Creation began on 12-20-23

Creation ended on 12-06-24

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Talismans: The Next Strike

The power of the Sheep Talisman was considered by those that either knew of it or experienced its usage to be a very useless power to possess, but not to Shinji. Astral projection, in and of itself, has no combat capabilities, but it proves useful as a means of gathering information without being seen or heard, enabling one to gain potential leverage against others for future exploitation. But Shinji had learned the additional power of the talisman to enable other souls to vacate their bodies. Or, in the case of Naoko Akagi, the spiritual resident of Evangelion Unit-00, to vacate their undesired prison cells.

This, of course, meant that Naoko Akagi, deprived of her original body, was reduced to a wandering spirit within the astral plane of their mortal world.

Will you be all right for the time being? Shinji asks the woman he freed from the shackles of the Evangelion prototype, floating in the chamber beside her.

So long as I never have to be inside this abomination again, the woman that was once in a relationship with his father responds, relieved to finally be free from the twisted confines of the Eva, I can make do with this new predicament you have afforded me.

Astral bodies can fly around, move through solid obstacles, eavesdrop on people, but they can't be seen or heard by anyone unless they have a heightened sensitivity to spiritual phenomena, he informs her of how to survive in the astral plane. In addition, demons or other spiritual entities can see and hear you, which also likely means that you're vulnerable to them if they try to attack you. In order to be seen and heard by those with no spiritual awareness of us at all, you must enter their dreams to communicate with them. Beyond this, since you don't have a body right now, you don't need to worry about sustenance. Where will you go?

I'll be around. Yourself?

I have people waiting for me where I am.

Then, as a sign of respect towards the woman, Shinji extends his left hand to her.

Naoko sighs and extends her left hand, clasping his wrist. This young man was not like his parents, but he was better than they had sought to be themselves; he had no desire for god-like power or immense wealth or privilege. Instead, he preferred the quality of the life he currently has with these people that were not out to change the world or destroy it. She at least owes him respect for following his own ambitions instead of being made to follow the ones made by other people that had ulterior motives of the darker sort.

May we meet again one of these days, she tells him.

Yeah, he agrees with her. Until then, see you around.

In an instant, only Naoko was in the chamber with Unit-00…until she flew off to pursue her own interests within the facility.

-x-

Returning to his father's office, Shinji finds Gendo still fuming over his loss of control over his precious scenario and blaming him for choosing to ditch the paramilitary agency after the rioting ended. He just sighs at how pathetic Gendo has become because of his desperation to be in control over all things and wanting to be reunited with his wife. As far as he was concerned, the two could be together in Hell when all was said and done, because that was where they were both going as punishment for their choices, against him and the rest of the world.

There's nothing left to gain from a venture that has been prematurely taken down, he sighs as he sees Gendo rise up from his desk, grips the back of it…and turns it over in anger. You are a pitiful disgrace, Father.

Deciding there was nothing left to gather from his father, at least for now, Shinji leaves the room and returns to Ōta.

-x-

They were as ready as they could be in such a short amount of time to face the Demon Sorcerers in the future. With the research into Chi spells and contacting other shop owners for access to rare items that were too dangerous to be put on display in museums…but perfect for use against forces of negativity, Auntie and her kids were as insured as possible to deal with the demons. An assortment of materials to utilize Chi spells, the talismans, access to Stand power, aid from several people that knew of the darker side of what items couldn't be sold to people that were careless with them, and not to mention a ragtag bunch dredged from society's disenfranchised in need of second chances to turn their lives around, the Demon Sorcerers were unlikely to know what hit them until it was too late to turn back.

"Are you certain that this katana will suffice should the time come to face my father?" Drago asks Auntie, looking at the sword in question, sheathed and on the table among the other assorted objects needed to face his father, aunts and uncles.

"All that's really needed is a sword to banish Shendu," she replies. "Nowhere is it specified that any particular sword is required. A katana is a sword recognized by the samurai."

"Just making sure. I don't want to see good people suffer."

Auntie smiles at him.

"We do everything right," she says, "nobody will suffer. But it's a watch and wait game now. We don't know when they're going to strike, but when they do, we'll be able to deal with them and send back to their prison dimension."

"Of all the things humans have been able to accomplish, there has always been one aspect of peace I was never to comprehend."

"Which is?"

"Why people hope?"

"Hope is something everyone has when they have nothing else. Even at the end of the world, people can still hope for a better tomorrow than today or the day before. For sunlight, for rain, for a companion…or even just a sign that something better is over the horizon. Hope is like energy; it's everywhere and nowhere. So long as one has hope, they can endure the darkness around them and within them."

Drago nods his head in acceptance of Auntie's explanation of hope. It was such a strange thing to believe in, but now he feels that he understands it better because of his prolonged isolation and lack of interest in dominating the world or enslaving humans to serve him. And learning that there were demons of other kinds that also embraced hope was something surprising to him. Did his aunts and uncles feel a semblance of hope when they were banished to the netherworld by the Eight Immortals of ancient China, waiting for the chance to escape and retake the world of the humans, to pick up where they left off?

-x-

"…This shop in Ōta is, predominantly, a junk shop owned by a woman that employs people that other people in other professions wouldn't think to hire because most of them have priors," the boss informs Shendu upon researching the building in Ōta known as Auntie's Rare Antiquities. "But judging from the fact that my enforcers lost the locator to a bunch of people that have done time in prison for one crime or another, this Auntie person probably knows about you and the other Demon Sorcerers."

"She would be no different from the Chans I faced in the past," Shendu replies, bitter and angry over this setback caused by a bunch of nobodies.

"For now, we should keep our distance from the shop. My enforcers will learn from a distance on these employees and which ones are more vulnerable than the rest. Their habits, their residences, where they go when not at the shop, who they're with when they're not on the clock, who they screw around with in their personal lives, where they go to screw around, the whole nine yards."

Shendu had no concept of what this man was talking about, but so long as his minions were able to gather information on these would-be enemies, all he could do was wait and see what would happen next until he regained the talismans. They don't have a deadline to meet, so time was on their side…even if it feels like it is not on their side. Still, the mere fact that the gathering of the talismans was being deterred by some…nobodies in the employ of a woman that saw their worth, regardless of their past misdeeds, it reminds him of his dealings with the Chans, especially the elder that was versed in the magic that hindered his plans all the time. Even when they were all in the past, some things were reluctant to stay in the past, such as the perseverance of these insignificant mortals that were leagues below what he and his demonic brethren are capable of. And the first thing he wanted to do once he returned to power was lay waste to these nobodies that interfered with his plans.

-x-

Shinji awakens from his inactivity caused by the Sheep Talisman and feels his stomach growl; it has been several hours since his last meal.

"Were you," he hears Hideaki, who was assigned to watch his defenseless body, speak to him, "able to find out anything new with NERV?"

"Do you know of a woman named Naoko Akagi?" He asks him.

"Sparingly. She was the mind behind the MAGI supercomputer system that was built in the Geo-Front under Tokyo-3. I'm sad to say that I was uncomfortable with the idea of a system of computers being in charge of the Japanese government. It's like what was said in Terminator 2, about how human decisions were removed from the strategic defense of the military, only instead of a computer running a military, it runs an entire country's government. At least on the streets, there was no computer making decisions for me."

"Well, she was trapped inside one of the Evangelions shortly after a failed attempt to take her own life after strangling a little girl that wasn't even a little girl in the ethical sense, put there by Gendo Ikari because he up and decided that she had one last use to him."

"That bastard."

"Was trapped inside the Eva. Past tense, meaning she's not in it, anymore. I used the power I have through the Sheep Talisman to eject her from the Eva, freeing her into the astral plane. That was all I could do for her; her body is long gone, so a spiritual state is the next best option to being a ghost inside a wretched shell that is an abomination to natural existence."

"Thank you. Do you suppose that she'll…try to haunt him?"

"If that is her choice now that she's free from the Eva. I wouldn't hold it against her if she did. He's not a really good person, so he'd deserve to be haunted by the people he hurt. But she can only haunt him in his dreams. If he sleeps at all, he's in for a rude awakening should she choose to go after him."

Hideaki then sighs as he holds out a protein bar for Shinji, who accepts it.

"Thank you," he praises the man as he takes a bite out of the bar. "How have things around the shop been while I was in the astral plane?"

"We're as ready as we can be to face the Demon Sorcerers should they come our way," Hideaki informs the young man. "But we should also take into consideration that it's not just the Demon Sorcerers that we need to be concerned with."

"We have dealt with people before. And we know that the Demon Sorcerers use humans to do the work they either can't or don't want to do for them. Along with people unaffiliated with them, there's hardly a person we know of in this town or outside it that doesn't owe Auntie a favor or two."

"The more I learn about Auntie, the more I know not to get on her bad side."

"Auntie has two bad sides, one of which we don't see at all. If we ever do, we know what to do until Auntie calms down. We back off. We back our asses off."

Hideaki gets the impression that, whatever "other bad side" Auntie possesses, Shinji and the others have either experienced it or would rather avoid it. All he could do was try his best not to cross Auntie.

"I feel the path to atonement is a torment I can only begin to imagine," he says to Shinji.

"Torment is its own kind of step towards being absolved of your sins of the past."

-x-

It was all over for NERV. Everything was ruined beyond repair. And Gendo had nothing because of these rogue factors he couldn't have foreseen or control, and he blames Shinji for his insolence and refusal to fall in line. Sooner or later, Section Two would have to abandon the minor operation of watching the junk shop with NERV no longer active or having any legal protection, and they would be disbanded, too. Oh, how he wants to get even against the boy now that he lost his power over his agenda.

Fuyutsuki has made plans to move away from Tokyo-3 to a reclaimed portion of the rural areas of the country, convinced that the Human Instrumentality Project was no longer viable due to the loss of Lilith.

"These people that restored the world want to take charge of it, that's their prerogative," Fuyutsuki had told him prior to leaving the Geo-Front. "If they have the means to outdo us, I'd rather do what I know I'm good at doing, which is not fighting a so-called foe I know I can't win against. I was a teacher before I joined this agency…and I'd rather do something like that again, Ikari. What are you going to do with your life now?"

Looking at his gun, Gendo decided that if his plans were ruined, he only had one other thing to do, and it was only because he had nothing left to lose.

I will make you pay for this, Shinji, he thinks as he removes the clip and bullet in the spout; with nothing left to live for and nothing to lose, Gendo packs his bag and makes his next move.

To be continued…

A/N: Uh-oh! We got trouble coming!