My Hero, Shinji Ikari

by Traitor of All Traitors

My first attempt at this crossover, so endure its potential might. First he dreamt of a little girl suffering at the hands of a man full of hate, and then he is told that the girl is someone that needs a hero, and he can be the hero she needs. Shinji ends up being taken from the life he was forced into by his father and put into a life where he needs to stand up for those in need.

21. Fear breeds Chaos!

Creation began on 08-11-22

Creation ended on 02-27-23

Neon Genesis Evangelion

My Hero, Shinji Ikari: Fear breeds Chaos!

Izuku Midoriya was a young man of several goals, one of which was to become one of the greatest heroes in the world, but at the moment, it wasn't mastering the powerful One For All Quirk he received from All Might. Nor was it this score of villains that appeared out of nowhere to attack the city he and his classmates were in. No, the biggest problem was that somehow, Shinji's daughter, Shado, was about to fall into a hole in the ground…and the only person close enough to save her was Bakugo, who was facing five villains that were too weak to stand up to him. The girl was screaming for help, for her father, for anyone to save her…but Bakugo was ignoring her in favor of facing the villains.

"Save her!" He yelled to Bakugo as he was helping Sugarman to lift debris off of some civilians. "Bakugo, save the girl!"

But Bakugo wasn't listening; he just kept hitting and blowing the lesser villains out of his way.

"Bakugo, save Shado!" Uravity, who was raising large chunks of concrete and metal off the ground to enable Tailman and Red Riot to pull out other civilians from under, told him.

Shado kept slipping into the hole.

Shinji, who could've done the task himself, was preoccupied by a villain firing an energy beam at him as he tried to defend Creati and Froppy, who were injured in a short battle against three other villains.

"Bakugo, save her!" He yelled at the boy, losing some of his face as the beam's intensity was chipping away at his durability.

But Bakugo, despite knowing that it would've changed nothing to his situation, that these villains he was beating were unable to do anything to hurt him, just kept hitting them. And then, to the horror of the young heroes, Shado fell into the hole, into the darkness, screaming until there was nothing but silence.

GASP! Midoriya awoke to the new day, drenched in sweat; it was all a dream, nothing more than a nightmare.

That was…extreme, he thought as he got up.

-x-

Shado awoke from a bad dream and looked around her room, seeing nobody was around. She didn't like that feeling, being like she was isolated from the world. Getting out of bed, she dragged her Ursa Guardian teddy with her into the hallway, seeing the door to her father's room open up and him stepping outside, seeing her in the hall.

"Are you okay, sweetie?" He asked her.

"I had a bad dream about falling," she told him.

"Same here," he told her.

He had dreamt about helping the others in Class 1-A against a horde of villains that were either dangerous or just numbering in the many, and out of the entire class of young men and women that were giving it their all to help the people caught up in the crossfire, just one classmate was being a stubborn loser with issues in the areas of trust and reliability. In the midst of facing these adversaries in the ruins of a city, his daughter was placed in danger of falling into a dark hole; nobody except Bakugo was close enough to rescue her…and he didn't. Or rather, he wouldn't; either out of choice or because he didn't see her safety as a priority, the young man that wanted to be a hero didn't do the one thing that was expected of heroes when it came to people being in danger and they were close by to do something, which was to protect them from further danger.

"Hey, did you two have a strange nightmare?" They heard Rumiko ask as she came out of her room with Toya.

"What kind of nightmare?" Shinji questions.

"The hero and villain kind."

"Yeah."

"I saw the little boy hero with the bumps on his head throwing them at some bad guys to keep them from moving," went Toya, "and your classmate with the pink face helping to rescue some people. But…that guy with the bad attitude who likes to blow things up… Everyone was telling him to save someone that was about to fall into a dark hole in the ground…and he didn't."

"Oh," Shado reacted, recognizing the aspects of the dream from her perception.

"Yeah," Shinji replied. "I told him to save the civilian, as well, but he just kept fighting these villains that weren't even a threat to him."

"He's a terrible person," Rumiko stated. "A hero that can't rescue a person in danger due to being preoccupied by a villain or two…or rather, a hero that won't even rescue one person from danger, making a conscious decision to disregard the victim…is not so much of a hero at all."

"What do you call this person, then?" Toya asks his mother. "What do you call a person that wants to be a hero…but won't rescue anyone that's in danger? Even when they know it's the right thing to do?"

-x-

"…What are y'all lookin' at?!" Bakugo demanded as he noticed his classmates looking at him like he did something wrong.

Todoroki, wishing he had something better to say, uttered, "Did you have any unusual dreams last night about a battle in a city?"

"What of it?"

"In a shared dream we were having last night, it seemed like you were the only one enjoying yourself in the fight against the villains," Hagakure told him. "You were fighting a bunch of them that were no match for you, but you just kept beating them down each time they tried to either run or surrender. Did you not hear anyone talking to you?"

"I was defeating a threat," Bakugo claimed. "It was a good dream, too!"

"No, it wasn't," went Shoji, using his left arm to generate a mouth to speak. "We all had the same dream last night, and the one thing we saw that could've gone differently is what you refrained from doing."

"And what was that?"

"There was a little girl about to fall into the darkness underground," Ashido explained, "and you were the only one close by to rescue her…except you chose not to."

"Oh, you mean that little girl who's too afraid of others to stand up for herself."

"Watch it, Bakugo," said Koda, raising his voice so the short-tempered boy heard his disgust towards him. "You're listed among the people that Shado's afraid of, and for good reason."

"Hey, I didn't lay a finger on her, even in a dream."

"No, but you didn't even try to save her from falling," Midoriya informed him. "Her father could've done so, but he was defending other civilians from a villain that was using an energy beam that kept him preoccupied. A bunch of villains that were beaten into a pulp weren't going to go anywhere without aid; you broke their arms and legs, so they couldn't get away. They couldn't even defend themselves any further from you. You could've gone over to where Shado was hanging on for dear life and give her a hand up… Why didn't you do that? Even if it was in a dream, it says something about you."

"Not every hero has to rescue people that can't rescue themselves," Bakugo claimed.

"That's horrible," said Asui. "Ribbit."

"Yeah, every hero, regardless of how they operate," added Ida, "regardless of their personal beliefs, is expected to rescue civilians from dangerous situations, no matter how insignificant it may seem to them to do so. It puts you in a better standing in the eyes of the public. To see a person in danger and do nothing when you're able to, it casts doubt on the type of hero you want to be seen as by the world. And with civilians, it's the same; if you see someone in trouble, but choose to do nothing about it, it puts you in a bad position. This whole bystander thing that people do when someone is in trouble, it's going to hurt us more than we realize."

"The bystander effect?" Mineta asks.

"When something goes wrong," Uraraka explained, "nobody does anything because they're convinced that, because there are others present, someone else will do something. How many people walking down a street see something happening that they understand to be wrong…and choose not to do anything because they have convinced themselves that someone else that saw it will do something? Twenty? Fifty? Two-hundred? Whatever the number, all it really takes is one person to see what is going on…and choose not to do anything about it."

"I probably made some rope earlier for the girl," Yaoyorozu stated, referring to what happened in the shared dream, "but then I probably ran out of lipids or something else happened."

"Be thankful Ikari's father wasn't around, even in the dream," Midoriya told them; the mere thought of having to face Gendo, knowing what he was capable of, wasn't something that any of them were trained to do yet.

"So, I didn't help the girl because I was too busy fighting villains," Bakugo expressed. "Big deal. It was only a dream. It's not like it'll actually happen."

"Maybe not," said Ojiro, "but it still says something about you. If you can't or won't save even one person that's in actual danger, then you're not a hero to them."

Everyone else in Class 1-A had to agree on this belief; in order to be a hero, you had to be able to rescue endangered civilians, no matter who they were, what their condition was or how terrified they were. To choose not to, whether out of concern of letting a villain get away or because of a thrill received from facing the enemy, you couldn't overlook the safety of the people you had to protect. But Bakugo didn't understand what all the fuss was about. It was nothing more than a dream of them being heroes; it wasn't his fault that some little girl was too terrified to do anything on her own just because she was in a dangerous environment and an equally-dangerous situation with some very dangerous people.

-x-

"…Aren't we prohibited from giving the kids coffee?" Shinji asked Rumiko as the quartet sat at the kitchen table.

"There's no caffeine in this coffee," she responded, putting pancakes on Toya's plate. "And we know better than to give caffeinated beverages to small children. They can cause aggressive behavior and crankiness."

"What's crankiness?" Shado asked as she drank her coffee from her cup.

"That's another way of saying that someone becomes upset about something," Shinji explained to her. "If you get only a few hours of sleep or sleep too much and you get disturbed, you can get cranky because you feel like you didn't get enough rest."

"Oh. Rumiko, don't you get cranky sometimes?"

"Yes…and no."

"I don't understand."

"Rumiko is… She gets a different sort of cranky sometimes," Shinji stated.

"Because she's older like you?" Toya questioned.

"Yes."

They were still the parents and had to be responsible for teaching their children whatever they could, but they didn't need to explain Rumiko's monthly visitor until they were a little older. Plus, they had other things to worry about.

"Daddy, you look unhappy," Shado noticed that her father seemed bothered by something.

"Huh? Oh, it's nothing, Shado. Just a…an old feeling in my left hand."

"What kind of feeling?"

"Uh…like I touched something that leaves an unpleasant feeling to the senses."

"Like a…like dirty clothes?"

"Yeah, kinda like that, sweetie."

Shado then drank her caffeine-free coffee and thought she could taste something sweet in the warm beverage.

"Why does this taste sweet?" She asked the teen parents.

"It's French vanilla-flavored," Rumiko explained.

"Oh. It's nice."

"Mommy, don't you and Shinji have to do something today if the school will let you?" Toya asked his mother.

"Yeah, but that's not likely to happen…unless they send one of the teachers over to explain what Shinji and I need to know about the legal use of Quirks in society," she replied to her son.

"What does that mean?" Shado wanted to know. "Don't you two use your Quirks here and at school already?"

"If we're to become heroes one day or find employment opportunities where we can use our Quirks to help others, there's a list of rules and regulations that govern the use of Quirks in society. Heroes and kids your father and my own age have to have a license from the government that serves as a form of permission for them to use their Quirks to help people when in a bad situation. People that use their Quirks in public get into trouble with the government if they don't have permission or just want to hurt others. But there are exceptions to this restriction on Quirk usage; it's not against the law to use your Quirk in situations of self-defense, like someone acting to protect someone else from a mugger or a building on fire, so long as they know what it is they're capable of and there's no sign of help coming from a hero."

"Like…that day you were able to get away from him to get help? Or when Daddy got me away from him and ran across the buildings in the city and then faced him to protect me?"

Rumiko and Shinji looked at one another and the teenage mother nodded her head in the positive to the little girl's questions.

"Yeah, Shado, like what your father and I did that day," she replied. "I got Toya and myself away to get help when I saw an opportunity to do so…and Shinji used his Quirk for the first time in his life to protect you from that awful man that was holding us against our will. We didn't need permission to do any of what we did because it was all in self-defense, protecting others from danger."

"Whether or not we can become heroes in the future," Shinji told Shado, "or we find jobs when we're eligible for employment, we still need to have permission from the government to use our Quirks to help people. Rumiko could become a tracker, someone that can find someone else. I could become a doctor or an architect if my Quirk has qualities in medical aid or arts and crafts. Uraraka is trying to get her Quirk public usage legalized so she can help her parents in the future. And Kaminari, he can use his Quirk outside of being a hero by providing power for a city's power grid in case of a blackout if he chose because his Quirk is electric-based."

"And people with electricity-based Quirks are advantageous for generating power for people to use during outages."

-x-

"…So, Class 1-A all had the same dream last night," said Aizawa to All Might during the lunch period. "It was a shared dream of a situation involving the heroes and villains."

"But what happened in the dream that has most of them casting doubt on young Bakugo?" All Might asked, having no clue why the class had this degree of disappointment in Bakugo.

"During the situation they were in, he was instructed to save a civilian in danger of falling into a hole in the ground…and he chose not to, letting the civilian fall."

"Well, that doesn't help those that want to be heroes for letting civilians suffer when they shouldn't. Any clue as to why?"

"He was facing some villains that, according to several of the classmates that saw him, weren't even a threat after they were left with broken limbs and bruises. He could've saved the civilian, but he just chose to continue beating them into a pulp. They kept telling him to go save the person…but he refused."

"When you compare his previous actions with his entry exams, there is a pattern of seeking conflict of which to take part in. Bakugo is more focused on facing the villains than actually saving civilians placed in danger by the villains. While this is also true for other combat-effective heroes, it's what separates them from the heroes that try to rescue others from danger."

Although All Might could understand and tolerate Bakugo's drive to be a hero, it seemed difficult to see him being the kind of hero that would walk away from a fight to save someone in need when there were other heroes that could handle the situation while he could perform a rescue with others that needed more hands. Whether or not this stemmed from his early childhood or was just a factor in his personality that made him believe that doing so was a waste of his time and effectiveness as a hero, it would need to be worked on if he ever hoped to become an effective hero to the people.

"Speaking of civilians, you look like you've seen an uptick in your popularity ever since Ikari's daughter unintentionally restored you with her Quirk," Aizawa told All Might.

"I didn't become a hero for popularity," he responded, opening and closing his right hand a few times. "While I'm indebted to little Shado for this unexpected renewal, there's no drive for glory. Just a drive to do what's right."

"What do you think are the chances of Ikari and Gaidoku surviving out there in the world should they make it to adulthood?"

"Honestly? Their road is likely to be difficult, but they take it one day at a time. It'll probably be tolerable for both if they stick together as they have for the last few years of their lives. They'll likely need each other more than ever when Ikari's father is back in Tartarus."

Aizawa found this tough to fathom, but wasn't far from believing it to be the truth. But with Gendo just waiting for the opportunity to get his would-be revenge on his only grandchild, it was difficult to fathom how this quartet of two teens and their toddlers were supposed to get through this period of difficulty when they were hardly able to go anywhere beyond the dorms right now because of this psychotic man that could rearrange matter at the molecular level.

-x-

"…So, the Fourth Child is on reserve until another Evangelion is made or Unit-03 is repaired," Ritsuko informed Misato as they walked down to Central Dogma.

"It's probably better to send him home," Misato responded; with no Eva for him to pilot, Kensuke Aida was of no particular use to NERV, and after nearly getting killed and being awakened from his coma, which led to the revelation that he saw Shinji in another place, alive and well, it was probably for the best that he didn't have anything to do with them.

"Now, you can't possibly believe that he saw Shinji wherever he was. It had to be nothing more than a dream, a figment of his imagination due to the fact that one of his friends was dead."

"Except I do believe him. Even you yourself said so; the Twelfth Angel's shadow-like body was likely connected to another dimension. Suppose that Shinji ended up where Aida met him before he was revived from his brief coma, meaning he's still alive, but just in another dimension beyond this one? Suppose he's actually someplace where Second Impact never happened and where there are no Angels or Evas, where the majority of the global population has some sort of superhuman ability and can go down one of two paths: Hero or villain? How do you question something like that? How do you even try to discredit that?"

"Even if such a thing were possible, it's not like we can just…contact him or find a way to him; we don't have any way of communicating between different dimensions. And even if we could, that could take years."

Meanwhile, Kensuke Aida was going through his physical evaluation. It actually bored the Hell out of him to have his vision and hearing checked, his knees made to jerk forward, even just to have his breathing checked. He would rather go back to being comatose than to wonder over whether or not he would ever pilot the Eva a second time; at least then, he'd probably be able to see Shinji again.

-x-

"…Uh, how long have you been doing push-ups, Rumiko?" Shinji asked, noticing that his friend was in her room working out.

"Twenty minutes," she answered, and then turned over onto her back and began doing crunches. "Rotating between one-hundred of each."

"Isn't that…exhausting?"

"I'm bored out of my mind. Where are Toya and Shado?"

"Downstairs asleep for the next hour-and-a-half."

Rumiko stopped on her fifteenth crunch and looked up at him.

"You can't get that dream out of your head, either?" She asked him, and he looked at her like she had read his mind.

"I don't trust Bakugo if he can't be a reasonable or reliable person, but if he can let go of his pride for once and actually save someone, I'd be open to list people that chose the path of the heroic…who didn't do what he did."

Rumiko spread her legs and responded, "I wouldn't be surprised now if he wasn't the first person that chose the path of the heroic and made a conscious decision not to rescue people the proper way. When I imagine him being instructed to evacuate the sick and elderly, I just…see him yelling at people to move, not taking into consideration that they can't move quickly or are injured or suffer from some other impairment. It does, however, make me question what it is that he wants to be when it comes to being a hero…and if he can even face someone like your father should a day like that ever come to pass."

"I wouldn't want to see someone like Bakugo face my father, even if it was to protect Shado. Even if their personalities were comparable, I can see the difference in both conviction and versatility between them. My father is a man driven by vengeance and his heart full of hatred. Bakugo is just someone driven by arrogance and his heart full of contempt. He wouldn't let anyone that wanted to be a hero get in his way of his would-be vengeance. Nobody."

"I can't see Bakugo even hurting your father. I see only the opposite; your father hurting him. He always had a tendency to want to leave someone feeling humiliated in a way that made them looking like they could've prevailed if they had taken him out ahead of time instead of taking their time."

"He hurts Bakugo in what way?"

"Like how I was informed you defeated him that one time in Sapporo; he targets the Quirk factor and neutralizes it so that it doesn't hinder him any further. In Bakugo's case, it would be his hands; if he has no hands…"

"He can't hurt anyone with his Quirk. Just like we thought he couldn't hurt anybody else when he lost his hands."

Rumiko then noticed Shinji opening and closing his left hand again, like a nervous tick or something. It bothered her a little because she thought of…that day.

"Why do you do that?" She asks him. "Your hand, I mean. You open and close it, like you're anticipating something to happen. Why do you do that?"

"It's…a complicated issue," he responds. "Sometime ago, I was harmed…and sometime ago, something happened that I…don't know how to explain. It feels like I'm split between two lifetimes; there's the life that I had…and the one that I have. Both lives are real to me, but…you don't know which one is the one you…want to adhere to."

"I honestly wouldn't know for sure which life appeals to your heart. In one, you were…alone in the world because your father left you shortly after the death of your mother, made to operate a monstrosity made by people for a paramilitary group, was never informed about any of what was going on until after you arrived to this Tokyo-3 to see your father, who decided there and then to exploit you against a bunch of monsters you didn't know about, basically sent you on suicide runs every time, with no guarantee of you coming back alive or in one piece…and in another, you're my best friend and fellow survivor of traumatic events, the young father of a little girl that looks up to you, and you possess a superpower that most can only dream of having…and part of a world where people can be heroes if they wanted to. How hard can it be to choose which one makes sense?"

"One promises struggle, the other promises…more hurt. And who doesn't want to be hurt any more by someone or something that doesn't really care about how you feel?"

Rumiko sighs again and thinks back to that day.

"Rumiko-Chan?" Shinji had spoke when he saw her astride him with her dress undone and his left hand on her right bosom, courtesy of her taking said hand and putting it there.

"You want to touch them, don't you, Shinji?" She had asked him, holding his hand against her bosom. "It's alright, Shinji."

She had lost track of time in that moment; nothing else had mattered when she felt, in that moment of repressed memories and feelings she didn't want to think about, better than she had been in the days prior to finding out she was pregnant by either her father or brother. What Shinji said about who didn't want to be hurt any more than they had been already by someone or something that didn't care about their feelings, it made her feel like she had hurt him that day she went to see him. They had both suffered…and she went and added more suffering to what he had experienced at the hands of a woman that decided to assault him.

The one thing I never got to do after that day, she thought with regret, was tell him that I was sorry for what I did to him.

"Uh, Rumiko?" Shinji spoke. "When we were little… I mean…over four years ago… Did you ever wear a blue dress?"

"Yes, why?"

"Just a memory I'm trying to make sense of a little. I…I see you in a blue dress…and there's this place in the countryside. I see this small house with this room that feels like it's outside, but it also feels like it's inside because there's a breeze coming in and shade from the sunlight. It felt like a dream from long ago."

"Really? A dream?"

"Nothing that…makes sense to me right now. But there was something else I recalled a while ago. It was…in the night…in the dark. I…heard your voice. You were screaming."

"I was screaming?"

"Did something like that…actually happen?"

Rumiko looks away from him for a moment…and then returns her gaze to him.

"Yeah," she answers him. "I was screaming late at night. I was in pain because my water had broken an hour after we had gone to sleep."

"Oh."

"That was actually the first time your father actually did something helpful with his Wrath Quirk, too. Painful, though…but helpful."

"What did he do that was helpful?"

"Saved my life."

"He what?"

"It was after Toya was born at the hospital. The doctors told me that because of my age and development at the time, I was at risk of bleeding out. My mother, who was also there, was informed of this risk…and still made me go through with my pregnancy. She was confident that I would survive it. Heartbreaker. I nearly died that night."

Shinji looked at her like he had just learned something horrible that he had no knowledge of.

"Nobody with a healing-based Quirk was available?" He asks.

"Not everyone with a Quirk that can speed up one's regeneration is as reliable as Recovery Girl's or is affiliated with the medical community, Shinji," she explains. "What's more, the only other doctor with a healing-based Quirk was unavailable because of a traffic accident on another side of Sapporo. It was your mother that suggested that your father use his Quirk on me."

"My mother?"

"Desperation to save a life. I was already unconscious, so I don't remember what they were saying at the time, only the fact that I felt like screaming again because of the new degree of pain I was feeling, except that I didn't have a mouth to scream with at the time. And I still don't know which pain was worse for me: The birth of my son when I was barely eleven…or your father reducing me to pieces and putting me back together again. At least I stopped bleeding and was expected to recover enough to leave two days after they took me off the painkillers."

"That's…rough."

"I honestly don't know when I started to hate my mother, but I must've started shortly after Toya was born. She didn't really come to see me while I was at the hospital; she wanted to see her grandson…or her stepson. I still don't know…and I don't want to know. You must think I'm a terrible person, not wanting to know who my son's father is."

"No, I don't think you are a terrible person. The identity of the culprit is your business; if you don't want to know, it's nobody else's business to want to know. The only terrible person I know is that man…among other people I don't really trust. Aaurgh!"

He grabs his head with his left hand as he leans against the doorway.

Flash! He sees Rumiko again, astride him on the floor, her desperate smile as she holds him.

"Shinji," he hears her say.

Flash! He sees himself, laying on the floor with his shorts halfway down on his legs, his expression one of shock and confusion…as Rumiko redressed herself and turned to face him.

"Shinji…oh…" Her voice sounded full of woe as she looked down at him. "Oh, no."

And then…she wasn't there, anymore. He saw himself sitting back up, looking around the room.

"Did…did I dream that?" He heard himself wonder. "Did I dream about Rumiko-Chan just a moment ago?"

Flash! He was back in the present, in front of Rumiko.

Or rather, he was under Rumiko, her expression one of concern.

"H…how long was I out?" He asks her.

"Not even two minutes after you fell to the floor," she reveals. "What happened?"

"I thought it was a dream. He thought it was a dream. He didn't know for sure."

Shinji then felt his left hand holding something and looked to where it was, seeing that it was on Rumiko's chest, holding her bosom.

"Oh!" He gasps as he lets go of her and she gets up off of him. "I…I, I…I'm sorry, Rumiko. I didn't mean that."

"No, I'm sorry," she responds.

"But…it wasn't your fault. I…"

"No," she cuts him off, her left hand clenched over her breast. "I mean… I'm sorry about that day, Shinji. I couldn't tell him, you, after what I did. That day you were on the veranda. It wasn't a dream. I was there with you."

Shinji got up and looked at her, confused.

"What happened that day?" He wants to know.

"My parents were arguing. More like my mother was fussing about what my father had done to me all over again. The constant yelling and my lack of understanding what had happened to cause their disputes at the time had made it so much that I couldn't stand it, being in that house. So I went to your house in the countryside, to see you. You were asleep…and I crossed a line with you. One I didn't even expect to cross…with you at all."

"So, then…your desperate smile that I saw on your face…"

"I was trying to escape from the tension I felt from my parents' arguing all the time."

"Did he, I…pass out or anything?"

"You said my name once…and you were silent the rest of the time. I don't know how long we were… How long I was… Maybe it was for an hour…or even just a few minutes. It was really the only time I ever recall feeling…good."

She looked at him and saw his expression was one of confusion.

"If you didn't think I was a terrible person then, you must think I'm a terrible person now," she tells him. "I feel terrible for what I did to you. What my father and brother did to me, I echoed on you that day. I hurt the one person I never once thought of wanting to hurt at all. I can't get any worse than that."

She looks away from him, towards her window, unsure of what Shinji thought of her. Did he hate her? Was he disgusted with her? Could he stand the sight of her after discovering that she had committed a crime against him? She wasn't sure…and she was afraid to find out…but wanted to know.

"It actually explains why he felt the way he felt that day," she heard him say. "He didn't dislike it, what you did to him, with him."

She turns to face him, seeing him leaning against the wall.

"In his defense, that time he spent with you that day was…many times better than what that woman did to him after kidnapping him; she was cruel and looking to scar people in more ways than one, but with you, he saw someone who was…compassionate and not some kind of…tormentor. He couldn't say anything about it to anyone because he didn't want to risk losing his best friend. His only regret that day…was you disappearing before he could talk to you…and then the next day came and…and…"

"We never brought it up," she tells him. "Either of us. We just…didn't talk about it."

"Can we talk about it now, please?" He asks her.

"I…would like that."

-x-

There was something to be said about Gendo's Wrath Quirk that sometimes impressed even himself. Because of his understanding of matter and his ability to manipulate it to his needs, he found himself able to address the needs of his body's energy requirements. As matter was all around, and it could be converted into energy, he used Wrath to break down the matter around himself and absorbed it into his hands and mouth. His limited access to food and water no longer an impediment, he felt his strength return as he rested within his fortress.

"I grow tired of waiting for these fools to make up their minds," he utters. "I will deal with the brat myself if they can't decide to live with the consequences of such a choice."

-x-

The hero course assignment of the day was a new wrinkle as 1-A was instructed on Ground Beta. The task was this: Four of them would take on the role of civilians placed in dangerous situations that required the aid of a hero while four more would serve as villains putting them in dangerous for the rest of the class to rescue and defend against, respectively. This was to test each student's ability to effectively to handle situations where civilians were in jeopardy and needed to be pulled from the danger as soon as possible. But the twist in this assignment: Midoriya, Yaoyorozu, Ida and Shoji would be playing the villains, fighting the heroes that would need to protect the civilians.

"Why do I feel like this has something to do with that dream we had last night?" Ashido questioned as she and Aoyama were walking down the street to look for the faux-civilians.

"I think it does have something to do with it," he agreed with her. "If being a hero means leaving a fight to rescue a civilian in danger, I'll drop everything to save the civilian, even if it means letting the villain flee."

"Protect the people, no matter what may happen."

As they were walking, from up on the rooftop of one of the buildings, Midoriya watched them; his role as the villain was to ensure that they were unable to rescue the civilians in the time set to rescue them, but he had to wait until they showed up where the civilians were being kept.

"Where are you hiding?!" He heard Bakugo yell, and was reminded that within the dream they had, he was the most aggressive and unyielding of them against the villains. "Come out and face me, you cowards!"

If he can't rescue even one civilian, he thought as he ran across the rooftops, how can he hope to be a hero?

-x-

"…Just answer me one thing about that idiot, nerd," Asuka told Kensuke as he was about to enter the elevator to go home for the day, getting his attention.

"What do you want to know?" He responded.

"When you saw him in this other world where people have superpowers…is he trying to be a hero? For real?"

"Yes…but not for any of the reasons anyone would choose to be one. He wants to be able to protect his daughter and his friends over there. Or at least this Rumiko Gaidoku that he lives with while at this school where people train to become heroes."

"And she's a friend of his over there?"

"It seems they have known each other since they were young…or she knew the Shinji that died."

"And she sees him as the same as the one she knew?"

"Is that jealousy I'm hearing from you?"

"Hardly! Why would anyone want anything to do with him, of all people?"

"Asuka Langley Soryu… Rumiko Gaidoku and Shinji Ikari, regardless of whether he's from this universe or from over there, are the only two people in existence that have gone through trauma so vile and unforgivably cruel that they're scarred by more than just their past and tormentors. Shinji has a little girl whose mother, a nameless and wicked stranger could care less about who she has harmed because she was looking for a payout…and Ms. Gaidoku has a little boy whose father was either her own father or her brother, neither of whom she can ever talk to."

"Why? Her mother kicked her out?"

"No, because Shinji's father in that universe up and murdered her parents and brother, along with a bunch of other people that weren't even a threat to him. She and her son lived with Shinji and his family for two years as guests of his mother's…and another two years as his father's prisoners. By the time she managed to escape from where he kept them all, the Shinji she knew had been killed by his father and she just barely made it to a police station with bullet holes in her back because security shot at her and her son."

"And she's supposed to have some sort of superhuman ability?"

"They call them Quirks, and not every one of them is the same. Hers is just a tracking-based ability; she can look for people to a degree, but at her core, she's as human as we are, meaning she's vulnerable to even a bullet to her head."

"And what of that idiot? What's his…Quirk?"

"Increased physical abilities, some degree of levitation, some form of regeneration that allows him to break down matter and absorb it into himself, and that's only what he's discovered so far. People in that universe can inherit Quirks genetically, so some of what he can do is due to what he got from his old man."

"And he wants to be a hero?"

"To the three people he currently has in his life over there."

"Why can't the people over there just send him back to this world?"

"I doubt they could. And I doubt that Shinji will want to come back; from what he and Rumiko told me, Shado, his daughter, is dependent upon him and is her only relative that isn't dead, in prison or has a vendetta against her for something that wasn't her fault because she was a baby when it happened."

"It sounds like their problems are their problems and he should just…"

"I'd like to see you say that to him, in front of his kid, sharing your belief on what he should do over what he has chosen to do in his current situation over there."

"He was here first, so he has an obligation to do what is expected of him here."

"Even if it means leaving a little girl without her father?"

"Even if it means that."

"You're crazy."

"What?!"

"You're crazy! You can't just expect Shinji to…walk away just because you think he has to… If it's between piloting the Eva against the Angels and looking after that girl his old man wants to kill because he blames her for what happened to his mother when she was a baby… I have to believe that he'll choose the little girl over the Eva every time."

The elevator closes and Kensuke is away from the redhead to ponder over what he revealed to her. It was just ridiculous, what she believed that Shinji had to do over what he was doing in that alternate reality he was living in where the Evas and Angels were nonexistent. He had to believe that Shinji wouldn't walk away from Shado just because some people believed that he had a previous obligation when it was unlikely that he could even return due to his situation. When the elevator reaches the top floor, he walks out and away from the NERV base.

"Pilot Aida," he heard Rei's voice down the hall.

"Oh, Rei," he responded. "What is it?"

"Ikari-Kun," she spoke, "how was he when you saw him?"

-x-

Shado awoke from her nap, feeling a little better, and looked around the living room area of the dorm house to find that she and Toya were still on the floor where they fell asleep. It felt quieter around the place than it usually did as she got up off the floor.

"…You're the reason I want to be a hero, Shinji," she heard Rumiko's voice in the kitchen. "You see the potential in others to be capable of helping others. You see their Quirks as possessing the power to change how people feel towards the people that want to do more than what society sees or doesn't see."

"I thought All Might was the reason you wanted to be a hero," she heard her father say.

"All Might, like the other heroes across the country, is a hero to the people…and while he is a hero to me…he's not the hero that sits beside me, that makes me smile…and makes me want to be a better person."

Shado enters the kitchen and sees the two at the table, and they turn to see her.

"Rise and shine, sleepyhead," her father tells her.

"I…don't like it when you call me that, Daddy," she responds, not really angry for being called a sleepyhead, but unsettled as she came over to him.

"Ahh…" They heard Toya groan as he got up soon after. "What a weird dream."

Rumiko got up from the table and went to the living room to see how he was doing after sleeping for a while.

"Did you have any good dreams while you were asleep, Shado?" Shinji asks.

"Un-uh," she replies. "I saw the boy that yells a lot trying to face…him…and he lost."

"What do you mean?"

"He grabbed the boy by his arms when he tried to hurt him…and he took his arms away and kicked him to the ground."

"That's horrible."

"And then he said something."

"What did he say?"

"He said…that anyone that can't stand up for someone else doesn't deserve to be a hero, and that the boy that yells a lot was someone that couldn't stand up for anyone, that he only knows how to hurt others. I believed him. The boy that yells a lot…wants to be a hero, but is…like him. Angry all the time."

"Bakugo is just… He's just one of those people that believes in violence being the solution when nothing else works because nobody else tries anything else."

"But…heroes are supposed to save people, aren't they? He doesn't seem to like doing that, saving people."

"Until he can save someone in need of a hero…and not be so angry about such a responsibility that comes with being a hero…he just wants to be one for the wrong reasons instead of the right ones that make people heroes."

Shado nods her head in understanding and then asks a question.

"Why is it quiet here?" She asks.

"Nobody's yelling or doing anything intense," he answers.

-x-

Bakugo failed at the test because of Midoriya keeping him away from the civilians, which included Mineta and Uraraka, who were bound and gagged to prevent them from getting away from the scene of conflict. It wasn't something he was proud of, but the test showed something about him that needed to be worked on; his propensity towards conflict when civilians were endangered had to be worked on if he was to protect civilians.

"How are you supposed to save these helpless civilians when you can't defeat me?!" Midoriya had asked him during the mock battle.

It was the first time he had to play the role of a villain and say something of the sort to Bakugo. And honestly, he didn't like being the villain, keeping the people from being saved; it felt like that time with the sludge villain that had captured Bakugo, only more intense.

"Ouch," went Mineta as he heard the results of the test; he was fortunate because he was playing the civilian, but to hear that Bakugo failed because he couldn't rescue the civilians within the set time limit against Midoriya made him wonder how Bakugo could, if at all, come back from this.

Fortunately, he had a second chance to make up for this failure by learning from his mistakes and trying to succeed against a different faux-villain: Ida, who was to be moving the civilian away from him at every turn, creating difficulty for the hero.

Sero, who would be the civilian this time, had to wonder how Bakugo was going to learn from his mistakes when the first time around, he was unable to save Mineta due to being unable to best Midoriya because he was stronger than before. And then, he had to consider a different alternative over Bakugo.

I think I'm better off with Ikari or Gaidoku over Bakugo trying to save me, he believed as the test began. At least they're not likely to yell at me.

-x-

"Is it just me," said Toya to Shado as they were eating lunch, "or do our parents seem happier talking to each other?"

Shado looked over at the stove where Shinji and Rumiko stood, seeing that they did seem to be at ease talking to each other a little more.

"Mmm-umm," she mumbled her response, unsure.

Crash. Something not inside the building made a sound, alerting the teenage parents to the possibility of danger being present.

"What was that?" Rumiko asked.

"No idea," Shinji responds.

Crash. Something else made a sound, coming from outside. It sounded as though it was from far away from the school.

Shado and Toya worried and got under the table while their parents went to the front door to see what was going on.

"It's probably nothing," Shinji tells them as he Rumiko step outside. Please, let it be nothing.

Just a criminal trying to steal something, Rumiko thinks, or a media mob trying to get through the entrance. The worst of the most pathetic are the ones we can deal with right now. Just let it be someone who's an idiot dealing with the usual nonsense that people go through, like heartache or an illness.

They saw smoke in the sky from afar.

"Uh, Shinji," Rumiko speaks, "please, tell me that's just a fire."

Before he could say anything, the sounds of footsteps and people talking got his attention as they turned to see some students coming from the main building.

"What's going on?" He asked them, hoping one would answer.

"Not sure," a girl with buck teeth responded. "It could be an earthquake."

"No, earthquakes don't make coordinated movements," a male student with silver, alien-looking tentacles for hair that reached down to his shoulders said. "It's gotta be a villain attacking the town nearby."

Boom! Another sound like an explosion came, and they could see what looked like a small building flying in the air.

"Oh, my!" Rumiko gasped.

"My patience wears thin, people," they heard a malicious voice over the loudspeakers, and Shinji recognized his father's voice. "I'm guessing more bloodshed will make you realize that the only way to save yourselves is to hand over that little bitch that isn't worth saving. Give her up and what's left of this little town lives. Refuse and I kill whoever's left living in it. Try and stop me…and you join them."

"Your old man's a sadistic son of a bitch," a male student with bat wings for ears expressed to Shinji. "He's going this far over a little girl?"

"I say give him what he wants," a female student with black and red spots all over her face and arms went. "If he has her, he'll stop, right?"

Rumiko backed away from the students and towards the dorm house.

"Would you really do that?" Shinji questioned. "Would you hand over a little girl to a guy that's so full of hatred that he would kill her for something that was nothing more than an accident?"

"If it's between stopping him and more unnecessary manslaughter," a guy with a cannon on his back declared, "we should hand over the girl."

Shinji's body started to glow bluish-purple as his veins darkened, reacting to the threat on his daughter's life because of these students.

"Don't even try it," he warned them as he stepped back towards the dorm. "He's just gonna keep killing until he gets what he came for…and he can't have my daughter."

"This is crazy! He's just one guy!" Someone in the background yelled. "Get him out of the way and get the kid!"

"I'd like to see you try that," they heard one of the hero teachers say to the students as Midnight came over to quell the panic, letting her Somnambulist spread across the air. "Heroes don't sacrifice children to stop villains. We take out the villains."

The students in front started to feel drowsy and backed away before they fell.

"Go back inside and lock the door," she told Shinji, who reverted back to his previous state.

"Thank you, Ms. Midnight," he praised her and went back inside the dorm.

-x-

Tucking the small device back into his coat, Gendo, floating on a slab of debris over this town situated at the foot of the school he resented for making sure he would never be a hero in his youth, pondered how many heroes would try to stand in his way before they realized that he had become far more than he ever thought possible. He took out a series of villains that were considered the worst within the nation, without any need for assistance, one of them actually tried to kill him, during the process of which he leveled up and became strong enough to dismember each of them down to their atoms and use them to redecorate his hideaway. And he felt the exhilaration that came with victory. These heroes had looked down upon him and were protecting that murderous child he should've killed long ago; letting her live was his mistake, something he owned up to, and now he had to fix it.

You want to protect the girl that brings misery to those she gets close to, then you're as hopeless as you're pathetic, he thought as he raised his arms up and caused two buildings to levitate off the ground, just as three veins protruded from his head and neck to remind him of his oxygen intake requirements. "Aaaah!"

-x-

Her father wouldn't let her look out the windows, but Shado feared something was wrong and that her grandfather was nearby, wanting to pay an unwanted visit. He was hurting people because he wanted to hurt her, and he was trying to get the people at U.A. to hand her over to him…just so that he could finish what he intended to do to her what felt like a long time ago. Even though there were heroes here to protect the students and her father and Toya and his mother, Shado feared that Gendo would not be easy to stop because of his anger towards her; it was always that way he looked at her whenever he used his Wrath Quirk on her, ripping her up and putting her back together again, leaving her in pain and in a puddle of her blood that he didn't put back inside her.

"Shado, you're glowing," Toya utters, and Shado looks at her hands, seeing that her body was aglow. "Shado?"

Oh, no, she thought, afraid right now, more than she had been that night her father took her away from that horrible place underground. No, no, no! Please! Not again!

Toya recognized this as her Quirk acting up in response to her emotions. The girl was becoming worried because of her grandfather's presence and it was affecting her tolerance around other people. She needed to be calmed before something happened that could spell trouble.

"Mommy! Shinji!" He calls out to their parents.

Shinji came over and picked Shado up.

"It's okay, Shado," he tries to assure her. "He's not going to hurt you again. He's not going to touch you ever again."

Strands of Shado's hair stuck up, but she felt safe in her father's arms, so they lowered back down. However, she still felt the fear that came with Gendo's hatred towards her; her body still aglow…and she felt something inside her that was worse than what she had felt before.

Crash! Something outside the dorm house made a loud noise, but Shinji had to do his best to ignore it because Shado needed to be calmed.

"I know you can hear me, Shinji," he hears his father's voice over the speakers. "Tell me, how many of these innocent lives have to be sacrificed to keep your bastard mistake from facing retribution? What is the number? And is she truly worth protecting? Are you willing to let people die for her?"

"Where does he get off asking questions like that when it's an unfair load?" Rumiko questions.

"Block him out," Shinji tells her as he sits on the couch. "He's not here and he does not matter."

But outside, as Gendo made two buildings smash into each other, Shinji was left to feel the bitterness of how far his father was willing to go to get revenge. He hated his father for doing these horrible and unreasonable acts, and he refused to look the other way. Even if he had been an abused child in his past, that he ended up in one bad home after another, Shinji couldn't see his father as a victim when he behaved this way. Not when this was all a choice he made for the sake of getting even with what he felt was the world being cruel to him.

To be continued…

A/N: This turned out a little different from what I had initially expected. One of the only good things to transpire from this was the conversation between Shinji and Rumiko; they needed to clear the air and Rumiko needed to hear a revelation that only Shinji could tell her. Gendo's powers have progressed in such a short time and now he seems more dangerous to people if he can do what he did at the end of this chapter, but this is why we have heroes nearby. And poor Shado; there's something else going on with her that you have yet to see and know about.