Creation began on 04-19-24
Creation ended on 09-03-24
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Grimoire of Evangelion: City of One
This mockery of Tokyo-3 just kept grinding at Shinji's conscious; everywhere he looked, everything he saw, it felt like he was back in the actual fortress city…but he wasn't back in the fortress city. It didn't have that sense of feeling like his home away from home, which was with Rika, Tenshi and Suki. Even Asta and Noelle could see it every time they looked at Shinji, seeing him trying his hardest to refrain from acting out in an irrational way in front of everyone else.
"Say, Mr. Tenshi Ikari," went Vanessa to the patriarch of House Ikari, "you once visited the actual city this place is based off of, right?"
"Yes," Tenshi answers her.
"Do you see anything familiar?"
"Do you see anything familiar?" Tenshi replayed her question in his head as he stopped to look up at the tall buildings. "Do you see anything familiar?"
"All I see," he responds, "is a demented woman's sick joke."
Vanessa looks over at a display of mannequins wearing strange clothing and pointed them out.
"Very sick and demented," she expresses, and Shinji walks over to the display.
Suki stood beside her nephew and held her tongue in check; knowing Shinji, he undoubtedly recognized the outfits the mannequins were dressed in.
"NERV," she hears him say bitterly.
"Isn't it missing a letter?" They both hear Yuno ask as he stood beside them.
"It's a different language spelling," Shinji tells him. "Different language, different spelling, same pronunciation and meaning."
Yuno leans in at the display and almost swears he saw something that shouldn't have been there.
"I wouldn't get too close, young man," Suki tells Yuno, and he turns to face her. "Just because they look harmless doesn't mean that they are harmless."
"Because Yui isn't harmless, you mean?"
"Because anyone that means to harm others will find a way to do so, regardless of their actions, whether they're subtle or not in their methods."
Shinji then walks away from the display, further disgruntled by how his mother used pieces of his own memories to further aggravate him with this mockery of a city.
"How is he holding up?" Yuno asks Suki.
"How do you think?" She responds. "It's eating away at him. Every second he's here. He wants to yell, to scream, to wring her neck out and demand an explanation for why she would do this. I know because I want to do the same thing, to just grab Yui by her neck and demand an answer for her atrocious attitude towards the people of this world and the one we were self-exiled to for over a millennia ago and lived in for over half a century."
"He really doesn't have a relationship with her…at all…does he?"
"It's hard to say if she has a relationship with anyone now. The only one we really even know she has is with Harbinger, and that relationship is one of mutual hatred towards all others for similar reasons that lead to similar outcomes on the one path they chose to take."
Yuno found it a bit uneasy to see a young mage that has a family to connect with…but whose mother was akin to a complete stranger and was now an enemy of her own volition against everyone else within the entire country. As he noticed Shinji walking into a building, he wondered what was going through his mind right now. Besides, perhaps, his memories of the actual city he once resided in before coming to the Clover Kingdom.
-x-
Standing beside a countertop of a convenience store, Shinji reflected on the night he moved in with Misato, recalling the minute conversation these people that had been at the store had about leaving Tokyo-3 out of fear of losing their lives because the government failed to inform the public of the Angels and their only questionable method of combating them.
"Shinji," he hears a voice behind him and sees Finral, who steps back from him, looking terrified. "Your hand is bleeding."
He looks down at his left hand…and sees it bleeding; he hadn't realized that, just moments ago, he had smashed up a cash register on the countertop.
"It's nothing," he says and walks down an aisle, seeing some paper towels on the shelves.
Even Luck, who had been with Finral, was worried about Shinji, since he didn't seem to notice that he had hurt himself smashing up something.
She's going to destroy him, he thinks as Shinji comes back, his hand wrapped in a paper towel.
-x-
"…Thank you, Lady Ikari," the monarch of the Diamond Kingdom expresses to Rika as he drinks an elixir she had brought with her, feeling better than he had ever felt before in his earlier years. "I feel my strength and clarity of mind returning with every minute that passes."
"You're welcome," Rika replies to him, looking over at a large cube of glass that held a man inside it, who looked like he was anything but loyal to the king. "It'll probably take a while before you're completely recovered, but this man won't be able to do any further harm."
"Moris Libardirt. He is…he was…my most trusted Magic Scholar."
"Everything I did was for the sake of the Diamond Kingdom, your majesty!" Moris yells; the revelation that Rika felt a bad vibe from this man that prompted him to attack her once she delivered an elixir for the survivors of the attack brought upon them by Harbinger made his corruption apparent. "Everything was to ensure our country was protected against our enemies!"
While Rika could sympathize with the goal to protect a nation from an enemy, she couldn't sympathize with this man's methods because they were brutal and outrageous, not to mention he committed crimes of cruelty towards children forced to become soldiers. Holding his grimoire in her right hand, she sighs as she walks over to his temporary prison.
"Even so," she utters to him, letting her words be heard, "your methods of trying to ensure the defense and peace of your homeland…were just unbearably cruel and inhumane, Mr. Libardirt. And while I have no standing against how justice will be served against you, I do hope that your fate will be merciful."
"You believe in merciful fates? There is no such thing! If there were, there would be light instead of darkness! Ever since I was born, I have never seen light! All I've ever seen…is darkness and despair! You're lucky if you can embrace light! You can see hope!"
Rika looks at him and could understand why he said what he said to her. His eyes, devoid of anything, were as blind as his belief that there was no hope.
"You were born blind, I presume?" She asks him. "If you could ask for anything right now, what would you ask of me?"
"What is this? A trick?"
"No. It's just a question. If you could ask for something, anything, right here and now, what would you ask of me?"
"I would ask for the light I was denied all my life. I would ask for the right to see the world the way everyone around me sees it, to not live in the darkness every waking moment."
"Maybe we can remedy that issue you have."
Rika's grimoire floated out of her bag and opened to a specific page she had recently acquired from her extensive studies.
"Eye Healing Magic: Give Sight to the Sightless," she utters, and Moris was bathed in light that was akin to a warm bath.
His eyes developed pupils with grey irises. His vision, once that of darkness and nothingness, became that of colors he only heard of but never experienced. In front of him, he could see a young woman that looked like a goddess that lived among mortals, with long, ebony hair and fair skin, dressed in an unusual dress comprised of two colors that was tied around her waist with what looked like a small pillow behind her.
"Are you what the people call a goddess?" He asks her.
"No," she answers him, seeing that he could finally see. "I am but a servant of greater powers that work through us all every now and then, affecting the world and the people within it."
Moris fell to his knees, feeling wetness in his eyes. Looking down at his hands, he could see these small droplets of water falling onto his palms. Tears of a former blind man. For the first time in his life…he could finally see the light that was hope. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Moris had seen the hope he had been denied for so long…and was grateful.
"Thank you," he whimpers. "Thank you."
-x-
Yui counted at least thirty-six Magic Knights, including the ones Shinji lived with, and couldn't help but be disappointed by who she saw. It was bad enough that Shinji lived with a squad as disturbing as the Black Bulls, but it was embarrassing to see one of its female members walking around the streets of her replica of Tokyo-3 in such an indecent state of dress that she recalls seeing his memories of Misato Katsuragi when at her apartment in a similar state.
"I honestly don't know what is worse right now," she utters as she continues to observe the Magic Knights wandering around. "Their criticism…or this woman's indecency. I guess it's the woman's indecency."
In the room, she presses a blue button and flips a black switch.
-x-
Tenshi stops walking and feels an ominous vibe on the street.
"Everyone, stop moving!" He yells.
"What?" A Magic Knight of the Crimson Lion asks.
"We're being watched."
"That's obvious," went a Magic Knight from the Aqua Deer expresses.
"No," a Magic Knight from the Coral Peacock replies, "he's right. She's watching us."
Shine. Tenshi caught something out of his line of sight and looked up at the skyscrapers, unsheathing his sword in case something happened.
Asta took out his Demon-Dweller Sword and Noelle raised up her wand.
The streets started to emit a thick, blue mist, surrounding the Magic Knight.
"Swift White Hawk," Yuno summoned a spell to dissipate the mist, but something was wrong; no matter how much wind he was generating in their vicinity, the mist wasn't moving in any direction he was trying to move it.
"As impressive as your spell is, young man," they hear Yui's voice around them, "I made sure that mine were stronger than required for this city."
"Dammit, Yui," went Suki, holding her bow and arrow at the ready. "This whole place is foul and despicable! And worse, you hide from us like it's a game!"
"Oh, this isn't a game, Suki," Yui replies. "It's an experiment."
"Now, that is despicable," Shinji expresses.
"Oh, I'm offended, Shinji. I would think you out of everyone would find remarkable this city you once lived in. Although, I admit, it's still a work-in-progress."
"Call it what you will, I hate it as much as I hate what you've done with your life here."
"Then I guess I should inform you that I am embarrassed by your choice of a squad to devote your services as a Magic Knight to. I mean, only someone without a sense of order and perfection would choose the Black Bull, the official squad within the whole of Clover that is the worst to be a part of. Look at them. They're divided, unorganized, like a melting pot of different walks of life that simply don't go together. I'm especially embarrassed by your tolerance towards that disgrace of a woman in the scanty outfit."
All eyes were on Vanessa, as if being pointed out to the obviousness of her attire.
"You honestly think I care what Ms. Enoteca chooses to wear?" Shinji questions. "I'm not the control freak here! If you have a problem with her, walk away! Your opinion is low, anyway!"
A figure emerged from the mist in front of them. It was Yui, dressed in her white lab coat.
"And yet, you choose to associate with her," she utters. "Such people, even if they are servants of a so-called great cause, are a disgrace to their superiors."
"Oh, go to Hell!" Suki responds, raising her bow up and firing an arrow at her.
It went right through her, revealing that she wasn't even there.
"None of you are leaving here," Yui tells them, pointing to the Black Bull she was disgusted with currently. "I have plans in place for each and every one of you."
Shinji opens his grimoire and shows her the pages containing the Eva.
"You want to threaten my squad," he tells her, "then how about I threaten you, Mother? I lose any of my squad because you dislike them, or if any Magic Knights here suffer because you refuse to leave…then I will tear these pages and destroy this abomination you continue to devote yourself to…and then we'll see what bright future remains for the both of us."
It was really the first time Yui ever felt scorn towards her son for his threat to destroy the Evangelion she really wanted back to complete her objective.
"I will not be denied by you, Shinji," she lets him know. "This world and these people are stuck in a rut that is going nowhere, and I need to set them straight. Everyone needs to grow up and put away these childish things that serve no purpose."
"Bullshit."
-x-
"Gott im Himmel," went Asuka as she looks at the picture of Shinji facing a ghostly version of his mother. "Could she be any crazier than to threaten the squad he's on because she doesn't like them?"
"I'm wondering that myself right now," Misato states, sympathizing with Shinji because his mother just expressed her disgust towards the woman that likely reminded Shinji of herself, down to her semi-revealing dress.
"He's used to people like that," Ritsuko confirms. "His mother is clearly not tolerant of anyone that doesn't meet her expectations."
"She pushes him further away from her," went Rei, "and doesn't see that in the end, he may make a choice she doesn't expect him to make."
"Such as?" Fuyutsuki asks her.
"One that affects everyone around him."
"You can't be any specific?" Asuka questions.
"The future is unclear."
"Maybe Shinji chooses to send his mother back to our world while he stays over there in that world his grandmother, uncle and aunt live in," Misato suggests, something Rei responds to by touching the photo of Shinji facing his mother.
"If he chooses to do that," she states, "it's only because his mother forced him to choose between her and his own interests."
"Not a good way to dictate anyone's life if they're going down a direction you don't want them to go down," Kaji admits. "Whether Yui knows it or not, she's pushing her son away from her in a negative way, and that's going to effectively destroy whatever chance she has of actually having a relationship with him."
"I think they're already past the point of their lives where they realize that they don't have a relationship that is worth having because they're on two different paths," Misato claims.
Turning to the next page, Rei sees Shinji and about four Magic Knights within a large room that resembles one of the rooms within NERV HQ; either by a fault of Shinji or perhaps by Yui herself, they were likely inside her domain once more.
-x-
Yui, feeling disrespected by Shinji's defense of how a Magic Knight chooses to conduct themselves so long as they were capable of making moral decisions, caused the streets to open up beneath them and brought them to her Steel Sanctuary. But she made sure to separate each of them from each other, feeling that her son and siblings didn't work well together with Magic Knights from other squads due to conflicting personalities.
"I guess your latest attempt to sway your son isn't working out?" She looks over at the corner behind herself and sees Harbinger, looking as though he had evolved further in his little sojourn.
"He refuses to see from my perspective," she tells him. "He's been indulged by my relatives more than I care to admit."
"Indulged? I fail to see how his development being influenced by his time with them puts him in conflict with you. Humans will be influenced by those that have a greater influence on their behavior than those of others dare to try. Guardian of the Void, his continual development over the ages has been influenced heavily by the ancestral members of your family. Particularly, one of the earliest members that solidified his affiliation with them."
"Either way, their influence on him makes it very difficult for him to comprehend the big picture that's at stake here."
"And what is the big picture?"
"A better future."
But Harbinger was still doubtful that her son would accept her perception of the future. If her family's influence over him was as strong as she resented it for being, then Shinji was undoubtedly a lost cause for this woman that wanted to reshape the world in her own image. Then again, her son was always going to be a lost cause because they were on opposing sides of the line between light and darkness; whereas she chose to embrace using chaos to establish her own brand of order, her son was of the light that promised more than what she thought she could give to him. Still, Harbinger could only succeed once all the pieces were established into the order they had set in place, and he was stronger now than he was after devouring the first three devils he encountered from Spade affiliated with the Dark Triad, along with their magic powers.
-x-
"…I don't mean to sound cruel to someone like you, Ikari," a male member of the Purple Orca squad expresses to Shinji as he and Guardian were inside a room with him and a female member of the Golden Dawn, "but your mother is a demented woman."
Looking around the room, Shinji, responds, "You'll get no argument from me about that claim, but could we find a way out of here first? I don't like making decisions in enclosed spaces."
"Claustrophobic?" The Golden Dawn member asks.
"Wouldn't you be if you were locked in a room with no exit?" He asks her.
"Good point. Why would she make a room with no door?"
Slam! Guardian rammed against a wall beside Shinji, creating an indentation of himself in it.
"Because she doesn't like guests in her domain," he tells them, looking at the indentation. "Or worse, she just doesn't like anyone refusing her and does something like this to spite them."
"Spite?!" The Purple Orca Magic Knight replies. "And this is a woman that refuses to leave?! What does she want? She already has her own city. What, does she want the throne of all four kingdoms? Spade isn't enough for her?"
"She doesn't want to control the four kingdoms, sir," Shinji states. "She wants to remake the world to suit what she believes has to be for everyone. She wants to take away the magic and force the people to conform to her grounded beliefs that everything has to be real and not make believe, something she views magic as and despises."
"That's insane," the Golden Dawn Magic Knight expresses. "Just because she doesn't like magic doesn't give her the right to take magic away from everyone else. I'd sooner see her executed for her crimes than to have my magic taken away from me. No offense."
"None taken right now. My mother is no different from my father right now. She's a horrible person, and we'd be better off without her."
Slam! Guardian this time bashed against the ceiling of the room, creating another indentation of himself as he fell to the floor.
"I don't see how that's helping," the Golden Dawn knight admits.
"Aaaurgh…maybe not to you, but rooms like this, made without doors or windows, it makes one wonder how anyone without magic was expected to ever get in here. And Yui, while she might claim to hate magic…is still living in a world where magic is everything, so no matter how much she hates it, it's still part of her nature here in this world, her heritage, her legacy."
"Meaning she has to use it, even if she hates it, because it's the only way she'll be able to get anywhere she wants to go," the Purple Orca knight realizes. "She made this whole place with magic and requires magic to keep it sustained. Talk about a challenge against one's own beliefs."
"Why is she obsessed with that behemoth that got sucked into your grimoire, though, Ikari?" The Golden Dawn knight asks. "Couldn't she just…make another one?"
"She probably already made dozens of them," Shinji states to her, "but the Evangelion, the behemoth that's inside my grimoire, is the one she inhabited for more than ten years. Probably has sentimental value to her for her goals, not something I'm fond of in any way. If she wants it, it's probably part of her goals, and she can't achieve them without it."
"And it's been reduced to a spell you haven't used? Like…at all?"
"Demon Beast Creation Magic: Evangelion Devil. Just the name itself bothers me. Whatever it can do as a spell, the world is better off without being affected by it. So, yeah, I haven't used it…and I have zero interest in using it at all, even for the sake of a victory."
"Then, it's a crazy stalemate that drives her towards you, kid," the Purple Orca knight declares. "She's gonna keep causing mayhem until she gets that thing from you, and you won't use it because you don't want to endanger the people with whatever it's capable of doing. That's an impasse of a different sort."
"Except knowing my mother a little bit, she's not going to let something like this impede her for long. And from what I hear from Tenshi and Suki, my mother is dead set in her ways; she's not going to take 'no' for an answer from anyone, including me."
Opening his grimoire, Shinji pulls out his naginata and taps its blade against the indentation Guardian made earlier.
-x-
"Stand back, y'all," Tenshi tells the other knights as he unleashed Excalibur from his grimoire. "Excalibur can be excessive when locked up in a large box."
The sword spirit generated seventeen swords of light around himself and thrust his arms out forward at the wall in front of them, sending the swords against said wall, creating fractures until it exploded outward, creating a hole.
"Son of a she-demon," Tenshi expresses as the dust cleared and revealed another empty room, similar to the one they were in.
"I don't care if she is your sister or Shinji's mother, Mr. Ikari," says Vanessa to Tenshi as she examines the new room. "Yui is crazy and has no sense of understanding the differences of others. She's not one to talk about what disgusts her."
"Her opinion is the only one that matters to her, Ms. Enoteca, but your opinion is noted by me. I hate her as much as everyone else does right now."
"Is she being deliberately unreasonable towards people because she can't accept what has been common knowledge for generations in this world?" Noelle questions.
"If we're being honest here, Yui doesn't know how to accept anyone that doesn't conform to her standards or meet her expectations because she sets them to an impossible high. She seeks perfection when she's the imperfect one. There's no such thing as a perfect world; everyone and everything is flawed for a reason, and we need to either understand why we can't perfect those flaws and just tolerate them…or just walk away and leave them be."
They entered the new room and couldn't believe how identical it was to the previous room.
Tenshi inhaled a breath and the pages of his grimoire flipped to a new spell.
"Armor Magic," he utters as his body becomes encased in black and silver armor, "Shell Bullet."
He lowered to his fingers like he was about to run a track as his armored guise started radiating a large amount of mana.
"Whoa!" Noelle gasps from the mana she could feel; based upon the degree of mana, as far as she could guesstimate, Tenshi's magical level was likely higher than anyone in her entire immediate family, and this was a man over a thousand years old, restored of his youth and lower body functions.
Dash! Tenshi ran towards the end of the other room…and plowed right through the wall!
"This Ikari's like a heavily refined blade or something," a male member of the Crimson Lions expresses, actually afraid of Tenshi's abilities. "He should be trying to be the Wizard King with his magical degree."
"I heard that!" They hear Tenshi yell. "As tempting as it sounds, I don't see myself leading the order anywhere. Besides, there seems to be a lot of people that want to become the Wizard King for different reasons, a few of which are reasons I can actually stand behind to support."
As the dust cleared, they could see Tenshi in a hallway, his armor unscathed by the collision between himself and the wall.
"I may not have any respect towards his sister," a member of the Blue Rose states as she steps through the hole, "but he's alright."
"No kidding," Noelle and Vannessa agree with her as they follow.
-x-
"…Do that again," Suki threatens Langris, one of her arrows aimed at his neck, "I'll put you in the damn ground myself, boy!"
Seeing that look on her face, recognizing it as the same type of anger he noticed on Tenshi when he had a loss of control over his emotions, Langris backs off from the girl that was technically, just like her brother, older than he was.
"I can respect that," he responds. What the Hell is with these Ikaris that embrace magic and follow this code?
Asta, Yuno, Charmy and a male member of the Purple Orca and a female member of the Aqua Deer saw Suki step away from Finral's brother and saw how the girl was angry, with both her sister and Langris' foolish attempt to escape from the room they were in, which failed due to how his Spatial Magic attacks were all deflected and had nearly maimed them instead of the walls.
"You might be considered a noble prior to your family's self-exile, but I'm still superior to you."
Suki turns back to face him, and he shudders from the look she gives him.
"Then tell me something," she tells him. "Do you really wanna go toe-to-toe with me to see who's superior to who, pretty boy?"
Langris didn't like her tone, but stepped back when he felt her mana levels rise up.
"Yeah, I didn't think so," she expresses as she turns back to examine the walls.
"Hey, if it was going to go down between you two," Asta tells Suki, "I had your back."
"Thanks."
Suki then knocked on the wall.
"Asta, how heavy are your Demon-Slayer and Demon-Dweller Swords?" She asks him.
"I would say that Demon-Dweller is heavier than Demon-Slayer, why?" He replies.
"Jam it into this wall here (Suki puts her left hand on the wall in front of them). Just jam it in there like you're forcing a puzzle piece into a space."
Asta takes out his requested sword and steps back.
"You may step further back," Suki suggests, and he does so.
"This far back enough?"
"Perfect. Do it."
"Aaaaurgh!" Asta charges with his sword aimed at the wall.
For a time, neither of his two swords were ever able to be used as stabbing weapons due to some sort of bluntness that affected them, but ever since it was revealed that he possessed Anti Magic and his grimoire was cleaned by Rika Ikari, his magic had been refined and his ability to convert other items to create Anti Magic versions of said items increased dramatically, along with his swordsmanship and mastery over Anti Magic. Jamming a sword into the ground was one thing, but jamming a sword into a wall was another thing altogether.
She wouldn't ask me to do this if she didn't believe in me, he thought as he was closing in on the wall, and she does believe in me. Here goes everything!
Jam! He impaled his sword into the wall, right up to the hilt and he felt the back of his hand get cut by the guard.
"Aaaurgh!" He groans as he lets go of the sword. "Is that good for you?"
"Perfect," Suki tells him as she grabs the sword hilt. "Haaaaaurgh!"
She channeled her mana into the sword, as much as she could spare, and made the sword transfer it into the wall, floor, and ceiling, causing it all to crack and fracture.
Charmy and the other two knights were wide-eyed as Suki gripped the Demon-Dweller Sword and pushed it all the way through the wall, forcing it to shatter into pieces like a series of bricks and stones, revealing a long hallway.
"Ha…ha…ah…ha," Suki pants as she holds up Asta's sword. "You were right. This is heavy."
Asta accepts the sword back and they all vacate the room.
"Are you feeling alright?" He asks her.
"This is nothing," she responds, just a little out of breath. "I can do seven more major spells…and still have the strength to best you at chess."
-x-
Yui fumed at how erratic these people were behaving in her domain. It was bad enough that Shinji still had Guardian to aid him and the Magic Knights with them, but she had underestimated her brother and sister and their ability to overcome the obstacles she set in place to impede them.
Shinji, she thinks as monitors them all through the eyeballs created by her Eyeball Magic in place of security cameras, why can't you just accept that this is the only way to save these tortured souls and mend this broken world?
She picks up her grimoire and vacates the room she and Harbinger were in.
"What do you intend to do?" He asks her.
"Drive a wedge between my son and my siblings," she states, and he turns to follow. "No, stay here. I got this."
It was the first time Yui wanted to do something of this sort on her own, but Harbinger let her have her own brand of fun. The time for talk was done…and the time for manipulation was in force. Either her son would be swayed to her cause…or he would burn with the rest of them. Either way, Harbinger was content with the outcome, since it meant one less obstacle in his way.
-x-
Blast! A wall with an indentation exploded open…and through the smoke and debris…were Shinji and Guardian, the blade of the former's naginata aglow with red energy similar to the latter's body aura.
"Okay, you two are scary right now," says the Purple Orca knight, uncertain if he should be fearful of this young man…or his mother…or all of the family if they were capable of magic of this degree.
"It's cool to be fearful of others," went Shinji, "but if you let fear drive you, you will not survive long to actually enjoy your life. If you joined the Magic Knights on the assumption that you wouldn't have to fear others, you're sadly mistaken about the profession you have chosen."
And it was the way Shinji was talking that was different from earlier. It was as though someone flipped a switch in him, and he was someone full of anger towards a particular person that was wrong in every sense of the word, but who he was was seesawing between right and wrong.
"And now, we're no longer within a confined space," Guardian expresses.
"It came from over here!" They hear a female voice and turn to the right, seeing a crossroad down the hallway, and from out the left side came Suki and Asta. "You have no idea how glad I am to see you two."
Shinji smiles and replies, "The feeling is mutual."
"Y'all, too?" They turn around and see Tenshi with the knights he was with.
"We need to settle this," Guardian tells them, reminding them that Yui was misbehaving and messing with them. "Before it gets worse than now."
"You nitwits," they all hear Yui's voice, "are breaking my sanctuary with your recklessness. And you, Shinji, I can't believe that you're at ease with seeing them, knowing how dangerous they are. You honestly think that this game has a future for any of them? For you?"
It was like she was everywhere around them, but she wasn't around for them to see.
"You're the one playing the game, Mother," Shinji responds, "and it's a crappy game where you're the only player. You call it a game, and none of us are having any fun with you…because you're a rotten player that doesn't follow the rules or even explain the rules to those that don't want to play with you."
"Burn," the female Golden Dawn knight expresses.
"Show yourself, Yui," Tenshi utters, "or are you too much like your father, hiding from others because you don't have the balls to face us with your problems?"
"I only need to concern myself with my son here," Yui, her voice full of spite towards them, replies. "The rest of you are of no use to me. You are irrelevant trash."
Guardian raises his head up and tilts it to the left.
"Shinji," he utters. "Your mother sounds like your father now."
"Yeah," he agrees with him. "You can hear it in her voice, in the way she says things. It doesn't matter if this is a conversation or a confrontation, she's as twisted as she expresses herself. And just how messed-up was her father, Tenshi?"
"Honestly? The guy failed your grandmother in more ways a disgrace of a man can fail when they don't honor their commitment."
"You make it sound like the guy from this world you were self-exiled to was engaged with another woman behind your mother's back," Langris expresses his opinion about the dead guy, earning a look from Tenshi and Suki that spoke volumes of disgust. "Ah, Hell."
"Yes, it's true," they hear Yui claim, "my father had two mistresses around the time he was married to my mother, but he has nothing to do with my life choices. Everything I do has to follow an order to the chaos that exists…and you faux-people are simply another form of chaos that exists and threatens the purity and rigidity of my order!"
"And there's that term you're using again," Shinji responds. "You keep calling everyone here 'faux-people'. What is that supposed to even mean?"
Suki's eyes widen at a memory she recalls from her childhood. There was a time when Yui would use that term often…and it causes her blood to boil from the anger she felt at hearing it.
"Shinji," she says to her nephew, "permission to call your mother out on a cold truth relating to the term she uses."
"I'm probably not going to like it, but I want to know. Granted."
"Your mother is like a twisted racist, only she directs her dislike towards anyone or anything she doesn't perceive to be real. She does this to any race or group that has a foundation in myths and legends. At first, she wouldn't say it as much, but now…she's just expressing more of her hatred towards this world and the people that live in it. Everyone…everywhere…even if she's never met them a day in her life…simply because she chooses to dislike them…for simply existing."
"You mean…what, she hates…elves…dragons…mages?"
"In a word, yes."
Shinji didn't enjoy this revelation about his mother, but it helped to explain more of her disgust towards all of them. If she viewed them all as these…people that didn't exist in her mind, where did this leave them? Faux-people, people that weren't supposed to exist anywhere, even in other worlds where actual people simply couldn't get to without help, and this included the people of the Clover Kingdom, Guardian of the Void, the Magic Knights, the Elf Tribe that was brought back to life with his grandmother's help…and…
"Well, where does that leave us, Mother?" He asks Yui, curious about something. "Don't we fit the mold of what you just laid out?"
"Out of everyone, Shinji," Yui responds, "you and I are the only ones that are real people here. We have lived actual lives grounded in reality. We don't fly on broomsticks or try to befriend dragons or see phoenixes rise from the ashes of their former selves."
"Real? What is real these days? What's the difference between a life one lives and a life one only dreams of living? The life I had back in Japan, while having its good moments and the people I care about, I hated much of after you went and faked your own death and Father left me with some stranger. And then I find out that you made a monster that carries a price that only a crazy person would even think of paying for some future that isn't even worth having. You want to get rid of magic because you hate it, and yet you're using magic and calling it something else that you do believe in. You make it so easy for me to want to hate you for doing all of this, thinking that I'll help you get what you're after. You can do whatever you want, but you're not going to prosper out of your twisted venture. That's how real this is to me right now. That's how much of a terrible person you are to me right now. You even let a dangerous creature that's worse than any demon or devil out of its cage. How much more of a monster can you become now after doing all of this?"
-x-
"Something tells me that this woman just pushed her son too far away," went Kaji as he saw the photo of Shinji and the other Magic Knights present in the replica of the NERV base.
"I hate to say it," Misato responds to his assumption, feeling that Shinji had expressed himself towards his mother's actions in a way that didn't bode well for him, "but I think you're right."
Fuyutsuki turns the page over…and sees something horrible.
"Kami," he utters, seeing Yui, her face full of malice, assaulting Shinji in front of her siblings and Guardian of the Void.
Under the photo was one of Shinji spending Christmas with the three Ikaris he cherished.
"Everything I do here, I do for the good of the future, Shinji," they all feel like they're hearing Yui's voice, bitter and angry at her son. "This world needs to change and let go of these childish fairytales, even if that means these faux-people dying before they can live again as real people in a better one."
The picture shows her using her right hand to grip Shinji by his neck, with her left hand holding his naginata-wielding arm at bay.
"That's not for you to decide, Mother," they hear Shinji respond, trying to move his naginata's blade towards Yui. "You're not the overseer of anyone here! Just walk away…or you'll face the repercussions for your actions!"
"Everything happens as it must, Shinji."
Asuka touched Shinji's face in the photo…and found herself standing in front of the mother and son, seeing Yui actually trying to choke Shinji…and seeing Shinji trying to injure his mother with his pole arm.
"Do you know what your problem is, Shinji?" Yui says to Shinji. "You can never see the big picture that I could always see. You let these distractions, these faux-people that are nothing more than a delusion to keep you occupied with and away from a world we were both taken away from by my mother and siblings. Let go and see how better the world will be without these delusions of false hope."
"You're wrong, Mother. You're the one trying to give false hope…simply because you despise our heritage that comes from Grandmother. I, for one, am not ashamed to know that we have a connection to a world where magic is everything. And the saddest part about you…is that you just picked up where you left off, making Evas, and that just breaks my heart from knowing how far you have fallen."
Yui just tightens her grip on his neck, and Asuka couldn't believe that she would actually try to harm her own son for stating some fact.
"No," she utters suddenly. "Please…please, stop."
Slash! Yui's arm receives a cut to the wrist, causing her to back away from Shinji.
Asuka looks at Shinji…and sees Guardian of the Void on his right side.
"Forty-three," Guardian says, his claws flexing as he looks down at Yui. "You're the forty-third parent I've encountered in my life that crossed the line and assaulted their own child. I wouldn't be an adequate guardian if I allowed Shinji to suffer irrecoverable harm…and there's a witness."
"What are you talking about?" Yui demands.
"You mean, you don't see the girl?"
Shinji looks to where Guardian points with his tail…and sees Asuka.
"Oh, this is making me wonder if you can see and hear me," he speaks.
"Of course, I can see and hear you," she replies.
Yui looks over to where the redhead is wonders how she got here. Nobody should've been able to get in unless she wanted them to, and this girl was not supposed to be here at all.
"What are you doing here?" She demands to hear from her.
"You're his mother, and yet you're treating everyone here like they're a problem when it's you refusing to leave that is the problem here," Asuka tells her. "You don't like it here. You don't want to be here. But you refuse to leave. Just leave."
"And everyone that tells me that is a broken record. Until I have remade this world into one that is grounded in facts and reality, I have a duty to fulfill."
"You call it a duty…but it's just an obsession you have created because you need an excuse to do everything that you do," Shinji tells her as Asuka sees his grimoire flip through pages on its own. "And thanks to Asuka, I know how I have to deal with you."
"Is that right, Shinji?"
"Anti Magic: Sphere of Influence."
Yui's eyes widen in disbelief as she suddenly feels like the power she has disappear from her body. She didn't expect him to use a spell of this sort, knowing that it might endanger the other Magic Knights. But then she realizes that Shinji is the only Magic Knight present where they are right now, removing the danger. Beside her, her grimoire, no longer glowing with her magic power, falls to the floor.
"You're within my Sphere of Influence now, Mother," Shinji says, and Asuka gets the feeling that she could literally feel the energy Shinji had used for this spell of his. "Your magic is nullified. Who's got the advantage now, you crazy witch?"
Whoa, she thinks as she sees Shinji hold his pole arm defensively against his mother. He's pissed as Hell.
"Shinji," Yui expresses, feeling like she had been disrespected by her son. "Stop this right now."
Shinji brandished his naginata against her, keeping her bay in the hall.
"I'm afraid I won't do that," he tells her. "I think we're going to just wait here for the other Magic Knights to get here and put the shackles on your wrists and legs. After that, the Magic Parliament can decide what your fate will be. You'll need more than Grandmother and Tenshi's influence to avoid the death sentence."
"Would you really let these faux-people kill me, Shinji?"
That was a question Asuka was curious to know what his answer would be. Would he let the people of this world he only knew about from the tales spun by his grandmother and uncle…decide his mother's fate?
"I'm just a Magic Knight, Mother," he responds. "I'm a servant of the Clover Kingdom. I don't have any say in what the Magic Parliament will or won't do to someone like you. If you're for the death sentence, that's your fate because you chose to do wrong. You chose to let out Harbinger and decimate the Spade Kingdom. You chose to pick up where you left off with the Evangelion. I didn't want to believe that you were a terrible person like Father is…but who was I trying to fool? I'm just a guy that never felt happy because he didn't know who his parents truly were, fearing they were like the monsters that other parents actually warn their kids about at night. Whether you live or die now, it's not for me to decide. It's for the people you despise with all your foulness to decide…and I'll just let them. I don't get a say in deciding your fate."
"And if you did? If you had a say?"
"Then I'd let Grandmother decide what should be done about you."
"You'd just be avoiding responsibility."
"So saith you, Mother."
"A pity. I didn't want it to come to this, Shinji, but I guess I have no other choice. Just so you know, you made this easy for me to do. My great mistake was not letting you know why your father and I were doing what we did in Japan. My great mistake…was not having those three disgraces neutralized so that you never even heard of them."
Yui reaches into her lab coat's right pocket and pulls out something small and black.
"There's no magic in this," she reveals…and presses her thumb on it, causing a red light to appear on it.
-x-
A red light catches Harbinger's attention in the room, and he turns to see a blinking light on the console Yui left unattended. It reminds him of the contingency the woman had in case her magic became compromised by something, and he smirks at her dependence upon him. It was not all that different from the Silva's reliance upon him to exact revenge against House Ikari.
"Blood Curse-Warding Magic," he utters out, "Blood-Searing Tears."
His eyes glow red as he targets three of House Ikari's members plagued by his power: the matriarch Rika, the patriarch Tenshi, and the rejuvenated Suki, each marked by him to make Yui's son suffer.
-x-
Tenshi and Suki, running down the hall to find Shinji and Yui, suddenly stop and feel a burning sensation on their bodies.
"Aaaurgh!" He gasps, falling to his knees and palms. "Aaaurgh!"
"Aah!" Suki looks at her left hand, seeing it turn red and blister.
"Urgh!" Tenshi then pukes up blood.
Suki falls onto her back, tearing open her shirt, revealing her flesh turning red and blistering allover, causing her to groan.
"Aaaaaurgh!" Tenshi's face blisters as he coughs up more blood.
The other Magic Knights present are horrified and have no idea what is happening to them.
-x-
Collapsing to the floor of her room, Rika, her skin covered in the red, blistering mark of all those cursed by Harbinger, tries to move, only to see her right arm slowly lose its flesh as it peels off of her.
"Aaaaah!" She groans; if this was Harbinger's power at work, it was likely Yui making him do something to torment her, Tenshi and Suki. "Aaah! Damn you, Yui! Damn you!"
Something falls out of Rika's mouth…and she looks down to see that it was her tongue and several teeth, covered in blood.
"Aaaurgh! Aaauurgh!"
-x-
Asta runs as fast as he can to find Shinji.
"Shinji!" He yells, turning left and right, zigzagging across the halls of this underground hellscape, until he feels Anti Magic nearby. "Shinji! Your aunt and uncle! Something's wrong with them!"
He stops running and sees Yui several feet away from Shinji, who is brandishing his naginata at her with Guardian blocking her escape.
"Asta," Shinji greets him. "Where's everyone else?"
"I left them behind to find you! There's something wrong with Tenshi and Suki. They fell to the ground and their skin started turning red and blistering. Noelle's trying to heal them, but nothing's working."
Shinji looks at his mother and frowns at her.
"What have you done?" He demands, but she remains quiet.
Guardian grabs Yui by her neck and lifts her off her feet.
"Answer!" He yells at her.
"My insurance policy," she says. "Should anything happen to me, I made sure that Harbinger knows to put my mother and siblings down like the rabid dogs they are."
"Are you insane?!"
"No, I'm just logical."
Shinji raises his naginata at Yui's neck, his expression one of anger and grief.
"I'll kill you," he warns her.
"But can you really?" She questions. "What will it be? Having these faux-people decide my fate…or saving three people I can live without? Because it seems that you clearly can't imagine living without them, Shinji."
Guardian does not like this. His current's partner's mother was putting him in a bind; to make sure she answers for her wrongdoings, Shinji would have to lose the three members of his family that made life worth living for him, but if he wanted to save them, he would have to let her get away. As much as he knew she and Harbinger have to answer for their evil, Guardian knows that Shinji wouldn't sacrifice the three people he loves for the sake of justice.
"Asta," Shinji utters, pulling back his pole arm, "take your Demon-Slayer Sword…and get ready to send me to my maker."
"What?!" Asta questions.
"What are you doing, Shinji?" Yui demands.
"You want to make a deal with me, Mother?" He responds. "They live if you go free? Well, I got a better one for you. I lose Rika, Tenshi and Suki because of you, then you lose your son and your damn Evangelion! It's not suicide if someone else kills you, and it's not murder if it's to stop someone like you!"
Yui glares at Shinji. There is no way he would go through with this! There is no way that he would…and willingly, at that…have his own life taken if those three were to be killed.
"You wouldn't dare," she tells him.
"Don't tempt me, Mother," he counters. "Don't you dare tempt me. Only Guardian knows if I'm serious or not. Why don't you ask him for yourself?"
Yui looks at Guardian, who glares at her with a viciousness unseen in humans.
"He's lying, isn't he?" She asks him.
"Based on the fact that you're affiliated with Harbinger," he says, "you likely ordered him to ramp up their curses to cause agony as they start to feel like death is upon them, and that Shinji just instructed Asta to end his life when their lives are ended by your actions, I can say with absolute certainty…that Shinji is prepared enter the next world to be with the ones he loves more than anything that showed him a world where magic is everything. And if that is his choice, I'm not going to stand in his way if the Ikari bloodline has to end here and now because of you. It's back to the Void for me when this is over. Until a new wielder emerges. Such is the way of fate."
Asta takes out his Demon-Slayer Sword and aims for Shinji, who stands in front of him.
"Shinji, are you sure you want to go down this path?" He asks him.
"Just make sure my mother pays for her crimes," Shinji tells him. "And when you're the Wizard King, make sure the Spade Kingdom gets rebuilt so the refugees can go home again. You'll be remembered for ages after that."
Asta smiles and nods.
-x-
"…He can't be serious," Kaji says as they see a picture of Shinji standing in front of a big-ass sword aimed at him in the hallway.
"Ikari-Kun is willing to die for his grandmother, uncle and aunt," Rei states.
"No," Misato pleas. "Shinji, don't do this."
Not even Asuka could believe this was going to happen. There was no way that Shinji would make such a choice, even for three people that were as good as dead right now and were ancient when he met them in his childhood after his mother faked her passing.
Yui, Fuyutsuki wonders, is what you're doing really worth this act that your son is willing to do for his family?
Slowly, he reaches for the next page in the album, hesitating before turning it.
"Ohhhh," he groans as he turns it, revealing the next photo depicting the final outcome.
-x-
Harbinger, despite his willingness to kill three lives that Yui could care less for, felt the shifts in fate that dictate the time and place for retribution and redemption to reach their peak and clash for the final outcome to decide all…and stopped his curse spell on the three Ikaris and enters the foray between mother and son.
"Yui," he speaks, keeping his distance from the four individuals in this narrow space, "this…I cannot allow to happen. We need to go. Now."
Guardian looks at Harbinger and couldn't believe that he now seems even more powerful than he had been before.
"Whoa!" Asta gasps. "Uh…you've been working out?! You look a little…extreme."
"That's what eating several devils from the highest ranks of power will do."
Shinji brandishes his pole arm against Harbinger, who simply raises his left arm up at him.
"There's a time and place for many battles to decide all things, young Ikari," he tells Shinji, looking at Yui gripped in Guardian's claw, "and this isn't one of them. Not here…and not now. Let Yui go…and you can have those three back. Right now, my word is worth the lives cursed. This is a game with many ups and down, but to have it end here would be foolhardy because Yui knows that doing so would cause ripples that she can't work with. You know I speak the truth now, Guardian."
Guardian looks at him with a frown, reminded of his original failure.
"Those that know when to fight and run away…shall live to fight another day," he expresses, and Harbinger nods his head in compliance. "We can step aside and hash this another time. Take your partner and teach her tolerance or something."
Guardian then throws Yui over Shinji and Asta, right at Harbinger, who opens a spatial rift and she flies into it and it closes.
"Another day, Guardian," he tells them, opening another spatial rift under his hooves as he sinks into it. "Another day."
When the rift closed, Shinji ceased his Sphere of Influence and turns to Guardian.
"What was that about?" He asks him. "I was ready to lay down my life, and you let him take my mother and get away. We don't even know if they're fine."
"Harbinger won't kill them…or you…or me just yet," Guardian tells him. "He just demonstrated something that is a first for him."
"And what is that?"
"He disagrees with your mother on how to resolve matters of the heart or drive. She was willing to kill them if it meant making sure you were left alone, and as much as he was willing to go through with that objective, he couldn't just yet. Not when there is more to come. And he saw you just now, experiencing a taste of your truest inner strength, and that spoke volumes, many times greater than what your mother had told him."
"Suki to Shinji," they hear Suki's voice coming from Shinji's Communication Magic tool inside his front left pocket. "Suki to Shinji, do you read?"
He removes it and responds, "I hear you, Suki. What's going on?"
"Tenshi and I almost died from a curse upon us. We're alive, but…we're not exactly presentable at the moment."
"Ask him if he's alright," Shinji hears Tenshi's voice, and is relieved to know that he's still among the living, too.
"I'm fine," he tells them.
The next thing they know, the floors beneath them turn red and glow…and they fall in…and hit the brick-like ground of a setting that is both familiar and welcoming.
"What the heck?" Shinji hears a Blue Rose mage react. "This is…the Royal Capital."
"We're back in the Clover Kingdom," a Crimson Lion mage realizes. "We got sent back to the Clover Kingdom!"
"A mercy from Harbinger," Guardian states.
"And he looked stronger," Shinji adds, looking at his uncle and aunt, seeing that they were…less than presentable. "Oh!"
Their clothes were bloody and torn, leaving them half-naked and like they had come out of a bloody horror film.
"I'm going to kick Yui's ass for this," Suki says as she gets up, barely able to keep her bloody and tattered skirt on. "She's crazier than I expected her to be."
"Crazier than even the foulest of devils, young witch," they all hear Harbinger's voice as he appears several feet in front of them, "but consider yourselves fortunate that a line was drawn between bitter cruelty and self-righteous vengeance. Next time, you will not be as fortunate."
Harbinger was see-through, indicating that he wasn't entirely there, but exhibiting a new form of power that made him more dangerous.
"Communication Magic?" Guardian questions.
"Demon Communication Magic," Harbinger reveals. "Only a handful of devils from the underworld were versed in such power…and I took them for my own. With the sole exception of Astaroth, the Time Magic Devil, you're looking at the new master of the underworld once the previous tenants and landlords were evicted. Permanently. I'll be watching you in the depths of your fears."
Then, he disappeared from their perception.
"Just how powerful do you suppose he's become, Guardian of the Void?" Yuno asks.
"Depending on the number of devils he devoured for their powers," Guardian replies, "he's gotten a lot stronger than the individual devils put together."
"Would the Sphere of Influence had affected him had he gotten to where I was standing?" Shinji asks him.
"Most likely, but he kept his distance because of the sphere."
-x-
Washing the blood from her healed limbs, Rika, feeling relieved for the time being after experiencing what had to be the worst form of skin irritation and necrosis to have ever afflicted those cursed by Harbinger, sat in the bathtub of her restroom and ponders how, if she had been so close to actually dying, she was able to avoid it when it felt like she was an instant away from the afterlife with no hope of returning to life.
Whatever fate awaits you, Yui, she thinks as she sinks her head into the hot water, I aim to be there when it's decided. I want to know what the Clover Kingdom intends to do with you. I want to know…because I'll tell you what I would've done that was worse than their decision.
She grimaces as she feels the hot water stinging at her healed flesh.
-x-
"There was no way that Shinji was going to go through with that stunt!" Yui yells at Harbinger as they circled each other in the replica of Central Dogma's command center.
"You don't know that, Yui," he counters her, "and despite those three being dragged to the depths of oblivion, it wasn't time for your son to pay for his connection to Guardian."
"That spell he used against me negated the energy generated by others, including the faux-people! It wasn't affecting me or him!"
"It was Anti Magic, the negative opposite of all positive forms of magic. If I had been any closer to that Sphere of Influence of his, the devil magic I accumulated in the underworld would've escaped from my body."
"You could've crippled him in his arms or legs. He wouldn't have died."
"I will not risk either of you dying ahead of your tight schedule."
"I need the Eva in his grimoire if we're to achieve what we're after!"
"And we'll get it, but not with that stunt you pulled if he was willing to get himself killed because of your actions."
"Those three continue to poison him against me!"
"And whose fault is that? Whose fault is it truly?"
Yui sighs and turns away from Harbinger.
"Everything happens as it must," she says.
"And vengeance is only within one's grasp when everything else within reach has fallen into place. For now, your son won't come back to this replica city out of concern for the three relatives that he trusts above all blood relatives, which includes you. I suggest you take this time to bolster your resolve in achieving our shared and separate goals."
Harbinger then walks away from Yui, leaving the woman to quietly fume.
I should've had you kill Suki first, she thinks as she walks out the chamber and goes the opposite direction of Harbinger. At least then, Shinji wouldn't be around her so much.
-x-
"I don't know how many more close calls I can handle with that book," Misato tells Kaji as she sits in the cafeteria with him. "I mean, Shinji was willing to… How can his mother not expect him to make such a choice and be willing to go through with it?"
"As an absent parent, some people fail to understand their children's actions and feelings," he explains to her. "If Shinji believes that his grandmother, uncle and aunt are whom he feels closest to out of the Ikari family, then he doesn't believe in living without them. At his age, with the fact that he spent as much time around those three as his father would permit, along with that former guardian of his, Shinji has come to realize in his own way that family is the people you love and trust the most, and these three are who he trusts the most, which puts him at odds with his mother, who is at odds with them."
"I don't know if it was a miracle or a cruel joke that that creature, this…Harbinger…shows up and keeps someone from doing Shinji in."
"Maybe a cruel miracle. Whatever this Harbinger is, he seems to have his sights set on something much bigger than what Yui is after."
That much they could all fathom to varying degrees, but not any further. Whatever it was that Harbinger was after, it only included what Yui was after as a part of it. And whatever that entails, it put him at odds with Shinji and the others of this magical world they were in.
"For a moment, I thought," went Misato to Kaji, "that that was it. That Shinji was just going to do it, just to make sure his mother couldn't get what she was after from him, and she was trying to take something he valued from him. And then…"
"You were relieved that he didn't," Kaji tells her.
"Yeah…but what his mother is doing…it's motivation of the cruelest sort. She's willing to murder her own relatives, minus Shinji…and Shinji was willing to forfeit his own life if it meant being with his relatives, minus her. People say that family is forever, but when I see Shinji with either of his parents, I see…three complete strangers that have nothing in common with one another. And when I see him with these younger versions of this Rika, Tenshi and Suki, I see…a better example of what his parents more than likely denied him in their own way…and what he was willing to do to keep it from being taken away from him."
"And…if it came between him choosing to return to this world or staying there?"
"If he chose something like that, it'd be his mother's fault, because she drove him to choose such. I wouldn't blame him at all. I'd just miss him."
-x-
"…How long has Guardian been standing outside the house?" Tenshi asks Shinji, seeing Guardian sitting out front of the house in Hage; the Ikari siblings and their nephew had chosen to return to the village to make sure that the current matriarch was doing fine with the mission to investigate the Tokyo-3 replica city being listed as a failure due to it now being a no-man's land for the time being.
"He's been perched out there since last night," Shinji answers his uncle, noticing that he was holding his sword scabbard. "You slept with that last night?"
"None of us went to bed easy, Shinji," he hears Rika say to him from within the kitchen, holding a cup of coffee in her hands. "I kept my Anti Magic stilettos on my bedside table. And I know Suki kept her Anti Magic bow and arrows nearby. A lot of Anti Magic energy was covering the house last night. Was that you?"
"I don't trust my mother not to try and repeat that stupid attempt on you three again if she was in the mood. So, yes, I used my Sphere of Influence spell again."
"You maintained that spell all night?" Tenshi asks him, surprised that he was able to do so. "That's impressive."
"Uuurgh!" They hear Suki groan as she steps into the kitchen, her hair a mess and her face still partially a mess from the previous day, scratching her abdomen. "I did not sleep well."
"What is a good night's sleep worth these days?" Shinji asks.
"I don't think I've had a good night's sleep in over thirty years," Rika tells them as she sits down. "I get some good winks, but never a good night's worth. Be honest, Shinji, but yesterday, when you saw your mother, and she made her choice to do what she almost did…were you really going to have Asta kill you if anything happened to the three of us?"
Shinji sighs and inhales a new breath.
"Yes, Grandmother," he answers her, "I was willing to make that choice. If it was between siding with her and siding with you three…it was both obvious and the only choice I know I could live with making. She's my mother, may she answer for her crimes and all of that, but I can't and won't side with her on what she's doing, what she has done and what she's trying to do."
As bothered as the three of them were with Shinji's way of thinking regarding yesterday's difficulties with Yui, Rika couldn't fault him for such a choice. While it would've condemned him to a dark light, it would have robbed Yui of any chance of trying to get back into her son's good graces…and there was no telling if these four would've seen each other in the next world. Still, Shinji had been willing to make such a choice, even though it would've been more to spite his mother than to actually stop her…and that alone made it worth praising him for his actions to some degree.
"I would say not to do that again, Shinji," Rika tells him, "but if your mother crosses the line again…and has no intention of stopping…just make sure she gets a good view of what she has to lose because she chose to go down the path she took…and be careful with your methods of how to end it."
Shinji nods his head in understanding.
"As much as I don't like the idea of anyone willing to off themselves, even for me," Suki tells her nephew after pulling her hair strands out of her sight to look at them all, "thank you for what you did yesterday, Shinji. I'm over fifty-five years old, barely fifteen years old again…but I didn't want to die before I could do more with my life that I didn't get the chance to do the first time around. Thank you."
"If I see your mother again, Shinji," Tenshi informs Shinji, "I may not put her in the ground for trying to kill me and the rest of us because she openly despises us…but I want to give her a shiner so that she won't be able to look at herself without being reminded who she tried to wipe out of her life."
"As offended as I could be, were it not for the fact that she's doing everything I don't like her doing," Shinji replies, raising his left hand to his uncle, "just make sure it hurts."
Tenshi gives Shinji a fist bump.
To be continued…
A/N: It's been a while since I last updated this story, but now we know where Shinji truly stands in his family and how far Yui has failed him. And as for Harbinger, he is following a strategy that is similar to how a design is intended to be followed, but like any villain, wants it be followed as precisely as possible, and there had to be a situation where he and Yui were at odds with each other regarding how their scenario functions. Neither wants to lose, but they have to make sure that they win in a way they can afford to play around for. I think the most detrimental aspect of Shinji's relationship with his parents so far has been his willingness to give up his life to spite Yui when she tries to get rid of her relatives out of hatred towards them for what she feels is them poisoning Shinji against her when she's the one pushing him away and he turns to the people he trusts most. She can't admit that she's wrong, but she doesn't want to admit that she and Shinji are not getting along and how he's rebelling against her because he doesn't agree with her intentions one bit.