Grimoire of Evangelion

by Traitor of All Traitors

Five years before the rise of the first Wizard King, there existed a royal family of the most unlikely sort. A family of nobles that believed all were capable of greatness, no matter who they were. They were hunted down and driven away from the kingdom, forced to await the day when they could return. That day...is now. The noble House of Ikari...rises once more.

3. Home

Creation began on 05-07-18

Creation ended on 05-11-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Grimoire of Evangelion: Home

It felt like a long time since Shinji ever felt like he could just sleep in, but there was something about it that didn't feel right. He felt like he was supposed to do something, but he couldn't put his finger on just what it was. Someone had once told him to fight a threat to the human race, but someone else was telling him that he didn't have to, anymore. He was confused, but he was also exhausted and in need of rest.

Struggling to open his eyes again, the boy could barely comprehend where he was as his vision was still obscured. All he could make out was…perhaps a girl looking down at him, but he was uncertain. A scent of vanilla filled his nostrils, and he closed his eyes again.

Suki, looking after her nephew, sighed as he was still not strong enough to get up yet; she and the others had deduced that the length of time he spent in the Eva had drained him of much of his energy. Not to mention, he had stunk like the interior of that tube he and his mother were inside of, and it smelled an awful lot like blood, requiring the both of them to be washed thoroughly.

Please, wake up soon, she encouraged her nephew. We just got here, and you should see where your unexpected aid returned us, even though the whole place is vastly different from what it once was.

-x-

Opening her eyes for the first time in many years, Yui Ikari, staring up at a stone ceiling, wondered why it felt like she was in her physical body rather than in the Eva. She raised her left hand up to her eyes and flexed the fingers, seeing them move just as the nerve signals permitted.

"It's good to see you're finally awake, Yui," she heard a familiar voice say to her, and she turned to the right of the room she was in, seeing a young woman she had only recalled in old photos.

"M…m… Mother?" She asked.

"Yes, Yui," Rika answered her; as much as she was happy to see her alive, Rika was suspicious of how she was unchanged from any further progression in age after being declared dead when her son was barely four years old. "How do you feel?"

"Lousy."

"I'd probably be, too, if I woke up after a prolonged period of what you went through."

"Where…am I?"

"A hospital in the Royal Capital of the Clover Kingdom."

It was what her mother said that bothered her right now. Yui considered herself a rational woman, but each time she heard stories about a place beyond the realm of logic and comprehension, she had to consider the possibility that her mother (and her elder brother and sister, by extension) were somewhat unhinged over the years, no matter how good they played the sanity card.

"You…you need to stop with these stories, Mother," she expressed, needing to get it out there that enough was enough. "It's the Twenty-First Century, not some medieval realm of swords and sorcery."

Rika sighed, knowing that Yui was lodged into science and technology and so on that didn't allow for the belief of magic, and told her, "Where you and Shinji are from, it is, but here, daughter, your precious science and technology have little place to settle around."

Holding out her right hand, Rika conjured a sphere of thread and cotton, shaping it into a small doll made to look like Shinji had been the day her youngest daughter had supposedly died, and handed it to her to prove it was real.

"It's not an optical illusion…or an hallucination, Yui. You're not on anything. This…is all real."

"But… No, no, no, I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming, and I'd like to wake up now."

Forgive me, ancestors, for I have sinned against my own child, Rika thought…and then slapped Yui across her face, hoping that it sunk in that what was happening was actually happening and not a figment of her imagination.

Yui, actually feeling like she'd been slapped on her face, looked back at her mother in realization as her sense of scientific logic wasn't going to help her this time.

"Well, I guess we're not dreaming after all, are we?" Her mother questioned, and then pulled her out of bed, dragging her to the closed window behind her.

"No!" She gasped, thinking the worst of her mother just because she tried to disbelieve this. "Wait! Please, Mother! I'm sorry!"

Rika pushed the window opened, letting the sunlight in, and standing her daughter out in front of the world beyond them.

It wasn't what Yui had expected at all. The city was massive, but made of stone and wood, not glass and steel. It resembled medieval castles built atop mountainous areas protected by dragons or knights. In many ways, the place was just as her mother had described it in the childhood stories.

"H…how is this possible?" She asked, dropping to her knees in disbelief.

"I was hoping Shinji could explain," Rika suggested, offering her a hand. "He might know how we were able to return here after so many years."

"Shinji is here?"

"He's sleeping just down the hall from here."

-x-

For reasons beyond the Magic Knights' understanding, the magic used by any of them had failed to affect the Evangelion, as it still resided in Hage in the Forsaken Region. No degree of magic, from Spatial Magic to even Water Magic could manipulate the purple giant to move an inch. Each squad's members, even the Silva siblings in the Silver Eagles, were upset about their inability to resolve this matter. Not even Asta's Anti Magic swords worked on it.

"This thing's not influenced by magic at all," Asta expressed.

"How did something like this get here?" Solid questioned. "How does something like this even exist?"

"Maybe they know," Nebra frowned, feeling humiliated by those…Ikaris.

"Permission to speak, sir," Klaus Lunette of the Golden Dawn requested from William.

"Granted," he responded.

"We should seek an audience with the head of the House of Ikari to ascertain information about this…monstrosity."

"If we can't remove this thing, maybe they can."

"We get outdone by this family of…of outcasts?" Nozel questions, enraged by this possibility that felt like a further humiliation for the House of Silva by the House of Ikari.

While most of the Magic Knight squads were still curious as to who these people were, the eldest siblings of House Silva were loathed to being outclassed by people that should've stayed away from the kingdom, never to return, prophecy or no prophecy. The longer they were around, the angrier they got. And the angrier they got, the more they wanted to see these people removed like a weed infecting a garden or a plague attacking a city for nobles.

"Say, Yuno, have you heard about the House of Ikari?" Asta asked his rival for the position of the Wizard King.

"Only that it's been over fifteen-hundred years since any of its members were ever seen," Yuno explained; being a member of the Golden Dawn afforded him access to historical documents not accessible to the public, including the history of noble houses, of which the House of Ikari was among the strongest. "Parts of their history have, however, been omitted from the kingdom's archives."

Nozel, Nebra and Solid all looked at one another and stayed silent about the revelation; the less known about the past, the better.

-x-

A week had gone by since the Twelfth Angel incident, and nothing was reported to indicate that Unit-01 was somewhere in the world. This left Gendo both depressed and infuriated over the failed attempt to salvage the Eva from the Angel's shadow body. Not only was his scenario completely compromised, there was no trace of the Ikaris from before the Angel disappeared.

Section Two had searched their hotel rooms and all they found were their bags, a camera and a photo album full of old pictures.

As he looked at the album, Gendo frowned at the photographs of Shinji with these three people over the years after Yui died. Even when the boy didn't see them as much as he probably wanted to over the years, the few times he did spend with them left the child feeling happy that he had people that cared about him and were willing to admit it.

They never should've came here, he thought bitterly, turning to the next page where he saw a photo of his wife with Shinji, infuriating him further. They never should've came here at all.

-x-

With some renewed strength, Shinji opened his eyes and looked up at another unfamiliar ceiling in front of here, made bearable by the fact that he was laying on a mattress that felt like it was made of soft materials.

"Shinji?" He heard a female voice say to him.

Turning to his left, he saw a young girl that seemed…almost familiar to him, but he couldn't place her somewhere from before.

"It's good to see you awake," she greeted him. "How do you feel?"

"I feel…" He started, but couldn't find the exact words to finish his answer to her.

How exactly did he feel right now? From his perception, he knew he wasn't at NERV HQ; the setting didn't seem based on any modern locations he knew or had seen before. The bed he was on was the most comfortable he had ever been on. And this girl that sat beside him was not a classmate he had seen at school or was either Asuka or Rei…but felt familiar to him for some reason. How could he describe his current state?

"I don't know how I feel right now," he responded. "Uh, who are you?"

"I'm…" She stopped herself due to the realization that Shinji had no clue that she was a rejuvenated Suki Ikari, regressed in age back to her fourteenth year of life where her mana reserves would've made her the strongest she had ever been.

"Wait a minute," Shinji stopped her as he started to realize something. "I… I think I saw you before in a picture. It was an old picture. There was a tower."

Tokyo Tower, Suki suspected, or the Sapporo TV Tower…or the Nagoya TV Tower. I was in those three towers during my fourteenth year. We were tower hopping during our vacations.

"You were dressed in a winter-themed school uniform," he explained.

"Tokyo Tower…during the winter season," she uttered, but then covered her mouth when she realized she spoke of her memories of that time. Oh, no.

Shinji slowly got up and got a better look at her, getting a clearer description of the girl.

"You had a good time…even though you never felt like you never belonged," he uttered, looking both confused and elated to see her. "You're my Aunt Suki, aren't you?"

"What makes you say that?" She tried to counter him.

"Because she likes to sit by when she finds out I'm sick. She did so when I had the stomach flu one time. The teacher did very little…"

"Because the guy was a complete tool that your disgrace of a father left you with," she finished for him, giving herself away. "Oops."

"Are Grandmother and Uncle Tenshi here?" He asked her.

"Uh, yeah, though you wouldn't recognize them as they are. When we came to and realized where we were, we had to rejuvenate ourselves before we did anything else. The spell Mother used to do so regressed us all back to where we were at our best. In my case, it's fourteen. Tenshi's, it's his early-twenties, and our mother's would probably be the same thing or so."

"You three used magic to make yourselves young again?"

"Mother calls it Rejuvenation Magic. We got rejuvenated through mana."

-x-

The people of the Royal Capital were still in awe over the fact that an ancient prophecy now passed had forced the captain of the Coral Peacock squad to awaken and be more active of the current situation regarding these five individuals discovered in the Forsaken Region with this giant that was unaffected by magic, which left a concerned air lingering around the kingdom as news of this spread across all three regions.

"They're still in the hospital," the vice captain of the Coral Peacock, Kirsch Vermillion, informed Dorothy as they approached the building.

"Has there been any update on their status?" She asked him.

"The healing nurses confirmed that three of them recently used Rejuvenation Magic to regress in age back to where they were at their strongest. These three are actually the original remnants of the House of Ikari; the fourteen-year-old girl was a newborn when she, her mother and brother had to flee."

"And what of these other two? The woman and this boy?"

"The woman is the matriarch's fourth daughter and the boy is her only grandchild. They're members of their house born outside the kingdom."

As they walked into the building, the Coral Peacock squad found members of the other magic squads present and awaiting a further update on the House of Ikari members.

"Word gets around fast regarding this house," said fellow Coral Peacock member Rick Cornell.

All nine squads present were in the hall in front of large doors that suddenly opened to reveal a healing nurse, who quickly turned around due to their invasive presence.

"The Magic Knights from every squad wants to see them!" She yelled to her superiors.

-x-

The recreational garden was the only place that offered a setting for the five family members to have some space to converse over the current state of things.

"Well, this is awkward," said Tenshi to them as they sat at a table under a cherry blossom tree, pouring a cup of tea for Yui and Shinji.

"This is actually the Clover Kingdom?" Yui questioned, a little bothered by the fact that her mother and elder siblings were as young as she was right now.

"It's exactly as you three described it," Shinji stated, a bit uncomfortable around his mother; it wasn't every day you discovered that your mother, whom you were told has been for over ten years to suddenly be alive and well again. "But there is a feeling of…resentment or anger being directed towards us."

Yui looked around them and didn't see anyone else.

"You don't have to see them to know they're there, Yui," Rika told her. "Shinji, how do you know there is a feeling of resentment directed towards us?"

"I've felt uncomfortable ever since we stepped out here," he explained to them. "I mean, more so than around…him, of all people. But out here, it's like someone's out and about around the kingdom…and they have an unexplained hatred towards us."

"Unexplained hatred?" Suki spoke, putting her tea cup down. "I would get it if it was…him…but who would hate us here? I was just a baby when we left and I'm fifty-five now…chronologically. I don't even know anyone here."

"None of us knows anyone here," Tenshi stated the truth. "It's home…but the people we knew are gone. It's not like we're some sort of…omen or something."

Whoosh. Shinji looked up behind him and thought he saw three people nearby…but there was only a wall there.

"Shinji?" Yui asked, and he returned to the conversation.

"Sorry," he apologized, though Rika became suspicious; while her mana reserves may had been replenished, but it would still be a while before her rejuvenated body had adapted to the rest of herself, including her previously-overtaxed mana sensory.

"I think you might have the ability to sense people by their mana, Shinji," she suggested, "indicating some degree of magic potential."

"Magic? Shinji? Really?" Yui questions. "How can he be capable of magic? Doesn't he need… I don't know, like a magic wand or a pendant?"

"Not like those people did in the cartoons and movies, sis," Tenshi stated again, "though, they're good references. Magic is just something you either have potential towards…or develop an affinity towards as you grow up. But it's a rarity, and an extreme rarity for that matter, for anyone to be incapable of magic in one way or another."

"Incapable of magic? You mean, can't do magic, period."

"I spent my entire life in Japan, and I couldn't do any magic," Suki informed her. "One of the things I never got when I turned fifteen was my grimoire, which would help improve one's magical aptitude."

"Being fourteen again in the eyes of the public may mean you have to wait another year until you're fifty-six," Rika informed her again-teenage daughter. "Yui, on the other hand, likely has to do the same waiting game with you and Shinji."

"Huh?" Yui and Shinji grunted.

"It's a kingdom tradition. Fifteen-year-olds receive their grimoires to aid them in the art of magic. Those that miss that day, regardless of how or why, have to wait at least another year for the ceremony all over again. If they keep getting delayed, they keep waiting. I once met a guy that didn't get his grimoire until he was thirty due to being in a coma that held him back for fifteen years."

"Why not just buy a grimoire?" Yui suggested.

"Heh-heh-heh. Yui, this is a realm where magic is everything. One doesn't simply buy a grimoire. It's like what that wand maker said in that popular story book series about a boy wizard and how wands choose witches and wizards. Grimoires choose their mages, not the other way around. When a grimoire chooses you, a bond is formed, and as you mature, so, too, does your grimoire; new spells add themselves to the pages, your grimoire expands with new pages, improving your magic, becoming better as you get better. And when you pass, your grimoire dissolves as you move on from this plane of existence. But that grimoire eventually returns later on to choose a new mage. If one bought a grimoire, they'd be nothing but blank slates."

"And the ones that choose you already have what you need to get started on your future in magical development?" Shinji suspected.

"That's right."

"But…how do you know one has magic potential?"

"Usually? When a grimoire chooses you," Tenshi answered. "Beforehand, whatever magic you do exhibit will either show itself or not, depending upon your talents or elemental affinity."

"Elemental affinity?"

"Magic, fueled by mana, is supported by the elements of the world. Primarily, the four elements of life. Water. Earth. Fire. Wind. Under these can several other elements be derived. Steel from Earth. Ice from Water. But only one element is commonly affiliated to the mage that exhibits it. Those of our family, however, didn't exhibit that limitation at all back in the old days."

"What do you mean? You're saying everyone from our family was special in some way revolving around elemental affinities?" Yui asked.

"According to these two, and they're the experts, the whole of House Ikari is not bound to just the elements," explained Suki, "but the very world itself. The winds, the waters, the ground, flames, storms, flowers, even time and space. The Infinity Affinity, they once called our house trait."

"Infinity Affinity," Yui and Shinji expressed; while the mother still found it unlikely, the son felt like he was no longer listening to a story, but was instead part of the story now.

-x-

Gendo stopped on a page that had a photo he was positive hadn't existed three seconds ago. The picture contained a detailed image of a castle-like community with people dressed in antiquated clothing that looked as though they belonged to renaissance movement. In front a building, he could see Yui, dressed in the same attire as the people around her, with Shinji and three others that looked exactly as his in-laws had in their younger years, all of them looking as though they belonged. Underneath the picture, Gendo read the location as the Royal Capital of the Clover Kingdom, which, based on old conversations with his wife, seemed like something out of a fairy tale.

I should've had their visitation rights terminated years ago, regardless of their relation to the brat, he thought, looking at another picture he was certain hadn't been taken before in the past or present.

This one depicted the Third Child in what appeared to be some kind of confrontation with Yui, with a younger Rika Ikari in between the two, trying to quell the fury.

What is this? He wondered.

-x-

A place where science and technology not having much to do with anything, this place might've been to Yui as she looked out at the capital on the roof of the hospital, but the people here were not primitive in either their intellect or environmental engineering; it turned out that even witches and wizards needed to use the restroom every once in a while. But this wasn't the reason she was looking out at the capital. No, she was just outed for keeping a dark secret that, unlike the one her mother and siblings had kept over the years regarding this place, had detrimental consequences concerning Shinji.

It wasn't everyday that your mother not only returns to life, but was actually inside a colossal weapon shaped like a humanoid that was meant for something much more unrealistic than fighting giant monsters that wanted to kill the human race. And this left Shinji…feeling somewhat used and betrayed.

"I guess it's my fault this revelation had the unwanted outcome it had," she heard her mother say behind her. "Yet it explains certain things I became curious over."

Yui didn't bother with looking back at her, as she came over to where she was standing near the parapets and sat on one of them beside her on the right.

"Where is he right now?" She asked her instead.

"Back in the garden with Suki and Tenshi," she answered her.

"How were you able to know what you knew about that day? Not even Shinji knew."

"You know how already. And as for Shinji, I had my suspicions that he was being kept in the dark by his father, but discovering that you were also pulling a deception on him is just as wrong, Yui. What the Hell were you both thinking? I mean, really, what were you thinking?"

"It was Second Impact. It was a bad time for everyone, but it was something that had to be done. He was the only one that could do it."

"You sound like your husband now. He also told Shinji there was nobody else that could do what he was doing."

"And how much did Shinji tell you three?"

"Everything he could. It might've been a rule or policy of this NERV agency to keep the public from knowing what was going on, but Shinji knows about the art of loopholes. He didn't tell the public, just his family."

"I just wanted to show him a bright future for all of mankind."

"Yui…there is no such thing as that. There is only the future, the past, and the here and now. You can't make the future any brighter than what can be imagined, just as you can't make the past any darker than what can be remembered by the people. Even if your desire for a brighter future was possible, that kind of wanting is among the most dangerous of desires. It's not how reality works for most."

"And you would know?"

"We all would know, Yui. If you cross a line that isn't meant to be crossed, you're fiddling around with things that are best left alone. The Eva, these Angels, Second Impact, Third Impact, what you did, why you did it, all of these are because you wanted something that was unrealistic."

"But haven't you ever wanted something of the sort?"

"I did…and still do, but I won't move Heaven and Earth to do so."

"What did you want? What do you want?"

"My first husband, my parents, my brother, my twin cousins, my eldest daughters, the two sisters you and Suki never got to meet, the whole family, together again, but even I know such a desire is unrealistic in life. There is no form of magic, not even science, that could bring the dead back to life. And if one were to even try, they risk condemning everyone that's left to a fate many times worse than what was already done."

"So, what, trying to use magic to restore life is prohibited?"

"No art is prohibited, Yui. Only certain practices. You can teach a dog to fetch your slippers, but you can't make it use a broomstick to clean up the world. You can cultivate a patch of desert, but you can't grow an island."

"Are you even familiar with the Dead Sea Scrolls?"

"I don't need to be familiar with anything that deals with the concept of destiny. Destiny is nothing more than an illusion to delude us. Prophecies, oracles and messiahs, those I do believe in, but the rest of it that relates to destiny on a large scale, that's only a falsehood meant to inspire, lift up or delude."

"How can you disbelieve that?"

"Because there are things greater than that, that don't require it."

"And what if there aren't?"

"Then it's only because people don't have the will to break from that belief. It was only a prophecy that said we'd be back in the Clover Kingdom, but we only returned because we, as in your siblings and I, all promised each other that we would return one day, that we had to believe in the possibility of getting back home. The people here viewed our return as a prophecy that they heard of for over fifteen-hundred years, never knowing if it would ever come to pass or not. Now that it has come to pass, there's no more prophecy, nothing to worry about or concern others with. There is only what happens today, tomorrow, and the day after."

"And you want Shinji to know all of this?"

"If he doesn't learn from history, how do you expect him to get out there and have a better chance to shape his future? His future, Yui, not everyone else's?"

"It's not like he even has any magic, Mother."

"You don't know for sure, Yui. Suki seems to believe that he does; somehow, he knew who she was when she was trying to hide her identity…because he somehow used Memory Communication Magic, a derivative of Communication Magic, to see her in the towers of Japan when she was fourteen back in her younger years. If so, then he demonstrates potential. He could be a mage if he wanted to, same as you if you have potential."

Yui got off the parapet and walked across the roof to the other side of to observe the garden area, seeing Shinji under a tree beside Suki. She couldn't hear them, but based on the way her son was throwing his left hand around in the way, it had to be a heated conversation.

"I don't understand how he can be so calm about being here," she told her mother.

"That's 'cause you think like a scientist. Take all that knowledge you have accumulated over the years and put it aside. Right now, Shinji doesn't have any dreams or ambitions. He doesn't aspire to anything. He wishes things with his father were stable, that the guy didn't see him as just some lackey. Honestly, I see no point in trying to resolve things with him, and I still don't understand why you chose someone like him to share your life with. I understand that everyone's got their demons, but Gendo is a man that clearly doesn't want to deal with his or even build or mend his relationships. What did you see in him?"

"I told you before that he's a good man. People just don't see him in a good light."

"If you just told me the actual truth, I'd been convinced."

"Surely, you've met people that others had an opinion over."

"Eh-heh. You truly are your father's child sometimes, Yui. How often has Gendo given you some measure of grief…or how often have you caused him grief?"

"What?"

"The day you died? The day you conveniently faked your death? You can't just be absolved of your absence without expecting some repercussions. And I'm just stumped at how I was able to restore you to life when my aim was to get Shinji out of that abomination I couldn't believe he was inside when we got here. I used a supplementary spell to manipulate steel to open the back of the Eva…and there you were, on Shinji's waist and legs. Now, whether you were actually trapped inside the Eva…or you purposely melded with it or something like that…is irrelevant to your current predicament. What matters now is what you're going to do about your life now."

"Could you put me back in the Eva?"

"No way, Yui. Even if I could, I wouldn't. If this is you trying to continue destiny or escape your responsibilities, nobody's going to help you do that…and it wouldn't be fair to Shinji if you did, either. You'd just be abandoning him all over again."

"What do you expect me to do?"

"I'm asking you what are you going to do, not what is expected of you to do. There's a difference. People can expect you to do one thing, but you can go do another thing that they don't expect you to do. An example being that I expected Shinji to grow up around his family and be as stable as possible, but instead, he ended up in the custody of some stranger because your husband didn't want a trio of elderly people taking care of him."

"Well, in his defense, you three were mostly at an advanced state of age."

"But that wasn't the only thing he stressed out about our potential unfitness. He had the arrogance to suggest things like dementia or Alzheimer's, even schizophrenia. Did you really expect him to look after Shinji when you did what you did? Or were you convinced that he would stick around? Squat on it for a few days, process all of this. Try to work out your next move. It's not like we're in any rush to go anywhere…and some of the people here have the patience to wait around to see us for the first time in a long time."

That, of course, reminded Yui that, for some reason, all five of them, including herself and Shinji, were suddenly the talk of the capital, either through rumors or in general conversations. An old page that prophesied their family's return to the kingdom had been part of history for generations. And now, just hearing that they were here had made them celebrities in a sense. As her mother turned away, she wondered how she could've been so blind to these childish stories that her elder siblings believed in above everything…and how Shinji had been convinced to believe in them, as well.

"Nothing is truly set in stone, Yui," she remembered her mother telling her one day. "Nothing is truly preordained. You believe in one thing while others believe in another."

-x-

"So, before they appeared," went Julius to the Magic Knight squad captains present in the room in front of him, "the lights that appeared had shot out to the bases of each squad and the village of Hage in the Forsaken Region?"

"That's right, sir," explained William. "The light emanating over three of the ten locations were the strongest, however, and one location's light…just seemed to turn red and black before ceasing."

Hage, the Golden Dawn and Black Bull headquarters had received the strongest of the beams of light…while the base of the Silver Eagle squad got the weakest light that changed colors before it disappeared from sight. Nobody was sure what it really meant, but a few members of half the squads had their suspicions that it related in some way to the Ikaris.

-x-

Missing in action. Not killed in action. That was all NERV could really say about the missing Third Child, that he was just that: Missing. Missing without a trace along with a one-hundred-meter-sized cybernetic weapon designed to fight the Angels.

It seemed the longer he went missing, the more it seemed like he was actually just dead. Though only three people wanted to disbelieve this due to the simple fact that, because the failed attempt to attack the Angel was never implemented, there was no body, and so long as there was no body, there was no proof that Shinji Ikari was dead.

The only other thing wrong with this assumption was that his maternal relatives had also all gone missing without a trace, yet most of their possessions had been left behind, making any attempt to get away difficult if not impossible.

Though Gendo seemed to suspect that they were very much alive, but out of anyone's reach. Only a photo album acting as a sort of window to where they might be…or where they've been.

-x-

Looking at his right hand as he lay in bed, Shinji pondered what to do. He was really in the Clover Kingdom, in a world where magic truly existed, where magic was a common practice for everyone…and where there were no Angels. It felt like he could just shift from doing what he hated to something he could probably enjoy, but he had that lingering feeling that he shouldn't. Even being introduced to the capital with the rest of the family in due time didn't make him forget about the Angels that he didn't want to face, anymore.

"Not easy for you to relax, is it?" He looked towards the door and saw Tenshi with a book floating in front of him.

"You have no idea how much I want to relax," he told his uncle, sighing.

"You've been unable to do that ever since you got to Tokyo-3. That father of yours has caused you tension by making you pilot that abomination to fight giant monsters. That's something only for the comics and cartoons. You're a young man and you need to relax until you get an occupation you can enjoy. I've been researching my Spatial Magic, and once I've mastered it and my mana reserves can support it, I can open a rift in space to go back to Tokyo-3 and give that jerk a piece of my mind."

"Hold on, you can use magic to travel between worlds?"

"Sort of. Spatial Magic only works if you've been to places before. Then you can open rifts to and from those places. For example, if you've been to Osaka and are from Sapporo, you can open a rift to and from one of those two places or the other."

"But…why would you want to go back there?"

"Just because Suki, our mother and I have returned home after a long time doesn't mean you have to be taken from your friends to the city. I mean, they're probably wondering what happened to you."

"Thanks, Tenshi."

The elder man sat in a chair nearby and turned a page in the floating book.

"Is that…"

"My grimoire? Yes, it is."

"Do they always glow like that?"

"Only when opened and in use. They're a source of magical information and instructions on how to use a spell whatever type of magic you use revolves around. Except that the spells are only as strong as the mage that uses them, requiring practice, discipline and effort for anyone. Use a high-level spell with insufficient experience and little mana, you risk causing harm to yourself and/or others if it gets out of control. Use too much mana on a spell that requires a small amount, you risk the same, potential outcome if it were the opposite. But if you open it simply to educate yourself on the spells you're capable of using, no magic is triggered because no spells are being used."

"Can I ask what it feels like to open a grimoire that belongs to you? One that chooses you?"

"The feeling? It's unique to each owner. For some, it's like being submerged in a hot bath or shower, for others, it's a feeling of elation, and it's a feeling only you can experience. I guess you could say a grimoire that chooses you is like the receiving of a sacrament."

"And your feeling?"

"Like the first time I started using magic just to climb up a flight of stairs when I was a baby. Just a happy memory."

-x-

The photo album had to be connected to wherever his wife and her relatives were. This was all Gendo could suspect as he saw photos that weren't there before, seeing them in different scenes with random people.

Stories about a place that seems like a fairytale is right, he thought, wondering what the picture showing the Third Child with a younger-looking Tenshi Ikari was all about and why a book was floating in front of him.

He turned to the next page, seeing several old photos of the Nineteen-Eighties, and one photo that showed his wife, their son and her relatives in front of a crowd of people as a man presented them.

"…These five are all that remains of the House of Ikari, ladies and gentlemen!" Gendo thought he heard someone say, followed by a series of claps and congrats.

He shook his head and heard only the silence of his office.

-x-

Shinji didn't expect to see so many people out here to greet him and the others of the Ikari family. And it had nothing to do with NERV or the Eva, just the family. It was almost remarkable that there were people that heard of this prophecy and had waited years to decades just to get even the barest glimpse of someone from the House of Ikari. He felt like it was someone's birthday today, and the capital was embracing the party person.

"Never thought people praise other people like this before," he uttered to nobody in particular.

"They don't know us yet," he heard Tenshi say to him, "but they will as time passes. Our interests, our quirks, whatever can be known about each of us."

As he looked at the crowd, Shinji, along with Rika, noticed a handful of people that, despite the positive reactions from those around them, seemed to be less than enthusiastic about their return, particularly a trio of them that looked as though they were sculpted from silver…but not very friendly. Looking elsewhere, the boy noticed a small bunch that seemed to be partially covered by small, black robes in the far background. He almost thought one of them had silver hair, as well, but they were too far back to make out complete features.

"Are you looking at one of the Magic Knight squads, Shinji?" Suki asked him.

"Uh, yeah, the one with the black," he explained.

"I didn't take you for an admirer of the Black Bulls."

"Black Bulls?"

"They're the squad that's considered the most unstable due to some of their members doing more harm than good. But they're actually a good squad, despite their flaws. Say, do you want to be a Magic Knight if you get a grimoire of your own when you turn fifteen?"

"I don't know. That's a whole year from here and now. You?"

"Maybe. As I'm young again, I qualify for an occupation…and I need something to do that determines my magical potential. Back then, I was just a grocer during the day and a security guard at night. Not something I'm proud of. If I become a Magic Knight, I'd be able to help people by using magic. I'd pretty much be like a police officer of the Clover Kingdom, swearing my loyalty to the current Clover and Wizard Kings while serving the people."

"The Wizard King? This man that introduced the people to us?"

"That's right. Who knows, one day, I could be the Wizard Queen. Or is it Witch Queen?"

"Isn't that usurping the heir to a throne?"

"No. I'll explain it to you later tonight."

Shinji returned his gaze towards the people in front of them. The Clover Kingdom, the Clover King, the Wizard King, Magic Knights. There seemed to be a lot to learn about. But one of the things he wanted to learn most…was simply where he belonged here.

To be continued…

A/N: It seems like the elder Silva siblings are by far the only ones angry at the Ikaris for returning. Be on the lookout for Gendo finding a way to the Clover Kingdom and trying to make a claim to things. Yui tried to deny that she was in a magical world only to be shown the harsh reality of it by her rejuvenated mother. And Shinji might have to rely on his rejuvenated aunt and uncle to survive in the kingdom until he's adjusted enough to cope with his dual life; I will have him return to Tokyo-3 to eliminate his MIA status, eventually.