Creation began on 01-24-22
Creation ended on 08-11-22
Neon Genesis Evangelion
My Hero, Shinji Ikari: Self-Preservation
A/N: When we feel threatened by something or someone out to get something or someone else, we do tend to act or react in ways that drive wedges in both society and personal relationships.
Heroes needed to be the best of their generation, in both power and morals. They needed to be able to withstand the difficulties of protecting people, places or beliefs without breaking, and were able to pass on these qualities to future generations that could follow their predecessors without succumbing to corruption. But what was a hero to a society that was being targeted by a villain out to do one thing that was so cruel after they had committed other acts so heinous that there was no forgiveness for any of them? What was a society that was affected by the villain that they were willing to cross a line so immoral in order to survive? This was something Rumiko Gaidoku, even to this very day after being freed from cruel and unethical captivity of Gendo Rokubungi-Ikari, had yet to receive a satisfactory explanation to and for.
As she sat in the living room area, she looked at the news for what was going on across Japan.
"…And with the number of causalities being more than the number of survivors, this elevates Gendo's villain and murderer status to supervillain and multiple murderer," a female reporter informed the masses through the cameras. "He's clearly become a man of unsound quality and unsavory methods towards the country."
She flipped through channels and watched the morning news echo or repeat the same things she already knew about Gendo's behavior and how it was affecting people.
"…The League of Villains was disposed of by him…"
"…Will he take out Tokyo?"
"…An all-out assault did nothing…"
"…Why didn't they execute him when…"
She sighs as she gives up on the morning news and gets up off the couch. It wasn't even eight yet, so she let Toya sleep a little longer.
"I guess there was nothing on the news?" She heard Shinji ask her as he came into the kitchen.
"What's less than echoes of what we already know to be relevant?" She responded as she reached for a box of cereal.
"Stress?"
"I guess that works. How's Shado?"
"I left her in my room to sleep some more. Toya?"
"I may just let him sleep in today."
Shinji was going to say something about that choice of hers when he looks at a nearby window and thought he saw a moving shadow. He goes over to it and looks out, seeing nothing or nobody. Sighing, he returns to the kitchen and grabs a canned coffee from the refrigerator before sitting down at the table.
"This is just messed up," he expresses to Rumiko after popping the can open. "We've done nothing wrong and we can't go anywhere because of my father and his immoral hatred towards Shado. He breaks out of prison to do one thing that he has on his mind, and he makes life Hell for other people that only want to get on with their lives. The guy could've relocated anywhere else in the world, change his name, his identity, build a new life for himself without any of us in his way…but he doesn't do any of that. Instead, he chooses to pursue a senseless vendetta that's one-sided…because he can't let go of anything he perceives as a problem that needs to be resolved his way. He's so consumed by his need to get even that he goes out of his way to spread madness over others."
Rumiko was about to say something when she thought she saw something outside a different window. She went over to it and looked outside, seeing nothing and nobody.
"Am I being paranoid right now, or are we being watched?" She asked Shinji.
"If you're paranoid, then I must be, too," he responded. "If anyone were watching us, I'd just hope that it's Mineta."
"Why him? Of all the people that live in the dorms, why him of all people?"
"Because he's just a little perv that's asking for someone he finds attractive to hit him. I can live with that. I can handle a pervert trying to peep at you or Shado, just not some vultures intruding on our personal lives we have so little of because of this insanity."
"You know, if I wasn't so upset about not being able to go outside right now, I could kiss you."
"Uh…a handshake would be acceptable."
"Ever the polite one."
Smack! They heard something outside, and went to the front door, opening it to see Ashido with her left hand raised…and Mineta on the ground with a large bump on his head.
"Morning, you two," she greeted Shinji and Rumiko. "Despite the seriousness of what's going on outside the school, Mineta here hasn't been affected in the slightest to shift his behavior."
"Hottie…hottie," Mineta groaned, raising his right arm up weakly, pointing a finger at the teen parents…or rather, pointing at Rumiko.
"Put him in a room full of women that can knock out more than be viewed as knockouts, he'd probably think he died and went straight up to Heaven," Rumiko expressed. "Put him in front of the world's most dangerous villains, he'll show his cowardice and run for his life. The perverse and the clueless."
Ashido picked him up by his head, surprising the teen parents of how strong she was (or by how light Mineta was) and dragged him away from their presence.
"I hope your day will still be as productive as ours will be," she told them.
"Hot mama," they heard Mineta say, still conscious enough to say something rude and directed at Rumiko. "Hot…"
"Shinji, can I express something to you?" She asked.
"Sure," he responded.
"If Mineta ever tries to grope me or peeps at me changing, I will feel the need to protect myself from his offsetting behavior by relieving him of his manhood."
"Ooh…maybe not so much that as you could emasculate him verbally."
"That's exactly how I intend to relieve him of his manhood."
-x-
The police had setup a grid to keep people from going near Gendo's fortress, but because there were no heroes they could risk going near the guy without being ripped to pieces, all they could really do was try to make sure that nobody tried to get near the fortress and incite Gendo into ripping them up.
From a safe distance, a man with heavy duty staples on his face watched the fortress and could only sigh at how the rest of the League of Villains fell at the hands of a man that was beyond insane. Not even close to the sanity levels of a man…and nowhere near close to the sanity levels of an animal, either. When he saw the man release his hatred upon the league, he knew, then and there, that it was a slaughter instead of a battle, and the only way to survive…was to know your limits and back away.
A person that can manipulate his surroundings to his advantage is next to untouchable if he can't be restricted, he thought as he turned away.
-x-
Shado awoke to the new day quietly as she found her father absent from his room, holding onto her Ursa Guardian teddy. She climbed off his futon and vacated his room, walking into the bathroom in her room and examining her face in the mirror.
"Oh!" She gasped, seeing something she hadn't seen before on her forehead.
A small bruise, just under some of her hair, and it had her worried about its possible meaning. It wasn't that she was afraid of being harmed again, but she didn't want to be harmed by someone that specifically singled her out based on some kind of issue like her grandfather did. She touched it, hoping that it was really nothing, but it discomforted her a little when she pressed on it, sending unpleasant sensations through her nerves and into her hand.
"Ow," she reacted, removing her hand from her head to the top of the sink. "Oh…"
Suddenly, a feeling of discomfort emanated from her hand to her brain, making her raise it back up to examine the limb. The palm itself was bruised, like someone had it under something heavy for a long time or hit it with force.
"Ahh," she gasped, turning on the faucet for water and dousing her hands with soap, washing her hands with panic.
When she was done, she turned the water off and looked at her hands, seeing that they were fine. She felt a little relieved, but when she looked back up at the mirror, she saw her worst nightmare behind her.
"You will die, girl," said Gendo to her, and she saw him raise his right hand to her.
She turned around…and he wasn't there. In fact, there had been no indication that he was ever there to begin with. She hadn't even been thinking about her grandfather since she woke up feeling safe in her father's room. The mere thought of him just being in the same space as she, having avoided all of the school's security measures and heroes, just to hurt her…or worse…never crossed her mind. Dropping to her bottom, Shado felt like she had a nightmare while her eyes were open, utterly helpless.
He can't come here, she tried to remind herself as she tried to get back up. He can't come here and not think that he can take me away.
-x-
Ring-ring! The phone in the dorm house rang, getting Shinji and Rumiko's attention.
"Uh…we only get calls from the school, right?" Rumiko asked Shinji as she set the table for breakfast when it rang.
"Yeah," he responded, setting a skillet down on the stove and walking over to the phone to answer the ringing. "Hello?"
"Yes, I'm trying to reach Ikari, Shinji through U.A. from the ruins of Miyuki," a female voice spoke to him.
"Am I allowed to ask why?"
"There's someone from Miyuki that claims to know Ikari, Shinji. A survivor that was in a coma from Miyuki Memorial Hospital. Are you familiar with a young man named Aida, Kensuke?"
Shinji's eyes widened at the sound of that name. He hadn't seen or spoken with anyone that had even the barest resemblance with anyone from his past, which, as of late, was starting to feel like a dream instead of a series of memories that either brought little to no comfort to him…or were not as worth recalling as they used to be. To hear that name, though, was very…
"Does this young man have freckles on his face? Wears glasses? Seems like an otaku of sorts?" Shinji asked the woman on the other end.
"He has freckles on his face," she explained. "Doesn't have glasses, but is near-sighted, and does seem to fit the mold for being an otaku. He claims to know about NERV, but his information seems off due to it relating more to the field of cybernetics. I was told a picture of him would be sent to you to confirm his identity."
Beep. A tablet on the countertop lit up with an alert.
Shinji went over to it and tapped the screen, revealing the alert was a picture message, and the picture was all Shinji needed to confirm his suspicion.
"I just got the picture," he told the woman. "I know this guy."
Rumiko looked at Shinji and wondered who was being spoken about. She may have only learned a little about this particular Shinji, but when it came to people from his past that she knew next to nothing about, she was just as much in the dark as any other person was regarding him. There might've been some similarities, but it was hard for her to see this Shinji and the one she knew personally as being two different people. And then, there was…
"Shinji… Shinji…" One of her memories from the past acted up, causing her to shudder mildly and look away from the young man on the phone. That was completely uncalled for at the time, Rumiko Gaidoku.
Still, the memory of that day…stemming from another aftermath that had affected both teens before they were even teens… Both were scarred…and the scars were unlikely to ever go away, even long after their other wounds had mended. Although, some of the memories that brought her some degree of comfort…were also the same memories that brought her an equal amount of discomfort because of the abuse they stemmed from. Either inflicted upon them by other adults…or self-inflicted by each other…or just inflicted upon by herself.
"…E…V…A… That's…" She heard Shinji say, sounding like he had heard something that gave him a measure of discomfort. "I know exactly what he means by that."
-x-
"…Not that it's any of my business, but how long as Wonder Girl been sitting in there with the stooge?" Asuka asked Misato, taking notice that Rei was in the medical ward sitting in front of the comatose Kensuke Aida.
"Nearly four hours a day for the last week," Misato answered her as they walked by. "It doesn't seem like anyone asked her why, though."
"Well, any luck with securing another pilot?"
"Unfortunately, no. NERV has been shot down five times in the last two days by our contacts overseas. Apparently, nobody fourteen and under really wants to throw their lives away for something that may never end and result in them having given up their future for one that is full of emptiness. Personally, I don't blame them for choosing not to pilot the Evas; the lack of faith in the science that took to make them is the straw that breaks the camel's back."
"And this baka was the only one willing to pilot the Eva because it was what he wanted to do ever since he found out about it and who piloted it?"
"That's apparently in his file."
Asuka still found it difficult to comprehend that this military otaku was all NERV could get to replace Shinji. Not that anyone could ever replace that idiot. At least not in the sense of his emotional impact on them; the guy was useless as an Eva pilot, but he had his uses around the apartment. Even after his death, there was that void he left that just couldn't be filled, no matter what they did to occupy it.
"How long will he be like this?" She asked Misato.
"The doctors don't know," Misato answered. "It could be a few days…or even a few months."
As much as the redhead wanted to demand from the albino girl why she bothered to sit in that room and watch the incapacitated stooge for hours at a time, Asuka decided not to due to the possibility of not liking the answer she could receive.
-x-
"…This is what keeps bothering me about the Fourth Child," went Maya to Ritsuko as they were examining the recorded brainwaves from the comatose boy in the trauma ward.
"What is it?" Ritsuko questioned her as she came over to examine the screen.
"These neuro patterns of his here, they don't register like someone that's in a coma," she explained as she pointed to the graph she was looking at. "They don't register like a comatose person at all, but the craziest thing about them is that I seen these patterns all the time."
"Where?"
"From the pilots when they're undergoing synchronization sessions."
Ritsuko looked at the brainwave graph…and could see a resemblance between the neural patterns the Fourth Child had to his previous synchronization scores…if not a little lower.
-x-
Kensuke waited for an update in the tent while reading the only salvageable thing from the town he and other survivors crawled out the crater of: A book that had the history of this world from just a limited point of view. He was surprised by how, over the course of what appeared to be one-hundred generations of random development, the majority of human society had evolved to exhibit superhuman abilities, showing mutations in bizarre ways. Somehow, he was in another world where history included actual superheroes and villains, individuals that only existed in works of fiction, and these abilities were classified as Quirks or Meta Ability.
And Shinji somehow ended up here after he died? He thought as he turned to a page featuring a bunch of men and women that seemed to represent the hero society.
"Aida, Kensuke?" The lady with the hair called out to him as she entered the tent, holding a tablet in her hands. "You'll be able to communicate with this to who you're trying to contact."
"Thank you," he praised as she handed the tablet over to him, just as it lit up with a calling sign.
The screen shifted to show a face he hadn't seen in a while, but recognized immensely.
"Shinji Ikari?" He asked the young man on the screen.
"Kensuke Aida?" The boy responded.
"You're…you're here."
"How…how are you here?"
"I have no honest idea. What is… It feels like I'm dreaming, except I'm awake, and I see people that look like they belong in strange comics or films."
"This is the way this world is, Aida. Over eighty percent of the global population has some sort of Quirk."
Kensuke then noticed that on Shinji's end of the communication, there was a girl nearby that seemed slightly older than they were and very attractive.
"Who's that behind you?" He asked Shinji, and Shinji looked over to see the girl.
"This is Rumiko Gaidoku," he introduced. "Rumiko, this is Kensuke Aida."
"Hello," the girl, Rumiko, greeted. "You're the otaku Shinji mentioned. And you survived the devastation caused by his father in the town. You're very fortunate."
Kensuke was then reminded that in this world, Shinji's father was a vicious man that been incarcerated for a short time and broke out, not to mention that he possessed an ability to deconstruct things and people at the molecular level and reconstruct them however he chose, making him a dangerous person to face.
"Just…what is going on here?" He asked Shinji. "This all seems like a dream…except it doesn't feel like one."
"A long story short," went Shinji in response, "this is a world where heroes and villains exist, roughly the majority of the global population has a diverse range of superhuman abilities that enable people to defy the laws of normality, and young people looking to become the next generation of heroes can go to schools where they train you to do just that. But with these abilities come repercussions with certain people; some people's Quirks aren't as people-friendly as we want to believe them to be, some go as far as to torment other people to the point of villainy, and there's a system in place to deal with those that follow the hero path and those that choose to become villains. And…I have a daughter to look after."
"You? For real?"
"Yeah, some people find it odd, but, yes, I do."
Kensuke then decided to let Shinji know what life was like after he died in Tokyo-3.
"Everyone back in Tokyo-3… Shinji, you're… Well, legally, you're dead in Tokyo-3," he told his friend. "The last time you went up against an Angel, you didn't survive."
"What?" Rumiko questioned. "What do you mean, he's dead?"
"There was an operation to blow this shadow creature up with every bomb the military had, and it didn't go well. They recovered most of the Eva, but Shinji here didn't get lucky. Nobody can survive a barrage of heavy-duty explosives."
Shinji had a look on his face that seemed solemn, but it seemed as though he was trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together.
"Shinji?" Kensuke asked.
"I kinda thought as much," he finally spoke up. "It's complicated, Kensuke. But in a few words, I was dead for a while here, too, and it was mere luck that I revived here in this world in the place of my counterpart, the Shinji Ikari of this world."
"You mean, there was a version of you that lived here?"
"Yes. But enough about me. What about you? How did you get here?"
"The last thing I remember was participating in the Unit-03 test, and then everything went dark. The next thing I knew, I heard an explosion, something that felt like a cave-in, woke up in a dark place, hearing screams and cries, and then I reached for whoever was nearby, and then a pink glow came and everyone trapped with me was grabbing onto everyone else. The paramedics that found us say that I was living in the town's hospital in a coma for a year-and-a-half, that I was in some kind of accident. What if I'm dead back home, too?"
"Don't think like that, Kensuke," Shinji told him. "Don't think like that. We don't know for sure. Maybe you are dreaming, and you'll wake up soon, however long that is. In the meantime, maybe you could learn more about this world and the people in it. Maybe you possess a Quirk here yourself that could help people. You never know for sure until you let a professional look at you. There's a bunch of heroes with strange powers."
"I don't understand why these powers are called Quirks, though. I understand that they were once called Meta Abilities, but some people don't call them by that designation."
"Quirks refer to traits unique to the person that has them. No two or more people have the same range or series of abilities. There are some with similar abilities, but everyone is different."
"What about you two? What are your…Quirks?"
"Maternal Devotion," Rumiko stated, having a hard time looking at Kensuke after speaking of her Quirk.
"Maternal Devotion? What kind of ability is that? What can you do?"
"I…I can find people I have a relationship with within a few miles of myself. But it's not really a powerful Quirk. It's pretty useless if people expect perfection."
"I don't think it's useless, Rumiko," Shinji told her.
"If you're able to find certain people you know, it can't be a terrible power to have, Ms. Gaidoku," Kensuke added. "And it's not a bad name, either. Maternal Devotion. It's gotta mean something only to people that understand it. What does it mean to you?"
This was a first for Rumiko, having people that she didn't know ask her why she called her Quirk what she had called it ever since it became known. No, this wasn't true; someone from before did ask her why once in the past, and she gave her response at the time. To this day, it was still the same when asked about it.
"I'm a woman that can be overwhelmed by her maternal instincts sometimes," she explained. "Ever since my son was born, my relationships have been either strengthened, weakened or…whatever word there is for different relationships with different people."
Kensuke was at a loss for words. It was quite uncommon for any girl around his and Shinji's age to have children, but this was a girl from a different world they were in, where people could be either heroes or villains. And yet, here was a girl that, like Shinji in this world, had a child. He could've said something about her behind her back, point out that she was quite an attractive person that most boys would give anything just to have her acknowledge their pitiful existence, but there was something about her eyes that made him think against such an idea.
"If Shinji believes your Quirk is not useless, then it can't be useless if you can find people," he told Rumiko. "What about you, Shinji? What's your Quirk called?"
"Guardian," Shinji answered him.
"That's unusual for a Quirk. What can you do?"
"Basically, I have increased physical abilities, some degree of levitation, a form of regeneration and adaptation. I'm just a guy that has the standard set of abilities that you'd find in the heroes and villains of the old comic books. What are they? Superman? Hulk? Thing? Juggernaut?"
"More or less. But at least I still recognize you. I was somewhat startled by some of the people because they look…"
"This is the way the world is now because of Quirks. Everyone stands out because of them in one way or another, but not everyone's judgmental about someone's appearance. I met some people our age that don't like everyone else, and they're among the friendliest people we've met so far. It's Shado that takes the longest while to get accustomed to others, but even she's not frightened that much by someone based on their appearance."
"Who's Shado?"
"My daughter. She's, uh…withdrawn a little?"
"You mean, afraid?"
"Not a word I'd rather use…but yes. She's afraid of certain people, but it's not something she should be troubled with."
"Why?"
"My father. In this world, in this life, he was…is a monster. In many respects, he's the monster that parents have to warn their children about at night…and persists during the day."
Kensuke got the impression that Shinji's father was a terrible person, no matter what world he was from, and in this one, he was beyond what could be called a "usual evil". And with a body count well over one-thousand, Kensuke felt that this man wasn't going to stop until he got whatever it was that he wanted from whoever it was that he wanted it from if he was a villain.
"Why is he the bad guy?" He asked the teen parents. "What does he want? Money? Power?"
"Revenge against someone that never even had any agenda to cause him pain," Shinji explained. "He wants to kill my daughter for what was nothing more than an accident committed against my mother when she was just a baby. That is how wretched he is, willing to despise anyone he feels has wronged him in some way he can't overlook or forgive. He has no redeemable qualities; there's no remorse, no empathy, no measure of any sense of comprehension between right or wrong. Even if he knows what he's doing to others is wrong, he doesn't really care as long as he gets what he wants in the end."
Kensuke looked away and found what he just learned about his friend's father to be horrendous and beyond unforgivable. The guy wanted to murder his own grandchild over something that was not even a crime if the other person wasn't even able to form any intent towards other people due to being a baby. It was depraved and utter insanity.
"How old is Shado?" He wanted to know.
"Almost five," Shinji answered. "We share the same birthday."
"That's not bad. Not many parents share the same number of things with their kids."
"Thank you. I, uh… I should be checking up on her now."
"Uh, yeah. It's nice having spoken with you. Until later."
Shinji handed the tablet to Rumiko and suggested that they speak for a while as he went to see how his daughter was doing this morning.
"So, uh…you and Shinji are…friends?" Kensuke asked her.
"Yeah. I… If the theory of there being a multiverse is true, then every universe in it, every world in it…has a version of us in each one. In this world, I was friends with a young man named Shinji Ikari…and I am friends with this Shinji Ikari that comes from the same universe as you. I care about Shinji, but…what I feel for this Shinji…is different from what I felt for the Shinji we lost to his father."
"How different is…different, exactly?"
"Complicated."
"Yeah. Everything is…complicated. But why?"
"Everyone has a past that has a measure of pain in it."
"I sympathize. My mother died when I was little…in my universe. In this universe, it's believed my parents were alive while I was in the hospital, but didn't make it when that man decided to level the town. I really would've wanted to meet them, to talk with them."
"Yeah. That'd be lucky."
But Kensuke got the impression that Rumiko wasn't all there when she was speaking now. It was like…she was there…but not present.
"Um, Ms. Gaidoku," he spoke, "is there something wrong?"
"A few days ago," she replied, "Gendo went to Hokkaido where we all used to live…and murdered my parents and brother along with a bunch of other people in the neighborhood. Before then, there were some…unresolved issues between myself and them. And before then, my mother had sent me what would be her first and last letter when she learned I was alive, expressing her contempt towards me further. I don't wish my lack of absolution upon anyone that is still fortunate to have the people in their lives that matter, but…my relationships with my parents and brother will never be resolved because of that man deciding to go kill them, especially when they weren't even a threat to him. What kind of person just…murders people that aren't even a risk to themselves and really don't care about what he does for a living?"
"I can't answer that. Some people are…just wired wrong."
"Wired wrong. How does something like that happen, being wired wrong?"
"Speaking from a personal experience?"
"It's complicated."
-x-
"Shado?" Shinji called out to his daughter as he entered her room, seeing she wasn't there. "Shado?"
He looked at the floor and saw three of her teddies arranged in a line that led to the bathroom…and a fourth that led to the closet. If Shado went to one of them, it was likely she was still inside the former or was in the latter. He checked the bathroom first, but it was empty; he even checked the bathtub. This left him with the closet, and he opened the door. It was slightly dark, just enough to hide in the shadows…and he saw a small blanket covering a small form on his right.
"Now, where could she be at a time like this?" He wondered; if Shado was afraid of something, he needed to try and alleviate her fears by being positive about how to manage her PTSI. "If I were Shado, where would I be? Geez, Shinji, you have less sense about these things than you care to admit to yourself. I have…zero recollection of a childhood where I felt safe and wanted. My social interactions were stunted in excess. My old man is a nutter and a monster I'd want to be far away from and not have to worry about him coming after the people I love more than I could ever love myself. Where would I be if I were Shado?"
He lowered to his knees and raised his left hand's index finger to the covered form beside himself. He poked it once, softly, and received a reaction.
A shudder from a little voice belonging to whoever was hiding under the cover.
"Shado?" Shinji asked. "Are you alright?"
"Mmm-hmm-mm," he heard a response underneath, but couldn't make heads or tails out of what she said, so he lifted part of it up to reveal her face and saw her face half-buried in her fifth teddy bear, her left eye looking at him like something was wrong.
"Did you have another nightmare?"
"Kind of," she told him, "except I was awake when it happened."
"A…daymare, I think. What are you doing in here?"
"Hiding."
"From…the monsters?"
"A monster. I know he's not here, but…he won't leave me alone. He'll never leave me alone, and everyone else gets hurt because of him."
Shinji turned around and pressed his back against the wall of the closet and stretched out his legs on the floor.
"I once heard that monsters used to hide in closets when they couldn't hide under beds," he told her. "But then one day, they stopped because of an issue that was bothering them all the time."
"Really?"
"Yeah, I looked it up from other parents."
"And…what was the problem?"
"As monsters got bigger, they couldn't stay under beds. So, they moved to the closets where there was more space available. Heh. But even they realized that they couldn't live there, either. So when it was impossible to live in closets, the monsters came out into the open…wanted to fight the parents for the right to live in their children's rooms…and the parents won."
"And what happened to the monsters?"
"They got sent to a school where they had to learn to be less horrible to the kids that are afraid of them, and their teacher was the greatest monster to have ever lived…and his name was…Godzilla."
Shado smiled at her father's would-be story. It was funny and put a smile on her face, knowing that he was trying to keep her spirits up.
"Who's Godzilla?" She asked him.
"Only the greatest monster in the history of cinema entertainment."
"A hero?"
"Sometimes; monsters that fight other monsters can be either due to a popularity contest or something else, like wanting to be the monster of monsters. The monster father."
"The monster father?"
"The big guy. The boss monster. And Godzilla's the king, the master of the world of monsters. A god, for all intents and purposes."
"Could Godzilla beat Mr. All Might?"
"Nope. When Godzilla's a hero, he only fights other monsters that act out, letting heroes like All Might face the bad guys and rescue people."
"If Godzilla were real…could he beat…him?"
"Yeah. He'd definitely beat him, make him run away like a sore loser."
Shado hugged her father and smiled.
"Heh-heh-heh… Ouch!" She went as she held her forehead.
"Shado, what's wrong?" Shinji asked, concerned.
"I have a bruise on my head," she confessed, and he checked it under her hair.
"How'd that get there?" He wondered.
"I woke up, and it was there."
Shinji picked her up and carried her to the kitchen; he had gotten a medicinal cream when they had gone shopping that could help heal bruises and alleviate pain. Out of himself and Rumiko, he was more uptight about being prepared for anything that could happen to them. Maybe not so much so, but, because he was a parent, his responsibilities were more than what he had learned from his dead counterpart, and this was after he learned from the hospital of the extremity of Shado's abuse. He just wanted to keep her safe until she was old enough to deal with pain properly; it would've been foolish to think that he could protect her forever.
Is it really? He wondered to himself as they entered the kitchen, and he saw Rumiko still on the tablet with Kensuke. Is it foolish to want to keep her safe from harm until she can look after herself? That won't be for a long time in this, but she has all the time in the world to actually have a life.
"…You should see him with Shado," Shado heard Rumiko say to whoever she was talking to on the tablet. "You almost wouldn't recognize him being paternal."
As Shinji took out the tube of cream for Shado, the little girl got curious about Rumiko and whoever she was talking to on the tablet.
"Do you know who she's talking to?" She asked her father.
"Yeah," he responded as he applied the cream to his left index finger. "It's just…someone I knew from…a long time ago."
"But…you and Rumiko have known each other for a long time. Neither of you ever talked about anybody else."
Shinji applied the cream on Shado's bruise, earning a small wince from her because of the subtle pain she felt.
"He's…someone I know from a…different time," he tried to simplify.
Being as careful as he could rubbing the cream on her bruise, he didn't see Rumiko turn the tablet around to show Kensuke a view of the young father and his daughter.
"…She looks a bit like him," he expressed, and Shado looked at the young man on the tablet screen and raised her right hand to point at him.
"He's watching us," she informed Shinji, and he turned to see.
"Shinji, you never said anything about your daughter being cute."
Shinji raised his right hand to scratch the back of his head.
"I mean, a lot of people say that, but…your daughter is really cute. You should be very proud."
"Thank you," Shinji responded, slightly embarrassed; he didn't know how to respond to praise for his daughter's appearance from a friend he just found out was here and had been in a citywide devastation that killed a lot of people and left others homeless, maimed and grieving over the loss of friends and family.
"You really think I'm cute?" Shado asked Kensuke.
"Yes," he responded truthfully.
"Thank you."
Shinji looked over at Rumiko, who looked as though she had something else on her mind.
Rumiko covered up her issue with a cheerful smile.
"He's an otaku of military paraphernalia," she told him. "You don't get that many people that talk about stuff like that these days."
-x-
It was difficult for the class of 1-A to focus on their studies when any moment in school could turn sideways and two of their own were placed in more danger because of a deranged man's unjust hatred towards his own granddaughter. The only student who didn't seem to let this fear take hold over them was Mineta, who, despite his own fear of Gendo, didn't look away from his attractive female classmates as a coping mechanism.
"We should just go after the bastard," went Bakugo, annoyed by the lack of action being made to deal with Gendo. "We take him out, we get recognition for defeating him. He's old, he's got no resources. What's stopping us?"
All eyes looked to Midoriya, whom they assumed would be the one to explain why they shouldn't go after Gendo.
"It doesn't matter how many heroes there are or how resourceful they might be," he spoke. "Gendo is a monster that has no scruples about killing anyone who gets in his way. Even if you managed to harm him, all he'd need to do is tear himself apart and put himself back together again to regenerate. And then, he'd tear you down to your last molecule and scatter you to the wind like he did with those villains. The best way to fight him is to keep your distance with methods of power that have precision and efficiency. Even between each of us, with what we know about our Quirks and how to use them effectively, we'd still be no match against a Quirk like Wrath, which is similar to Overhaul, only more extreme."
"Your lack of confidence right now is amazing," Bakugo told him.
"If I'm being honest, the only person who may have a shot at Gendo is the same guy whose arm you blew off on his first day back to school, since their Quirks are related and may not work well against each other if they try to break each other into pieces."
"You really think Shinji stands a chance against his father?" Uraraka asked him.
"He was able to stop him when he escaped from NERV that night with his daughter," said Todoroki. "Even if it was only due to his drive to protect his daughter and his Quirk acted up with a measure of innate control or even because of his paternal instincts, he was able to come out of it without so much as a broken arm or lacerations. And he's developed his control and understanding of his Quirk since arriving here. He may have a shot against his father. Not a big shot, but still a shot."
"And he'd get the babes if he won," Mineta uttered under his breath.
"He'd be a greater star," Aoyama expressed.
"There's only one problem with that suggestion," Ojiro told them. "He's basically confined to his dorm house with Gaidoku and their children, so he can't go to where the forest used to be unless he decided to forgo his own safety and face his old man because he felt responsible for the people he killed."
"But that would be insane," said Asui. "He's not responsible for anything his father does to others. Ribbit."
"Maybe if he felt others looked at him like he was responsible," suggested Hagakure, her face becoming see-through to reflect her emotions on such a possibility.
-x-
Rumiko found the comfort of a bath to be lacking in the comfort department due to the sense of woe in the back of her consciousness. Even as she submerged her head into the tub, she couldn't escape her memories of her life after her best friend had been kidnapped and rescued from his captors. If it wasn't her parents arguing over the fact that either her father or brother got her pregnant sometime before Shinji had been kidnapped, it was something else to argue about, like infidelity or the neighbors.
"Please, stop yelling!" She remembers her younger self yelling at her parents while she had been taking her bath. "I can't take this!"
She ran out of the house and down the street; nobody would notice she was gone for hours. What made living on Hokkaido awful for her was that the only place worth running to was the countryside of where she lived. But it was better than being in that house, around her parents and brother. She couldn't stand it when her mother always raised her voice over anything and everything, regardless of whether or not any of it even mattered. And when she stopped running to catch her breath, she realized that she was following the path her Maternal Devotion had led her down…right to Shinji's house in the countryside, where he and his parents were in order to help him recover from his kidnapping and sexual assault by one of his abusers.
He was just sleeping on the veranda that day, she recalled that day, the memory of Shinji just sleeping there on a hot day, followed by her choice to walk towards the veranda. Why did I do that to him? I knew it was wrong with my father and brother after my mother found out…but I did what they did to me…to Shinji.
Despite the ugliness of the memory being the aftermath of their respective trauma and abuse at the hands of people older than they were, all Rumiko, at that point in her disrupted childhood, just wanted to escape the tension from within her home. She found her escape through Shinji, but she took advantage of his inability to decline her. How could he do so…when she was on top of him that day in a way that wasn't like that of a friend just playing a game?
"Rumiko-Chan?" He had asked when he awoke to see her sitting on top of him strangely, his eyes widened to the fact that he could see her small bust…and everything else that was usually covered by her dress at the time.
"You want to touch them, don't you, Shinji?" She had asked him, taking his left hand and putting it on her right bosom. "It's alright, Shinji."
Sighing underwater as she brought her head back up for air, Rumiko's darkest thought regarding that memory…was that for the first time since she found out she was pregnant with Toya…she felt good. Even if it was only for a while with someone she liked that wasn't a relative.
"What your mother called you that day isn't true, Rumiko," she remembers Yui telling her. "You were taken advantage of, and you got confused by what was done to you. It's just not something that people your age should do until you're of age later in your lives. Promise you won't let anyone else take advantage of you again now that you know better."
My mother, never understanding or willing to give others the benefit of their confusion…and Shinji's mother being understanding and willing to give others the benefit of their confusion. A heroine in her own right, and one that never needed a mask or hero name.
Meanwhile, Shinji was working on a puzzle with Shado and Toya.
"We need more puzzles like this one," said Toya, putting three pieces together.
"Why?" Shado asked him.
"We have enough heroes on puzzles, but not enough of princesses and pictures of gardens and playgrounds. Those used to be popular, and now, they're just rare."
"Yeah, that's true," Shinji agreed with Toya.
It was mainly because his previous life was anything but pleasant, with any talks of princesses or gardens, just streets and lack of bonds and… Suddenly, Shinji was looking at his left hand, feeling as though he had touched something from a while back that was like a phantom sensation. He tried opening and closing the limb, but still felt as though whatever he had touched was being experienced all over again.
What is this feeling? He wondered.
"Daddy?" Shado asked him, and he looked at her. "Are you hurt anywhere?"
"No, no, just a…just a feeling," he responded, putting his hand back on the table and reaching for the next puzzle piece. "I think I got a part of one of the flowers on the left side of the garden."
-x-
He had to admit to himself that facing those menagerie of villains was quite the exhilaration for him, but he felt different after facing that one with the hands over his body and the feeling of decay when he was touched by him. Never in his life that Gendo felt so close to death…and yet further away from the inevitable than during that battle between himself and the League of Villains. And it was really the first time he had ever used Wrath to disassemble himself to negate an instability affecting his body in such an extreme way; he had ripped apart other people and left their molecules to drift away, tortured that little girl that took his wife from him, put an end to his own son for trying to impede him, but despite his own molecules being scattered, his consciousness remained intact, connecting him to life, and pulling himself back together, free of the decay. If this was the rare phenomenon that the scientific community specializing in the study of Quirks referred to as an "Awakening", where Quirks could evolve and become more powerful, then it must've been something he experienced during his escape from prison, his massacre of those people in that neighborhood the Gaidokus lived in, and his fight against the League of Villains. His Wrath Quirk had evolved…and he was stronger because of it.
Fascinating, he thought as he raised his right arm in front of himself and felt the molecules that made up the ground around shift. A sword and shield.
From the ground, he created a sword and disc-shaped shield of metal.
Fracture, he thought, and the sword and shield cracked and crumbled. At first, I had to grab onto the ground or walls to affect my surroundings. But now…it feels as though my will has permeated every layer of my immediate vicinity. The ground, the walls, all an extension of myself. I probably don't even need to touch anyone to kill them, although…old habits really do die hard.
He lowered his hands to his sides as molecular dust rose from the ground and wrapped around his wrists, forming gauntlets that reached up to his elbows; he thought of gauntlets like the kind you would see on warriors and people wanting to look tough or badass, but he wanted his to have spikes on them.
A target, he thought as a dummy target rose from the ground in front of him. "Aaaaurgh!"
He ran towards the target with his right arm raised up, a blade forming from the molecular dust that reached his palm.
SLICE! The dummy's head fell to the ground, cut cleanly from its body…and Gendo held a longsword in his hands.
"Heh-heh-heh," he chuckled, imagining the little girl in front of him, scared to death of him…and then being slashed to pieces by him, dead on arrival.
-x-
"…There was a League of Villains," said Kensuke to the nurse that was informing him of the current situation regarding Shinji's father, "and killed them? He killed the whole league?"
"Most if not all," she explained. "We don't know how many villains were in it, but if most of them went to the fortress he made from the Suicide Forest, those are villains the world will never have to worry about again."
From what Kensuke could understand, there were as many villains as there were heroes, and each one of them had abilities that were beyond the norm of this world. Whether it was superhuman strength, blood manipulation, hair manipulation, shadow manipulation, knife generation, fire generation, telepathy, fear projection, power duplication, it appeared none of these people stood a chance against this man whose ability enabled him to tear all manner of things and creatures apart at the molecular level and put them back together if he chose to. Out of the many powers that were present in this world of heroes and villains, it seemed among the best and worst of them was molecular manipulation because of how anyone could manipulate anything at the molecular level.
If you can control molecules, there's pretty much nothing you can do, short of achieving immortality, Kensuke thought as he was given a cup of warm soup. "Thank you."
"I take your friend was relieved to hear from you?" She asked him.
"He was surprised to hear about me being here. I'm surprised that he was here after what happened to him. It's a relief that he remembers me; if I had to see him and he didn't even recognize me, I don't know how I would've reacted."
Suddenly, he started to feel weak in his arms and like a weight was put on his chest. He looked at the nurse and tried to raise his left hand up.
"Did…did… Is…soup…drugged?" He tried to question, dropping the cup to the ground and falling to his side.
"Doctor! Doctor!" The nurse yelled out. "Help!"
-x-
It was a bad idea, but it was something Ritsuko believed was possible. By injecting a steroidal solution into the Fourth Child, they could revive him from his comatose state and evaluate his brain in another synchronization test with Unit-04. So far, his vitals were a little elevated, but still within the normal parameters, which was to be expected.
This has gotta work, she thought as she saw his bound limbs twitching from the reaction the solution was causing to him.
Suddenly, the boy's body jumped up, causing a security guard to hold him down until he calmed. The machines monitoring him showed a spike in his blood pressure and heartbeat.
"…Gah…aah… Gaaaurgh!" He awoke and started yelling. "Aaaahh! Aaah! Aaaaahh!"
Ritsuko came over and injected his IV line with a sedative to stop his violent reaction to having his brain kickstarted. He stopped yelling and passed out, his vitals lowering back to their original parameters before he was revived.
Outside the room, Misato had seen the entire act and wondered if they were even in the right, trying to forcibly revive a comatose patient because of some unusual phenomenon in his brain scan. She didn't think they were in the right. How could she? They had nearly killed him and he was being revived like a car having its battery replaced and attached to jumper cables. As far as she could see, NERV was doing anything except what they should've been doing within morale.
"…Can you hear me, Aida?" She heard Ritsuko say to Kensuke. "Can you understand me?"
"…Y…ye…yes," she heard him respond, albeit weakly. "What…did you do?"
-x-
He didn't just pass out, according to the doctor examining the boy. No, Kensuke Aida had become comatose; he was fine, and then he wasn't. Fortunately, he wasn't in any other danger for the time being, but they couldn't explain why he returned to his previous state.
-x-
"…What are you doing out here?" Rumiko asked Shinji, seeing him sitting on the porch of their dorm house at night. "And why do you have a knife?"
Beside Shinji was a large knife, and he looked up to her.
"I don't really know," he responded. "After dinner and putting Shado to sleep, I just felt like I needed to sit out here. As for the knife, I suddenly felt like throwing a blade against something. Did he ever… Did I ever throw knives?"
"No…but we both developed an interest in the kunai. We…we were attracted to old things that not many people today take interest in. I once said that I wouldn't have minded living in a house whose exterior was modeled after medieval Japanese homes. After heroes, we admired stuff like that. Gardens, shrines, the samurai."
"Rumiko, I…" Shinji uttered, but then the feeling he had in his left hand from earlier returned, and his vision blurred.
Flash! He saw Rumiko, but she looked younger, smaller, and his hand was on her chest, holding her right bosom.
"Ahh…ah…ahh…" He heard her, moving up and down on top of him, and he realized that this blue dress she had been wearing was open…and he saw more of her on that day than he had expected to see in his entire life.
What seemed unusual to him, however, was her smile towards him as she had her hands on him; he had seen her smile before, but this smile was different, like she was…desperate for something, with her cheeks flushed.
"Rumiko-Chan," he heard his deceased counterpart say to her.
He thought of that one time he was in Rei's apartment, just to give her her new NERV ID card, and he saw her in a state of undress, but it was somehow overshadowed by what appeared to be another one of his deceased counterpart's memories. His memory of Rei's expressionless face, her red eyes, her pale skin, outshined by his counterpart's memory of Rumiko's expressive face, her gray eyes, her light skin. And for some reason, he couldn't find himself being disgusted by Rumiko's unexpected act on him. The way she seemed desperate for something to happen, whatever it was, the look on her face, the way she smiled at him as she had his hand on her chest.
Flash! He was back in the present, looking at her as she was now.
"Shinji?" She spoke to him.
"I…I… Did we… Never mind, it's nothing," he said back, getting up. "Just stress, probably. I've been cooped up inside all day, my mind is playing games with me."
"Shinji, do you… Do you ever…recall your past memories of our childhood?" Rumiko asked him. "Anything at all?"
"Just bits and pieces. Some of it is…confusing, though. The woman that was involved in his…in my kidnapping… I see her cutting me…but I don't feel the pain of my chest being cut into. I felt his agony, but not that knife she used on him."
"He…you wouldn't tell me anything about that time. I waited for you to tell me…but you didn't want to talk about it. So I let it go."
"He didn't know how to tell you. He had been tortured by a woman that was incapable of sympathy or remorse. He…just wanted to put it behind him after you helped find him. There was nothing to say about it."
"I just wanted…to know how he was feeling during the aftermath. We rarely spoke about anything traumatic."
"I think the less he spoke of it, the less it affected him. He didn't want to be the only thing there was to speak about. I mean, you two were in therapy for a while, right?"
"Yeah, but…it was only for a few months. Three months, at least. But we never spoke to each other about what happened. We just…watched old recordings of the acts of heroes."
Shinji picked up the knife…and it atomized in his hand; he was thinking of disposing of it because it was no longer necessary to have, and because it was dirty. Seconds later, it was reformed in his hand…in the form of a large spoon.
"When did you learn to do that?" Rumiko asks him.
"Just now," he answers. "Am I scary to you?"
"No. Why would you ask such a question?"
"I don't want to risk being compared to that man."
"There's a lot of reasons why you can't be compared to that man, Shinji. He's a violent monster…and you're a pacifist."
"I'm a what?"
"You're not a believer of things like war and violence being the right way to resolve situations. Maybe you'll dabble in some violence, but you don't enjoy causing harm to people. You don't use violence unless it's necessary to protect others from danger."
"But the scariest thing about being a hero when it comes to violence for me…what terrifies me to the bone about it all…is the feeling of being like people like that Bakugo…in the worst way."
"Which is?"
"When people with powers behave like that, when they let go of their self-control…and go all-out…they eventually admit to a dark truth: That they like it."
Rumiko shuddered at that realization. It was a scary thought to see Shinji becoming someone like that, someone that lost their restraint and succumbed to their darker impulses. But she had her doubts that Shinji would ever do something like that; he might've been a victim of abuse in the harshest of ways to hurt a young person, he was still a gentle and sensitive boy that didn't enjoy hurting people. And then, there was Shado, the only other person that feared being hurt because of the abuse she suffered at the hands of her grandfather, the only other person that had a power that could help people if she had practice and support…but was treated with disdain by a relative that had nothing but contempt.
"You don't like it, Shinji," she told him, leaning against one of the pillars on the porch. "You like it when the bad guys get theirs for their brutality, but you don't like being the person committing the brutality. You…"
"I want the good guys to win," he cut her off. "I want the heroes to save the people…and, yes, I want the bad guys to get theirs for their cruelty."
"They always get what's coming to them, one way or another. You believe in karma?"
"I believe in a price that bad guys must pay for all their wrongs, no matter how long it takes them to pay it. So…I don't really believe in karma…as much as I would probably believe in payback."
"Just because I've been one to think about it once or twice…be careful. Because they're both, as the people of the previous generations have stated numerous times, the biggest of witches when they consume you."
"I've been consumed by darkness…by fire…by acid…and even felt the sting of defeat…and still, I rise back up, because I don't want to stay down."
-x-
It wasn't what they had expected, but it was a reaction they couldn't fathom after the Fourth Child was revived from his coma. He was agitated and upset about being revived, with his nervous system sending random signals to his arms and legs…and needed to speak with Major Katsuragi. Why he wanted to speak with her? He kept to himself until she came to see him in the infirmary.
"…I guess your aim to revive him from his coma didn't exactly work," Misato chastised Ritsuko as they were in the elevator.
"It got him up," the faux-blond expressed.
"Except he's not happy that he was disturbed. It wasn't even a week, and he was wrestled from a deep sleep that was probably like paradise to him. Hell, I'd be agitated, too, if I was disturbed from a good sleep."
Ritsuko found that illogical to compare her college friend's sleeping habits to the behavior of an Evangelion pilot stirred from a coma just a few hours ago…and was angry about it.
Ding. The elevator stopped and they got off, seeing the First and Second Children in the hall of the infirmary.
"He's really off!" Asuka told Misato. "He's happy to be awake, but he's angry about it, too!"
"Pilot Aida…doesn't make sense in his vocalization," Rei added. "How can he be happy to be revived…and angry about being revived at the same time?"
"He probably had a good dream and didn't want to wake from it," Misato suggested.
She walked past them to see the Fourth Child, seeing him still restrained to the bed, his head turned to look out the window.
"You…wanted to see me?" She asked him, and he turned to face her.
"Yes," he responded, and she came over and sat down. "I saw him."
"You saw who?"
"I saw Shinji. He was alive, where he ended up. I saw the little girl, too."
"And how positive are you that you saw him?"
"For sure positive. I spoke with him. He and the people where he's at have a problem with his father over there. The guy's a monster. I mean, out of control. A complete psycho. He leveled a city I was found in and murdered a lot of people that weren't even on his hit list. He just wanted to kill his granddaughter over there."
"What are you saying?"
Kensuke told her everything he knew from his experience, everything he understood as the truth. He told Misato how Shinji had been in a world where most of the global population possessed some kind of superpower, whether it was superhuman strength, flight or a bodily mutation that gave them multiple limbs, a fifth limb or wings, and how, despite the seemingly-impossible reality of it, Shinji had a daughter along with a lady friend around his age with a child of her own. She was quiet the entire revelation, and then he told her that the people of that world were divided between heroes, villains and civilians…and Shinji was learning to be a hero to protect people while his father embraced villainy due to a one-sided vendetta against the granddaughter over an accident involving his wife, Shinji's mother, the girl's grandmother.
Misato wanted to disbelieve most of this, that Kensuke was probably thinking a dream he had was too real to let go of, but there was certainty in his tone. It seemed impossible, like a fantasy, but there had to be more to it than just a fantasy. Even if it seemed unlikely that Shinji was alive, just in another world, an alternate reality where people developed superpowers, the mere possibility that he was alive would've been enough to convince her that there was hope in seeing him again, no matter how long it took her.
"It didn't feel like a dream to you at all?" She asked him.
"No," he responded. "I felt like I was actually there. I know I was there. I know Shinji was there…and is still there."
Dead in this world, but alive in another. It didn't change the fact that they were cut off from him…and there was no way to know for sure if either NERV or Shinji could find a way for the young man to come back to this world.
But even if there were a way for him to come back, Misato had to consider, would he want to come back? Would he really want to?
To be continued…
A/N: I just want to give Misato a sliver of hope in seeing Shinji again. As for Shinji, it has to feel like the longer he's in the MHA universe, the more he recalls the memories of his deceased counterpart before he was killed by Gendo, and that latest memory involving Rumiko is to hint that there was something else between the two teenage parents besides shared and similar trauma from their childhood, something Rumiko has recalled and is not entirely happy about because of her own actions that stemmed from the disharmony in her own home that drove her to Shinji that day. And we have the Quirk-holding Gendo seemingly evolving further as the day he makes his next move draws closer. What do you think?