A New Cause

by Traitor of All Traitors

Where the madness ended, a new darkness will begin, one that leads to light…if those that are tasked with leading the way can endure the wrath of those that stand against them…as well as each other. The Angels descend, the dead talk, myths and legends come to life, and judgment comes to more than just Japan. All of the world isn't safe…but is it in any greater danger than before?

6. Violence and Sickness

Creation began on 12-23-13

Creation ended on 01-10-14

Neon Genesis Evangelion

A New Cause: Violence and Sickness

Death sat on the ledge of a skyscraper, overlooking the desolated city that was the disgraceful Tokyo-3. The Angel that was Sachiel had remained untouched, which was a good thing; it made his duty of ensuring his safety easier. His horse, Rumi, was sitting behind him, also overlooking the Angel and the empty. It was a sunny day, the same as the day before ever since the Japanese nation lost its other seasons.

"Hot, brother?" He turned to face his twin, who was now looking down at the empty streets below.

"My body doesn't have any heat, Mako," he responded; his undead state left him deprived of any body heat or a pulse. "I don't feel the heat of the sun's rays on my skin."

"I know. But it never hurts to ask, to remind oneself that they still have some sense of humanity left within their soul, however degraded it is."

"You know, I could almost crack a smile or laugh, but I can't, really."

"Knowing that you speak with me…is enough to assure me that you may find your ability to smile without effort in the future."

"Mako, I just realized something. You're a lot smarter than I ever was in life, even in death. So you know what to say that I don't understand."

"I was in Heaven for over a decade, so there was ample opportunity to be educated in helpful facts, wisdom and so on. I'm particularly proud of the knowledge of religious phrases that are useful when teaching others. You care to hear what my favorite phrase is?"

"Stab me."

"'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone'. No one that has done wrong should be judged by others because everyone has done wrong. Everyone that has committed a sin, however small or large, shouldn't condemn those that have done no wrong to anyone else."

"Like me? Before I sinned?" Death asked him.

"Yes, Death," he answered him. "Exactly like you. You didn't do anything wrong, and everyone around you condemned you, just because of who our parents were in life. And then you did do wrong, but only because the people didn't show you any real affection. You…you said there was one time when you were sick some time after that man left you with that other man and woman with the boy, right? What happened when you were sick?"

"That woman…that bitch I stabbed to death… I had a fever, and she just left some soup and medicine beside me as I was in my bed, didn't even make an attempt to help me beyond that, like she hated me before she even knew me. I didn't even hate her before she said those awful words about not missing me if anything bad happened to me! How can you not help somebody that's sick with a fever, thinking they can do it all by themselves? I was so weak, all I could do was lie down and sleep. I'm glad I killed her when I had the motivation to do so."

"She treated you with unkindness, so she died an unkind death as a result of her actions against you. It's a harsh example of what goes around, comes around."

"You know one phrase I heard that I hate that has its roots in religion?"

"Enlighten me."

"'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away', meaning all that God gives, he will take back. I hate it because it's untrue. Most people don't lose what they never had to begin with. Some people give what they have willingly, while others take whatever they want without any consequence. And some take from those that have nothing to give, which is as cruel as cruel people can be."

Mako placed his exposed hand on his brother's shoulder and showed him sympathy; it was true, what he had said, that people would and could take from those that had nothing to give, which made them exceedingly cruel to others. If anything, he knew his younger twin, his little brother, had nothing but a heart full of life and innocence, and their former family ties took the innocence and left only bitterness and hatred. Of course, he couldn't help but feel that such a choice had been decided upon by their former parents shortly after his own murder. So he couldn't tolerate how people, especially families, could be cold to people that did nothing wrong…or little things that were wrong to deserve such contempt thrown to them.

Rumble! The ground began to rattle a little, catching the attention of the twins.

"What in the…" Death questioned, and then saw a giant behemoth rise from around the buildings from afar. "Oh, great!"

The behemoth was red as blood and looked like it had four eyes. It was facing the Angel, which was bad for Death; he was tasked with keeping Sachiel protected from harm until all eight points were chosen, and that was what he was going to do.

-x-

"…Once burned, twice shy," went Ritsuko, awaiting this day that they could go against the Angels a second time.

Misato wasn't so sure that this was even right; to go after an Angel after being warned by Death, the former Shinji Ikari, not to attempt such an act after being told they were off-limits. But the order came from the new commander, who got his orders from the Committee. And with Unit-03 reserved as a backup in case Unit-02 couldn't deal with the Angel, NERV was as prepared as possible to take back the city.

"Commence the attack," the commander instructed.

When she heard the order, Asuka willed Unit-02 to charge toward the Angel, armed with a Smash Hawk axe. She was going to waste the Angels, regardless of what the late Third Child said to Misato the last time she encountered him.

"Die, you monster!" She shouted, and raised the axe against the Angel.

The Angel responded by raising its AT-Field to defend, but felt like it was reduced to a thin wall of air, useless against the mockery of his predecessor.

SLASH! The red Eva injured the Angel's left arm, spilling its bluish-purple fluids.

"Iiiiiiiiieee!" The Angel shrieked, backing away from the Eva.

"Ha-ha-ha!" Asuka laughed.

"STOP!" She heard someone shout out, and saw something atop a nearby building. "You continue to assault the Angel I was tasked to protect, and you'll pay with your life!"

Asuka had finally gotten an audience with the dead boy, wielding a sickle; she had assumed with his death and return, he had lost all his firearms and gained a replacement weapon. She wasn't all that surprised to see him wearing regular clothes like the ones she'd seen the pictures of him after his remains were collected and disposed of, but the sight of his accompanying horse that looked like a unicorn was unsettling enough; it seemed like something ripped from old fairy tales.

"So, you're the Third Child, brought back to life?" She questioned, using Unit-02's loudspeakers to respond to his verbal threat. "You're not all that impressive to look at."

"Who's trying to impress who? And no one is supposed to be in this city so long as it's required for the cause it has become chosen for. Leave the city, leave the Angel, and do not come back. Otherwise, I will use deadly force upon your flesh." Death warned her.

"Sorry, kid, but I got orders to waste the Angel and take back the city," she informed him, "and that's something I gotta do."

"Then you have sealed your fate."

Then, beyond what was considered normal, the horse of Death jumped off the rooftop and hovered through the air, leaping over the street to the next rooftop, heading towards the red Evangelion.

Asuka had no time to lose, and reached out with her left hand to swat the horse and its rider.

Death raised his sickle up and swung with greater force than he had ever unleashed upon the mortals he had sent to Hell.

SLICE! The blade had left a nick in Unit-02's hand, spilling out some of its bluish-purple blood.

"Whoa!" Asuka gasped, pulling her arm back, and then using the other arm to swat the boy and his horse away, sending them hitting the street.

Thud. They had impacted the ground with less force than what she had expected of them. But what she didn't expect to see…was the two get back up like nothing happened; the boy didn't even have a scrape or bruise on him to show that he had been assaulted.

"Asuka, forget about him," went Ritsuko. "He's just a bug. Get the Angel while it's still down."

In Central Dogma, on every available monitor and screen, the Angel had already begun healing its injury. If it recovered completely, it would most likely improve upon its physical design and make itself impervious to future injuries.

"Send out Unit-03," the commander ordered.

Back on the surface of Tokyo-3, Unit-02 raised its left foot, which had now sported a bloody gash on the bottom where Death slashed it, and brought it down on the unicorn-like horse, along with Death, burying them beneath several tons of brutal war machine. And at that moment, another behemoth arose from the streets; this was the pitch-black Eva that was Unit-03, armed with a Smash Hawk axe of its own, facing the Angel.

"Attack, Mana," Misato ordered, although with some hesitation, and the Fourth Child carried out the order without question.

"Hyah!" She shouted, raising the axe and bringing it down on the Angel's bony face.

"Iiiiiieee!" Sachiel shrieked once more, now sporting a cracked face as it fell to the ground.

Beneath Unit-02's foot, Death, still in one piece, was out cold.

"Ugh…" He groaned.

FLASH! He saw things that didn't make sense to him, right then and there. He saw his dead father looking down upon him with a purple version of the behemoth that just buried him, then, sometime later, he saw himself looking over the city from a hill with the purple-haired woman that shot him in an attempt to kill him during a sunset. Another vision was of him and his worthless father in front of a grave that served as nothing more than an artifice for his absentee mother…where the bastard told him to stop seeking him out (like he had ever tried to in his past), unwilling to even say one kind thing to him, just like he never did before he killed him. Another vision showed Death's mortal incarnation being, in one of the worse of scenarios, exploited by people by being inside one of the behemoths (the purple one, no doubt), and ganged up upon by nine, white creatures that were the same as the purple and red ones, but had wings and could fly. The next thing he saw was enough to make him wish he had killed his mother before he let himself fall to the Grim Reaper he had battled with for more time to get revenge on his father: He saw himself, alive once again, but without any recollection of what had happened in the past, in a world that was just as manipulated as he had been, showing the remnants of the behemoths standing around in crucified states.

If he had been conscious, he would've been balding his fists, wanting to beat the life out of his mother and anyone else that he might've wanted to punish for what he went through. He had to get out of this predicament he was now in.

"It's one of the darkest of sins," a female voice uttered out, "to be exploited by the ones that don't do their own work. A darker sin…to abandon the ones you claim to love…but do nothing to prove it."

Death soon found himself in the same cemetery that he had visited when he found the grave marker that possessed his former identity engraved upon it, but it was filled with mist and a layer of dampness. In front of him, amidst the forest of tombstones, was a woman that, like the previous visions he had, looked like Rumi, only older, dressed in silver armor, like a samurai, but with an organic theme to it, like his vision of the little girl with her gold armor.

Death felt like he should've brandished his sickle, but this woman didn't make herself a threat to himself, just like how Rumi hadn't made herself a threat toward him.

"Of course, you would know only of being abandoned…and never being loved by the ones that abandoned you," she told him.

"You're Rumi's mother," he responded, addressing her by her status; he didn't know her name.

"Yes…and no," she said. "I'm a shade, a small part of the woman whose appearance I possess."

"You… The woman you resemble…was a kind and caring person in another life, in another world."

"As well as a martial arts master, a town leader, a master of the elements, among other things."

"I know the girl was called Rumi, but I don't know who you are. I mean, who you're supposed to be in the other lifetime."

"I was called Akira, in a few other lifetimes…and a few other dimensions," she revealed to him.

"Akira… Why am I here right now, talking to you?" He asked her.

"You were stepped on…and you lost consciousness," she answered him. "Massive trauma to your brain, you conscious mind, resulting in your incapacitation. To think that Death could take that type of punishment from a cheap imitation of a creature charged by a higher authority to bestow life across the farthest reaches of the universe. And to think that Death would be a young man that people tried to own, control and then cast aside like garbage. It's the same in every case, the same situation that befalls your mortal self in nearly every life."

"My mortal self…suffers the same fate…in nearly every life that he lived? How many times? How many lives exploited for the wrong reasons?"

"Many. Barely a few of those lives end on happy notes, others end before they even have your alternate selves living to the age of fourteen. One of your alternate selves was made to take his own life after being convinced that he was unloved…while another gave up on life and let himself be murdered at the age you were when you died."

"And what of those visions I had just now? Where it seemed like I lived, but without any memory of anything that happened?"

"The woman that left you when you were alive…and never came back, even when your life was in danger by everything and everyone that tried to exploit you… She used you with her absence, and she never once came back. She stayed in her creation in some lifetimes as a would-be testament of mankind's existence. But that was cruel of her, saying that she loved you, that she wanted to give you a bright future, but, in most cases, all she ever gave you was what you're a constant understander of, something that has followed you in many cases. In that glimpse of another universe, everyone was forced to pay the ultimate price, and they lost what they held most dear."

Death turned his head away as he frowned in his rage. It seemed like no matter what he did, where he went, alive or dead, fragment, shades or memories of his pathetic life were trying to get him to go down the other way, which was close enough to make him scream in agony before he went after someone that deserved the ultimate fate they would be dealt with.

"But when you die before they can use you completely, nothing goes the way they want it to," Akira told him, and he looked back at her. "And…your death changes everything, throwing off everyone's agenda. Everyone except for Mother Gaia, who wants to do right by the world, but understands that there will be further tragedy before salvation comes. She respects every lost soul in existence, and wants them all to live again, but needs the Four Horsemen of the Restorative and the Angels to do the impossible. A future where everyone is made to lose their life isn't desired, and a future where the planet left crippled by the arrogance and greed of people that want what they can't have without sacrificing what's left of their moral decency, made whole and full of life and hope again…is a future that is worth fighting for."

"I'm all for that, but I'm only doing what I'm doing for my reward at the end. I no longer want to be associated in any way to the name Ikari, or anyone of science, politics, abusers, child abandoning cretins and megalomaniacs with god complexes or pathetic beliefs. Because, contrary to the old belief, appearances are deceiving, even for one that is dead. I'm not back as a horseman because my death set me free. I'm back because, despite dying, I am not free of all my bindings. And Hell isn't all people want to believe it is; there's no fire and brimstone, only darkness, with very little light, like you're in an empty dream or a small room with no furniture. My soul can't wander, it can't go beyond the barriers that were grounded in the flesh. I do this for Mother Gaia, my brother and I will be rewarded with a clean slate."

"Yeah, the two you definitely need a fresh start, deprived of the pain you've had to carry in the past."

"I'm a killer, and I won't deny that part of my existence. As much as I want to let go of that side of me, I will use the methods I've become accustomed to using against others until all eight points on the planet are chosen by the Angels and the day comes where the planet can finally heal."

"Yet, you're not proud of what you do."

"There was never any pride in murder. Murder… It just came to me as the only solution to a childhood without love from the people I was left in the careless care of. I couldn't believe I was left with relatives that treated me like a waste of space. I just wanted to let go of my heart after the put-downs I got from everyone, but I couldn't forget that there was one man that needed to be punished for his abandoning of me. I've made my peace with the past, now I just need a new future, one where I'm in control of my choices and no one's out to get me."

Akira nodded her head in agreement; she was understanding of why he was doing all this and his reasons for continuing to perform acts that were in defiance of the laws of people and nature themselves until he could stop.

Suddenly, the mist began to thicken around the two and enshroud the armored woman.

"It seems," she sighed, "that every time something like this happens, a conversation between two strangers from different worlds, we only have a few minutes to speak. I will say this to you, Death of the Restorative: Good luck…and I hope you do succeed in your new cause."

Then, without so much as a warning, Death fell backwards and felt like he was falling. He felt like he was falling down a dark pit, with only the sound of air around him.

"…Death…Death…" A voice called out to him.

"…Death…wake up…" Additional voices called out.

"…Wake up, brother…" He heard Mako's voice say to him, and he opened his eyes, seeing two of his fellow horsemen, Conquest and War, and his twin looking down at him.

He rose up and looked around, seeing that he was atop a building in a city, and saw the Angel, Sachiel, sporting a new face and healed injuries.

"What happened?" He asked them.

"You were out cold for two hours," went Conquest. "You were stepped on by one of the mockeries bearing Adam's flesh. Mother Gaia then had War and I come to aid you and drive the behemoths away."

"I'm actually glad I came," added War, sounding…rather cheerful. "I met my battle crush."

"Huh?" Death responded.

"He means that he saw a girl come out of the red behemoth and he became attracted to both her looks and her violent aura." Mako explained.

Death looked away from where the Angel stood and at the moderate damage done to a few buildings; he had clearly missed something that went down between the horsemen and the behemoths.

"Tell me all that happened," he told them.

"Well, that's not much to tell," went Conquest.

"I have an eternity to waste hearing the details," he assured the Poison Master.

"Well… It was after you were stepped on," he started.

-x-

Rescuing Death

Mother Gaia felt the incapacitation of Death and sent a telepathic alert to the Horsemen of Conquest and War to go to Tokyo-3 to aid and protect Death and the Angel, by whatever means required, but not to lose the city.

The moment they received the alert, the white-robed archer and the ancient knight took their horses and rode through the streets of New York and Hong Kong and disappeared, reappearing in the streets of Tokyo-3, seeing the Evangelions that were trying to take back the city.

"Oh!" War shouted, and brandished his sword, already ablaze as he he charged toward the red Eva. "Feel the relentless wrath of War, the Violent One!"

SLASH! He ran past the Eva's left leg, cutting through the armor and artificial flesh underneath, spilling its synthetic blood out as it lost sensation.

"Aaaahh!" Asuka screamed, feeling like her own leg had been cut off her.

Unit-02 fell to the ground and saw the rider of the red courser go past her.

SWAT! Conquest fired an arrow toward Unit-03's head, hitting it in the jaw and sending a jolt of discomfort to the twelve-year-old girl inside the dark giant.

"Ah!" Mana gasped, feeling like one of her teeth was knocked loose.

Conquest saw that there was a little girl inside Unit-03, but found it unlikely that he could pass judgment upon her on Death's territory. But so long as Death was out of it right now, he saw no harm in spreading a little case of the common cold; with the additional designation as the Horseman of Pestilence, he had the ability to spread every type of sickness that ever existed on the planet, ranging from allergies to diseases that were untreatable unless removed by him. It was what he liked about his status as a Horseman of the Restorative: He could curse people with illness…and he could take the illness away, just like that.

"Time to spread a little sickness!" He yelled, and fired another arrow at the black Eva.

"Hey, I don't even know you!" The girl shouted at him.

"This city needs to be empty and the Angel unharmed," he responded, arming his bow with another arrow, "and your ally attacked one of ours. You mess with one Horseman of the Restorative, then you mess with all Four Horsemen of the Restorative. I don't believe in solving situations like these with senseless violence and bloodshed. We get enough of that through War and Death. But if it becomes necessary, I will use deadly force to enforce the will of the Earth, which is in intense pain from the maiming it received long ago."

Then, just as Unit-02 struggled to get up with just one leg, War turned around and used his sword again, going up the Eva's back and jamming the blade into its lower back, sending three streaks of flame upward towards its head.

"Aaaaaurgh!" Asuka screamed, feeling like somebody poured boiling water onto her back. "Damn you! Damn you!"

She tried to reach for the horseman, but he dodged her and ran toward her partially-burnt head.

"If this soul feels the damage done to her behemoth, then what do you think might happen if it was decapitated by my sword?" He questioned, stopping at the top of Unit-02's head, his sword raised high.

"War, stop!" Conquest yelled.

"Please, don't!" Mana pleaded.

But War wasn't having any of it; he was going to behead this giant, just to show that the four of them meant serious business against any that stood in the way.

"Oh, no!" Misato gasped. "Quick! Disable her nerve connections!"

War brought his sword down, but then his horse head-butted him and sent him falling over the head.

"Aaaaahh!" He screamed, hitting the street with his head. "Mmmm!"

With her nervous system no longer tied to the Eva, Asuka felt relieved of pain, and self-ejected the Entry Plug from the Eva.

"Who does that…that thing think it is?!" She asked, climbing out of the plug and going down her damaged Evangelion. "What the Hell do you think you are?!"

War got up, showing some viscosity of sort on the right side of his lower lip, dripping onto the ground near his fallen weapon, and looked up at Asuka as she climbed down her Eva. He had never seen anyone, not even during his eternity in the depths of the afterlife where he couldn't move on, that was dressed in red before like this girl. It was…almost like a sign that was meant for him.

"Whoa," he whispered.

PUNCH! Asuka got close enough to punch War in his face, bypassing his helmet and hitting the flesh.

"Mmph!" He grunted, falling backwards onto the ground.

Unit-03 then turned to look back at the Angel, but found that it disappeared from sight. In the whole distraction, it had the opportunity to regenerate its injuries and get away.

In addition, Conquest had gone over to the spot where Death had been stepped on and picked him up from the ground and set him on his mare's saddle.

"You can still survive this, ladies," he told them. "Just walk away."

Personally, Mana was willing to accept this offer to walk away, but she suspected that Ms. Soryu, being stubborn in her own way, wouldn't accept the offer.

"I never surrender!" Asuka told Conquest.

As the Horseman of Conquest and Pestilence armed himself with another arrow, preparing to give this girl a sickness that matched her unwillingness to turn away, the Horseman of War got back up and removed his helmet, revealing the rest of the face he possessed from his previous life.

War had a battle-scarred visage: Three slanted cuts on the right cheek, a single cut on his left cheek, bluish-gray eyes, dark hair that reached down to his neck, and a small chain attached to his left ear.

"Are you the type of girl that people speak of?" He asked Asuka. "Are you the type of girl that likes violence above all else in the world?"

"Huh?" Asuka and Conquest both uttered, confused.

"You…you spark my streak of bloodshed," War told her. "Especially that blazing head of hair of yours. I want to set you ablaze and watch you fight to survive."

"War, now's not the time for personal conversations," Conquest told him, really not wanting to go anywhere that was into the pursuit of relationships that could've interfered with their goal.

"No way, Poison Master," War retorted, raising his sword up. "I want to fight this girl. War desires conflict with a burning beauty."

Conquest recalled Mother Gaia warning him about War's arousal to anyone that demonstrated a type of love for battle that matched his; it was something he grew up with when he was alive, but it was also what led to his death. He had to keep this from getting out of hands.

"Hey, new girl!" Asuka shouted up at Unit-03. "Your Eva still works! Crush these jerks!"

"I…I…I…" Mana was hesitant on actually going and attacking someone that was giving them the chance to turn away while the option was still available. "My orders were to deal with the Angel, not these men. We should take the offer to leave."

"No way, Mana Asagi!" She heard Ritsuko through the intercom system. "They still have the boy that should be dead! Flatten him! Crush him! Reduce him to pulp!"

STOMP! Mana looked away from the horsemen and Asuka, and toward the opposite side of the street that the Angel had been on, seeing it from afar. It looked like it had a score to settle with her, judging from the way it looked at her Eva.

With its new face, Sachiel's eyes flared up, looking like they could unleash a beam of light at the black Eva, but it refrained from doing so, like it was waiting for Unit-03 to make the first move.

"Sachiel's enraged that you attacked him the way you did," she heard Conquest yell at her, "but, like me, he's showing you a measure of clemency! We don't want any more trouble! This is simply something we need to do!"

Mana looked back down at the horsemen and Asuka, even taking another look at the one that people either addressed as the horseman Death or the late Shinji Ikari, seeing how helpless and vulnerable he appeared right now after being stepped on. You couldn't even tell if he was actually dead, probably not unless you touched him and checked for a pulse, which she wouldn't risk her life trying to do. Plus, she wasn't feeling too well right now.

Oh, Mother, she thought, what do I do? Do I listen to my superiors…or do I listen to these horsemen?

In Central Dogma, the new commander evaluated the situation on the monitor: The Angel was waiting for its right to fire upon the Eva that could still function, Unit-02 had been damaged and the pilot left vulnerable to any potential danger she was in, these horsemen giving the girls an opportunity to turn away, but Ritsuko Akagi seemed Hell-bent on wanting the late Shinji Ikari dealt with while he was out cold from getting stepped on.

Fuyutsuki, on the other hand, paid more attention to the horseman that called himself Death, wondering if he was really dead…or just out cold. And now that he had seen two more horsemen, he was convinced that there were only four of them, meaning there were Four Horsemen of the Restorative, a literal opposite to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

"Call off the attack," the new commander ordered.

"Sir?" Hyuga asked him.

"Bring the Evas back to base…now," he told them.

"But, sir…" Ritsuko tried to implore him.

"Now," he cut her off, not wanting to hear her out now.

That was all Misato needed to hear.

"Mana, bring back Asuka and Unit-02," she ordered the Fourth Child.

"Yes, Captain," Mana responded, and backed away, and saw the Angel's eyes dim down. "Miss Soryu, this battle's lost. Live today, live to fight another day."

"Verdammt!" Asuka cursed in German; she really wanted to try her luck with beating War to a pulp. "This isn't over, dummkopf."

"Sorry," War told her, "but my German is rusty, so's my Japanese. Try basic hand gestures."

Asuka then pounded her left fist into her right one, making sure he got the message.

"Now, that just makes me want to fight you with more ferocity," he said, further impressed by her.

Unit-03 picked up the damaged Unit-02 and went back into the ground; Asuka, unfortunately, had to go back to the Geo-Front the long way due to the dangers of going down the Eva way outside the Eva.

-x-

"…And when they left, Sachiel retook his position and began the process of regenerating until he's fully healed," Conquest finished the story.

Death sighed soon after; it would be a while before he got over being incapacitated, and got up off the rooftop. He'd been laid low by something his former mother had aided in creating, and he desired retribution for the minor failure he obtained. As the Horseman of Death, he was afforded more than just this priority of the Restorative to undo the maiming that was caused over fifteen years ago; he was afforded the power to defy fate even further, and he was going to defy it further until the primary objective was achieved.

"They clearly don't get that this city is no longer theirs," Death told them.

"Don't worry about them for now," Conquest told him. "They won't be coming back for a while. I put my abilities as the Poison Master to work. When I fired my last arrow at the black behemoth, I gave the girl inside a non-lethal contagion that will spread to the rest of the world down below."

"Oh, really?" War asked him, not knowing of this until just now. "And what non-lethal contagion did you give the girl?"

He and Death looked at Conquest, who then removed his hood and revealed his scarred face so they knew what he had done with some better clarity.

"Gave her the common cold," he answered, "but this variation won't be easy to treat. I reckon they'll have high fevers and running noses for a few weeks. Three, at the most."

"Running noses? Why didn't you just give them diseases that killed them?" War questioned.

"This is Death's territory," he defended his reason. "Plus, this was to warn the people that, if we want to, we can cause them great agony that won't end unless we say it ends. If I were to give a woman terminal-stage lung cancer, she wouldn't know relief until she either died…or I relieved her of the illness. It'd be no different from you threatening to cause the burning end of your would-be victims or Death dealing in death to the people that probably deserve it."

Death then unsheathed his sickle, which he was fortunate enough to still possess, assuming that the weapon was linked to him, able to disappear when not in use, and come to him when he desired it. Unlike his clothes, the weapon still looked like new, right down to the glistening blade. He then asked his fellow horsemen if they were going to make sure that their cities were deprived of human life until the next cities they would be assigned to protect came.

FLASH! The three became paralyzed by the perception of two different cities. One city had a tower that looked like it had a flattened ball near its center and a lake nearby. The other had several pyramids of stone and some water scarcity with most of the people living closer to the river that had water obtainable. The Angel that traveled to the former city looked like the one that came to Tokyo-3, but lacked any bony features, seeming streamlined, while the Angel that traveled to the latter city was massive and disturbingly floating around like a piece of paper in the air, with a large eye and large hands with eyes in them.

The vision ended and the horsemen were returned to the rooftop.

"Whoa," went War.

"Looks like we got double the work, War," Conquest said.

"Huh?"

"You get the city Israfel's going to, while I get the one Sahaquiel's aiming toward."

"Why you get the one with the stone structures?"

"Because the people that get the most water in a vast wasteland are the victors of a small conquest, worthy of suffering a plague for their consumption. Water, in such places, is more precious than any amount of gold or silver or jewels. Also, as I am known as the Horseman of Pestilence in most interpretations, I can resurrect the famous plagues that they were forced to deal with."

As Conquest got back on his stallion, War's courser nudged the Violent One in his left shoulder, and he conceded to acquire the other city. The two then left Death alone to hasten the Restorative's cause.

"This has not been a good day," Death turned to face Mako, who floated beside him.

"Yeah," he responded. "But then again, there's no such thing as a good day. Just a day, nothing more."

"Days where nothing, expected or unexpected, happens."

"Days where nothing that needs to happen ever does."

"Days where there comes a time where anything you do in the hours that pass you by…"

"Could be the last that you ever do of them."

-x-

Toronto, Canada's greatest city in terms of population and size. Almost a metropolis like other large cities scattered throughout the world, but today was a different case for it. Today, unlike the previous ones before it, Toronto was to become one of the chosen points for the Angels and the Restorative. It was being approached, from miles away, by the Angel of Music, Israfel, who had decided that it would serve as its domain.

"Oh, my God!" A man shouted, looking up at the Angel.

"Aaaaahh!" A woman screamed, and then picked up her daughter and ran.

"It's another one of those giant monsters!" Another woman screamed.

As Israfel made it to the city and began its approach toward the CN Tower, the Restorative Horseman of War quietly road in on his courser; the plan was like New York: Let the Angel show up, scare out as many people as possible, then make himself known and clear out the remaining mortals that chose to stay and hide.

NEIGH! His courser neighed, rearing up and going down the street.

-x-

People of the land of sand were running like crazy in all directions. Small explosions rattled the uninhabited plains outside of Cairo as the Eighth Angel, Sahaquiel, broke through the upper atmosphere, dropping pieces of its mass in an attempt to frighten away the people, the descendants of the primordial spawn of Lilith. It spread its amoeba-like arms out as it to darken the skies, blocking the sunlight, leaving an artificial darkness over the lands of Cairo, Egypt.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! It dropped smaller pieces of its mass into the Nile, causing small tsunamis that, while washing onto the streets and flooding them up to three feet, receded back into the river.

As the people ran for dear life, some of them saw, up atop one of their modern-day buildings, a figure on a white horse, wielding a bow.

"People of Cairo," the Poison Master announced, "I am Conquest, the Poison Master, a Horseman of the Restorative, and your city has become a part of the cause I serve to see fulfilled! It is now my domain and the domain of Sahaquiel, Angel of the Sky! Leave now, and you will know mercy, stay…and you will experience the consequences of your actions! I will unleash upon you the Plague of Pestilence…and your souls shall belong to me!"

The people took no time to question if this man was some sort of madman or lunatic, not when he fired an arrow into the air and it self-destructed like a firecracker, into the shape of the poison symbol, black and gray and everything. They ran out of their city with a fright that could match the power that a former slave used to part the Red Sea for others to cross to safety.

Conquest looked up at Sahaquiel and wondered if this massive servant of the Heavens he had never been to could understand the fear they ignited in the hearts of the lesser people. He himself might've been a former member of the human race from long ago, but there was resentment in his past, enough resentment to trigger an outbreak of an infectious plague that targeted only those with malicious intent. Almost like Death, and just like War, Conquest was a victim of his past, but not like those that suffer from the unfairness of violence, retribution or some other form of suffering related to them; he had been a devastating weight upon his mother just because of how she got him. This was a hatred he could pin with arrows to the man that was his father.

I help the Restorative succeed in the end, every will benefit from the results, he thought. I help the Restorative succeed in this…and I can absolve myself of any of the darkness I got from that bastard. I'll be able to free her from the curse that was the unholy union between them.

BANG! He felt an impact in his back and out his stomach, and then turned around, seeing a policeman with a gun in hand.

"Don't move!" The cop ordered him. "You're under arrest!"

SWAT! Conquest shot him in the chest with an arrow and watched him fall to the ground, shaking and groaning in immense pain.

"You're going to suffer quickly," he told the cop, looking down at his face as his skin began to shrivel up. "All the fluids inside your organs is drying up. You're now as dry as… Well, as dry as your limited imagination is. For whatever it's worth… I am sorry you had to die for not leaving."

The man was then reduced to dried-up husk in civilian police clothes. This made Conquest sigh as he walked away from the latest member of the dead. He looked out at the people that were still running away, hoping he wouldn't see any people that chose to stay and suffer; he hated to induce the suffering of those that didn't need to pay the price. Though, he'd probably do what Death had done, and go looking for those that inflict cruelty on the innocent and make them pay with their lives.

-x-

"…I don't believe this! Achoo!" Misato had responded to what Ritsuko had revealed. "Two cities at the same time?!"

"Achoo!" Ritsuko sneezed. "This was completely unexpected. Along with all of the base coming down with a cold! Those horsemen are probably responsible for this!"

When Mana had brought Unit-03 and Unit-02 back, she had come out of the plug looking a little under the weather, and less than an hour later, came down with a high fever that spread to the rest of NERV HQ. No one had seen it coming, not even Ritsuko, who wished she had (along with wanting to blame Death for this illness), and when Asuka returned and caught the cold, she wanted to blame Mana for not attacking the horsemen.

Kaji wasn't even the least concerned about having caught a cold, as it reminded him of the hundreds of thousands of people that died from diseases far more devastating than such a minor ailment. But if there was any one person that wasn't impressed by what the horsemen did, it was the new commander. The only person yet to show any signs of sickness was Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki himself; he was the oldest person there, and he hadn't broken down with a running nose, high fever or anything yet.

"The Committee is not going to like this," the new commander expressed, taking a tissue from a box of tissues and blowing his nose. "They're going to demand answers, and if they spit, the saliva's coming out of my mouth."

"They're the ones that demanded the Evas attack the Angel in an attempt to take back the Tokyo-3 city," went Kaji, blowing his nose. "Nobody anticipated there would be assaults from the horsemen. Achoo!"

"And now, everyone's sick," Fuyutsuki sighed.

"Everyone but you," the new commander corrected him. "Now, why is that?"

"I don't believe the Sub-Commander had anything to do with this," Kaji defended the elder. "He probably has a higher immune system, and absolutely nothing to do with his limited association with Death when he was alive."

"Oh, yes. Achoo! The day the Third Child came to get revenge on the former commander, which was also the same day that the Sub-Commander met him at his home…and brought him here to exact his revenge, costing the lives of the personnel that died by his hands. The Committee wanted to hold you responsible for the deaths of Gendo Ikari and the First Child, but took into considerable that you were threatened by the boy and acted only in self-preservation."

Fuyutsuki sighed and responded, "It was never like that. I didn't anticipate for Shinji… I mean… I didn't anticipate for Death to know where to find me. It should've been impossible, but there he was, in my apartment, with my machete, and he left drawings there to show that he knew who I was from when he was a little boy years ago. I knew he hated his father for abandoning him, and wouldn't stop the senseless killing until he dealt with him…so I told him that if he wanted to kill his father, I would take him to see him."

"Achoo! I read the file on Gendo Ikari, and I could tell that he wasn't well liked by the people. Achoo! Honestly, the Committee didn't trust him all that much, like he had his own agenda. NERV's priority, its major concern, its only concern right now…is to deal with the Angels, and we can't even do that without analyzing them for potential weaknesses or getting rid of these horsemen. What's more is that we need the pilots to be able to fight them, and our only two are on bed rest. Achoo!"

"So what do you intend to tell the Committee when they demand an explanation?" Kaji asked.

"That it was a mistake to go after them half-cocked and not expect the warning Death gave Captain Katsuragi to be true. If we're to beat the enemy, we need to know where to find them and put an end to their plans." The new commander answered.

"They've already taken six cities," Fuyutsuki sighed, wondering when and where the remaining two cities would be found and taken by the Angels. "What could they want with them?"

And deep down, the elder felt like he was about to sneeze.

-x-

As Mother Gaia floated in the lake on her island, she had entered a silent conversation with the higher authority that she would frequently speak with. No other mortal could see who or what this higher authority was, but the Four Horsemen could, on account that they were lost souls in mortal purgatory until God-knows-when.

I didn't think that two Angels would arise and visit two cities in one day, her mind spoke out to the unseen force she answered to. That's six of the eight chosen locales needed for the cause.

Yes, a male voice spoke back to her. Six out of eight. Until the remaining two are chosen by the Angels, those that desire that which shouldn't be desired…shall be entitled to a season…but only a season to either try and atone for their misguided, cruel or disgraceful deeds…or suffer the consequences when the day that all will be decided comes.

How long will this season be for them? Mother Gaia asked.

For as long as possible, a female voice responded to her. You needn't worry if you feel they will continue to ravage the lands.

That's what I fear the most every time, she expressed, and the worst part is that I can't really do anything about it without causing self-inflicted harm to myself. The one thing the deities agree upon more than anything when dealing with matters that concern mortals is that free will shouldn't be manipulated for any reason, for better or for worse.

No one with free will can be controlled, Mother Gaia, the male voice returned. It is the ultimate blessing men and women possess.

And yet, there are always those that abuse the blessing, wanting what is most forbidden. What is most forbidden than that of the power and authority of the deities themselves? Immortal, unquestionable, infallible…and all-powerful.

It is a poisonous desire that shouldn't be achieved by anyone, regardless of their intentions, another male voice expressed.

People that fear death, what lies beyond their own mortality, will do anything to avoid dying and becoming just another memory in the collective of memories carried by others. They don't understand that there's rarely anything to fear after dying, Mother Gaia said; she knew this to be a half-truth because those that did die either ascended to the heavens…or fell below the Earth…or they were just as likely, like the lost souls that became the Four Horsemen of the Restorative, to wind up in between the two realms of the blessed and the damned. It has been this way ever since they were cast out from the Garden of Eden to keep them from eating from the Tree of Life after they were tricked into eating from the Tree of Knowledge. And it'll continue to be this way until they come to accept that nothing is meant to last forever. Nothing mortal, that is.

And they continue to fail and see that both things and people are more precious to them because they don't last forever, another female voice added in.

Then, the conversation ended, and Mother Gaia opened her eyes to the sky above, finding that she had drifted to the edge of the southern side of the lake.

"Hello," she turned to the left and saw Famine, looking down at her.

"Hello, Famine," she greeted back, and got up, her dress dripping with water, clinging to her mortal flesh like a second skin.

"Were you… I mean, were you speaking to anyone out in the lake?" Famine asked her.

"Yes, I was. It will be a while before the next Angel arrives to a given location for you and Death to keep empty until the day everything and everyone maimed is undone. I wasn't told how long it would be until they arrive, but you got some time before then."

"You know, Death was incapacitated because of those behemoths made from the flesh of a harbinger of life stepped on him. I wouldn't be surprised if Death would try to deal in retribution to the one responsible for knocking him out."

"If you, Conquest or War had been stepped on, or blown up, you'd be incapacitated, as well, but you wouldn't die. So long as the Earth, my true self, continues to fight for its right to continue living, like the beliefs of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Four Horsemen of the Restorative are practically as immortal as the gods themselves are believed to be. Plus, you're all lost souls, you're already dead, so you can't die again."

"I still remember one of the criminals I sucked dry of their fluids shooting me in the head before I killed them, and it hurt when I took a bullet in my mouth. It took me, I don't know, probably two minutes, maybe five minutes, before I revived and exacted retribution on the guy that shot me. But Death was stepped on, and he took longer to revive. Why is that?"

"It's not all that complicated…nor is it all that simple. Death takes longer to revive from massive incapacitation because he's not as close to the mortal coil in his purgatory as you three are. Conquest, War and Famine are different from Death because there is no indication, nowhere in any form of history or religion, that three are like him. Therefore, you three are more closer to life in purgatory than Death could ever be."

"But, surely, Famine is a little close to being dead."

"Close…but still far from it."

-x-

Toronto was reduced to another ghost time where some of the people still tried to cling to their home, only to be driven away or deprived of their lives by the knight with the flaming sword. There was very little to no damage present, except for the minor indents made on the streets by Israfel as it had made its approach toward the CN Tower. Beyond that, the only other damage made was by the people that either ran or tried to shoplift some stores. Any attempt made on Israfel, whether by the lesser mortals or those associated with military might, was made undone by War, such as when a series of fifteen jet fighters made their move on Israfel, unable to get past its AT-Field, and War unleashed fire into the sky.

He stood at the tip of the tower and raised his sword up high, and unleashed a widespread assault of intense flames and made any jets that got close enough suffer the consequences of being engulfed in ever-rising temperatures of fire that matched the fury of Hell itself.

"Fire, the blessing and curse that was given to mankind in the ages long forgotten," said War to himself, directing the widespread flames by swinging his sword that continued to generate more fire. "According to Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and bestowed it upon the people, in essence, granting the people a power that they have used for generations, ever since obtaining it. And with fire came the advancement of technological achievement. You used fire to burn away large patches of forests for farmlands, mold metal into savage weapons, create war and so on, which aided in your success of creating machines that use fire to fly. You started with fire…and now you have all of this: Guns, missiles, explosives, all weapons of mass destruction…and you use them in whatever way you see fit. You abuse power, make it poisonous, a plague that everyone desperate enough wants to catch. And the Four Horsemen… The Four Horsemen are the last resort, here to restore the balance."

He made the flames bigger, almost like the top of a mushroom cloud over the vicinity of the city, reducing all opposition to smoldering bits of metal that fell to the ground.

"I wonder how Conquest is doing with his new new city to vacate of people without much hostility," he wondered about his fellow horseman.

-x-

There were those in Cairo that refused to leave the city…and whenever they were found by Conquest, he dealt with them a serious blow to their health. Rather than outright murder, like with the cop that shot him, he let them live with however much their little lives had, damned with his version of the Plague of Pestilence. If they made the choice to leave, they found that their sickness would lift the instant they got out of the city, but if they stayed, they would simply suffer in agony over their inability to treat their ailments. It was only the animals that were in their homes and on the streets that were unaffected by Conquest's power; in the minds of those smart enough to theorize the possibilities, the Poison Master only had it in for the people, and in most cultures, beliefs and so on, nobody considered an animal as a person.

"GRRRRRAURGH!" Conquest, sitting atop one of Cairo's tallest buildings, looked up at Sahaquiel as he continued to float over the city, almost blocking the sunlight, causing an artificial Plague of Darkness for the city.

"Hopefully, the majority of the population will be wise enough to leave and take back their health and freedom," he told himself, looking down at the few that remained, wandering around like ants, really hoping that they would leave the city. "Hmm? Looks like another one of them has chosen to leave and has regained their health, now needing only to regain their freedom."

If he strained his ears a little, he could hear a young woman say to somebody, "We just need to leave this place. It's not worth dying in, anymore. Let's go."

He smiled at the small victory achieved by choosing to leave; he made that possible in the plague that any that chose to leave would cease to have it, but if they tried to lie about leaving, they would suffer its return until they did leave. He took it so far as to ride around the streets to spread the sickness, to enforce the warning of the harsh fate, and, in addition, he didn't want to see any children suffer because of the stubbornness of their parents or guardians; he believed, as he had in his mortal life, that no child should be made to suffer because of their parents' sins.

Neigh. Conquest leaned back and looked behind himself toward his horse, which sat around, doing nothing other than looking at him.

"Is there ever a time when I need to feed you?" He asked the stallion, who, despite being questioned, said nothing in response to his master.

-x-

"…Our plans continue to diverge from the original scenario," SEELE 06 informed the other monoliths in their secret meeting.

"The Angels have taken Cairo, Egypt and Toronto, Canada," SEELE 13 expressed, "and the military powers that be were unable to take them back. Anyone that tried were either burned to death or died from a plague that can't be treated by medicinal means."

"Yet, the Angels have done nothing other than take up residence in each city visited," added SEELE 02.

"Whoever these Four Horsemen of the Restorative are, they possess powers beyond anything we've ever encountered," went SEELE 08. "The Angels arrive to a city, frighten away the majority of the population, and these men arrive soon after to clear out the ones left that refuse to leave, either through persuasion or murder."

"And the former Third Child is the one they call Death," said SEELE 11. "Nowhere is it written in the Dead Sea Scrolls that there are Four Horsemen in league with the Angels. Nowhere is it written that the Angels would arrive and do little to nothing. They are supposed to arrive, attack Tokyo-3, ignoring other cities, and be dealt with by the Evas. None of that has happened, and everything got out of hand after the Third Child was released and Ikari failed to capture him."

"And now NERV has become burdened with a damaged Evangelion and sick personnel, all caused by a man in white robes and a man dressed like a knight with a flaming sword." SEELE 01, also known as Kiel Lorenz, expressed, very disappointed, like the rest of the council, at the would-be incompetence that was being demonstrated by NERV and others that tried to stand up to the Four Horsemen and get dealt with in return for trying.

Most of the SEELE council had to consider that, with the Four Horsemen involved in their affairs, they were facing a major threat that had, potentially, biblical proportions, and many of them lost their faith and respect in any form of religion. And yet, they hadn't seen or heard of anything else that could've related to anything revolving around the horsemen; there was no reports of rivers or seas boiling, volcanic eruptions, water turning into blood, or the dead rising from the grave (unless you made the former Shinji Ikari the only exception to that possibility). They needed to find a way to deal with these men and whoever employed them before the Angels came to claim two more cities from the world, based on the information they received from Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, who had gotten this from a source outside of NERV. And they needed a way to defeat them all…before they themselves were dealt with for trying to carry out their goal.

"We'll have to speak with Ikari's wife again," Kiel expressed, wondering if the very woman that created both the Evas and the killer child that got revenge on Gendo, along with killing the First Child, could come up with a plan to remedy their situation.

-x-

It seemed this former patch of civilization mirrored his own status, as it had been destroyed and what was left of it left to decompose. This was the ravaged remains of the once great city that was Tokyo, being visited by Death, who could smell the traces of decayed, organic matter that was buried beneath the debris. He could even feel the fragments of bone beneath his feet. The only difference, however, was that he, who was dead person, couldn't decay. As he had nothing else to do until he became aware of Sachiel's endangerment by NERV or some other pathetic group that thought they could take back the pathetic city or kill an Angel, he decided to look at the other parts of the awful archipelago he never had a chance to know about until after he drew his final breath, along with finding out what he could from his twin.

"And this was once Japan's capital?" Death questioned, as his brother floated beside him as he walked over to ravaged site of the long-gone Tokyo Tower. "It's no different from a large, forgotten cemetery: Lifeless and a waste of space."

"And then people had to go and condemn it, along with all the lives that were in it, to the afterlife," went Mako, hovering down to the lifeless concrete and soil. "And for what? For what? For godhood? For power? They went to extremes to when they committed massive homicide, trying to commit genocide years later. This needs to be kept from ever being achieved."

The brothers both touched the ground with their right hands and didn't feel any trace of life in it, not even so much as a meager piece of weed. The whole place was just a dead zone.

NEIGH! Death heard his horse from several feet away, around a corner in the ravaged neighborhood they had wandered into, and ran to see what was wrong. NEIGH!

Running around the remains of a building that was adequate enough to cover a potential crime, Death saw his horse being assaulted by some people with ropes and restraints, dressed in casual uniforms.

"How much do you think we can get off this creature if we sell it?" A man asked a woman, as he wrapped a lasso around Rumi's neck.

"If we sold it to the right buyer, a fortune," the woman answered, and then took a cattle prod to Rumi's left side. "If we gave it to NERV, they'd probably go to extremes to find out if it is a unicorn like from the fairy tales."

NEIGH! Rumi shrieked and reared up, unable to get away.

Death then made his presence known. He counted ten men and two women, and had an immediate dislike of them for harming his horse.

"Hey!" He shouted, and they looked at him. "Take your guilty hands off my horse!"

"Huh?" A man in a shirt with a camouflage theme responded, looking at him. "Ain't he that dead kid that murdered all those people before killing his old man?"

Death manifested his sickle and was ready to deal in his wrath the moment any of them either refused to unhand his mare…or addressed him by his former name.

"I won't hesitate to send you to Hell," he threatened them; after he'd been informed that the Restorative Horsemen were to take it easy for the time being until the next Angel arrived to invade a city, he really wanted to explore the boundaries of this pathetic patch of land that had summer weather all year long, but he wasn't intending to go after people unless he had a reason to. "Release her now!"

"I thought Shinji Ikari was one of those mute kids," the second woman, wearing green jogging clothes, expressed the moment she heard his warning.

SWIFT! Death ran past her, swung his sickle, and carved into her clothes and flesh.

"Aaaurgh!" The woman gasped, and blood sprayed from her waist in all directions.

When she fell, the first woman and the men became terrified; they didn't think a young teen that should've been dead would move like lightning and cut a grown woman in half! They saw Death raise his sickle up, now dripping with blood.

"She shouldn't have said that name," he told them, now looking at the rest of them. "Anyone else want to address me by a name I don't answer to?"

BANG! One of the men, armed with a shotgun, fired at Death…and made a bloody gash in his abdomen, soiling his shirt on both front and back. Unfortunately, the blast was unable to knock him down, only making him stagger three feet backwards.

"Alright," he told them, and his sickle's shaft elongated until its bottom reached to above his knees, "now you're all gonna die!"

SLASH, SLASH, SLASH! He swung his weapon around at the nearest men, cutting through cloth, flesh and bone, hearing nothing but the sound of his own grunts.

"Aaaurgh!" Two of the men screamed, feeling their backs and arms get cut as they tried to get away.

"Quick!" The woman shouted to one of the other men. "Shoot him! Shoot him!"

As they took out their guns, Death swung his sickle horizontally and beheaded them. All four of them. Their bodies fell to the ground…and their heads fell to join them in five seconds, afterward.

"Oh, God!" One of the two injured men gasped. "The Hell with this horse! I'm gone!"

He ran, but Death wasn't having any of that; he'd been shot too many times after coming back as a Horseman of the Restorative, and it was time to end those that dared to raise a gun at him.

"Grrr!" He got angrier, and felt his insides boil.

Suddenly…both his sickle…and his eyes shot out tentacle-like streams of energy, grabbing things at random and grabbing the remaining mortals that tried to capture Rumi.

"Aaaaahh!" They all screamed.

Death then heard nothing for a full minute, and saw only darkness. It wasn't like that time he lost consciousness when he was stepped on; he still felt aware of standing around, but he couldn't make sense of what was happening. Moments, or what felt like moments, later, he saw…himself, submerged in that orange liquid that stunk of blood he saw when he murdered Gendo and discovered his twin.

"The mind and soul have abandoned the flesh they won't let move on," his doppelganger expressed, sounding…almost desperate in his tone. "Flesh without a will to animate it, understands only agony. A will without flesh…cannot truly live. The flesh is weak, seeking release, but they won't let it die. The will is strong, but does not seek what they desire for it to do. Please…the flesh is weak, seeking release…but they won't let it die!"

The next thing Death knew, he stood in front of the twelve mortals that tried to steal his horse, all in pieces, looking like they had been ripped apart instead of cut into pieces. He looked at his hands and saw them ceasing an unusual glow that was red. His mare, Rumi, unscathed by whatever had happened, coming toward him and nuzzling his head.

"Death?" He heard Mako say to him, appearing on his left side. "What did you do?"

"I… I did what I had to in order to protect Rumi," he told him. "One of them called me by that old name that means nothing to me…but a reason to condemn them to the darkness."

"Yet, you did something that you never demonstrated after becoming a Horseman of the Restorative. You…unleashed tentacles from somewhere and they…ripped everyone to pieces…and you have no awareness of this?"

"I wasn't knocked out like last time, but I saw something that seemed to obscure my awareness of what I did. I saw…myself…and I was saying things that didn't make any sense. I kept saying that the flesh is weak, seeking release, but they won't let it die."

"That's unusually similar to a daydream I had recently, before I came to after following you into the purgatory we are now dealt with until further notice. I saw myself in the primordial fluids of Lilith, saying that the flesh had grown weak, seeing the bliss of oblivion, but someone, also identified as 'they', wouldn't let it die." Mako revealed. "That didn't make any sense to me."

"Well…flesh is weak, and that's a fact. You can cut flesh, and it heals slowly. You can take one's arm or leg off, and a new one won't grow in its place to replace the one that's missing."

"Yeah, obviously. Well, we know who to turn to for answers when we know no clear explanation."

"We do…but let's not ask for such until we actually need such. There are other places on this archipelago to see."

Mako nodded his baby head in acceptance and disappeared from sight, leaving Death and Rumi alone.

Death slowly turned to get on the saddle, but stopped when he stepped on the shotgun that was used on him, and picked it up. It was broken, like something ripped it in half with enough force to crush a car, and the horseman thought back to when he was alive…and had acquired the darker means to carry out his vengeance against his mortal enemy and those of the flesh that stood against him. While he might've carried a sickle as his weapon as a horseman, he may have had to own up to a harsh fact that followed him to his purgatory: It had been easier for him to use firearms when he came to possess them. The fact that he carried a sickle seemed to represent a return to the old ways of conflict, where one had to get close enough to your opponent to inflict serious harm before the development of the bow and arrow, the symbolized weapons of Conquest. And then…he threw the damaged weapon away, as it couldn't serve any other purpose than as a piece of discarded metal.

"Next stop…anywhere but here," he announced, and Rumi reared up and galloped towards the next part of Japan that held some interest that included the important, final road in life: Death.

-x-

"Achoo!" Mana sneezed again, and then got out of bed. "Ohh…at least it's not as bad as the last week. People are starting to recover after plenty of bed rest."

She entered her bathroom and used the toilet to empty her bladder of tonight's dinner, which included more vitamin pills to boost her recovery. During the entire two-week road to recovery, she couldn't stop thinking about the former Third Child. No…she couldn't stop thinking about the Horseman of Death, who continued to make himself known to the whole of Japan, one city at a time. Just two days ago, she heard about a criminal being beheaded in a grocery store by a boy with a sickle. She felt that he was venting his rage at people that were, lack of a better word, bad, just like how he murdered those men that kidnapped, raped and videotaped those women that he found in Nagoya.

Death is to be considered an enemy to all forms of life, she thought, getting up from off the toilet and flushing away her last meal. But Death hasn't murdered a lot of people from the places he's visited. Maybe the bad people, but he left the innocent ones alive. He got help for those women, saved the people in that store…and all the police from any of the cities he's been to are wondering what to make of him: A wannabe vigilante that was declared dead the day he murdered his father…or a vengeful ghost that seeks to continue killing…long after his vendetta had been fulfilled? Why has he truly come back? What is he after, if he's after anything?

Then, after washing her hands and getting a drink of water, Mana had the craziest of ideas run through her conscious mind: What better way for her to understand the Horseman of Death…than to meet with the Horseman of Death…in person? A crazy idea, it was, but one that might've helped to satisfy her need for questions that needed to be answered. It was better than not knowing anything about anything. Her grandfather once told her that, should she ever encounter an enemy of sorts, she should try to understand her enemy as best she could.

She grabbed her shoes and coat and stepped out of her room. With the majority of the security personnel still sick, it was easy for her to sneak away from the Geo-Front, though she suspected that the sounds of moving machinery, such as an elevator, would alert those awake that somebody was up and about around NERV. But once she stepped foot into Tokyo-3 for the first time in her twelve-year-old life, none of that was going to matter for her. She never imagined for the city that the former Third Child rendered into a ghost town to be so…quiet.

As she walked down the streets, getting a better look at the majority of the parts of the city that wasn't damaged by either the Angel or people, she made sure to keep her distant from the Angel that she was told by the other horsemen was showing a measure of leniency toward. At the same time, hoping her presence was enough to bring Death to her.

"Brrr," she shivered a bit from the cold. "What'd I do to be in the sunlight. Achoo!"

NEIGH! She heard the neighing of a horse, and thought to what was written about the Horseman of Death, hundreds of generations ago.

"…I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hell was following close behind him." She recalled those exact words from the Book of Revelation. "…and Hell was following close behind him."

The sound of galloping feet got louder as she stood under a streetlight, making her presence known and easy to see for the man she wanted to meet in person. Her heart was racing as the additional sounds of snorting and the unsheathing of a blade came; she couldn't deny that he was in the city…and was nearby now.

A pale horse came from around a street corner down the street from where she stood…and its rider saw her, holding a sickle that glistened under the light of the moon.

"Oh!" Mana sighed, holding onto the streetlight.

-x-

Death looked down at the girl and wondered why she was in this pitiful city. At first, he wanted to assume that she was just a runaway that left an abusive home and strayed into an abandoned city that was no-man's land. But then he recognized the stink of blood that was on her, not at all different from the spot where he fell from mortality, and realized that she was one of them. One of those fools that rode in a behemoth that was a mockery of another behemoth of a higher authority. This made him frustrated to know that people continued to persist against those that were either overestimated or underestimated of their unpredictability, just as he had been.

"I hope you can give me a good reason not to condemn you to the next world," he told her.

Mana sneezed and snorted, sucking up the snot that was leaking out of her nose, and responded, "On my world as a young woman…and a fellow Japanese native, I'm not here to disrespect your authority. I'm only here to talk."

Death then became accompanied by his twin, who appeared in front of Mana and him.

"She's telling the truth, brother," Mako expressed, which surprised Mana; she never expected to see a ghost baby appear…and be able to talk.

"Oh, Kami," she shuddered, and then Death put his sickle away.

"You don't appear to converse unless it's whenever I need to speak with you or in the presence of the other horsemen," he spoke to Mako. "How can you be sure she's here to…just talk?"

"I'm sure that if anyone wanted to assault or entrap Death, the Endgame, they would've came prepared…and not getting over a sickness dealt to them by Conquest." He told him.

The next thing that happened was that Rumi came nuzzled the right side of Mana's neck.

"Oh…" Mana moaned in fear; she never thought this could happen to her before, not even by a horse associated to one that was either good or bad.

"Well, Rumi seems to like you," said Death to the girl. "Okay. I will hear you. So…whenever you're ready to talk…and whenever Rumi stops greeting you."

The pale horse then backed away from Mana, and the girl let go of the streetlight.

"Okay," she inhaled, beginning her talk with the Horseman of Death, "my name is Mana Asagi. I was contacted by a paramilitary agency to deal with a threat made by unknown monsters called Angels. My priority was only to protect people from certain doom by an enemy that was believed to want the end of the world…until you came along. You seem to know the truth to what's really going on, and that's what I really want to know…if you'll tell me, please."

Death looked at her, then at Mako and then at Rumi, whom was sitting on the ground. Then…he moved under the streetlight and toward the wall of the building on the sidewalk and sat against it.

"I am Death, the Endgame," he introduced himself to her. "I am a member of the Four Horsemen of the Restorative, charged with the almost impossible purpose of fulfilling an almost ignored goal to heal the Earth…and the lives that were taken because of the violence instigated by mortals that seek an end to all forms of mortal freedom…and the negatives of individuality and mortality. Whoever's Hell-bent on triggering world-wide genocide is hiding in the shadows of the public, using vast resources, including scientists, finances, politicians, the military. They practically own the world in secret…but that's going to end soon."

"And the Angels?" Mana asked.

"They are here with a similar purpose, to heal the Earth. But as part of the mortal coil, they need to be protected from external harm that can send their souls back to the realm that is Heaven. They are necessary in undoing the pain that the planet suffers from. The extensive deforestation attempts, the massive firestorms caused by bombings, the fallout and pollution, the loss of animal and plant life. Once all eight points are selected by eight Angels, all the death and destruction will be undone, the lost souls will rise from the afterlife and the planet will breathe again. But until that day comes, the Angels must be protected from harm by the Four Horsemen. They come to a chosen destination, clear out as many lives as possible to ensure that they are protected against harm…and the horsemen arrive soon after to clear out the people that haven't left…by any means necessary, including murder…if it gets the word out to others that their city, their town, wherever people live…is no longer their domain until after we're done with it."

"So, then…since you're Death, it's obvious that your methods are all murder-based, aren't they?"

"Yes…and no. Tokyo-3 is my protectorate until I get informed of the next location chosen by an Angel, and it was abandoned, emptied by me before I drew my last breath. Eight locations, four lost souls chosen to be horsemen to ensure the Angels are kept protected, assigned to protect two of the Angels of the two locations they are assigned. I've just made it a minor habit of murdering those with dark intentions in whichever city I visit that's on this pitiful archipelago until I am assigned my next Angel to protect from harm."

"And…once you've all achieved your goal, once you've healed the Earth…what then for you?"

"Could you elaborate?"

"I mean, what becomes of you after you've done all that you're tasked with doing? Do you…just go back to wherever you were sent to after you died? Do you just…fade from existence?"

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster," went Mako, "and when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."

"Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche," Mana responded to the baby's quoting of an old philosophy. "How does that answer my question?"

"It's already too late for the both of us to return to our previous lives, the ones that were taken from us," Mako explained, "but, in exchange for our help in achieving this goal, we have been promised a right to live again, either through resurrection, which is the path we're not interested in taking, or reincarnation, the path to new life that isn't tied to the previous one you no longer have. That's a reward and a damnation…far more positive than we have experienced in our state of purgatory."

"Reincarnation's like…like a clean slate, where your soul is deprived of the past you lived in so that you may live, unbound by the nightmares that were lived in the last life. People believed that we can die thousands of time…and be born and reborn thousands of time. But for a few, just a few, have to perform various tasks set upon them in order to earn the rights to a new life. I never believed it to be true…until I met you two."

"If we've truly lived more than once," went Death, reminded of his previous visits from faces of another universe where he had known a good life, "it surely wasn't around here that we did."

"Ahh," Mana yawned; unlike the Horseman of Death, she was still alive and needed things necessary for her livelihood, like more sleep and time recover from an illness that still afflicted her immune system. "Sorry. I should get going. I still have a bad cold and I don't want to infect you with it."

"We're dead," Death told her. "There's no one to infect."

Mana then got up and walked away, but then stopped.

"I, uh… It was nice to speak with you, Death, the Endgame," she told the horseman. "Thank you for your time."

As he climbed back onto the saddle, Death looked at her, but whatever words that could've reached his mouth never came.

"You'll have to forgive my brother," went Mako. "It's not easy for him to say kind words…but in time…with patience…you'll likely hear him say such words. Purgatory's as much an opportunity to redeem a lost soul than it is to condemn one. Do take care, miss…uh…"

"Asagi. Mana Asagi."

"Mako. No last name. Just Mako."

Mana then ran off, wondering how long it would be before anyone found out she was not in the Geo-Front and in the city that was off-limits. She'd probably get hammered for risking her life just to speak to Death about what could've been seen as valuable information in proving that NERV was facing an enemy they simply couldn't beat…and one of them was Death. Literally. The Grim Reaper incarnate.

A/N: Another chapter bites the flesh. I bet none of you expected Shinji/Death to experience incapacitation like that. Well, I have more in store. There will be plenty to partake on in this season in between now and until the next two Angels arrive to select the last two places to be used. Until the next chapter. Peace out.