Chapter 3: First Steps

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April 1st, 2024, 7:00 am

I woke up to find myself staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. Sterile, white tile. There was only one place I could be and, looking around the room, I confirmed my suspicions. I was lying in a hospital bed, bandaged up like some kind of mummy. It felt like some kind of cruel, sick joke that I was even alive at all, especially since I was probably the only one that bitch had left alive.

Despite the pain, I forced myself to sit up and yanked the tubes out of my arm. I had to get out of there, fast, before anyone decided to start asking questions about what had happened in that warehouse. But as I moved to get up from the bed, I found my left hand pulled back to the bedframe as soon as I moved it. Damn it, I'd been cuffed to the bed. I wouldn't be able to get out of there without finding a way out of that thing. Not unless I wanted to try dragging the whole bed with me, anyway, but that would have been damn near impossible even if I wouldn't have to sneak out.

As I was contemplating trying to break my own thumb like they do in the movies, I heard footsteps coming from outside, growing closer as whoever was out there came closer to the room I'd been left in. It was probably a doctor or, more likely, a nurse who was coming to check up on me. If I was lucky, and I never was, then I might be able to convince them to uncuff me long enough that I could make a break for it. But then again, they probably wouldn't have been able to. Or it could have been a cop coming to interrogate me and I could overpower them and take the key to escape.

What I wasn't prepared for was for a damn vampire to stroll right into the room like he owned the place. Seriously, what the hell? His long, dark hair was graying at the sides and was wearing a freaking black and red high-collared cape over a three-piece white and cream suit.

"Who the hell are you?" I blurted out, completely caught off guard by this wacko's unexpected appearance.

The man just gave me a smug look before opening his mouth and I wasn't sure if I was relieved or not that he at least didn't have fangs. "Not much for formalities, are you Mister Komori?"

Despite looking Japanese, his accent was distinctly Russian, as if he couldn't have been any more strange. Not that I could blame anyone for being a foreigner. After all, I hadn't been dragged off to this shit country until I was in high school.

"No, I'm not," I said bluntly as the weirdo casually took a seat on the chair next to my bed.

He gave me a disapproving look before nodding curtly, as if I cared what this random old dude thought of me,

"At least you're honest," he said at last. "That counts for something in my book, I'd say. You may call me Doctor Shinigami."

…

Doctor God of Death? Did he really just call himself that with a straight face? Ah, he must have wandered out from the psyche ward.

"What kind of name is that?" I laughed. "Might as well call you Doctor Death! You some kind of supervillain trying to recruit me into your gang?"

The self-styled doctor smirked and crossed his legs casually, folding his hands over his knee. "You're not as far off as you might think. I believe you may recognize some of my work."

My eyes widened and I quickly shut up as the old man proceeded to pull a glowing blue syringe out from his jacket pocket, holding it out in front of me. Of course I knew what that was, it was the same stuff that my gang had just been killed trying to get our hands on.

"Yes, I see it in your eyes that you know exactly what this is." The doctor gave me another smug look, which seemed like it might as well have been his only expression. "I understand that you had a bit of an… incident, trying to acquire some samples of my product yesterday."

"Your product?" I found myself asking, unable to but two and two together at the moment. Looking back, I probably had a nasty concussion at the time.

"Why yes, of course," he replied. "I used to be the head of Shocker's augmentation research and development team and this serum was the fruit of our work."

"So, you're from Shocker?" I asked accusingly, prompting a chuckle from him. "So then you're, what, here to finish me off for getting two of your guys killed?"

"Oh, no, I couldn't care less about them." he waved his free hand dismissively. "It's their own fault for not being more careful. No, I'm here because regardless of how poorly that transaction may have gone thanks to… our mutual enemy… it is our responsibility to make sure that you get what you paid for. Though, there is one thing…."

"Yeah, and what's that?" I was already growing tired of this guy.

"This is merely a sample of our basic G1 Mutagen," he explained as he did that thing doctors do where they squirt out a bit of the liquid in their syringe to make sure there isn't any air in the needle. "It will enhance your strength, speed and reflexes to the limit of what the human body is physically capable of, maybe a bit past that if I'm being honest, but it's also the same basic formula that we use for our combatmen, our mass-produced, rank-and-file enforcers. And you, my friend, seem neither rank nor file."

I had to scoff at that, despite myself. "Yeah, and just what's that supposed to mean?"

The doctor let out an overly dramatic sigh, clearly making a show of himself. "What I am trying to say, Mister Komori, is that you strike me as a man who's meant for far greater things than just running drugs and guns for other people's criminal enterprises. If you really feel content with a life of second-rate street crime and whatever else thugs like you do, then feel free to just ignore this old man and keep on as you will. But, if you wish to be something greater, then I will be waiting for you in a black car parked along the road outside the south side of this building. I will wait for half an hour, no more. But either way, this is yours."

With that, the doctor stood up with a creak of his knees and walked around the bed to place the still-glowing syringe on the counter beside me. Then, with a curt nod, he saw himself out of the room.

That was… certainly a thing that had just happened. I was left reeling with my thoughts as I tried to process it all. I didn't trust that guy as far as I could throw him but… something about his offer enticed me. It was true that I wasn't exactly happy with what my life had become. The Spider Clan wasn't exactly a glamorous group. We weren't even proper Yazuka, just a gang trying but failing to make a name for ourselves. And even if we had, what then? What was it that I even wanted? To make a name for myself? To work my way up the criminal ladder? That all seemed so petty and small, now.

And that was before five of my best guys got slaughtered by the hands of that bug-eyed bitch, the so-called 'Masked Rider'. I could practically feel my blood boil at the memory of her standing over me, bloodied and broken, like she had my life in her hands and chose to throw it away like it was trash she didn't want to dirty herself with, just like so many others had done before. I was tired of it. Tired of everything.

The memory of my fight with that helmeted freak flashed through my mind again. She'd taken down my whole group like it was nothing, not even breaking a sweat after killing over half a dozen grown men with ease. She had a strength to her unlike anything I'd ever seen before. She'd even had the gall to look almost graceful and poised while doing it.

Whatever that bitch was, she wasn't human. That kind of strength, that power, wasn't natural. Even the goons I'd seen hopped up on Shocker's new wonder drug had nothing on her. She felt almost more like a Kaiju than a person.

I wanted that. No, I needed it.

With only a moment of hesitation, I reached for the syringe. Unfortunately, that bastard had left it to my right side and that arm was currently bound tightly in a plaster cast. Judging from the wave of pain that shot out from it when I moved the arm, I was pretty sure it was broken.

But I was never going to get anywhere if I let something like that stop me. I reached out again, powering through the pain and making sure not to bite my own tongue off. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to grab the glowing syringe since I didn't have any usable fingers at the time and the bulky white cast just bumped futility against the glass, causing it to roll out of my reach.

Damn it!

No, keep a cool head, Takuya! This was just a minor setback. I swung my legs over the handrail I was cuffed to, noting that one of my legs was also broken and in a similar cast to my arm. More pain had to be ignored as I stood up and tried to move. The bed may have been on wheels but they were locked in place and I wasn't going to be able to do anything about that in my current state, which meant that I had to physically drag the whole table around to get to the counter.

I couldn't exactly do that quietly and the shrill shriek of the wheels dragging along the tile floor seemed almost deafening. The sound was nothing compared to everything else I was experiencing at the moment but it would definitely alert people outside that I was awake and that something was wrong. But soon, that wouldn't matter.

At last, I managed to grab the syringe, holding it not-so-gently in the fingers of my cuffed hand, the only one I could actually use at the moment. Since movement was rather limited in that arm, I had no choice but to bend over and jab the needle into my neck.

PAIN

It was unlike anything I'd ever felt before. Like I stuck a fork into a power outlet while someone posted a bucket of ice water over my head. I could feel my broken bones snapping back into place, feel my muscles start to swell. You would think that the pain would have been overwhelming but somehow I could also feel my senses coming into focus and I was completely alert as a group of nurses and orderlies rushed into the room to see what the screaming was.

A hand touched my shoulder and I reacted almost instinctively, whipping around and smashing my arm against the nurse's head hard enough to crack the cast and probably her skull. As the body fell to the ground like a discarded ragdoll, two large men rushed to grab me. One found his fingers broken as I crushed his fist with one hand while the other received a knee in his gut with enough force that I could feel his ribs shatter.

Once everyone but me was either incapacitated or dead, I rushed out of the room only for the cop who'd likely been stationed to guard me, though apparently he hadn't been doing a very good job considering how long it took him to show up, to take a swing at me as I ran through the doorway. It didn't exactly hurt but was enough to knock me flat on my ass.

He tackled me, trying to pin me to the floor, and yelled something that I was too riled up to make out. Unfortunately for him, I was able to use his momentum to push him to the ground. Before the pig could get up again, I pulled off the hospital gown that I'd been left in and wrapped it around his neck. After a couple minutes, he stopped struggling and fell much like the nurse before. Just to be sure, though, I stomped his head in with my left foot and discovered that it was still in a cast.

Realizing that it would be harder to run with that thing on, I started slamming my leg against the doorway until it broke enough that I could tear it off. Then I did the same with the one on my arm before running again.

Of course, a naked man running around a hospital covered in bandages and blood that wasn't his own was going to attract a lot of unwanted attention and if I stopped to take down every orderly or security guard I came across, I wouldn't be able to make my deadline even if I didn't get worn down through sheer numbers. So, I did my best to avoid people as much as I could. Unfortunately, I happened to be in the middle of a very crowded public hospital. Fortunately, thanks to those super steroids the doctor had given me, I was able to keep pace at a full sprint for far longer than I should have been able to.

Of course, there was only so much that the supposed wonder drug was able to do and by the time I finally managed to run out the front door, I could feel my legs burning and my lungs wanting to revolt. I may have been stronger but I wasn't as strong as she had been.

Despite the fatigue, I had to hold on just a little longer. Doctor Death had said he would be parked outside the south side of the building, so I checked the sky. Figuring that it was probably morning, that meant the sun was still east and I quickly worked out which way I was going. Maybe my parents making me go to all those Boy Scout activities as a kid wasn't such a bad thing.

Sure enough, I found an unmarked black car parked along the road. And by car, I mean a freakin' limo with windows tinted so dark they were impossible to see through. Subtlety, thy name was not Doctor Death. I ran over to the overly suspicious vehicle, opened the unlocked door and hopped in. I took a seat opposite the old man, who looked up at me with a small smile on his face.

"Hm, that took longer than I was expecting," he mused.

"Building's like a damn maze," I muttered back.

"Well, regardless, you're here now which means that we may begin." The doctor knocked on the small window separating us from the driver and the limo started to move. He then turned back to me and dropped the fake smile, his face curling into a scowl. "Ugh, you're getting blood everywhere. Not yours, I should hope."

"Course not," I said.

"That's going to be a pain to clean out but I suppose that we have people for that." He shook his head dismissively before picking up a neatly folded stack of clothes and handing them to me. "Here, you can at least cover yourself up."

I reluctantly took the offered clothes, a cheap black tracksuit, and slipped them on. Not uncomfortable, I supposed, but I didn't bother zipping up the jacket. Once I was settled in, I noticed the Doctor's gaze settling on the tattoo on my chest.

"What, you got a problem with my ink?" I asked accusingly.

"No, no," he waved dismissively. "I was simply admiring the work. Whoever gave you that must have been a skilled artist. That would be a Kumonga scytodes, correct? One of the giant spiders found on Sollgel Island?"

I glanced down at the brown-and-yellow spider sprawled out across my chest.

"Um, yeah."

"Interesting," the doctor said. "You know, I once had the chance to visit Solgell Island on a scientific expedition. The kumonga are quite impressive creatures in person. I take it that you must have some affinity for them, to have one permanently drawn onto your flesh."

"I guess," I shrugged, not really one for that kind of introspection. "Spiders are cool but most people hate them, and Kumonga's the biggest spider of all."

"I see." Doctor Death nodded and wrote something down in a notebook he pulled out of his jacket pocket. "Well, I suppose that's enough small talk. I suppose now it's time to move on to the matter at hand. Welcome to Shocker, Takuya Komori. We will be expecting great things from you."

Shinji Ikari

April 1st, 2024, 12:45 pm

My first day of college certainly could have been going better. Although considering I never finished middle school and knew next to nothing about the subject that I was supposed to be majoring in, things also could have been going much, much worse. Thankfully, day one was mostly focused on orientation and getting introduced to classes so my almost complete lack of knowledge wasn't too much of a hindrance yet. Still, I found myself wishing that I knew how to hand control of this body back over to its rightful owner, the other me. He was the actual university student, after all. I didn't even know any of my classmates even though a lot of them were people he'd already worked with before.

In fact, thinking about it, I should have just handed this life back to him in general. Not only was I very much not comfortable living another me's life but I'd already had my chance at life while that Shinji still should have had his whole future ahead of him. It wasn't fair for a screwup like me to get this second chance. Unfortunately, I hadn't had any contact with the other me or the silver alien man living in our brain since I'd woken up that morning. It felt almost like I'd been cut off from them again and that I was back to how it was before yesterday. At least I was having brief flashes of insight about things that I was pretty sure were from the other me, so I at least had some confirmation that they were still there and that I wasn't just going crazy. But then again, things would make a lot more sense if I was going crazy.

At the moment, I was sitting on a bench somewhere on campus, though I wasn't familiar enough with the university's layout to be sure where specifically I was. I didn't have much longer before my next class started and I wanted to enjoy what was left of my lunch break before heading back into the academic nightmare that was being a middle schooler attending the country's most prestigious university.

"Ikari?"

"I looked over to see someone running up to me and it took me a moment to recognize Ichiro Akamatsu, the guy I'd tried and sort of failed to rescue the day before. Apart from a few bandages, he seemed no worse for wear, which was a huge relief. I'd kind of just forgotten about him after that whole thing with the alien and fighting a giant dragonfly-dinosaur-thing. I was still having trouble believing that was actually a thing that I did. Though considering what my old life was like, I supposed it shouldn't have seemed that strange. But somehow it still felt like it was.

"Hey, that is you!" Akamatsu exclaimed excitedly as he came to a stop just in front of me. "Dude, I thought you were dead! What happened?"

Oh, right. Last he'd seen me, I was getting carried off by one of those giant man-eating bugs. The fact that I was, if anything, in even better health than before should have been impossible.

"Uh, yeah, I barely made it out of there," I said weakly. It wasn't even really all that much of a lie. "I'm glad to see that you're alright."

"Me, what about you?" he asked, clearly exasperated. "You took on a Meganula by yourself! I thought you were done for! And that's not bringing up the Megaguirus that showed up right after that! And then the Ultraman!"

Yeah, talking my way out of this was going to be a challenge…

Wait…

"Ultraman?" I parroted.

"That silver giant that showed up right after the Megaguirus woke up!" Akamatsu fiddled with his phone before turning it around to show me a shaky photo of, well, me. Judging from the low angle and the trees in the way, it looked like Akamatsu had likely taken that picture himself. "People on social media are calling him Ultraman."

Well, that was certainly a name. Not the one I would have picked out. Then again, I had no idea what name I would have picked. I hadn't even come up with anything to call the alien, yet.

"Ah, well," I tried to think of what to say, "I'm not really sure what happened after that. I, um, passed out after that dragonfly thing grabbed me and… I just kind of woke up like this?"

There was no way that he was going to buy that story but it wasn't like I could tell him what actually happened. I'd sound like I was crazy! Which I probably was. Not to mention that this was definitely something that I should keep secret. There's no telling what would happen if I told him about what happened, about what this 'Ultraman' really was.

"Ugh, whatever," Akamatsu sighed, giving me a skeptical look. "Dude, you have got to stop doing stuff like this. It was bad enough when you fell out of a tree trying to save that girl's cat, or jumping in front of a truck to save that old lady, but trying to donate your kidney for that guy you met on the bus was crazy and this… this is a whole new level of insane, even for you! You need help, man, and I don't think that therapist girlfriend of yours is enough."

"Oh, um, sure," I said awkwardly, not really sure how to respond to that.

My increasingly frustrated classmate checked his phone and rolled his eyes. "Look, I've gotta go. Professor Fuyutsuki will have my head if I'm late for the first day of class. But seriously, stop with the heroics. There's only one of you."

I watched as Akamatsu ran off in a hurry, starting to get a very different look at my current situation. Did the other me really do those things? That Shinji seemed so calm and collected when I'd met him before, like he actually had his life together and knew what he was doing. But the way Akamatsu was describing him just now… he sounded almost suicidal. But I guess he was still Shinji Ikari, which meant that he had to have his own issues. And somehow, his insisting that I take over was starting to make a lot more sense.

Wait, who was that professor that Akamatsu just mentioned?

Takuya Komori

April 1st, 2024, 1:00 pm

I don't know where I was expecting to be brought. Some kind of underground lab or supervillain lair? With the way Doctor Death presented himself, maybe an old European Castle in the middle of an endless thunderstorm? But where we eventually ended up getting out of the car was just outside the entrance to some fancy lab on the outskirts of town, the kind of compound where they've gotta buzz you in to get past the big iron gate blocking the entrance.

I let out a groan and stretched my back once I was finally able to get out of the limo. I'd finally come down off the adrenaline high of my earlier escapades but thankfully I wasn't having to deal with the pain of everything I'd gone through back at the hospital. I did have a serious itch around where I'd injected myself with the serum, though, and the area where I was scratching felt strangely hard. If I had a mirror, I would have seen that the area around the injection had grown black and scaly.

"The Institute of Super Science?" I scoffed as I read the sign outside. "Really?"

"This way," the good doctor waved for me to follow him as he strode towards the front door, practically gliding along the ground.

"I'm just sayin', it sounds like the villain group from a Saturday morning cartoon or one of those shows with the guys in rubber suits," I said as I followed him inside.

The ISS was pretty much what I expected it to be from the outside. A sleek, open-air 'modern' office that tried to strike a balance between post-modern art and a minimalist aesthetic. The kind of place I'd expect to find in Silicon Valley or something. Also not a lot of color, it seemed like almost everything was stark white, with a bit of black and light gray to spice things up.

"Good morning, Doctor!" A peppy young receptionist looked over at us from behind the front desk.

"Tell Doctor Heinrich to prepare the augmentation lab," Doctor Death told her as he made his way towards one of the hallways leading out from the foyer or entrance hall or whatever you wanted to call that room. "We have a volunteer. Oh, make sure that he has the Kumonga scytodes sample on hand for the procedure."

"Of course, Sir, right away!"

After that, we made our way down to an elevator the doctor pressed the button to go down. The doors opened almost immediately and I followed him inside. He swiped a card key next to the floor buttons, after which we just had to wait.

"Sooo…" I started to say, if for no other reason than to break the awkward quiet of the elevator. "What is this place?"

"Well, you clearly already know this company's name, seeing as you were just making fun of it as we came in," Doctor Death said disdainfully, sparing me a sideways glance. "Officially, it's a biological research lab owned by the Ishigami Group, focused on the study of DNA manipulation to find diseases such as cancer, AIDS and other such things. In fact, the upper floors of this facility are actually used for that research."

"But unofficially?" I prodded.

The doors opened again before he could reply and we stepped out into the fourth basement floor. To my mild disappointment, we were still in what looked like a perfectly ordinary research lab.

"You won't find this level on the publicly available floorplans," he said as he guided me down another hallway. "This is our new human augmentation lab, where we take people like you and bring out their full potential beyond what 'nature' would allow for on its own."

"Your 'new' lab?" I asked. "What happened to the old one?"

Doctor Death stopped in front of a door and turned to me, a sour expression on his face.

"The Kamen Rider," he said. "I would tell you more but you don't have the clearance for that particular story. Not until you've come out the other side, at least."

"The other side of what?" I asked, not knowing how much I would come to regret the answer.

"Hell, of course."

Shinji Ikari

April 1st, 2024, 8:45 pm

After classes finally ended for the day, I found myself exhausted and just wanting to go home. Instead, I somehow found myself standing outside the biology department's faculty offices, feeling like I was about to have an anxiety attack as I debated with myself whether or not to go inside. I had just decided against it when the professor from one of my marine life classes walked by.

"Oh, Ikari," he greeted me somewhat awkwardly. "Heading inside?"

I would have shaken my head and turned around but he was already holding the door open for me and it would have been impolite to just leave, so I walked in. The professor went down a hallway, presumably heading to his office, while I ended up making my way to a reception desk. No one was there but there was a listing of all the professors, along with room numbers and office hours. My eyes were immediately drawn to one name in particular.

Professor Fuyutsuki, Kozo - Kaijuology

I could feel a lump growing in my throat as pained memories came flooding back to me of my father's right-hand man. I thought, or perhaps more accurately hoped, that it must have been a coincidence. It couldn't have been him, could it?

I turned and hurried for the door, deciding that I was better off not knowing. If I didn't check, then I would always have room to doubt, to assure myself that it couldn't have been the man who had loyally aided my father in his schemes. That life was gone, I knew that much for sure, and I didn't need any reminders of those horrible times.

Before I could see where I was going, I accidentally bumped straight into a tall, older man in a brown suit and dark blue tie.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" I reflexively bowed after taking a hurried step back.

"No trouble at all, I wasn't looking where I was going." My breath caught as I recognized that voice and I hesitantly looked up. I knew that face, even if it was rather less haggard that I was used to seeing. And from the way his eyes widened, he recognized me as well. "Gendo?"

He suddenly shook his head, as I tried not to panic.

"Wait, no, sorry. You just remind me of someone I used to know." The professor narrowed his eyes as he looked down at me again. "Pardon me for asking but your name wouldn't happen to Ikari, would it?"

I straightened up at the sound of my name and hesitantly replied. "Yes, sir. Shinji Ikari. Gendo Ikari was my father."

A warm smile fell over the elderly man's lips. "Ah, yes, you're Yui's boy, right? I haven't seen you since you were still just a baby. How are you?"

"I'm fine," I replied automatically. I wasn't fine, though. I felt like I was on the verge of a panic attack. Again.

"Would you care to come into my office so that we can catch up?" he asked, gesturing towards one of the doors leading out of the hallway behind me.

I didn't but I also didn't want to seem rude, so I nodded my head and he led me into what must have been his office. I took a seat on one of the empty chairs in front of his desk while he sat down on the other side with a creak of his knees.

"You know, I saw your name on the student listings and I was wondering if I'd get the chance to meet you," he said. "I taught both of your parents here back in the day and your mother in particular was one of my favorite students. I'd never seen anyone with such a passion for Kaiju Studies."

His smile turned to a pained frown. "My condolences. I heard about what happened but it's hard to believe that she's gone. And she was still so young…"

I stared down at the desk, unsure of what to say. I had never had the chance to meet my mother. Thanks to my father, I'd never even so much as seen a picture of her to know what she had looked like. An image flashed through my mind of a dark-haired woman in a hospital bed, who looked almost like an older, more weary Rei Ayanami. It took me a second to realize that it was a flash of the other me's memories of his mother. Which meant that she was also what my mother must have looked like before she passed away when I was young. Despite myself, I was suddenly overcome with intense emotions that I didn't know how to describe.

Fuyutsuki reached over and handed me a tissue before I'd even realized that I was crying. I took it from him and tried to wipe the tears that were running down the sides of my face. It was a few minutes before another word was exchanged between us.

"I haven't heard from your father in quite some time," he said at last, catching me off guard. "Do you know how he's doing?"

I just stared up at the professor. I had assumed from what the other me had said before that this world's Gendo Ikari had also died but was that actually the case? I tried to look inside myself, so to speak, and was met with a no to both my question and Fuyutsuki's. I shook my head.

"I see." The professor muttered bitterly. "Gendo was always distant. I'm not surprised to hear that he wouldn't even make time for his own children. But enough of that, let's switch to happier topics, shall we? What are you majoring in?"

"Marine biology," I said, glad to finally get an easy question.

"Ah, a good field." Fuyutsuki nodded. "And one not so distantly related to your mother's line of work. She was one of the world's top researchers on Godzillasaurs, you know. I take it that some of her enthusiasm passed on to you?"

I squirmed back in my seat, back to not knowing what to say. I ended up just nodding. "I guess?"

"You know, I've still got a few seats open in one of my classes," Professor Fuyutsuki said as he grabbed a sheet of paper from under his desk and handed it to me. "If you're interested and you have the time available in your schedule, I could get you in as a last-moment enrollment. Only if you want to, of course. I don't want you to feel pressured to join or anything."

I looked down at the paper, a course schedule, and realized that the class did line up with a free period in my schedule. I wasn't going to sign up, of course. I was already far too busy and there was no way I'd be able to throw another class on top of things. Even though something about the subject did seem to stand out to me-

"I'd love to."

The words may have passed through my lips but I wasn't the one who said them. Fuyutsuki smiled at me as I internally panicked.

"Very well then. I look forward to seeing you in class tomorrow, young Shinji. But for now, I'm afraid that's all the time I have available."

We both stood up and shook hands. A moment later, I was walking outside while the professor returned to packing up his things for the night. I stared up at the cloudy evening sky, trying to figure out what had just happened. It seemed that I was going to have to have a talk with my other self, assuming that I could even figure out how.

April 1st, 2024, 10:00 pm

When I finally got home that night, I dropped my school backpack, which thankfully wasn't the one I'd lost in the woods during the Meganula incident, on the floor and slipped off my shoes before making myself a quick dinner and settling down on the couch. After that, it wasn't long before I found myself lying in bed, trying fruitlessly to fall asleep. At least I didn't have to deal with homework on the first day.

After what felt like forever, I finally managed to drift off to sleep, where I found myself sitting on an empty train, SDAT in hand. It was nice, peaceful, but not where I needed to be. I pulled out my earbuds, pocketed the old tape player and disembarked the old passenger train to stand once again on the sandy shore of Oda Island.

I could see the old cabin that the other me had shown me before and headed towards it.

The alien, 'Ultraman' as people were apparently calling him now, was outside practicing what looked like judo moves on a straw dummy that looked less like a human and more like some sort of lizardlike hedgehog creature.

"Good evening, young Ikari." Ultraman bowed to his 'sparring partner' and turned to me. "It is good to see you well. How went the day?"

"It could have gone better," I admitted, then gestured to the cabin. "Is the other Shinji inside?"

"He is." The alien nodded, his blank expression as unreadable as always. It was subtly unnerving, how his face, almost more like a helmet, didn't move at all even when he spoke. "But before you go to speak with him, I would like a word with you."

I had already started walking towards the door but stopped mid-step and turned to face him again.

"What is it?" I asked hesitantly.

"When we spoke before, I told you that you will need to take on my role as a defender and protect this world from threats until I am able to safely extract my essence from your own," he said. "But while you have some combat training from your formal life, I do not believe that it will be enough. We do not know what challenges may await in the future and it will be best to prepare while we can. Would you be willing to let me train you here, while your body rests each night?"

"Yeah, sure," I replied, finding myself unable to say no to the request.

The alien nodded again. "If possible, it would also be best to clear time in your schedule so that you may train in the real world as well, to get used to fighting in my body and familiarize yourself with how to properly utilize my abilities."

"But… wouldn't it be easier to just have you take over if we get into a fight?" I asked. "I mean, you're the one who knows what you're doing."

He stood there for a moment silently, looking to all the world, or I guess just me, like a statue.

"That is one possibility," he said at last. "However, I believe that with our unusual circumstances, it will be best for us to try and work as a team so that we may utilize our individual strengths and perhaps cover our weaknesses. Perhaps rather than me merely instructing you in how to fight as I would, we should learn to work together in sync with each other. We will have to work this out as we go."

I wasn't sure how to respond to that, so I ended up just standing there awkwardly.

"That was all that I had to say for the moment," he said. "If you wish to speak with your counterpart, then I will not hold you up any longer."

"Right," I nodded. "Um, I guess I'll see you later."

"Indeed."

With that out of the way, I walked up the stairs leading to the front porch and opened the door to the cabin. This was my first time seeing it from the inside and yet it felt oddly nostalgic. Almost like I'd been here once before a long, long time ago. It had a cozy feel to it, feeling more like a home than anywhere I'd ever been except maybe the apartment that I had shared with Misato and Asuka during what would end up being the best few months of my old life. I found myself lost in thought as I looked around at the various decorations and photos scattered around, remnants of a life I hadn't lived.

"Hey, there he is!" I heard the other me's voice and turned around to see him walking up behind me from what looked like a living room, snapping me out of my thoughts and reminding me why I was there.

"What was that?" I suddenly snapped, surprising myself almost as much as I did him.

"What was what?" he asked, though didn't sound convincing in his apparent confusion.

"You left me in charge all day, making me go to all those classes that are way above my level, then take over just to sign me up for yet another class against my will!?"

He turned his head, unable to meet my gaze at the accusation.

"Well, it's your life now so I thought you should be the one to experience everything but I also knew that you weren't going to take the professor up on that offer even though I could tell that you wanted to-"

"No!" I suddenly took a step forward. "None of this is my life! We may both be Shinji Ikari but we are not the same person. I'm not ready for college, I never even went to high school. How can you just expect me to just slide right into your life? Besides, I heard what Akamatsu said about you. Why would you keep throwing your own life away like that?"

"Well, what am I supposed to do?" he suddenly grew heated at that. "Not help the people around me when they're in need? You're right, I guess we're not the same because I can't just stand around and not lend a helping hand to someone who needs it!"

"That only goes so far," I argued. "But that's not the issue right now. You need to be the one in charge and take your life back because I can't live it for you!"

"What life?!" It was his turn to step forward, glaring down at me with such intensity that I couldn't help but back down. "My father left us and took my sister away from me! My mom died and left me behind! All I can do is try to help the people who need my help and if I can't even do that then what good am I?"

"But what about Mari or your other friends?" I pointed out as he backed up against the wall and slumped down. "You're in a good school and I'm sure you've probably got a good career lined up for you. You've got a good life so how can you just throw that away and hand it to the screwup who destroyed his own world, twice?"

"Easy for you to say," he sighed. "Your life was taken away from you by circumstances far beyond what you could be expected to control. I've had everything practically handed to me and yet I haven't been able to make anything worthwhile out of it. If anyone's the screwup here, it's me."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, kneeling down next to him.

"What do I have?" He looked up at me through bloodshot eyes. "University? I only got in because of who my parents were. A job? I don't have anything lined up after this. Friends? Not really."

"You have a girlfriend," I pointed out.

"Yeah, the one thing I have going for me," he looked back down at his knees, pressed firmly against his chest. "And I don't even know what she sees in me. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just a test subject for her studies… But, yeah, I see where you're going. How about a compromise?"

"What?" I asked, urging him to continue.

"We split our time. I'll handle classes and schoolwork, you get the rest of the time. Deal?"

I grimaced at that. "I still don't like it."

"That's how compromises work," he said and started to hold his hand out for me to shake but then pulled it back. "Oh, and one more thing. You get Professor Fuyutsuki's Kaijuology class."

"What, why?" I stared at him in confusion.

"Because I could tell that you're interested in it." He cracked a smile. "Besides, if I'm handling the rest of our education then it's only fair that you get at least one of the classes, right?"

I closed my eyes and sighed, before turning back to him and holding out my hand. "Alright, fine. We can do this for now."

"Then it's a deal," the other me accepted the handshake, and the deal was struck. "...Now what?"

"I don't know." I said as I pulled him to his feat. "Do you have a cello?"

Author's Notes: Finally! I'm sorry this chapter took so long. I had a bad case of writer's block which was followed by burnout from my other stories and then back to writer's block. At one point I ended up completely rewriting this chapter practically from scratch just to try and get my creative juices flowing again and push through to finally finish this. I'd like to say that the next chapter won't take as long but it's kind of hard to make that promise when I'm posting this right before taking a two-month hiatus from fanfic writing and won't be getting back to it until January. Though I do have what should hopefully be good news, I'm going to be using that time to power through an original story that I think will be of interest if you like this fic:

Pseudo Rangers will be a Super Sentai/Power Rangers-style story (in case you couldn't tell from the title) about a group of college students who accidentally steal a random set of black market ranger powers from the mob and decide to become vigilantes to keep their city safe. But can they survive getting caught in the crossfire between super-powered hitmen, local law enforcement, an ancient conspiracy, their city's 'official' ranger team and… a middle-aged magical girl? And what kind of team has two blue rangers and no red ranger, anyway?

If you want to know more about Pseudo Rangers, see how my progress is going on Chapter 4, discuss Masks and Monsters' worldbuilding, or just chat about whatever, feel free to join my Discord with the invite code BY4n4YAjWZ or DM me!