Creation began on 08-29-21
Creation ended on 10-05-21
Neon Genesis Evangelion
My Hero, Shinji Ikari: Days blended in Shades
A/N: With the poll closed and the votes measured, this story can begin where it needs to be.
"Aah!" Shinji awoke to the sound of Shado screaming, and he jumped out of bed and onto the floor, staggering to the door to his daughter's room, seeing her awake, panting.
"What happened?" He asked her, coming over and sitting beside her.
"Everything was on fire," she told him. "Everything was on fire."
It was the third time this week that she had a nightmare of fire spreading everywhere because of someone violent. And it would be another hour before she could go back to sleep and spend the rest of the night doing so soundly and peacefully. But Shinji was content with this; he didn't mind the near-sleepless nights or the periodic responses that was himself getting up to comfort his daughter each time she had a night terror. His own night terrors being of the memories of Gendo in his monstrous state from that night, only larger and more inhuman, tearing people to pieces and hurling large chunks of debris at him, the only person standing between himself and Shado, who was too terrified to run away from the scene of conflict.
"It's okay, Shado," he calmed her as he rocked her back to sleep. "I'm right here."
It had been almost two months since they relocated to U.A., and during that time, Shinji had learned more about his Guardian Quirk, making him more comfortable with using it and refining its use each time. Aside from the increased strength and speed, durability and adaptation, his Quirk augmented his body's would-be recollection of what caused it harm and made it so that he couldn't be hurt the same way. His classmates had to hit him with harder attacks just to cause the slightest degree of harm, causing his Quirk to act up again and improve his adaptability further, which made it more difficult to harm him the same way. He even had to go up against Bakugo again after the boy was reminded of what would happen if he tried to kill him, managing to scorch Shinji with severe burns and making him look like a burn victim with no identity, requiring the atomization of much of his surroundings to regenerate him back into his previous state, complete with his face and hair.
But for Shado, her nightmares were much more than nightmares. Every time she saw her grandfather, he was always looking at her with these deep, dark eyes, and his arms are covered in blood and dirt. And every time her father came to save her, something…worse had happened. Something…worse than what she could explain to him or anyone else.
-x-
The alarms went off like crazy at NERV, which meant only one thing: Another Angel had finally appeared and was on its way to Tokyo-3.
"You'd think they'd stop showing up," said Asuka as she put on her plugsuit.
Rei didn't respond; she didn't have an opinion on the Angels attacking, as they would show up when they show up, not when anyone at NERV desired them to show up.
"What's its ETA?" Misato asked Hyuga as they saw the Angel approaching the city.
On the screens, it looked like a massive mountain of sorts, with four limbs, crystal shards sticking out of random areas, and an eyeball with a dark red sclera. If anything, it was horrendous attempt at creating a turtle of some sort, and it became a threat to the world.
"ETA is…an hour," Hyuga revealed; despite the Angel's massive size, it was moving so slow.
"Why didn't the JSSDF try to destroy it?"
"They did, but none of their weapons could harm it," said Shigeru.
So, this Angel was taking its time to show up to its destination, unable to be harmed by the military, and Commander Ikari was absent from the city again. All NERV had available were two of its four Evas…and only two pilots, not three, four or even ten. Every possible pilot candidate to replace Shinji had either refused or had some degree of problems that made them unable to pilot the Evas, even if they wanted to; some had been victims of some form of abuse, others had juvenile records, even a handful were deviants of the worst varieties. It was as though no matter where they looked for a suitable replacement, none could fit the void left by Shinji Ikari.
Gendo had left to go look for a replacement overseas, but the chances of finding one outside of Japan were just as slim as they were within Japan.
"Your orders, Major?" Hyuga asked Misato.
"Launch the Evas," she ordered; they didn't have the time to be selective of the situation just because someone they knew had died…and were still reeling from the aftermath.
No matter how much they disliked the reality of it, no matter how much any of them wished it was all just a nightmare they were trying to wake up from, they couldn't change the fact that Shinji was dead and not coming to help them with the Angels left to face.
-x-
"…Still having nightmares every few nights?" Recovery Girl had asked Shado as the little girl and her father sat in the heroine's office.
"Yes," Shado answered her, "and every other night, I wake up screaming."
"Can you describe them for me?"
"I see buildings on fires. The sky is red. People disappearing all over the place…and he appears, always wearing a bad smile. And then he reaches out to me with his right hand."
"Shinji? What do you feel about your daughter's nightmares?" Recovery Girl asked the teen father. "How do they make you feel?"
"I worry about her," he answers her. "I know they're just nightmares, but the reason for them is very real…and we're still recovering. I can deal with the nightmares and waking up whenever she screams, but ignoring her…is something I can't ever do because I know it's wrong to neglect her when she needs me."
"And your feelings about the man responsible for the nightmares?"
"I am relieved that he's in jail and will not get out. He can't use his hands to hurt anyone, anymore, and he's isolated from everyone. If anything, my father's the animal that needs to be caged all the time because he's incorrigible."
"What does this mean, 'incurigable'?" Shado asked him; there were still many words that she didn't know how to say, but she still spoke them to the best of her ability.
"It means a person who is so set in their ways that they are unable to change," he explained to her. "It's not necessarily bad all the time, but when someone does things that are so wrong, they make other people believe that they can't see any hope for them to change. An incorrigible hero would be someone that can't be swayed to the dark side of human nature, able to remain true to their beliefs on what makes a hero a hero and not some person playing around."
"Oh."
This was therapy, but talking about their problems helped with their recovery from captivity. It was a requirement of most people, and they were no exception. Even the greatest of heroes had their share of problems that they needed someone to talk to about in order to eventually resolve them in the future.
"But tell me," Recovery Girl wanted to know, "what do you think your nightmares mean to you, Shado? You see a world on fire and your grandfather reaching out to you. It has to mean something to you, but what?"
"Personally…I'm terrified that he's going to come back someday. Even though he's locked up and miles away from the closest stretch of civilization…I can't help but worry that he'll get out and…come looking for us."
"The thought of him escaping from prison and coming after us frightens you this much?" Shinji asked her, needing to know.
"He always seemed more dangerous than he looked. His angry expression…makes him seem impossible to lock away for good."
"Miss Recovery Girl," Shinji spoke, "this probably goes against our attempts to move forward, but do you know where that man was put after that night we got away from him?"
Recovery Girl nodded her head and uttered, "He was transported to Tartarus, a high-security prison for people with Quirks who are extremely dangerous and unfit for societal life. Depending on the level of danger their Quirk represented and their behavior, people incarcerated there are locked underground in super max cells and monitored by guards, cameras and sensors for the slightest hint of using their Quirks. From what I was informed, despite not having his hands, and therefore no access to his Quirk, he was transferred to the deepest level in Tartarus, which is over five-hundred meters below sea level, due to his immorality and the fact that he has no regard for the lives of others; you weren't the only ones that he locked up in cages, you know."
"Yeah. I haven't heard anything from the women I found when I rescued Shado that night, so I just assumed they moved away."
"They recovered, but they relocated to another part of Japan where they could put NERV and Gendo behind them."
"Their testimony helped put him away for life."
"Their testimony, what remained of what was found in NERV, as well as your father's complete lack of humanity. Personally, and I mean no disrespect to either of you, your father scares me, Shinji. He's not infamous like the villain All For One, but he's clearly a dangerous man that has no restraint."
Shinji looked to his daughter and took her left hand in his right hand.
"No disrespect taken, Ms. Recovery Girl," he responded. "My father is a scary person. But the scariest part about him was not just his hands or his hatred towards Shado, but the fact that he made himself a villain because of his inability to forgive and forget. How are we able to move on from periods of grief if we can't do something as simple as forgiving those that caused us some form of torment…and moving past it? While I admit that I can't forgive him for abusing us all that time he kept us isolated from the rest of the world, I can forget about it and move forward with knowing he has to live with his failures long after he succumbs to his inevitable demise."
"Those that can't or refuse to forgive are those that have no heart with any measure of compassion. If anything, his heart can only understand the one emotion he embraces with complete acceptance…and that's malice."
"Malice?" Shado questioned; it was another word she didn't understand.
"Badness, Shado," her father explained. "No remorse, no love or friendship."
"It makes people into monsters?"
"Yeah. In a way, it does."
-x-
Asuka was infuriated by this Angel. Not only was it not using its AT-Field, but none of the Evas' weapons were making a dent in its hideous hide.
"Its body compositions are similar to the elements and materials that make up Kevlar and crystalline substances," Ritsuko informed the First and Second Children as the Angel just continued to walk towards the city. "Your rifles and Prog. Knives won't be able to harm it."
Scheisse, Asuka thought as she brandished her Prog. Knife in her Eva's right hand, and its core is right inside it, just waiting to be taken out!
They weren't at the city yet, but this Angel was causing serious problems for NERV. The JSSDF had spent several missiles on trying to harm it, but to no avail. This Angel was like the Fifth Angel, but it behaved like a turtle in its advance towards the city, a slow and steady pace to achieve victory. Oh, how challenging it was right now to face this Angel that was making things difficult for the people tasked with saving the human race.
"How are we supposed to defeat an Angel that's essentially bullet-proof and hard as diamond?" Misato asked Ritsuko.
Ritsuko thought about it, and she believed the only weapon that could work against this Angel while it's AT-Field was disabled was an N² explosive. Except that the military hadn't made any new ones since the Twelfth Angel incident where NERV lost the Third Child. By the time they did make some new ones, it would be too late. The only other alternative…was using a nuclear weapon, as it was all they had available. The Evas would be able to survive and contain most of the fallout, but there would still be a considerable degree of radiation that would take time to clear away, making the land this Angel would be taken out in a death zone for…a few months to over a year.
"We may need to use a nuclear missile to defeat this Angel," she told them.
"What?" Misato gasped as the rest of Central Dogma murmured in fear and disgust; the use of nuclear weapons was just something that they naturally discouraged due to how they made a mess of things.
-x-
"…So, how was your therapy session with Recovery Girl, Ikari?" Midoriya asked Shinji as he sat down in the classroom with Rumiko.
"Shado has recurring nightmares," Shinji explained. "It seems that even when my father is locked up in a black hole where the authorities threw away the hole, his scars still persist because of his hatred towards Shado. Maybe I should go see where he is and make sure he's not getting the soft treatment only those that actually need it deserve over the bare minimum he deserves."
"That jerk," went Rumiko. "Does it ever end with him? Why didn't they just…dispose of him?"
She used "dispose" instead of "kill" or "execute" due to trying to exercise her own restraint over the issue of Shinji's father.
"For some villains," Uraraka stated, "the death penalty doesn't suffice for the wrongs they committed. Most people that view the incarceration of criminals with Quirks as akin to a human rights violation."
"How is their incarceration a human rights violation?" Shinji asked her. "If they're bad, cruel, rotten and immoral towards other people, they deserve to be locked up until they can either be rehabilitated or until…something else happens to them so that they never get out."
"You believe in rehabilitation?" Hagakure asked him.
"Only if it works for people that actually want to change. Anyone can change…but not everyone wants to."
"Any example beyond your father?" Sero questioned.
"Y'all have faced more villains than I ever will, so you tell me."
This was an undeniable truth; Class 1-A had faced more villains than Shinji had. They went up against the League of Villains earlier this year at USJ, aided in the operation to locate the Shie Hassaikai and rescue Eri, even tried to locate Bakugo when he was captured by the League of Villains prior to All Might's final battle with All For One. In truth, they had more experience with several villains than Shinji or Rumiko, whose experience was limited to people that had hurt them the most in their past, which had been their parents that displayed the most negativity towards them.
"Um, what about you, Gaidoku?" Aoyama asked the young mother.
"What villain experience?" She responded. "Excluding Shinji's father, the only other villains I've been exposed to are hardly even villains, just tormentors and…deviants."
"Deviants?" Mineta spoke.
"Deviants."
Mineta decided now was the best time to keep his distance from Rumiko. If she used that word as a way of pointing out that she had been sexually abused by the older men in her own family before becoming the target of abuse and disgust by her mother, she used the word very subtly.
"Keep your distance, Mineta," Jiro warned him; about close to six times already, he had tried to snoop around whenever Rumiko was by herself…and ended up being dealt blows none of them had expected the teen mother to be capable of inflicting. "Keep your distance."
-x-
"…Well, you have funnier dreams than I wish I could have, Toya," said Shado as she and the boy were playing a game of connecting dots of black and red to try and get four of them either sideways, horizontally or vertically. "How many people dream of fighting a monster to win pizza?"
"Not that many," Toya responded as he blocked Shado from getting another attempt to get four in a row with her red chips in Recovery Girl's office. "Are you sure you're alright? You seem quieter than you usually are."
"I feel like I need to do something, but I don't know what it is I should do. I'm barely able to sleep the rest of the night without my father coming into my room after waking up from a nightmare. I'm grateful that he's in my life, but I…I worry that something may happen…and he gets hurt because of me."
"But he's your father, Shado. Him getting hurt is…it's part of his responsibility as your father. He wouldn't hesitate to keep you safe from harm, and from what we recently learned from Shinji…is that it's becoming harder to harm him due to his Quirk making him…safe from whatever did hurt him."
Shado looked at the game in front of them, seeing an open, and put a red chip on top of one of Toya's black chips.
"Daddy's getting better, but he's not that good. Not yet, at least. He still has a lot to learn about how his Quirk does what it does."
"Regardless of this, Shinji won't stop protecting you from anyone that may hurt you. There's this code or something that people follow when they have kids, and part of it is making sure that kids like us are safe from other people that behave wrong."
"Does this include a possibility where it's the kid that is a risk and not other people?"
Toya noticed where he needed to keep Shado from beating him in the game and put a black chip into a different slot.
"Even if you were a living bomb, Shado, Shinji would still protect you," he told the girl. "You'll figure out how to make use of your Quirk one day and be able to control it. I mean, you made Ms. Hagakure able to turn invisible at will, so it's not all bad."
"Thank you, Toya," she praised him, but even that still felt small because of her fear of hurting someone if she touched them and didn't trust them enough to touch her.
Suddenly, the door to Recovery Girl's office opened…and the two children saw All Might step inside, looking like he was in poor shape. Well, more so than he did when they first met him in person, seeing that he had seemed less like a regular-looking person and more like a man in need of a better healthcare plan.
"Uh…are you alright, Mr. All Might?" Toya asked him.
"Yes, I'm fine," he answered, greeting the two as he turned to look at Recovery Girl. "I'm just here to receive my weekly medication."
Shado sympathized with the former hero, as even they needed something prescribed by the medical world to help them get by. She needed to take a health pill every other day due to her calcium deficiency that they were to help her recover from until she no longer them.
"Here it is," Recovery Girl said as she turned around from her desk to give him a bottle of pills, but accidentally knocked it over onto the floor and watched it roll across the floor towards the small table where Shado and Toya sat playing their game. "Oh, dear."
Shado got up and picked the bottle up off the floor.
"Here you go, Mr. All Might," she told the former hero, holding the bottle to him.
"Thank you, Ms. Ikari," he praised her, accepting the bottle, making contact with her right hand.
Crackle! He felt a surge of energy and pain go through his arm.
-x-
With no access to N² weaponry, they had no other alternative but to use a nuclear weapon, but Asuka knew that there was a risk in using this tactic. There had to be another alternative to this before the Angel reached the city.
Dammit, Shinji, how did you do this without losing your cool? Asuka wondered, wishing that he was here to help them fight the Angel right now. We can't hurt it with the rifles, knives or rockets…and we can't lift it. There has to be a way to stop it.
She then noticed how the Angel's front leg on its left side fell into a space in the ground, seemingly stuck for a moment.
"Hey, are y'all seeing this?" She asked the whole of Central Dogma. "It fell into a ditch on its side. It must be too heavy to move."
"Yeah, it probably weighs a considerable amount to provide it with a natural defense, but moves slow to compensate for its lack of maneuverability," Ritsuko realized when she saw the Angel fall, struggling to free its leg from the hole.
"If it weighs too much," Misato went, "what are the chances that we can cause this Angel to just fall into a large enough hole and knocking it over to expose its underside?"
"Slim, but it's not a zero."
"Good, because I like it better than the nuclear option."
-x-
Shinji ran back to the nurse's office when he received a feeling that something was wrong with Shado. When he got there with Rumiko following at her own speed, he was tense at the sight of an unconscious Shado laying on a recovery bed with Toya sitting beside her.
"What happened?" He asked Toya.
"Her Quirk triggered when she touched…Mr. All Might," he answered back. "Something happened…and she passed out."
"Wait a minute, she touched All Might?" Rumiko asked her son, noticing that Recovery Girl was not present. "What happened to All Might?"
Toya pointed to a door leading to a different part of the office.
"Recovery Girl took him in there to evaluate him," he stated, and the teen parents walked over to the door.
"Hello?" Shinji called out. "Is everything alright in there?"
The door opened and Recovery Girl came out, a look of confusion on her face.
"In all my years of practicing medicine," she went, walking around them and into her chair, "I've never seen a Quirk do something this extreme before to anyone."
Shinji turned to face her.
"What happened?" He asked her. "What did Shado do to All Might?"
He was fearing the worst, but he had to keep his daughter safe from the fallout that might've occurred if the worst happened.
Recovery Girl looked up to him and uttered, "She…restored him."
"What?" Rumiko spoke, and someone came out from the other room. "Oh, my gosh!"
Shinji turned to see who they were…and had to look up. Way up.
A man, towering over all of them, muscly and well-toned, with his face shadowed like a mask stood before them.
"I was told your daughter would be asleep for most of the day," he told Shinji.
"All Might?" The teens asked.
"How do you feel, sir?" Rumiko asked him, shocked by the fact that this man that was one of the world's greatest heroes in history…was standing in front of them without a shirt on.
"Good," he answered her, although it was the craziest way to describe his current state; he didn't feel like himself ever since his final battle against All For One in Kamino, and that was with the last few embers of One For All left within him.
"My daughter restored you with her Quirk?" Shinji went, trying to wrap his head around this. "Is this permanent for you? Do you feel any…problems?"
All Might nodded his head in the negative. He felt better than he had ever felt before. While he would need a further evaluation by Recovery Girl, he just wanted to know if Shado would be alright after she recovered from her Quirk affecting him.
-x-
Gendo returned to Tokyo-3 three days later, discovering a large hole in the ground just outside the city limits, right where Lake Ashi used to reside, and wondered what happened, not that it mattered to him. He was unable to find anyone willing to pilot the Evas NERV possessed, either willingly or through coercion, and every candidate either had a disability or was just ill-equipped to be handled by the paramilitary agency.
"What happened here?" He demanded to know from Ritsuko when he saw her in his office.
"Another Angel attacked and we were facing difficulty in dealing with it," she explained to him. "We were going to use a nuclear missile when we discovered that it was too heavy to move its arms and lured it into a deep enough hole, but it was heavier than we had realized, crashing into the Geo-Front and into a clearing. Its underside was exposed and Unit-02 was able to damage its hide to reach its core. It self-destructed, but the explosion was contained by Units-00 and 02."
Gendo sighed and later dismissed her.
-x-
"…How long has he been in there with his daughter?" Yaoyorozu asked Ida when school let out, seeing that Shinji was sitting in Recovery Girl's office beside a bed where his daughter lay asleep.
"He hasn't left her side since he was called," he explained. "Do you think it's true? Why All Might wasn't in class today?"
"As Gaidoku was the only one that came back and had to pick up what Ikari missed, it's hard to say for certain. I do hope he's doing fine."
"Excuse me, you two," they heard Rumiko say behind them, reminding that the day had ended and the teen mother had to pick up her son and go back to the dorms. "And just because I told you already, Mr. All Might looked fine when I saw him. You'd have a hard time not looking at him now."
They had no exact clue as to what she really meant by that. They saw her greet Shinji and hand him the school work he missed that he could make up for due to his absence, and then he smiled as he picked up his sleeping daughter and walked out the nurse's office with Rumiko and Toya. The only other oddity was that Midoriya had been called to the principal's office once school let out, making the rest of the class wonder what, if anything, he did.
-x-
"…You're saying that Ikari's daughter, Shado…was just handing All Might a bottle of pills that he needed when…this happened?" Midoriya questioned, seeing All Might at his best in the principal's office. "And she passed out afterward?"
"That's right," went Recovery Girl, still needing to evaluate All Might thoroughly in order to make sure that he wasn't suffering any side-effects. "From what we initially understood, she didn't have any measure of fear towards All Might when she saw him, both in person and in a picture. She even saw recordings of his past actions up to the Kamino incident, and not once did she express any dislike of him or his inclination towards violence against villains whenever necessary to protect others. She clearly fears Bakugo, as he's prone to unnecessary violence, and Mineta, who simply creeps her out by being a deviant, but most others, she's comfortable with being around to varying degrees."
"Did you feel any pain when her Quirk was triggered on you, All Might?" Nezu asked.
"No," he answered him, although it was false; he did feel pain, but it was not enough to actually bother him, "but for a brief moment, I did see a woman in a vast, white expanse. It was only for a moment, but she turned to face me. I think it was the same woman Ms. Hagakure saw when Shado's Quirk activated on her. It was Yui Ikari."
"Did she try to say anything to you when she turned to face you?" Midoriya asked him.
"I heard one word escape her mouth before I was back in Recovery Girl's office: 'Help'."
"Just 'help'?" Recovery Girl wanted to understand.
"That was all I could hear her say. More than likely, your theory is right, Recovery Girl; Yui Ikari isn't dead, just…somewhere else."
She would have to run every test possible to ensure that All Might would receive a clean bill of health, but Recovery Girl had to consider the possibility that Shado Ikari had done what most others couldn't do, and that was undo the extensive damage done to the retired Symbol of Peace. The one thing she had to verify most of all was whether or not this advanced form of recuperation included the return of his Quirk. This was part of the reason Midoriya was called, as they both had access to the same Quirk that had been around for a long time.
"Midoriya," she went, "can you still access your Quirk?"
"Yes, why?" He responded.
"All Might?"
"I…I feel like I have it again, but that shouldn't be possible; once I gave it to Midoriya, I was left with only a residual trace amount of it. I used the last of it against All For One in Kamino."
Midoriya then looked as though he had an epiphany or something.
"But…you still had some of it left inside of you, right?" He asked All Might.
"Yes."
"Maybe that's what Shado's Quirk targeted when it was triggered by you. It reacted to the leftover embers of One For All within you…and restored you to your previous state."
"You think that…Shado's Quirk…affected what remained of One For All within All Might…and just gave him more power to make use of the remaining measure he couldn't make use of after the last battle?" Nezu questioned.
"That's the theory, at least," Midoriya stated. "We really don't know much of anything about her Quirk to have a full understanding of how it works."
"What we were able to understand about it after a failed attempt to copy it…was that it required energy or something to act up," Recovery Girl revealed.
So far, Shado's Quirk was more of a mystery than Eri's Rewind Quirk because they had no clue how it worked. It acted up on at least three different people, and under different circumstances, two of which might've been more beneficial than the initial activation. One person was…displaced, one person's Quirk reworked to act up in a different manner, and another person's whole body seemingly restored to a previous state with all their Quirk-endowed abilities intact by reaching out to the few embers left within them. Still, it was as much a conundrum as any other Quirk that wasn't fully understood, like One For All, Rewind, or even Guardian, and Midoriya had added Shinji's Quirk only because it seemed to mirror One For All, excluding its ability to regenerate the teen father and adapt him to Quirks that had been able to harm him.
And yet, it seems that in the two recent times it's been used, unintentionally, it causes the girl to pass out from fatigue, he thought, unaware that All Might and Recovery Girl were thinking the same train of thought as he was.
-x-
Even as the people went about their day-to-day activities, it didn't do well to help NERV retain its credibility against the Angels if they were facing difficulties in finding new pilots for the Evas. One after another, each candidate they tried to recruit seemed to be a risk or liability because of one drawback or another.
"I heard the one you lost in one of those attacks was your own son, Ikari," Gendo recalled a woman telling him when he tried to recruit potential candidates from overseas. "Did you even grieve his premature passing? Did you even care that he was killed by your people?"
At this point in time, all NERV might've had to use against the Angels were the First and Second Children and the Dummy System; the late Third Child and other candidates were as flawed and useless as the emotions of grief and animosity were. As he sat in his office, Gendo pondered the acceleration of the Dummy System's completion, but something had been off about the recent Angel attack. In fact, a lot had been off, from the very Angel itself to the method used to defeat it, none of which fell in line with his scenario. A death before the climax of his agenda, Unit-01 not harvesting the power of the Angels for itself…and an Eva not being usurped by the enemy…was a lot that didn't happen.
"I heard all that was left of your kid was a leg," a man said to Gendo as he went over the files of other ill-equipped candidates. "The gods must either hate you…or decided your kid was just collateral damage and took him back from you because you didn't really want him in your life."
Oh, how Gendo wanted to make these people pay for their choice of words towards him. Not because his son was dead, not because of some misplaced sense of paternal feelings, but because he felt disrespected by them. In his own mind, Gendo also felt his son had disrespected him by merely dying in the midst of an Angel attack by getting stuck in one and getting blown to bits. As much as he despised Shinji, he had served a necessary purpose; piloting the Eva was all he needed him to do, but dying was never part of the job unless he felt it was absolutely necessary in eliminating the Angels.
"I won't let you hurt him again," he looked up from his desk and saw a little girl standing in front of him. "I won't let you hurt him again, you heartless monster."
She was small, about the size of Shinji when he was a little boy, wearing a medical gown covering all but her arms and legs, which were covered in bandages. Strangely, the child bore a disturbing resemblance to the Third Child, face and eyes and everything.
"Who are you?" He asked her. "Identify yourself."
But the girl had disappeared from sight. It was as though she was never there to begin with.
"He who has no hopes or expectations of others to start with can never hope to achieve anything," a woman had told him in his past. "If you have no hope or expectations of others to begin with, then they can never achieve what you want them to for yourself or what they desire for themselves."
-x-
Shado awoke from what felt like a long slumber, finding herself in her room at the dorms, wondering what had happened while she was asleep. Looking to her left, she saw Shinji sitting beside her futon.
"Daddy?" She spoke, stirring him from his own slumber.
"Uh, Shado, you're up," he uttered as he turned to face her, looking relieved. "How are you feeling right now?"
"Fine. Um…what are we doing here?"
"You passed out after handing All Might his bottle of pills."
"I did?"
"You don't remember?"
"Un-uh. I remember playing with Toya in Ms. Recovery Girl's office, then seeing Mr. All Might, but after that…nothing."
Maybe her Quirk had exhausted her so she didn't recall everything that happened, but she recalled enough of what occurred earlier to know that was how her day started before she lost consciousness and was asleep for the rest of it.
"How long was I asleep?" She asked him.
"A little over five hours," he revealed to her. "Did you have any good dreams?"
Shado nodded her head in the negative.
"There was something I was seeing, but I didn't understand it," she told him. "I was…somewhere far away…and there was a lady. She looked at me…and told me she was sorry. I don't know what she meant by that."
"She told you that she was sorry?" Shinji wanted to make sure he was hearing right from his daughter. "That was all she said to you?"
"Yes, Daddy."
"Do you…recall what she looked like?"
"She kinda looked you…but older and more 'tyangler'."
Shinji's face did a pullback as he tried to comprehend what she had said.
"Oh," he realized that she meant "triangular" due to it being one of the many words she had difficulty pronouncing properly. "Her face was like a triangle."
"Yes."
Shinji then got up and stretched his arms.
"You've been asleep ever since your Quirk was somehow triggered by Mr. All Might, and he's seen what could be better days," he told her. "Rumiko and Toya have already eaten, but I didn't want to eat until after you got up. Are you hungry?"
Shado nodded that she was hungry, but was curious about what happened to All Might.
"He…he didn't disappear when he touched me?" She asked him.
"No, the very opposite like Hagakure. He looks better for the time being, but Recovery Girl still wants to evaluate him to make sure he's doing fine."
Shado was relieved to know this. It was still confusing and irritable on not knowing precisely how her Quirk behaved. She wasn't able to control it yet, whenever someone she didn't know or trust touched her, they could've become a potential victim, and she feared what could happen if they got hurt.
"Don't worry about it, sweetie," Shinji reassured her. "You haven't hurt anyone. If anything, you just…helped them a little bit. Hagakure can be seen by her classmates and friends, and if All Might checks out fine, there's a possibility that he might regain his former position as the number one hero of all time. Maybe."
As the two walked out the daughter's room and to the kitchen, the daughter noticed that Rumiko had fallen asleep on the sofa with Toya, a tablet on the floor beside her.
"Were they worried, too?" She asked Shinji as he reached into the refrigerator and pulled out two containers of food that had been prepared earlier in the day.
"We were all worried about you when you passed out today. Nobody worries about the four of us more than…well, the four of us."
They went to the table and enjoyed their reheated dinner together.
"Daddy, can I ask something?" Shado spoke.
"Sure," Shinji responded.
"My Quirk… You're not afraid of my Quirk…like…at all…are you?" She asked him.
"No, Shado," he replied, "not in the slightest."
"Why?"
"Because…there are many truths to who and what people are. One of the truths I choose to follow…is what we choose to be and do with what we can do."
"I…don't understand what you mean by that, Daddy."
"Put quite simply, dear, our Quirks are similar because we're related to each other…and to a man that has absolutely no redeeming qualities…but we're not defined by what he did…or does. Yeah, it seems like we exhibit some measure of what his Wrath Quirk enables him to do…but you know why he's the one locked away and we're up here trying to get a better understanding of what we're capable of?"
At first, Shado was going to shake her head in the negative, but decided to instead say, "Because we don't want to hurt anyone unless we have no other choice? Because we don't want to be anything like him?"
"Yeah, that's right, Shado, and that's a truth that sets us apart from him or anyone else that behaves the way he does. We can choose whether or not to be defined by what we're capable of. I mean, look at what you've done twice now since we got here. You changed two people you barely know, that were great heroes or want to be heroes, and your concern of possibly hurting people you don't want to hurt makes you a good person."
"And you not using your Quirk to hurt others on purpose while learning to control it and go further than you already have makes you a good person?"
"That's right."
Shado nodded her head in acceptance of this truth, furthering her own desire to learn how to control her Quirk as time passed while here at U.A.
-x-
Recovery Girl didn't want to jump to any conclusions until she run her tests on All Might, just wanting to make absolutely sure that he'd be able to go about his day-to-day routine like always. And after running every test she could do, after evaluating his blood, skin, hair, eyes, heart, lungs and everything else, she couldn't describe his new condition in any other way than what she was going to say to the former hero.
All Might, once the world's greatest hero, the Symbol of Peace…was restored to his former glory by Shado's Regression Quirk. Somehow, the girl's Quirk regenerated his body from the inside out, revitalizing his deteriorated organs and regrowing ones he lost after his previous battle with All For One. But most of all, the child's Quirk somehow caused the previously-Quirkless man to develop a Quirk factor based around the former Quirk he had possessed prior to passing it down to Midoriya, resulting in an exact duplicate of One For All when he possessed it.
"Somehow, Shado Ikari's Quirk broke you down and built you back up," she told him, clearing him for teaching and whatever else he could do. "I didn't find anything physically wrong with you. You're…you're perfect."
All Might wouldn't have used "perfect" to describe his current state. He would've just used words like "better than ever" or "I feel like I just had the most extreme spa day of my entire life". "Perfect" was just not something he would've used to describe himself, but it was close enough to how he felt on the outside. However, on the inside…he didn't know how to address this change; he was originally reduced to a man that could no longer stand as the Symbol of Peace after his final battle against All For One, burned out from using the last of the embers of his remaining ounce of One For All…and now he just learned as the day ended…that he was more than likely capable of doing so again if he chose to. And all because of physical contact from a little girl that barely knew how to control her own power and use it at will.
"Thank you," he said as he bowed his head to her before leaving.
His thanks, however, was not just to Recovery Girl, but also to Shado; although it wasn't intentional, more accidental than deliberate, it was because of her that he was like this again. Maybe this was a blessing for him. Or even just temporary, depending on how he acted. Either way, he knew he had to make the best of whatever this was now.
"Have no fear," he uttered to himself in the halls of the academy, "I am here."
To be continued…
A/N: I bet y'all were more focused on Shado's Quirk doing something strange than the NERV/Angel portion of the chapter. I was surprised that I was able to envision this as a possibility because of how the girl's power behaved, but I focused on the idea that All Might, despite only having a few embers of One For All inside himself, still possessed the Quirk, just unable to make any use of it. In a sense, he was regressed back to his previous state before any of his injuries and the transfer of the Quirk to Midoriya. What do you think will happen now?