Yami To Boushi to Hon no Tabibito: Ever After
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Lieutenant Smrhova raced to the observation deck, responding to a security alert. She had a back up officer on the bridge, but she was closest to respond. "Anything new to report?" she asked over the open link to the bridge tactical station.
"Three intruders, one apparently in medical distress." The bridge officer added disapprovingly, "A medical tech is there providing assistance."
Smrhova sighed. Hopefully the medic wouldn't end up a hostage, but they took their responsibility to help the injured seriously. "Keep monitoring," she ordered as she reached the doors.
The doors swished open, revealing crew members off to one side, three women on another with one woman collapsed on the floor with a medical officer tending her. Smrhova instantly registered the sheathed sword the one woman wore and the odd staff the other carried.
"We come in peace," the tall, black haired woman with the sword said, smiling wryly.
"Hazuki!" the other woman said urgently, "The ambient magical energies in this universe are nearly zero. It's incredible!"
"I think this is a mostly science based universe, Quill," Hazuki answered, "I'll explain later."
Quill accepted that, but continued, "Do you think that's why Lilith...?" She gestured to the out cold woman.
Smrhova didn't get a sense they were dangerous, but still approached warily. "Could someone explain what is going on?" she asked mildly.
The black haired woman hesitated. "We're other dimensional travelers," she confessed, "looking for a lost member of our people, more or less."
Smrhova digested that. "Well, it's not the strangest thing I've heard..." she admitted.
"Could we transport this woman to the medical bay?" the medic asked. She frowned, "I don't think it's critical but I don't like these readings."
"I'm not leaving her," the black haired woman said firmly.
Making a executive decision Smrhova tapped her communicator. "Five to beam to Sick Bay. Security level two."
And in a swish of golden light they were off.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"Star Trek?" Quill echoed.
"It's a science fiction television show I watched in my home world. I never expected to actually be in it though," Hazuki admitted wryly.
Doctor Beverly Crusher-PIcard looked like Hazuki remembered, if a bit older. Tho her marrying Captain Picard was a surprise. The TV series had never gotten that far, as far as she could remember.
The doctor closed her tricorder. "She appears to be in a kind of shock," Beverly said, "but she brain wave activity and other vitals are returning to normal on their own."
Hazuki puffed out a breath, "That's a relief. Thank you."
"Now," the large Klingon and, surprisingly, the second in command, Worf said, "The Captain would like to speak with you."
"Of course," Hazuki nodded. She looked at Beverly, "Could you let us know if anything changes?"
"Certainly," Beverly responded gently.
It was so ODD seeing Worf in a red shift for command, rather than yellow security. They walked the halls of the Enterprise-E, and Hazuki had to do her best not to gawk. Quill looked very amused, not having the same references.
They went into a turbolift, and Hazuki was surprised at almost no feeling of motion. In seconds they arrived, and the doors opened onto the bridge. Hazuki really had to fight the urge to look around, instead following Worf along the rear of the bridge to the Captain's ready room.
Worf pressed a button by the door and Picard called, "Enter."
Captain Picard was checking a report on a data pad, but put it down at they entered. "Ladies," he nodded politely.
"Sir, thank you for your help," Hazuki said politely. "I'm Hazuki Azuma, this is Quill Fiat and our friend in your sick bay is Lilith."
"As I understand it, you are travelers from another universe?" Picard asked curiously.
"Yes," Hazuki nodded and sketched in the tale of Eve/Hatsumi's first disappearance, her return and her latest vanishing act.
"Fascinating," Picard acknowledged thoughtfully. "The parallels with many creation myths..." he murmured.
Worf cleared his throat before Picard could get too far off track.
Quill looked amused. Leaning forward she asked, "I assume this vessel has a fairly large crew, but could we try to find out if Eve had been here?"
Picard looked thoughtful, "Normally we protect the privacy of our crew members, but we could allow you to review images from our files for a match."
"Thank you," Hazuki smiled.
T'Ryssa Chen was, probably, the most cheerful Vulcan in the universe. "Call me Trys," she said cheerilly, "I've been assigned to help you." She sat at one of the consoles at the back of the bridge, "So how old would she have been? Special traits?"
"She's usually sixteen when she disappears, blond hair, red eyes and usually in good shape," Hazuki told her. "She's usually mute, but not always."
"Unless she was some kind of prodigy she's too young for crew," Trys noted with a smile, "but we often transport people in emergencies and such, Let's look through our files..."
Trys narrowed down the files o humanoids, starting with the past two years or so. They flipped by images on the screen, with Hazuki being able to stop them at any time.
"There!" Hazuki yelped.
"Amara Long, former resident of Deneva. We had her aboard due to the Borg attacks last year," Trys told her. "I remember her... there was some strangeness around her."
"Oh?" Quill asked.
"We were half way to our destination when she just disappeared from our emergency bunks. We did full scans, even backtracked our route to see if she had been taken off the ship somehow," Trys told her, "but found nothing."
"Right on her birthday," Hazuki murmured. She shook herself, looking frustrated. "Excuse me, I think I'll go check on Lilith..."
The two watched Hazuki leave, then Trys looked at Quill curiously. "Been a long trip?" she asked gently.
"A few weeks for me," Quill said, "longer for her. I think the excitement wore off a while ago."
"Hmm," Trys said, tho she couldn't really imagine that happening to her.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Hazuki stepped into the lift, grabbed the handle on the wall then said "Sickbay." With barely a jerk she was off. She HAD to smile as she muttered, "This is SO cool."
"HAZUKI!" a extremely cross voice bellowed.
Hazuki hurried in to find a revived Lilith sitting on the medical bed, looking cross. "You're all right then?" Hazuki smiled at her, relieved.
"You were worried about me?" Lilith asked teasingly.
Hazuki blushed. "Of course I was," she said, looking away.
Doctor Crusher-Picard smiled faintly. "I was about to call you," she noted, "Miss Lilith here woke up a few minutes ago. I'm monitoring her vitals, but she appears to be healthy."
"Thank you very much," Hazuki bowed.
"I'll be in my office if you need anything," Beverly added as she walked off.
"Sorry to worry you," Lilith sighed. She looked sheepish. "You know it takes energy to cross between worlds, correct?"
"Yeah," Hazuki said.
"To save energy I draw on the ambient power of the universe I'm traveling to," Lilith said, "so when we were coming here..."
"According to Quill there's almost no ambient magic here at all," Hazuki got where she was going, "so you tried to pull in power and got nothing."
"Yeah, and the shock pretty much knocked me silly," Lilith admitted.
"Well, I'm just glad you're okay," Hazuki took her hand and squeezed it gently.
"You know, your climbing into this bed with me would make me feel a LOT better," Lilith suggested archly.
"Lilith!" Hazuki blushed.
"I DO wonder where the magical energies of this universe went. It's almost like someone is hogging them," Lilith mused.
In a different part of the universe Q of the Q Continuim sneezed suddenly. Unaware of the Japanese tradition of people sneezing when people were talking about you, he shrugged and went off to bother a overly serious Captain...
To be continued...
Notes: I think it's a unofficial rule that EVERY multiverse crossover has to have a Star Trek story. This is novel-verse Next Gen, which has some new cast, Picard and Crusher finally got married and so on.
Notes 2023: I am STILL bitter that the Star Trek Next Gen novels NUKED the whole timeline for this in the CODA trilogy. I get why, of course, the book canon no longer worked with Picard's canon, but it still pissed me off.
Note: this is a crossover with my fanfic Rebuild of Third Genesis, also on fanfiction dot net. You don't HAVE to read it to understand this chapter, but it helps.
Ever After
Fourteen: Neon Genesis Evangelion Returns
"You?!" the redhead with a eyepatch in a school uniform exclaimed, "AGAIN?!"
Quill looked at Hazuki and Lilith curiously then at the young woman, "You've been here before?"
"Yeah. They helped us kill an Angel," the other woman seemed to have calmed down a bit. She nodded to Quill, "Asuna Langley Soryu, at your service."
"Quill Fiat," she introduced herself.
Hazuki was looking around her with an odd look on her face. "What happened? The city wasn't in a valley last time, and..."
"What happened to you?" Lilith asked bluntly. "Why the eyepatch?"
"Lilith!" Hazuki scolded.
She and Lilith had landed here shortly after they began their second search for Eve/Hatsumi. They 'appeared' in NERV and were jumped by security, which Hazuki had successfully fought off. Misato had intervened before things could escilate more, pointing out they clearly weren't the angel that had attacked the city.
Searching for traces of Eve/Hatsumi the two had gone up into the city, meeting several students in the process. They found out Eve had disappeared just before the first Angel attack, annoyingly. They also had a close run in with the latest Angel... who appeared frightened of Lilith.
That had taken Hazuki aback a bit. A eldrich abomination out to wipe out human kind... was scared of Lilith. Made one wonder what she and Eve were really capable of.
"So are you still searching for that blonde?" Asuka asked shrewdly. "I thought she had been and gone?" she noted.
"That's what I thought," Hazuki conceded.
Lilith frowned as the busty young woman noted, "Something pulled us back here. I don't know what though."
"How long has it been since you first came here?" Quill wondered.
Hazuki looked at Asuka questioningly.
"Over a year," Asuka answered.
Hazuki did her best not to react to that. It had only been a month or two for them, subjectively. It also made her wonder how much time was passing on her home world?
"Why don't we go to NERV?" Asuka asked. "We can use the Magi computers to help you search Tokyo-3."
"That's very generous of you," Hazuki noted.
"Well, we do still owe you for helping with the angel," Asuka shrugged.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
There had been a shake-up at NERV too, Hazuki noted as they stood in the Commander's office. The creepy dude with the pedo beard, Gendo, was gone and Misato was running things. With a UN representative working with her.
"Back up a second," Satoko Shinden blinked. "You came from another UNIVERSE? And helped kill an Angel?"
"Dimension," Quill corrected. "There's a difference."
Satoko just sort of ignored the correction as she looked across the office at Misato. "Why wasn't this in the files I saw?" she wondered.
"Would YOU like to explain a mystery girl with a magic sword and a witch killing a Angel?" Misato asked wryly.
"Point," Satoko conceded after a moment.
"We also didn't kill it," Hazuki noted. "Distract it, yes. Kill it, no..."
"We could have killed it," Lilith offered, "if we had to."
Everyone just sort of ignored that.
Ritsuko looked over from where she had been chatting with Quill, "I normally don't agree with Gendo's having classified things, but at the time I felt it was reasonable."
"Anyway..." Misato tried to get things back on track, "you're back here again. Any idea why?"
"We're not sure," Hazuki admitted, "the trail we followed lead us back here again. I was hoping we could borrow the computers here to try a search..."
"While Quill and I investigate via other means," Lilith added.
"Asuka, you mind going along?" Misato asked.
Asuka made a face, "Why me?"
"Because we don't know this Quill woman and Lilith got into trouble pretty much instantly last time," Misato noted quietly.
"Point," Asuka conceded. She walked over to Lilith and Quill, "Okay, where do you want to start this time?"
"Let's head up to the city..." Lilith said briskly as they left the office.
"All right," Misato said briskly, "Ritsuko, take Hazuki up to the 'bridge' and talk with the Magi. See if we can figure out what's going on."
"Right," Ritsuko agreed.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Tokyo-3 hadn't changed THAT much, Lilith noted. It appeared that after the massive geo-front cavern collapsed, they had mostly attempted to lower the existing buildings down to the now open cavern floor. Along with paving new roads etc etc. So heading to the high school was fairly easy.
"WHY are we heading to the high school?" Asuka asked, quickly realizing where they were going.
"Because I sense something from there," Lilith admitted. "It's not like how I normally sense Eve, but I'm picking up something..."
"Joy," Asuka deadpanned. "Do we need to notify security or something?"
"I think we can handle it," Lilith said.
Quill was using her Device, though she was keeping it in pendant mode to avoid drawing attention. Like a glowing, talking necklace wasn't going to draw looks.
"The energy readings are very unusual," Quill noted. "If I didn't know better, I'd say they underwent a class three Instrumentality."
Asuka made a choking sound. "You know about...?" she started.
Quill pretty much pumped Asuka on details on what they had gone through. Fascinating," she murmured, "group mind and everything. I need to write this up for the Mid-Childe Journal of Science."
Asuka had a fairly dubious look on her face. "So what's a class one or two Instrumentality?" she had to ask.
"Everyone converts into pure energy, merges together and ascends to a higher plane of existence," Quill told her cheerily, "in fact we think that's what happened to several predecessor civilizations in the Dimensional Sea..."
"Damn..." Asuka muttered as they neared the school itself.
Classes were just letting out, and a steady steam of students were going by them. Several boys were noticing Lilith in her low cut blouse and such, as well as getting clouted by girlfriends. AND there were a lot of men and women in dark suits, keeping a wary eye on Quill and Lilith.
"Holy..." the tall young man with a limp ogled Lilith.
Asuka gave him a look. "You'd better not let Hikari catch you doing that," she warned.
"Yeah," Toji conceded then he frowned thoughtfully. "Didn't we meet before?" he asked Lilith.
"About a year ago. I was with my friend with a sword...," Lilith looked amused.
"Oh, right!" Toji smiled. "She was bad-ass."
As they talked another young woman had come over, frowning as she saw Toji interacting with the blonde. "Asuka," she addressed her, "What is going on?"
"Hikari," Asuka smiled, "you remember Lilith, right? I'm showing her around."
Hikari Horaki looked less than pleased. "I see..." she said, nodding stiffly to Lilith and Quill.
Lilith just looked amused by the blatant jealousy.
His boyish 'I don't want my girlfriend to kill me' instincts activated as Toji said, "We probably should get going. Can I walk you home, Hikari?"
"Please," Hikari took his hand and they hurried off.
"Ah, young love," Quill noted quietly.
"Okay, so we're at the school," Asuka addressed Lilith, "now what?"
"We need to go inside... I want to see where Eve disappeared from on this world. We never had the chance to, last time," Lilith said seriously.
Asuka gave her a flat look. "All right," she sighed, "I'll see if I can flag down a teacher..."
Quill looked at Lilith thoughtfully. Her Device, other than the Instrumentality readings, hadn't picked up anything at all. Certainly no remaining Eve/Hatsumi energies. What was the other woman up to...?
To be continued...
Notes: It was mentioned MUCH earlier that they had ended up in a 'giant robo' world, but I never showed it. It amused me to make it Evangelion, AND to have them return there eventually.
I have a reason in mind for what Lilith is doing, and it's actually kind of silly. I'm looking forward to cranky reacts after I post the next chapter.
Ever After
Neon Genesis Evangelion Returns Two
Hazuki wasn't quite sure what to make of this Mari girl hanging around. She was also a pilot, like Asuka, but wore a skintight mostly green colored plugsuit all the time. AND kept rubbing up against her.
"Mari, do you not have work to do?" Ritsuko finally scolded.
"Yeah, yeah," Mari walked off. Noticing Hazuki was watching her go, she added a bit of wiggle to her strut.
"Thank you," a blushing Hazuki sighed to Ritsuko.
Ritsuko had to fight back a chuckle. Hazuki was surprisingly cute, really. If she wasn't firmly committed to Maya, she'd probably be hitting on her too.
"So... as far as we can tell, Hatsumi didn't reappear after our first visit?" Hazuki asked.
"Not seeing anything coming up in our records," Ritsuko agreed.
Mana, the young woman who had been assisting with the search, added, "And we added a 'alert' to let us know if she appeared again. Just in case."
"Huh. Well, it's remotely possible she could be here as a baby... still, it's strange," Hazuki sighed quietly.
Ritsuko nodded. She didn't say the other possibility that had occurred to her... that Lilith was here for some OTHER reason.
"Or yes, Lilith is here for some other reason," Hazuki sighed. She shrugged, "That would be a very Lilith thing to do..."
"I STILL am trying to wrap my head around all this," The UN rep admitted. Satoko shook her head, "Alternate dimensions?"
Misato smiled at her wryly, "Ritsuko gave me a very long lecture on the topic, which I quickly forgot."
Satoko snorted.
"But yeah, it relates to quantum theory and how every decision we take creates a second dimension so that both decisions potentially happen," Misato shrugged.
"Like places where Impact happened and didn't happen," Satoko nodded thoughtfully.
"Or weirder," Misato agreed.
"Thank you again for your help," Hazuki said, bowing a little as she came up to them.
"It's fine," Misato waved that off, "I still feel we owe you from last time."
"We haven't had any luck with the computer search, so I think I should head out into the city after Lilith and Quill," Hazuki explained.
"They have Asuka with them, it should be fine," Satoko noted.
Misato had the oddest look on her face, "Did you just say ASUKA is the responsible one?"
"Point," Satoko conceded.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Meanwhile, three young women were walking the halls of Tokyo-3 High School. "Excuse me," Lilith flagged down a young man.
"Hommina." he managed a incoherent noise at her impressive clevage.
Lilith smirked. "Eyes up here please," she ordered.
Asuka giving him a death glare also helped making him stop staring.
"My friend here hasn't been there, so could you direct us to the literary club?" Lilith asked.
"Literary club? Right...," he gave them directions and then hurried off before Asuka killed him or something.
"You're looking for something in particulsar, not following a magic signal," Asuka accused as they walked on.
"Well," Lilith shrugged.
"What is it?" Quill asked, looking amused more than anything.
Lilith lead them down the hall as she admitted, "Eve told me something when she returned to the Library, last time."
"Yeah?" Asuka prompted her.
"Turns out she was a member of the literary club here, and wrote for the club magazine," Lilith told them.
"And...," Quill prompted her.
"She mostly wrote erotica about Hazuki," Lilith admitted.
There was a LONG beat of dead silence.
"So we're here to get Eve's PORN?" Asuka demanded.
"Pretty much!" Lilith grinned saucilly.
"Hazuki is going to kill you when she finds out," Quill noted.
Asuka just shook her head as they arrived at the club room.
"Yes?" Yuki Nagato asked calmly.
Asuka was weirdly reminded of Rei Ayanami. Huh.
"We're here looking for copies of your club magazine," Lilith said breezilly.
"Why?" Yuki tilted her head sideways.
"Research," Quill said firmly.
"Yes, research," Lilith repeated.
Yuki accepted that and lead them over to a bookcase where copies of the magazine had been bound into books. "What name...?" Asuka asked, vaguely curious.
"Nova," Lilith told them, adding the last name too.
"There we go," Quill found a reference.
All three started reading... then Quill blushed, then Asuka and finally even Lilith.
"Your sister has SOME imagination," the fiercely blushing Asuka noted.
"She's much more perverted than you'd think under the sweet exterior," Lilith agreed.
"They were by your sister?" Yuki asked mildly.
"Long story, but yes." Lilith told her. "Could I take these?" she asked, holding up the book.
"Copies," Yuki said apologetically, "We like to keep the originals."
"Fair enough," Lilith agreed.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Later, Hazuki caught up with them and Lilith apologetically explained it was all a false alarm.
"Really," Hazuki said dubiously.
Asuka was clearly fighting the urge to laugh.
Hazuki sighed and decided she just didn't want to know. She nodded to Asuka, "Thank you for the help, sorry it was a bit of a waste."
Asuka visibly smirked. "No problem, I think I learned something," she said.
"Hazuki, we should get going," Lilith added quickly.
Before Hazuki could ask anything else, she, Lilith and Quill were engulfed in green light, then were gone...
To be continued...
Notes: Yes, silly chapter. Blame it on after Christmas exhaustion.
