Creation began on 09-22-20

Creation ended on 09-26-20

Neon Genesis Evangelion

My Hero, Shinji Ikari: Suffering

A/N: Say that our dreams function as windows for us to observe different lifetimes. What would it take to move away from these windows…and out the front door?

For days now, as she had lost track of the time, not that time was something she had to learn about at her age yet. But for days now, the darkness surrounding her had been a constant reminder of how cruel her present was and how much her past…had been a dream she wanted to return to over this waking world that offered no comfort to her as it once did.

"Please…" She uttered as she lay on the small futon, her arms and legs wrapped in dirty bandages. "Find me, Daddy."

Suddenly, a door opened, shining a blinding light on the girl's face, revealing that she was much younger than she seemed, with short, ebony hair and pale brown eyes. She raised her left hand up to shield her eyes from the light, seeing a tall man's obscured form in front of her.

"Please…no more," she begged, but the man raised his right arm out to her…and she was thrown back into the darkness.

-x-

Gasp! Shinji awoke to the next day, recalling this strange dream he'd been having for over a month now, drenched in sweat.

Who was that girl? He wondered as he got up for the day. I keep seeing her face…but I never hear her voice. She looks like she's always suffering.

He couldn't ask about a recurring dream because he wasn't sure what he was having the same dream about, based on what little he could recall every time he went to sleep. All he could ever recall was that the person he saw was a little girl, maybe three or four years of age, with short, dark hair, brown eyes, and she was dressed in an oversized shirt that failed to cover a series of old bandages that covered her arms and legs. But whenever he thought of her face, he couldn't help but think of someone in such a degree of pain that wasn't right. It was like she was being tortured by someone…and nobody was doing anything to help her, either because nobody knew where she was…or because nobody cared about her.

Who are you? He wondered, looking at a small drawing he had made of the girl's face while in school last week; with the teacher droning on and on about Second Impact, Shinji found an outlet to reflect upon his recurring dream. Are you even real? Are you even real?

-x-

Returned to that room to rest again, the little girl, with her limbs wrapped in new bandages after fear of her old ones risking infection, drifted off to sleep due to fatigue.

"You're no good to me dead," the man had told her after removing the needles from her body. "So long as you survive, remember that your life belongs to me."

But she couldn't believe that. She couldn't believe that her life belonged to this man. Not this cruel man that never once gave her even an ounce of kindness or love. But he threatened to harm others if she so much as thought of trying to get away from, to cause endless suffering onto others if she tried to escape…and say it would be her fault.

He made it so that anything she tried to do would be her fault.

Daddy, she thought as she laid there on the futon, where are you?

-x-

"…Huh?" Shinji reacted to being shook by Asuka, who looked impatient with him. "What is it?"

"You were asleep again," she told him. "Idiot! You keep falling asleep, you might as well get checked for narcolepsy! We gotta go to NERV now!"

School had ended eight minutes ago, but Shinji had only closed his eyes for just a minute or two…and he saw her again. He saw that little girl in the darkness, her limbs redressed with new bandages, but they were starting to darken with red areas, indicating that she had been injured again recently. This time, he was almost certain that he came close to hearing her voice; it was faint, weakened, but he was certain he almost heard her speak.

"Tell me something, Asuka," he spoke to the redhead, "do you ever get recurring dreams that seem like they're trying to tell you something?"

"No, idiot," she responded. "I don't know what runs through that head of yours, but you ask the most stupid of questions…and your dream girl looks pathetic, too (she points to a piece of paper on his desk, displaying a sketch of the little girl he'd been seeing in his dreams)."

Shinji sighed and looked at his sketch of the girl. Again, her features were just to remind himself of what she looked like…and why her face haunted him.

-x-

She felt a rumbling noise outside her cell, waking her up from an extended nap. The noise lasted for a few minutes before ending…and then she heard a man yelling furiously at someone.

"…Find them!" She heard him yell. "If they get out, you'll all be the ones to pay the price if they tell anyone!"

Did someone get loose? Was someone trying to get away? Oh, she didn't know anything, yet she was curious about what was happening outside. How she longed to see the world beyond this place she was being kept in. She recalled only bits and pieces of what she had seen long ago…and how much they seemed like a dream she wanted to return to…with her father.

"What of the girl?" She heard someone else say outside her cell. "If they manage to tell someone, and they believe them, they'll come back with the police and ruin everything."

"If that happens…make sure that they don't find her," that monstrous man that she feared responded. "She can't fall into anyone else's possession and ruin my goal."

-x-

"…His synchronization ratio is a little lower than usual," went Ritsuko Akagi as she and Misato observed the three pilots in the test plugs, paying more attention to Shinji's than Asuka's or Rei's. "Has he been having trouble sleeping?"

"No clue," Misato explained. "He hasn't told me anything."

Before the faux-blond could say something else about the Third Child's reduced synchronization with the Eva, an alarm went off and the personnel of NERV realized that it was an Angel.

"Damn it," Misato groaned as they received satellite imagery of what the Angel looked like and where it was located, which turned out to be right in the city. "Another Angel and Commander Ikari isn't here again."

Meanwhile, inside the test plug, Shinji, having felt like he had drifted back to sleep, was seeing that little girl again, laying down on the futon, her exposed skin paler than it used to be, looking as though she were barely alive and in desperate need of medical attention than just getting new bandages. Why was he seeing her like this? Why was she suffering this way? And who was her tormentor that seemed to relish in causing her agony, time and again?

"…Who…who are you?" He uttered, trying to get her attention, and then a door opened again, blinding them with light.

"Please," he heard her say, "stop it."

"Don't make me have to hurt you again," he heard a man respond, and Shinji couldn't help but feel the man sounded a lot like his father, only less human and more of a monster.

He saw the man reach out to her…and her expression was devoid of any hope.

"…Shinji…Shinji!" He was stirred from his daydream by Misato's voice, and found himself back inside the plug.

"I'm sorry, what?" He responded.

"We've sent you all the data we have on this Angel," she explained the objective. "Approach it carefully, see what it does, and try to lure it out of the city."

During his entire daydream scenario, he and the girls had sortied out onto the streets of Tokyo-3 in the Evas and had observed this bizarre-looking Angel that was a black and white sphere floating in the sky above.

"Understood," he sighed.

-x-

When opportunity presented itself, they were able to get away. But they had to leave the girl behind, which was a terrible weight on the young woman as she carried a little boy on her back, running through the streets of the city.

"We left her alone with them," the boy said to her as she saw a police station. "We left her alone with him."

"We're gonna go back for her," she told him as she ran across the street, just narrowly avoiding a truck passing by.

"Hey, watch where you're going!" The driver yelled, but the girl paid him no mind as she carried the boy on her back up the steps of the station and barged right into it.

"Someone," she panted, getting the attention of several police officers, "help, please."

She collapsed onto the ground and the boy fell off her back, revealing that both had small, red spots on their backs, an indication that they had either been cut…or shot at.

"Someone rush a bus on these two!" An officer yelled.

The girl slowly pulled something out of her white, stained dress and placed it onto the floor beside herself. It was a picture of four people, two teens and two children; they were of herself, the boy, the girl they had left behind in order to get help…and the young man they hadn't seen in what felt like an eternity since this nightmare started.

"Find…them…" She begged before she passed out. "He's hurting…them."

And then she passed out from fatigue and blood loss.

-x-

Shinji had that depressing feeling again, only it was worse than before. It had only been three hours since he sank into the Angel's shadow after the failed attempt to attack it, but it felt longer than that due to not being able to do much in a confined space. Except for falling asleep, which he did periodically. And each time he did, he saw something different that seemed to relate to his recurring dream of that little girl. The last time he closed his eyes, he saw an island next to another island that was thin and long, adrift in the ocean, except the other island was rather big, unlike the other one that was long.

Hokkaido? He suspected, since that was Japan's biggest island. What is going on?

Shinji closed his eyes again, tired and hungry…and, above all, confused due to a dream he kept having for over a month now. What did it mean? Who was this little girl? And why did she make him feel the way he did, like he needed to help her?

Why do I feel like I've met you before? He thought.

-x-

Misato didn't like the operation to defeat the Angel after Ritsuko was given command authority to blow it with every N² bomb the JSSDF had in its arsenal. Such an attempt to do so would more than likely kill Shinji, as an Eva wasn't protected against multiple explosions, with or without an AT-Field. Even if the priority was to defeat the Angels, no victory was worth the loss of any of the pilots.

Shinji, if you're still in there, now would be the perfect time for you to find a way out of the Angel's body, she thought as she looked at the widespread shadow that served as the Angel's real form, with the black and white sphere in the sky serving as its shadow.

"There's something you should probably know about," she heard Asuka say to her. "There's a reason why he's never focused on what we're doing."

"What are you talking about?" She questioned.

"He asked me once if I had any recurring dreams…and I think he's been having recurring dreams about some girl he made a sketch of recently."

"Did he say anything about what it was about?"

"The conversation never got that far. I shut him down before he could ask any further about it."

"You think he's been having recurring dreams about a girl?"

"If he has, I don't know why he'd have to dream about a girl when he already lives with two beautiful women in the city."

"Does he still have the sketch?"

"If he still does, it's in his locker with his things."

-x-

"…So, who's the girl with the boy?" A police officer asked a female nurse, standing outside the room the two injured patients were resting in.

"Their DNA tests confirmed their identities, but they also confirmed something disturbing," the nurse explained to him. "The girl is Rumiko Gaidoku. The little boy with her is identified as Toya Gaidoku."

"Brother?"

"No, the DNA tests confirmed he's her son."

"But…she can't be more than fifteen."

"We checked her, and she's definitely the boy's mother, but the boy…he's too much of her son."

"What do you mean, he's too much of her son?"

"He has over sixty-seven percent of her DNA markers. He shouldn't have more than fifty percent of her DNA. She was questioned about it earlier, and she shut down. She didn't want to talk about it in front of her son…or anyone else…at all."

"She's hiding something?"

"No, she just doesn't want to talk about her relationship with her son, but there was something else we discovered that was disturbing; these two are among four individuals that were listed as missing, presumed dead, almost a year ago. Nobody's seen or heard from them since the search for them was called off."

The officer remembered the case; unaccounted disappearances tended to stay with certain police who tried to find as much information about the missing individuals as possible, and this was a case that had been called off too quickly. Two young teens and two tender-age children, and a four-month-long search for them that ended due to lack of clues and suspects.

"Who was the boy with the little girl?" The nurse asked.

"Ikari, Shinji," the officer answered. "The little girl is his illegitimate daughter, Shado. He was a kidnap victim who wasn't rescued until after a week went by. The police on the case were fired for inadequate work; they weren't taking the kidnapping case seriously, and it was revealed that the girl, the friend, Rumiko, was doing her own investigation into the search for Shinji, and had several locations listed, but couldn't convince the police to check any of them, prompting her to use her Quirk to get the police that would do the job to find her friend."

"She has a Quirk? What kind of Quirk?"

"Nothing really dangerous or powerful. She calls it Maternal Devotion. It enables her to keep tabs on people she's committed to, whether they're a friend or a relative. It's limited to five miles, but she can't use it for three days after she's used it for a week, her maximum extent."

"So, then, she's a tracker-type. A Quirk like hers would be beneficial to finding the other two if they're close by."

"Unfortunately, wherever she was being kept, she was being worked over, including the use of her Quirk. I don't expect her to be of much help until she's recovered."

"Urgh!" They heard a grunt and a clatter from within the room. "I…I can point you to the last building I saw before I ran for my life and the life of my son. I was supposed to get Shado away from that man…and I failed. I failed Shinji. I have to atone for it."

They went in and saw her leaning against the medical bed and helped her get back into it.

"Please, listen to my mother," Toya told them. "That man, that monster, he's still hurting Shado. He's always hurting Shado. He hurt her father, and he won't stop, even if it means killing her."

"Hold on, you said he hurt her father," the officer repeated. "Have you both seen the face of this culprit? Do you know who he is?"

Toya looked down and fear…and nodded that they had seen the culprit.

"Who is it?" The nurse questioned Rumiko.

"Shinji's father," she revealed. "Gendo Rokubungi-Ikari, and if he finds out we told anyone, he will kill them…if he hasn't already."

-x-

"…This is absolutely everything we have on Gendo Ikari," said a police officer as everyone in the room were being told about the suspect. "Forty-eight years old, U.A. dropout, currently heads the private security firm NERV. Married a Yui Ikari a little over sixteen years ago, was last reported missing about four-and-a-half years ago, presumed dead, survived by their son, Shinji Ikari, who later had a illegitimate daughter by one of his kidnappers, a depraved and sadistic woman by the name of Koge, Chase, who later died in a prison riot a week after the birth of her daughter."

"Good riddance," said a female officer, "but how does this relate to the missing persons case?"

"Word is that Gendo was against the little girl being forced on them after it was revealed she was his granddaughter, but his wife and son took to the girl almost immediately after the police brought her to them. Gendo was stated by several people from his past to be an egomaniac with a god complex. He has a Quirk that was considered dangerous, even by regular standards, due to the way he used it while at U.A. for his first year. He even exhibited erratic behavior with a superiority complex, thinking he was better than everyone else there…until he was disciplined by one of his teachers and dismissed from the academy. He served two years in a mental institution and spent the last years of his life living in Sapporo, Hokkaido where he met Yui. It's unknown if he's used his Quirk in the years following his removal from U.A."

"What's the name of his Quirk?"

"It's a Mutant-Type Quirk he called Wrath, but the Quirk doesn't exhibit the factors of a Mutant-Type Quirk. It seemed to possess the qualities of both Emitter and Transformation-Type Quirks."

Another police adds, "Wrath enabled Gendo to tear things apart and put them back together however he chose, at a biological and molecular level, which made him a danger to people. U.A. had to consider the safety of the other students and removed him from the school. He couldn't return until after he learned to manage his behavior. Some didn't believe that he could become a hero, not with his attitude. He was more of a villain."

"Maybe he was predestined for villainy."

"What about his son? Did he possess a Quirk?"

"There's no record of his son possessing a Quirk, either from his father or his mother. He wasn't tested for a Quirk factor, either."

As the police researched Gendo further, they knew one thing for certain: If Gendo's Quirk was what made him a dangerous person, they were going to need the assistance of several heroes that could deal with a Quirk like Wrath. Like Eraser Head or Endeavor, as All Might was no longer able to protect the people from Gendo if he was planning something. The heroes close by were neither powerful or capable of dealing with him if he had been practicing with his Quirk over the years, which would've likely strengthened over the years.

-x-

"…This means I'll likely be out for a week or so until this matter has been resolved, class," Aizawa informed the class of 1-A that he would be over in Hokkaido due to a situation that required his assistance.

"Sapporo, Hokkaido, huh?" Bakugo uttered. "That place usually has nothing going on to require the services of heroes. Wasn't there a private security firm over there?"

"You mean NERV?" Todoroki questioned. "A few years ago, that group actually did some good work for the businesses in the city, but then it went quiet after a while. I think there was a project that was being developed, but nobody really knows."

"I heard the previous head of NERV's daughter went missing," said Mineta, fantasizing about the woman. "She was a looker."

"I think if you met her son, he'd break your face just for thinking the thoughts you currently are," went Hagakure. "I heard he was very protective of some girl."

"I heard that the family of the guy that runs NERV has a personal connection to another family with a bad history," said Sero. "Some girl and a little boy."

Most of the class' eyes were now on Midoriya, whom they had suspected of knowing more than they did about what was going on.

"Uh, I've never heard of this NERV until now," he confessed to them, which surprised them.

"What?!" Bakugo yelled. "How can you not know about them?! You know about everything else there is to know about!"

-x-

Shinji found himself standing in the darkness, facing someone that was unlike who he was usually expecting to see if he were hallucinating or something. In front of him was another teenage boy, dressed in jeans and a blue shirt, his hair a messy mop of ebony…and his eyes a shade of blue that seemed maimed. The young man resembled Shinji down to the very jaw structure on his head.

"Who…are you?" He asked him.

"Shinji Ikari," he answered back, his voice sounding like his own, but with a measure of pain that was unheard of with the Evangelion pilot.

"But…I'm Shinji Ikari."

"Anyone can be named Shinji Ikari. What matters is how our lives are lived. Where do you live? Who do you live with? Are you alive?"

"I live in Tokyo-3. I live with Misato and Asuka. And I am alive."

"Then…you don't live with your father. Good for you. My father isn't a social person of any level of grace. I used to live in Sapporo, Hokkaido…with my best friend, Rumiko, and our children, Shado and Toya."

"Your children?"

"We were met with…unpleasant encounters. The outcomes were less than damaging of our faith in others older than ourselves when push comes to shove."

"What do you mean?"

"You must come from a different lifetime where you didn't experience much of the drawbacks of being a victim of people's brutality and everyday evil. What did you experience in your past, Shinji Ikari?"

"My mother died when I was little," the young man in the plugsuit revealed to the other teen, "my father left me with a stranger not too long after. We didn't see each other all the time, except on the day my mother died, but even then…it was often brief. He wasn't very…talkative. And then, a few months ago, he sends me a letter and tells me to come to Tokyo-3…but didn't tell me why until after I got there, which was to pilot a giant robot to face a monster called an Angel. I've been doing that for the last five months now."

"Were you ever taken advantage of by a woman? Were you ever kidnapped and held for ransom? Do you have any childhood friends?"

"No on all three questions. Why?"

The other Shinji removed his shirt and showed his counterpart something quite shocking. Covering his chest from his waist up to the base of his neck was a five-pointed, star-like scar of healed skin; it must've been a few years old.

"I was kidnapped when I was nine," he explained, "and the police didn't find me for about a week. I was rescued mostly by a childhood friend by the name of Rumiko Gaidoku…who sort of became my girlfriend for almost a year (plugsuit Shinji looked at him like it was unusual)… Hey, don't get any ideas of questioning such a truth when you don't have the whole story. If you've seen her, you'd be lucky to have a friend like her in your corner. Anyway, she helped save me from my kidnappers. Unfortunately by then, the damage was done."

"What do you mean?"

"The woman that helped to kidnap me had her way with me before she got the idea to give me this scar. Trust me, you don't want an older woman having her sick brand of fun with you unless you give consent and it's legal. Pedophilia and rape make for a traumatic experience in my case, while with Rumiko, it's the manipulation of family affection and resentment that led to her estrangement from her parents and elder brother. We were both hurt by people, something we had in common to a degree. I spent two weeks in the hospital recovering from my scarring and almost a year in therapy to recover from the psychological trauma. I was indebted to Rumiko for helping to save me with her Quirk."

"Quirk?"

"It's like her superpower. I guess in your world, there's no such thing as superheroes or villains. In my world, the majority of the global population is comprised of men and women that possess some sort of ability or series of abilities that set them apart from the rest of the world. These abilities are called Quirks, and they have a wide range of randomness, anywhere from super strength to creating temporary copies of yourself. Rumiko could leave a mark on people that she could track them down through, but it takes her a while to be a able to use it all the time. People with Quirks could go to these schools designed to teach them to become heroes if they wanted to, making a decent living by helping the people and working alongside the police."

"That almost seems like something out of a comic book movie or cartoon."

"Yeah…except in early versions, it's all fun and games…until the kid gloves come off and people do things that make the world a bit difficult to navigate without proper guidance. But Rumiko and I had different views on what made people heroes…and what made them real heroes. In the past, anyone was capable of being a hero if they did even just one thing that was selfless, even something as trivial…as taking one's hand after a horrible nightmare…and letting them know that their lives didn't end. These days, the world is separated between heroes that are out to raise their popularity…and those that want to protect the people from those that are after something they can't earn or deserve. Do you have a hero? Do you have someone in your life that you can see with hope in your eyes?"

"No," plugsuit Shinji told him. "Sorry."

"Don't be," casual Shinji responded. "Some people have heroes, others have yet to meet theirs."

"So, then…your friend is your hero?"

"She's one of them. People can have more than one hero if they choose. For me, it's Rumiko, my mother, Rumiko's son, Toya…and my daughter, Shado."

"Your daughter?"

"I did say I was taken advantage of by a woman that kidnapped me, didn't I? That undesired encounter led to my premature sense of parenthood, same as Rumiko. You don't have kids, so you're lucky that you don't have anyone to tie you down just yet. My father called my daughter a curse while my mother viewed her as a blessing, no matter who her mother was."

Plugsuit Shinji then saw the darkness around the two shift into what looked like a room with four sides, each displaying both men's respective history around them. He could see the people his counterpart had in his life, that gave him a sense of happiness and purpose, and he saw no trace of the Eva or the Angels involved in his past.

"Is that her?" He asked, pointing to a wall displaying a little girl holding a teddy bear. "Is that your daughter?"

"Yeah," casual Shinji responded, "that's my Shado."

"She's very pretty."

"Thank you."

Then, they saw one of the Angels, a giant that looked like a literal eyesore because of its many eyes, followed by a version of Gendo that appeared to be much colder than usual, with his bare hands covered in filth and lacking glasses. The sight of him made casual Shinji cringe.

"He looks like a monster," plugsuit Shinji expressed.

"He is a monster," casual Shinji stated. "He's the worst. He's not someone you could ever feel safe around, with or without a Quirk, because he's the embodiment of how one responds to disappointment and failure to the ultimate extreme."

"What happened to him?"

"He wanted to be a hero, but he lacked all the qualities of a hero, including morality. His Quirk also made him a threat to everyone around him if he lacked restraint. He could…tear you apart down to the bone and put you back together however he chose. With his hero dream crushed before it could even begin, he worked for my mother's family's private security firm called NERV, where it was claimed he learned to control his Quirk and manage his behavior. But I didn't believe he learned to manage anything beyond his Quirk's versatility. It was like he was power-hungry, despite already being the head of a firm that did good work for the whole island. And then, when my mother was killed by Shado in an accident…"

"Your daughter killed your mother?"

"It was an accident. None of us knew it at the time because my father refused to have me or Shado tested for inheriting Quirks. My rapist possessed a Quirk, but never made use of it, even up to her last breath of life. My mother possessed a Quirk that she considered not so helpful because her own parents didn't see any use for an ability to build up over the years, like filling a large jug with water everyday for the rest of your life. I never thought I possessed a Quirk like everyone around me did, but my daughter, my Shado…she didn't realize what she had done at all because she was barely three when it happened. She…made my mother disappear. My father described her power as a form of regression, different from his own Quirk. Instead of tearing objects apart, Shado just…removes them from physical existence within a matter of moments. I was going to tell the police about what my daughter did, but my father claimed she was missing, that my mother just ran off somewhere. It turned out he had other ideas that he didn't want to jeopardize by having anyone take Shado from him. Not me, him. He saw my daughter's Quirk as a means to take control of the world, or something like that, removing anyone that didn't agree with him."

"You mean…he wanted to take your daughter's power and weaponize it?"

"Yeah. People will pay anything for Quirks that can be used as weapons, a way to revolutionize the arms race. I told him that he couldn't do this to Shado, that he'd be subjecting her to things I wouldn't wish on anyone, not even a dog, and that if Shado could be taught to control her power, then something like that wouldn't happen again. But he had already made up his mind about Shado. His mind had always been made up about Shado, regardless of what anyone else suggested. It turned out he had more resentment towards heroes than anyone could've imagined. If he couldn't be a hero, he didn't want anyone else, including members of his own family, to be heroes, either. He became a villain…and took control of NERV through fear and intimidation, threatening to use his Quirk to keep the people in line. For a while, he kept me in check, but I couldn't put up with what he was doing to my daughter, no matter how much he threatened to use his Quirk on me if I tried to tell anyone. At first, he kept us all confined, spreading the story that we were missing…and later had us presumed dead. He was especially cruel to Shado, more so than he was to the rest of us. I think it was because he blamed her for my mother's death, even though my mother didn't blame her for what wasn't her fault. He kept us all separated at all times. I heard her scream out for me one night, and I broke out of my cell and freed Rumiko and Toya from their cells. I found my daughter on the floor, laying in a pool of her own blood…and my father was just standing there with his hands covered in blood. He was using his Quirk on my daughter, breaking her apart and putting her back together to keep her in line."

They saw this memory of Gendo standing beside the girl as she lay in the pool of blood, barely conscious and looking like she was ready to die herself. That's when they saw the young father lose his cool and charge at his father, slamming him against the walls.

"You crossed the line!" They heard him yell, surprising Gendo with how strong he was. "I'll kill you! I'll kill you so you can't hurt anyone else, ever again!"

And then…they saw Gendo do the unforgivable to his own son…and plugsuit Shinji got the impression that what was done to casual Shinji…was permanent.

"He killed you?" He questioned.

"Yeah," he answered. "I don't know how long I've been lingering around. It feels like an eternity. Please, I have one request for you to do."

"Me? But…I…"

"Please… I'd do it myself, but I'm no longer able to. If, by some miracle, you're able to get to Sapporo, please, rescue my daughter. Rescue Rumiko and her son. They're all alone, surrounded by people they're unsure of if they can trust or not. I failed to be their hero…but maybe you can be who they need. Please."

Plugsuit Shinji saw as his counterpart began to evaporate into dust, clear proof that he was no longer alive, but saw the lingering sadness on his face as he knew he'd be gone from the lives of at least three people that he had in his.

"Okay," he told his counterpart, "if I'm able to get to your world, your lifetime, I'll do all that I can to help your friends, your daughter. I'll try and be their hero."

Before his head atomized, he expressed, "Thank you. I know you'll be a great hero one day."

The ground around Shinji shook as it split open and he fell into darkness.

"Aaaah!" He yelled.

-x-

"What's going on?!" Some people were gasping as the streets of Sapporo were shaking.

"Earthquake?!" Some children suspected.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone in the city, in a cell cut off from the rest of the world, a little girl that had been tortured for what seemed like an eternity by a man that held no love in his heart for her, had shed tears and said only one thing that felt like a crushing blow to the heart beating in her chest.

"Daddy…please, come get me," she cried.

In another room, old and disused for weeks, a hand formed from nothing underneath fallen lab equipment, followed by a leg…and then a head with strands of ebony hair.

"Be their hero!" A fallen voice had urged from the past…and a young man rose up from under the fallen equipment, bare as the day he was born.

"Aaaurgh!" Shinji yelled as he staggered his way out of the rubble, his body and limbs feeling like they'd been immobile for a long time, moving just to get the circulation restored. "Aaaauurgh! Urgh! Graugh!"

No longer feeling stiff and sore, he looked around and found that he was no longer within the Entry Plug of Unit-01…and no longer wearing his plugsuit.

"I'm in his world," he realized, finding a discarded pair of pants on the floor and picked them up.

-x-

The operation to destroy the Angel and salvage the Eva didn't go as expected for NERV. Even as the bombs were dropped into the shadow body and Units-00 and 02 expanded their AT-Fields, the resulting explosion was still powerful. It was contained to at least five blocks, but the damage done to Unit-01 was catastrophic, including the damage done to the Entry Plug. The dense metal had been melted and even if there was a chance of Shinji moving inside it to avoid the collapsing interior, it would've been for naught; all that was left of the plug was a tiny piece that belonged to the lower half, too little to hide a body.

"…We recovered what was left of the Eva," Ritsuko informed Gendo, "but there's not much left of the Entry Plug to recover. It's getting sent back to HQ. I don't expect to find any trace of the pilot. Understood, sir."

Inside the plug of Unit-02, Asuka, despite not really feeling anything for Shinji, had her regret over his presumed death. Even if it wasn't a competition, just a struggle to protect the human race from extinction, she didn't have any desire to have other pilots killed. Scarred, maybe. Crippled, without a doubt, but not dead. But to find Shinji dead, killed by the multitude of N² bombs because the operation was to defeat the Angel…wasn't something any at NERV probably anticipated…with the sole exception of his father.

Just be a jokester, stupid idiot, she thought, wanting Shinji to be alive, injured, scarred, laying somewhere waiting to be found. Just be alive, you stupid, stupid idiot!

In Unit-00, Rei was unsure how to respond to this revelation that Shinji was now dead. She knew that if she died, she could be replaced, but such wasn't the case for others chosen to pilot the Evas; when others died, they couldn't be saved, just forgotten about.

Ikari-Kun, she thought.

But Misato was the one devastated the most by this turn of events. Her job was to make sure the pilots returned home, saw the next day, live to see old age or die from natural causes, not get killed by authorized methods designed to defeat an enemy the majority of the world knew nothing about or to salvaged a piece of machinery at the cost of risking their lives. She could only suspect that Shinji had been expecting some sort of rescue attempt, and instead of getting rescued, they killed him; all of NERV, from the commanders to the lowly janitors were all guilty by association. And they had to live with that now.

-x-

It was a nightmarish sight, but what made it disturbing for Rumiko to see it…was how it looked like a regular location her Quirk was leading the police and three local heroes to. The location of NERV's research and development facility looked like a trio of eight-story-tall buildings interconnected by several skyways, making it appear as a singular body, enclosing a small garden a quarter of the size of Golden Gate Park. To anyone with a scientific mind, this place looked like a good place to work at, but to Rumiko, this place, day or night, was a literal Hell that consumed you to the very soul.

"Are you sure this is the place you were being kept in?" One of the police officers asked her.

"Yes," she answered. "The last time I saw Shado and Shinji, my Quirk showed me where they were. Wha…that's strange."

"What is it?"

"The last time I tried to find Shinji, Maternal Devotion couldn't tell me where he was. At first, I thought it was because he was taken beyond my Quirk's range, but I believed we were all kept in the same place, just kept separated from each other. Now, it's showing me that he's here…but it's different from before."

"Define 'different'."

"It's like people give off a colored aura when you look at them. With people you care about, the color is either pink or green; black and red for people you either fear, resent or just don't like very much. Regular people, the ones you don't know anything about, don't give off any colors. But Shinji's aura is registering as blue. I've never seen an aura that was blue."

"Would that mean something is different about him?"

"I don't really know, only that he's here with his daughter. Please, save them."

Unfortunately, this was only a reconnaissance mission; once they knew where the captives were being held, they would keep watch over the location until the other heroes arrived to help deal with the situation. The three local heroes that were close by were just a pair of tag-team brothers with augmented strength and a woman that could change metallic substances into rubber for twelve minutes. Even if they were able to help, the fact that they might've been up against a man that could break things apart at the molecular level made even the local community heroes unsettled about this mission. Still, they were dealing with a variety of criminal charges that had been committed, based on what was done to the teen mother and her son; kidnapping, imprisonment, reckless endangerment, aggravated child abuse (if it was true that the paternal grandfather in this case was harming the grandchild most of the time), and each of these offenses, even if only committed once, added up to a life sentence for anyone involved if the authorities decided to pass judgment of the highest sort.

"We're going to need search warrants and a lotta ammo for this," one of the police stated.

To be continued…

A/N: Basically, my first attempt at splicing Evangelion with My Hero Academia. However, the twist is splicing the anime version of Shinji with the frequently-used deviated past of his manga counterpart, such as his illegitimate daughter, Shado, and giving the boy the chance to be someone's hero against another person that has become a villain. What do you think will happen now that Shinji has entered the universe of people born with unusual powers that can choose to become heroes or embrace villainy? And what sort of Quirk do you expect him to possess when he comes for his little girl?