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.

42. Pushing Me Away

Creation began on 01-06-22

Creation ended on 02-28-22

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Grimoire of Evangelion: Pushing Me Away

A/N: How can you push away someone that you were barely even close with to begin with?

There was no such thing as bad press right now for the Clover Kingdom. When word of Yui Ikari being the culprit behind the Spade Kingdom massacre became public knowledge, the masses ate it up and spat it out to anyone that had something to say about her. Basically, nobody was really pleased with her actions; if it had been just the people responsible for turning the neighboring kingdom into a place of dread, she would've been afforded much greater respect, gotten a meteoric rise up the ranks in the Magic Knights, even be seen as a national hero, but she killed countless innocent lives, and she would have to answer for that. Her allegiance with Harbinger also made her the most feared of women to have ever walked the grounds of Clover.

"I didn't know what she was doing," Wong informed the captains of the Golden Dawn and Silver Eagle squads when he was being interrogated by Damnatio Kira. "She only came to the library to read books on magic."

"And she never spoke with anyone while she was there?" William asked him. "Anyone at all?"

"No, never. She wasn't really much of a…people person."

"Did she ever give any indication, whatsoever, that she was planning something?" Nozel asked.

"No, sir, all she ever did was read books. She never talked to anyone, never made notes… I don't think she even got up once just to use the lavatory."

The two captains left the librarian in the room and spoke with the Wizard King and Damnatio.

"I don't believe him to be helping Yui Ikari," William shared his opinion on the man with them. "He's a man that keeps order in the library, not someone remotely interested in helping someone do something he would know to be wrong."

"Captain Nozel Silva?" Damnatio asked. "Do you agree with Vangeance?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Nozel answered. "This woman didn't confide in this man. I doubt she confided in anyone from around here, noble or commoner. She was only interested in developing her knowledge, not developing her relationships."

Damnatio sighed and realized that this nobleman from the Tong family was useless in trying to find Yui.

"What do you want us to do with him?" Julius asked him.

"Let him go," he ordered them. Where is she hiding? Where is she keeping Ms. Vermillion?

-x-

While the Clover Kingdom was a small country, comparable in size to its neighbors, the Heart and Diamond Kingdoms, when it came to finding specific individuals, it was big enough to hide in if you knew where to go. This was the case with Tenshi, as he flew through the air over a forest, looking for Yui, trying to find Mimosa; as he was requested by House Vermilion to find one of their own, he didn't really need permission from his squad captain to go searching. But he would've made sure he had permission from his captain if he had to; ever since his family's escape from the attempt on their lives and his accumulation of knowledge from the other world that became their second home, one of the harder lessons that people from younger generations fail to grasp in their entirety is that it was never always better to ask for forgiveness rather than to ask for permission when it came to doing something. While there were those that chose to act now and regret later on, Tenshi preferred to ask for permission, only asking for forgiveness when the heat was on and the crap was going to hit the fan. And so, he was trying to find anyplace Yui could've hidden in.

You can plot all you want, Yui, he thought, lowering to the forest grounds and stopping beside a creak, but you're only making things worse for yourself.

He suddenly felt the mana of someone nearby, and slowly lowered himself to pick up a tiny stone; he wasn't going to resort to magic unless he needed to at the last moment. Then, he felt a familiar ki and smirked.

"You're actually quite powerful for an ancient creature…Guardian of the Void," he uttered, and the creature that protected Shinji emerged from behind a tree…with Shinji and Suki. "What are y'all doing here?"

"You were actually close by Henry's house, the Black Bull hideout," Suki revealed, "and you're not the only one that wants to find Ms. Vermillion. In one sense or another, we all got deceived by Yui, and she's out there, hiding from us, and is allied with the one creature that may give us a run for our mana reserves."

"Harbinger may talk a good intimidation, but no matter how strong he looks, his power comes at a price," Guardian told them.

"A price, you say?" Tenshi questioned.

"Think of mana like a liquid substance," Shinji explained, "and the body like a cup to hold it in. The more you add to the cup, the heavier it becomes. The cup, the body, also has to be able to hold all of that mana; the bigger the cup, the more liquid it can hold, but if it's too small, it can't hold so much. Harbinger's body, when compared to a cup, is one with holes in it; he can't overflow…but he can't hold so much because he's always leaking to keep from overflowing. Once upon a time, he used to be able to hold a lot of magic power inside himself, but I changed that for him the day I trapped him in the Void."

"Guardian gave him a fatal injury with Anti Magic," Suki informed her brother. "It was so severe that he probably can't use his magic for a prolonged period, however long that is. Unless he can use Healing Magic, that is."

"A creature like Harbinger doesn't strike me as an intelligent being that would use magic for recovery purposes if he seeks only the death and destruction of other species."

"Except when he attacked us that night, he was able to hurt Guardian with a spear of bone, an ability that he didn't possess before," Shinji stated, something Tenshi found unusual.

"A spear made of bone? Bone Magic? Some of the refugees from Spade said one of the Dark Triad members possessed Bone Magic. The other two possessed Blood and Body Magic. Could Harbinger have taken their magic when he attacked Spade because they were stronger with their contracted devils?"

"It's possible. He mentioned consuming the devils had triggered a side-effect when he looked different from how he looked when I fought him before your time. He had the arrogance to suggest that he was becoming like House Ikari's members."

"Not if he's stealing magic from other users. Artificially-obtained magic isn't the same as naturally-obtained magic. There's no natural affinity to magic you're not used to using."

"Like a mage with a natural affinity to Fire Magic and being asked to practice with a newly-obtained form of magic like…perhaps Earth Magic?" Shinji suggested to Tenshi.

"Yes, exactly like that. The form of magic you have a natural affinity towards affects your way of using it. It has to be as natural to you as anything else you do that becomes second nature. Breathing, walking, talking, hearing. If it's not natural to you, then it becomes something you use sparingly…if you use it at all."

"Still, this would give Harbinger…seven forms of magic to wield at his disposal instead of his own magic," said Suki. "Can we agree that none of us are to face Harbinger alone?"

"I wouldn't face Harbinger, even if I was half-naked and back in a wheelchair."

"Even if someone dared me to, threatened me to, or even just to point a gun to my head," Shinji expressed, "I ain't going up against Harbinger by myself."

"Unusual way to agree on the same thing," went Guardian, "but I'm not complaining. There is strength in numbers. And, as humans came to say, one is the loneliest number."

"Yeah, that's true," Tenshi agreed. However, two is also in that lonely sense because when you put Yui in with Harbinger, it's really only those two that stand against others.

-x-

One of the many things that made Rika Ikari a worthy mage to the Memory Magic spirit Mnemosyne was her understanding and embracing of how memories, no matter how old or how long they were, couldn't be manipulated in the darkest sense. You could relive a memory in the barest of sense, relay it to others so that they get somewhat of a picture of what you experienced, but memories could never be altered, only talked about from a different perspective. In addition to being unmanipulable, they couldn't be destroyed, either; even if you remove the owner of certain memories, the memories were still around, only inaccessible by those without the means to retrieve them. But when you were a mage that possessed the power of Memory Magic and worthy of Mnemosyne, your ability to access memories was almost unlimited, and this was a resource that made Rika invaluable to finding people that might know something about Yui's whereabouts, even if they didn't think much about what went on if they saw her or had a conversation with her.

"Mister Tong's memory of Yui is sparse," Mnemosyne informed Damnatio and Julius while showing them and Rika the man's memories that revolved around Yui. "Everything he told you from before has been confirmed to be fact; Yui only ever came to the library to do research. He was impressed by her reading of various books and allowed her access to more advanced books that wouldn't have been accessible to Magic Knights of lower ranking. This woman never made time to speak with others during the entire time she was there."

"He's not keeping secrets from any of us that he knows he shouldn't," Rika agreed with her. "He's innocent of any wrongdoing. Yui wouldn't confide in him of anything."

"Someone that makes no time to build relationships with other people," Damnatio uttered, upset that they were looking at another dead end. "What kind of person are we dealing with here? Does she not have one friend in the entire kingdom? A neighbor? Her siblings? Her son?"

Rika looked at him and replied, "I'll show you my own memories of Yui if need be, but even I have my doubts that she's changed in the slightest sense from who she used to be when she was little. Unless people are of her caliber, words like 'friends', 'companions', 'posse' or 'gang' don't really go together with Yui."

"A young woman that can't make friends with other people unless they're like herself," said Julius. "How can she fit in a society like this one if she doesn't even try to?"

"Rika here has been wondering about that ever since she discovered Yui's lack of parental bonding towards Shinji when he was a toddler," Mnemosyne revealed; from what the spirit could ascertain, all Yui possessed between herself and Shinji…was just a basic bond between parent and child that was minute at best.

It was just a blood bond, nothing more and nothing less, but an inadequate bond because there was nothing else in it to connect the two. There was no extended conversations, no understanding of one's own interests or dreams, not even words of encouragement between them. No, as far as Mnemosyne could see, whatever relationships Yui had with other people were just whatever the young woman needed them to be on the surface, never going any deeper than what she had desired of them.

-x-

Shinji had to own up to it for the umpteenth time as he, Suki and Tenshi reflected upon their recollection of Yui's time with each of them. He simply didn't know much about anything relating to his mother, aside from what others had mentioned about her. His father mentioned very little about her in the past that was actually relevant to him developing a proper idealization of her; there was no mention of what her favorite colors were, what her other hobbies were, not even what she did on their first date, things like that. And his aunt and uncle, their relationship with Yui was very…complicated…and most of that stemmed from Yui herself; from what they had to share about his mother, it seemed that Yui was just too into science and technology, which seemed normal for a woman of her generation, but it was that passion that also alienated his mother from just about everyone else around her, including her own family. It was as though Yui Ikari, this woman that he wanted to see with different eyes…was just walled off from everyone that wanted to get her to open up…but were unable to meet her on stable ground.

"So…she was awful at archery?" He asked Suki as the three walked through the forest.

"More like pathetic, and that's a word I only use for when someone has potential to do good at something…but has no drive to actually put in any effort to try," she explained. "You can train your mind all you want, but what good is your mind if you don't train your body? Our mother tried to expand Yui's interests in other places, like sports…but…"

"Your mother just isn't like Suki or I," Tenshi clarified. "For her, it was just science and technology. She focused on trying to solve the problems of tomorrow, but she kept out the one thing she needed that prevented her from actually being so great at it."

"Which was?" Shinji asked.

"Morality. As we came to see her, Yui had, and still does have, potential to be great, but forgoes the sense of morality that people have; just because you can do something others can't do, it doesn't necessarily mean that you should without considering the consequences of doing so. Yui…doesn't seem to do that much of the time…if she ever thinks about the consequences at all. She just does what she does."

Shinji stopped and took out his grimoire and opened it to the pages that had the Evangelion. Although the opinions of his mother's behavior and very upbringing were just from the views of other people that knew bits and pieces about her, he couldn't help but feel like they were on two different ships, one that could go whichever way was possible…and the other that only went in a straight line on a predetermined course. If such was the case, he felt like they were never going to understand each other…and all he really saw of his mother…was this lady that chose the Eva over her family, science and technology over people and relationships, future over present. And…he just hated her for making such a choice. He hated what she had done, what she was doing, and how she hadn't even tried to explain her reasons in any sense.

"Tell me something, Guardian," he spoke to the Anti Magic creature that stood beside him. "You see possibilities based on what currently is over what could be, right?"

"Yes," he answered Shinji.

"Everything that has happened…everything that could've happened… Not once…did you ever see any possibility of my mother moving past her ambitions and giving life here an actual chance? I mean…does she ever stop of her own volition and just take this world for what it's worth? Even for just a little while?"

Guardian lowered his head in regret, and that told Shinji all he needed to know.

"I am sorry, Shinji," he apologized. "Despite my efforts, I never saw any such possibility. Your mother is…rooted in her own desires…and nothing and no one will be able to sway her."

"Great. That's just lovely."

"Please, tell us you don't see her killing Ms. Vermillion, do you?" Tenshi asked Guardian.

"I can only hope that she doesn't."

"She does that, she can forget about whatever mercy she could receive from the royals of Clover," Tenshi stated. They'd kill her just for looking at them.

Stupid Yui, thought Suki. She just can't accept what is, always trying to change something to suit herself. She takes the joy out of everything with every word that escapes her mouth. It's no wonder we never got along.

-x-

"…Seems like they have yet to find his mother," said Asuka to Misato as they examined the photos depicting the four Ikaris in their respective situations in the album.

"And all she's done is cause more trouble because nobody there knows what she's up to," Misato stated as she drove them back to NERV HQ the next day. "How does Shinji seem so far?"

"So far? He's really upset with her."

That's a fact.

Asuka turned the page and saw a picture of the redhead that had been kidnapped by Yui, now being fed intravenously by the woman that took her, looking rather miserable.

-x-

Mimosa, unable to get free because of Yui and Harbinger, was now being kept barely alive by the woman she didn't have any real bias towards in the beginning, seeing her as just another member of the Golden Dawn, now seeing her as just another crazy person with ambitions that were unsavory towards others.

"One day, you'll all understand that I'm doing this to save everyone," Yui tried to convince her.

"No, Yui," she countered her. "Nobody will ever understand you for doing these cruel things. You're incapable of being understood…because you don't understand others. Is that why you're the only one in your immediate family that doesn't have a relationship with your own son?"

Yui, who had turned away from the girl, turned back to face her, her expression one of mild anger of a facet of the truth. She didn't expect people to understand her primary concern in any situation she was in.

"Shinji is easily impressionable," she claimed to Mimosa. "He can be easily deceived and encouraged to see things from a perspective that doesn't support any logic. And my mother and siblings…they turned him. They manipulated him to abandon the path I wanted him to follow. He needs to let go of this foolish nonsense that surrounds all of us and move forward."

"That's your opinion. You hate magic, but he seems to enjoy it, making you the complete opposite of everyone else in the world. If you hate magic so much, why live here? Why don't you just leave and go back to that other world your mother and siblings were self-exiled to over fifteen-hundred years ago? Your brother has been making strives to master Spatial Magic, hasn't he? You could return to that place once he achieves mastery."

"Oh, even if I could, that wouldn't change anything here. You would still be living the life of a fairytale…and fairytales need to be erased."

"You truly are a terrible person."

"No. I'm just a rational person. I know how reality needs to be, and everything each of you does is not how reality is supposed to be. How am I supposed to stand idle and allow people to throw their future away over unrealistic goals?"

"You…don't get to decide what is and isn't unrealistic. People should only be responsible for what they do for themselves, not others around them. You should walk away while you still can. Just leave and forget about the people of Clover."

But Yui nodded in the negative.

"Not until I've removed all of the craziness that plagues each of you," she proclaimed to the girl, "and I will…once I have Shinji to help me."

"And what makes you think he'll help you?"

"The only thing worse than someone pretending to be a hero…is a hero that suddenly becomes despised by the people he swore to protect," Yui stated cryptically.

Mimosa didn't like the way she said what she said. It was as though…she aimed to turn her own son into an outcast. But she doubt that she'd be able to; with everything that was done that involved Shinji, the boy seemed to be rather favorable by some…and tolerated by others, despite what his mother had done. Even after she heard that his abilities and actions had impressed most of the Magic Knight captains that wanted him in their squads, she didn't think it was a mistake that Shinji, along with his aunt, chose to join the Black Bull, the one squad in Clover that most considered the worst group because of its members and their quirks. The Black Bulls had even gotten better at being Magic Knights because of their inclusion of the Ikaris, including her cousin Noelle, who had developed greater control over her Water Magic.

"Shinji's a Magic Knight now," she reminded Yui. "That doesn't make him whoever he used to be before he came here, anymore. He's still your son, but he's not your…ally or pawn in your sick, twisted game."

-x-

"…Say, Suki, I have to ask, but I never found the right moment to do so," went Tenshi as they continued down the forest path until they came across a sandy terrain, "but…what's with your attire right now?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Suki questioned, turning to face him, her hands on her hips.

"I'm all for freedom of self-expression and everything, but I thought you had…outgrown the school girl theme, that's all."

Shinji sighed at how his uncle had to point out an obvious truth. It wasn't until shortly after Suki and he joined the Black Bulls, around the aftermath of facing the Eye of the Midnight Sun and Third Eye, that she started reverting her choice of clothing back to something as odd as the sailor fuku uniform. Not that he really minded, though; he'd seen the female student uniform of his Tokyo-3 middle school enough times to lose interest in its aesthetics, and every picture he'd seen of his aunt in her teens wearing the school uniforms of that time was actually…more impressive than what he'd seen in his time at school.

Suki looked down at her current, casual outfit, the traditional school uniform that mirrored everything she remembered about it, red scarf, blue skirt, short-sleeved shirt and everything in between, and did a mock twirl in front of her brother and nephew.

"Old habits die hard, I suppose," she claimed. "And no offense, Tenshi, but you collected manga and anime about those girls that made the school uniform a bit of a fetish back in the day."

"Hmm?" Guardian went, looking at Tenshi. "A uniform is a desired totem of obsession in this world you were self-exiled to?"

"For otaku and hentai-minded hobbyists," he defended, "and it's called Sailor Moon. Teenage superheroines from the magical girl genre."

"Of all the genre that attracted you, Tenshi," Shinji spoke, "which ones had the most impact on your imagination?"

"Magical girl, giant monsters, sword and sorcery, vampires, mecha, steampunk, cyberpunk, fantasy involving myths and folklore, the samurai and ninjas, even some variations of postapocalyptic and romantic fiction. They may have been a way to escape from the mundaneness of everyday life, but weren't we all looking for an escape once upon a time? Aren't we all still trying to escape from that mundaneness that doesn't give us what we're seeking out of real life?"

"Heh-heh-heh," Guardian chuckled. "Reality. It only ever allows for one to desire more than what is possible. Why is it that people desire to live beyond the Earth when they're still walking through the forest? Why do people dream of flying when they know they can't? Why dream of miracles that don't exist? Because they long for more of what they don't have? Or because they grow tired of this…mundaneness. Magical girl? Those already exist here, don't they? Witches, sorceresses, enchantresses. Sword and sorcery? There are those that use swords in tandem with their magic, such as Yami Sukehiro, yourself, Asta of the Black Clover and Shinji, who are still apprentice swordsmen. And giant monsters? We exist alongside myth and folklore. In a world where magic is everything, you get almost everything and more when you awake to the new day and walk out your room."

"Thank you, Guardian of the Void," the three praised him.

"And what can I say about my preferences?" Suki questioned. "I wanted to stand out for reasons understood only by myself. I'm not for long, flowy dresses or any outfits that could be viewed as racy or skimpy. But the uniforms of my old schools make me stand out just enough."

"Pre-Second Impact Japanese school uniforms look better than the post-Second Impact ones, anyway," Shinji expressed his opinion.

"How is that, despite his limited time spent with you in the past," Guardian spoke, "you two and your mother have been a stronger influence over him than even I can fathom?"

-x-

Even Rika hated these moments of her memories replayed around herself and the Wizard King and Damnatio, but her past right now couldn't be hidden if it held even the slightest bit of information regarding Yui's behavior towards other people and her unsavory desires. However, she was getting a reevaluation of how her relationship with her youngest daughter was bare bones compared to the ones she had with her elder daughters and Suki; there had been a connection that was there from the start, but with Yui…there was this gap the size of a canyon…and it just continued to fill up with whatever it was that kept them from understanding each other properly. And then, there was her father; Rika cared for the guy in the beginning with a different measure of love than that of her first husband, but after finding out that he'd been cheating on her, it degraded their relationship with the same level of negligence that their views on Yui had been based on.

"Your second husband clearly was of inadequate devotion," Damnatio told her. "I can see why he ended up getting killed."

"Say what you will," she responded, "he brought his death upon himself."

"He had different views on your daughter's behavior?" Julius questioned, seeing a memory of the couple talking to a teacher of Yui's from this grade school that had some misgivings about Yui's lack of social bonds and her questioning of traditional teachings.

"Yui wasn't very social with others her age," she explained. "One of her teachers suggested that she see a counselor, but her father was against it because he didn't want her being labeled."

"Labeled?" Damnatio asked.

"Another improper way of saying someone's looked down upon because of something that was considered off about them. I was all for Yui seeing a counselor, but her father refused."

"And I'm guessing that he was adamant that Yui be allowed to go about her personal business as always?" Julius asked her.

"More or less."

"What did you see in your second husband?"

"Survival in a world not our own at first…but I slowly started appreciating him as a person. And, yes, I did love him. Not in the same league or level as I loved my first husband…but I did love him all the same."

Even her memories of her time with her second husband didn't deny her former affections for him. But her relationship with him was as similar to her relationship with Yui was; the affection was dying and becoming strained due to different personalities and beliefs. Not even the range of emotions eluded Mnemosyne as she showed these memories to the men; Rika felt joy, friendship, angst, disgust, love, hate and so on when faced with these two people that were probably the most difficult of her relationships with family. And the spirit felt how her mage partner's feelings of difficulty with her youngest daughter conflict with her stable feelings of love and compassion towards her only grandchild, who had been a victim of his mother's deceit the most out of the family because he was the youngest member.

"Your grandson was barely four years old when your daughter conveniently faked her own death at the hands of her artificial behemoth?" Damnatio questioned, seeing a copy of a memory belonging to Yui of the day she performed her last experiment with the Eva when it was still incomplete, seeing the toddler Shinji.

"She says she loves Shinji, but it's hard to actually see her affection when she made a choice to let her work consume her, literally, and it's hard to understand her when she focuses more on how she wants to reshape the future using Shinji," Rika explains, closing her eyes from the memory of how Yui allowed herself to be ripped to pieces and broken down to nothing so she would become the soul of Evangelion Unit-01, an act that broke up her family. "I guess I want to forgive her most rotten of transgressions towards her family, but she just makes it hard to do so if she makes no effort in trying to make amends."

"So, her absence in his life left a huge space in his recollection and caused trauma that didn't fade from his conscious mind and made his subconscious mind attempt repressing it." Julius understood as he examined another memory of Yui's past copied by Rika, seeing her with a man that wasn't her husband, but appeared to be someone she confided in before that dreadful day.

"Not really the type of environment I believe anyone should raise children in. But then again, what do I know? I'm just a traditional person."

"One eye on the past, one on the future, both legs in the present."

"Yeah."

"Judging only from the memory here," Damnation expressed, seeing the memory Rika had of Shinji walking away from his mother after discovering the reason for her absence in his life, "Yui Ikari is someone that only looks in one direction, regardless of whatever obstacles impede her."

"However, past memories can only tell you so much about anyone. Especially when they're just one person's memories."

"And how many people alive know your daughter?"

"That's a question I can't answer…because I don't know her relationships that actually stuck with her. If they were of her caliber, she'd likely keep in touch with them, but I have to judge her how I see her right now."

-x-

"…Based on this picture," went Fuyutsuki as he and the others were examining the album again, seeing Rika with two men in front of various displays that were around them on one page, "it doesn't look like they're any closer to finding Yui."

"And based on this photograph," added Rei, pointing to a picture on the other page, depicting Shinji and his aunt and uncle, "Ikari-Kun isn't interested in his mother as she is, not like how he is interested in these people as they are."

"I could be wrong," said Kaji, "but is his aunt dressed in a school uniform?"

"No, you're right," went Misato, "but the outfit is a custom-made one based off the school uniform, not an actual uniform. But who's really looking?"

Ritsuko turned the page and noticed a Halloween photo of Shinji, his older aunt and uncle dressed as comic book characters. It was almost unusual that the Third Child, someone his father tried to various lengths to keep away from his mother's relatives, got along well with these complete strangers that even Gendo wouldn't speak of, and reminded herself that part of the reason they were viewed as strangers was because they were from another world that didn't make any sense to her.

"I honestly don't see that fool's parents taking a page from the book of these three," Asuka expressed, envious of Shinji's familial ties that actually wanted to be with him. "The grandmother, aunt and uncle have this…this welcoming feel to them that he enjoys, but his parents, they…they're the complete opposite; they have a pushy feel to them."

"Pushy?" Rei questioned, confused by her choice of words to describe Shinji's parents.

Under the photo was one of Yui and Harbinger, standing in front of some people with short, green robes.

Fuyutsuki touched the picture, wondering what Yui was up to in that situation.

Flash! He suddenly found himself surrounded by the fallen people in green robes…and Yui approaching a tall, skinny man…and taking a book from him.

"Please, understand," he heard her say, "I'm doing this all for your own good."

He pulled his left hand away from the picture and was back in his office where they currently were to follow the happenings in the Clover Kingdom.

She's not only pushing people away from herself, he thought, she's rationalizing every one of her assaults on them when she decides to go after them.

-x-

It was one thing to hear about something, and it was another thing to find its aftermath, but William was unsure of how to address this new issue when he and the Golden Dawn received a magic distress beacon from the Green Praying Mantis squad…and found the crew scattered across the ground, looking more like victims of a hangover due to obsessive drinking than a vicious fight. He counted about forty members, including Jack the Ripper, but realized that the squad was one member short, but he couldn't remember the guy that was among the Green Praying Mantis.

"Who did this to them?" Siren questioned as they gathered the fallen Magic Knights.

"That…" They heard Jack speak as he came to. "That…crazy…chick."

He passed out again, leaving them to wonder what he meant by what he had spoken. But Yuno was starting to suspect that this squad had a would-be confrontation with someone on their most wanted list.

William took out his Communication Magic device and heard a voice on the other end.

"Backup!" A man yelled. "We need backup! We're under attack! The Purple Orcas are under attack! It's… Aaah!"

The connection was cut on the other end, and everyone that heard that transmission was confused by it. Some of them had to suspect that whoever attacked the Green Praying Mantis was also the one that attacked the Purple Orca.

-x-

"…Oh, you gotta be kidding me," said Suki as she, Shinji, Tenshi and Guardian flew to the location where a member from the Purple Orca squad sent a distress beacon to nearby Magic Knights requesting backup, seeing the fallen Magic Knights all over the ground.

"A squad of the so-called elite," went Tenshi as he looked down at one of the Purple Orcas, seeing that it was the vice-captain Xerx, "and they were all beaten by someone."

Xerx, who was still conscious, looked up at him and responded, "Your sister has a serious attitude problem."

"Which sister would that be?"

"You know which one I mean."

Shinji looked down at the captain of the squad and found his injuries to be unusual. Actually, he found every member of the squad to have unusual injuries; not a single member had visible injuries, but they all looked like they had been in a brawl with someone that knew how to leave them without a mark.

"Get away from me, you Ikari," Gueldre uttered at him, too weak to resist being moved.

"Who did this to you?" Shinji asked him.

"Your mother."

Shinji sighs and helps Gueldre sit up as he took out his grimoire to use a Healing Magic spell.

"…Yeah, we located the Purple Orca," Tenshi was heard talking to someone through his Communication Magic tool. "They were attacked by Yui. The Green Praying Mantis? They were attacked, too? One of their members is missing? Well, it's possible, but why would she do that when she already has one? Hey, this is no different from dealing with any other antagonist; they always have an agenda…and they always think they're going to win in the end when they're not going to."

"No!" Gueldre yelled, looking around himself. "My grimoire! She took it!"

"Plant Healing Magic: Garden of Renewal," Shinji uttered, and a field of flowers sprouted across the ground, bathing the Purple Orca in rainbow colors as they felt relaxed. Why would my mother attack these people? She's keeping away from everyone, so why steal from them? She already has her ally in Harbinger. She's not making any sense. But then again, Mother never has made any sense to me. She makes no sense to anyone here.

"…Why is she attacking us now?" A Purple Orca member asked Suki as she helped him up. "She's making us look bad with these unprovoked assaults. Well, that's not necessarily true; she provoked the royal families by taking one of their members."

"It's unprovoked if none of you attacked her and she made a choice to attack you when all she could've done was cooperate," she replied. "Did any of you attack her first?"

"No, we didn't even know where to find her. We were following a report of an attack on a commoner village. We weren't expecting trouble. And that creature she was with… I think I can see why she chose to work with that thing; she really hates people that aren't like herself."

"I've never known Yui to openly admit having any hatred towards other people."

"If you hate someone, you don't have to openly admit it. You just have to express it in whatever way you choose to do so. Some do so by harassment, others by ignoring the people they don't like, and some take a more direct approach that often includes removing the cause of their dislike for someone else."

"Like how the Purple Orca chose to cast aside Mr. Spirito simply because he was a commoner?" Suki had to ask him, which earned a look of concern from the man. "We've done our own research on your squad; there have been a number of men and women in the Purple Orca that are no longer around, and they all had one thing in common: They were all commoners. Your squad is biased, sir. Even if you make a choice to accept someone in your ranks, you don't really seem to have much faith in their abilities…if you have any faith at all."

"What good can commoners do?"

"I live with some of them…and they're all good once you take the time to know them and see their quirks for what they are."

Guardian picked up two Purple Orca members from the ground and set them down again.

"That kid's mother," one of them spoke to him, "is she going to kill us the next time we see her?"

"It's a possibility," he replied, "but the question is… Will she have a reason to come after you a second time?"

"She's crazy."

"How many people have you dealt with that end up with that designation?"

"Not like this woman," the other Purple Orca responded. "She looked at us with disinterest, wearing a white robe in place of her Golden Dawn robes, and then she says something that doesn't sound at all like she means well at all."

"What?" Shinji went as he came over to the guy. "What did she say?"

"She said…she was doing what she was doing for our own good, whatever the Hell that really means. It didn't sound like she meant any of it. Not in the right sense."

She does what she does for our own good? Shinji thought as he tried to comprehend what Yui meant by that. "My mother isn't much for sharing why she does any of the things she does."

"If you find her, you gotta stop her. Sever her head, burn her to ashes, stab her in the heart, send her away, whatever you have to do to stop her."

-x-

It was improvisation at best, but Yui could still work out the kinks that were still present. Since she couldn't ask for their assistance, she would settle for objects that have been imbued with additional energy to implement her grand design for them.

"You really should've let me kill them," Harbinger told her as they walked down the hall of her laboratory. "They wouldn't have mattered."

"If we had killed them, we wouldn't have access to these (she holds up two grimoires, neither of which were her own). The captains are considered the strongest out of each squad, second only to the Wizard King himself. Since we can't risk killing certain individuals right now, we can make do with their grimoires. Deprived of these, anyone can only do basic magic. They're not so much of a threat without these." Yui reminded him; after seeing several men and women with grimoires from Spade die and their grimoires disappearing from sight, the woman couldn't risk that happening if someone else she decided would be beneficial to her plan were to up and die.

"If this fails, we both end up with another setback."

Returning to where Mimosa was being kept, Yui set the two grimoires down on a table nearby and sat in a chair.

Harbinger sat against a wall crossed his hoofed legs. He had suggested going after her son for his grimoire, but Yui chose to save Shinji for last, as there were other people of much greater quality that could be relieved of their grimoires first. However, taking her son's would've been a challenge if he kept it with him at all times.

"Even if he forgives your crimes," they heard Mimosa speak, "he won't be able to look at you the same way, anymore."

Yui looked at her.

"I don't need Shinji to look at me the same way," she responded. "In due time, he'll understand that what I do is the best choice for everyone."

"Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, but nobody will believe you. They won't follow you. You're just a…another terrible person. You've done too much to forgiven by the Clover Kingdom. And my family will demand you pay for your unethical actions."

"By the time any of them realize it and find me, it'll already be too late."

No, thought Mimosa as she held onto the hope that she'd be rescued from this blight upon her and the kingdom. As long as they're looking for us, it'll never be too late. You could stop at any time, but you choose not to. The Magic Knights could stop looking and assume I'm dead, but I hope they'll keep looking for me.

-x-

"…There doesn't seem to be any place in any part of Clover that Yui would hide in," Suki expressed as she, Shinji and Tenshi stopped walking in front of a cave. "We've searched the forest, three different caves and some ruins, but no trace of her or Mimosa. Where would Yui hide to keep away from us?"

Shinji sat on a nearby rock and pondered those words his aunt used. Just where would his mother hide, and where would she keep Mimosa confined? Unlike the majority of the kingdom, including his maternal relatives and himself, Yui didn't seem to be the kind of person that could look at a place and accept its customs without questioning everything about it, whether it was the kind of homes people lived in…or the kind of recreational activities they had to occupy their time with. But whenever Shinji did allow himself time to think about it, the Clover Kingdom wasn't anything like Tokyo-3 or any other city that he either heard about or read about in school; places that people would strive to proclaim were the greatest of places one could live in, where anyone could rise up and seize whatever it was that they wanted with what they could do, where tomorrow was today and yesterday was too long ago.

"…Anyone else feel the stinging of their curse marks?" Tenshi asked them, baring his teeth as he felt his mark acting up again.

"Yeah," Suki replied, taking out her grimoire from its pouch at her side. "Shinji?"

"I had totally forgotten about it," he confessed; his mother's despicable acts had made him forget about the curse Harbinger had put on each of them, which now seemed to be meant as an initial attempt to throw them off any suspicion that she was the one responsible for letting that soulless creature out of the Void. "Whenever you're ready, Suki."

"Wind Healing Magic: A Gentle Breeze," the rejuvenated young woman uttered her chosen spell, and the three were surrounded by spheres of soothing wind.

The mana within the wind took effect on their bodies, abating the pain they were feeling for another few hours.

"I gotta give you props, Suki," said Tenshi to her. "You've progressed in your skills."

"My favorite subject was always archery, but I always kept an open mind about other places I could devote my time to."

Shinji silently applauded his aunt…and then realized something. It wasn't so much an epiphany as it had been a memory that just acted up in his mind; when he dreamt of his first conversation with Guardian, it had been on a rainy night, in the streets of a section of a city, reminding himself of how his life had been at a crossroads, staring down a road obscured by the rain and darkness, no light strong enough to show him anything down there. As Guardian had pointed out in the dream, he had been down that road because it was the one that stemmed from his estranged relationship with his father, now an estranged relationship with both his parents, time and again, and he knew exactly where that road always led…each time he thought about taking it. There was no future down that road that was truly for him to choose, just one that was chosen for him, like nearly everything else had been.

"What kind of person is my mother?" He asked Tenshi and Suki, getting their attention as Suki's recovery spell ceased when their mild pain was abated.

"Not like us," Suki told him.

"I mean, what kind of person is she that we see more of than anything else we can see? She doesn't get along with people unless they're like herself, prefers to be alone, to do things she knows she's not supposed to be doing, and…we don't see her as much as we'd probably like to. What else is there about her that we either know or don't think much of?"

Tenshi looked at Suki and thought about what their nephew asked about his mother. They knew very little about Yui away from the family, but when it came to their personal experiences with the woman that was their baby sister, it was a limited measure of what was known or done with nearly everyone else they had met at that time of their lives.

"She openly refused to cut through alleyways when we needed to get to or from places," Suki stated, "using a fear of germs as her excuse."

"Yui had a very unusual habit of reading up on dissection," Tenshi added. "Yeah, in fact when I had to go pick her from school at one point, one of her classmates claimed she was the only one that actually looked forward to cutting open a frog. None of the other kids wanted to play with her at all after that day."

"She likes chemistry sets over dolls and stuffed animals. I've never seen her so much as gossip about movie stars, sports stars or pop idols. She always looked up scientists, some widely respected, others discredited for unproven or unethical studies, almost bordering on obsession."

"And…she's also a neat freak."

"Yeah, especially that! She's that and always organized; she always keeps things in her room tidy with no sense of disorder. Not even a little bit. Hey. Hey, wait a minute… Dammit!"

"What?" Shinji asked.

"We're not going to find your mother anywhere out here! Nobody would find Yui out here! She's not just a neat freak! She's a control freak! An extreme control freak! She needs her hiding places to be tidy and manipulable!"

"Like a building that's to her liking," Tenshi realized. "Yui wouldn't choose a building in this kingdom unless they were to her liking. Some parts of the Golden Dawn HQ were to her liking a little because they weren't primitive-looking. Despite being castle-like, the interiors were more like what you'd see in modern-day architectural buildings; they're neat, clean and devoid of filth. It could actually be a place you'd find somewhere else in another universe where magic doesn't exist as a skill or practice."

Suddenly, all three Ikaris had the same assumption regarding their wayward relative: It was the likelihood that Yui was hiding in a place that was so modern that nobody else would even think to look there.

"What was the name of that spell in her grimoire?" Suki questioned; it had been so long since she last heard of it that she had forgotten about it.

"Steel Sanctuary," Shinji recalled. "She said it was likely a place she couldn't share with anyone. Maybe she was right about that; if it provides her with a space that is to her liking, she'd probably wouldn't want to share it with anyone else."

"Depending on how her magic progressed in its own development, she could've expanded upon the spell's original limits," Tenshi told them. "The more magic you can use, the stronger or more refined a spell can become."

"How much refinement if you're stronger?" Suki wanted to know.

"You're only limited by your own imagination. No limits, no boundaries. If she's stronger than she seems, her hideaway could be the size of a house, a village or…"

"A city?" Shinji suggested. "A small country?"

"Yeah…so long as she has the magic to support such a spell for long periods of times. But if she's with Harbinger, then whatever magic she originally had would've likely gotten an uptick."

"Harbinger was already dangerous before he consumed three devils and their human allies from Spade, taking their powers and adding them to his own. There's no telling how strong Yui has become if this is the case."

"Tenshi, can you track Spatial Magic usage?"

"I just mastered opening a portal through time and space that led me to this forsaken place underneath that so-called fortress city where your old man shot me. It shouldn't be that hard to open one leading to wherever your mother's hiding like a coward."

-x-

He ran. He ran like a coward, fearing for his life upon seeing that creature with her. Not even his captain was a match for it, and he was a complete lunatic. Hell, the captain never even got a chance to fight back, each time the beast struck him. And all the woman did was watch from the sidelines as his squad fell at her monster.

Even as the sun went down, he kept on running, wanting to get as far away from the both of them as he possibly could. If a Grand Magic Knight stood no chance against this thing, what good would he have done?

-x-

"…What's wrong with them?" Fuegoleon asked, seeing the Purple Orca and Green Praying Mantis squads in the recovery ward in the Capital, with Rika examining one of their members. "They don't look injured at all. I thought they were healed on the field."

"Oh, they were healed, but they're still injured," Rika revealed, using Blood Magic to extract something from a Purple Orca-affiliated man's mouth, revealing it to be a scorpion-like creature made of blood. "They were all cursed. Healing Magic performed out there just abated their troubles for a while."

She took her grimoire and pulled out a glass jar from the pages, putting the creature inside it and placing it aside as the man revived.

"How do you feel?" She asked him.

"Awful," he answered her.

"Can you answer some questions?"

"Yeah, I can do that."

"Thank you. Who did this to you?"

"Some creature your crazy daughter was with. He came at us with a bunch of bony spears coming out of his claws and made the air around us heavy. Then…he hit us with a bunch of red orbs…and suddenly, I couldn't use my Smoke Magic…and I couldn't move my arms or legs. And when it was done with us, she came over and took our captain's grimoire and walked away."

"Wait, wait… Yui just…took your squad captain's grimoire? She didn't…try to take yours or anyone else's grimoire?"

"Our captain's a Grand Magic Knight. The rest of us are just Junior, Intermediate and Senior Magic Knights. I don't know why she would take only his and disregard the rest of us."

This confused Rika. The captains of the Purple Orca and Green Praying Mantis had been relieved of their grimoires, their personal property, something that would've cast a heavy cloud of shame and repulsion over her for doing so. But it made no sense to steal someone else's grimoire. Maybe to sell it to someone willing to pay a hefty sum for it, but they were just three-leaf clover grimoires, not four-leaf clover or five-leaf clover grimoires (not that the latter grimoires of that sort would've fetched a pretty yul), making them next to worthless, even after the owners died. Why would her daughter steal other people's grimoires?

"What is wrong with her?" The guy asked her. "She's acting like she's on a mission of her own…and we're all in her way of completing it or something. Worse, this is…just messed up."

Using her magic, she removed the curses on each member of the two squads, but they would be bedridden for the next few days.

"Why would Yui take only the captains' grimoires?" She wondered aloud after she returned to meet with the Wizard King and the captain of the Crimson Lion squad.

"Taking their grimoires would render them incapable of using their strongest spells that require their magic," Fuegoleon suggested. "She can't destroy them unless she killed the captains."

"No, she decimated an entire country…but this is different. There's no reason to steal them unless it was to sell them to someone willing to pay for them to be in their possession."

"That's assuming that this was about money," Julius stated.

"She kidnapped Mimosa, and she's not made a single demand for money in exchange for her return. Yui wouldn't steal or even hold someone against their will for money. This goes higher. This goes a lot higher."

-x-

"…Yui's starting to look even more twisted," Misato expressed as she saw a picture of Yui with Harbinger, the woman appearing to have an aura of intense brutality as she seemed to loom over this girl she kept tied to the gurney. I seriously hope she doesn't kill the girl.

"And it looks like Shinji and his uncle and aunt are about to try finding her in a different way," said Kaji as he pointed to a picture underneath that showed the three bringing their grimoires together in a triangle.

Rei looked at a different picture, one showing a younger Shinji, probably seven or eight years old, asleep on the floor beside some crayons and paper. A picture beside his left hand depicted three people, one of whom was in a wheelchair. There was a lot of emotion in some of these pictures than she could comprehend. There was a lot of appreciation in some of these pictures than she could comprehend, too.

Asuka turned the page, but pulled two pages by accident, skipping them.

"Oh, shiest," she cursed, seeing undesired pictures of Shinji with his face and arms withered and Yui choking the life out of him. "My mistake."

She quickly returned to the desired page and found a picture of a teenage Shinji that seemed very recent, as it was dated almost a month before the Third Angel attack. He was helping his grandmother carry groceries into her apartment.

"This was probably the last time he ever saw them before he came to Tokyo-3," she expressed.

"Probably so," Fuyutsuki agreed; the lack of time needed to do anything from making a phone call to these relatives to even seeing them in person had taken a toll on Shinji after he became an Evangelion pilot, resulting in his sense of isolation from his grandmother, uncle and aunt. Ikari would've gone to extreme lengths to make sure they were cut off from each other if he had people monitoring possible emails and phone calls, too. But these three are persistent in making sure that they saw Shinji whenever they had the time to do so, and all they seem to have now is time due to their relocation and lack of involvement with the Evas and Angels.

He slowly touched the picture.

"…I honestly don't want to see him at all, Grandmother," he heard Shinji say to Rika as he set the grocery bags on the kitchen floor. "I don't believe he has any interest in reconciling our lack of a relationship. Actually, I don't believe he has any interest in even talking to me at all. Why should I go see him when I don't even know him? Why does he want to see me when he doesn't know a thing about me? We only see each other once a year, and always on that one day that is the worst day to make time just to see someone for barely an hour. Add it all up, and it's…what, less than six hours of my time wasted standing in front of a grave with a name and no identity that I can connect with, standing beside a man I have no other connection to? I mean, do I really even have to see him? Can't I just refuse him? I can make my own decisions now, can't I?"

"Personally, Shinji…I think you should see him," Rika suggested, "but if he's not a changed man, if he's not looking to make amends for being absent in your life…then you walk away. Just walk away from him. Leave him to fume, or grunt…or yell curses or whatever it is that he chooses to do when someone refuses or rejects him. You cast him aside…and you never look back. That's what you do."

"You make it sound so easy."

"Nothing is easy, even when you wish it was. Fifteen years ago, things weren't like this. Today…we're still no better off."

He could sympathize with how the son really hated the father for his absence in his past, and how much he had really wanted to either have him make amends for his absence or to just walk away from him and cut him out of his life completely. Were it not for the Angels and his father, Shinji would've left them right there and then in the Geo-Front. But then…he probably wouldn't be in the Clover Kingdom right now.

"What the Hell is Yui doing to the girl now?" He heard Misato say as he looked down at a picture of Yui inserting several tubes into Mimosa's wrists and neck.

Fuyutsuki had seen enough of what they did in the beginning with the Evas to suspect that Yui was doing a variation of it to this girl.

"I think she's going to exsanguinate the girl," he suspected.

"She's going to do what?" Asuka questioned.

"She's going to bleed her dry."

-x-

Yui didn't want to hear Mimosa raise her voice while she did this. She was ensuring a bright future for all of them, and this needed to be done. Simply having the grimoires wouldn't suffice right now. More was needed, and Mimosa had plenty she wasn't using right now.

In time, she thought as she began siphoning more mana from the girl, in time, you will all see. You will have no choice but to accept that this is best for everyone. This is a future that needs to be embraced.

"Warning! Warning!" Her lab's alarm went off. "Intruder! Intruder! Warning! Warning! Intruder! Intruder! Breach in the lab! Breach in the lab!"

She didn't expect anyone to ever actually find a way here, into her place of solace. And yet…she knew it was inevitable; sooner or later, someone would come…and she would need to be ready for them. With a sigh, she grabbed her grimoire and left the girl alone.

"Help…" Mimosa uttered weakly. "Help…"

-x-

It was the first time they used Compound Magic between the three of them, but it was effective due to their conviction to find Yui and Mimosa. Through Suki's Thread Magic, Tenshi's Spatial Magic and Shinji's Compass Magic, the three relatives were able to defy the boundaries between themselves and Yui and gain access to her personal domain. And by focusing on what Tenshi had suggested between them, they were able to come to this refined environment that was based on Yui's specific mindset.

"Bitter tidiness," Suki uttered.

"Enslaved to reality," Tenshi added.

"And grounded in possibility," Shinji finished. "This is a place where only my mother would want to be in…because it's a place she accepts more than any other that exists. Her home away from everything not in her control. It looks just like NERV."

"That place where you last saw her as a toddler?" Guardian asked him.

"Yeah."

"This place…is hollow, devoid of any humanity."

"It's basically a science lab, Guardian," Tenshi told the creature. "Some labs are like that."

Shinji raised up his grimoire and chose a different spell to use.

"Fire Compass Magic: Passion's Guiding Flame."

A compass made of fire materialized in front of them and sent a stream of flame down the hall, leading them to wherever it was Mimosa was being kept. If his mother only focused on forms of magic that enabled her to pick up where she left off with the Evangelions, then she wouldn't have Plant Magic as a resource, since there was no scientific use for Plant Magic in her eyes, meaning that only Shinji, Suki and Tenshi were among the only other people here that had a form of magic that could be tracked without hindrance. They followed the stream of flame down the hall, both disgusted and awed by the fact that Yui was able to create such a hideaway that grew to such a significant size. But what made them so uncomfortable with being here was how it just made them feel nothing but disappointment in the woman that caused them such shame and disgust in such a short time since returning to the Clover Kingdom.

As Shinji continued to lead them towards Mimosa, he pondered how to deal with his mother if they were to meet. Looking up at the top sections of the halls, he couldn't help but wonder if she had installed security cameras to keep tabs on the place…and saw at least a handful of them, indicating that she was aware that they were here. Well, right now, he didn't care if she was watching from an office identical to his father's back in NERV. They were just here to get Mimosa; they would deal with Yui at another time.

"Whoa," Tenshi gasped as he pulled Shinji and Suki back around a corner; Shinji didn't look up from the compass until he turned the corner, seeing a creature walking down another corner. "That was Harbinger."

"Do you think he saw us?" Suki asked him.

"Didn't seem like he saw us."

"He doesn't know where we are because you're with me right now," went Guardian. "My Anti Magic obscures your magic from being detected. He only knows that I'm here…and he's avoiding me, waiting for an opportunity to strike when I'd least expect it."

"Coward," Shinji called the enemy creature. "He's all show and tell, but no show of conviction in his cruelty right now."

Tenshi looked around the corner and saw nothing. He gestured for them to resume following the path of flame.

That's right, Harbinger, thought Guardian as he saw his rival walking down the hallway away from where they were, never bothering to look back. Keep walking. Don't even look back.

Shinji led them down a long corridor that echoed his initial visit with Misato. The airflow passing by making their clothes press against their skin.

"It looks like you were right about what Misato said that first time, Shinji," Suki told her nephew, grateful of the fact that she was wearing a skort underneath her skirt. "The breeze here really makes wearing a skirt uncomfortable."

"At least you're wearing a long skirt and not a short one," he responded, looking down the long shaft the walkway had been built through. "I never really liked the architectural design of this place. There's no safety bars or nets to stop you in case you fall. It's just a long drop down a dark hole. Whoever built this place needs to have their license yanked because of a lack of safety protocols and extreme hazards."

"I hear that," Tenshi expressed, agreeing with Shinji as they made it to the other side of the chamber. "This is all one, oversized, overpriced death trap."

"If this place ever ends up in the Void one day, it'll be in the deepest recess where nobody can see it or think about it," Guardian told them.

Shinji stopped in front of a door where the compass was pointing, indicating that Mimosa was just inside the room.

"Everyone, get ready," he told them, as he took out his sword.

Tenshi took out his sword and Suki took out her bow and arrow.

Guardian approached the door and gripped the closed sections of it with his claws, pulling it open with his strength.

"Rrrraaurgh!" He roared, damaging the door and base, granting them entry into the room.

They entered the room and gasped at what they found.

"Mimosa!" Tenshi yelled, seeing the young girl strapped to a gurney, looking half-dead and with several tubes sticking out her arms and legs, leading into the floor.

"Son of a bitch!" Suki cursed as they ran over to her. "What the Hell was Yui doing to her?!"

Tenshi carefully removed one of the tubes from her right arm and felt a trace of mana fading from it, causing his eyes to widen in disgust and dread.

"Mana siphoning," he revealed, and carefully removed the other tubes; if he just pulled them out, he'd run the risk of harming Mimosa further than what Yui has already done. "Yui was sucking out as much mana from Mimosa for her own purposes. This…is just cruel and unethical. It's discriminating to anyone with magic that other people choose to take advantage over."

"Ten…Tenshi?" Mimosa uttered, weakened by the loss of mana, and the Ikari patriarch tore off her restraints to pick her up.

"Let's get the Hell out of here," Tenshi told them, and turned around.

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that," they heard Yui's voice…and saw her standing in front of the doorway, looking upset. "This is unexpected."

"Unexpected, my ass, Mother," said Shinji to her. "You've crossed the line. You just up and cross the line. You'll be lucky if you just get locked away."

"Shinji, I didn't expect you to be here so soon, but this was unavoidable from the very beginning. I hope that you'll understand that what I'm doing here is for everyone's own good."

"That's bullshit," went Suki. "Since when have you ever cared for anyone that doesn't want or need your help? Our own good? That's just the vanity of someone over-ambitious and incapable of accepting their boundaries."

"First, I'm told we're in a world where there are no boundaries, no limits beyond the ones we put on ourselves, and then I'm told not to do things that I know are possible? What is the point of being able to do things if I'm told not to do them?"

"Nobody ever told you to do this!" Tenshi yelled at her. "Nobody wanted you to do any of this! You chose to do this! You did! What, do you have to violate every level of ethicality just to feel like you're doing something good?!"

"You three knew from the very beginning that I am a scientist, first and foremost. Everything I see and do has to be within the realm of scientific possibility. If there's one thing I can't tolerate in the world, it's anything that doesn't make sense. Anything that doesn't make sense must be removed from existence. Only then can people be shown a bright future ahead of them."

It was the way she was saying all of that, the way she tried to justify her actions…that made Shinji feel sick of hearing it all. It was practically similar to his father's cold words that offered no insight to understanding who he was deep down, which made any hope of ever getting to know him as a person nonexistent. But to hear his mother say it was like the universe giving him a smack in the face because the one thing he asked for was deemed impossible because it was just selfish, wishing his parents weren't the monsters he began to see them as for their twisted behavior towards the rest of the world.

"Shinji," he heard her speak to him, "we can fix this world if you join me. We can lead it to a brighter future…and put all of this behind us."

"You mean, put all of this behind you," he retorted. "If you hated being in the Clover Kingdom so much, why didn't you just tell someone? Why didn't you tell us? Tenshi has mastered his Spatial Magic and managed to open a way back to Japan, so you could return to that place whenever you wanted if you didn't know how to get back yourself. You don't have to be here, anymore. You don't have to be here at all, Mother."

"Oh, that's where you're mistaken, Shinji. I do have to be here. The people of this world, they're victims of an inescapable fate that awaits them. They constantly believe in these senseless stories and beliefs of magic like you do, becoming corrupted and made to give up on what is possible. What is truly possible. I can't let them go on like this. They need to see. All of you need to see. A world of magic is just a stupid dream that you need to wake up from, even if it means I have to go to extremes to do so."

"Just because you hate magic and living in a world where magic is everything," Guardian expressed, "it doesn't give you the right or authority to decide what will be for those that don't believe what you want them to. Like Shinji just said, if you hate it here, then just walk away. Walk away…and go back to that world that makes sense to you."

"And I just told you, I can't let the people here continue to live as they do in a world that doesn't make sense. I do hope that you'll eventually see that I mean well and have everyone's best interests at heart."

"Except that when I see possibilities, Yui Ikari, I must confess that I don't see a possibility where anyone here will just accept your so-called best interests for them. You're already viewed as a threat to their existence. Even I view you as a threat because you're in a pact with Harbinger, and he's the absolute worst of the worst. Anything he's done now is reflected upon you."

"And yet, he's the only one that actually understands my ambitions better than any of you ever could. Our goals aren't all that different from one another."

"He's committed to the end of all tangible life," said Tenshi. "Even if what you want to make happen were to happen, what good would it do to take away the people's lives and replace it with something that wouldn't be like what they had and cherished. What would keep them from wanting to go back to what they know and desire more than what you think they need?"

"Because in the end, I know what the people need more than anything."

"That's your opinion, Mother," Shinji told her, "and it's just a depraved excuse to make yourself feel like you're some hero when you're no better than my father or your own father."

Then…Yui's face contorted into one of anger…staring daggers at Shinji.

"Watch the way you speak to me, Shinji," she warned him. "You know not which you say."

And it was that tone of voice, the way she spoke back in that moment, that had Shinji realize, right there and then, that not only was his mother committed to her old ambitions…but how far she was willing to go to see them through to the end, even if it meant she had to go through all of them in the process, something he had to accept was next to inevitable.

"Good for nothing disgraces," he uttered. "All three of you."

"What?"

"Terrible people."

Guardian looked at Shinji and while he knew that he was speaking his mind and heart about how he felt towards his mother, father and maternal grandfather in this moment, he worried that Yui was going to take all of what he said personal. Way too personal.

"Grr," they all heard a growling noise behind Yui, and then Harbinger appeared from behind the woman, carrying a canister of glowing liquid. "I guess your son has told you where he stands in all of this, Yui. How are you going to deal with this dispute over beliefs?"

-x-

"…I don't like this," Rei expressed as they were looking at the photo depicting four of the five Ikaris in the room that mirrored one of the labs in NERV HQ, three on the left and one on the right. "Ikari-Kun's mother…is unpleasant right now."

"It seems like Shinji is against what she's up to and just made his voice heard," went Misato, looking down at the picture under it, showing Yui's face all full of spite. Would she really hurt her own son just for refusing her agenda?

Fuyutsuki looked at the picture and didn't want to think that Yui would do something as insane as attack Shinji. But when he thought about it from a different perspective, that of how her son, like these other relatives of theirs, either joined the Magic Knights or provided some sort of aid to them in service of the Clover Kingdom, Yui had attacked him…and everyone else whenever she did something she knew she wasn't supposed to. Yes, she had attacked Shinji, in the emotional sense that she would attack others without any provocation…and the sense that a parent would cross the line towards their own child. This made him fear the worst could happen.

Would you really hurt him, Yui? He wondered, touching the picture of her angry face.

"Maybe the loss of your aunt and uncle will make you see that I'm right," he thought he heard her voice, and he pulled his hand away.

Rei touched the picture…and recoiled.

"She's threatening his aunt and uncle," she revealed. "She's going to hurt Ikari-Kun however she can without laying a finger on him."

"She won't attack that jerk, but she'll attack her own siblings?" Asuka questioned. If she won't hurt him physically, she'll hurt him emotionally by attacking the only other family he has. She'll push him away like his father pushed him away.

To be continued…

A/N: Sorry to leave you with a cliffhanger, but you gotta let your imagination decide what happens next. Maybe having Shinji speak his mind towards his mother about her and their fathers was going to far, but I wanted Yui to see that her actions were having serious repercussions on her relationship with her son, and in the end, she was still going to carry out her agenda, even if it meant hurting him. Her decision to attack Tenshi and Suki is also an example of how she doesn't want to get rid of Shinji, as she sees a use for him just like Gendo did, but she's willing to hurt him wherever she can hurt him indirectly. Anyway, do read and review and let me know what you think. Stay healthy, sane and keep living for better days.