Creation began on 10-17-23
Creation ended on 01-27-25
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Safeguarding a Child's Future
He could feel the essence of the three Angels within himself. Although they were mere echoes of their former selves, Kirby could still feel as though they were banding together to overpower him. But he couldn't let himself be overtaken by the shadow consciousness of the fallen enemies that had threatened to destroy the human race. If he did such, he would be dishonoring the people he had relocated ages ago when they were suffering and had their original home to return to when they were ready to go back.
"Poyo," he utters as he floats while on the far side of the moon. "Poyo."
-x-
"Kozo Fuyutsuki," went SEELE 01 to the sub-commander of NERV, "we appreciate you taking the time to meet with us."
Of course, this wasn't entirely true; SEELE had brought him to meet with them because they wanted to know whatever it was that he might've known. Moreover, it wasn't exactly an invitation if one was tied to a chair like a hostage; this was only so that he didn't try to escape before he could tell them anything.
"I find this unnecessary," he tells the holographic monoliths.
"The pink alien," SEELE 04 spoke, "what do you know about it? What did Ikari's son tell you?"
Was that what this was about? They wanted to know about Kirby?
"What is the meaning of this?" He asks them. "Curiosity over a jolly fellow that rescued a little boy from a sad childhood?"
"It is imperative that we know everything possible about this…Kirby," SEELE 01 expresses. "What its abilities are, what its power source is, everything it's capable of. From what we can guess, Ikari's son confided in you about the alien, as you were somebody that he seemed to open up to more than most in the short time he was returned to Earth."
And while it was true that Fuyutsuki was the one that spent the most time to actually talk to Shinji, it was mostly to understand him, not to acquire information that could be exploited later on by NERV.
"Kirby saved Shinji over eighty times in the time that he lived on Popstar prior to returning to Earth," he tells them. "A pink and heroic alien that does good deeds to protect people. If anything, Kirby's primary purpose is to protect people from harm, whether it's physical or emotional. Sometimes, he even acts like a kid himself, but is very mature."
This, however, didn't say much about what Kirby was capable of to SEELE, who needed more information on the alien.
"Each time he assimilated an Angel, he would say what we believe to be his designation along with something that may relate to the Angel he assimilates," he goes on. "Uh…'Star Warrior Kirby'. If I had to guess, he comes from a race of beings known as Star Warriors."
"Ikari's son didn't say anything about where this Kirby originates?" SEELE 12 asks.
"All he ever mentioned was being on Popstar. Kirby has probably lived there long before Shinji ever showed up. He doesn't know how old Kirby is, but the alien has probably been around for a long time."
Fuyutsuki told them some of everything Shinji had told him about Kirby, but left the important details out. Just because SEELE wanted to know about the pink alien, it didn't mean that they saw him as a friend or ally, and Fuyutsuki had to admit that a creature capable of fighting an Angel by assimilating some piece of them into itself had to be more powerful and capable than an Evangelion. Even if there was someone who he supported for years, the look on Shinji's face when he mentioned Kirby as their hero had to be where the line was drawn when confronted with the harsh reality of his father threatening to cause harm when he made his choice to leave for the second time. And on a personal level, Shinji deserved to be happy and without pain, even if it meant the rest of the world had its issues that NERV required him to help them resolve.
SEELE was not entirely impressed with the knowledge they had obtained from the sub-commander. None of it was pertaining to what Kirby was able to do, but they had to expect that such knowledge was likely oblivious to even a child that hadn't aged a day since his abandonment by his father before his fourth birthday. Still, this was likely to be as much as expected from a small child that was, more or less, out of step with the people of his generation due to his absence and lack of physical development.
However, happiness, peace, even a dream…all came at a cost for some people. Even Shinji was no exception to this rule.
-x-
Kaji didn't want to believe it was likely, but based on the results of what he looked into, it was likely that Kirby had been visiting the Earth many times in the past, finding select children or even adults that were reported missing that barely added up over the years. While it was mostly children from broken homes and families with a history of abuse over the years, there were several adults that went missing to the point where there were stories of strange disappearances and a "being of light from beyond the curtain of stars in the darkness". But the list of names he found were incontrovertible along with the ages they were when they disappeared all around the world.
Rumiko Gaidoku of Sapporo, Hokkaido, age five.
Noelle Silva of Paris, France, age eight.
Historia Reiss of Germany, age ten.
Ian Nottingham of New York, age twenty-three.
Cyan Fitzgerald of Chicago, age seven.
Niccolo Blouse of Russia, age thirty.
Tina Greer of Kansas, age thirteen.
Gaz Digzy of Los Angeles, age eighteen.
Kaede Sogen of Odo Island, age four.
Ace Ambling of Oakland, age twelve.
The list went on and on with men and women and children that up and disappeared, some within weeks or months of each other over the last thirty years or more. If all of these disappearances could be connected to Kirby, then Shinji wasn't a unique case, just the latest in a long list of people that were relocated to this other world. It was doubtful to Kaji that they were taken to Popstar for a repopulation program, since Shinji hadn't aged in the short time he had been seen. But the unshaven man suspected that these people weren't victims if they were chosen by Kirby to be given a better life away from their lives of difficulty.
"…What are you doing?" He heard Misato ask him as he looked up from his computer.
"Looking at what might be a long list of people that Kirby took to Popstar over the years," he answers her. "It's not a lot of people, but the list of disappearances that might be Kirby's doing is in the double digits, almost seventy-eight."
"All of these disappearances…in fifteen years?"
"No. Some of these people have been missing, presumed dead, for over thirty years. But if they were simply relocated by Kirby, then it's likely they're alive, unchanged, just somewhere else."
Misato looked at the list of missing people and couldn't believe that the little, pink alien that took Shinji was likely responsible for the disappearances of these other people across the world for decades. Something like that seemed to be next to impossible, but she was reminded that, due to watching the movies, most depictions of aliens were not incapable of the impossible and could do the impossible, including abductions. She wanted to see this alien as nothing more than a kidnapper, but due to the fact that it had protected the world from three Angels, it was probably along the lines of an antihero; what it sometimes did was intolerable, but its intentions were from a noble heart. And Shinji chose to see Kirby as a hero, not as a kidnapper or abductor or monster.
"Is it possible that they haven't aged, either? If they're in the same place as Shinji Ikari?" She asks her old boyfriend.
"More than likely," he responds. "It's also likely that Shinji has probably met these people in the years he's been over there on this Popstar. Did he ever say anything about there being other people like him there?"
Misato didn't have any clue as to who Shinji met while on Popstar. The only person that might've known was the sub-commander, though, but she didn't know where he was at the moment. If he knew, there had to be an answer if Shinji had met other people while on another world far, far away from this one.
-x-
"Oh!" Shinji gasps, nearly bumping into a girl that looked his age, carrying a bag with her. "I'm sorry. I nearly walked into you."
"Are you alright?" The girl asks him, offering him her left hand.
The girl was around his height, had gray hair and blue eyes…and a pleasant smile. It was Shinji's first time this year seeing a girl around his age; most of the women he had met were old enough to be his aunt or big sister.
"Yes, I'm fine," he answers her. "How do you do?"
"Just another day in paradise," she responds, gesturing at the world they were living on. "Um, Kaede Sogen. You?"
"Shinji Ikari."
"Wait, you're the boy Kirby has saved over fifty times, despite your attempts to stay out of danger? How do you end up in danger all those times and you barely look like you're looking for trouble all the time?"
"Just bad luck, I guess."
"Or you're just lucky; Kirby saved my life only four times since I got here."
"What kind of danger do you get in?"
"Bridges breaking."
"Wow. Are you visiting from somewhere?"
"The Float Islands. I was contacted by a friend from the Rainbow Resort to meet her here. Have you been living in Dream Land since you arrived?"
"Yes. For years."
"You should come to the Float Islands some time. Kirby had to deal with some meanies there a long time ago, but it's a really nice place."
"Maybe I will."
Kaede smiles and then resumes her walk.
It was always nice to meet other people that Kirby brought to Popstar to live peacefully. And while Shinji didn't know all of them, it was still a good thing to know that he wasn't the only person from Earth here on this strange paradise.
"Oh, you like her, don't you?" Shinji hears a female voice behind himself and turns to see another girl around his age, though a bit older than he was.
Rumiko Gaidoku, from Sapporo and a fellow victim of familial discord like Shinji; whereas he suffered from being abandoned, she suffered from being abused. When she met Kirby, she had been harmed by her mother and had just run away from her home to hide from her. Unlike her life in Sapporo, which was not very promising of a happy future, Popstar had been a place that held promise of a happy future for Rumiko that she carried a fear of going back to Sapporo to the point where the thought of seeing her parents again bothered her in her nightmares.
"I just met her, Rumiko," Shinji tells her; it was common knowledge that Rumiko was among the girls Kirby had brought to Popstar to have a tinge of jealousy whenever a boy they liked looked at another girl that was just as attractive as they were. "And…I have never seen a girl with gray hair before."
"She has grandma hair?"
Unlike Shinji, Rumiko's education at the time had been limited to what she picked up from other kids in her neighborhood…or her parents and elder brother.
"It was nice to look at," Shinji confesses.
Rumiko wasn't sure why, but she always disliked it when someone she liked liked someone else she knew nothing about.
"Maybe I should meet her," she tells Shinji, which made the boy worry about her reasoning for wanting to do so. "I promise I'll be nice."
-x-
"…It wasn't in so many words," went Fuyutsuki to Misato and Kaji during their conversation about what Shinji had confided in him, "but yes, Shinji did mention there being other people like him living on Popstar. Other people that he says Kirby had rescued and brought to the planet. Some people had been living there since before his time."
"Then it's true," Kaji reacts upon learning this. "This Kirby has been picking up people across the planet for over thirty years and relocating them to some other planet."
"But from what Shinji told me at the time, they were all people that were being hurt by others. Children being hurt by their parents, older kids being mislead down dark paths, people that have had their hearts broken one too many times by other people that don't know how to treat them the right way. Kirby ends up finding them and taking them to Popstar to get away from their hurt. I could've told Shinji that what Kirby did could be interpreted by human laws as kidnapping or human trafficking, except that he sees Kirby as a hero, a savior, along with everyone else that saw Kirby. As a child, he's impressed by anyone that does something good, and he saw what Kirby did for him as a good thing, no matter what anyone else tells him."
"Because his father left him alone one day," Misato responds. "Being taken to a better place where he could forget about his hurt over that would be viewed as a good thing to him. Nobody hurt him where he was on purpose. Nobody was mean to him where he was. It would make sense why he'd want to go back after coming back here to see his father only to find the guy was the same as he had been after he left him alone."
"If people can live on an alien world lightyears away from Earth, and remain unchanged for such a long time, like some sort of alien fountain of youth, it would be a goldmine to the wealthy and influential if they had access to such a world."
"Yeah…if only," Fuyutsuki expresses, not the least bit supportive of such a possibility. If Shinji could live forever as a three-and-a-half-to-four-year-old on an alien planet, along with other people that were brought there by Kirby over the years, and they don't age at all, it would be a bit like paradise for them. Never getting sick or older. Just being able to live and…be happy for a change. It would be a dream for some.
To be continued…
A/N: This is actually the first time where I included other characters as being involved in the scenario as Shinji is, some from other franchises and others from my own works. But hey, everyone does it every once in a while. I don't know when the next chapter will be, but it'll be made in the future. Peace.
