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?

8. Needing and Wanting

Creation began on 02-25-14

Creation ended on 04-09-14

Neon Genesis Evangelion

A New Cause: Needing and Wanting

It didn't look like there was much of a city left on this side of Japan. Where Tokyo-3 once resided was nothing more than a lifeless patch of land that spanned for miles, contaminated by some means because the soil visible was reddish-black and the water was reddish-orange. A red streak of some sort spread across the night sky, even staining the moon, giving the land an eerie presence. Nowhere was a single life present or within the range of hearing.

"My God," went Mana Asagi, standing in front of a beach-like setting, staring at the reddish-orange water rising and falling against the white sand.

"No," she heard someone say in response. "God is dead. They killed him."

She turned to her left and saw Death, on his knees, looking like he had aged prematurely because his face looked wrinkled. He was dressed in what looked like a school uniform: White shirt and black pants, very basic for a school boy in Japan.

"Death? What happened here?" She asked him.

"People that wanted what was best left unsought for," he stated, "spread a poisonous fire…and purged the planet of all the life left on it, right down to the last microbe. This…is a world of absolute lifelessness. Nothing lives, and any actual trace of life that did exist…has all been reduced to the blood water that was once blue."

"Blood water?" She gasped, looking back at the red ocean. "Oh!"

She covered her mouth and ran away from the beach, straight toward a patch of debris and threw up.

"They believed there was nothing left but sadness and despair," she heard Mako, who appeared in front of her. "To obtain the powers of the divine authority that gave them their existence, they sacrificed everyone to reach their goal. Men, women, children, plants and animals, all gone. The trees, the birds, the rats and roaches. People that knew nothing of the violence that was being demonstrated and the women that were about to embrace motherhood, their lives taken by people that were no better than our own parents when we had flesh and blood. That woman, she even helped them to reach their goal. Her bright future for all of mankind was nothing more than a falsehood, a selfish lie to try and motivate us to live."

Mana wiped the leftover bile from her mouth with the sleeve of her right arm and saw Death stagger over to where she stood and his infant twin levitated.

"This is awful," she expressed to them. "This is just awful."

"You're disgusting, Fourth Child," she heard that female voice, that awful, self-centered girl that was a year older than her from nearby. "Talking to the dead like they're equal. Like they're to be respected."

Seeing Asuka in her plugsuit, but sporting a bandaged arm and eye, like she'd been in a severe accident, Mana wanted to question her reasons for constantly putting her down every chance she got, but the sight of the injured girl was making her hesitate from doing so.

"You let the Angels live and this was the outcome of your choice," the redhead told her.

"You're terrible at lying," went Death in response to her words. "You know damn well that the Angels had nothing to do with what the people truly responsible did to everyone, including yourself, but you're too blind by your arrogance, your desire to be seen, heard and remembered for years and generations, to accept that truth."

"You're not one to talk, Third Child! You died and people still spoke of you!"

"I'm no Third Child. Your addressing me by that designation does neither me nor anyone else any justice. You view people around you as either fools or competition, when you know that there are hardly any souls that flaunt any degree of the would-be superiority complex that you often express. And it was you that purposely endangered Ms. Asagi and nearly got her killed, which in turn drove me and the Horseman of War to come after you and punish you with pain and despair."

"What?" Mana questioned. "Miss Soryu almost got me killed?"

RUMBLE! The ground rattled and Mana fell to the ground.

"Mana," went Mako to her, "you must wake up."

"What?"

"Wake up, Mana. Wake up. WAKE UP!"

GASP! Mana awoke, sweat on her brow and allover her sheets, panting as she found herself in her room, where she recalled herself turning in after her last online chat with her father.

She looked at her palms, seeing the sweat glistening on them, and she got out of bed.

"What a horrible dream," she told herself, stepping into her bathroom, splashing water on her face. Maybe I should try to speak with Death and his brother again. Or maybe Mr. Fuyutsuki. Or Ms. Katsuragi. Anyone I can talk to without much trouble.

She checked her clock, seeing that it was another half-hour before seven in the morning, and decided to call it an early start.

-x-

The morning sunlight shone over the Japanese Institute of Insanity, which was unusually quiet today, more so than the previous days. A door kept sliding open and closed, as though it were unable to make up its mind…or there was something in the way to keep it from closing. On the ground in between the door, a woman, dressed in security guard uniform, but with a bloody face and back, kept it from closing up. Further inside the hall entrance to the lobby, over at the desk, its clerk, a young man, hid underneath the counter, whimpering in fear over what had transpired last night, most fortunate enough to still be alive,

Nobody that worked here wanted to believe that a former patient would just come back for revenge, to settle old score or eliminate loose ends. But a former patient did return…and he claimed every soul that he had a score to settle with, taking them to Hell.

-x-

"Mercy's dead"

First, the security cameras all went static! Then, the lights went out, coming back on only because of the emergency generators, ensuring that some of the cells that were designed to be unlocked electronically were kept locked. The only thing that didn't go off to indicate any danger were the alarms, which were supposed to go off in response to a security breech.

"What's going on here?!" One of the female guards questioned a male guard.

"I don't know, the main power got cut off," he explained to her what he knew. "We're on emergency power until they can get the problem sorted out."

Scrape! A sound, like a blade against the wall, came. Scrape!

"What the Hell was that?" The male guard asked.

From around the corner nearby, a young man was shown, levitating a foot off the floor.

"Ga…ugh…unh…" He gagged, looking like he was ready to drop dead.

"Kurama?" The guards asked him, wondering what was wrong with him…and then they saw the sickle.

The man, Kurama, was slowly brought to the floor, revealing that his neck had a hand gripping onto it, lifting him off his feet, and from behind him stood a person that they hadn't seen in many weeks. And this young fellow wasn't hard to forget, as he'd been mentioned about in the news ever since he came back from God-knows-where.

"You?" They pointed at him, and Death, formerly known to them as Shinji Ikari, with a new look and a sickle, looked at them with malice.

"Yes, me," he responded, and tightened his left hand onto the guard's neck.

"Aaaaaurgh…aaaaurgh!" Kurama choked.

"I didn't really intend to come back here," he explained to them, "but then I realized something that I couldn't overlook, anymore: My life here was as much a living Hell as it was before I was incarcerated. All of you, the guards and the board, gave me that Hell. And now…I'm here to give to you…a literal Hell. One that you can't walk away from with a guilty background."

"Aaaaurgh!" Kurama screamed, and Death snapped his neck, silencing him for good, spilling blood across the floor and wall before letting him fall.

"One guard down…and nine more to go," he told them, revealing that he had enough recall to know how many guards needed to be dealt with…and how many deserved to be butchered like animals.

He manipulated the shaft of his sickle and made it longer so that it was broomstick-sized, giving him a weapon with which to slash and pummel his targets with.

The guards took out their guns, but Death brandished his scythe at them.

"You two don't want to go there," he threatened them. "It's been done many times before, and everyone that pulled a trigger got dealt with."

"What do you want?" The female guard asked him.

"I want y'all dead," he answered.

"Oh, Hell, no," the male guard responded, and ran, followed by the female guard.

"You can't run from me," Death told them. "I will find you."

The female guard recalled the time she actually tried to assist in two guards trying to assault the former patient/inmate when he was younger, and now his ghost had come back to take them all to Hell for their crimes against him. She wasn't going down without a fight.

"You're dead!" She told Death, and raised her gun at him, shooting him four times in the chest. "Die!"

Death staggered back against a wall, recalling the day this woman actually smiled at the two male guards that tried to sexually assault him when he was younger, around nine years old, and decided that she would know how it feels to be looked down upon. Really looked down upon.

"You shouldn't have done that," he told her, holding a heavy ball and lengthy chain at the end of his weapon. "But, then again, it was to be expected, even if I hadn't said anything about it."

He threw the ball and chain at her, watched the chain wrap around her neck and the ball wrap around the chain to keep her entrapped. It was so tight that it blocked her airway, causing her to gasp for what little air she could get as she dropped her gun.

"How does it feel?" He asked her, holding his end of the chain, and then he pulled it to force her onto her knees. "How does it feel…to be looked down upon? To feel the light that is hope flee your grasp? I never knew such hope to exist. The light was taken from me long ago, and being here was darkness. Most can't see in the darkness…or survive in it."

"Gaa…aaurgh…" She gagged, unable to breathe at all.

"Hey!" The other guard gasped, aiming his gun at the horseman's face. "Hey, let her go!"

SWISH! Death threw his sickle at the guard's chest, impaling him clean through while holding onto the chain, and then yanked it to bring the dying guy down to his knees.

"You guards…and the other people that run it…gave me a extended period of torture whenever I wasn't in my room drawing my past, nightmares and perceptions of what could never be for me, even if I did live a long life," Death continued to hold the chain, his face now exhibiting features that weren't at all like the kind you see on a live face; his flesh looked like it was decomposing and looking like a nightmare made more real than anything else possible. "Dying set me free from the bindings of the physical abuse…but the only way to free one from the bindings of the psychological abuse…is to either forgive and let go…or seek the vengeance that is desired…long after dying. Forgiveness isn't for every soul that has been tortured or knows how to torture…and I'm not in a forgiving mood…so the only solution is the very one that is personified by my condemned status. It's time to die."

He pulled the chain…and both guards fell to the ground, their hearts no longer beating…and their souls sent to Hell. Pulling the chain again, he freed his weapon from the cooling flesh of his latest victims, returning it to his right hand. Now, he had six guards left to send to Hell. And once they were dealt with, only the suits that pulled the strings behind the institution would be left to be dealt with.

"Aaaaahh!" He heard a scream from close by. "Aaaaahh!"

Several more screams, womanly screams, the kind you could only hear from women, came from down a hall. One that wasn't on the floor he was currently on. Fortunately, he had the ability to track foul intentions, so he knew which floor to go to. No mortal soul could hide their presence from Death.

He entered an elevator and pressed the button for the third floor going up.

"Aaaahh!" The screaming got louder (and far worse) than they were before.

Reaching his level destination, he stepped out of the elevator and walked down the hall on his left, seeing three doors wide open.

"Aaaahh!"

"Oh, yeah!" He heard a man's voice grunt out, and his grip on his sickle tightened. "You like that, don't you, bitch?!"

He approached the door on his right and stepped inside, seeing the guard's back facing him…while said guard was dominating a woman that screamed in distress; from the rapid pace of her heart and the emotional intensity in her screams, the woman, barely in her mid-twenties, was not consenting to what the guard was doing to her with his pants dropped to his knees.

SLASH! He swung his sickle at the guard's back and cut through the cloth, flesh and bone.

"Aaaurgh!" He screamed, slowly turning his head around to see his killer, and couldn't believe who it was that had claimed his soul.

Death then grabbed him by his head and yanked him out the room, revealing the woman was bare, bruised and leaking the guard's waste along with her own blood, weeping from the pain she had been feeling from his unwelcome invite. He turned around and walked into the second room that was open and found a second guard with a second woman on the cot; the woman was weeping as the guard forced himself upon her.

"Hey!" The guard gasped, but then actually saw the sickle-wielding horseman's face. "You?! No, no! Not you! You're dead! They killed you!"

He pulled out of the crying girl, for a girl she was, not even sixteen yet, and reached for his gun. Firing seven rounds at the horseman to get him to back away.

"They killed you!" He shouted at Death, who staggered backwards with each shot. "They killed you!"

Death fell to the floor, but got back up, just as the guard was accompanied by the third guard, who was zipping up his pants, apparently finished with his own victim.

"Shinji Ikari?!" He gasped. "Oh, shit! Run for it!"

"Oh, no, you can't run from me. Hell has come for your souls!" Death told them, and then dashed toward them. "Enjoy this!"

He tackled them and sent them flying backwards down the hall until they slammed against a wall.

"Urgh!" They groaned.

"My arm," the guard on the left went, holding his right shoulder. "I think it's broken."

They looked down the hall and saw Death slowly walking towards them, as if savoring the moment that he would kill them. His face now looking like it did before he died, but showing a calming rage that hid a fate worse than what was in front of them.

"No, Shinji!" The other guard begged. "Please! We were just fooling with you back then! We were just fooling! Surely, you can take a joke, right?"

Raising his sickle, the horseman uttered, "Abusing others is no joke…and neither is this."

SLASH! He swung the weapon and cut through the flesh and bone, sending the guy's head falling into the injured guy's lap.

"Aaaahh! Please! Shinji, it wasn't entirely our call! Your father, he wired the whole thing with your situation! He paid off everyone! The judge, the jury, the asylum board, we were all paid to look the other way when it came to you!" The injured guard tried to talk his way out of getting murdered.

Death then had a look of cold neutrality on his face…but his eyes seemed to be on fire. His right arm's gauntlet retracting its armor like sliding plates, except with a mind of its own, to reveal, to the guard's horror, a hand that had been reduced to nothing more than bones, stripped of all the flesh.

"Oh, shit," the guard gasped, and saw the skeletal limb move its fingers without the aid of nerves or muscles, showing how real this unrealistic situation he was in had truly been shown. "You're really dead. You're really dead."

"Shinji Ikari is dead," Death told him, raising his sickle over his head. "I am Death, the Endgame, a merciless Grim Reaper…and your grave has been long since dug out for you."

SWISH! Now two heads had been cut off their necks, each in the other's lap. And the Grim Reaper's gauntlet recovered his right arm.

"Unh," he heard a whimpering and turned around, seeing one of the women that had been raped by the guards, slowly crawling out of her room, and looking at him.

She looked old enough to be his former mother, with waist-length, brownish hair and blue eyes, wearing a dirty, hospital-type gown that had been ripped on the left shoulder, reducing it to a toga.

Death felt the dark stain that she had caused in her past, how she suffered from a psychosis shortly after having delivered a girl…and murdering her own husband. She had been incarcerated to get treatment for her psychosis over a year ago, leaving her daughter in the care of her sister until she wasn't a danger to herself or others. But the guards had seen her as fresh meat like any pretty girl that was admitted to the institute, and instead of keeping watch over her, they tortured her.

The other girls, the teen he saved from before and the one in her mid-twenties, soon crawled out of their rooms and looked at him.

"The boy that drew pictures every day," the teen girl uttered; she had seen him a few times to recognize his face. "Your ghost returns to cast judgment upon us all."

Death felt the dark stains in each woman's soul, but found they were so minor that they were not worth his time to deal with. Each patient that had been sexually assaulted by the guards had sought help with their illnesses, not to be locked away forever. They were guilty…but sought to return to society after they got the medical attention they required, doing right by their goals to return to the people they sought to return to.

He approached the three and, as he got close enough to smell the darkness and not feel it, he could smell the guards' personal stench in their flesh, just like he had seen with the first trio of women he rescued from a future of torment. Then, holding up his weapon, he uttered the words he felt they needed to hear.

"The guilty will be condemned," he started, "and the tortured will be spared."

SLASH! He slashed the air in front of them, and watched them vomit out blood and other various fluids for a moment.

"Stand aside and know mercy in the face of torment. Interfere…and know a quick or extended death." He told them, now interested in the rest of the guards and the board before the night was over. Letting his spiritual detection seek out the darkness of the institution, he saw beyond his current setting and into a boardroom where what was left of the guards and the very board of directors that the guard said his father paid to look the other way. Now, he had a reason to look back into the past…and sever more strings that he thought he could just forget about.

Voices faded in and out of his hearing as he left the women and wandered closer toward a door that was far from the floor he was on. Talks of further transactions and admittance of new patients with mental illnesses that could be treated, but treated very scarcely to ensure the very facility the owners ran could continue lining their pockets. There was even those that spoke of the complaints made by the media that still had something to say about himself. Once he reached the door that led to the boardroom on the building's seventh floor, he reached for the knob and turned it over, breaking the locking mechanism to allow him entry into the room.

"What the Hell?!" A male suit gasped, seeing Death walk in. "Oh, god!"

"Security!" A woman raised her voice.

"Some of the security's gone, due to a major case of murder," he informed them, and slammed the door shut behind himself.

"What is this?!" Another female suit questioned.

"This…is an old case/new case scenario, board," he answered her, being cryptic. "The old case is my ill treatment during my time here…when I still had a pulse. The new case…is my finding out some very disturbing details from a guard a few minutes ago. He confided in me before he lost his head."

He approached the right side of the desks that were placed into an upside-down "U" facing him and set down his sickle atop the first desk, frightening the board.

"So that bastard that was once my father paid off people to deal with me in foul ways after I murdered those uncaring jerks that showed me no kindness or acceptance, and you took the money without question, locking me away and doing whatever you chose to do to me in order to make my time here a merciless Hell. This unexpected revelation has also sparked a good news/bad news scenario for all in this room. Good news for me…and bad news for all of you."

"Hold on a minute, Mr. Ikari," one of the men got up and raised his left hand in defense. "Surely, we can talk about all of this. I mean, this is all just a misunderstanding."

"And some people don't seem to understand the difference between past tense and present tense when it comes to identity. I died in Tokyo-3, and I cast aside all ties to the name Ikari, including the very name itself. My name is Death…and all you…are no different from me when I was alive. You're pawns, assets, tools and cattle. Expendable in every way, disposable and as replaceable as common objects…and each of your death certificates reveal that you've all expired." He revealed to their uneasiness and fear that he really meant to do what he had decided upon doing to them, to actually go through with the vendetta as he had with Gendo Ikari.

"Please!" The women pleaded to him. "Have mercy!"

"Didn't you hear?" He asked them, picking back up his sickle. "Mercy's dead."

And then came the screams of fatality and hopelessness.

-x-

In that one night of revelation and retribution, the Horseman of Death had slain more of those that were guilty…and used facades of innocence to hide with from the world around them. He stepped out of the building just as the last of the security guards Death had a vendetta against breathed her final breath before succumbing to her life-threatening injuries inflicted upon her body. His jacket and shirts had seen wear and tear to the point that discarded them, leaving him only in his pants and boots; thankfully, he always brought extra shirts with him and could find more coats in Tokyo-3. Soon, the authorities would arrive and see his bloody message written in his victims' remains, and they would know that the murders were the result of injustice having been done to many lives and not only his own. Whether they would do something about it that didn't involve coming after him was uncertain of right now, but the horseman would be gone before they arrived.

Neigh! He heard his horse whine as she galloped toward him and stopped in front of him.

"Good girl," he told her as he patted the right side of her neck. "Thank you for bringing me here."

Walking over to the right side of the saddle, he ripped open a plastic bag that he carried his extra shirts in every time he left to go hunting for criminals, and covered his torso with a new shirt that was tie-dyed in many colors, leaving swirl patterns. With that task done, he walked over to a nearby trash bin and disposed of the ripped bag before he departed to wherever he was going to go next.

-x-

For the umpteenth time, Yui Ikari was at a loss for scientific discovery. The sample she had received of the blood that belonged to the Horseman of Death was as unusual as it was complex. There was no definable cell structure, no trace of life whatsoever that would've been seen in a living person. And what was more unusual was that its compositional makeup mystified her; it was not human per se, but the elements that added up to the entire sample were close enough to compare to a human's. Since she knew enough about the human body's compositions, she had to suspect the blood was artificial, meaning that the horseman that was her youngest son himself was artificial in a physical sense. But this suspicion raised an intriguing question: Who possessed the skill capable of creating an artificial body that seemed almost perfect, and to what purpose could this achieve?

She had examined the cloned bodies of Rei Ayanami, or rather, the artificial human bodies meant to house a portion of Lilith's consciousness, and found that, despite the frailness exhibited within each clone, even the ones that were salvageable for genetic research, none of them were in the same league as the horseman's body. It was like the cloned bodies were just meant to pass as human to a slight degree, but the horseman's body was perfected, well-made and, based on the hostility factors in which the blood had been acquired, didn't require any form of medication just to function.

If his body's indeed artificial, she thought, looking away from her microscope and notes, it's an impressive piece of work. A lot of time and effort went into crafting it.

Then, she sighed and looked at the tanks holding her sons' regenerated bodies. There had been some more activity in them as of last night; respiratory functions had returned in Mako's infant body, along with a strengthened heartbeat in both twins, and lower brain function, but still not enough to bring them out of the tanks. Their bodies were returning to a semblance of life, but not enough to be considered alive or resurrected to move about on their own. If anything, the reanimated cellular activity would be sufficient for genetic research, perhaps even cloning.

"…Are you really willing to move Heaven and Earth just to prove your beliefs?" She frowned slightly at the sound of Shinji's little boy persona, who appeared sitting atop the EKG machine. "You're striving for the unforgivable. You should let go of your goal. You've already caused enough pain and suffering."

"You wouldn't understand pain and suffering," she countered, which should've been a pathetic attempt on her part, trying to argue with a person that wasn't truly there. "What would you have me do?"

Driving Force had a thoughtful look on his face and expressed, "Reveal the truth to the casualties that others have suffered…otherwise, the truth will find other, darker ways to be heard or known to the world that has been devastated by those that committed an unforgivable sin against the Earth."

"Tell the people the truth? Tell the people why they lost their homes, why children lost their mothers and why I spearheaded the creation of biomechanical monstrosities that were made animated by the souls of deceased mothers? Now I should ask you this: Are you insane?"

Driving Force gave her a frown and sighed as he nodded that he was insane.

"But in the end, we're all a little crazy," he expressed, making no attempt to hide his new-found contempt for her. "Some…made crazy more so than others. Tell me, do you think it was insanity that sparked your sister's contempt for your son after you faked your death and your husband abandoned him shortly after? Was it a twisted form of fate that your sister unintentionally motivated him to do the unforgivable and prove a perverse reversal of what had been heard by him and used against her? She said she wouldn't miss him if he died…and he didn't miss her when he killed her and her family. She didn't accept him…so he made sure she paid the price for her cruelty against him, just as he made you pay for your cruelty."

"I'm not cruel," she defended herself.

"You can deny it all you want, but you can't undo what you did. Why do you think he grew to hate you so much after all these years? You were absent in his need for comfort, for acceptance… You kept secrets from him, tried to manipulate him in subtle ways… All you've truly done…is the only thing that means anything to you. You play at being a mother, but you wouldn't take your responsibilities as one serious…because you would lose control, eventually. But if you were to treat your family, your surviving child, as if they were just pieces of an experiment or some project you were working… Now, that's something you could live with. The only thing you could live with." He told her, turning away from her with resentment…and hurt, then disappearing from sight.

Yui sighed before looking at the twins in the LCL tanks again, seeing a change in their current activity: The brain-dead boys had one hand raised against the glass separating them, as if trying to communicate with one another. A tear fell from her left eye; the truth was right in front of her, and she was arrogant to admit it, even to herself. To be toying with her sons' remains was just another scientific move…of a fearless scientist. Not a mother.

-x-

"…I didn't know NERV had a fountain garden," went Mana, having a walking conversation with Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki.

"Not many of the personnel know of this place," he explained, showing her the garden of fountains and very few flowers. "Rarely anyone comes here."

Mana sat down on the concrete ground under a gazebo to keep the sunlight pumped into the Geo-Front from the abandoned city above for its solar energy needs out of her face. Earlier, right after lunch, she had crossed paths with the elderly man and asked if he was free for a conversation. It turned out that with the lack of activity, from both NERV and the Angels, the very agency was on constant standby, so everyone had time to do other things. If they had other things to do, that was.

"It seems saddening," she told him, "that no one comes here often. It's a beautiful setting, but rather isolated, almost abandoned."

"I was present during your synchronization test after breakfast," Fuyutsuki expressed. "You seemed distracted by something."

"I, uh… I had an unsettling nightmare last night," she told him. "The world had been devastated, but it wasn't the Angels' fault. There was no trace of life anywhere, not even a tiny weed was near my feet. I met the Horseman of Death in my nightmare, and he looked…like he had seen the very end of the world because he had a front-row seat to watch it happen from. His face had aged prematurely, and…he had explained some of what had happened, that there were people responsible, but he couldn't explain any further because of Ms. Soryu showing up."

"Well, a bad dream would help to explain Dr. Akagi's irritability."

"Except she seems irritable all the time, ever since before I got here."

"She was one of Death's victims to survived his massacre when he came to kill his father."

"And that's why she's angry all the time? Because Death took her legs when he came to get revenge? But…didn't he leave a message of some sort that explained he wouldn't hurt anybody if they stayed away from him?"

"He did…but some of the people either didn't leave…or didn't take his threat serious."

"How can people not take Death serious? He avoided the police, took out a bunch of assassins that his father sent after him, left bloody messages to be found by people to spread the word that he was a force to be reckoned with, and when he showed up, he was taking no prisoners…and he wasn't going to stop until his vendetta had been settled. Why…would people not take serious a boy that was feared by the general population that heard of him and wanted nothing to do with him?"

"Because…if you believe that somebody that's believed to be dangerous, and had been locked away for a long time because he did something so awful, only to be let loose by accident or through some other means that allows him to escape…then he becomes something more metaphysical than a killer…and one you can't touch, anymore."

"Like what, Mr. Fuyutsuki?"

"A legend, almost. When you devote yourself to a goal and see it through its conclusion."

"I've heard something like that in a film once before. It was a modern-day Batman film. He's a legend in his own right. But you're right about the path to being a legend."

Fuyutsuki watched the girl dip her left hand into the water beside the gazebo and sat down on a bench nearby inside it.

"You seem to idolize Death a little, don't you?" He asked her.

"Um, no, I don't idolize him," she told him in response. "There's a difference between idolization, fascination, obsession and admiration. I find him to be fascinating as an embodiment of vengeance, which is different from evil; there's no limit to evil while there's always a limit to vengeance."

"Yet vengeance may never know fulfillment."

"You ever heard of the legend of the crow? An old, Native American myth?"

"I have not. What is it about?"

"People back then believed that a crow could carry people's souls to the realm of the dead…only to sometimes bring them back to settle unresolved matters. The crow drew great strength to achieve impossible feats from the love of those a fallen soul brought back still has, revealing that a soul brought back doesn't settle unresolved issues for the sake of revenge…but for the sake of redemption. So…sometimes, the vengeance you seek is the vengeance…to be absolved of damnation and such."

"Where did you learn all this?"

"The States. It's always a necessity to draw up knowledge from many different places. If you take it from just one place…"

"It becomes rigid and stale."

"Exactly."

As they continued to converse, in Gendo's former office, the new commander was engaged in conversation with Misato and Ritsuko over the synchronization tests.

"…Both pilots' synchronization ratios were fluctuating between forty and seventy percent," Ritsuko explained the tests to him, "but the Fourth Child's was barely over fifty-two percent."

"Could it be because she's still recovering from that plague NERV was afflicted with by that horseman with the bow?" Misato questioned.

"It's possible, but synchronization tests between the Eva and its pilot shouldn't be affected by any physical changes in the pilot. Even recovering from an illness shouldn't affect the tests. This could be more psychological than physical."

"What do you suggest, Dr. Akagi?" The commander asked the faux-blond.

"Retest the Fourth Child to see if her fluctuating synch-ratio has resolved itself," Ritsuko told him.

But then the commander noticed something off in the photograph of Mana Asagi.

"Where's her interface headset?" He asked, noticing that the Second Child had hers on, but the Fourth Child's was nowhere to be seen on her head.

"We didn't get it from the NERV branch in Massachusetts yet," Ritsuko revealed; every interface headset had to be custom-made for each pilot, even a pilot candidate, and the ones designed for the Fourth Child were still in-transit.

"Could their absence be part of her fluctuating synch-ratio?" He suggested.

"It's possible, but we've never had this problem with the First or Second Child."

"Except Mana's younger than Asuka," Misato added. "We should take the one-year age difference into consideration, as well. Also, it took Rei months to synch with Unit-00 and Asuka a year to synch with Unit-02. Mana's only had a few weeks to synch with Unit-03."

"Yes, that is true. Have her retested with Unit-03 after her interface headset comes in."

As their meeting ended, Asuka continued to examine the ballistic remnants in the halls damaged by the shootouts the Horseman of Death had been involved in. She just seemed to have a much harder time comprehending the devastation that he alone caused when he was alive. It would've been believable if he'd been affiliated with a gang or cult, but as a one-man army, it was insane. The destruction led all the way down to Terminal Dogma's most guarded location.

With the revelation of the crucified Lilith being public knowledge to all of NERV, the Committee explained that the Angels would be coming to attempt a merger with this immortal being which would wipe out all life on the planet. Of course, not many of the personnel believed this to be true, but decided not to question it any further than necessary. All except one man, that is.

Ryoji Kaji was in Lilith's chamber right this moment, studying the crucified being that he believed the Angels had been after, taking pictures and analyzing the LCL that leaked from its unseen wounds and the multitude of dangling legs that twitched every now and then.

"What are you doing down here, Mr. Kaji?" He turned around and saw Asuka present, looking up at Lilith, disgusted by the details she took in.

"I could ask the same of you, Asuka," he countered.

"You think he did this, too?" She asked him, wondering if Death had anything to do with Lilith being crucified and massacred like this.

"Impossible," he answered her, knowing a bit more now than he used to. "This thing's been here since before he was even born, and NERV has been experimenting with it ever since. Besides, why would Death want to do anything with this? It's crucified, defenseless. It couldn't do anything to him, so he wouldn't have a reason to feel threatened by it. The only reason the whole agency knows about it is because Death made it so when he murdered his father before he died. It was a day of revelations than it had been a day of retribution."

Shuddering at the sight of one of Lilith's many legs twitching, Asuka retorted, "Yet, nothing has happened since that killer died and came back. Anybody that dares to trespass on those cities invaded by the Angels are given the choice to either leave or die should they encounter the horsemen. What are they up to? We got an Angel up in Tokyo-3 that's doing nothing, and no other Angels have made a single attempt to try and come down here. Some people are pretty sure that they could all take the base if they wanted to."

"All we have is Death's claim that they would stay away so long as we stayed away. We made an attempt on one and, despite the signs of abuse and would-be attempted murder, you stepped on Death. We get defeated by not one…but two horsemen that come to his aid, and suffer a heavy case of the cold for weeks. Nothing new has happened…other than the sightings and reports of Death murdering people with records as long as the Great Wall of China."

"Oh, don't remind me of the plague everyone got through the Fourth Child," Asuka expressed; after that incident with the Angel and the horsemen, her dislike of Mana Asagi had expanded after she got sick with the sniffles, running nose and high fever. "What kind of girl wants to be a doctor but seems to lack the will to do what is necessary? She should spend her time playing with dolls rather than piloting the Eva."

"Honestly, and this is just my opinion, the Marduk Institute got desperate for anyone capable of piloting an Evangelion. With the entire nation of Japan full of children that know of Death's history as Shinji Ikari…and parents that would rather see them have a future full of education and romance than one of trying to face an enemy they know nothing much of and were never informed of early on, the people responsible for tracking down capable individuals have to look elsewhere. That's how NERV was fortunate enough to get Ms. Asagi. Except her father threatened to sue the entire agency if his daughter didn't come home in one piece."

"The guy that's an American that came to Japan, found love with a Japanese woman, got married and then left with his daughter and father-in-law back to America to protect what was left of his family after losing his wife?"

"Yeah, Asuka. Not many people tolerate interracial relationships quite well. But from what was said, Ms. Asagi's mother was a warm and caring young woman that loved to see children smile. She kept to herself and never sought to solidify her place in history, although a man at her funeral said she was a bright woman, one with a future."

"Sounds more like her mother lacked the capacity for violence just as she does."

"Perhaps, but not every battle, even the smallest ones, need to be settled with conflict."

-x-

He seemed to be making a serious impact upon the Japanese society, though he was trying to stay detached from the people that had discarded him. Looking down upon the wandering men and women from the rooftops of adjoining buildings, Death was looking for any signs of darkness within the souls of those beneath him, and sensed no such energy within any that moved around the streets. He didn't even so much as feel any desires to cause anyone harm from a little girl that walked with her male caregiver from eight minutes ago. Everyone walking down there on the streets of this small city were as harmless and innocent as any newborn child was.

"You must be very proud of what you've done so far," he heard his twin say to him, appearing beside him. "You keep this up, you'll have put the entire force of good cops out of a job."

"If the good cops were any good, they wouldn't be slacking off most of the time," Death responded.

The ghost baby sighed and floated around from Death's right side to his left.

"I won't deny that as the truth," he told Death. "However, even honest police are limited to what resources they have at their disposal. Some are limited to reports filed, others are limited to DNA found at crime scenes or whatever."

"If I left any criminals alive…I'd probably do one of the things I didn't do before dying."

"Which is?"

"If I let a criminal go free to live another day…I'd regret it."

Mako was quite surprised to hear his brother say this to him. He didn't think Death would ever be capable of feeling such a thing as regret if he did something that was as wrong as letting a maniac live to terrorize another day. While he certainly didn't regret murdering people that were as guilty as they came in people that wanted to control, dominate or deprive innocent lives of something other than their hopes and dreams.

"But you can't stop crime," he told the horseman, sadly.

"No. No one can. But I don't want to stop crime just for the sake of what little innocence is left in this world. I just want to reduce it as much as possible. Very few criminals…very few crimes…very few innocent deaths."

Mako suspected his brother was showing a different degree of his crippled humanity, a degree that made the Horseman of Death see some measure of understanding that what he was doing was no different from fighting a losing war. He could kill a few hundred of them in a week or even a thousand of them in a month…and crime wouldn't stop forever, only crippled until it could recover in both its people willing to do whatever they had to in order to achieve a goal and the effects it had on people that didn't serve it. But he wasn't trying to stop crime. He just wanted to control it by reducing the criminals that did whatever forms of crime they did, from robbing banks to fraud or rape.

"You've changed a little," he told Death. "You never cared much for the troubles of others. Actually, you never cared for the troubles of others at all. And then, that night in the city, in Nagoya, you showed that people were wrong about you being heartless. What went through your head that night?"

"That's not entirely true, Mako," Death countered his belief that he had changed a little. "I saw those women…and that girl that was older than I had been before I died…and they had people that loved them. They had people waiting for them to come home. They had what I could never have back in that hopeless life as Shinji Ikari. They hit a sore point in my lifeless heart. I had felt no darkness within their souls that was their own, so I couldn't murder them. They were victims, used as perverse entertainment for those morally-decayed men that were dealt with. I wanted to murder those that needed to be taught a deadly lesson: When Death comes knocking, nothing and no one is going to stop him from coming in, and all you can do…is own up to the sins you committed to bring him to you. Death decides who goes and who stays. Now that I am an embodiment of Death, I can decide who stays and who goes. The innocent will stay…and the guilty will go. That's…what I've decided upon…and that's what I want to see happen while I'm still free to do so…until the next Angel arrives."

"Well…at least you're keeping busy with this amount of free time. Where will you go when all the criminals left unchecked around Japan are dealt with?"

"Wherever else I can find them. No one will be an exception."

"You know, there's a word for what you do as a person that goes after criminals outside the boundaries of the law."

"Oh? And what is that word?"

"A vigilante. You take the law into your own hands for reasons not fully understood by others. That's what you've become, for better or for worse."

"A vigilante, huh? Sounds like someone playing a game that doesn't make any sense."

"Yes, it would sound that way. The rules of the game would be to be alert, to be vigilant, and to be willing to do to the bad guys what others under the law won't because it's either wrong or just not within the boundaries of the person or persons playing the game."

-x-

"…Oh, Kami, he did it again!" Makoto Hyuga gasped, reading the recent news on the Internet in the cafeteria on his tablet.

"Who did what again?" Maya Ibuki asked him, sitting down at the table next to his.

"Death. Last night, he killed over a dozen people, but where he killed them seemed to be a personal move for him." He explained to her. "He returned to the Japanese Institute of Insanity…and left a lot of evidence of his presence there."

Maya looked at the news of this latest homicide on his tablet and saw the censored, graphic scenes and the bloody messages written on the walls. She had to cover her mouth to keep from gagging. This didn't make any sense to her at all. The horseman's motive behind this was unusual.

"What kind of dead boy…returns to the nuthouse he was abused in for most of his life…and kills the people in charge of the nutters?" She questioned.

"Somebody that had a vendetta with the people there…and decided to eliminate loose ends that he overlooked when he was alive. If he's murdering criminals, he must've viewed the guards and the board of directors as corrupted…or he hated them growing up and wanted to see them dead along with Commander Ikari." Shigeru Aoba, who, unlike Ritsuko Akagi, walked around on crutches, suggested, coming to a stop at Hyuga's table. "With so many murders, the crime rate has dropped drastically in Japan. He must've took out the Yakuza early on."

"If he keeps this up, the police will be out of a job for quite a while." Maya stated.

"Until the crime rate goes back up, that is. He might even go looking for criminals around the world." Hyuga expressed.

"If he does that, that'll prove he's not playing favorites or is selective of who he goes after." Shigeru added in.

On Hyuga's tablet, the bloody message read, "They weren't innocent. Guilty breeds only pain and retribution. I severed their life lines, condemning their souls to Hell. Should I find those that are left, they, too, shall know the same fate."

-x-

"…So, there's no way to kill this so-called horseman, even if we were to encounter him?" SEELE 07 questioned Yui's findings on the blood sample belonging to the Horseman of Death.

"No, sir," she answered him and the other holographic monoliths. "I've examined the sample thoroughly, and confirmed that the horseman's literally an undead that isn't affected by anything thrown at him. The blood didn't even require any nutrients. If anything, all we'd be capable of doing to the horseman is putting him down for just a short while."

"And the horseman's…remains show no similarity, whatsoever, to the current subject?" SEELE 01 questioned her.

"There was no genetic similarity," she revealed her findings. "The horseman's blood samples and my sons' blood samples weren't a match…just as the blood wasn't comparable to any other samples we have access to. Death's blood isn't even close to human…or any other animal that exists."

"So this creature, this horseman…is unrelated to all forms of natural life," went SEELE 03, "but what of the other forms of life? The Angels or Lilith?"

"Nothing in relation to the cloned Adam elements or the amplified Lilith elements. Whoever or whatever created him is to be credited for having such skill and resources unlike anything we have in our possession. Death is as close to a perfect human as possible. Physically, that is."

"If Death is still hunting down criminals, the crime rate in Japan will have dropped enough that crime is no longer occurring," went SEELE 05, "meaning that if he's going to continue hunting criminals, he'll have to look elsewhere. We need to find a way to deal with this horseman and his allies. Find a way to eliminate the horseman…or contain him. Disable if possible, exterminate if necessary."

Yui obliged that she would find a way to deal with the Horseman of Death, despite the uneasiness she felt with the fact that said horseman looked and sounded just her youngest child.

When the holographic monoliths vanished, signifying the end of the meeting with them, the former resident of Unit-01 slumped into a folding chair, pondering how to deal with the dead man that simply couldn't be killed and probably wouldn't be confined without a heavy price being paid.

How do you contain what can't die…or kill what can't be contained? She questioned herself, sighing at the craziest fact that she took care not to mention or make known during the meeting with SEELE: Throughout the entire time she was there, she saw both Driving Force and Slayer, sitting in front of her, looking at her with cold stares. And how did NERV's predecessor, GEHIRN, disregard the necessity of a team of therapists?

-x-

SWAT! Another of Conquest's arrows hit their mark, practicing one of Death's former culture's practices: Japanese-style archery. The white-robed leader of the horsemen had manipulated the size of his bow to that of a yumi or a longbow, stood still like the Japanese that practiced this ancient style of archery, and pretended that his arrows struck his targets' hearts or heads.

Clap, clap, clap! Mother Gaia, who was present during his training hours, sitting on a large stone, applauded his mastery of the ancient skill.

"Bravo, Conquest," she praised him. "Bravo."

The Poison Master bowed his head to her. And then took notice of the knight that was the Violent One, wielding a large naginata with the blade ablaze, slashing dummy targets in half in a burning twister.

"How come War has dominion over the fire element and I get the air element?" Conquest asked her. "His skill with fire is akin to a child playing with a gun."

"That's something that can't be rotated, I'm afraid," Mother Gaia expressed to the Poison Master. "Each horseman is corresponded with an element that is designated by other forces in the universe. Conquest, War, Famine and Death, Air, Fire, Water and Earth, respectively. A conquest is like a poison that travels through the air. A war spreads fire…which burns everything in existence until there's nothing left to consume. Some victims of a great famine barely had access to even the scarcest of water sources to cope with their malnourished bodies…and in death, all things once sentient…return to the Earth to be used in the circle of endings and beginnings. From the white crane that lives to fly for one-thousand lifetimes…to the pale dragon that soars from the depths of the planet's core to grasp the grand prize that is the eternity of its right to live…and die…on its own terms."

"And the red tiger that burns to thrive in a world that can't seem to survive without it…and the turtle that has to struggle in the muddy waters each day just to see the next sunrise."

The earthly woman then approached him and removed his hood, looking at his scarred visage, tracing the claw marking and the look of self-hatred in his eyes.

Conquest felt the calmness Mother Gaia brought to him each time she did this; she always seemed to be able to quell his negative emotions and one of the desires he carried within his soul for generations: The desire for revenge against the one that made his choice to become Conquest, the Poison Master easy the moment he met Mother Gaia.

"Why do I get the feeling that you, Mother Gaia," they both heard War say to them, "favor the oldest of us horsemen?"

"I don't favor one of you over the other three," she explained to the knight. "It's just that we have a good relationship, just as I do with you and Famine."

"What of Death?" War questioned, which made Conquest himself curious about the relationship, or, rather, the lack of a relationship, with Death, the Endgame. "He rarely ever engages in extended conversations, like socialization is awful."

"We need to take into consideration that Death grew up in an environment that was drastically limited in these modern times," the earthly woman explained the Horseman of Death's mortal past conditions. "He was a victim of abuse in the harshest of forms. No kind words, no warm embraces or acceptance from the people that condemned him. His ability to socialize has been stunted. Severely, and this defect in his soul followed him to his current purgatory. It's truly not his fault if he says very little or responds the way you wish he'd respond."

"The nature versus nurture scenario, where however one turns out is not only a result of their environment…but also of who and what resides within that environment." Conquest stated. "People raised in positive environments with positive wills often turn out to be well off in the world…while those raised in negative environments with negative wills will often themselves become negative. Death was a victim of this type of upbringing. External and internal factors gone south."

"A…a super storm or even a perfect storm," went War, realizing the seriousness of Death's behavior.

"That's right, War," Gaia praised him, "and just as he demonstrated in his mortal life that wasn't a real life, he was a young man that knew very few boundaries…and showed that he had very few boundaries. He was, and still is, unpredictable. And like each of you, he must find a way to let go of the majority of his past, his anger and grasp the unknown future, mold it into something for every soul that seeks out the hope that still exists. Only then will the four of you, once the metaphysical paths have all been laid out, be able to ride together. The four of you together are much stronger than you know yourself to be when alone."

Conquest and War looked at each other…and War removed his battle-scarred helmet, revealing his own visage that had been scarred in his previous life among the living. The two agreed with the goddess that offered them their purgatory state of existence on the path to salvation…that when the four of them were able to ride together, everything would be alright.

-x-

"…Asagi, Mana?" A woman, a female courier to be precised, asked as she entered the NERV cafeteria, holding a large package.

"Yes?" Mana, who was eating with Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, responded.

"You have a package," the courier revealed, which surprised the little girl.

"But I…I don't get anything from anybody except my father and grandfather," she explained.

Once she signed her signature and accepted delivery of the package, the courier handed it over and left her to open it. To Mana's surprise, it was a book. A very weathered, hardback, blue book, but still in good condition. It had been addressed to her…from her grandfather, Miroku Asagi.

"Who's Miroku Asagi?" Kozo asked her.

"My grandfather," she answered him. "My maternal grandfather."

"Oh. He must be a vivid reader, then."

"The Book of the Restorative?" She read the engraved title, and running her left index finger on the markings on the cover. "I've never heard of this before."

There was a note attached to the back of the book and she removed it, finding it a hand-written message from her grandfather.

"'Your grandmother left this in my possession before she passed away. It is time it was handed to you, Mana. To preserve the future, one must understand the past, for that is where the future lies.'" His note read, which made Mana curious to why her grandmother, whom she had no memory of, whatsoever, would leave a book like this to be passed on to her.

She then opened the hardback front of the book and looked at an old drawing that wasn't colored in. It was the Earth, surrounded by four creatures she recognized from Asian mythology. From the upper left to right were the snake and tortoise beast and the dragon, respectively, and on the lower right to left were the crane and tiger.

"Aren't those from ancient times, Ms. Asagi?" Fuyutsuki questioned her.

"Yes. The black tortoise, the blue dragon, the white tiger and red crane."

"Genbu, Byakko, Seiryu and Suzaku?"

"Yes."

As she examined the contents of the book, which started to seem more like a Bible, judging from its title and the usage of ancient creatures, she found a passage marked by an old bookmark.

"This passage was marked here," she told him. "'Death of the Restorative'."

"Sounds like a lot of people died in that chapter, doesn't it?" He asked.

"No, Mr. Fuyutsuki," she explained. "It's not talking anyone dying. It's actually referring to Death, one of the Four Horsemen. 'And there before the guilty came a pale horse that had once been a greater beast of burden. Its rider and companion held a scythe…and his name was Death of the Restorative. And then a motherly voice, without a shred of cruelty, told those with sinfulness, "Come and see the return of salvation", just as the sun returned from the darkness'."

Turning the page, she found another picture, one of four beasts with riders on them, looking as though they were about to go in combat with an army that meant to put an end to them. The beasts looked like the four from Asian mythology, only smaller and more tamed. "The Four Horsemen of the Restorative" was written above and below the two pages that represented the entire drawing.

"My new book seems to tell of this group comprised of four men, all taken from the realm of mortality and left in a state of mild damnation."

"The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?"

"No. The Four Horsemen of the Restorative."

-x-

The mere idea of searching for criminals elsewhere now was no longer an idea on how to spend his free time, but an action now being enforced by him. With every habitable city and town left in Japan seemingly stripped of criminals of all varieties, Death was now looking for them outside the boundaries of the archipelago…and beginning his criminal search throughout Japan's relatives with more geographic space: China. Though he stayed out of Hong Kong as a courtesy to Conquest; none of the other horsemen took lives in Tokyo-3, so he decided to show the same manner of handling mortals in their Angel-invaded territories. And he scored a dark hit in the night, and was chasing a drug dealer that recognized him.

"No!" The man cried as he tumbled around the alley he was tracked down through. "Please! I didn't mean to get those girls hooked! Please, don't kill me!"

Slam-splash! Death landed in a puddle and took out his sickle, advancing toward the dealer.

"Please, don't! I have a wife and son back home!" He continued to beg for his life.

Death stopped for a moment and tightened his grip on his sickle.

"You divorced your wife eight years ago after you came home drunk and nearly beat her to death," he told the man; his darkness making the understanding of his very past up to the here and now as clear as the water in a cup, as though he saw all of his actions, every little sin, every minor act of kindness like he had actually been there to witness it takes place. "Also, you don't have a kid. And even if you did, I'd probably still stand by the choice I made less than six minutes ago."

"No! Please, you can't!" The dealer cried as Death raised up his blade. "Please!"

SLASH! The sickle came down and severed the man's head from his body, and it rolled down to Death's feet.

Grip! He then picked up the head and looked it in its lifeless eyes.

"Maybe you can tell me where some more drug dealers are now," he uttered, and for another moment, stood still, and then threw the head away, returning to his horse.

Neigh! Rumi neighed, rearing up as her companion came back.

-x-

"…So, you see," went Mana to the commander, as she, Asuka, Fuyutsuki, Misato, Ritsuko and Kaji were present in the commander's office, "if my book's accurate, then Death and his fellow horsemen are actually here to restore order to the planet's chaotic present. A return to harmony by means of their disorder and cruelty to any that get in the way of their duty, which is to be carried out at all costs. This would make them, despite their way of doing things, the good guys. Hence, the Four Horsemen of the Restorative."

Her book, on the commander's desk, showed the picture of the four beasts and additional information.

"If this is true, then why take control of the cities from the people and governments?" Kaji asked. "And why kill those that get in their way?"

"According to the book, what the horsemen are charged with restoring order to…is the very planet itself," explained Fuyutsuki, backing up Mana's belief. "Which is a different case for them. Some would view the planet as a whole, with absolutely nothing to do with any nations or governments."

"The book refers to the four corners of the planet as the Four Homelands. Breaking them down, the Four Homelands means the mountains, rivers, forests and human settlements that have been desolated too many times." Mana explained further.

"So, they're not really protecting anyone," went Ritsuko, "just clearing out the cities visited by the Angels and making sure that they stay empty until God-knows-what happens."

"People will only survive so long as they stay out of those cities," Misato added in, "but does the book explain why Death is murdering people?"

"It doesn't say why, only that the horsemen are entitled to do as they please while they are not on the job. They're not as contained by society as they were when they were alive." Fuyutsuki expressed. "Four dead souls brought back to do the work of a greater force that seeks a healing to all its pain."

"That's crazy," went Asuka, trying to disbelieve that there were dead people running around on horses instead of there being some other explanation that was rational. "People don't just come back from the dead to do anything for anyone else."

"Then what of Death's exploits?" Mana questioned her, stressing out that the horseman had reduced the crime in Japan by a substantial amount. "He's even left his messages at most of his sites of carnage and retribution to show that he's the one that resolved most of the troubles on the streets."

The commander turned the page in the book and examined a page that spoke of a white-robed man that was empowered with the wraiths of mortal health and sickness, able to twist and turn one's life to dust on a whim and do the opposite to others if so desired. A man whose negative was the crowned fiend of a grand conquest, riding hard into battle on his own, white horse.

"And we're to understand that your grandfather sent you this book?" He asked Mana.

"Yes, sir," she answered him.

He then closed it and handed it over to her.

"Makes interesting reading," he told her. "Find out whatever else you can about these Four Horsemen of the Restorative. Whatever little details you believe should be known."

"Yes, sir."

"Dismissed."

Mana bowed her head and then left out of the office to catch up on her reading.

"Are you sure that's a good idea, trusting a twelve-year-old with an old book to find a solution to our problems with these…horsemen?" Ritsuko asked him.

"Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat their mistakes from history," he explained to her. "If we're to find a way to deal with the horsemen before dealing with the Angels, should we ever find a way to deal with them, we must understand what we can about them."

"Why not just lure them out into an open area that nobody's going to miss and drop an N² bomb on them?" Asuka asked, not minding that to be a solution to all their problems with the horsemen.

"No offense, Asuka, but if guns couldn't stop one of them from murdering people…what good will an N² weapon be against all four of them?" Misato questioned her, though she wasn't expecting an answer from her. "Also, the only other harm done to one of them was you stepping on him. No doubt he'd be after you with a vengeance if he decided to come down here."

"It's a good thing he doesn't have a reason to come down here," went Kaji.

"I ain't afraid of him," Asuka claimed.

"Those that don't fear the end are either very brave…or foolish," the commander expressed.

-x-

"…Death?" Famine asked, seeing the horseman's bloody appearance as he returned to the island's caverns. "Why are you all bloody?"

"Death was hunting for Triads," went Mako, appearing beside his twin.

"Triads?"

"They're a Chinese gang of criminals," Death expressed, removing his bloody shirt. "I hacked up about thirty-eight of them before calling it an end…until I go back to China to continue."

"Why not go around the States instead? There are dozens of crooks there." Famine suggested.

"I'll get to them in due time. Nobody criminal will be spared."

Death then left further down the cavern tunnel to where his room was; the horsemen were, due to their individual service to the Restorative, given their own caves to retain their privacy and solitude. Within his cave was a spring the size of large bathtub and deep enough to submerge at least ten people, his bag of additional shirts that were starting to run low, his other coats (since he couldn't let go of a good sense in fashion) and a stone cot for him to lay down on.

Mako floated down onto the cot and watched his brother throw his bloody shirt aside and remove his boots, leaving on his pants as stepped into the spring to wash off the remaining blood. Suspecting that he was going to soak for quite a while, the ghost infant prepared for a long wait.

When Death was fully submerged in his spring, he floated between the surface and the bottom. The blood of his arms and pants washing away, his very mind wandering away from the present as he looked up at the surface above the reflective barrier of the pool.

Sometimes, I can forget about everything when I let go of myself, he thought, and he felt the bottom of the pool connect with his back. But this is how it hurts most…when I pretend I don't feel anything that should affect me.

"…There's a saying old, says that love is blind," he heard a female voice sang. "Still, we're often told, seek and ye shall find… So I'm going to seek a certain lad I've had…in mind…"

That sounds like…the Asagi girl, thought Death, rising to a sitting position at the bottom of the pool.

"…Looking everywhere, haven't found him yet," he heard the girl's voice continue. "He's the big affair I cannot forget… The only man I ever think of…with regret…"

He lied back down and decided to listen to the girl that had to be Mana.

-x-

"…I'd like to add his initial to my monogram… Tell me, where is the shepherd for this lost lamb?" Mana continued to sing as she showered. "…I know I could always be good… Follow my lead… Oh, how I need… Someone to watch over me…"

She sighed as she turned off the water and exit the stall. Ever since she was five, her father and several of her friends said that she had a enchanting voice befitting a deity, and this was mostly because she acted out on a dare by one of her friends to sing an old tune. It was only by a stroke that her singing caught the attention of a dozen or so people that suggested she could make it as a singer. But even if she had a voice that could entice, her dream of becoming a doctor was still her goal.

She dried off and changed into her blue nightie before she slipped into bed for the night.

"I am always safe and free…'cause you're watching over…me…" She expressed before falling to sleep, dreaming of memories of a wonderful woman from long ago.

-x-

Emerging from the water, his flesh cleansed of the dirt and blood from his hours of hunting down criminals and police swayed to the darkness of the wicked hearts, the Horseman of Death sat on his cot and put back on his boots and a new shirt. His elder twin, looking like he was asleep behind him, no different from a baby that had fallen asleep after a burping. He looked at his right arm, at the gauntlet that enclosed the skeletal limb…and removed the armor to examine said limb. It was quite a surprise to see the bones that made up the hand move like they did when he had nerves and flesh covering them, and when he touched the bones of his index finger, it felt like he was touching stone or concrete; it just didn't feel all that real to him.

"Let he who is dead cast the final judgment upon those that remain," he remembered Mother Gaia saying to him, perverting a piece of some religion that he could care nothing about at all, "and let they who are alive be judged by his blade."

He then fell to his back and sighed for the one thing he couldn't experience again; the dead truly don't sleep after dying. But he was okay with that. He didn't really need to sleep; it was just a mortal trait that those with heartbeats and pulses required.

When did the night become quiet again? He wondered. It was never quiet like this before. It's…subtle…and peaceful.

"Something on your mind, brother?" He heard Mako ask him.

"No, brother," he answered, needing his personal thoughts to remain personal for the time being.

-x-

"…I gotta call it a night," Yui yawned, stacking her notes together and closing her folder.

Looking up from her desk, she noticed Driving Force looking back at her, but she decided to ignore him; these personas belonging to her dead son were just hallucinations and they couldn't bother her with just showing up and speaking to her. As she was now walking down the hall to her living quarters, the Slayer persona looked at her with unrestrained rage, needing the little boy that was his superior to hold him in check. She reached the door and let herself in and locked the door, then falling onto her futon and looking up at the ceiling.

"You're striving for the impossible, lady," she heard Slayer say to her. "You can't stop him. No matter what you try, you won't deny him whatever it is he wants."

She ignored him, but then Driving Force appeared on the futon near her left arm.

"She hears what you're saying," she heard him speak up. "She's just ignoring us. The smartest choice she's made since she got out of the insane asylum. A pity that most of her other choices weren't as smart as ignorance is most of the time. People say that ignorance is bliss, but harassment is offensive."

Harassment? Yui thought. What is he talking about?

"What harassment are you talking about, Driving Force?" Slayer questioned. "I doubt she's bothered anyone with her life."

"Oh, she has, Slayer," he expressed. "She'll deny it all she wants to, but whatever sins she committed in the past, they will break out and destroy her…just as she shamed her family and destroyed it."

-x-

"…I think they wish for the Angels in Hong Kong and New York to be Godzilla and Zilla, respectively," went Kaji to Misato, trying to enjoy a drink with her in the only cafe in the Geo-Front.

"I heard some people tried to get into Hong Kong last week," Misato responded, unable to pick up the can of beer in front of her. "They were found two days later, shriveled up and covered with arrows. Death doesn't use any arrows."

"Another horseman, perhaps?"

"Yeah. There was one sighting of this guy. He was dressed in white and wielding a bow. His horse was identified as a large, white stallion."

"A white horse, huh? One of those religious chapters spoke of a white house. Its rider held a bow."

"Maybe Mana has read up on this guy…or perhaps Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki has some understanding of him."

"It's late. The girl's probably asleep now. We'll ask her another time."

"You know, I was never able to ask you this question earlier. Why are you here? I thought your assignment was to drop off Asuka and then return to Germany."

"I've been reassigned here for the time being," Kaji explained his reason for being in Japan a while longer. "What, does my presence bore you?"

"Among other things," Misato expressed.

"Afraid of Death coming back to murder more people?"

"Not funny, Kaji."

"It wasn't meant to be."

"If you messed with Death, he'd probably wouldn't hesitate to kill you. You're not exactly someone he'd let live if you crossed him."

"But that's if I crossed him. I just have to make sure that I don't."

Somehow, Misato didn't think her old boyfriend would live long to enjoy anything if he did mess with the very boy that made Tokyo-3 a ghost town. Her encounter with him was fortunate enough to end with her living to see the next day, but she often feared her next encounter with him. The things she heard of the fantasies of encountering an actual embodiment of the end of mortality, the fear spawned by such beliefs and the shear hopelessness you feel at being unable to escape your doom.

"I'm turning in," she told him, sliding her beer to him. "See you tomorrow."

"Yeah," he responded, and drank out of the can.

-x-

The mere sight of a dead beach made Death suspect that he was having another period of unconsciousness that was involuntary. He remembered staring at a ceiling of stones and now he was looking at a sky that was dark with a red wave, like a would-be rainbow that was only one color, and the water lapping up against the white sand was as red as blood. Buildings and patches of land either destroyed or made too unstable to traverse upon. Whatever had occurred here was more than devastating…maybe even apocalyptic so that life, not even a weed, could thrive here. He couldn't feel any trace of life energy for miles around himself.

"Why can't I be…somebody else?" He then heard a female voice, a little girl's, sounding like she was nearby. "Somebody who…isn't too cool to believe…it's okay to be just me?"

The girl? Death thought, walking towards a sand dune. The Asagi girl?

"…She wants to go home…but nobody's home…broken inside…" He followed the voice inside the sand dune…and found the source to be not what he was expecting to find.

It was a damaged tape player, held by a clothed skeleton, dressed in the same manner as the girl he encountered in Tokyo-3 that night she attempted to speak with him.

"…Don't let me go…" The player continued…until the battery died.

"Who let you die?" He wondered.

The next thing he knew, he was back in the cave that served as his personal space, sitting on his stone cot, blinking several times, as if clearing his eyes of any deception they were probably under. He had to assume that it was true now, that he had lost consciousness again. He lost consciousness…all because he'd been stepped on by a fake giant wrapped in red armor. Getting up off the cot, he picked up a new shirt and jacket and placed them on. He then looked at his brother, practically asleep like the baby that he was. He decided to let him sleep while he left out.

It was quiet in the caverns, meaning that most of the people that made up the collective Restorative were asleep…or just resting for a short while until they probably had to assume the role of a guard. And once he got outside onto the open field, bathed under the moonlight, he entered the woods nearby. There were a few men and women wandering around a small spring that stood out in between the trees…where his horse was drinking out of.

"Death is here," a woman whispered, and the people backed away as the horseman got closer to his beast of burden.

Rumi, once she finished drinking from out of the spring, looked up at her owner and raised her head up.

Death raised his right hand up and stroked her neck, earning a purr from her.

"Going out into the night, Horseman of Death?" A man asked him from behind.

Death looked at him, seeing him as one of those men from a place far from Japan, but unsure of his ethnicity because he wasn't educated of such things (and because he didn't really care about who the man was)…and gave a small nod that he was going out again.

"How long do you think you'll be able to hunt down criminals until the next Angel arrives, Death, the Endgame?" A woman asked him.

"For as long as he can," went a voice that wasn't Death, who didn't even move his mouth.

The people gasped, for Conquest had arrived into the gathering, carrying a large jug. The Poison Master dipped it into the spring and filled it.

"Criminals are like prey, food for the Horseman of Death, who is like a predator. A lion, a tiger, a wolf. A hunter that likes to stay close to its prey…just as a beast of instinct likes to enjoy its kill." He told them. "There's no telling when the next Angel, the next servant of the celestial planes, will arrive, so Death is free to enjoy his time seeking out the dark souls that pay in the flesh and blood of others…and forcing them to pay the price for their sins, knowing that they can't escape him, however many of them there are left to hunt down."

-x-

"…So, Mana," went Maya to the Fourth Child the next day, after her interface headset came in, "how is your headset functioning?"

On the monitors, Mana, just to ensure that it was properly set on her, straightened her interface headset on the front of her head and responded, "Everything's good, Ms. Ibuki."

"Are we ready to begin the test?" Ritsuko asked the personnel present.

"All systems are in the green," Shigeru informed her.

"Her blood pressure's a little elevated, but within the acceptable parameters," Maya added, but needed to clarify it better. "She's nervous."

"About what?" Asuka questioned, being monitored on separate monitors in Unit-02.

"Stage fright, perhaps?" Kaji suggested. "She knows we're looking at her through the cameras."

"Begin the synchronization test," Ritsuko instructed.

Inside Unit-03's plug, Mana felt the mild sensations of her nervous system being linked with the artificial nerves of the Eva. They were mild sensations because her headset soothed out the linking process; the last few times this ever occurred, she had to grin and bare her teeth a little because she felt like something was sticking her in the back of her head. In addition, she didn't like the fact that the LCL that she was told provided some protection against attacks smelled so bad to her nose. It made her feel uncomfortable, like she was in a pool of mud and she was trying to look her best in front of people. She tried to forget about it all by thinking of her past and future, with the people that made an impact upon her life.

"…When you were born, your mother said you were the most precious person she had ever seen," her father had told her once. "We initially wanted to name you Sango, but we had decided upon Mana instead. You were very precious."

"After that horrible night, your father and I swore that we'd keep you safe from harm," she remembered her grandfather saying to her, years after her mother had been killed. "But after that night, he didn't feel safe staying in one place for too long, which is why we live abroad."

After what happened to Mother, I'd probably wouldn't feel safe living in one place for too long, either, she thought.

On the bridge, the technicians were at work measuring Mana's synch-ratio. It was slowly rising, reaching stability at sixty-three percent.

"Well, her synch-ratio's higher than forty percent," Maya stated on Mana, just as said girl started to hum a little tune.

-x-

Triads ran like Hell from Death through the streets of Beijing! The Grim Reaper had just shown up to claim more souls…and had managed to find a great sum.

"You can run, you can hide," Death told them, seeing the guilty hide among the innocent lives that ran on the streets, "but your days are at an end. Hell demands that the guilty be condemned, filled with the souls of the damned…and I am charged with carrying out that duty to lead you accursed fools to the netherworld as retribution for your sins."

Neigh! Rumi neighed, reared up and galloped toward the masses.

"Police!" A man in uniform shouted, pointing a gun at the horseman. "Halt!"

"Drop your weapon!" A second policeman ordered Death.

"Shoot, and you're only asking for your grave to be dug," the dead boy threatened them, his sickle's blade as long as his arm now.

The two policemen looked at each other and did the only rational thing they could do: They backed off.

"It's only the criminals that will be dealt with," the horseman assured them. "The murderers, the rapists, smugglers and such. Stay out of the way and know mercy. Get in the way…and mercy dies along with the rest of you."

-x-

"…It's a massacre! A live execution, here in Beijing!" A female news reporter expressed in front of the camera to the world at large. "Just moments ago, the boy identified as Death, the Endgame appeared and singled out less than twelve individuals accused of criminal activity! He has now begun his rampage of seeking them out for the sole purpose of being their judge and executioner. The police can only stand idle as this ghost of vengeance wreaks havoc upon our streets in his hunt for criminals."

"My God," Misato gasped, watching the news from Beijing in Central Dogma with the rest of the personnel present.

"How'd he get to China so quick?" Hyuga wondered.

"He's dead," Maya stated. "The dead can go wherever they want."

"But Beijing?" Aoba asked.

"He's working his way across the world," went Mana.

"What are you talking about, Fourth?" Asuka demanded.

"He's hunting down criminals and dirty cops," Mana stated. "If he can't find any more of them in Japan, it's only logical that he'll look for them elsewhere to repeat his cycle of seeking out the bad guys and giving them the death sentence. Once he's done with China, it's anyone's guess where he'll go next to find more criminals to slay."

"You make it sound like his behavior's like that of a predator," Ritsuko informed her.

Mana looked at the wheelchair-bound woman and explained, "When you think about it that way, he kinda is a predator. A carnivorous predator. Criminals, crooked police, diplomats, mayors, governors, they're all his prey, his food. His eyes are always in front. They're always in front so that he may determine the distance between himself and his prey, which he always seeks out."

"Well spoken, Ms. Asagi," went Fuyutsuki to the girl, believing her words on Death's behavior toward the criminal element that he was after. "And…if, for some reason, there were no more criminals or dirty police and such for him to go after, what then?"

"It's only likely that nobody would see or hear of him," Mana expressed, "but with the number of criminals out there, you couldn't help but hear of Death, even risk seeing him out and about."

"And what if places like Beijing or even other criminal-infested locales were emptied of all their population?" The commander suggested. "Everyone, not just the criminals."

Mana sighed and answered, "A lion likes to stay close to the zebras."

"What?" Asuka reacted. "Speak more coherently, please."

"If places like Beijing were totally empty of criminals…then Death would just move to another place filled with people…to begin his hunts allover again." She clarified. "As I said, a lion likes to stay close to the zebras."

They all looked at the screens again, seeing Death had claimed the lives of at least three men, looking like he could be celebrating his kills in his mind in front of the camera.

"Can anyone stop this man?" The newswoman questioned.

Mana, removing her interface headset, sighed at the hopelessness the people of Beijing were experiencing right now. She knew the innocent would be spared the horseman's wrath, but the fact that they didn't know unless they paid any attention was a poor note for them. Anything, she'd probably be given an order to find a way for NERV to deal with him from her book, if it had any solutions on how to deal with a lost soul serving a greater force at work. But on a personal level, she doubt that anything of this world, this realm of the living, could combat an agent from the realm of the damned set free…and she worried that she might not even want to find out if there were any solutions at all.

The people on the streets screamed and cried as they tried to run away, proclaiming their fear of the Grim Reaper as he charged after them on his horse.

-x-

"Oh, dear God," Yui covered her mouth, just in time as Death decapitated a woman he galloped past with his sickle on the television.

No doubt everyone else in the facility was watching this nightmare occur, seeing the horseman claim the souls of the guilty. And there was no doubt that SEELE would be watching this, as well. The moment they found out about this would be the instant that they demanded results on a means to deal with the horseman's activities concerning the criminals and corrupt cops.

"I think he deserves a medal for his actions," she heard Driving Force again.

"Yeah," she soon heard Slayer respond; both personas were behind her. "Along with a few criminals to pin it on."

Ring-ring! Yui's phone rang, and she picked up.

"Yes?" She greeted. "Yes, I'm watching it. Yes, I am aware that this horseman's becoming a greater problem. I've studied the blood sample and put it through a battery of tests…and there may be only one thing that can be used against the horseman."

Both personas looked at Yui with some suspicion. If she had found a way to deal with the Horseman of Death, then it had to be bad. The horseman would need to be cautious if he wanted to persist now.

A/N: Here is another chapter, getting closer to putting the Angels back into the fold. What is the thing that Yui found might be useful in dealing with Death, and why would Mana's grandfather send her a book related to the Four Horsemen of the Restorative? Read and review, please. Peace!