Creation began on 01-03-15
Creation ended on 01-25-15
Neon Genesis Evangelion
A New Cause: Danger
"Section Two reports that two of their agents returned from an unauthorized monitoring operation in Tokyo-2," Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki informed the commander. "They say that Death was onto them and incapacitated them almost to death."
"If it was unauthorized, then that would mean that if Death were onto them, their monitoring operation had to have been of their own accord," the commander expressed, looking at several documents that needed to be checked.
"The two agents that returned almost dead claimed that Dr. Akagi ordered them to monitor the Fourth Child," Fuyutsuki revealed, and the commander looked up at the elder.
"Section Two, or rather, the NERV Department Security of Intelligence, to be more precise, has periods of incredible lapses in both time and judgment," he told the elder, rising from his desk and putting on his coat. "Maybe we should make an unsanctioned visit to Dr. Akagi and learn for ourselves why a subsection of NERV would claim she made them watch Ms. Asagi after she was released from her duty to the Evangelion."
As he walked past him, Fuyutsuki was wondering what this unsanctioned meeting with Akagi would expose…if it would expose anything.
-x-
As sunlight shone through her window's curtains, Mana awoke to the new day.
"Ah, what a night last night was," she yawned, getting out of bed and into her slippers.
She stepped out of her room and down the stairs, seeing her grandfather step out of the kitchen.
"Good morning," she greeted.
"Good morning, Mana," he responded. "Did you sleep well?"
"Mm-hmm. Where's Daddy?"
"He left out early to try and accelerate his chances for applying for a new job. He should be back in time for lunch."
"Oh, okay. Hmm?"
Her grandfather turned to where she had turned her gaze, and noticed the Book of the Restorative on the kitchen counter. It had been shortly after Mana had returned that she gave her grandfather back the book, since she decided that she didn't need it any longer.
"Oh," he sighed.
"Grandmother's book," she addressed.
"After you went to bed, I decided to look at it myself," he explained. "It's…hard to put down."
"One of the things that made me regret helping NERV was finding a potential weapon that could harm the Restorative Horseman of Death. Sometimes, I wonder if I hadn't read that page that foretold the horseman having to flee after being exposed to a blood-like substance before the sunlight touched him, would the current horseman that is Death be any better off. But then, I'm reminded that he, despite being dead, can still be harmed."
Miroku inhaled and expressed, "It's impossible to really kill something or someone that is dead, even if they can be harmed. There's a big difference between harming…and killing."
"Never wound what you can't kill," Mana heard someone say to them, and looked to the hallway, seeing the spirit of Mako float out of the living room. "But seek out alternative ways to either subdue, hinder or eliminate your adversary. As powerful as any one person is or can be, no one is without weakness. There are always ways to overcome an enemy, just as there are always ways to adapt and overcome one's weaknesses."
"Mako," Mana greeted and bowed to the ghost infant. "When did you and Death get here?"
"Get here? We never left. Though, that's untrue. Death left for a few minutes, but that was last night. And then, he came back. When there's no person or no reason to engage in conversation, he's as quiet as an empty city. You'd never even know he's there unless you turned to face him."
Mana then walked under his ghostly form and entered the living room, seeing the horseman from last night, sitting cross-legged on the floor, his arms crossed on his chest and his eyes as blank as the wall in front of him. She approached him, looking at him with curiosity, unable to tell if he was even looking at her because he was so still.
"Death?" She asked, but he didn't respond to her.
She waved her left hand in his face, but he didn't react. Then, she placed her hand on his right shoulder, patting it, but he still didn't show any indication that she was even there.
"It's like he's there," she turned to her grandfather, "but he's not aware of anything."
"Maybe…it's just how he conserves energy," she suggested. "Maybe I should look at the book again."
Unbeknownst to her, Death turned his head slightly to look at her, catching Miroku's attention. Then, before she could turn back, he returned his head to its original position, as though he hadn't moved it at all, and Mana didn't see a thing.
She looked at his skeletal arm, seeing how polished, how clean the bones were. It was like the bones were sterilized and then coated with a special layer or coating to ensure that they would remain impervious to alien environments. Even the joints in the digits looked cleaned.
"Necrophiliac!" Death declared, startling Mana as she jumped back.
"Aah!" She gasped, wondering how long he was paying her any attention. "Death, I… I…I…"
"Eh-heh!" The horseman's mouth contorted into a twisted smile where his teeth were exposed. "I don't know much about humor, but I prefer to scare the bad guys. This…will be the only time I joke on little girls that have good futures ahead of them."
Joking? Mana thought. He was…joking?
Death got up to his full height and every bone in him, including the exposed ones, cracked as he straightened his limbs. His face removed of the smile and restored of his neutral expression, but the satisfaction of surprising Mana remained in his eyes.
"That… That wasn't very funny," Mana retorted, regaining her composure.
He bowed to her and expressed, "I apologize for frightening you. I hope this doesn't change anything between us."
Offering her his left hand, he awaited her response.
Mana sighed and shook it, telling him, "One day, I will scare you with a joke."
"Then I shall be on the lookout for when that shall take place."
-x-
"…And then, he jumped off Gaghiel and disappeared," Conquest revealed to Gaia, informing her of the mysterious man he encountered in Hong Kong. "My arrow didn't put him down. He wasn't alive. How is this possible?"
War and Famine were with her, as well, and they were confused by this information, too.
"Did anything occur before you met this guy?" Gaia asked Conquest. "Anything that might've signaled his presence? Anything at all?"
Conquest thought about it, and answered, "Something did happen. I felt like something struck me in the heart. Something beyond me."
"I think we gotta tell Death," went Famine, voicing his opinion.
"If this guy is dead and has it out for him, then Death needs to be warned," War agreed, albeit reluctantly and not because he had any concerns for the horseman.
Mother Gaia nodded and expressed that she would tell Death herself.
-x-
"…It's still their word against mine," said Ritsuko to both men as she typed in command codes for the MAGI to follow.
"Their word, which, for the moment, seems heavier with a degree of credibility than yours is right now," the commander expressed his opinion to the faux-blond. "Miss Asagi was dismissed from NERV after being convinced by her father that the Horseman of Death's continued invasions of Tokyo-3 in search of the criminals it was ordered to plant there in order to lure him would endanger her life. After confirmation of her return to her home was discovered, Section Two was ordered to return to the Geo-Front to await further orders we would get from the Committee. You, on the other hand, ordered them to continue watching the girl, resulting in an encounter from the horseman, which they were lucky to escape from and avoid their deaths. And what, exactly, was the point of spying on her, Dr. Akagi?"
"That Death not only returned the girl to her house, but visited her house a second time," she revealed.
"He…visited the Asagi girl?" Fuyutsuki questioned.
"Be that as it may, unauthorized surveillance of any residence brings unnecessary attention to NERV," the commander explained. "And if Death says the family is off-limits, then he must have a reason for declaring them off-limits, which we'll find out in due time. The proper way."
He then left the two on the command bridge, muttering something about how unnecessary actions breed a loss of order and control.
"He acts like he doesn't want NERV dealing with the horseman," Ritsuko expressed.
"It's mainly because NERV was originally tasked with dealing with the Angels, not the Four Horsemen," the elder explained. "He also does want to make sure that the horsemen are dealt with, but without any loss of the personnel, here or elsewhere."
"And yet, he seems less interested in the lives they've already taken."
"Since when are child molesters and arsonists considered lives? Death only goes after criminals and anyone that has committed acts that are unforgivable? The deaths I hear he actually considers a great service by the Horseman of Death are the ones he caused that night in Nagoya when he rescued those kidnapped women."
"When had he ever considered doing someone a service?"
"Remember when he murdered the young man that killed a little boy's dog in front of him when he was still Shinji Ikari? The mother had considered that service before leaving the city."
-x-
"…A multinational coalition formed in secrecy to search for him, study him, learn everything we could," the woman on the television said in front of the Asagi family and their undead guests, as they were watching a film that was made just last year.
"We call him…Gojira," the man added in, identifying the creature in the photo.
As Death sat on the floor and watched with Mana, he looked on with interest; it was like he really was a kid like the girl beside him was, curious and wanting to watch a movie that caught his interests.
Mana, would a bowl of popcorn, slid it across the floor to him without turning to face him, and offered him some. Line of sight-wise, all she saw was his right hand reach into the bowl and took a handful of the butter-coated food and put it into his mouth.
"Nature has an order," the older man said to the younger man that questioned the danger the flying parasite represented upon the world. "A power to restore balance. I believe he is that power."
"Why would people put their faith in a creature that has existed before their time?" Death asked Mana. "Why believe that such a creature can save them if it is nothing more than an animal, a predator?"
"In movies like this," she responded, "movies that gain popularity by being make-believe, it's important to have a creature that can be viewed as a protagonist, a protector, even if it doesn't behave as such."
"A creature that serves as a guardian of sorts…only it doesn't seem to do so in the eyes of those that would take such a creature seriously. And it feeds on a substance, a material, that is hazardous to people. Why imagine such a force into existence?"
Mordecai found the horseman's curious questions admirable. A soul that was, for all intents and purposes, lost and, without a doubt, damned, walking among people, asking questions sparked by his curiosity, simply wanting answers to them. This undead man was truly no different from a young kid that knew virtually nothing about anything that he was not versed in. It was…unbelievable that a dead person could still learn.
NEIGH! They all heard a horse whine, and turned to the source of the whine.
Mako, who hovered above the living room high enough that he couldn't be seen, saw Rumi out from of the window, looking agitated.
"Must be an important reason for her to be here," Miroku uttered.
As Death got up to retrieve his firearms, Mako expressed, "If it's hunting down sinners that committed unforgivable atrocities or protecting the messengers of Heaven from potential harm, my brother has to answer the call. It may be something all the horsemen must answer to."
Just as he replaced his shotgun bandolier over his scabbard holding his shotgun, Death saw Mana out of his line of sight, approaching him in the hall. But then saw her stop and press her back against the wall.
"It could just be an Angel that needs to be protected and a horseman that requires aid from a fellow horseman," he told her, loading a magazine into a Glock 17 pistol and then replacing it into its holster that he had relocated onto his left leg. "I'll know when I get to my destination."
"What if it's a kidnapper?" She suggested. "Or a mob or a batterer?"
He turned to face her, and his eyes were the only thing that gave any indication that he was showing emotion as he asked, "Are you…worried about me, Ms. Asagi?"
"Somehow, you don't strike me as the kind of person that needs anyone to be worried about him," she expressed. "But to answer your question, no, I'm not worried. Not like that."
"Like what?" He asked, curious.
"That," she expressed, though it didn't make Death show any emotion on his face.
"Very direct," he sighed, "but what can hurt me only makes me learn from past experiences. I learned what can be used against me, and I can work around it. Pity not the dead that walk the mortal realm, Ms. Asagi. Pity the living…that live with the fear of their final days with each passing minute. Let the guilty pay the ultimate price for their sins…and allow the innocent to live until it is truly their time to depart to the paradise that exists above our heads."
Click! He pumped one of the rounds of his shotgun into the barrel and replaced it into its scabbard, and then stepped out of the Asagi house.
-x-
With the eighth mass-produced version of the Dummy System nearing completion, Yui was standing in front of the LCL tube that housed Shinji's regenerated corpse, now sporting an apparatus designed to pick up on the limited neurons his nervous system was slowly reanimated into the vegetative state he was in to pick for the Dummy System. It was a necessity, since the boy was in no state to think of anything without a consciousness to do the thinking for him, and because his brain was still of minute size, there was the opportunity to study why it had reduced to such a size. Yet, she couldn't ponder the reason behind last time he spoke; prior to the device being placed on his head, he became active again and said the same thing he said last time, about the flesh being weak, seeking release, and a need to let something die.
"It's still to imagine, let alone believe," she turned around and saw a young man in a white lab coat, "that this is the real deal…and someone that resembles him is out there in the world, making a name for himself by murdering criminals."
"Nama," she greeted him kindly, "what are you doing here?"
"The Committee has expressed the possibility of the Horseman of Death being dealt with in due time," the man, Nama, explained to her, but still didn't take his eyes off the deceased boy in the tube. "How's he doing?"
Yui turned back to Shinji and answered, "Nothing has changed. His brain activity's stable, despite being vegetative, but within the acceptable levels for the Dummy System."
"And you're okay with this?"
"Well, it's for the sake of the human race that we take these strides to ensure that we have a future."
"But what about personally, not professionally or metaphorically?"
Yui didn't answer him. She didn't have an answer for such a question.
"Well, what do you think?" She asked instead.
"What do I think?" He repeated, stepping up to the tube that housed Mako's remains. "As a scientist with a passion for improving the lives of people, I want to believe that we're helping the world that seems to be on the brink of extinction… But as a person, I have to believe that there are moral considerations that should've been carefully followed before certain lines were crossed. To be blunt, while I believe the Dummy System to be a necessity, if it even keeps people safe from harm, I don't believe that this was the right thing to do when it was derived from a boy that suffered every day of his life. And I think…there's a reason to what he said the last time he spoke up about weak flesh and seeking release. He might not have a will to do anything, but he must have some remnant of a desire, a need to let go of living."
"Let go of living?"
"Maybe Shinji Ikari, or some trace of him that still lingers in this body, is just tired of living, tired of people trying to get him to do things for him that he's incapable of without a will or motivation. Maybe it's better if that were what was to happen, to let them both die."
"You believe that, despite being brain-dead, Shinji is demanding that he be let go of?"
"Demanding, requesting…or even begging. My grandmother once told me…that there's no shame in asking to die, but there is pain in being kept alive…especially if it's against your wishes."
Yui wished she could believe this. But it went against her own belief. She still wanted to declare that as long as people lived, have the will to live, there was always hope for them. And yet, every time she looked at Shinji's body…or heard or thought about the Horseman of Death that resembled him, she saw someone that didn't agree or embrace her belief. She found difficulty in understanding how a dead person, with an agenda to see innocent people live, possessing no mandate or desire to live as who he used to be.
-x-
A single candle in the cave that served as Mother Gaia's quarters on the island illuminated Death's face, which seemed to be trying to contort into an expression of pure rage, but the horseman's will fought against such a desire to show emotion. Even in front of the goddess that restored him to this plane of existence, just to avoid an unnecessary release of emotion.
Conquest, War and Famine stood behind Mother Gaia, just as she had revealed to Death what Conquest had revealed to her and the other horsemen. None of them wanted to admit it, but any measure of emotion released by Death would be bound to frighten them, among the other traits he demonstrated as a Horseman of the Restorative.
"…How can you be sure of this?" Death asked Mother Gaia; even though it was just his voice, there was no hiding his heightened state of denial.
"Conquest shot him with an arrow meant to deal in a quick demise," she explained to him, sitting in front of the candle in front of him. "Unless this man were alive, he would've died within moments of the poison within the arrowhead seeping into his body. He pulled it out and discarded it. That can only mean that this man wasn't alive to begin with, anymore."
The flame of the candle grew to the size of a large mirror, revealing to the cave's occupants the man Conquest saw, and Death recognized the face with hidden (or rather, not-so-hidden) scorn.
"This man was sent to Hell by my mortal incarnation," Death told her.
"But anyone sent to Hell can be pulled back into the mortal realm to serve a purpose," Gaia expressed. "Anyone from the mortal coil with resources that deal with the retrieving of condemned souls can bring back one that is dead. The question now…is who would want to recall the damned from Hell…and for what purpose?"
"Someone that fears Death, that's for certain," went Conquest. "This guy really detested you."
But it seemed that Death didn't want to hear any more, and left out the cave.
In truth, however, the horseman needed to be sure that this man wasn't who he appeared to be, as Hell always held several surprises for the eternal damned for their sins, and this could've been no exception.
Just as he neared the light leading to the outside of the underground cave system, his twin manifested in front of him with a concerned look on his face.
"You know what's going to happen already, don't you?" Death asked him.
"As you once told me, it could be nothing," Mako responded. "It may be nothing, but you want to make sure that it is nothing. I, too, want to believe that it's nothing."
Stepping onto the grass of the open field, Death stood in front of the entrance to the underground network of caves, waiting for Rumi to arrive at his location.
"An eternity for the damned should mean just that," said Death to Mako, "an eternity."
"Sometimes, even an eternity doesn't mean forever, sadly," Mako told him.
Neigh! They heard the pale unicorn whine as she galloped to where they were.
"He was sent to Hell for a reason," the horseman uttered as Rumi stopped in front of him, and he climbed onto her saddle. "He had sacrificed both his family and his rights as a parent for an attempt at a falsehood belief! He abandoned what he had left in his life to reclaim what was hardly his to begin with, and exploited everyone he could! The youngest of his sons claimed vengeance for being abandoned and nearly exploited as he himself neared the end of his own existence, and the father thought he could assuage his personal sins that he couldn't be forgiven for committing! A man with no heart for his family, just his woman, who is just as guilty as he was, deserves to rot and burn in that inferno abyss he was condemned to when his life was ended in front of him! To Hell and back again, Rumi! To Hell and back again!"
Neigh! Rumi reared up and galloped toward her rider's chosen destination, disappearing into a body of fog that gathered up in front of them.
-x-
In her room, Mana set the Book of the Restorative down on her desk and sat down to pick up where she left off. She may have severed her ties with NERV, but the book still held some details she wanted to understand properly. Maybe she was a bit like her grandfather, being that the book was hard to put down, but she had to admit that the Bible-like book had some measure of information that could help clarify many things yet to come. One of the things that did bring discomfort to her conscious was the information about the Scarlet-Blood Priestess that looked just like Asuka Langley Soryu…and how her familiar, her red behemoth, resembled Unit-02.
What's this? She thought, discovering a new chapter she hadn't read yet. "The Days of Danger"?
She turned the page and began to read what was written long ago. It was a fascinating story of sorts, about how the Four Horsemen of the Restorative were met with what was perhaps their greatest adversaries from below the Earth, in the depths of Hell. Lost souls that sought to restore the planet in exchange for a second chance at a better life…pitted against the souls of the damned that couldn't be redeemed for their sins against the innocent, against the heavens and against the Earth, and the next page showed a battle charge about to escalate into mortal combat between eight people riding atop horses, representing light and darkness. But what made the story seem like it really was a battle of light and darkness was that both sides seemed to use the same sort of weapons that seemed to be derived from medieval times; two horsemen were using bows, another two were using swords, and the last pair of horsemen seemed to be using what had to be scythes as their weapons of choice.
"Light…and darkness," Mana uttered, tracing the picture with her right hand. "Heaven…and Hell. The Restorative…and the…Apocalyptic."
As she turned to the next page, she saw the next picture show another battle the forces of light and darkness, made up of people fighting for the future of the innocent…and the damned fighting for a future of eternal darkness.
Knock-knock. Someone knocked at her closed door.
"Mana," she heard her father outside her room, "your bath is ready."
"Okay, thank you," she responded, and put a bookmark in the book.
As she came out of her room, her father looked at her face and asked, "Are you okay? You look like you saw something that spooked you."
"I was…just reading the book and…" She tried to explain, but found it hard to clarify.
"Mana," he said to her, "just say what needs to be said, no matter what it is."
And she said what she felt needed to be said.
"I don't think Death, the Endgame was okay when he left," she started, expressing her woe for the Restorative Horseman of Death. "He said not to pity the dead that walk the Earth, but worrying for the dead that do good for the helpless is a different thing that he didn't say anything about, and I'm worried that whatever the reason he left…may be more than he can actually handle."
"If that's true, then Death, the Endgame knows where he can recoup if he needs to get away from whatever he faces that he can't handle."
Hearing this didn't really raise Mana's spirits up.
"Mana, are you attracted to this horseman?" Mordecai asked her.
"What?!" She gasped. "No! I'm not attracted to him!"
He was expecting to see her cheeks flush, which would've showed she was lying about her affections, but her cheeks stayed the same shade of pink they were before he asked her.
"I mean, I'm not attracted to him…like that," she tried to clarify. "I don't view Death as the type of person you pursue with a romantic interest. He seems more like the type of person that's in need of a friend, which he never had in his previous life."
"A member of the undead in need of a friend," her father chuckled at this belief, though not in disbelief or anger. "How many people currently go through or went through life without one? I don't wanna name any that suffered for not having any, but if this horseman seems to be capable of redemption, a friend may be what he needs…in addition to a new life."
Mana then proceeded to the bathroom and closed the door.
-x-
"Urgh!" The Sabrewulf-like demon Death, the Endgame encountered the last time he visited Hell was slammed against a stone pillar by said Restorative Horseman, enraged by the discovery of Hell being one condemned soul short. "It wasn't my fault! This happened on another demon's watch!"
"I don't care whose watch this happened on!" Death declared, gripping the demon by its throat. "I wanna know why that bastard's damned soul was returned to the mortal coil! How did something like this happen?! Gendo Ikari was condemned here for his irredeemable acts, cursed to suffer for his lust and unquenchable desires! Who could and would pull his soul back?!"
"Excluding the masters of this realm and the damned population," the demon explained, "anyone of the mortal coil, provided they have the resources necessary to bring dead souls back. But the soul in question was brought back, released, under a specific circumstance."
"What circumstance?"
"Whoever brought him back to the mortal coil brought him back as your opposite. Like you, he has become endowed with great power to serve a cause. Like you, he has become a horseman."
Death released the demon and walked away.
"Death, the Endgame," the demon struggled to speak. "Unlike you, Apocalyptic Horsemen have greater limitations. You ride with the heavens on your side. He rides with only a layer of the darkness. Only a layer! He can hide in the darkness, but he can't rule it! Not on his own!"
As he left the domain, Death understood what the demon said to him. So long as the damned soul that was once his father was on his own, he wasn't as powerful as he could've been with the other horsemen that made up the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But that brought little ease to his own tortured soul, as he needed to find a way to send him back to Hell…and keep him there for good. And the sooner he discovered this way, the better.
-x-
RING-RING! Hei-Bai's cell phone went off, just as he was about to sit down and relax his feet after spending much of his morning and afternoon out and about.
"Hello?" He greeted the caller, and then his eyes became wide with shock and disgust. "Wait a minute. What do you mean, the people that were primarily responsible for tomorrow's reading of the will have all be murdered?"
He had been looking forward to the reading of his father's will after waiting in Japan for over two months, but now that he heard that the people that he was to see about it had been murdered, it was likely that he would have to wait a while longer, as the reading would likely be delayed. When the caller informed him that he would be updated on the rescheduling of the will reading, he hung up.
"Who'd want to murder a bunch of lawyers and attorneys in charge of a simple will reading?" He wondered aloud, and then turned to his television set, now showing an old piece of film with a man in black and white.
"We knew the world would not be the same," he expressed, and Hei-Bai remembered who he was, then and there, being one of the people responsible for the creation of the world's first nuclear arsenal. "A few people laughed… A few people cried… Most people were silent."
Julius Robert Oppenheimer? He thought, wondering why a man from the Manhattan Project was being broadcast on television.
"I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita," the deceased man continued. "Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds'."
Although what had been said by the deceased had more to do with the aftermath of the production of a powerful weapon that could kill and poison lives and land, respectively, it also brought revelation to what was happening recently and what had transpired fifteen years ago. And Hei-Bai felt that it related more to the horseman that was his deceased, younger nephew that got to grow up.
"The world isn't the same as it used to be," he agreed with the dead man. "The young man that was once my nephew, whom I've never met, has taken on a form that brings us together in our best and worse ways, as he is now Death, one of the Four Horsemen."
He wished that his father was here right now. They never had many conversations because he had lived much of his life in the States, but Yuma was a man that had been highly qualified to understand what troubles his only son was going through.
"How'd you ever get through your troubles, Father?" He asked, looking at a framed picture of his father from when he was younger.
-x-
The tall building in Tokyo-2 where the latest murders took place was being run through, in and out, by the honest police as they were investigating the deaths of the lawyers in charge of reading last will and testaments to whoever they were left for. Atop the roof of the building, Death, the Endgame had just arrived on Rumi in her dragon form…and sent her off into the visual confines of the night where she wouldn't be seen…while he himself stepped into the building, despite the fact that there were police there investigating.
"…But the previous crime scenes investigated had footage that indicated that the people the horseman went after were all cut up with his sickle," he heard a female voice say to someone. "While not entirely pristine, his murders were quick, precised, directed. These, on the other hand, were anything but."
"And there are no blood messages," another voice, a male one, added. "Even without them, we'd know that this would be Death's doing because of the way he operates."
"Oh, shit!" A male cop gasped, seeing Death walking into the hall, and ran into the room. "He's here!"
As he approached the room where the murders took place, he heard the clicking of several guns loading bullets into their barrels.
"If you want to shoot me, feel free," he told them as he stepped inside, seeing five cops and a three forensic specialists against the wall, "but I want the same thing you want: I want whoever did this."
"How do we know you didn't do this?" The female cop asked him, pointing her pistol at his chest.
Death examined the newly deceased victims, seeing the work performed on them as being sloppy. He went over to the woman that had been deprived of her left arm and head, seeing the damaged skin and bones, and examining the residual energies left within the remains.
"Before you can ride together, the four of you will begin to change the hearts of those around you," he remembered Mother Gaia saying to him. "You will begin to change the hearts of those around you."
"You killed hundreds of people, before and after you died," one of the male cops said to him. "You're the reason the Yakuza is no more and why the Triads are in hiding. You've reduced crime and almost put us out of work. Are you running out of excuses?"
"You can blame me all you want, but I didn't do this," Death responded, placing his left hand on the victim's chest. "We might have our own perceptions of guilt and innocence, but as a lost soul that goes after the people that think the law doesn't apply to them, I don't hurt the innocent. Spare the innocent, condemn the guilty."
He felt a gun's barrel press against the right side of his head, and looked up at the woman that was fearful of his presence. Her eyes were split between fear and hesitation, duty and survival, right and wrong, many of which things Death had to let go of to get where he had gone to in life.
"The only thing wrong this woman did was get one lousing speeding ticket that she paid for eight years ago," he told them. "She paid her debt to society and has been sober ever since. No history of violence, before or after her ticket, no child abuse, no domestic abuse, as she was never married, and no shred of drug use, except what her doctor prescribed her for depression. I wouldn't have come after her unless she had done something she chose not to atone for."
He then rose back to his full height, almost up to the woman's neck, not even thinking about reaching for his own pistols; he was putting his faith in what Mother Gaia had said to him about him and the other horsemen changing the hearts of those around them. If it was true, the police were likely to stand aside and let him find out who did this.
The woman then pulled her gun away and put it back in its holster, backing away from him.
"Who could do this?" She then asked him.
"Someone I killed before I ceased to be Shinji Ikari and became Death, the Endgame," he expressed, albeit with some disgust in what he had discovered. "If he came here and killed these three, then it was for a reason. I don't believe in murdering a bunch of suits for no reason at all."
"Who'd you kill that you believe has come back?" One of the forensic people asked him.
"Gendo Rokubungi-Ikari," he answered, his eyes emitting white fire as he did so.
-x-
Having gathered all the information he could get out of the MAGI, Kaji had deduced that he everything he had discovered about the former commander's agenda, along with what the Committee/SEELE were up to was all that there was to understand. Storing each and every discovery of information into small discs and hiding them, the unshaven man was prepared to leave NERV and expose the organization of its dark secrets once the opportunity came.
I guess I owe the late Shinji Ikari for distracting the entire agency, he thought as he left the chamber of Lilith to retire to his quarters.
Suddenly, the alarms went off like crazy! It was the alarms that went off whenever a non-Angel showed up, like Death himself when he came to rescue his brother ghost.
-x-
As the security team showed up where the alarm was tripped, the commander had already stepped into the room that had been broken into that housed an old project that NERV had been working on a year prior to the deceased Third Child's arrival and subsequent manslaughter. All he really knew about the project was that it was supposed to be an addition to the Evangelions, but had to be proven that it could function on a basic, and therefore, smaller smaller scale before it would be implemented on a larger scale.
Ritsuko Akagi had dubbed it an Evangelion Mobile Weapons Assault Platform, a type of walking fortress of sorts the Eva could ride, almost like a horse.
When the security team arrived, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki had arrived, as well, seeing, along with the commander, that the vault that housed the basic prototype had been broken in, with the fortified doors looking like they had been ripped open with one's bare hands.
"It's that damn child," went Ritsuko, wheeling into the room.
"You want it to be him," the commander expressed, and the security team ran into the room. "Tell me, that prototype you designed, was it ever finished?"
"It was completed before the Third Child ever arrived."
"Why would the horseman take an interest in your project when he never showed any interest in what NERV was trying to do?"
BANG! BANG! They heard several gunshots along with yelling.
"It's not the horseman! Shoot him!" A man shouted.
"Hey!" Another one gasped.
BANG! BANG!
"Aaaaahh! No!" Another screamed.
Misato, with her gun out of its holster, ran into the chamber and saw the team getting incapacitated by the Geo-Front's uninvited guest. To her surprise, it wasn't Death, but someone else that had died when his mortal incarnation breathed his last breath.
In front of her, having impaled one of the men in his chest with his own gun, was someone that looked just like Gendo Ikari, prior to his mutilation and death, trying to get Ritsuko's basic prototype of the Eva addition.
"No way," she gasped, and raised her gun at him. "Stay where you are!"
He turned to face her and said, "Stand down, Captain Katsuragi."
"I don't take orders from you," she countered.
"And the dead don't usually come back to life unless at the beckoning of some greater authority."
Gendo then moved fast until he was now beside Misato and relieved her of her gun, knocking her aside before he returned to his task of opening the vault the prototype was locked inside, now that all distractions were dealt with.
"The late Gendo Rokubungi-Ikari, I presume?" He stopped and turned around, seeing a man that had, without a doubt, been sent by SEELE to replace him as the leader of the NERV agency after he had been killed by the late Third Child, and found his presence in his former agency to be quite a disappointment.
"And who are you supposed to be?" He asked him back.
"Commander Chansu of NERV HQ," the commander identified himself. "Your replacement, tasked with cleaning your mess."
"And you're doing such a lousy job at it. The Angels are here, and none of you have laid a finger on them. If any of them ever got down here, mankind would…"
"And why would the Angels ever want to come down here?" Commander Chansu questioned; it was already common knowledge that NERV's entire personnel knew about the creature known as Lilith that was kept in Terminal Dogma, and none of the Angels made any attempt to invade the Geo-Front to make contact with it (and Gendo's replacement had known from the start that the belief that they would was hardly true). "None of them, not even the ones that showed up in the States, Canada or China have made any attempt of any kind to invade the Geo-Front for any reason. Even the Third Angel has done nothing but take up residence in the abandoned city above that had been desolated by the Horseman of Death. You could say that we're on an uneasy truce with them right now. We don't mess with the Angels…and they don't have the Four Horsemen of the Restorative messing with us."
"Except that's not an uneasy truce, that's submissiveness. You're letting them live, and with each passing hour that they continue to exist, you doom mankind to annihilation."
"And what do you suggest we do? Attack an unknown group that we don't really know? Risk the lives of young people that were never properly informed of the potential threat we were facing? You had the blood of hundreds on your hand when you let your son loose upon the city."
"We're all responsible for our own choices."
"You brought your death upon yourself, you know. You could've gotten him help long ago, you could've informed him of the danger ahead of time, before he made the choice to punish you and your wife for your depravity against him."
"He made no attempt to even try and associate that he even understood what I had said to him!"
"It's probably because he was already dead set on the choice he made when he first started killing, Gendo! He murdered your in-laws that mistreated him. He murdered the guards and board of directors in charge of the institute you sent him to. He stabbed your wife, his mother, and left her for dead when he came here to execute you, the one he seemed to hate the most when he was alive. And you actually deserved what you got from him in the end."
It was then that Gendo, probably out of anger that he couldn't suppress, started to sprout horns on his forehead and his teeth became fangs, making him look like a mutated oni of sorts.
"He was supposed to pilot the Eva and face the Angels," he said, his voice now sounding contorted with inhuman rage. "That was all he had to do! Instead, he refused to do as he was told!"
"What exactly do you think you were to him, his father or his owner? You're either a parent or you're not…and you're clearly not a parent. Not with your attitude…and not with your soul as degraded as your face is right now."
"You can't stop me. I'm already dead."
"Maybe, but as you're dead, you're no longer in charge of NERV, and as you're no longer affiliated with NERV, you have no right to be here. Away with you, before we flood the halls with LCL."
"Not until I get what I came for."
Gendo then ripped open the secured vault and revealed the fruits of Ritsuko Akagi's efforts to extend the work of the Evangelions.
Within the small room was a large, horse-shaped, mechanical construct, colored like the Unit-00 Evangelion, but with a white band encircling its metallic waist. It was about the size and length of a full-grown stallion, but its saddle and reins were built right into its design.
"What a waste," Gendo uttered, and climbed onto the mechanical creature, which then turned on, unleashing a small stream of steam from its nostrils. "If the Evas can't use this, then it will serve a different purpose."
Time seemed to spiral out of control in the ten seconds that came and went: Gendo took the prototype and rode off into the halls, passing Commander Chansu and the rest of the personnel present, and escaped from the Geo-Front. But within those ten seconds, all anyone felt was a dark feeling of impending doom the longer the undead Gendo was there.
"What the Hell was that?" Commander Chansu heard Ryoji Kaji question, running down the hall where the smoldering hoof prints led away from the vault.
"One of history's least favorite miscreants," he answered cryptically.
-x-
Death left the building, out through the front door, in full view of the cameras and police…and nobody tried to stop him from leaving after he had confirmed that it was Gendo Ikari that murdered the three people that were dismembered this evening. His effort to believe that he and the other horsemen could change the hearts of those around them had paid off quite well, as the police allowed him to walk away without a struggle. But as he walked down the street, he pondered the information he had obtained from both the police and the newly deceased, about how there was to be a will reading to the surviving children of a man that had died a few months ago, presumably around the same time he had returned as the Horseman of Death, a man named Yuma Ikari, survived by one of his daughters, Yui Ikari, and his only son, Hei-Bai Ikari. What was more to ponder was that the lawyers were instructed to wait until tomorrow to read the will and inform the surviving family members what was left to them, but now that they were killed, the reading would likely be postponed until a date could be setup for it.
Why kill three lawyers over a will that didn't include him? He thought, curious as to why his dead and former father in the previous life would go after people that had nothing to do with him, as the will, salvaged from the lawyers' memories still present in their remains, had no mention of the name Gendo Ikari or Gendo Rokubungi. It's unlikely that he would've been left anything at all, as he was not a blood relative, having married into the family. As for the relatives themselves, this Hei-Bai Ikari seems the most likely person to inherit all that his father had left, as the sister, may her soul know everlasting damnation, only came back shortly before I did.
Walking into a park, the horseman stood under a streetlight, looking up at the night sky. There was something about the murders that didn't add up in his mind, and it was likely because he had no sense of a complete understanding of any legal actions or a businessman-like mentality. All he could accept was that this damned soul had murdered for some reason relating to the Ikari family…and he needed to either find out why…or hunt down the soul and send it back to Hell before more innocent lives were taken instead of the guilty.
"Mako, brother," he uttered, and his ghostly twin manifested in front of him.
"Yes?" Mako responded.
"What do you know of wills that relate to family and other forms of association?"
"A will is a legal document signed by a person prior to their impending death, ensuring that their surviving relatives will receive something of theirs after they pass away. It can range from money setup into a trust fund, an ancestral estate they owned, or even a business that was founded generations ago. But one of the disadvantages of a will is that whatever was of value will likely be coveted by one that feels they deserve it more than anyone else, especially siblings that will turn on one another for it if their relatives were well-known for a long time. Another disadvantage is that there are also clauses that can be included in the will, either stressing or prohibiting something that risks losing what a person is entitled, even after death."
"Do you know anything about a Yuma Ikari?"
Mako's eyes widened, and then returned to normal as he prepared to respond to his younger brother.
"In our previous life, he was our maternal grandfather," he explained, "and perhaps one of the nicest people that have ever lived in the decades past. It's a shame neither of us ever met him."
"And this Hei-Bai?"
"Maternal uncle. Another nice soul…but with a strained past."
"Define 'strained'."
"He was sent away by his father to be protected from his sister. He only recently returned to Japan after he was informed his father was dying. There's no chance of reconciliation between the surviving siblings, who can't see eye to eye because of their different personalities and individual views on many things. If there's anything they can agree on, it may just be to disagree."
"Agree to disagree, hmm? That sounds like something many a people can decide upon."
Death then walked away, and Mako followed him.
"Do you intend to find Hei-Bai?" He asked him.
"I see no reason to," he explained. "We never met him in the past, so there's no relationship that demonstrates a connection. He has committed no crime against anyone, so there's no reason to track him down."
"Death, sometimes, I think you need a reason that involves a crime being committed to go after someone. What's wrong with just seeing someone for no other reason than to see them?"
But Death didn't answer his brother's question. Not because he was uninterested in answering him, but because he wasn't sure how to answer such a question. After he had murdered the majority of the Ikari family that caused him much suffering, one way or another, excluding the ones he had never met in his previous life, Death wanted nothing further to do with the family that he sent to Hell, not even the innocent members. All he wanted was to be disassociated from the name Ikari, now…and forever.
-x-
Sometimes, she could drift away in a hot bath and forget about things. But Mana, while she was laying her head back in the tub, couldn't let go of what she had read in the book earlier. She couldn't even shake off the feeling that something could happen to Death that was more than what he was used to dealing with as an undead. And if what was written in the book was as accurate as much of the other things she read, Mana worried that the Restorative Horseman of Death, a tortured soul that deserved a happy life as much as anyone else did when he was once Shinji Ikari, would face an adversary that could be much more dangerous than the criminals he hunts down with the intention of passing the ultimate judgment on them.
Death, the Endgame is an obelisk of might, she thought, closing her eyes. He's the end of the darkness, incarnated in flesh that has quit. A titan, a juggernaut, a sentinel that defends the innocent by punishing the guilty. He takes no crap from anyone.
Her mouth sank into the water that reached just under her nose, almost submerging her entire body in the tub.
Unbeknownst to her, a large shadow appeared over her, with eyes as hollow as the dead that were sent to the depths of Hell.
"You're as good as dead, Fourth Child," a dark voice uttered out to her.
Gasp! Mana jumped up and grabbed the edge of the tub, looking around the bathroom and seeing nobody around.
-x-
Death stopped walking down the park path, feeling a sense of nigh-imbalance from afar, like someone innocent was almost placed in danger before the situation corrected itself. But that didn't ease his disgust that the damned soul of Gendo Ikari being back. And some feeling he had, probably an extension of his ability to detect the defilement of innocence and the cruelty of the guilty, seemed to be attempting to instruct him that he needed to go back to the Asagi house.
Growl! He looked up and saw his beast of burden flying down towards him. Growl!
Rumi landed on the ground in front of him, and looked at him.
Death climbed atop the saddle and grabbed onto the reins as his pale dragon flapped her wings and took to the sky again.
This time, it's something serious, he thought, approaching the urban areas away from the tall buildings. This time, it's something I will put my foot down upon.
BOOM! Something exploded just inches behind them, lighting the sky and exposing the dragon to whoever was out to see her.
Death looked down at the ground below, unable to find what had fired upon…and not seeing an innocent soul out on the streets.
HISS! He heard a firing sound, and saw something shaped like a fireball flying towards them.
He took out his shotgun and fired at it, blowing it up before it made contact with them.
Something was deliberately targeting them, and he couldn't find it.
-x-
"…Daddy, did you hear anything outside?" Mana asked her father, running out of the bathroom in a towel under a bathrobe.
Mordecai, locking the windows and doors, looked around the house and then said, "Yeah, and I didn't like the sound of it outside. Sounded like someone setting off bombs."
Miroku ran into the kitchen, armed with a small dagger and revolver pistol, and said, "I just got off the phone with our neighbors, and they're all taking the same precautions we're taking. One of them called the police, but nobody's seeing anyone on the street running around or shooting."
BOOM! Something loud occurred outside, and Mana ran under the table.
The adult men joined her under the table and held onto her.
-x-
SNARL! Rumi hissed and grunted, zigzagging in the air to avoid being blasted out of it with her rider in tow.
Where are you? Death wondered, looking at a small hill that dozens of single-family homes had been built on and around.
He saw a small flash and another fireball being sent up at him and Rumi.
"There, Rumi!" He told his beast, and Rumi opened her snout and unleashed a fireball of her own.
The two fireballs impacted and canceled each other out, allowing the dragon to fly towards the hill and bring her rider to their attacker.
Manifesting his sickle and taking out a Glock 17 pistol, Death jumped off the saddle and hovered down to the streets below, slamming his feet onto the pavement in front of what was quite a new sight to him; he had never encountered a horse made of metal, almost dishonoring the Restorative Horseman of War. But what was beside the metal horse was what caught his attention; the features were the same in death as they had been before he was murdered, down to the awful glasses on his face.
"You," he gave a low growl, raising his sickle at the condemned soul's face.
-x-
Gendo, using the prototype's onboard weapons to attack the Restorative Horseman of Death in the air, was quite disgusted that none of his attacks hit the dead boy, but was impressed that he managed to lure him to the ground.
"Yes, me," he told Death. "Surprised to see that I'm here?"
"It's back to Hell with you," Death told him, raising his Glock at his face.
"Not before I send you back there myself."
"I've killed you before in the flesh…and if need be, I will do so again in your condemned flesh."
"You will find that things are different from before."
"You haven't changed. No matter how much you'll probably want to deny it, you can't escape that your soul was condemned to the eternal darkness the day you abandoned your youngest son. Even I, his Restorative incarnation, can't stand the sight of you."
Just then, Mako manifested beside Death and added, "Be careful, brother. Do not hesitate to do what must be done. I can see into his heart…and it's as dark as his former intentions were."
Death's grip on the shaft of his sickle tightened, enforcing his intent to seal this damned man away once again for eternity.
Gendo looked at the ghost infant, informed that it was his and Yui's eldest son out of the twins they had, the one he had killed by accident, but found his presence to be of equal hindrance as the younger twin's had been in life.
BANG! Death shot at him with his Glock, aimed at his forehead, showing that he, just like with Shinji Ikari when he was alive and on his final day of life, had no feelings of pity, remorse or fear of this disgrace of a man.
"Aaurgh!" Gendo groaned, staggering back, reaching for his head, and pulled himself up straight to reveal a small hole on the left side of his forehead. "Is that all you got?!"
Death didn't answer him, but was unwilling to be baited by him; he knew better than to lose focus and give into anger, as feeling such an emotion clouded all sense of reasoning, calm and control.
"Why don't you come here and see what else I have?" He then questioned the fallen man.
Gendo then charged towards the horseman under the heavens, unsheathing a large blade from within his sleeves, and swung it against him.
Death swiftly dodged the blade, lowered to the ground, and drop-kicked Gendo.
"Urgh!"
"Sloppy," Gendo heard him say as he got back up.
BANG! A bullet was fired into him again, this time in his back, just under his nape.
The weapon Gendo used, looking similar to the kama sickle Death used, but its shaft was longer and the blade itself was larger, in both size and length, like the scythe that the Grim Reaper was depicted using in old pictures. Its presence aided in Death's understanding, from the demon he spoke with, that this condemned soul beneath him was similar to himself, being a horseman, but his very opposite.
Gendo quickly got up and tried to grab him, but the Restorative Horseman backed away and raised his sickle up, cutting his right arm clean off.
"Aaaaurgh!" He groaned again, seeing his limb fall to the ground and burn to ashes. "Damn you!"
BANG! Death shot him in the waist, sending him down to his left knee.
"Look at you," he said to Gendo. "It's just like when we were in Hell, and you were in a state of decrepitude when I saw you again. You think yourself superior to everyone around you in every way imaginable. But in truth, you're as pathetic as any other low-life with a death sentence on their soul."
BANG! Another bullet was fired into his face, sending him falling onto his back.
"You thought you could exploit your estranged son, whom you abandoned."
BANG! Another bullet inserted into his chest.
"You thought you had him by the heartstrings that were long since decayed."
BANG! BANG! Death emptied two more bullets into Gendo's stomach, forcing the fallen man to cough up a dark substance from his mouth.
"You…you think you can stop me?!" Gendo asked him. "I'm already dead! Go ahead and try! I'm just like you! I work for someone whose authority compels me to!"
Death's eyes glowed white and expelled a fiery energy, and he aimed the blade of his kama sickle at the man's head.
"Yeah," Gendo challenged him, "but you must know this. You know that dying…is such a bitch."
Then, Death retracted his sickle…and stepped back from him.
"Get up," he told him. "Get up…and defend yourself. You…deserve that much."
"What?"
"You're not even trying to put in any effort. Just what are you? What do you think you are? Are you Satan? Are you a fallen angel? Are you filled with self-righteousness?! ARE…YOU…VENGEFUL?!"
Gendo then got up…and grew a new arm to replace the one Death cut off. The bullets that were lodged in him then fell out of him. In ten seconds, he looked like new.
"Impressive…for a fallen spirit," Death expressed, putting his Glock back into its holster.
"You're going to regret giving me this opportunity."
"I'm already regretting it."
Gendo retrieved his weapon and brandished it in front of the Restorative Horseman.
Death brandished his sickle in front of him.
They began to move slowly, in a ring, on the street, as if trying to court one another on the battlefield. The streetlights dancing on their blades, glistening in the darkness.
"To challenge Death in the hopes of escaping…is to embrace the inevitability of dying before judgment can be dealt," Death uttered.
"And to challenge Death…is to challenge the will of God," Gendo expressed.
"Death is separate from God…just as Heaven is separate from Hell."
Gendo then charged toward the horseman that used to be his youngest son, wanting closure at being dealt with by him.
"You'll pay for what you did to me!" He yelled at him. "You'll pay!"
CLASH! Their blades crossed…and the battle was on again.
A/N: And with this, the danger will only get worse…until all four members of the damned are gathered against the Restorative Horsemen.