he confesses to Shinji. "No offense, but you don't even look like a fighter. You look more like a…loner."

"Better that than a guy that doesn't have even one friend to talk to about how good…or crappy their day has been," Shinji responds. "I only fought a real fight a while back when Rumiko and I went to this orphanage to take back our children…and ended up taking a bunch of other kids with us because the place and personnel were completely cruel to them."

"You two have kids?"

"He has a little girl," Rumiko states. "I have a little boy. You hear of how some people take advantage of kids' naivety to certain extremes? Well, we were taken advantage of in the worst of ways. Shinji here was kidnapped and assaulted. My father and brother took advantage of me. We're past that trauma and just want to be left alone by those that don't see what we want or how we feel about their way of handling things we may disagree with."

"And what does any of this have to do with me?"

"We want to do something really extreme," Shinji explains, "but we need more help to do so. There are six beings that possess abilities we can tap into to do things we couldn't do on our own, and we need people that we can trust to hold onto those beings that can give them the same abilities. We're looking for three allies that can help us do something special for the people that don't want to get involved in the craziness that people like my parents have committed for years. Rumiko has informed me that you and two other people your age are likely the three we can trust with what we're hoping to achieve."

"You want my help to do something?"

"That's right."

"And I'm supposed to believe you two?"

Rumiko then walks over to his sister and sits beside her.

"You're angry because your sister was hurt and the doctors are barely doing anything for her, right?" She asks him. "If we could do something about this, would you believe us?"

"What could you possibly do for her?" Toji asks.

"Turn back the clock…and give her back her life."

Then, Toji saw her hands glow green. It was the strangest thing he had ever seen thus far, and the glow was shaped like something he had never recognized a day in his life. But it looked similar to a ring with symbols all across it. The way Rumiko turned her left hand, counterclockwise, was causing something to happen to the little girl in the hospital bed, and Toji saw how it seemed as though time was moving backwards on Sakura. The bandages covering her disappeared from view, the minor scars they had covered disappeared, her color tone started to look healthier than before her injuries, and her short hair starting to grow long again.

Rumiko, due to the temporal awareness the Time Stone provided her, knew when this young girl had been harmed in the Third Angel attack and simply needed to carefully rewind her injuries to just moments before they occurred. Reaching four minutes before her body registered harm, Rumiko stopped the temporal manipulation and then caused a full-body glow to cover the girl before making it disappear under her. By undoing the harm and then subtracting her past self's body and bringing it to the present, Rumiko was able to return time to her and let her move on with her life. As the glow ceased, she saw as the girl slowly stirred from her slumber and opened her eyes, seeing her brother.

"Big brother?" She asks, groggily as she rises up. "I was…dreaming."

Toji couldn't believe it. Somehow, Rumiko had healed his sister with just her hands.

"Thank you," he tells Rumiko as he goes over and hugs Sakura. "Thank you."

Even Shinji felt pride in what Rumiko had done for this young man. Her use of the Time Stone was so precise and skillful that it seemed like second nature for her.

"Will you," he utters to Toji, getting his attention, "hear us out completely?"

"Whatever it is that you two aim to do," Toji replies, "I'm already in. I'm in, whatever it is."

-x-

Based on what each of these stones is capable of, just having one of them would make a regular person a force to be reckoned with if the stone in question possesses offensive capabilities, thought Gendo as he tries to familiarize himself on the six Infinity Stones in his office. Reality, Power, Time, Mind, Space and Soul. Each representing a different aspect of the universe itself. But if one has all of them, then they could become a god-like being, able to do anything without question. And the Third Child possesses one of them. If what that man said is true, and each stone is represented by an individual color of light, then the boy possesses the Space Stone, which enables him to go wherever he wants within the universe itself. But if he has nowhere to go, why would he need such a resource that is better held by someone with more use for it than he could ever have?

If his son had a means to get away from him, it would make taking the stone from him difficult. But Gendo wasn't too concerned about this. He could file a multitude of outrageous charges against the boy that would make the entire world look for him if he was hiding elsewhere, and he doubt that the Third Child would be able to survive anywhere without the meager means to survive. People had come to rely heavily upon science and technology to live, something that was likely the same for a useless brat like Shinji.

Blue light for the Space Stone.

Green light for the Time Stone.

Red light for the Reality Stone.

Orange light for the Soul Stone.

Yellow light for the Mind Stone.

And purple light for the Power Stone.

Interdimensional travel for the Space Stone.

Temporal manipulation for the Time Stone.

Reality manipulation for the Reality Stone.

Spiritual manipulation for the Soul Stone.

Mental manipulation for the Mind Stone.

And, based solely on the information that man provided, the Power Stone provides an extreme form of energy manipulation to those that could control it.

But whoever possesses the Space Stone can surely find the other stones to acquire them, Gendo assumes as he looks at a photo of the Third Child, taking notice of the fact that he was wearing that pendant that Yui once wore, probably the only keepsake he would ever have of her. Is it possible? Did Yui know… Is that pendant… It can't be. If she knew about it, why give it to him? Why couldn't she trust me with it?!

Of course, he was simply jumping to conclusions, but Gendo had to suspect that the Taoist pendant that his wife left their son with was likely the Space Stone, capable of the most efficient modes of travel, able to get someone out of a situation they would be otherwise incapable of getting out of. This meant the boy could go anywhere in the universe without any restrictions…and to think that he possessed such power and was likely only making use of it since he left the city.

Where are you? He wonders, setting the photo on his desk. You can't stay away forever, you petulant brat. Where are you hiding?

-x-

"…Based on what Rumiko tells me," Shinji tells Toji, holding up a picture of one of the Infinity Stones they needed to achieve the goal they had in mind, "the stone most suited for you to hold onto is this one. The Power Stone."

"The Power Stone?" Toji questions as they were on the roof of the hospital; it would be a while before the doctors got his sister's discharge forms in order after Sakura made her miraculous recovery. "Why is it called the Power Stone?"

"Put quite simply?" Rumiko replies. "It represents the total sum of the power of the universe itself. But the power it unleashes makes it dangerous to anyone and everything that exists. In the past, all one had to do was touch the stone to a planet in order to destroy it, tearing down all manner of civilizations like a great firestorm destroying a forest. It would react violently to anything organic. The bigger the person or thing, the bigger the power surge. But the stone later regained its sense of awareness and can now choose who will possess it and why."

"But…why me?" Toji wants to know.

"What is power to you?" Shinji asks him. "I mean, what is power to someone like you? Just be honest with yourself."

"Power is…being able to protect the people in my life. Doing anything to protect my sister, my friends, my home."

"Does that include a drive to punish or enslave…or even murder?" Rumiko asks him.

"No…not really. I can't imagine myself doing anything like that to anyone. I don't like bullies or bad guys, no matter who they are or where they're from."

Shinji and Rumiko look at each other and then Rumiko smiles at Toji.

"That's why you're the best person we know of so far to hold the Power Stone," she says to him. "You don't have power…but you understand what it can do if you ever possessed it for the reasons you have. A strong person, untouchable or unconquerable, who has known power all their life and what they choose to do with it…may eventually lose respect for it and become corrupted by it. And as people came to believe about power is that it eventually corrupts the ones that have it and begin misusing it. But a weak person that has never had any power, not even a taste of it, and only seeking the means to protect those that matter more than they themselves do…has to know what its true value is and not be corrupted by its possession. To possess the Power Stone…is to understand that there's a time and a place to use such power, and only for the right reasons."

Then Shinji's pendant glows and a small portal opens in front of the three teens. It was about the size of a small book, and something purple came out of it, falling onto the ground with some rocks. It looked like a rock or crystal, but was held in place by a strange, metallic band that looked like it was to be worn on the wrist. The band itself had strange symbols that looked like computer circuits.

"What is that?" Toji asks.

"Uh, that's the Power Stone," Shinji answers, "but it didn't have a casing like that when I removed it. It was on some guy's ring, which wasn't the best thing to hold it in my opinion."

"It looks like a bangle," Rumiko says.

"What's a bangle?" Toji questions.

"It's a type of bracelet. Put it on."

Toji picks it up and places it on his left arm.

Snap! It snapped onto his wrist and he felt a jolt of energy surge through his innards.

"Ooh!" He gasps as he backs away and holds onto a railing. "I…I never felt anything like that before. It felt like I just saw a multitude of stars…and the sun exploding…and planetary cores imploding… And how do I know any of this?"

"I guess that's a sign that the Power Stone is fine with you as its holder," Rumiko tells him. "That's four Stonekeepers down…and two left to obtain."

"Reality…and Mind," Toji utters. "Who will come to possess them?"

"We need this…Kensuke Aida…and Hikari Horaki," Shinji reveals.

"I know them. I know them."

"But we should get the Mind Stone first, and then we'll have the whole set," Rumiko states. "We'll be back…later this evening…Suzuhara."

"Keep in touch with your friends…and protect the Power Stone," Shinji informs him. "One of the banes of being a Stonekeeper…is that you have to protect the stone from those that would seek its power for wrongful purposes. Protect the Power Stone as you would those which matter the most to you."

Then, in an instant, Shinji and Rumiko were gone. The only thing Toji saw to indicate that they had used their Infinity Stones to leave was the fact that they had glowed prior to their disappearance. It had been likely that Rumiko caused a pause in time with her Time Stone, enabling Shinji to use his Space Stone to displace them from sight. Oh, how Toji couldn't believe what he had just gotten himself into with these two teens that were trying to gather allies for the other stones they were gathering, just to have a place of their own for others. Still, it was quite a goal to be had, to use these powerful artifacts that were older than they were…and combining their powers to create something greater than themselves.

This is one for the history books if we pull this off, he thought.

To be continued…

A/N: I know, it's long overdue. I hope this will impress you until the next chapter, though.