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.

43. Mother Doesn't Know Best

Creation began on 02-28-22

Creation ended on 03-15-22

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Grimoire of Evangelion: Mother Doesn't Know Best

A/N: When nothing planned in advance, like years in advance, goes as planned, people will either have to find ways to accept that not everything follows a set course…or try to force them back to their original schedule. But when force only makes things worse than before, you don't know what to expect.

There were many things that Yui never openly admitted to people, but there were a handful of things she regretted, and one of them was leaving Shinji alone in a world where her mother, elder brother and sister were likely to influence him whenever they got a chance to spend time with him. They were over a generation or more with their heads stuck in the past, constantly trying to relive their happy memories in a make-believe world where nothing made sense, and they dragged him into their foolishness! But she refused to believe that what she decided to do now was the wrong thing to do: Remove her brother and sister from the equation that was her agenda. She needed Shinji to help make her bright future for everyone in this world a success, but she didn't need the rest of family alive, no matter how important they were viewed by the Clover Kingdom; this was just a world where nothing made sense…and she was going to make sure that it made sense, regardless of who was against her.

"Harbinger," she told her ally, "you can kill Tenshi and Suki, but leave my son unscathed."

"That won't be easy, but if it enables me to deal with Guardian, I'm all for it," Harbinger replied. "You never cared much for them, anyway."

This declaration of wanting her siblings dead made Shinji, who swallowed his hurt a moment later, determined to rise up and protect his family. Family might've been something he had rarely anything of when devoid of his parents, but he couldn't imagine life without Tenshi, Suki or Rika, whether or not they were young or old; they were a part of the life he had here that he loved since coming here due to the last Angel incident he had been involved in, and didn't care if it was only because of the Angel that he was now in the Clover Kingdom, he cared about his ancestry and that it was because of these three that he became a Magic Knight, and he was doing a good job of it without the Eva looming over his head.

Clash! Harbinger was impeded by Shinji's pole arm.

"You can't save them," he told the boy.

"You know," Shinji replied, "I'm getting really sick of people telling what I can and can't do, like they know my limitations better than I do. You just got ordered by my own mother to kill my uncle and aunt, something I'm against letting happen. If you want to get to them, you have to waste me. But can you?"

"There are many ways to leave you unscathed without actually having to leave you unscathed."

Shinji felt the stinging burn of the curse Harbinger inflicted upon him on his back acting up.

"Grrr!" He bared his teeth as he refused to give in.

"Shit!" They heard Tenshi curse as his curse mark began to act up, as well. "Damn you, Yui!"

"Let's get the Hell out of this Frankenstein-wannabe madhouse!" Suki told them as Guardian carried Mimosa on his back, and she raised an arrow at Harbinger, but couldn't shoot until Shinji got out of the way…and her curse mark was acting up, too, like someone poured scalding water on her shoulder. "Aaaurgh! Aaurgh!"

"Gaaurgh!" Shinji groaned, and pulled back his pole arm to hit Harbinger in his waist with the bottom of it. "You and Mother are complete monsters!"

"Oh, we're just capable of seeing the world as it truly is," Harbinger responded. "It's not our fault if nobody else gets it."

Clasp! Suki fired her arrow once Shinji moved his head out of the way, getting Harbinger in his neck, letting the Anti Magic affect him.

"Aaaurgh!" He groaned, backing away from the boy to pull out the arrow. "I'm going to enjoy making you scream as I rip you to pieces! And I'm going to enjoy making you enjoy it!"

"And I'm going to enjoy saying this to you, Harbinger," Suki responded. "Piss off!"

Shinji saw an opening, and thrust his pole arm into Harbinger's waist, causing the beast to yell in agony as he backed off.

"You heard my aunt!" He told Harbinger, digging his pole arm deeper. "Enjoy this!"

Harbinger erected his stolen Gravity Magic to push Shinji away, pole arm and all.

"You got a lot of brass for someone whose relatives were just threatened by your own mother," he grunted, using his stolen Body Magic to seal the impalement. "But it's true, you know. Your mother hates them enough to want them out of the way."

"And I won't forgive her or you for it."

But Harbinger, even with Body Magic, try as he did, couldn't regenerate the old wound Guardian inflicted upon him. Not even with Bone or Blood Magic could he eliminate the injury. These mages that used Anti Magic were the biggest threat to his own existence. Back then, it was easier because it was only Guardian, but now…these Ikaris that dabbled in multiple forms of magic…and some other mage, an orphan that somehow possessed Anti Magic and didn't have a family to belong to…were not just a threat to his life; if they got any stronger, they'd be comparable to opposing, lesser variants of Guardian himself when he was just making himself a hindrance to his mission to dispose of all sentient life.

"Curse-Warding Magic," he uttered, and Guardian opened his mouth, releasing a stream of Anti Magic from it. "Decaying Heartache."

An orb of red energy generated from Harbinger's left claw and hit Shinji in his chest before the Anti Magic released by Guardian could fill the whole room.

Yui watched from the background and wondered what these three distractions with Shinji could do to impede her and Harbinger further than they have now. They couldn't halt progress, no matter how skilled they were. All they could do…was accept that what she and Harbinger were trying to do was inevitable.

Shinji checked himself for signs of injury, but didn't find anything wrong, and backed away from Harbinger with the others.

"Those that fight and know when to run away live to fight another day," he told his mother and he pointed his pole arm's blade to her. "I can't believe I ever had hope for you to change your ways. All you've proven is that you can't let go of an ambition that is so awful that you'll go to extremes to make it real."

"It's a brighter future for everyone, Shinji. It needs to happen, regardless of what people think." Yui tried once more to convince her son that she was in the right. "We don't have a future like this, living in a fairytale world."

"I'll take my chances living in a fairytale than in some post-apocalyptic setting where you watched inside a man-made monster as I had to fight other monsters that wanted to get rid of people and nobody that did know why this was so chose not to tell anyone that didn't know."

"You can't possibly be serious right now. You'd really throw away everything I've done for a childish belief my mother and brother told you ever since you were little?"

"I like being a Magic Knight more than I hate having anything to do with the Eva. It doesn't get as serious as that right now."

His grimoire flipped pages and showed the Eva to him, as if trying to tempt him. He looked away from it.

"You can try all you want, Shinji, but you can't just walk away from the Eva or myself," Yui warned him. "Everything happens as it must. Your place is at my side, not these…these faux-believing people."

Guardian stood behind Shinji and placed his right claw on his shoulder.

"Let's get outta here, Shinji," he told him. "She's like stone; her convictions are etched in. She won't be swayed, no matter how much you want her to turn away from this madness."

Shinji inhaled a new breath and walked backwards with Tenshi, Suki, Guardian and the unconscious Mimosa, never taking his eyes off Yui or Harbinger.

"The next time we meet, Mother," he told her, gesturing to her with his pole arm, "you better pray to whoever it is that you pray to…that you kill me before I do worse than kill you myself."

Yui's eyes widened from this warning. She was just threatened by her own son. Threatened…and rejected by him in favor of her mother and siblings. She hated this sense of betrayal coming from him of all people. Why couldn't he see that she was the one that saw this world as a stopgap at best and a dead-end at worse and needed to be changed?

Then, they left out the room.

"I can still go after them," Harbinger told her.

"No," she replied, reaching down and picking up the canister he had retrieved earlier containing the mana she had siphoned from Mimosa. "Let them run."

He looked at her and suspected she was processing her son's abandonment of her.

"Are you sure?" He wanted to know.

"You did hit Shinji with a curse like I had requested of you to do, did you not?" She wanted to know. "The one that wouldn't be triggered until later?"

"Yes, and as you requested, it is a persistent curse. Nothing any of them may try may undo it. Do you honestly believe he'll reconsider once he experiences the repercussions of his rejection of you later?"

"He can't reject that everything I do, I do for him and everyone else. In the end, we both get what we want out of this venture."

"Casting aside your physical forms removes you from the inevitable demise of all things in the vast existence of now and then."

"The second we know for sure that they're gone from here, I'll modify the safeties of this place; whatever they used to locate my sanctuary shouldn't be used to get back here a second time."

"Using Curse-Warding Magic to endanger with a threat of organ or bone damage should entice intruders enough to keep away in the future."

"How soon can you do that?"

"I can do it right now; they've already left with the girl."

-x-

"…I don't even wanna know how we were able to get away from Harbinger," said Tenshi as he, Suki, Shinji, Guardian and Mimosa were hiding in a cave in the forest. "How's Ms. Vermillion doing, Shinji?"

"I wanna say she's in recovery with my Healing Magic," Shinji stated, "but I'd probably be lying. Whatever my mother did to her while she was there in that awful place, it was degrading."

"And we didn't get her grimoire," Suki added, holding Mimosa's left arm as Shinji applied Healing Magic to the limb. "Eventually, we need to go back and get it and any other grimoire she stole from others."

"What makes you think we can even get back there?" Shinji asked her, and then gestured for Mimosa's left leg. "What makes you think I'd let either of you go back to face her after she decided to have Harbinger off you, knowing I was there and heard everything?"

"Right now, Yui's hideaway is a no-go zone, whether it's to confront her directly, retrieve stolen grimoires or just to poke our noses where they don't belong," Guardian told them. "Shinji, are you sure you're feeling fine?"

"Yeah. Nothing wrong here, except for Ms. Vermillion's mana reserves. Even with Healing Magic, she's going to need bed rest and real food for a few days…or weeks."

"Or months," went Tenshi. "Mimosa Vermillion is from the House of Vermillion, one of the royal families of the Clover Kingdom. Even if she comes from a long line of mages with powerful magic that is a result of her heritage, she's still young and probably can't access the total sum of her mana just yet. Yui exploited that and probably drained her of as much mana as she could from her, knowing that as a royal, she'd have more mana than a regular mage would."

"Not enough to kill her, though. She was smart enough to know that her family wouldn't take kindly if Mimosa ended up dead because she got greedy for more mana." Suki reminded. "Actually, they wouldn't bat an eyelash on wanting her to receive the death penalty if she killed Ms. Vermillion here."

-x-

"…What a luder," went Asuka, using German to describe Yui best right now. "She is not getting in his good graces."

"I don't think she's getting in anyone's good graces," said Ritsuko, looking at the photo of Yui and Harbinger. "She's trying to rationalize everything she does, but it's not effective if nobody accepts her actions."

"There's no longer a reason to hide her disgust from anyone," Rei expressed, "and she can focus on her ambitions more freely, putting her other hindrances aside."

"She's painted a target on her back while painting a larger target on the Clover Kingdom," Misato understood as she turned to the next page.

"Even if it means taking away all that he loves in this world," she thought she heard Yui's voice in her head, looking down at another picture of the woman in front of an Evangelion the size of a human, "Shinji has to accept that his place is at my side. He can't possibly think that living here affords him a future when it doesn't. He has to see. He has to learn."

This woman's nuts, she thought personally about Yui, looking under the picture and at one depicting a much younger version of the woman playing chess with a man that was probably her father. She's willing to deprive her son of everything if it means taking over his life.

Under the photo was one of Shinji with Tenshi and Suki and Guardian, walking through a hall in front of some people that came towards them.

-x-

Shinji wished returning Mimosa had been smiles and praise when he and his uncle, aunt and Guardian of the Void returned to the kingdom's capital with her so that she could receive further medical aid, but that would only have been a cup half full of just relief. Finding Mimosa and getting her away from his mother was only half the matter resolved.

"I still can't believe you three found her," Mimosa's brother said to Shinji as he, Suki and Tenshi were standing out in the hallway waiting for an update on Mimosa's status. "What did that woman do to her?"

"All we really know is that she was draining her of her mana," Suki told him; that was really all they could say right now.

"Why?"

"My mother's perverse sense of what needs to happen over what has happened," Shinji expressed, "and the fact that she's a delusional person that will not stop until we stop her."

"A dark beauty."

"What?"

"People like Yui Ikari are a dark beauty. She is beautiful in a sense, but her actions are full of cruelty and malice toward others, making her a dark beauty. Basically…"

"Evil or madness that hides behind a pretty face?" Tenshi asked Kirsch.

"Yes," he answered.

"I don't consider Yui to be a beautiful person. Not when she does something like this. Not when she does anything like this. I don't consider her to be a beautiful person at all. You can't use prettiness to mask your dark intentions. That's like…covering up a mess instead of cleaning it; it's still there…and won't go away until you own up to it."

"Where was she holding her?"

"In a place that's an echo of her past…and a dark reminder of the life I was all too glad to have left behind," Shinji stated, not really wanting to go into details about his mother's twisted home away from home. "I guess what some people could call Hell, she would view as home."

Kirsch got the impression that wherever these three Ikaris found Mimosa at that one of their own dwelled in of her own volition, it was a place that their youngest member wanted very little to do with in the future.

"Not a beautiful place, was it?" He asked Shinji.

"There was no beauty in that place at all," he replied.

A door opened and a male nurse came out.

"I gotta hand it to you three," he told the Ikaris. "Miss Vermillion is very fortunate to be alive right now. Other than her minor injuries from being drained of a significant amount of her mana, she should recover within a month."

The three bowed their heads in gratitude over hearing this.

"However, there was a mark we found on Ms. Vermillion that has us worried that Yui Ikari may have had other intentions and didn't plan on simply casting her aside."

Tenshi looked at him and became concerned.

"A mark?" He questioned. "What kind of mark?"

The nurse took out a piece of paper and gave it to Tenshi. His eyes widened at the picture of the mark and he gave it to Suki to look at.

"Shinji, does this mean anything to you?" She asked as she handed him the picture.

It was a depiction of Evangelion Unit-01's head, accompanied by several strands of some kind where the neck and spine would've been, leading to a sphere.

"I recognize the head of the Eva, but the rest of it is beyond me," he replied, and gave the picture back to the nurse. "Some sort of tattoo?"

"Not that we could tell. We suspect that it may be some form of Curse Magic, but it hasn't been triggered yet."

"Curse Magic? Not yet triggered?" Suki spoke, confused. Yui, what the Hell were you and Harbinger going to do with Mimosa? Were you going to incite her family's wrath as well as our own? You've already incited enough fear and hatred towards yourself to stoke the inferno of a forest of volcanoes.

"Have you tried to remove the curse?" Shinji asked.

"We've never seen anything like this before. However, because it hasn't been triggered yet, we suspect that Ms. Vermillion hasn't met the curse's requirements yet…"

"Or my mother's just waiting for the right time to trigger the curse herself."

"Yes. She's not in any immediate danger from it yet."

But she's still in danger because of my mother.

"She had a message for you, though."

"Me?"

"Yes. She muttered…that your mother would try to force you to aid her in what she was aiming to do against the world. Does that mean anything to you?"

Shinji groaned as he covered his face with his right hand.

"My mother is a twisted woman," he sighs as he turns away. "She's so committed to her ambitions that she doesn't give a damn about the fact that she's looking for something that simply won't happen for her."

The nurse was confused.

"Did his mother do something to him?" He asked Suki and Tenshi.

"Yeah," Suki responded.

"She made herself his archenemy on purpose," Tenshi added. "Her past involvement with some very bad people in a twisted plan required Shinji to decide everyone's fate. If she's trying to do it all over again, then she needs him to decide people's fate here."

"But that's… Why?" Kirsch questioned, disgusted by this mother's intentions.

"She hates magic," Suki stated, "and anything and anyone that won't see the world the way she thinks it needs to be. Even when offered the chance to return to the other world we lived in, she refused because she's committed to getting rid of magic in this world."

"If you destroy the magic of this world, you might as well destroy everything else in it."

-x-

Rika was called in to examine the mark Yui had put on Mimosa, and was further displeased with Yui's actions.

"Is it…bad?" Mimosa asked her as she covered her left shoulder.

"I'm not getting any negative mana from this mark, but I have no idea why Yui would do something like this," Rika told her; her Blood and Spirit Magic couldn't detect anything malicious from the mark, but that didn't ease her concerns. "But you should be careful. I am sorry about all of this."

"What do you mean?"

"What happened to you…what is happening to you…is only because of my youngest child deciding to pick up where she left off instead of trying to move on. She put you in danger. She disrespected your family."

"She disrespects everyone, Mrs. Ikari. I wish I could see her as a benevolent woman…but her actions make her anything but a benevolent woman. She killed all of those people when it wasn't even necessary, chose to let that monster out of its cage to kill those people from Spade, and she's trying to torture her own son for her own gain. I can't… I can't…"

"You can't, what?"

Even though her parents were present, it felt like Mimosa was beating around the bush in front of Rika, and she didn't really want to.

"I can't understand why Yui, a mother herself, would target her own son and try to destroy his life here. If she hates magic, she should just leave…but she won't. She should leave the people here alone…but she won't do that, either. I thought there was a light in her that was like yours and the other members of House Ikari here in the Clover Kingdom…but there's no light in her at all. There's just…madness. She sees all of us living a fantasy lifestyle and wants to destroy the fantasy because she dislikes it all. What kind of person despises fantasies and wants to take away other people's fantasies and leave them with no dreams?"

Rika wanted to say that Yui wasn't much of a dreamer, that everything to her needed to be grounded in what was possible, but she couldn't say. She didn't want to say that her youngest daughter was simply detached from the hidden power of hopes and dreams of the impossible. Everyone within the Clover Kingdom believed in the impossible and dreamt about it all the time, but to be threatened by one that hated such beliefs simply because they chose not to accept them…was irredeemable and cast you in a bad light.

"I can't imagine living a life where I couldn't use my Plant Magic," Mimosa told her.

"I can't imagine that, either. A life without magic…or even a dream of magic…is a sad one if there are no fantasies of something you love. There are people that want to fly past the moon or swim the deepest oceans. You take those ambitions away…"

"You take away their chance to live out those ambitions."

-x-

Shinji hated having to remember that dreadful place his mother had, but he had to report to the Wizard King and Damnatio what he, Suki and Tenshi had seen while in Yui's Steel Sanctuary. As the Wizard King's aid, Marx, explored his memory of the place, he sat with a displeased expression, thinking back to when his mother threatened the lives of his aunt and uncle because he rejected her for what she was doing. Even Guardian could see that this was taking a toll on his conscious as he stood away from where he sat.

"The fight was brief because they didn't want to risk the safety of Ms. Vermillion," Julius expressed, "and the room they were engaged in was small, limiting their actions. I would recommend them for managing to rescue the girl and getting away."

"Still, it leaves the matter of what Yui Ikari was doing there," Damnatio replied. "How big do you suppose a place like that is, Mr. Ikari?"

"As I can only guess it's based completely off an actual place I've seen little of," Shinji responded, "it's probably big enough for her to hide anything she wanted in there."

"And you have no idea what she might've been doing while you were there?"

"Having seen nothing of any actual significance, being focused only on finding Mimosa Vermillion, I didn't concern myself with what she might've had there."

"And this moment here, where your mother threatens your aunt and uncle?"

"That was due to my discovering how far she has fallen back into her old habits and disgraces the life we have here in the Clover Kingdom. She made herself heard where she stands in her agenda…and I had to make myself heard on where I stand, which is not with her or Harbinger. She wants to get rid of everything relating to magic out of her dislike of it. Even when told she could leave this world, she chose not to because she's convinced that she needs to save everyone from her belief that magic is a senseless way to live one's life. She wanted me to join her…and I shot her down because I didn't want the life I have here to be ripped to pieces by her. She only threatened Tenshi and Suki to spite me for refusing and rejecting her goal."

"Maybe the loss of your aunt and uncle will make you see that I'm right," his memory of his mother had suggested, making it clear to them that the woman, still interested in making her son join her, didn't think highly of the rest of the family.

Rika didn't like how one of her children would just threaten to get rid of the other two due to their own hatred, and then how it seemed her only grandchild was being exploited by his mother. The worst part was never even being told by Yui that she hated magic. If she had known from the very beginning, she would've been understanding; once Tenshi had gotten control over his Spatial Magic and mastered the Time Magic aspect needed to open rifts through time, he could've helped her go back to any point where they had left off.

"Missus Ikari," Damnatio spoke to Rika, "have you verified your grandson's memories and checked him for any curses?"

"Shinji's memories are genuine, and there's no trace of a curse on him; either Guardian's Anti Magic negated whatever Harbinger had attempted…or it's a curse that has yet to be triggered by something Shinji needs to do. Either way, Shinji's not hiding anything," Rika answered.

"Very well, then," went Julius uttered, "you're free to go now, Shinji Ikari."

Shinji got up, bowed his head to them, and then turned to leave the room.

Mother…all you want to do is make trouble for everyone, he thought as he walked down the hall. Just give it a rest, stop and leave, go home and make your life miserable back there. It's not like there's anything for you here. It's not like there was anything for you here at all.

Further down the hall, he saw Suki and Guardian sitting on the floor.

"What are you two still doing here?" He asked.

"Waiting for you," Suki told him as she got up. "Are you feeling alright?"

"No," he replied. "My mother threatened you and Tenshi. She might as well have threatened all three of you. Tenshi, Rika and you. I am far from feeling alright."

Suki sympathized with Shinji. They were all far from feeling that way.

-x-

"…It seems like Shinji gets closer to his grandmother, aunt and uncle every time he gets further away from his mother," Misato expressed as she looked at the photo of Shinji with Suki. "The better his relationship with them, the lesser his relationship with his mother."

"Yeah," went Fuyutsuki in agreement with her. "If he's being pushed away from people that he initially wanted to have a closer relationship with, he'll want to be with others that he can be with. He trusts his relatives above his parents."

"What will happen should his mother try to remove her mother and siblings from his life?" Rei questioned; if Yui had threatened to have the three murdered, it would not be good for her if Shinji was devastated by their deaths.

Misato turned to the next page…and saw Shinji walking through a village by himself.

"Probably wanting to be around people, but can't because of his mother," she suspected.

Under the photo was one of Suki doing her archery practice, and under her was a photo of Tenshi and Rika engaged in conversation with some people that were likely upset about Yui.

-x-

The nobles were upset with Yui's behavior and wanted to make sure that she was apprehended and punished for her crimes, but Rika and Tenshi were also aware that their disgust towards Yui was very one-sided; they were afraid that she would disrupt their view of the world they only understood from their perspective, and if she made things worse for them, it would disgrace their public image. But neither really cared much for public images right now; it wasn't a matter of protecting the nobility from Yui and Harbinger, but a matter of protecting all of the Clover Kingdom…and the rest of the world from the dangerous pair. The nobility, the common folk, even those that had little to nothing to live off needed to be protected from them if Yui had every intention of going after everyone she viewed as a threat to her agenda.

"…She's already demonstrated that she cares nothing for the people she goes after from the nobility," a noblewoman expressed. "What's to stop her from choosing to go after another noble? Or the Clover King?"

"It's unlikely that Yui will even bother with the Clover King," Tenshi responded. "She may not even go after the Wizard King, either."

"Why not?" A nobleman asked.

"She's already incurred the hate of the House of Vermillion by attacking one of their own. What's to keep her from attacking the Clover King and Wizard King?" Another nobleman added.

"She's probably already done her own evaluation of the Clover and Wizard Kings and concluded that going after either one would be a waste of her time, and for different reasons based on each individual," Rika declared.

"What do you mean by that?" Damnatio questioned.

"If Yui studied both at some point in the past, she would probably understand that the Clover King is protected almost all the time by a personal number of Magic Knights assigned to his residence, and as he's the head of state, any and all moves that include silencing the Clover King carries a death sentence if caught and apprehended," she explained, "and personally, in terms of mana and defensive abilities, the Clover King has likely no need to protect himself against a threat, and therefore has never been exposed to a situation where he's had to fight for himself."

"Is that so?"

"We've even spoken to Guardian of the Void, and he has suggested that the Clover King, simply due to the possibility that he has never engaged anyone in combat, before or after his rise to rulership of the county, would be useless to Yui, even if all she wanted was his grimoire. The Wizard King, on the other hand, he'd be a target of considerable quality, but trying to take his grimoire would be next to difficult if not impossible. We have never seen his grimoire, so she wouldn't know where or how to take it from him." Tenshi explained.

So, even if it was only a possibility, Yui and Harbinger wouldn't try to go after the Clover King because he was believed to be a waste of time…and they couldn't go after the Wizard King due to not knowing how to best him or take his grimoire.

"And what of the possibility of her going after the other Magic Knights and taking their grimoires?" Another noblewoman questioned.

"She's only targeted two of the captains so far and taken their grimoires," Rika stated, "implying that she'll only go after those with the ranking of Grand Magic Knight, as they're the strongest under the Wizard King himself. With the sole exception of Ms. Vermillion's, she never tried to take those from other Magic Knights of lesser ranking, regardless of whether they were nobles or commoners. She's being specific, selective, only going after people she can actually one-up instead of facing them directly and discreetly."

"So, unlike the rest of you, Yui Ikari has no decency when facing others? No honor?"

Rika and Tenshi looked at one another and nodded their heads in the positive; if Yui was doing this to people here, then she lacked any measure of honor or decency, just one-upping anyone she could take advantage of.

"What will you do when and if she's apprehended and we demand that she pay for her crimes in their entirety?" Another noblewoman declared, which was also a reason for why the two were present in this meeting with the Magic Parliament.

While most would demand Yui's punishment be an execution, Rika and Tenshi, being the heads of House Ikari, would look for a lesser extreme for Yui to serve her penance.

"Even if it was decided that she be executed to pay for her crimes," Tenshi stated, "killing her won't undo the suffering she caused…and it won't bring closure to her victims…even if she did deserve it."

"Your morality in looking for lesser penalties isn't returned by Yui Ikari," Damnatio expressed. "We can't afford to risk letting her walk after what she's done."

"Whoever said anything about her walking away with what she's done?" Rika asked him. "All Tenshi said was that even if we were to execute her, there'd be no true justice for her victims, even if it was what she deserved. There are other ways to punish someone for their crimes that doesn't include murdering them, and each possibility is just as worse than murder."

"Which would be?"

"Anything that makes it so that the culprit will never be seen around here, including banishment from the kingdom."

Even if that was the lesser evil, Damnatio still felt like Yui needed to pay the price for her deceit. And surely, many of the other members of the nobility felt the same way.

-x-

No matter how many times she stood before any of them, it just didn't feel the same to her. Even if they were of the same size or of greater height and quality, Yui didn't see the same comfort from the one she lost.

I've made twelve of them to this extent, she thought, standing in front of the detailed replicas of Unit-01, and they're still insufficient, despite the strides I've made in advancing them.

Even as Harbinger looked at the Evas, he wondered why Yui was making some that were larger than human-sized variants when they were sufficient enough to deal with any opposition. Although the one she used to reside inside before ending up here was larger than most buildings around the Clover Kingdom (and most buildings elsewhere in this world, for that matter), likely able to do serious damage if let loose upon the world, he found them to be ridiculous if just for show. Then, he turned to face Yui and ask the question that needed to be answered.

"You have an obsession with the behemoth that was taken from you?" He asked her.

"Unlike these Evas, the one inside my son's grimoire is an original," she told him. "These modified variants are no better than pale imitations. Worse, I can't just put myself inside one of them and act out my objectives. I can't even splinter myself into these variants."

"As desperate as you are to save these people, the fact that you would try such actions to make your goal more effective is what makes you blind to matters of the soul. Spirit Magic, even in its most advanced state, requires the soul to be intact. Even if you stress the importance of your science and technology, nothing you've explained to me that I don't already know in one way or another, has truly explained the full potential or power of the soul when defiled in ways that tarnish the total worth and value it possesses. And based solely on what was done to release you from the original you spent over a decade within to affect your grand design in that other dimension you refuse to return to when granted the opportunity to, your soul may have developed a persistence towards being affected in ways relating to where it's been once already."

"Are you suggesting that, simply because I was a spiritual presence within the Eva once already, and for such an extended time period, and then restored to my original state of being, that I…I can't return to being a spiritual presence within the Eva?" She questioned him.

"That…is a possibility. This could also stem from your relatives' desires; your son desires you not to echo what you've already done to him when he was a child…and your mother and siblings desire you to admit your faults instead of trying to repeat your past actions that caused harm. In other words, they are a factor in why you can't animate these Evas like you did with the one you were inside of."

Yui frowned at this revelation; it was always a necessity for anyone directly involved in the utilization of the Eva to be able to fuse with it so that it became an extension of yourself, but this discovery, not being able to do so again, was an impediment of the worst sort. It was another stopgap at best. A complete hindrance at worse. She needed to find a way to get around this issue and move forward.

She reached into her lab coat and pulled out a tablet that showed her a view of a small village being visited by a squad of Magic Knights. It was the members of the Blue Rose, but she didn't see their captain, which made them not worth going after. She tapped the screen and it switched over to another village, visited by another squad, this one being the Coral Peacock, but like the Blue Rose, their captain wasn't present there, either. It seemed as though the captains were wise to her now, taking steps to ensure that she wouldn't get their grimoires like she did with the Purple Orca and Green Praying Mantis captains.

"I'm going to try one other thing before we progress further," she told Harbinger as she scrolled through villages she had marked to keep tabs on.

"Which is?" He asked her.

"Convincing Shinji one last time to join us in saving this world."

"And if he refuses?"

Yui looked at him with an annoyed expression, and Harbinger sighs at the fact that Yui was not one for being refused or rejected by someone when she sets her mind on something.

"We'll make it so that he doesn't have a choice," she told him, and put the tablet away as she turned to walk away. "Those that rebel will need to be set straight and have their fight taken out of them to reshape their drive."

-x-

"Ha!" Asta yelled as he attacked Shinji with two small swords made entirely from Anti Magic not from his grimoire. "This is incredible!"

Shinji blocked with his katana and pushed Asta away from him.

"You keep this up, you'll eventually access that third sword Guardian says you're yet to possess," he told the boy.

"I look forward to that day."

Personally, Shinji wanted to get stronger so that when the time came, he would be able to face his mother and Harbinger and put an end to whatever it was they were planning to do. He might've seen nothing of what his mother was up to, but if her secret hideaway was modeled completely after NERV HQ, it was a sign that she was making Evas all over again. The one thing he wanted to get away from above all else, and she was infecting this world with her insane smut that he despised almost as much as he did his father.

It's like she can't let go of it, he thought as he blocked Asta's sword strikes again, ducking his head and hitting Asta in the chest with the base of his sword's hilt, knocking him to the ground. She can't let go of the Eva…but she can let go of everything else…and everyone else. She chose it over all else…like it's all that matters to her. And Harbinger…just makes her seem worse than she probably is. As much as I want to forgive her… Not for this. Not for any of this that she has done that she knows was wrong.

"Shinji!" Asta gasped, pointing away from them. "Watch out!"

Snapping out of his train of thought, Shinji looked away from where they were on the open field in the wood…and saw Yui Ikari and Harbinger, standing a considerable distance away from the two Black Bull Magic Knights.

Slam! Guardian, who was observing the training session from one of the trees, dropped to the ground and extended his claws in case his nemesis tried anything.

"Don't try anything stupid again," he warned Harbinger.

"Please, if I wanted to attack you, you'd be on the ground and riddled with bony spears," Harbinger stated calmly. "This, unfortunately, is just an attempt on her part to use reason (he points to Yui) on her kid."

"What reason?" Shinji questions. "I see no reason, just an excuse."

"Shinji," Yui spoke up. "I meant what I said back in my Steel Sanctuary. What I'm doing will save this world and the people in it, but I need your help to achieve that goal."

"Oh, spare me your self-righteous goal, Mother. I think we both know why you really want me to help you, and it's not going to happen."

"The people here need to let go of these ridiculous beliefs they have had for countless generations and embrace the future."

"Embrace the future? Like you?"

Shinji then took out his grimoire and opened it to the pages containing Evangelion Unit-01 and showed it to Yui. If she wanted to talk about the future, he had to let her know how he felt about her perception of the future.

"Is this it right here, Mother?" He questioned her, making sure that she got a good look at the Eva depicted on the pages. "Is this the future you want? Is this it right here, Mother? The Eva? What you gave your life for when I was barely four years old? Well, if it is, then it's no better than you are right now with Harbinger. You see it as a future, but all I have ever seen of it was pain and suffering, and I don't want it. You see it as hope, I see it as despair. You see salvation through it, I see nothing but damnation, and if I could, I'd rip the pages out and do the worst thing I can think about doing to it in front of you, which is to burn that monster to ashes for all time just to spite you like how you did me in your hideaway."

Yui widened her eyes in response to this and replied, "You wouldn't dare destroy the bright future that I have worked too hard to make possible for everyone, that I have shown you."

Shinji frowned and retorted, "You want to keep believing that your future is the only future for everyone, you keep believing it all you want to, but I only have this to say about your so-called 'bright future', Mother: I hate it. I hate your bright future and I hate the Eva. I'd sooner spit on both and walk away than embrace either…and make my own bright future that has nothing to do with yours."

"You…can't possibly mean that, Shinji."

"If Guardian couldn't see any possibility where we're both together in the future, it's only because of one factor above all others that explains why it's so: He couldn't see the possibility…because you didn't want for there to be one where we're together unless it's the way you want. Unless it's what you want, it doesn't exist, just like how the future you want doesn't exist without me helping you…and I won't help you. You threatened our family, you let him (points to Harbinger) out of his prison, you caused the deaths of millions of people from the Spade Kingdom when all you could've done was taken out the Dark Triad and their followers, but no, that wasn't enough for you. None of it is enough for you. You're too ambitious. You're too consumed by your perception of the future that you can't stand being in the present. I always thought Father was a heartless monster, but you… You're no better than him. You're no better than anyone that chooses to do wrong and call what they're doing right, knowing that they're hurting others. So, if you want to continue going to make your bright future a reality for people that want nothing to do with it, I will impede you, Mother. I will get in your way…and make sure that the only way you get what you want…is over my soulless…Magic Knight…corpse."

"Whoa," Asta reacted; it looked like Shinji and his mother really didn't see eye-to-eye, and they were related.

Even Guardian had a mild disbelief over Shinji's conviction to stop his mother's agenda, even if it meant risking his own life to make it impossible.

-x-

"…It looks like Yui is starting to see that what she's doing has put her and Shinji against each other," said Fuyutsuki as they were looking at the photo depicting Yui and Shinji facing each other, seeing Shinji make his declaration of rejecting his mother.

"But what will his mother do?" Asuka wondered.

"As it would seem that she threatened their family right in front of him earlier," Ritsuko stated, "she might do worse to hurt him."

"But," went Misato, a bit worried, "she wouldn't really hurt her own son, right? I mean… She's his mother."

"And yet, he hasn't seen or spoken with her in over a decade," Kaji reminded her. "Even if there is a familial tie between them, she might as well be a complete stranger to him. And…in a way, she's already hurt him. Your family being threatened by someone from the family? That's about as personal as you can get to hurting someone."

Misato placed her left index finger on the only photo on the two pages that served as a window to the world of the Clover Kingdom, almost overshadowed by various other photos of the Ikaris on various holidays, like Christmas or Thanksgiving.

Flash! Misato, this time, found herself seeing Shinji standing before her in front of his mother, standing firm in his resolve to defy her to the end, and seeing his mother give an inhuman frown that spoke many volumes of contempt that seemed like Gendo's own, only worse because she had deliberately crossed the line.

"You would choose these faux-people over me, Shinji?" She questioned, sounding like she was hurt by her son's decision.

"Only because you made it easy for me to reject you," she heard Shinji reply. "I love living here in the Clover Kingdom, Mother. I love being a Magic Knight, being able to do things I only knew about in my grandmother and uncle's stories of their lives before they were forced to leave. And when I learned I could do what they and everyone else here could do, I finally had something I knew I wanted to do for myself. I chose this life to bury my past as a pilot for that monster you helped make. And yet you…you go and do the one thing that makes me look at you the same way I looked at Father and the Angels. I see you as a monster, not a person…that dredges up the echoes of my past that I've grown to resent. You should've just said you hated living here if you had a problem with being here. You're just like him, you know. You can speak your mind all you want about other things, but you never say anything about yourself that helps others to see the real you, to understand you. You don't say anything…and yet, you make it hard for anyone to understand you, including me. Do you know what happens when someone does something so wrong that they make others come to their own conclusions about who they are?"

Misato worried that someone was going to say something so unforgivable that once it was spoken, there would be no turning back.

"Whether they're good or bad is up to those that conclude for themselves that they're one or the other," Yui replied. "But Shinji, I'm not the villain here. I thought I could convince you to come with me and change things for the people here, but that's impossible so long as they live and poison you against me. Maybe if I had stayed, you never would've met those three. I never wanted you to ever know about those three, blood or not. They turned you against me…and they don't have a place in the bright future I will show the people."

"If they don't fit in your future, I wouldn't want to be in it, either, so maybe I don't fit in your future at all. So, if you go after them…you're coming after me, too."

He's standing up for these three that his mother admits to disliking and resenting for being in his life, Misato thought.

Then, Yui walked away with the monster behind her.

"I will save you, Shinji," she told her son, "from the end of this world and from them. It's inevitable. Always has been because everything happens as it must."

"You keep telling yourself that falsehood belief," he replied. "You better pray the next time we meet, I don't hand you over to Grandmother so she may reprimand you."

Yui entered a spatial rift behind her and disappeared with her ally.

"You can't own up to your faults to the point where you blame others for what you consider to be mistakes," Shinji uttered as he turned away. "You really are no better than Father, Mother."

She saw a small tear escape his left eye; he was clearly hurt by what his mother was doing and how far she was willing to go…and must've been fighting against shedding tears at her betrayal when he saw her.

"Shinji," she spoke, and he turned his head towards her, looking in disbelief.

"Misato?" He questioned.

Flash! She was back in the room where they were observing what was going on in the photo album, and removed her finger from the photo.

"Did you see anything, Katsuragi?" Kaji asked her.

"What?" She responded.

"You were zoned out for two minutes," went Ritsuko, "completely unresponsive. It happened after you touched the photo. What did you see?"

"I saw…Shinji and his mother. Yui openly declared a willingness to go after her mother and siblings in front of Shinji…and he declared that he would stop her. Instead of owning up to her fault in her absence in his life, she chose to blame her mother and siblings for turning him against her. It's like whatever she can't admit to being responsible for, she tries to pin it on someone else. Whatever she's up to, she won't let them be part of his life or future, something he's taking personal."

"I knew his father was a creep, but his own mother?" Asuka went. "I'm starting to think he was better off thinking her dead than to ever see her after ending up in the Clover Kingdom. She might be his mother, but she's no better than his father if she's willing to hurt all of those people and say she's helping them."

"I don't think she views the people there as 'people', Asuka. She called them… Well, I'm not sure if it means anything, but she…called them 'faux-people'."

"Faux-people?" Fuyutsuki asked her. "She called them that exact term?"

"Yes. Has she used that word before?"

"She only used it once. Apparently, she has a mild disgust towards anything that isn't human and conforms to civilization, and the list includes races relating to mythology, like…"

"Elves, fairies, dwarves, kappa, tengu, yokai?" Kaji questioned.

"Yes. At first, I thought it was just a dislike towards myths and fairytales, but now… Now, I think just being in a place where such creatures do exist makes her very prejudiced towards people from other worlds or races similar to our own."

"She views people as people that look like regular people," Misato expressed, "but anyone with pointed ears, are small, have wings, horns or webbed limbs, even if they are friendly and don't conform to the entirety of myths, she views as not being people."

"Maybe, but she seems to view the people that actually are people that live in that world the same as elves or goblins," Ritsuko suggested. "Anyone probably would in her shoes."

"Maybe just people that don't like myths and legends, the stuff of fiction," Asuka stated.

"If it's not grounded in reality, it serves no purpose," said Rei. "Anything that can't conform to the perceived reality of the individual must be removed before it distorts the totality of one's perception of reality…by any and all means necessary."

The way the albino girl said it, the way it seemed to make sense, it seemed like Yui, unlike the rest of her immediate family, or rather, just her maternal family, really hated anything and anyone that related to anything that wasn't scientific, grounded in possibility that took years, generations, just to prove.

Asuka then turned to the next page in the album, hoping for something less hurtful than what was mentioned…and was rewarded at least that much in the form of three photos that depicted Shinji with the Black Bull, Tenshi with the Golden Dawn and Rika flying somewhere in the night sky.

"If they all know what Yui's up to," went Fuyutsuki, "they're probably not taking any chances with the possibility of seeing her on their own."

-x-

Yui fumed over Shinji's stubborn refusal to side with her in saving this world as she walked down the halls of her Steel Sanctuary. She hated how he had been influenced by her mother and siblings in the years she'd been away, and knew that in order to save Shinji from their fate, she would need to remove them from the present before reworking the way her son's mind worked, removing every last shred of their existence until there was no recollection from his life, making them ghosts in every sense of the word. Even if her absence was due to the contact experiment and her husband leaving him alone afterward was a symptom of her departure, she didn't really blame Gendo, despite everyone else doing so. No, she blamed the intervention of Rika, Tenshi and Suki, whom she found to be a trio of seriously disturbed people that couldn't let go of a fiction that made zero sense. And now that Shinji had been swept into their world of insanity, she had to make sure that he and everyone else in this world was cleansed so that they could conform to the new future, free of the fiction.

Harbinger found her to be quite off for a human that wanted to save her species; if an individual wanted to save a race, it usually referred to every last member of the species, but Yui was doing something that compared her to Alexander Silva IV in a perverse sense, which was to cherry-pick everyone they wanted to go after. It was exactly what she was doing with people, picking out who would be saved and who would be cast aside for when the world ends. He had no problem with it, as only a handful of survivors in an evolved situation were no different from an entire race being saved from the end. Since he was primordial in terms of age, he saw no point in relationships beyond what was needed to be done once these humans were disposed of, he would move on to the next world and dispose of the physical life forms there.

Yui stopped in front of the only picture she allowed to be present within her hideaway: It was a family photo of her back when Shinji was a baby and she had Gendo. She didn't mind the separation between them, but once she had achieved what she was doing here, she intended to go back to the other world and gather the rest of the people there into the whole of her version of Human Instrumentality, which was getting closer to being possible as the days went by.

"None of it is enough for you," she recalled Shinji say to her. "You're too ambitious. You're too consumed by your perception of the future that you can't stand being in the present. I always thought Father was a heartless monster, but you… You're no better than him."

She felt resentment towards Shinji for saying that to her. He had no right to consider both his parents to be monsters when they were trying to save the world, even if it was not in the way most people would like. It made her feel disappointment in how he developed, both mentally and emotionally. Hell, she was disappointed with how he could turn against her after learning of this plan of hers, and his declaration to stop her.

Of course, I don't really blame Shinji for being this way, she thought. I blame Mother, Tenshi and Suki. They just had to be part of his life when it was easier for them to be ignorant of his existence. The sooner they are out of the way, the sooner Shinji will see things from my perspective and turn the other cheek. He needs to decide what will be for everyone.

To be continued…

A/N: And it seems like Yui, no matter how many times she's told, can't get it through her head that she's the one at fault for everything she does. Instead of blaming herself, she blames her mother and siblings for Shinji turning against her. Even after Shinji openly declares his intentions on stopping her, she still sees Rika, Tenshi and Suki as the problem between herself and Shinji. Read and review and let me know what you think will happen later on. Peace out.