Creation began on 02-24-22
Creation ended on 03-10-22
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Modern Day Legend of a Rage-filled Anchor: Acceptance of Death, Acceptance of Rebirth
It was just so quiet around him as he laid there. The silence was really…really depressing. He tried to lift an arm up, but his body failed to respond to his will. He tried to move his mouth, but it was the same there, as well.
Why…why can't I move? He wondered, trying to at least move his eyes, finding that they were the only thing he could move. Why…what was I doing just a while ago?
He thought back to where he was before his current predicament, recalling the royal thrashing he got from his father, who wielded the artificially-created hagoromo Kagami used Misato's doppelgänger to create like a thug with a gun that packed a punch…and left his body in a state of injury that was worse that before when he had that thing in his hand that made him a monster. Try as he could, he couldn't move even the pinky finger on his left hand. It was a pitiful state he was in, laying there, unable to move, to get back on his feet, to keep his father from going after his friends and family.
This…this can't be…how it ends for them, he thought, trying to move his arms and legs, despite his failure to do so. I have to protect them from Father. He'll kill them without thinking twice about it if it means getting what he wants as a secondary objective if he can't have what he wants as a primary one. Come on, Shinji. The stakes are high in this. The highest they have ever been for you since you ended up here. Get up and do something to help keep them safe.
But still, try as he might, his body refused to obey his will. The nerves and muscles, his blood and bones, they were all broken, leaving him armed with just his mind. This was worse than when he had to pilot the Evangelion; the enemy wasn't some monster, but his father, who had condemned himself to being a monster, out to destroy, maybe not the human race, but everyone Shinji was affiliated with…and all because he refused to accept that something so powerful in the right hands, the hands it was meant to be in could help do the impossible…would never be his…and all because only one of them could meet a prerequisite that the other would never meet because of other conditions. But Shinji was reminded of a crucial difference between then and now; he didn't want to pilot the Eva because he wasn't properly informed ahead of time, properly educated ahead of time, and his father refused to acknowledge his incompetence in simply telling him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth back then…and now…in a situation where he wanted to do something to help others, he couldn't do anything due to being physically impaired by his father, his enemy, an inescapable truth.
"Shinji…I love you," he recalled Asuka saying him.
"I believe I could love you for you, Shinji Ikari," Rei's voice echoed to him.
"Shinji…I am sorry I wasn't there for you when you needed me," his mother expressed.
"Shinji…Shinji…Shinji…" He heard Aya, Yuuhi, Toya and the others speak his name, saying things that were either trivial or something at the time they were spoken…but all mattering to him when they did.
I don't know if my voice can be heard by you right now, he thought, trying to reach out to Frenzia and his deceased counterpart, but if you can hear me…Shinji…Frenzia…I really need your help right now. My life is a mess that I have tried to straighten out, just to meet the expectations of others without having any of my own. I was isolated from people before I went to see my father…and then I met people that believed they were protecting the world…but I didn't want to be some savior of the human race. Who would want that for themselves? It'd be the type of life only suited for make-believe, a form of escapism. But I didn't want to be a hero. I just wanted to be accepted by my father back then. Except we're from two different walks of life…and won't ever be able to understand each other if all he cares about is getting what he wants, not caring that he'll hurt others in the process. I don't want to lose anyone here because of him. Not Mother, not Aya…not even Asuka and Ayanami. If I have to give up my future to do what I want later in life to protect them…I'll do it. I'll be the hero if it means they get to live free of people like him. I'll do as needed of me, go wherever I need to be… All I ask…is that I can protect them above all else. I love them…and would give up whatever possibilities of my own future if it means keeping them safe and enabling them to live out their days in peace. I'd even give up whatever thoughts of divinity I could dream of…because I'm not special because of some irresponsible crud my father claims is what protects the people. I'm just…me. We're not special because of something others claim we can do. We're just special of how we live, who we choose to be with, who we choose to devote ourselves to…and I want to devote my life, however long it is, to my friends and family. I want… I want a life here with all of them, no matter what it takes for me to achieve it.
He then felt his vision dimming, most likely a sign that he was dying, something he didn't want to do yet. It couldn't end like this, not when he had everything and everyone to live for, to want to have to live for. He wanted to see Asuka and Rei again, to see his mother and grandmother, to make sure that Aya and Aki got back to their lives before the craziness with Ceres started, to just…live.
Being a hero sometimes means giving up everything, he realized, including the life you want to have. Nobody is perfect. The world isn't perfect. It's messy, it's unpredictable, but it's all we have, and we have to do whatever we can just to live in it.
Suddenly, he found himself standing in the wood again, on the path that was lined with lanterns, but something was different. It was…brighter, a blue sky could be seen above the trees, not like before because of the fog and mist. In front of him was Frenzia, dressed in a different yukata and with much shorter hair, barely reaching past her back, and her expression was positive and full of awe. And beside himself was his deceased counterpart, dressed in an orange shirt and blue shorts.
"It actually took many generations of Ikari men to get this far," Frenzia went, "but I gotta hand it to you both. You're impressive and beyond what I initially thought of you."
"Frenzia?" Shinji, upon realizing that his body was no longer in such a maimed state, at least in his mind, spoke up. "What's going on?"
"You passed your greatest test," she explained. "You're willing to die to protect the others from someone that is a threat to yourself…and yet you still desire to live once you have resolved the matter. Your willingness to give up your life…but at the same time wanting to have a future…entitles you both to inherit my mana."
"But," said the deceased Shinji, "I killed myself to protect Asuka from myself. How can that make me worthy of the Ikari family's mana?"
"When consumed by rage, especially rage without conscious, you become unrecognizable to yourself…but you still possess enough conscience to know what needs to be done to protect those that matter to you. Even in death, your soul, however maimed, however seared by the shame of your choice end, is still redeemable by the fact that you chose to save someone you love more than yourself. So, both of you have met the requirement to obtain my hagoromo. And now…go do what has to be done…and live again."
A light shone behind Frenzia as she stepped out of the way on the path, revealing the glowing sphere that was her mana when separated from her.
"Are you sure about this?" They both asked her.
"Yes," she replied. "It used to be mine. And now it's yours. You'll be alright."
They took a step forward, followed by another step…and another. The light the mana gave off was warm and welcoming. There was a promise of a future behind its warmth, but these two, from different worlds, from different lifetimes, they had to be strong enough to accept that future and make it their own.
Power has always been a cruel desire to obtain by people for generations, thought the deceased Shinji, but what worth is power if it can't be used to do good for others?
What value is any power, whether it's derived from science and technology or ancient beings from other worlds that choose to belong to the one you have always related to…if those that have it choose to hide it away instead of helping others with it? The living Shinji wondered. Those that want it only for the sake of wanting…
Are just plain greedy and obsessive. But to have it…and use it to aid the ones in need…
Can do more than they thought possible than those that decided they weren't worth helping.
The light shone brighter than before…and it felt like the two young men that were on the path towards it were fading from each other's side.
We save them…
We save ourselves…
We live for them…
And we live for ourselves.
And then…they were gone. Even Frenzia had disappeared from the wood, but with a glad smile and a heart full of hope for the both of them.
-x-
Yui had seen men full of ambition and men full of rage, but never had she seen a man like this version of Gendo, who was full of disgust and arrogance. Even as she was grateful that Yuuhi and Toya were still in one piece because they were pulled away from Gendo by Aki and Chidori before he could shoot them, it felt like they were facing a demon swollen with hate. The ugliest and most violent.
"I honestly don't know what he saw in any of you that made him think he could have a life here," Gendo spoke up as he aimed his gun at the red-eyed Asuka, "but none of you are worth anything, living or dead."
"Do you treat everyone around you like they're expendable?" Yui asked him. "Do you truly believe that you're the only one that matters?"
"When the world is coming to an end, people will either accept their inevitable demise or do whatever it takes to survive. No one is exempt from this truth."
"And whose world is ending?" Rei asked him. "Ours or yours? If it's your, then you have more or less escaped the end by abandoning it to come here, but you treat the people here with contempt. It's like you hate us, and you can't even say why."
"None of you are worth living for. You sided with that brat, and he chose you over returning to the other world and doing as I needed of him to do until he was no longer useful. What right did he have to refuse me? He had no right…and none of you had any right to influence his decisions. In a sense, you're all at fault for being in his life when I got here to take what was rightfully mine, what was supposed to be mine."
"Except Frenzia's hagoromo can only go to an Ikari male belonging to a fifth or sixth generation in the bloodline that has the Rage-filled Anchor," Asuka told him. "Shinji belonged to a fifth generation in the bloodline and had the Rage-filled Anchor, meaning he met the prerequisite for inheriting Frenzia's hagoromo. He was blood. You may have been his father…but you would never be an Ikari. You will never be entitled to anything that will not and can not belong to you."
Gendo aimed the gun at her, but Asuka didn't back down. No, she looked at him with her red eyes that some people cursed her for having, wanting him to know that when he killed her, her ghost would haunt him for eternity.
"You kill my sister," went Rei, "you better make damn sure you kill me before I kill you. You took Shinji from us, and you need to answer for that."
"He should've given me what was mine instead of keeping it from me. He brought his fate upon himself, just as each of you brought this upon yourselves."
"Then do it, you psychotic prick," Yui called him. "Do it! What's stopping you?! Be the judge, jury and executioner you chose to be the second you showed your ugly face here!"
Gendo aimed his gun at her chest…and all Yui could think about that was once her greatest pain-filled memory…which had been reduced to a memory that hurt because of who it pertained to.
"Aaaurgh!" She recalled yelling in agony during her labor, followed by the relief she felt after Shinji was born. "Aah…"
A part of her wanted to die that day, feeling like she was going to be split in half below the waist. And then…there was a measure of relief when it all ended for her, followed by a wailing from her newborn son. It was only in this moment where she felt her life was going to end, that she was going to pay the total price for her negligence towards Shinji, did she remember the first awful thing she did to her son right after he was born: It was often a common fact that new mothers hold their children for the first time after they were born…but Yui didn't do that after Shinji was born; she just let the nurse take him away while she slipped into a blissful reprieve from her new responsibilities. She was thinking right now that she deserved this, to pay for her negligence and lack of a maternal bond towards her son.
Asuka thought back to when she and Shinji first met, just hoping that they would be together again when her time was up.
"Hello, I'm Asuka," she had greeted him. "Nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you, too, Asuka. I'm Shinji."
"Want to be friends?"
"Okay."
Rei thought of the aftermath of knowing of Shinji's death, and how she felt when she couldn't just say what was on her mind.
Why him? She had wondered as she and Asuka were walking home after school one day. Why'd he have to pay the darkest of prices for something as wondrous as love?
And back then, her greatest regret was not telling the boy how she felt about him, despite knowing that he was in love with her sister, which was a mutual affection.
Gendo was set to pull the trigger.
"It can be cruel, poetic or blind," a voice uttered out, and Gendo turned to look around them, "but when it's denied, it's your violence you may find."
It was a voice that none of them could deny not recognizing.
"Give up, Father? The answer is justice. Justice is sometimes cruel, poetic or just plain blind. But when justice is denied, such as what you've done not being penalized, it is the violence of others that you'll find. My violence. Our violence. And you will not escape it."
Gendo turned away from the three ladies and looked around the room they were in. It felt like he was in the room with them, but he wasn't visible.
"Where are you?" He demanded, looking at the Mikage twins and Kagami. "Show yourself!"
"I'm here. We're there. Everywhere and nowhere. I am in the shadows. We are in the light."
Gendo was finding this speech to be confusing; the brat kept rotating between singular and plural languages, as if he couldn't make up his mind about whatever was going on. He turned back to the three women in his life that weren't the ones from their past…and decided to just put an end to the redhead that more than likely had a thing for the brat. He aimed his gun at her head and pulled the trigger.
Bang! The bullet fired…but nothing happened.
Asuka, scared beyond her natural wits, saw the bullet had left the chamber of the man's gun…but it stopped an inch from the weapon, as if something kept it from reaching her.
"Hey, Father," they heard the voice again, this time much closer than before. "I'm right behind you now."
Gendo turned around…and was immediately grabbed by a pair of hands that were the strongest he had experienced, pulling him down to meet the eyes of an enraged man.
-x-
"…I can't believe he waits until then to come back," Asuka expressed as she, Misato and Rei saw Shinji grab his father, forcing the man to drop his gun to the floor.
"His father just tried to murder him," said Misato as they took in the way Shinji looked now. "I think he's entitled to be a little dramatic or whatever it is to do whatever it is he's going to do now. I think anyone would."
In the mirror, Shinji Ikari, was no longer dressed in his usual attire that was a white shirt or black pants. He was wearing a black, blue, red and purple hakama, with a pair of large, angelic wings behind his back, but not protruding from his body. They were being manifested from a sphere of light behind his back. His face had markings of the same coloration as his hakama, covering his cheeks and forehead, and his eyes had an extra iris in them, making it look like he had four eyes (A/N: Think Ahmanent's eyes from The Mummy after she summoned Set) in his head. And flowing around his arms like some sort of scarf or serpent was a swirl of energy, forming a triquetra pattern.
"I killed you!" Gendo yelled at him, and then was thrown by Shinji, who didn't even grunt as he turned and threw him aside, smashing him through a wall.
"Yeah, you did," they heard Shinji respond, "and you made it possible for me to claim what has been passed down without ownership for generations in the Ikari family, the one thing you can never have…and it has ensured two things that will happen."
Gendo got up as Shinji levitated over to where he had fallen and looked up at him.
"The Ikari hagoromo?" He questioned. "You have it now?!"
"Have it, wearing it, infused with it," they heard Shinji say. "It was my birthright…and now it's just mine. You can't have it, Father."
They saw Gendo's face contort into an inhuman expression of pure rage towards his son.
"YOU WILL HAND IT OVER TO ME, BOY!" They heard him yell, lunging towards Shinji.
But Shinji raised his hands up and Gendo slammed into a wall of energy and was sent flying backwards through another wall. Then he floated over to the hole in the wall and saw Gendo rise back up. The man's wrists and sleeves were torn and his face had cuts covering his cheeks and forehead, making him seem more like a monster of a man.
"You're fighting for the impossible, Father," Shinji told him as his body and clothing started regenerating. "That hagoromo is flawed because you're flawed. It's degrading and taking you with it. You have no idea what'll it do you."
"It's doing well so far," his father responded, looking good as new now. "Hand over that hagoromo now, or else I will make you regret your stubbornness!"
-x-
"That was Ikari?" Kagami questioned as he and the others had seen Shinji go deal with his father, confused by the way he looked.
"I guess he finally got his family's hagoromo that belonged to Frenzia," went Misato.
"So, he now has the power of his ancestress?" Gladys suspected.
"Yeah," Yui answers. "He's…more or less…unbound by whatever limitations he once exhibited before he obtained the hagoromo. He can do…whatever he wants now."
"A god incarnate," Yuuhi utters.
Kagami couldn't believe this. Not only had Shinji threatened to harm him if he crossed the line, only to come back later and keep him from being murdered by his deranged father, but now he had a hagoromo that afforded him god-like powers. The boy had become…practically everything he had tried to do for the human race, looking for ways to improve the future of the world beyond the here and now. Even if they were to salvage any of their collected samples from the C-Genomes, even with more funding from his superiors, there was no way to match what Shinji had become; this kid was on another level beyond them. He went from fourteen-year-old mortal to deity in less than three months after finding out about him, and that was a feat that deserved praise from those that hadn't anticipated that much from him.
BLAST! Another explosion could be heard and Alec looked for active cameras on his tablet.
"This is insane," he uttered. "They're both wielding a hagoromo, and yet the young man is clearly stronger than his father. He just transmuted a sword from the debris around them."
Asuka, Rei and Yui came over to look and were amazed by Shinji brandishing a katana in front of his old man, who seemed to have no imagination beyond the use of a gun due to its modernity over the medieval era of weapons. While it seemed like Gendo had the upper hand, it was easy to see that Shinji was in control; Shinji didn't let his emotions cloud his actions, but Gendo was full of rage and obsession. There was no need to guess who would win, even when Shinji pulled his sword beside himself.
"It looks like he wants his father to surrender," Asuka suspected.
"What happens if his father refuses to surrender?" Rei suggested.
"Shinji will do whatever he chooses to do to get rid of him," Yui stated; she wasn't worried that Shinji was going to die again, but she was worried that he'd be unrecognizable when this was over. Shinji, don't let power corrupt you. Just do what needs to be done and walk away.
They watched as Gendo shot at Shinji again, but Shinji deflected the bullet and then charged towards his father, bringing up his sword and swinging it across the air.
Slice! Shinji had to have moved with such unearthly grace and speed to inflict such a grievous wound on Gendo, as the man was cut in his waist and sent falling to the ground.
"Incredible," Kagami utters.
-x-
It was unbelievable. Shinji had never felt such power like this before. It was almost intoxicating, but he kept his mind clear of distractions and focused on this one objective in front of him. His sword strike on his father was enough to disable, but not enough to murder him. He could see the power of the artificial hagoromo at work, regenerating Gendo, but the speed of the regeneration was slower now.
"Father," he spoke to him as he came over. "I can't be manipulated by you or anyone else, anymore. I'm done with being manipulated by those with ambitions and agendas that are horrible and unforgivable…and I'm through with you trying to decide my every move in life. I will offer you a choice, and then you must decide. Give up your hagoromo and let me return you to the other dimension, I will do all that I can to restore the planet before returning to this dimension, you get to live the rest of your days without any further repercussions…or…I can take the hagoromo from you…and you will not like what happens if it comes to that."
Gendo frowned and fumed over their power struggle. The hagoromo he possessed just didn't compare to the one Shinji had, and he was flaunting it in front of him now. He knew the boy was trouble right from the start, and he refused to be condemned by his idle threats.
"You petulant brat," he called Shinji, and ran towards him. "I'll tear you apart with my bare hands if it means getting rid of you!"
Shinji sighs and unleashes a burst of light at his father, sealing his fate.
FLASH! Gendo, who had seen a hallway around himself and Shinji, suddenly found himself in a strange, forest-like setting, lined with lanterns on the trees and a foot of mist at his feet.
"What?" He went, confused. "What is this place?"
"My domain," he heard Shinji say, appearing in front of him. "Our domain."
On his left side was…the other Shinji, dressed exactly like he was, like a mirror reflecting his image. They both looked at Gendo with conviction.
"You thought you could bully your way to getting what you want from us when we didn't have anything to offer the likes of you," the Shinji on the left expressed. "But you can't have everything you want, no matter who you try to bully. You can't treat us like crap whenever you feel like you're not getting your way just because you feel like you can."
"You had every opportunity to make right all your wrongs," the one on the right uttered, "and you blew them all in favor of satisfying a selfish goal. You could've let go of your cruel ambitions and moved on with your life. You could've walked away and made amends with everyone you chose to hurt."
"No, I couldn't," Gendo responded. "I never could've undid anything I did. The world is cruel, and the only way to deal with a cruel world…is to dispose of it and all the pain and suffering within it, and the only way to do that is to have the power and authority of God, who is cruel and indifferent towards the suffering of others."
"That's only your belief, which will not be realized in its entirety," both boys told him. "Whatever deity you blame for all of your failures or shortcomings, whether or not they were of your own doing, is infallible. Deities cannot be subject to our belief in rules and regulations; we might've been made in the image of deities, but we have no right to make any claims that they should have to do as we desire. We're fallible; we have no worth beyond the worth we have to those we care about or for, and when we're gone, we have to accept that. Nobody's perfect."
"And you two are?!"
"Nobody's perfect."
"And yet, you two…or just one of you…has all this power now, and you flaunt it in front of me! You can do anything you want, and you still choose to defy me!"
"Defy you, refuse you, reject you. Yes, we do that…but you make it so easy to defy you because you lack a proper relationship with either of us. The only one you truly have is based on a one-sided dislike of your own son, who never did anything wrong to deserve your contempt…until he decided to be defiant towards your ambitions because you are cruel."
"I'll still kill you both."
"One of us has died once already, and it's not something we wish to experience again until we get old and sick, and we have a future to build once we're done with you."
Gendo took a step towards the two, but his right foot sank into the ground, trapping him.
"Aaurgh!" He groaned, trying to free himself, but his left foot sank into the ground, too.
"Your connection with the artificial hagoromo is defiled and augments your dominant emotions that make up who you are, inside and out," the Shinji on the right said.
"Your anger, your pride, your greed, your perverse sense of entitlement, your need to be in control of everything and everyone around you, all of which are just worse because you don't know how to be reasonable or show humility. Even if people do possess a power that makes them almost close to the gods they either worship or despise because of a choice made long ago, they still wouldn't be viewed as gods because there's a line they can't cross. Ever. The line between mortals and gods. And so, Father…we're relieving you of your stolen power."
The pair raised their hands at Gendo…and all the man could do was envision what would come next for him.
-x-
"Aaaaaugh!" They heard a horrific scream, and worried that it was the stuff of nightmares, making them fearful.
Alec looked on the tablet, but there were no cameras that showed what happened between Shinji and his father.
Footsteps could be heard, and they saw Shinji walk out of the darkness of the hole in the wall, holding a glowing sphere identical to the hagoromo they kept hearing about or saw in person.
"Is that…" Asuka spoke, but was afraid to ask.
"This is the hagoromo that my father stole for himself," Shinji revealed. "I left him laying back there to think about his mistakes until we get back to land."
"So…what are you going to do with it?" Rei asked him.
"Something like this, when in the hands of any one person full of negativity, is more of a curse than it could be a blessing. I thought of disposing it, but that would be wrong."
"Why?" Yui asked him.
"Because it's not good or evil. It's just present and has yet to learn anything due to being in an enclosed environment."
"It needs to develop in a different environment?" Aya and Yuuhi asked him.
"Yeah."
Then, he raised the hagoromo up into the air and watched as it levitated and shot out of the place like a bat out of Hell.
"What'd you do?" Kagami questioned.
"I sent it to thrive in the ocean, out of people's reach. Piece of advice: Don't go creating another hagoromo after what happened to Misato the first time you tried such an attempt. There will never be such a thing as a perfect race. We're flawed, and science and technology can't fix or eliminate everything that ails us. I got nothing against progress, which is always going to be the goal of anyone that has a drive to do things, but moderation should be practiced when pursuing a goal. Because what you've done ever since before I met Aya and learned of her family's minor dysfunction because of the past with Ceres and Mikagi…is a poisonous dream you tried to rush through, and many people died as a consequence, Mr. Kagami, something you still need to answer for."
Kagami didn't feel like he was in the presence of a young man, but in the presence of an insightful and powerful being that had ascended to a level of existence he could never elevate himself to.
"Are you going to kill me, then?" He questioned Shinji, and the young man walked over to him.
"No," Shinji answered him, which surprised him. "The mere thought of killing you was preserved only for if and when you crossed the line further and reneged on your agreement to leave the women you called C-Genomes alone and let them return to their lives if I surrendered myself in exchange."
"But you…you never intended to help us realize this goal at all…did you?"
"No. You may believe in a grand design for a future generation of mankind to inherit the world and beyond for moral reasons, but your actions, past and present, caused pain for people that were just trying to get around what has happened to upset the stability of their past and present lives. Your goals were different from those that feared for their own lives, but they would've eventually led to further bloodshed. Unnecessary bloodshed…in the pursuit of the currently impossible. People are simply not meant to evolve or adapt right now and should just be allowed to pursue their future of their own choosing…wherever their choices lead them. Those that choose to persist will sometimes find that they end up paying a price that is far worse than what they had expected."
Before Kagami could respond to him about his line of reasoning, he saw a shadow behind Shinji.
Shinji got the impression that someone was behind him and turned to see that it was Gendo, who brandished a piece of debris shaped like a small blade in his hands. But in his eyes, he saw that it wasn't himself that was his father's target. No, in his eyes, Shinji saw that his father…was targeting Kagami himself, someone he chose as the most convenient person to harm. He couldn't allow that to happen; he had seen the fates of people play out in the cruelest of ways and couldn't allow them to play out for one reason or another that just made the pain and suffering of others worse than ever, and got in the way.
No more sorrow, he thought, reaching out with his hands and grabbing his father's blade. I'm tired of people trying to hurt others for their own selfish reasons.
Gendo's roaring fury towards his son, his doppelgänger, Frenzia, Asuka, Rei, all of them and none of them, felt like a labyrinth he was trying to escape but lacked the map or guide to show the way out. He just wanted to make Shinji hurt however he could.
"Just die!" He yelled at them. "All of you just die!"
Shinji crushed his arms and watched him drop to his knees as blood sprayed across both their faces as he looked down at him.
"Father," he uttered, and a wall of light appeared behind the man, "go…home."
He then head-butted him in his face, sending him into the light.
"Aaaah!" Gendo yelled in hatred as he tried to come back, to get one more shot at one of them, at Shinji or someone close to him just to spite him for the rest of his life. "Aaaugh!"
Suddenly, a woman, older than the rest of them, appeared with a shotgun, and raised it at Gendo.
"Here's a little something to remember me by," she uttered, and fired.
Blast! Gendo was struck in his chest by…a beanbag?
"Aaaah!" He yelled, falling backwards; the beanbag didn't hurt much, but it inflicted enough force to drive him back as the portal Shinji opened started to close. "No!"
But he had no say in the matter. He was gone, back on his depressing way to his dimension.
-x-
It was a complete surprise to see Anzu show up at the last second and have a shotgun with her. As she stood there in front of them, they looked at her like they hadn't expected her to show up at all.
"What?" She asked them.
"Where did you get a shotgun?" Asuka asked her back.
"Oh, this?" She questioned as she brought up her weapon. "I've had this for twenty years now. I used to keep it locked up in the house. Then last year, I decided to put it on the boat. I never know when I might need it to protect someone or…whatever it is that people call it when they want to be threatening."
"Scare tactics," Yui spoke. "What'd you shoot him with?"
"A beanbag."
"Heh! A beanbag? Ah-ha-ha!" Shinji laughed a little. "That's, uh…that's really impressive."
"Sometimes, a threat isn't enough without some measure of…actual, physical violence."
"I guess that explains why I never felt like it was never much beyond being for show," Yui expressed; she knew her mother had the weapon, but lost her fear of it due to her never using it once in her life.
"I guess it was a good thing you and Q-Chan stayed behind on The Modern Day Legend," went Aki, but then noticed something. "But where's Q-Chan?"
Anzu looked around them and replied, "She was right behind me."
"I'm over here," they heard the other elderly woman's voice, seeing her looking at a hole in the wall. "What exactly did we miss?"
"A lot," Asuka and Rei expressed, and looked at Shinji, wondering how he was able to look the way he did now.
"So…Shinji, I… How did you get to look like this?" Asuka asked him.
"I…I sort of…died," he told them.
"We saw," Rei stated, "but how did…you come back?"
"Frenzia appeared to me…or I appeared to her…with Shinji…and she said we both accomplished what nobody else over the generations had ever done before and gave us her hagoromo."
"You mean, you passed that rite of passage we could never really understand and you inherited her mana?" Aya asked. "That's…incredible."
Creak! Something in the ship cracked.
"Please, tell me there's nobody else on this ship," Shinji requested from Kagami and Gladys.
"There were less than thirty people onboard," Gladys revealed. "Your father murdered seven of them and the rest fled to the lifeboats."
"Good, because we're leaving this boat before it starts sinking."
-x-
It was a sight that belonged on the news or in a movie. A large ship sinking into the ocean, taking with it all its secrets before they could be collected. Even as they escaped the scene and retreated back towards land, Kagami felt defeated by what he couldn't control from the start, losing everything they had worked so hard to gain.
"A perfect race is impossible, Kagami," he heard Yui tell him, handing him a bottle of water. "Leave those ambitions behind."
He didn't have much of a choice in the matter. His superiors would find out and more than likely bury this project under obscurity. Not that they would really care; they were just a bunch of powerful people behind some powerful people that had too much money and time as it was.
"What else is there to do?" He questioned.
"Alternate energy research?" Rei suggested. "Solar energy, geothermal energy, biodiesel? Anything that aids in reducing the need for fossil fuels would be a benevolent goal. Or making the use of nuclear energy redundant."
"That would be worth doing, Kagami," Shinji agreed with Rei.
"After everything that has happened," went Alec, "I wouldn't argue against doing something as far removed from the C-Genome project as alternate energy research…or just research into blood substitutes in general."
"What about that Gendo?" Gladys asked Shinji. "Where'd you send him?"
"It's as I said back on the ship," Shinji repeated. "I sent him back home. Nobody's going to be seeing or hearing from him for the rest of his life."
-x-
Bash! Gendo was slammed back against his office chair, in his office, inside NERV HQ.
He looked around, panting as he caught his breath after feeling like he had been falling through a vortex for over an hour. Fuming, he couldn't believe that the boy had done something as ridiculous as sending him back to this dimension while staying over there with those people that weren't his people.
"That useless brat," he grunted as he got up from his desk. "How dare he does this to me!"
He approached his door and opened it to leave out, but something got in his way.
SLAP! A hard slap from none other than Misato Katsuragi struck him in the face, sending him falling to the floor in his office.
"You despicable bastard!" He heard her say to him as he looked up to her, seeing the First and Second Children with her, along with Fuyutsuki and Ritsuko and Kaji. "You killed him! You killed him because he wouldn't give you what wouldn't be yours!"
"He isn't dead," he responded.
"Not anymore," went the Second Child to him. "He came back to life to stop you and sent you back here! I get that he might be a clueless idiot from time to time and questions everything, but even he didn't deserve what you did to him! Nobody deserves what you did to him!"
"He abandoned NERV and the war against the Angels."
"You drove him to that outcome, Ikari," Fuyutsuki told him. "You threatened the people he has come to view as family and friends. You had no right to endanger them."
"Just how much of that…"
"We saw everything!" Misato revealed to him. "We saw you do something sick and twisted things, turn into a power-hungry psycho…"
"Kill people in your way to get to Shinji," Kaji added in.
"Revealed you had a monster grafted into your hand," Asuka also added in.
"Injured Ikari-Kun enough to kill a regular person," Rei continued.
"And even when you had obtained a close enough substitute to what the Ikari family of that dimension had, you still wanted what they had because you felt you deserved it when you didn't," Ritsuko finished. "No matter what you did, sir, you were never going to claim what went to your son. And the craziest thing about it, he seems to have lesser ambitions than anyone else does right now: That Frenzia woman that's his ancestress in that dimension said he could do anything if he inherited her hagoromo, and if he chose to, that would include restoring a maimed world, something that would be considered an act of the kami themselves. But whether or not he comes back to this world is entirely up to him now."
"If he does," Gendo told them, "he has to be contained."
"No way," Misato responded; even if there were still several Angels left, she wouldn't have Shinji locked up because his father decreed it, god-like powers or no god-like powers.
"If he's in the same boat as that alternate dimension ancestress of his now, Ikari," Fuyutsuki uttered, "who are we to decide what someone like him will do and not do? He's more than capable of making his own decisions now."
-x-
They didn't really expect Kagami to turn himself into the authorities when they returned to Magatama Town. Some of them had just expected him to walk away and they'd never have to see him again. It was relieving to watch as the police took him away. They had taken Gladys and Alec, as well, since they were, more or less, his accomplices in what he did. But Shinji, like Aya and Aki, didn't think they'd do serious time for what had happened in the short years since this madness started on the twins' birthday.
"How long do you think they'll get?" Aya asked Shinji, who looked like his usual self now as they were walking back to the Ikari house.
"Probably a month," he suggested. "Maybe more or less. I don't want to see into the future any more than I have without meaning to and seeing things happen that don't need to happen. But I'll say that Kagami does appear to have finally been enlightened by the fact that he survived my father's wrath and lives to see another day."
"But how can we be certain that he or someone else will just pick up where this craziness was left off?" Yuuhi spoke up.
"I think Shinji put the fear of the kami in them to make certain that they won't try to pick up where they left off," Yui stated, stopping under a streetlight. "So…it's all over now, right? We've done everything that we needed to do since we got involved in this celestial ancestry business. I just didn't think the aftermath would be so…"
"Plain?" Misato asked her. "It hasn't sunken in yet, but it will. I do look forward to a return to whatever normality there is left to have as the days to come flow by, but there is something that has been bothering me since before we left the docks."
Suddenly, all eyes were on Shinji, who had suspected that there would be questions directed towards him.
"It was only faint at first," Misato revealed, "but it felt like there were two of you inhabiting the same body, Shinji. Your deceased counterpart…and yourself. It still does feel like that, but…there's no confusion or loss of self. It's like you're both in front of me, but you're neither one or the other. Did something else happen when you inherited Frenzia's hagoromo?"
Asuka, Rei and Yui looked at Shinji, hoping that whatever did happen wasn't something that was horrible and condemning to him.
"Yes," he replied. "Something else did happen. As we inherited the hagoromo and returned to life, our souls ended up merging into one. It's not as awful as some would believe…and, as odd as it seems, we were okay with that happening. We know each other's past and present, inside and out, both wanting and needing the same thing, and wanting and caring about everyone in our lives here."
"Spiritual fusion," Asuka expressed; she didn't think something like that was really possible, but if people loved each other enough, then something of the sort was truly within the realms of tangibility. "So…you're both literally the same person now?"
"Yeah. Literally. Are you…upset about it?"
"No. As long as you're alive again, the both of you…I'm happy to see you as you are."
"Same here," added Rei; she didn't believe something of the sort was possible, either, but after everything that was seen, heard or experienced, she was willing to believe in everything else that was possible, including the possibility of an impossible romance.
It was bizarre in a way, but not as bizarre as everything else they had seen. The young man in front of them was neither the Shinji Ikari that had once committed suicide to keep from killing Asuka…or the Shinji Ikari that was from another dimension where half the world was gone and pain and suffering were in excess. Instead, they were one and the same…and it was probably better this way; both boys were saved this way, as one was freed from a dark afterlife…and the other was freed from the pain of his own past.
-x-
"…How is he doing over there?" Asuka asked Misato as the woman looked at the mirror later that night.
"It looks like something else did happen to him that was a drawback of inheriting his ancestress' hagoromo," she told the girl as she set the mirror down. "Somehow, his soul or consciousness got merged with that of his dead counterpart, resulting in the two being one person. I'm not sure if it's a temporary thing or a permanent one, but both seem fine with the outcome. At least…they seem to be fine with it."
"What do you really think?"
Since they were the only ones in the room with the mirror, as Rei had left earlier to get away from Gendo and Fuyutsuki, who was still technically in charge, despite Gendo's insistence that he was the one in charge, something that security actually had him locked in the brig for, and Kaji needing to go do something and Ritsuko needing to do more repair work on the Evas, they were the only ones present to express their opinions on Shinji's current state.
"I think that Shinji's in a class of power and authority by himself that nobody else can currently match right now," Misato expressed her professional opinion, "and personally, I think it's over for him, so he can't be convinced to pilot the Eva again if he comes back to fix the damage done to this world by what happened in Second Impact."
"And you're not going to try and convince him?"
"After everything that's happened, I don't even want to."
Asuka picked up the mirror and waited for it to show her something besides her own reflection. It rippled and showed Shinji's face…and pulled back to reveal that he was sitting on a sun lounger beside her and Rei's counterparts, on a sunny day at the beach. She could see everyone else that Shinji had met since he ended up in their dimension, and they were relaxing in their own way around the beach.
"He's on vacation," she told Misato. "They're all on vacation at the beach."
"Surfing? Volleyball? Cold drinks and barbecue grills?" The adult woman asked.
"You should see the teenage version of yourself in your bathing suit. I think you're with a woman that's your doppelgänger's grandmother."
Misato looked at the mirror and saw her doppelgänger with an older woman around Anzu's age, with a similar hair color as her younger self, but it was faded with age, sitting beside the elder Ikari at a beach table, enjoying an ice tea. It was possible that some time had past since the day they had dealt with Gendo and Kagami, as it looked like Shinji and herself had more time to adjust to their current situations, and it appeared that there was something going on with Shinji, Asuka and Rei's counterparts, as all three were watching the ocean waves while sipping on cold drinks. If she could enjoy half of what they were enjoying, she'd be content with what was going on there.
"I don't think I've ever taken time off to just relax," they heard Rei's doppelgänger say.
"There's no shame in chilling," Asuka's doppelgänger responded. "It's days like this where people should just…forget about their worries and just live in the moment."
"Very philosophical, sister."
"I wouldn't really know for sure. I just…love living."
"For the longest time, I never lived," they heard Shinji say. "But right now…this is living. Yeah, this is living."
"Hey, you'd better come back here and live when you go back to your world and try to fix up everything you know to be wrong over there!" Both girls told him, looking at him.
He looked back to them and smiled as he nodded his head in the positive.
"I promised I would return…and I intend to keep that promise," he replied.
"It looks like Shinji has every intention on returning to try and undo what Second Impact did fifteen years ago," Misato expressed.
"How long do you suppose that'll take him?" Asuka questioned.
"Who knows? It probably depends on how much he understands was done in Second Impact."
"As it's predominantly seen as an environmental disaster, he'll probably try to restore the Antarctic to its original state before the icecaps were melted by the explosion. Undoing the flooding of coastal areas would enable people to reclaim lost land. And…since the Second Impact also threw the planet off its axis, he could probably resolve that, too."
"You don't think he can do it?"
"Personally, I don't think anyone can, even when they claim they can. If people could've done this fifteen years ago, they would've done it. But people expect miracles. Impossible miracles…and they don't come cheap. Everything everyone tries to do has a price attached to it."
"Maybe so, but if Shinji can do it all, think about his would-be price. All he'll want…is to go back to where he calls home."
"And there will be people that will want to possess him, maybe even turn him into a weapon or nuclear deterrent for the future. But…he won't be exploited as some living weapon."
Misato looked at the mirror, but only saw her reflection.
"Where'd he go?" She wondered.
-x-
Walking down the streets of the fortress city, Shinji, after his words of a small parting with the people in his life and his promise to return, sighed as he couldn't believe that he was finally back in Tokyo-3, in this world he had unintentionally left due to an Angel encounter…and already dreading the fact that he was back…but with a sense of enlightenment. He wasn't the same from before, anymore. His time here, however long it would be, was limited because he wanted to go back to Magatama Town.
First things first, he thought, seeing nobody on the streets with him. I need to head back to Misato's and see how things are over there. After everything with my father, she's the only adult in this world I actually trust enough to tell me things.
Then, with a mere thought, he levitated off the street and into the air. The hagoromo, once Frenzia's…and now his own, still connected to his very existence, but he didn't intend to rely on it every day of the rest of his life. No, the goal was to be moderate about the power, even though he didn't really have to, but chose to because he understood that power could corrupt the soul if the belief that it made you invincible or above reproach was apparent in the one that possessed it. He needed to be benevolent, not malevolent, restoring what he could so that the people could carry on on their own, not destroying what remained and condemning the people to a hastened fate, and to do this, he had to keep his mind focused on the goal to aid.
To be continued…
A/N: There is more to come. The outcome between E-Shinji and C-Shinji was thought about, but it wasn't thought much on how to affect the plot of the story when it came to pass. See you later.