Creation began on 06-12-24

Creation ended on 09-23-24

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Demon Slayer Evangelion: A nightmare you can't wake from

Oh, how there were days when Misato wished that this was all just nothing more than a bad dream that they were all trying to wake up from. The Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Angels, the loss of Shinji, the nightmarish victory of Unit-02, all of it. Except for perhaps Gendo's lost leg; that much, the cold man brought upon himself. But everything else, she just wished that it was all a bad dream she wanted to wake up from.

"I don't know how bad this is, but the Committee was not happy about the aftermath with Unit-02," Kaji had informed her. "They're afraid that it's become unstable."

At first, it was concern over Unit-01, but that Evangelion was no longer around. Now, concern seemed to shift to Unit-02 after the devastation with the Fourteenth Angel. Just what was going on here and why was NERV in the thick of it? With Unit-02 in indefinite stasis, it left their number of Evas to just Unit-00…and after the Unit-03 incident with the Fourth Child, there were no other attempts to recruit any other students from the Tokyo-3 junior high. There had been one attempt to try and recruit Toji Suzuhara, who refused outright.

But the worst part of it all right now was that Misato was looking to have Asuka sent back to Germany for her own protection; as the life of the pilots were secondary to the use of the Evas, NERV seemed to have no regard for the safety of the people they were putting in harm's way each time these Angels appeared and attacked, and the fact that Shinji was gone was a slap in the face of their reality by the powers that be.

Oh, how she really wished this was all nothing more than a bad dream.

-x-

Getting away from Warabihime after receiving an answer from her on the possible whereabouts of Hinatsuru, Shinji walks down the hallway and into his assigned room, where he finds Tanjiro and Inosuke there.

"You look like you've seen a ghost, Shinami," Tanjiro tells him, using his alias.

"I just got a bad vibe from the oiran of this house," he tells them, closing the door behind himself to give them privacy. "Warabihime. It wasn't just the mere sight of her, but the sound of her voice, the way she was looking at me, the chill I got under my skin… It was like I was facing a nightmare I couldn't fathom…and wanted to wake from."

"Were you able to get anything from her on the whereabouts of Hinatsuru?" Inosuke asks him.

"She claimed to have not seen her in the last few days…but I believe she lied to me."

"Care to elaborate on why you think this?"

"I didn't like the way she answered me. 'I haven't seen that disgrace in days. Don't ask me about her again.' She acts as though everything and everyone, no matter how small or large, annoys her to no end. I fail to understand how anyone, especially a woman that takes a profession such as this, can act like something as simple as a question is something they don't wish to be bothered with by responding to."

"Some people are just not interested in conversations."

"Well, this seems like the wrong place to be in if you don't want to talk to anyone or have anyone talk to you. Then again, this is an entertainment district, and I know next to nothing on how any business is conducted here…besides what Death explained to us."

"There aren't any districts like this one where you're from?" Tanjiro asks Shinji.

"I can't answer that…because I've never been to one like this before," he replies.

Despite learning that Shinji was from a world different from their own, separated by more than a century of progression…and personal intellectual growth being stunted by a lack of general knowledge, Tanjiro and Inosuke had to be reminded that Shinji, unlike them, was raw and learning as much as they were learning as they progressed in the Demon Slayer Corps. Still, it was a bizarre thing to know, that he was from a future where Japan was in the Heisei Era, but after meeting his father, who seemed to be a major enemy of sorts to the young man, Shinji was forced to confront giant monsters that the people of that time referred to as Angels, the complete opposite of the demons, using giant robots that forced him to feel pain each time he engaged them. Neither of them felt that they could ever do what he did before he ended up here.

Shinji, of course, didn't blame them. Nobody should've done any of what he had been forced to do. And if he was fortunate enough to return to his world one day, or was forced to continue the rest of his life in this one, a permanent guest of the Taishō Era, the early years of the Twentieth Century…he would have to try to make it so that the cons of his past, his future-yet-to-come, don't reverberate in this one.

Click. All three Demon Slayers turn to the box that held their swords and see the one Shinji possesses, the one based off his Evangelion, fall out over Tanjiro's sword.

"It's done that twice now," Inosuke informs Shinji, who looks at him and Tanjiro with suspicion.

"What do you mean?" He asks him.

"Two minutes ago, it fell out of the box," Tanjiro states, "by itself. I put it back in, then three minutes after, it fell out for a second time. Just what is with that sword?"

"An unfortunate cross I must bear."

"You make it sound as though it's a cursed sword."

"For someone like me, it kind of is. But I can't get rid of it…and Death is disgusted by it."

"We've noticed," Inosuke reveals.

"I used it during Final Selection. It's similar to a Nichirin Sword, but because of how it came to be, it carries a considerable measure of danger if I were to ever use its actual power, which I have no idea how to. But it doesn't change the fact that it's a danger to everyone around me if it ever ended up in the wrong hands."

"A sword like that could be useful against demons."

"Not at the cost of something much bigger than what we do each day of our lives."

"You mean, like…like the end of the world?" Tanjiro questions.

"Yeah."

"Who would make such a sword like that?"

"Someone that, despite having lived in just a fraction of the world, held no true respect for it or the people that live in it."

-x-

Even with Unit-02 fully repaired, the suspension it was under made using it unlikely in the event of another Angel attack…and with the request to have the Second Child sent back to Germany underway, the continued operation against the Angels was dire.

"I don't understand why you're trying to have me sent back to Germany, Misato," Asuka says to her guardian.

"For your protection," Misato informs her as they walk down the hallway in the Geo-Front. "The last attack was not even a battle. It was a nightmare. Even if you survive, there's no guarantee that you'll walk away like before. Last time, you almost didn't walk away at all."

"You sure it wasn't a simple fluke?"

"You were absorbed into Unit-02 and reduced to pulp for a month. It turns out a similar thing happened with Unit-01 over ten years ago."

"And what was the outcome?"

"The original pilot ended up in the same situation as you, only they didn't come back. The operation to rescue the pilot ended in failure."

"And who was the original pilot?"

"Yui Ikari."

"Who?"

"Yui Ikari. She was Shinji's mother. It turns out that she was the brains behind the Evangelions. She did an experiment with Unit-01 one day and died. But she wasn't declared dead until after the operation to retrieve her failed. It's probably something Shinji didn't have any memory of."

That's when Asuka slowly starts to realize something; if it was Shinji's mother that spearheaded the research and development of the Evangelions, then that mean that it was also his mother that indirectly caused the later experiment her own mother took part that drove her crazy. Maybe if the Evas were never made during that time, her mother would still be alive…and sane.

"It was…that idiot's mother that made the Evas?" She asks Misato. "She was the driving force behind them? How they work? What they were intended for in the beginning? All of it?"

"More or less," Misato answers her.

"That's messed up. His mother performs an experiment, dies, and he likely knows nothing of it at all. My mother did a similar experiment, probably trying to do it better, ends up crazy and later dies. Why make something like that when it seems to carry a death sentence for some?"

"Asuka, the Eva seems to carry a death sentence for anyone involved with it, whether directly or indirectly. Whether they live or not. And with Unit-02 suspended, there's no reason for you to pilot it until further notice…or at all. And personally, I'd rather you didn't continue piloting. If something like this happens a second time, you may not come back from it at all."

"Walk away…and save your soul," Asuka suddenly recalls what the pale-skinned Shinji had told her before she awoke from her slumber. "The choice is yours in the end. Nobody is going to make it for you."

She reaches up for her head and leans against a wall beside her.

"Even if I did leave," she tells Misato, "who would be left to defend against the Angels? The First Child? She's next to useless with her Eva. What, you're going to use that autopilot again? It didn't exactly pan out the first time."

Misato doesn't need to be reminded of how poorly the Dummy System performed against Unit-03. While the Angel's defeat was considered a success, most within NERV viewed its first activation as an omen because Unit-00 nearly killed the former Fourth Child. Former because NERV had made two separate attempts to try and persuade Hikari Horaki to return to pilot for them again, only to be refused when it was revealed that the girl started having nightmares of that awful event.

"You can't expect me to do that again when the first time was almost my last time," Hikari had told Misato. "And the fact that it was all because of an autopilot you had made that was used by Ikari's father… Please…I can't go through that again. I don't want to go through that again. Just leave me alone."

And while it wasn't easy for Misato to accept, but she understands how discomforting it is for someone to go through something as traumatic as piloting an Eva just once and surviving unscathed. As far as she knows, after doing an investigative search of the Marduk Institute, everyone in Class 2-A is listed as a pilot candidate for the Evangelion program, but it seems that none of them, not even their families, most of whom have some affiliation with NERV, have any knowledge of this. This meant that Horaki's selection wasn't a random choice, just a decision made at the convenience of whoever runs the operation of choosing who will pilot the Evas. And worse was that she couldn't tell Asuka about this; there was no telling how she'd react to learn that her friend was handpicked by NERV to pilot the Eva and almost killed.

"I just remembered something in a dream I had…or I thought it was a dream," she hears Asuka say to her.

"What about?" She asks her.

"I saw Shinji in Tokyo-3. He was dressed in some strange uniform that…he kind of looks nice wearing, with a haori that was red, blue and purple. He had these two swords on him, one of which looked like Unit-01…and he said something about it that he was upset about."

"What did he say about it?"

Asuka thinks hard about it, recalling the conversation she had with Shinji, about how the Eva was not meant to protect the human race at all, that his parents paid a high price for it, and how there would not be a time where he could begin to forgive for having made it.

"He said…that it was once the Eva…and he wasn't proud of having it. He was upset about some things he had discovered, supposedly from that other version of himself that was paler than others. And he told me to walk away from piloting the Eva because it's not meant to save anyone from anything but the very opposite, to condemn them. He seemed to believe in that notion…and was upset that there were some people that made the Eva with that goal in mind."

Misato finds the very idea that the Eva being meant to condemn the human race instead of protecting it to be a very, very unsure belief without proof. But since Shinji wasn't here to confirm or deny any of what Asuka was saying, what other other was there for her to either believe or disbelieve? And it was a matter of whether or not Asuka believed in any of it.

"But do you believe it?" She asks her. "Do you believe that the Eva is not meant to protect us, but condemn us?"

Asuka looks at her, a sense of conflict in her over whether or not she believes in what she thinks she witnessed while having an out-of-body experience of the worst sort.

-x-

What was there to say about Warabihime? That was quite the conundrum of the Entertainment District, day or night. While among the most sought-after oirans by men of means, Shinji, Tanjiro and Inosuke have discovered that there wasn't really much to say about the woman beyond the fact that she was attractive and men would pay anything to spend time with her, something that Shinji, simply due to how he lived before he ended up getting displaced, finds confusing.

"…The more beautiful a woman is, the more men will desire her," the house mother explains.

"But…shouldn't there be more to what appeals to a man that seeks a woman besides mere beauty?" He asks her. "Shouldn't a woman also be smart, able to speak her mind…or just be well-liked as a person instead of a…object of desire?"

Omitsu looks at the person she believes to be a girl and chuckles.

"You're not like most girls, are you?" She asks him.

"I get that a lot," Shinji replies.

"That's not a bad thing, though."

"Oh, it isn't?"

"No, but most men these days here…are just not interested in anything else other than how beautiful a woman is."

Shinji sighs, reminding himself that, in a way, the three women from his past, represented by his haori that Death and Mako procured for him, were attractive to him…and each one of them, in their own way, an object of something more than simple desire.

"But now that I think about it," he hears her say as she opens a window to let in the daylight, "I think there's something you should know about this district so that you're careful. It's been years since odd things occurred in a previous house, but people still talk in whispers about a courtesan of dark desires. She was beautiful…but her behavior was vile. She would cock her head to the side with her nose pointing up, but only when something angered her…and then the next morning, someone turned up dead."

"Did anyone ever suspect that it was probably a courtesan?"

"Some did, but the courtesan would disappear, never to be seen again…and then a new one would appear in a different house…but they would demonstrate the same behavior. The same quirks. The same attitude…and the same type of name."

"The same type of name?"

"Each courtesan's name always ended in 'hime'…as though they believed themselves to be princesses, to be respected at all times by everyone. Except that…no, it couldn't be."

"Please, whatever it is, just say it. Whatever it is."

Omitsu then sighs and looks at Shinji.

"I just realized that Warabihime," she says, "is similar to the previous oirans that behaved in the same manner going back over dozens of years. Over fifty years. At first, I thought it was just a coincidence, and that the rumors and stories I've heard as a child were just made-up tales. But now… If it is true, then…if Warabihime is like the previous oirans from other houses in the past…or worse, if she's the same one…then she'd be over fifty years old by now. Over a century old. There's no way she could be, is there?"

"I have heard tales of some people living to be over a hundred years old…but that's a miracle of simply what is known as the human condition. People grow old, but they don't live forever. They can't live forever. But if a person is not just a person, but something else altogether, something that could live longer, unchanged by the hands of time…that would explain things."

"Like a demon?"

"Yes. But why would one…choose to live in the same place, the same district, for over a century, knowing that they invite danger to themselves by doing so? Why not just leave and avoid being caught? Unless it's not a fear of being caught…but a choice."

"A choice, you say?"

"Anyone can choose to venture out into the world…or just stay in one place. To those that stay in one place, they likely prefer familiar settings, sticking to what is known as a comfort zone. If your comfort zone has all that you feel you need, there would be no reason or excuse to want to leave it. An entertainment district would be the same for a demon of the same mindset…and likely hiding as a courtesan would be the be the best disguise. Who would think to question a woman that lives and works in the entertainment district?"

"But what if it's just a coincidence?"

"Omitsu-San…one coincidence after another…becomes too much to ignore or believe to be nothing but rumors and whispers in the darkness. Permission to leave the house to obtain something, please."

"Permission granted."

Shinji bows his head to the house mother and then gets up to leave.

-x-

Zenitsu had to admit, even if only to himself, that Death seemed more capable than any Demon Slayer he had known by far, and this was someone that looked like someone else, only less than alive…and more dead, and proficient with a sickle. The way that he moves in the confined space of the room of the wisteria house, it was as though he really was a ghost, only…

Death, with his right arm extended outward with his kama's blade almost making contact with a dummy's head, turns to face Zenitsu, startling him.

"Ooh!" Zenitsu panics.

"Shinji is on his way here," Death expresses.

"Huh?!"

"How can you tell he's coming here?" Uzui questions the horseman.

"Shinji has a scent that is different from everyone else's here. He has that stench of loneliness and desire for the presence of others as he goes through life. For some, loneliness is not a choice…but a curse needing to be broken."

In less than a minute, the Sound Hashira and Zenitsu were greeted by Shinji, who was fortunate to still have his disguise on; he practically passed for a girl that was athletic enough to avoid most men.

"Were you able to find out anything?" Uzui asks him.

"Maybe," Shinji responds, "but I need wisteria incense to confirm a suspicion."

"What kind of suspicion?" Zenitsu asks him.

"The oiran of the house, Warabihime, might be a demon. I need wisteria incense to fill up the house to confirm."

"Of course, if she is a demon, the wisteria will affect her," Uzui understands.

"Exactly."

One of the men of the establishment brought Shinji the requested incense and the Demon Slayer bows in gratitude before leaving.

"Stop, Shinji," Death says, impeding Shinji from leaving with the required item. "There's a stray scent on you."

The Horseman of Death approaches him and raises his left arm up to smell the sleeve…and his pale flesh turns two shades of dark around his face as he steps back from him.

"Someone at that house reeks to the heavens," Death tells Shinji. "Be careful. Be ready."

Shinji nods as he runs off back to the house as Death's face returns to normal.

"You think he was in the presence of a demon?" Uzui questions him as he turns to sit down on the floor.

"He was," he answers the Sound Hashira, "but whether or not it is this Warabihime woman…I can't say until I meet her myself. We find this demon, there's a good chance that we'll find your wives alive. That is the primary reason you sought out aid, is it not?"

Uzui nods, but Zenitsu frowns in remembrance that Uzui has three wives, something he finds ridiculous for any man to have achieved at any course in their lives.

"What are you pondering, Death?" Mako asks his twin as he floats high in the air above them.

"Whether or not…I'll need to make good on my promise to the village that holds my Nichirin arsenal for me to gather."

"So, those blades are really for your use?" Uzui questions out of curiosity, prompting Death to look at him.

"Even those that walk the path of the damned will use weapons forged to dispel the darkness of the night so that the day can bestow light," he states.

"Even when I can't understand what you mean by that," went Zenitsu, "I can guess that you mean business when there's a demon present."

"Believe it," Death tells him.

-x-

"What do we really know about the Eva?" Misato keeps repeating the question Asuka had asked in response to her own question of whether or not she believes in what Shinji had claimed about the Eva being dangerous. "What do we really know about the Eva?"

Other than being copies of the First Angel found in Antarctica, Misato thinks as she stands in front of Unit-02, I know next to nothing about what NERV intends to do with the Evas after the Angels are defeated. What is NERV going to do with the Evas after the Angels are gone?

"Hey, Katsuragi," she hears her old flame say to her, and she turns to face him. "Whoa. You seem tense about something."

"I'm having a hard time contemplating what to do about Asuka," she tells him.

"What do you mean?"

"I want to send her back to Germany, but Ritsuko is insisting that she stay here. She claims that we can't afford to lose Asuka, and we almost did lose her because the salvaging operation going south. And Asuka doesn't believe half the things that we know about dealing with the Angels; her out-of-body experience left her suspecting that she saw Shinji wherever he ended up, and not knowing whether or not he'll return in the future…and claims that he will never pilot the Eva if he does return."

"Maybe she was just dreaming the entire time, Katsuragi."

"Most of the time, I find Asuka's dreams, any dreams of hers, in fact, to be akin to violent fantasies, and when they usually involve Shinji in them, they're always with her harming him for some reason or another."

"No sense of romance between them?"

"The chances of those two ever having romantic affections for one another…are slim to practically nonexistent."

"Ouch."

"Yeah. I don't see that happening in the near future…if at all."

"So…what will you do?"

"I'm… It's probably against my better judgment, but I'm sending Asuka back to Germany."

-x-

"…I must say, Shinami," the house mother says to Shinji upon letting the incense sticks burn around the house, "I didn't expect you to be the incense type."

Shinji gives a small smile and replies, "Who doesn't like incense? They smell beautiful and leave a feeling of bliss."

Crash! They hear a crashing sound and one of the younger girls runs into the room they are in.

"Wah!" She cries, falling to her front on the floor. "Warabihime is upset!"

"What happened?" Shinji asks as he helps her up to a sitting position.

"She doesn't like the smell of the incense sticks, and then she attacked Sumiko!"

Shinji gets up and runs up the stairs to make sure Tanjiro was still alive.

Crash! A nearby wall was shattered…and Shinji could see that Inosuke was in his usual ware, boar mask and everything, abandoning his Inoko disguise, rising up to his feet with his serrated swords brandished at the ready.

"You were spot-on, newbie," he says to Shinji. "We got ourselves a demon in this house."

Before Shinji could say anything, Inosuke jumps up and just narrowly avoids what look like sashes moving on their own from within the room with the broken walls. He quickly runs to his room where he stashed his Demon Slayer uniform and swords; with the oiran now exposed as a demon, there was no longer a need to hold back. Entering the room, he finds Nezuko out of her box, helping an injured Tanjiro suit up.

"I take it you know?" Tanjiro asks him.

"Very," Shinji responds, seeing his haori and uniform to his left, and goes over to change. "Time to work."

"Hmm!" Nezuko grunts.

-x-

The Sound Hashira had to admit that when it came to hearing, Death was capable of hearing things that even he had to strain his ears in order to hear, but was impressed to see that, when it came to seeing other people still among the living, capable of feats only those with a heartbeat could produce with practice and skill, the horseman was limited to abilities he was already capable of and showed room to improve.

"Death can only adapt and evolve by learning from the living," Mako had told Uzui when Death explained that he knew nothing of Sound Breathing.

Death could learn the Breathing Styles, but because his lungs were useless, he couldn't properly teach them to those that could learn them.

"And because I killed Zenitsu temporarily, I acquired his knowledge of Thunder Breathing, enabling me to perform the moves he can," Death had revealed in his ability to absorb and assimilate knowledge from his dead victims.

Or, in the case of Zenitsu, temporarily dead victims.

"My limited association with the Demon Slayer Corps has afforded me access to the wealth of knowledge possessed by the former Hashiras and Cultivators. I wouldn't consider myself a unique individual that is capable of learning many things, but I am the only one that currently walks between the land of the living and the realm of the dead that chooses to protect the innocent of the living…and dealing in death and judgment to those who are condemned to the dead. For as long as I am able, I am the Demon Slayer Corps' ally in your struggle to eliminate the demons and their king, Muzan Kibutsuji."

It reminds Uzui of the time he was told that Death had paid a visit to the Ubuyashiki family, albeit not of his own volition, and upon meeting with the master, he decided, then and there, to offer his services to the Demon Slayer Corps. But because he wasn't there at the time, he wasn't sure how this Death, the Endgame just up and decided to join them of his own volition over four years ago. But ever since that day, there has been a boon to his service to their cause, such as having the aid of a member of the dead whose abilities practically made him similar to a demon, but with the added benefit of moving about in daylight. And now, as they made their way to the Kyogoku House as the district slowly came to life at night, Uzui feels like he's in for a flashy fight against a demon with the aid of a dead man that has a past of shame and penance with the power to backup his threats to end your life if you cross him.

CRASH! They hear an explosion of wood shattering across the side of the building and see a young man in a haori, wielding a sword, flying backwards in the air, pursued by…a very, very indecent woman of sorts with several sashes protruding from her back.

"Well," Death utters as he brandishes his kama and Zenitsu, who had to be dragged by him because he wanted to flee while feeling the option to do so was available, "it looks like the nightmare just started, and we're in for a long night."

"Oh, why did you have to say that?!" Zenitsu whines, wanting to flee.

"Cooperate, Zenitsu, and you'll likely survive to ascend to the next level of your Demon Slayer ranking. There is no better teacher right now than the experience achieved by facing a foe that knows no mercy."

"Aaah!"

To be continued…

A/N: Everything will change evermore drastically in the next chapter. Look forward to it in the future, providing the current instability of real life returns to stability.