Creation began on 11-28-13
Creation ended on 12-10-13
Neon Genesis Evangelion
A New Cause: She understands Death's pain
The funeral had been small, comprised of only what was left of his family and some of his friends that were still alive. After Second Impact, Yuma had lost his wife to violence and most of his best friends to the disasters that were the result of people he wanted nothing to do with because of Yui's transgressions and the people she worked for. There had to be at least twenty people, and only eight of them were associated to the dead man.
Yui looked to her brother, who was one of only four people that brought bouquets for the grave; he ignored her like she wasn't there, which she probably should've been. Her absence from the physical plane was no different from faking one's death, and she did it by letting herself be consumed by Unit-01, formerly known as Unit-00 back then; she had found out that the identity change was made not long after the Contact Experiment due to the Eva being a test at seeing if one could be made from the flesh of Lilith, since their samples of Adam were either cloned or limited and took time and money to replicate, whereas Lilith's flesh was available and could be used in abundance so long as Lilith could regenerate the lost or damaged tissues.
The preacher's words gave no comfort. Not that anyone's words could when attending such events.
-x-
Asuka found it somewhat pathetic that there was hardly a soul that made its presence known in Tokyo-3. She saw no gossipers, no children running around, not even boys that she wouldn't mind ogling at her if it made her more noticeable. No, the city was truly a ghost town after the Third Child showed up and made a mess of things. Then, she heard a recent rumor…that his ghost came back to cause more trouble. Of course, she didn't believe that for a second, since there was no proof that he was still around; all she really heard was that after the autopsy, the boy was cremated and cast aside somewhere, since he made the medical examiners uneasy.
Though, due to the Geo-Front's power needs, electricity still coursed through the city, which allowed the street signs to work, the cameras that were available to observe people, and the televisions of a nearby electronics store to show news elsewhere around the world.
"…And it's been a week since New York City and St. Louis were invaded by giant monsters that have done nothing more than take up space," a woman said on the flat-screen televisions in front of Asuka. "From the pictures taken, you could almost mistake these things as giant, surrealistic balloons or statues, but people that used to live in these cities believe these creatures to be related to the one that's standing around in Tokyo-3, the city remembered mostly for being the hunting and death grounds of Shinji Ikari."
"Now, could I stop you for a moment?" A man asked, appearing beside the woman. "This is what has me ticked a little: People speak of monsters every now and then, like it's common practice or something, but when anyone speaks of Tokyo-3, the so-called fortress city of Japan, supposedly meant to help rebuild society, all it's really known for is that one kid with a twisted childhood and terrible disposition showed up because his father ordered him removed from a mental institution…and then he got loose and started killing people, and it didn't stop until he murdered his father…and by that time, he had murdered over three-hundred people, including the majority of the city's police force and over a dozen workers at Japan's NERV branch where his father resided."
"And you're saying?" The woman questioned.
"I'm saying that, even though these other cities are getting invaded by giant monsters all of the sudden, people are still more affected by what happened in Tokyo-3 than everything else that's happened," the man explained. "The people are still talking about him, still gossiping, constantly looking behind their backs, like he's still out there, on a rampage, killing anyone that he comes across. Some of the people are even starting to consider that he's not done with murdering people, and these giants are some sort of group he's become affiliated with. Even in death, he's still a curse that haunts people."
Then, several of the other flat-screen televisions showed various people's faces.
"…I never wanted to use the words 'conspiracy', 'neglect' or 'manipulation'," a male cop uttered out, "but after escaping that night he showed up at the police station and murdered everyone he came across, wanting to replenish his arsenal for when he decided to go after his father, it all started to sound like those words. Like people had conspired to neglect and manipulate this guy for reasons unknown."
"I consider myself one of the lucky few," a woman holding an infant close to herself said in front of the camera. "I got out of Tokyo-3 as soon as I heard he was being released from the nuthouse he'd been living in for as long a time he'd been alive."
"Tokyo-3 used to be such a quiet place to live in," said another woman, "without so much as a large death toll…until he showed up and changed everything! Now, I don't want to take my family back there, not even to resume school."
"…I've heard the gossip about his family," went another man, "about how his father killed his mother in a science experiment, and then we come to find that she's been alive all this time, hiding in the darkness, leaving her child alone to suffer. Both his parents were lunatics. We're talking just a pair of egomaniacs. And the relatives he was left in the care of tortured him with their opinions and dislike of him, simply because of who they were. I can't imagine how he was able to put up with them for as long as he could until he decided to kill them."
But one face stood out from the rest that Asuka noticed. It was that woman she'd seen recently, one of the few that returned to NERV after Shinji died, with her boyish looks and short hair; she could almost pass for a boy because of her height and face.
"…Everyone says such awful things about him," Maya Ibuki expressed, "but…even though it's just my opinion, and some people are bound to not agree with it, there's something that no one really seems to understand, that they don't take into consideration. I mean, people thought he was some sort of monster for doing what he did to all those people he killed…but…we can't forget, deny the unchangeable truth that…he was just a boy that everyone that didn't know personally…and disregarded entirely."
Unfortunately, Asuka couldn't agree with what Ms. Ibuki revealed of her opinion. She had never met the boy, but wouldn't have minded showing him a thing or two if she had met him. When she heard about NERV trying to recruit Shinji into working for them, she thought they were crazy to do so. There was no need to recruit another pilot, especially a boy, since she was superior; she was trained to pilot the Eva ever since she can remember, and she didn't develop any psychotic tendencies. Although she despised him before she even saw his face, she thanked him for eliminating Rei Ayanami, the First Child; the less competition she had to prove her worth, the better.
-x-
"…I hated what they did to his grave marker," Hei-Bai told Yui, standing in front of the tombstone of Shinji, which had been vandalized in the vast, memorial cemetery for those whose lives were lost because of Second Impact. "It's bad enough I never got to know either of them, but this is worse than what people have been saying about him."
Like all the other tombstones, Shinji's was as black as obsidian, shaped like a small pillar with a half-circle top, but had been disfigured with green and red spray paint to make it read out, "Burn in Hell, Shinji Ikari" so you couldn't see his DOB or DOD. No doubt some people that lived in the city he made a ghost town did this as an attempt to get back at him, even though he was dead and wouldn't care about them any less than he had before.
"Makes you feel bad, doesn't it?" Hei-Bai asked his sister. "It makes you feel bad that you still have your life and your son that didn't get killed by your husband lived to only be fourteen, and hated you?"
Yui kept her head turned away; it wasn't out of disrespect, but out of the fact that every time she saw the grave marker, she thought of Shinji in both her recent nightmare with him as one of the horsemen…and when he was alive for that final day, covered in blood and armed with guns, completely different from the little boy she left behind to ensure a bright future for all of mankind. And his only words to her were filled with hate, like there was nothing either of them or anyone could've done that could've brought them back together, not after the years of loneliness and hurt.
Hei-Bai placed a single rose with white petals in front of the grave, and then bowed his head.
As they turned to leave, from a large distance, so far that no one could've noticed anything, a pale horse with a horn on its head, standing around and doing nothing, while a young man approached the tombstone that was just visited, and stared down at it.
"Heh," he expressed, "I can't burn in Hell. But I can bring Hell to those that get in the way."
He touched the grave marker and then, as if responding to an impulse of rage, the tombstone cracked and shattered into a jigsaw puzzle. If anything, this was just to remove any traces of who he used to be when he was alive. His death had done more to him than just releasing him from burden he'd been forced to carry by his former parents; as he was transitioned from death to purgatory alongside his twin, he'd seen and heard secrets that made his desire for a new life free from the stain of the one that brought him no happiness all the more sought after. But one thing he couldn't shake off from when he was alive…was that dream or vision he had of the little girl that smiled at him, and had the round tummy. His death showed more of what had happened in some other life that was never lived by him to explain the girl in further detail: In at least some other plane of existence, he had known this child that seemed to care so greatly about him…or the him that was involved in her. And yet, as much as he found the girl to be somewhat of a beacon of sorts to his mind…he didn't know who she was.
"It bugs you, not knowing who this girl is that you've been seeing in your dreams and visions, doesn't it, brother?" Death turned to face the see-through spirit of his brother floating around behind him.
"You wouldn't happen to know who she is, do you, Mako?" He asked him.
"Gomen nasai, Death, but I don't," he apologized to him; he could've addressed the horseman by his former name, but chose not to on account of Death wanting to be as far removed from their dark past as possible. "Maybe Mother Gaia knows who she is. We will be seeing her again later."
"Just need to do one other thing before we do," Death informed him, and then returned to his horse, leaving the shattered tombstone…and a flower deprived of life, its petals crunched up and looking like the color of a leaf in the fall.
Mako noticed the rose and felt a degree of sadness from it. As much he longed for a new life like his brother did, the fact that the tiniest of things that cling to life still suffered, no matter how hard you tried to protect them. He considered himself an example of tiny lives that were unprotected; he died as an infant, dropped by his former father, and, although labeled as an accident, he couldn't change that.
"Mako?" Death called out, catching his twin's attention.
"Coming," he responded, and disappeared.
Death then climbed atop his horse and rode off through the forest of tombstones.
-x-
When the former citizens of St. Louis came to the conclusion (and acceptance) that the minimum safe distance of which this boy riding a black horse that caused unnatural consequences to any that stood between him and clearing out the city of human life was eighty yards on all sides, all they could do as they took shelter in the neighboring cities and towns around their beloved home was watch as the large, monolithic creature that made chorus-like noises as it floated in the center of their tallest buildings. And as Ramiel, the Angel of Thunder maintained his position within the city, the Black Rider, Famine, continued to make periodic checks around the streets to ensure that they were deprived of men, women and children that didn't leave, and give them one of two choices: Leave or suffer the consequences. He had just finished eating out a neighborhood deli shop to replenish his and his horse's energy reserves. Or, rather, supplying the both of them with new energy; of all the horsemen, he had the shortest straw of the quartet, and that was something he was trying to remedy as quickly as possible.
Neigh! His horse neighed, detecting a presence within the city.
"If it's another prostitute, it'll be the seventeenth one since I had to ensure that the city stays deprived of human life," he expressed, and followed the aura of sin and virtue that existed within people. "Abashed, the Devil stood, and felt how awful goodness is. How awful goodness is…in the wide womb of uncreated night."
In two minutes, he found the source of the presence that no longer belonged in the city, and was disappointed to find that it was another prostitute. A woman, or a girl, actually. She couldn't have been more than…his own age in appearance, dressed in a green miniskirt, a blue cut-off shirt and a white jacket, with short, blond hair and brown eyes.
"Okay, I gotta ask you a question of personal interest before I give you the life-altering question I've given several people since I got here," he spoke to the girl. "Just how old are you?"
"I'm as young as you want me to be," the girl told him.
"Mother Gaia, help me," he sighed to himself. "Miss, I'm going to have to ask you to leave this city, as it's a no-go zone for people right now until further notice. Otherwise, I'm going to have to sentence you to a fate you can't walk away from."
"You must be crazy if you think I'll listen to you," the girl told him, sounding not so sweet like she did a moment ago. "Though, if you're looking for a moment of fun, I'm your lady."
Famine's face frowned, showing the girl that he wasn't looking for what she was offering. He wasn't interested in relationships back when he was alive, and he wasn't interested in sexual favors in his purgatory. No, for him, it was just this cause…and the reward for his services when it was all over.
"Please," he tried to be merciful to the girl, saving his violence as an absolute last resort for when nothing else worked out. "Don't make me decide the darkest of fates for you. Leave and live…or stay and die. Make the right choice, the smart choice."
"Make me," she responded, and Famine sighed in defeat, as he climbed off his horse and approached her. "Yeah, come over here and make me leave."
He stopped in front of her and raised his arms up…and then grabbed her face and right arm.
"Aaaurgh!" He growled, performing his darker duties as a Horseman of the Restorative. "Aaaaurgh!"
The girl tried to resist, but felt weak all of the sudden, and saw her left arm, to her great horror, shriveling up to nothing but the bone underneath the skin. Then, she felt her lights dimming to nothing but the darkness that awaited her. In less then a minute, Famine had reduced the young prostitute to a shriveled-up corpse that looked like all of its fluids had been sucked out and the skin became dry and rough like a dead leaf. Unlike his namesake, but with a few signs of such, Famine possessed the ability to cause fatigue, hunger and weakness in whoever he touched, and, when pushed to extremes, could take such things to fatal levels by sucking out the life energy in his victims, taking all of that life energy for himself to use.
"I hope you can understand now that this is something I have to do to those that don't get the message," he told the corpse. "I do this not because I've suffered like so many others, but because there's no one else more qualified than thee to aid in this great cause to undo all existing pain. But fear the darkness for a short time. All the souls sent away shall be restored once all is made right with the world."
He returned to his horse and rode off. Sometimes, he felt the worst part of his duty as a horseman was the fact that he had to harm the people that decided to stay in the cities invaded by the Angels, being foolish in their choice instead of just leaving. And yet, it was the fate they chose, and the fate he dealt them with for staying. Maybe the other horsemen were comfortable in their positions, but he was often left wondering if he could stomach the form of violence he was capable of unleashing in his.
-x-
His horse never seemed to know fatigue, as it never slowed down as he rode it around the city. But Death was pleased to see that the Third Angel was untouched since it arrived in Tokyo-3; there were a few birds atop its shoulders, but no serious harm had been done to it, whatsoever. But as he saw the face of this Angel, he felt like he had seen it before, yet this was his first encounter with the being of divine might brought to Earth. He could see himself in one instant facing the Angel, and in another, the girl that seemed to haunt his thoughts, facing the Angel for him. Lately, there was something wrong with the way he perceived the world because of his thoughts on this girl he had never truly seen.
She smiled at me, he thought, walking his horse down the same street he walked through when he escaped from NERV, seeing that nothing had changed from that night he tasted freedom from the walls and boundaries surrounding him. Who was she? Why did she really care?
He walked past the glass wall of the store he broke into in order to gather things with which to change his appearance and hold his guns when he had them. Going further down, he stopped in front of an electronics store, showing several television sets, all showing his face, both in his childhood and during his time in the institution and after he died. His eyes widened from the revelation that people seemed to be talking about him. They were saying things about him, still full of harshness and contempt; their words breaking through his walls of bone and decay. His eyes narrowed away from the TVs and toward newspaper vending machines, with his face plastered over them!
They were speaking of him, of his evasion of the law, his murders, his crimes. Not his pain, his loneliness, his being manipulated by the people that should've cared about him, that shouldn't have lied to him, leave him alone, left him to suffer every waking moment of being hated, hurt and abandoned by the rest of society. No, for who he was back then, he was labeled a villain, never a victim.
SMASH! He ripped the vendors off their hinges and threw them into the street.
SHATTER! He punched the glass displaying the TVs and threw them allover, venting his anger.
Neigh. His horse whined, watching him cause damage. Neigh.
"Grrurgh! Aaaurgh!" He grunted, breaking the TVs, shattering the vendors, even knocking over a streetlight by staggering against it.
-x-
"…Oh, my God," went Hyuga, who was detecting a disturbance in the city above the Geo-Front on his monitor. "Captain Katsuragi, you're not gonna believe this!"
Misato, who was nearby in the core of Central Dogma, walked up to behind the lieutenant and saw what was on his monitor.
"It's just a guy breaking things," she tried to disregard this.
"But look at who it is," he responded, and had the camera he was watching this scene of minor devastation. "What are the chances of anyone looking exactly like the kid that everyone believes to be long gone after the murders he committed?"
When she saw the boy's face showed up on the monitor, all the color drained from her face; she never expected to see him alive. She saw him draw his final breath, heard him saw his final words after he had felt freed from the pain he had for years due to what his parents had done to him, to instigate his maddening cause. There was no way this was some sort of copycat or imposter; the resemblance was too uncanny, too extreme. This kid had to be Shinji…or a shade of him, like a ghost unable to find rest.
"Where is he right now?" She questioned Hyuga.
When he gave her the location, she ran right out. She had to see for herself if this kid was who she believed he was. And if she was right, then she had to know something: Why he came back.
-x-
When Death was done trashing the street, his brother appeared and saw the damage he had done…and the hateful expression on his face.
Death looked up at Mako and sighed.
"Do you feel any better now?" Mako asked him.
"Yeah," he answered back. "They're talking about me. They're constantly talking about me."
"They're talking about who you were, not who you are. There's a difference between who a person is…and who a person was. We were Mako and Shinji Ikari before fate stopped our hearts. They're past tense, and Mako's only remembered for being a baby accidentally murdered by a megalomaniac who wouldn't so much as try and hold his surviving son that made it to fourteen, while Shinji's remembered only for murder. They're immortalized by the people that won't let them go."
"We still look the way we did when we died, brother," Death retorted, though the infant was unfazed by the harshness of his twin's words; he knew he was just trying to state the facts of their undead status.
"You still call me Mako. Just Mako, not Mako Ikari, just as I know you, not as Shinji Ikari, but as Shinji…but you're also Death of the Restorative, the Horseman of Death, a reaper of souls that deserve what they get from you if they don't get out of the way. None of that means you have to be what the people affected by your past misdeeds label you as, any more than I have to be remembered as another dead baby."
Death sat on one of the destroyed vendors and looked at the ground. In the semblance of eternity they spent in the dark after he died, he couldn't believe how educated his twin had become during his time in the paradise above mortality.
"You sure you don't regret throwing away your place in Heaven to be with me?" He asked him.
"If I had to do my previous life allover again, up to my death and entrance to Heaven, I'd give it up again to be with you. Brothers in life, brothers in death, bound by a thread stronger than any other bond understandable or acceptable by the rest of any society. There's no good twin/evil twin scenario, no bad brothers, no 'save one, let the other die'. If there truly was, then it's all bull. And what those childless nuts were trying to achieve by exploiting you was also bull. Do you think any mortal, from those with wealth and advantages to those born with little to nothing, should try and defy an ancient truth that a force above all of us, a force some people call God, or all the gods from different cultures, different beliefs, is infallible? To make a mockery of the ageless belief that people can become better than the deities that gave them this world that they're killing with their pollution, their biological warfare, their sick cruelty toward people that did them no wrong?"
"I think…that if I am Death of the Restorative, and, like the Horseman of the Apocalypse that goes by the same designation, Hell is supposed to follow close behind me, then in the absence of Heaven, Hell will aid in saving the world, as opposed to ending it. And people will be taught a grand lesson on doing things that were better left undone."
Mako's exposed right arm rose up and he said, "You would unleash Hell only to punish the guilty, which is those that stand between saving the planet and killing its immortal soul? Not for the obtaining of wealth, not to scare people with the inevitable end to their existence should they continue to interfere…but to ensure that people see the error of their ways and repent, atone or suffer for crimes against everyone, including the souls taken generations before the ones that gave…and stole…our lives before they could even be lived?"
Death raised a finger from his right arm and gave it to his brother.
"Nobody is innocent, not even the innocent, and everyone is guilty, including the guilty," he said to him. "Heaven won't take the guilty…but there's plenty of room in Hell for those that have lost their innocence, something that isn't easily regained. Let the guilty be punished…and the innocent be permitted to see the return of the lives taken."
When large finger connected with small hand, their pact was sealed. This made Mako convinced even further that, unlike what so many people that lived through the horror his brother had wrought in his final days, his twin was merciful to the point that he could be considered kind and gentle if people gave him a chance…if they had actually tried to help him instead of condemn him. In fact, before he transitioned into the darkness with his brother, he saw a glimpse of some other life his twin had. It was only for a moment, probably a twenty-second glimpse before he ended up in the darkness, but it was long enough for him to see that Death, in that one life, was a happy child, mainly because he was surrounded by a group of people that, from his perception, didn't seem like they belonged together, but might as well have belonged together because they got along well, and that little girl that haunted his mind was with him…holding his hand so tightly and kindly that it was like she didn't want to let go.
If only Death was able to feel some measure of hope, of kindness that could make him smile.
Neigh! The horse whined, and they heard the sound of an engine running.
"Someone, a familiar mortal, is approaching," Mako told Death.
"There shouldn't be anyone in this city," he responded.
"Unless there are people here…but living in that Geo-Front. You remember what Conquest said about the Angels showing up in the cities chosen, that it's only the cities invaded, and that other places wouldn't be attacked. Sachiel hasn't attacked anyone or made an attempt to go down to where we found each other for the first and only time. And there are bound to be ways to get to and from the Geo-Front that don't direct entrance to this city that's your duty to ensure it stays empty of people."
"Still, I need to make sure that this pathetic place has no people left in it, and that means they'll either leave of their own volition…or they don't leave alive."
Mako then disappeared, just as a blue car showed up around a corner.
Shinji recognized the car, for he shot at it once he stepped out of the police station after replenishing his arsenal with more guns, but it got away from him. It stopped in front of him and a woman stepped out, one he also recognized. He was sure there was no other woman in the world with purple hair, and if he recalled it correctly, the woman's name was Katsuragi.
-x-
She couldn't believe it! There was no way this was possible, but he was right in front of her. Misato never thought she'd see Shinji among the living, but he looked different, and it wasn't just his change in clothing. It was like he'd been charged with a new mission…or he had unfinished business in the city. And the sight of the horse that looked like a unicorn proved that he had killed a woman that shot at him prior to getting away with it.
"Shinji?" She questioned him, and saw his face show anger.
"My name is Death," he told her. "Death of the Restorative, and you don't belong here. This city, however wretched it is, is under my protection…along with the Angel."
"The Angel? You…you're working with the Angels?" She questioned. "You're one of them, aren't you? You're some sort of Angel sent back to destroy mankind."
Death's gauntlet released his sickle with its blade smoldering hot.
"I am not an Angel," he uttered, "and I am not here to destroy mankind, even if it's still full of people that condemned me. Leave this city now, or you will be made to leave it."
Having just recovered full use of her arm, Misato took out her gun and aimed it at him in defense. It was bad enough he seemed able to speak more openly than he wasn't until he was dying in his final moments, but him threatening her life was enough to convince her that he was crazy like everyone said he was…even though he seemed very sane in his reasons for wanting revenge back then.
"Don't make me shoot you, Ikari," she threatened.
"It's not Ikari," he reaffirmed his designation. "My name is Death. I don't answer to the name that used to be deadweight…and will always be deadweight. I will not be persuaded to back down by you, and that gun won't change a thing. You can't kill me. It's been tried once before already."
"Don't tempt me to try. You make a move, and you're dead."
"Well, then, I say that I'm dead…and I move."
He approached her, and she fired at his head.
BANG! The bullet struck him right in his face, and he staggered backwards for a moment before he regained his stability…and looked at her like the shot never occurred.
"What in the name of…" She couldn't believe it; the sight of him unharmed seemed like an illusion.
Then, Death, perhaps to show that her attempt was futile, spat the bullet she used on him onto the ground, covered in blood and saliva.
"Just so you know," he spoke up again, "that did hurt, just like everything else I went through on the way to killing that bastard hurt."
And then he got up close, like lightning, and slashed her gun in half!
"Aaahh!" She gasped, and was then headbutted by Death and knocked to the ground. "Urgh!"
RING! The blade of his sickle was inches away from her neck, but close enough to show that if she made a move, her escape attempt would be short-lived. Her eyes meeting his, and seeing only a speck of mercy, almost like there had been when he was alive.
"Even though it was only because that bastard made it so, it was still you that got me out of that institute," he told her, which made her remember that day they met. "There was never anything worth speaking of, but I did appreciate being taken out of that pit after crawling over the sharp stones and being shoved into the mud by twisted authorities of stability and torture. You helped make it possible for me to put into motion my revenge, even though I never truly lived, even in my final moments, just existing in every waking moment of the worst form of existence I knew of. You got for me my freedom in my final days…so in return, I'll let you have your freedom to keep your days of existence a while longer. I want you to spread the word to those that don't know. The Angels are off-limits, each of the eight cities they come to is no man's land, a no-go zone for people. Anyone left within any of them will be at the mercy of the horsemen that protect the Angels from massive harm…and ensure the cities remain deprived of human life, with the choice being that you either leave of your own volition…or suffer your final breath. If people live down in the Geo-Front, but have ways of getting to and from it without being in this city will be spared, as the world beneath it is not part of the city. You don't bother the Angels, disobey the horsemen, or interfere with their shared cause…and they won't come for any of you with the intent to cause you trouble that will lead to what I can do. You tell them I said all of that…and don't let me catch you or anyone else in this city again."
He removed the blade from her neck and got up off her.
"And I don't wanna hear people talking about who I used to be, ever again," she heard him add as she got up and saw him get atop his horse. "I am not Shinji Ikari, anymore. I am Death. Death of the Restorative, and like the horseman I am named after, Hell follows behind me…and I can unleash it if I so choose to. Ya!"
NEIGH! His horse neighed as it rode off, disappearing behind a corner. NEIGH!
With that, Misato ran to her car and drove off the opposite way.
-x-
Like anyone with a green thumb, the woman that brought the Four Horsemen of the Restorative together was sitting within a lush garden on the island, surrounded by various, mammalian animals that barely reached the size of beach ball and colorful butterflies, as though she were a spring maiden of some kind, since the island itself looked like a perpetual piece of paradise. Everything around her was beautiful, pain that people inflict upon each other for all the wrong reasons seemed nonexistent here, and there wasn't a soul present that desired more than what they needed out of life. She smelled the scent of a nearby rose and sighed peacefully, though a tear fell from her left eye.
Neigh! She turned to her right, toward a series of trees where fog resided, and saw the pale, unicorn-like mare that belonged to Death emerge, with her rider atop her back.
Death stopped beside a small fence and got off onto the grass. He slowly crossed the fence that separated the garden from the woods his horse emerged from, and stopped four feet from the woman. He had never seen her looking almost saddened about something.
"Why do you seem miserable…Mother Gaia?" He asked her, addressing her by her name.
"Just a memory that hurts because of its meaning to me," she answered. "My daughter loved the scent of roses."
"Your daughter?"
"If she were here, she'd a bit older than you were when you were alive. About twenty-four years old."
Death then sat down in front of her and gestured for her to continue; his speech was still impaired, so he lacked most words that other people were capable of using under specific emotions…as his were still those of pain, anger and retribution, making it difficult to use words.
"I was among people again for a new century, a virtual nonentity, just enjoying the life I had until the century ended and the next one started. I was drawn to Japan to see how the people there had progressed in their development, both spiritual, emotional, physical and technological. I was disappointed in their fading from their spiritual roots, with their emotional ones following suit, and their technical development was a saddening sight, for it seemed that everyone was into violence. The only physical development they had that was good was their architectural achievements. It was the Zen architecture they were improving upon. There was just something about it that showed people's spiritual and emotional development; they put their hope into something old and making it new. I was on my way to a rock garden…when I stumbled upon my daughter."
This then made Death realize, just as Mako manifested beside him, that Mother Gaia didn't have her child in the common sense that both brothers could understand with certainty. No, Mother Gaia was like the women of the past and present that acted as surrogates to those that lost their mothers, yet it was also likely that, long ago, she did have children of her own.
"She was trying to steal my lunch from my bag, and I sat her down and shared my lunch with her," she resumed. "I asked her what her name was, and she said she couldn't remember it; I had made it a point to be able to tell whenever a person is lying to me…and her words were honest. I took her to a doctor and had her examined, and they explained she suffered from memory impairment; she couldn't remember an incident she was in that caused her memory loss or anything of her life before we met. She couldn't even remember her name. Nobody reported a missing girl or anything tragic that happened recently, and nobody claimed her. She was a living ghost, a phantom with no ties, so I took her under my wing. I decided to call her Kyuukai (Long-cherished hope), but her nickname was Zen, like the rock garden I had lunch with her in. I loved her like she was my own, and I wouldn't deny it. We got along like best friends, and, like my children from the past generations, I would've done anything for her to have a happy life."
"What happened to her?" Death asked.
"We were vacationing on one of the smaller islands in Japan…just to get away from the subtle madness she found herself in with me when she found out I was, literally, no different from Mother Nature or any other personified entity. She didn't resent me for my existence or anything, even thought I was some sort of hero to lost souls that wanted to live again in a restored world, and then…the island had been submerged by giant waves. Over eight-hundred people either drowned or was buried under fallen buildings. I survived only because I was the embodiment of the planet, now wracked with intense pain because of what Second Impact did, but my daughter, my Zen…wasn't so lucky. She was underwater for over ten minutes, and I couldn't revive her."
Death slowly brought his left hand up and placed it on her right hand; even if he couldn't express many facial emotions, he did understand Mother Gaia's pain at losing someone they cherished.
"I was so angry that there were people behind the major death toll just because they desire something that is better left undesired. Even if there were other ways to ascend to godhood, why go down this route where, while you might not suffer as much personally, everyone else suffers greatly as a whole? Nobody is excluded, no one is spared, everyone must be offered as some sort of payment for your inhumane desire to free the world from divine law…or to rewrite divine law where deities are nonexistent and select humans decide everything? That's insane, unethical, unacceptable. People kill each other on a regular bases, and even I find that extreme, but by what right does any one person or a group of persons have to decide everyone's fate? Who has the right among people to decide who lives in a new world and who doesn't in a new world? Who decides among people…who gets to live and who has to die for everyone else? No one that is human, no one that is mortal has that right to decide such things."
"Only the gods have such rights?" Mako asked.
"Yes…and no," she answered. "As a whole, life must be lived within the time that the universe allows. Divided, anybody can live for as long as they possibly can, but only within the moral boundaries, meaning that you never take someone else's life to extend your own, even if it was only for one more day…or one more minute."
"Take someone's life to extend your own?" Death questioned; it might've been something he had done.
"She doesn't mean like what you did when you still had your living flesh, brother," Mako corrected him. "Some forms of murder can be viewed as cheating fate, but you didn't defy it. Before you became Death, Death was beating around your bush, unable to split it in half until you fell from mortality…and you let it happen after you got revenge. You didn't try to fight for your life any more than you did years ago, and you didn't try to fake your death."
"Believe it or not, Mako, your brother's one of the Masters of Death," Gaia expressed.
"What?" Death questioned again.
"You're a Master of Death…by accepting the unacceptable," she explained.
"How so?" Mako asked her.
"No one can truly live forever, and there are worse things than dying. But beyond that, one masters Death by accepting that one's fate to die…in inevitable. You can't run from Death and expect Death not to come after you…as he comes for everyone that must be taken to the afterlife…until they're judged by the greater forces at work." She answered in greater detail. "Not many people accept their fate…and very few lost souls that become the Horseman of Death for the Restorative were masters for accepting their fates."
"How many were there that did?" Death asked, curious. "The ones that came before I did?"
"Excluding you, there were at least thirteen others that were Masters of Death, which would make you the fourteenth Horseman of Death to achieve the same status. Though, out of all the horsemen, you're a unique case; none of the horsemen that came before you had a twin that accompanied him."
Death looked at Mako, who returned a similar glance before returning to look at Mother Gaia.
Mother Gaia then uttered, "There was something you wanted to ask me, wasn't there, Death?"
Death shook his head and responded, "What was that?"
"Was there something you wanted to ask me about?" She repeated, and Death nodded that there was.
"Before my death," he explained, "I had a dream or a vision. There was this girl I've never met. A little girl, always smiling at me, saying things to me that I didn't fully understand. I think she even said to me that, if something had happened between her and myself, it wasn't my fault. She's something of a haunting for me…and I don't even know her name and what she means. Do you?"
Mother Gaia remained quiet for a minute, pondering what needed to be said to him, and then took in a new breath.
"The little girl with a round tummy that smiles at you," she started, "is someone close to you in another life, lifetimes away from this one that is purgatory. People believe in something called the multiverse, which comprises every universal plane within it. An example would be to say that, in this world, this universe, you used to be a boy disregarded by the people that condemned you, and now you're a Horseman of the Restorative. In another, you could be another orphaned child of one of those education-deprived societies left to suffer, and in another, you're a well-off child with a happy life, with friends and family that love you for you. In another, you're probably married to a girl you knew for years, and in another, you're probably married to a different woman that you, originally, couldn't stand because there was a love/hate relationship between you two. There could even be a universe where you're the victim of incest or in an incestuous relationship with a sister or cousin."
"Then, the girl is someone I know…that resides in another universe," Death expressed. "But, then, why does she affect me? I don't know her in this life of purgatory, and I didn't know her when I was alive."
"It's just something that happens to some people," she explained. "Some people can experience things that are associated to different incarnations of themselves from other universes, depending on which universes affect neighboring universes more than others. Every universe affects another, and it's likely the universe this girl comes from is close to this one, allowing you to be affected by memories or feelings the you that resides with her carries within himself. Maybe you know who she is, deep down, but you're too full of anger to hear her name be spoken to you. Try to let go for a moment. Let go of your sense of hatred, your feelings of being condemned and desires for revenge, knowing you've done what you needed to do."
Death turned away from her, shutting his eyes, listening to the sounds of squirrels chirping and birds tweeting, along with the calm breeze of the wind. He let go of his anger, the memories of pain inflicted upon him by many and the pain and death he gave to others. He even let go of any lingering memories toward his mother, who had no place in the cold sack of blood that was his deceased heart. And then, there was no noise, not even the nice ones, around him. Everything was silent.
"I love you, Shinji," he heard the girl's voice again, in his mind.
"I love you, too, Rumi," he heard himself say in response, or at least the him that resided with the girl.
He opened his eyes and had an almost-sad look on his face as he got up.
"Who names their little girl Rumi?" He said, though it didn't really seem like he was asking.
Rumi? Mako thought, seeing his brother get up and walk away from them. So, that's the girl's name that captivated my twin?
"Mother Gaia?" Death went, catching the woman's attention again.
"Hmm?" She responded.
"Uh…I…uh… Thank you," they heard him say to her, and he left them alone.
"Did he just thank me?" Mother Gaia asked Mako's spirit.
"Yes, he did," he confirmed. "If it makes it any stranger, you're the first person he's ever said such a kind expression to."
"You mean, he's never said it before?"
"Not once. Words of gratitude…words he's never been able to use before…not even with me, though he's never had to with me."
Mother Gaia then noticed how Death went and disappeared behind a tree and wondered, more like a parental figure than a person on a mission, how much emotional damage Death had taken before she met up with the twins. It was likely, that out of the two, Mako had experienced the lesser of the parental evils that exist within societies around the world, which would explain his kinder tone of words, whereas Death spoke with a colder tone, not so different from before he died.
"He needs a new life so badly before the lingering sorrow of his previous life corrupts him," she told the infant.
"A new life to forget the previous one completely…and to be cleansed of all his pain. One thing that I want from a new life is to be with my brother again. I'm still the elder twin, and all I can do is watch over him, unable to protect him. Though full of pain, I am for not being able to help him endure life's cruelty, I would rather die for him again, as many times as I needed to, than to be lost forever."
"You're a kind soul, Mako, just like the other souls I've met before the World Wars and during the American Revolutionary War. And to give up your place in Heaven for your brother, it must be a sign."
"Of what, exactly?"
"That even in a world full of pain and death, there is still hope for everyone. Not a lot of hope, maybe…but it exists. Heh…I believe your brother and the other Horsemen of the Restorative will be the ones needed to ensure that hope spreads to cover the world and undo the great pain that engulfs us."
"For everyone's sake, I hope to see my brother not take his pain out on those that don't deserve it. There's still good in him, only buried beneath his anger."
"I can understand his pain better than you think. It's not the physical pain that troubles him, but the emotional and psychological ones. Even when his heart has ceased beating, it still suffers from what he endured in the past. His only escape from the pain, as well as his only means to recall people and things that he felt he couldn't forget, was drawing pictures every day. But as time slipped through the shadow of what wasn't even a childhood, his hatred against his family grew and grew, more towards his father than his mother, who you might as well say walked out of his life than to stay and raise him. He had to wonder what, if anything, did he do wrong to have his parents abandon him…and have relatives he hadn't known about until after his father dumped him hate him so much, then to discover, in his own fury that he had trouble venting as he got older, that he did nothing wrong, he was the victim, and it was his parents and relatives that were wrong for what they did and they deserved what they got. He also knew that they needed to be punished for their unjustified crimes against him."
"But what of his dual personalities? Driving Force and Slayer?"
"Born from the trauma of committing murder…and being unable to deal with his role in the deaths of his aunt, uncle, cousin and five other lives that were no different from collateral damage in the eyes of people on both sides of the line. But as the anger became more and more internalized, he felt life being shortened to the point where what could've been decades spent on some other profession…become nothing more than a few years during the time he was incarcerated. He somehow knew he wouldn't live to see the age of fifteen, that what time he had left had to be used to get revenge, to make sure that the last person he knew needed to suffer the most for his pain paid the price for his role in his son's despair, so he fought hard to delay the approaching Grim Reaper. Delay, not deny; your brother wasn't going to make the masters behind life and death wait forever on him to cease breathing. When Gendo was killed, he knew he could stop…because he never truly lived…and didn't want to live in a world where people threw him aside like he was a lost cause. With his end, Driving Force and Slayer became one person once more, but they still exist within his mind, and, if Death wanted, he can call upon them and still be himself. It's part of why he wants to make the world a better place for when he gets a new life; remove all ties to the past that you no longer want, from memories to emotions, and you're for sure to have a life that makes up for the previous one that had no happiness at all. He's like the other Horsemen of the Restorative in that regard, for they all want to be freed from the pain of the past, to feel relieved of whatever sins they might have committed to put them where they ended up. Remove your old past, you make room for a new one, with new faces, new surroundings and so on. That's the whole point of reincarnation, which is what they all seem to desire, but they each have their own past reasons for wanting to forget their pains."
Mako thought about it for a while, and then nodded his head to Mother Gaia before disappearing, leaving the woman alone.
-x-
"…You're saying the Third Child has come back from the dead," asked the new commander of NERV to Misato, "like some sort of ghost or demon?"
"I don't know what he is," Misato responded to him in the former commander's office, which, surely in the perception of the new commander, needed to be redecorated. "Death called himself a horseman. I shot him in his head, and he spat the bullet out of his mouth in front of me."
"I'm sorry," Fuyutsuki went. "You just called the boy Death?"
"Not me. Death did. I mean, the Third Child did. Ikari's kid." Misato had spoken, now needing to straighten out her explanation. "All I know about his identity is that he said his name was Death, that he didn't answer to his original name, anymore."
"Death? As in, like, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?" The new commander suggested.
"Yes," she answered, "but he also said he was part of something called the Restorative or Restoration. He said the Angels in each city were protected, and that each city invaded was no-man's land and needed to be deprived of people, otherwise they'd be at the mercy of the horsemen that keep watch over the Angels and the cities inhabited by them."
"So, then, it's possible that…Death will come here," the new commander expressed.
"That's not what he said," Misato told him. "The Geo-Front and Tokyo-3 are viewed as separate places, and the Angel in Tokyo-3's not going to come down here at anytime sooner. Death made it clear that if people could get to and from here without going through the city above, we're safe so long as they stay out of Tokyo-3. Anyone seen in any of those cities by these horsemen will only be given the option of leaving them willingly…or probably be killed."
"And he said nothing else beyond that? No mention of where this Restorative was located or why he was in league with them?"
"No. He just said something that was more personal than anything he was doing. He's aware that people are still talking about him when he was alive, and he wants that to stop, as he's not that boy, anymore. I have reason to believe that he trashed a part of the street I met him on because he found out that people were still speaking of him, which is true."
"The people have nothing better to speak about," went Fuyutsuki, "even when there are giant creatures showing up in cities and forcing them out of their homes, they'd rather talk about a boy that they didn't try to help long ago. People run from what they don't understand that's the size of a building, and all they really care about is someone they don't know or care about."
Misato guessed that he was still affected by his own encounter with Shinji, or Death, as he called himself now. She swore to herself that he looked a little older than he did over a month ago.
"The Committee will have to be informed of this," the commander told them. "Until the Angels are dealt with, one way or another."
"But if the Angels are off-limits, then we'd have to go up against these horsemen, which includes Death," Fuyutsuki expressed, wondering how many horsemen there were; he wanted to think there were four, but there could've been more than that, since he wasn't truly much of a religious man.
The commander dismissed them both from his office and the two walked down the hall.
"Captain Katsuragi, are you sure that…Death didn't say anything other than what you revealed?" Fuyutsuki asked her.
"No, nothing," she answered him.
"And you shot him in his head?"
"I got him in his right eye, but he looked unharmed…and spat the bullet out of his mouth. Nobody survives getting shot in the head all the time."
"When you shot that boy, there was no way you could've killed…because I think he's not a boy, anymore. If what he said was true, then that means he is what he said his name was. Shinji Ikari has become Death itself, and somehow, some way, he has come back from the other side…with a different purpose. Perhaps, a different reason. He doesn't seem interested in his family, anymore, as he hasn't made any point in attacking people for information on his mother, or looking for her."
"He's not interested in his family. He made his peace after he killed his father before he died; there was no reason to continue living."
"It's best to inform the base that, even if they don't go to the city, Tokyo-3 is off-limits and that any mention of Death's previous incarnation is prohibited, and to warn anyone they know elsewhere."
Oh, Asuka's going to be pissed when she finds out, thought Misato, as they entered an elevator.
-x-
With the upgrades on her research on the Evangelions, Yui was able to make an Eva last longer on the battlefield when separated from external power sources. She raised the internal batteries' limitations up to at least an hour at full power, as opposed to the reserves of one-five minutes, depending on how much energy the Evas were able to hold internally. This discovery was due to a failed attempt at creating an artificial soul for the Evas; it seemed that no matter how hard she tried, creating a new soul from scratch seemed next to impossible with existing technology. It reminded her of an old movie about a monstrous, bat-like pterodactyl that lived over ten-thousand years and fought against a giant turtle with flight capabilities, both of which were made by an ancient civilization with technological advances superior to anything people of the modern-day world possessed.
Knock-knock! Someone knocked on the door behind her in the lab, and she turned to see who it was.
"Yes, Dr. Togusa?" She asked the woman that was a year younger than her, chronologically, wearing a white lab coat over a blue dress.
"Have you been hearing the news?" She asked her back.
"No, why?"
"Japan's NERV branch had just released information on something associated to the Angels that showed up in those cities that were emptied out of people. That woman, Captain Katsuragi, had an encounter with someone that claims to be in charge of protecting the Angel in Tokyo-3. He called himself Death, but everyone seems to know him a bit differently. I think his name was Shinji."
Clank! Yui had dropped her pen to the floor after hearing this revelation.
"That's not funny," she told her, trying to stay calm.
"It wasn't supposed to be," Dr. Togusa responded. "I found out from my friends here that found out from their friends in Tokyo-3 that were informed. Captain Katsuragi even shot at the kid in his face. He spat the bullet out in front of her."
"Maybe people misinterpreted the original information, like a rumor."
"Un-uh! He was shot in his face and he didn't die. He was already dead. Dead boy walking."
Yui didn't want to believe it any more than she tried not to. She was already busy with enhancing the technology behind the Evas and creating artificial souls for them, and she had already lost most of her family. All of her family when you included her brother, who she doubt she would be able to reconcile with because her lifestyle back before and after Second Impact. She couldn't even answer his question of whether or not it made her feel bad about everything she did on her part to turn Shinji into a monster and if he hated her for leaving him.
"Plus, his resemblance to the boy that died is too uncanny to be a copycat," Dr. Togusa continued. "What's more…is that everyone that was informed of this was also informed that Death doesn't want to hear people talking about who he was when he was alive. He actually threatened the woman."
-x-
Sitting beneath a tree, Death let time slip on by, blocking out the external. He took Mother Gaia's suggestion of letting go of his anger and pain, and thought of the other universe where he was associated with the little girl with the round tummy. When unfettered by his emotions of hatred, he saw, through what seemed like a large cloud of vast and wavy, spiky, jagged forms, the girl that was Rumi, the incarnation of himself that knew of happiness, untainted by a harsh existence, and several other people that looked like they made a big, unmatched-but-close, happy family surrounding a woman that looked like an older version of Rumi, whom said little girl seemed just as affectionate towards, which left Death to suspect that the woman was the girl's mother, whom he could see was a kind and caring soul that was a rarity among people. He could see himself and the girl walking up a mountain path toward a building that looked like a series of temples (no doubt it was where they lived), spending time in and out of a hospital (he saw that his incarnation seemed sickly for a time), going places across the world, places he had never seen, and the extent of his relationship with her, sealed in a deep, passionate kiss that left Death feeling hollowed out because the way he viewed this series of events and memories from his incarnation's life was like that of an observer; these memories weren't his own, just those of another him that knew how to smile without being angry.
Neigh. His mare caught his attention, finding him under the tree and fed off the grass nearby.
"You've been sitting under this tree the whole you left?" He heard his brother ask him, appearing behind the mare, floating over toward him.
"When you have time to yourself, and are cleared of the negatives of emotion, you find your ability to glimpse into the life of another you strengthened a little more," he explained to his twin. "Has anything happened that I should know about?"
"Nothing has happened. Everything's quiet."
Death then looked up at the night sky, and then at his mare, who continued to consume the grass.
"How was your glimpse into another dimension?" Mako asked him again.
"It was…bitter," he answered him. "He suffered, but he survived because he had people that gave a damn about him and gave him a real future that was deprived of pain. It makes me think of my own misfortune…and how people that condemn me before they even consider my fate are able to sleep at night, knowing that they don't think about who they've harmed by not doing anything."
"People are often cruel to children, brother. Forget about them; they don't matter, anymore."
Death nodded and got up onto his feet and walked over to his horse, stroking her neck. The mare stopped eating and looked at her owner. This horseman had a grip befitting his name, but at the moment there was no malice, no desire to be cruel, no hatred.
"…Rumi…" Death uttered, and the mare turned her head to looked completely at him.
"Hmm?" Mako reacted, thinking he heard his twin say something.
"That's what your name will be now," the horseman said to his horse. "Rumi."
Neigh. The mare responded, and licked the left side of her master's forehead.
"You named your horse after a girl from another dimension?" Mako questioned. "She must've gotten to you hard for you to do that."
Death then climbed atop Rumi's back and spoke to his brother, "It relieves me a little. Makes me feel less angry towards the past, less interested in the lives I didn't take because I wasn't concerned with any loose ends. In fact, I'm nowhere near concerned with loose ends. I'm going to ride around Tokyo-3 now. Care to come with?"
"Sure."
-x-
Tokyo-3's greatest rival in the realm of major cities would've had to been the one and only Hong Kong of China. Despite the devastation of other parts of China, including Hong Kong itself, the great city had been salvageable after suffering extensive damage; the many buildings that remained, including the tallest ones, could be restored, the streets cleaned of debris from the waves, and the people could return to continue their way of living once more. With the loss of the original Tokyo, and the additional lack of popularity of its successor cities, China's major city was the place many wanted to reside in to make a decent living, even those that lived in Japanese territories. It was the better version of Tokyo that Tokyo-2 and Tokyo-3 could never compare to.
Unfortunately, out in the South China Sea, perfectly camouflaged due to the darkness of the night and being too far out for anything but the moonlight to expose it, a giant creature surfaced and began moving toward the lights of the great city. It was another of God's great messengers, tasked with a great purpose: To aid in liberating the planet from a great pain that ravaged its heart and soul. When it was within close range, it surfaced up all the way, revealing itself to the neon lights…and the people that were in the wrong place at the wrong time to bear witness to its arrival.
"Monster!" A guy screamed, and soon everyone was panicking.
"Rrrrrrrraaurgh!" The creature roared, slowly rising from out the water, revealing itself to be larger than that of a massive, naval aircraft carrier.
It then left the water and levitated toward the larger buildings, going for the tallest ones. As the people within the buildings got the message to clear out (and not just because some of them got the idea to yell out that there was a giant monster outside), they failed to see (most likely due to simply wanting to get away quickly) a white horse atop one of the smaller buildings. Beside it was a man in a business suit, but then the man shed off the gray suit to reveal…white robes and the gauntlet with a bow protruding from it, and the hood of the garbed man removed to reveal his scarred, gray-skinned face, the face of Conquest, the Poison Master.
"That's right, people," he uttered down to the lives that would surely live to see another day. "When you see an Angel, when you see one of God's messengers that bring an important message that you either don't hear or don't understand…you run away. You run until you're outside the city, outside the patch of civilization that is to become my domain to ensure the messenger's protected until the message has been delivered in its entirety, and those that refuse to leave…will be dealt with."
He then fired an arrow from his bow, into the air, and watched it explode into a series of burning letters that read, "You all must leave the city, or suffer the consequences." In a way, unlike the other horsemen, he viewed this method in his list of methods to be less violent and it got the word out to those that looked up at it and understood what was being meant. He was certain that people with irreplaceable lives, including families or children, would understand that when an Angel or a Horseman of the Restorative should overtake a city that has been chosen as one of the eight cities needed, they would understand and vacate the vicinity, leaving any that chose not to heed the warning for him to deal with later when sufficient time came and went for him to wander the streets to make sure no human lives were left within the city. For him, the thought of killing children was something he didn't want to do unless he had no other alternative.
"Grrraurgh!" He heard Gaghiel, the Angel of Fish, snarl as he now made his position of dominance on the three tallest skyscrapers in the city. "Grraurgh!"
"Well, at least you're able to fulfill your role now," Conquest sighed.
-x-
"…Well, that makes four cities invaded by Angels and thousands more people forced out of their homes," said Ritsuko, once more frustrated by the fact that each city was no man's land, according to the undead Shinji Ikari, almost three days ago. "Tokyo-3, New York, St. Louis and now Hong Kong, and we can't make a move on any of the Angels for fear of retaliation."
"Not to mention that it seems like each city is being looked after by people running on horses," said Ryoji Kaji, who, unknown to his fellow co-workers, spent most of his time trying to figure what NERV was up to, though that was a problem, and it wasn't entirely because of the new commander; it was because there was people that couldn't go back to Tokyo-3 were living down in the Geo-Front, enforcing an old concept about living and working underground. "I feel like I should be reading the Bible or something. Whatever religious details that talk about horsemen."
"You'd be searching for any information relating to the Book of Revelation," went Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, looking over some printouts he received from the Chinese branch of NERV, detailing the appearance of the latest Angel. "Something from the New Testament of the Bible. 'And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder, and one of the four beasts saying, "Come and see". Then behold a pale horse, and his name that sat upon him was Death, and Hell followed with him'… Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse…and a dead boy brought back to life has become an embodiment of the same force."
"You honestly need to get with the current times, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki," went Asuka, pissed because of being informed that Tokyo-3 was now off-limits. "Anything religion is old news."
"Which makes some of what was obtained from Captain Katsuragi no less real. How else do you explain someone that died over a month ago up and about, and being shot in the head and not falling over like any other person?"
"But that would be insane to believe."
"Right," went Maya to the redhead, "like the Angels and the Evas are normal."
"You can't actually believe that a dead boy, the very same boy that murdered his father and left his mother for dead…is taking a cue from one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse?" Asuka suspected from them.
"We don't even know if there's four horsemen, just horsemen," went Hyuga in response to Asuka.
"If there's one named Death, then there's bound to be three other horsemen, each one named after the other members of the Apocalypse," added Fuyutsuki.
"Katsuragi, you sure you shot this guy in his head?" Kaji asked.
"Well, I wasn't aiming for his legs," Misato retorted. "That boy could've killed me if he wanted to, and I wouldn't have been able to do a thing to him."
As the mood in Central Dogma was unpleasant, in Gendo's former office, the new commander was engaged in a meeting with his superiors.
"We may have no choice but to engage the Angels," he was told by SEELE 01, aka Kiel Lorenz, who was determined to have the situation revolving around the Angels. "Starting with the one in Tokyo-3."
"But, sir, we only have one working Evangelion and one pilot, neither of which could deal with the Angel that made the gesture of not doing anything to it again."
"Which is why we're sending over the Fourth Child," he told the commander.
-x-
After doing another check of the Angel to ensure it was untouched by cruel hands, Death, accompanied by his twin, was visiting the store he had broken into when he was Shinji Ikari, seeing that there were many things still in it that didn't get off the shelf the only time he was there. Looking at the selection of clothes available, Death examined his own outfit and found that, unlike his previous wardrobe that he wore to his first death, it didn't really feel right to be wearing it; he could live with the pants a bit, but a red and black coat didn't seem to give him a sense of self that he could put up.
"Tell me, Mako," he got his brother's attention, "do this outfit make me seem out of place?"
The floating ghost baby looked at the teen and sighed, "I'm sorry, but you look like a soldier fighting on the wrong side of the line."
"I thought as much," Death respected, and grabbed a shirt from off the racks and went up into a dressing room. I looked better with the clothes I died in, with the exception of the injuries.
He removed the coat, revealing his torso, even after his end, still possessed the scars and bruises of his previous life…and the closing bullet holes he got from when he got his horse from that stable house with the horses. Putting on the large shirt with short sleeves and with a description of blood and gore battles, he looked at himself in the mirror, and decided he needed a coat to go with the shirt.
Mako watched as his brother went to the selection of coats and pulled a large, black one off the racks, putting it on.
"How's this?" Death asked him, deciding to keep the pants until he found a better pair.
"Now, you look like you did before your final breath," he answered him. "I like it."
The horseman then grabbed several more shirts, both short-sleeved and long-sleeved, a bag similar to the one he had used to store his firearms, and, just because he couldn't pass up on such a common practice, took another hat for his head.
Suddenly, his world dimmed to a gray-colored realm, with his twin shaded in a darker tone. In front of him, instead of the street that led to his horse, was the very girl that had haunted him for a while, dressed in armor like a little samurai, but her gold-colored armor looked almost organic in a way, and her expression was one of concern mixed with an innocence that was lost to him.
"It's good to see you, even though it's not an anticipated meeting," the girl, Rumi, said to him.
Death turned to look at Mako, who seemed frozen in time, floating in the air behind him.
"Oh, he can't hear us or see me," Rumi explained. "This is just between you and I."
"You're Rumi? You're the little I knew in a different dimension?"
"Yes…and no," she told him. "I'm not really the little girl you see me as. I'm just a small part of her, the part she knows nothing about, that can see into other dimensions, see other versions of people she holds dearest to her heart. Yet the one that she gave her heart to, the one she professed her love to, despite the gap in age and the difference in origins, was a version of you, and so I looked to this dimension to find you. Your life has changed a lot from most of the other lives lived by other versions of you."
"Why are you here to see me?" Death asked her.
"You're going down a road that isn't easy to deviate from. You have done so in your living state, but as a soul lost in purgatory, it gets further complicated. You have your reasons for doing what you do, but should everyone pay for the sins committed by those that came before your time and those of the other horsemen you now work with?"
"Only if they stand in the way," he told her.
"But…what of those that are incapable or are unable to follow a simple instruction? A man that has lost the use of his legs can't run like those around him, may even be forced onto the ground, and make an attempt to drag himself to the safety of the outside of the city that needs to be emptied of people. Or a woman whose mind became shattered because of some mayhem that affected her, leaving her, mentally, blind and deaf to her surroundings; she wouldn't be able to leave a city an Angel has invaded…because her consciousness was too degraded for her to make choices of accepting something or refusing. You shouldn't cause the end to anyone like that; it'd be like giving someone a thirty-second head start to run away from you before you go after them…and then chasing after them after only ten seconds go by…or calling a baby's name during roll call, as though you expect that baby to speak up when they're only a few weeks or a few months old, unable to speak, unable to walk, unable to understand what's going on around them."
Death sighed and thought about it for a while, remembering how, in his final days, he let a boy's abusive father off the hook because the boy that was abused begged him not to kill him. Instead, he shot him in the leg. He also remembered sparing the lives of four teens that were with the one he murdered for killing a kid's puppy in front of said child, letting a pregnant girl live after he killed some cops that came looking for him; all of it being like he couldn't murder children again after killing three of them from his lost childhood, so he transferred the majority of killer tendencies toward those that were older than he had been. But he assumed he could still murder children if they got in his way or caused him trouble he didn't need to be bothered with.
"At least take into consideration that not everyone needs to die because of an unheard warning or because they're unable to get away of their own volition, Death of the Restorative," the girl suggested of him. "I'm not telling you to do something totally different. I'm only asking you to think about doing such a possibly. People think of you as a monster, so you should try proving to them that you're not."
"Death is always a monster."
"But it isn't a monster of absolution. Death can't decide the fate of all living things. It's pointless to even attempt such a dark act, and that's the whole point of dying."
"How is there a point to dying? It sounds pointless."
"And that's the whole point."
"Death is the only fairness anyone gets at the end of their life, regardless of what they've done in life."
"Just think about it for a while. Let go of your sense of hate and contempt."
Suddenly, the girl began to fade out of his perception, as though she were leaving him now.
"Wait," he attempted to stop her. "I have one question for you."
"Ask away," she told him.
"The me that lives with the little girl, Rumi… How does he get through each day, living with the past?"
"He doesn't. He has Rumi, her mother, his cousins, aunts and uncles. They help him each day. He's put his pain his parents left him experiencing for the last years of his life behind him, left buried in the darkness to suffer for making him suffer, and moved on with his life…and his parents lost their lives in a murder-suicide caused by his mother once she came to the realization that she had hurt too many people to ever be forgiven, and that her husband was just as foul as she was to people, just so that you know of their fates, in case you were wondering."
"So…he, basically, has a happy ending to a sad story that is his past."
"The only sadness in his tale is that his parents would never know the love he has for the people he grew up with. You can have a happy ending, as well…if you try hard to seek alternatives to all that you do against others, for others. Just let go of your anger, you grief, your vengeance. You'll understand…in your own time. Also, what will transpire in the future…will be something that only you and the other Horsemen of the Restorative can deal with, and if you can't find a way…no one else will."
Then, Death felt the world around him return to the semblance of normality it had, with the colors retaking their places and time resuming its course.
"Death?" He heard Mako say to him.
"Yes?" He responded.
"Are you really going to wear that hat all the time?"
"No." Death then removed his hat and stuffed it into the bag. "Mako?"
"Hmm?"
"Thanks for being with me in the darkness…and in this state of purgatory."
"You're thanking me for two things I did for you?"
"Yes."
"You seem a bit different."
"I…just seem to think Mother Gaia understands my pain, the same as you."
"She might be the only woman that understands. Where to?"
"How about the next city on the Angels' invasion list? It should be in due time. Or…we can take a look at the other three cities of the other three horsemen cleared out. Why be limited to this pathetic heap of space when we can travel to the other places we've never seen outside this pitiable nation?"
"Oh, I'm all for it. Let's go see another city." Mako agreed with him, and disappeared from sight as Death climbed atop his mare.
"Let's go, Rumi," he told her, and the mare neighed, reared up and then rode off down the street, and they disappeared around a street corner.
A/N: I hope the people that read this find this to their amazement so far. I'm already on the path to making Shinji/Death a bit more positive and less negative, though not too negative; he still needs to be able to kill those that get in his way. Hong Kong is now Gaghiel and Conquest's territory! Which city do you think will be next on the four remaining cities that need to be emptied out of people? Any suggestions? I could sure use some, since the point of having eight cities emptied is to have them correspond to the four corners of the planet, but I don't know any city that exists on the four corners. Anyhow, read and review and give me some ideas I could consider putting in the story. Peace out!