Creation began on 08-01-15
Creation ended on 10-14-15
Neon Genesis Evangelion
A New Cause: Shame
"Mana…Mana…Mana…" A voice called out to the little girl in her sleep. "Mana…"
But in her dreams, she was wandering within a vast forest with tall pillars of stone that reached into the sky. As there was no way for the sun to shine completely through the forest, its light shone through on the sides to give it a mystifying sense.
"Mana…don't let Death, the Endgame suffer for what isn't over," the voice, now audible to the girl, and sounding like Mother Gaia, continued.
Stopping to catch her breath, Mana, wearing a green, glittering dress, looked up at the thickness of the leaf-covered branches of this forest that could've existed in real life. She couldn't see the sun that gave the planet its warmth and the means to thrive, but she could see something different…and it was light in the darkness. The darkness that could hide many things, some of which were as unpleasant to think of as they were to experience…but in the light was the promise of a hopeful time where even the darkness held no sway over one's will to become more than the sum of their existence.
A shadow appeared behind her, and she turned to face the figure that owned it.
It was Death himself, but he looked like a literal corpse, deprived of color, vitality, and his jaw much of his face was gone, leaving a horrid sight to behold.
But Mana didn't scream or try to run away from him. Instead, she went over to him…and held out her left hand.
"Death?" She said to the horseman.
He accepted her hand and went with her to wherever she was going in this dream forest.
-x-
"…I'd ask if you have any last words, but you don't have much of a mouth on you," the Apocalyptic Horseman of Conquest said to Death, aiming the arrow at his head. "And look at you right now. You're pathetic in your methods and have no idea what you're dealing with."
SWISH-PIERCE! The arrow was released…and into Death's head!
Death's eyes went dark as he went limp, and Mako faded from sight.
"Check him," Conquest ordered the Apocalyptic Horseman of Famine.
She approached the incapacitated child and felt around his neck.
"The residual energies inside him are at a standstill," she revealed. "He's no threat to us now."
Conquest then fired two more arrows at the chains hold Death's arms, dropping his body to the ground.
Famine picked him up and carried him out.
-x-
"…I'd be careful around him," Gaia told Yui, trying to advise the woman to be cautious about her damned husband. "Just because he can walk the mortal coil once again, it doesn't mean he has all of his free will. His soul is no longer his, and he has to serve the bidding of his inferno masters."
As Gendo tried to approach his wife, Yui kept her distance.
"They promised to let me see you again so long as I served them," he explained to her.
"You made a deal with the Devil…to see me again?" She questioned his decision.
"I had no choice in the matter. They saw my desperation, and appealed to my longing for you."
"The bargain was probably limited to just this moment," Gaia expressed. "You can see her…but you can't be with her, as it was not part of the deal."
Gendo frowned upon her…and sighed as she was right about his agreement with the masters of Hell.
"So, you're the woman that gave the Third Child a way out of the dark abyss he went to the day he died," he said to her.
"I am," Gaia responded, "and do you really need to address who was your youngest son in the mortal past by a designation that is as meaningless as the sinners his purgatory incarnation has sent to the inferno abyss? What's wrong with just using his former name? It was you and your wife that gave him the name that soon became synonymous with every aspect of the darkness inherent within mankind's coldest individuals because the two people that should've made themselves an important part of his past left him alone."
"He…killed…me," Gendo defended. "I tried to reason with him, to make him see things my way, but he was already set on murdering me."
"You were trying to manipulate him into serving you as a pawn, into believing that there was no reason to live in a world where the deities take as much as they gave to people. But your attempts became futile because he had his own beliefs, based upon his own experience with those around him. You were guilty of abandonment and attempted to get away with your own interests for your future, which didn't include either of your sons as it did your wife."
Yui looked at Gendo, wondering who was being truthful and who was being anything but truthful.
"Oh," Gaia realized. "I take it that you had no idea what his agenda had been in life."
Gendo then intervened with, "We can discuss what I tried to do at another time. I have work to do."
As he walked away, Yui turned back to face Gaia, who crossed her arms and shook her head negatively on Gendo's decision to actually avoid talking about what he had done, or even take any responsibility for what he had done. And then she left the goddess alone in her prison cell.
The Ikari family is synonymous with despair and shame, the goddess thought.
-x-
The hand Conquest used to gain access to the building proved to be very useful for the Restorative Horsemen, as it enabled to disable the security protocols and be undetected by the cameras and heat sensors afforded to the facility.
As they ran through the halls, they encountered some people that were just performing their duties as the personnel of NERV.
"Unless you want to get sick again," Conquest uttered, taking out his longbow and preparing an arrow to fire, "back off and stand against the walls!"
The people that saw him and War got the message and stood against the walls.
"Where's Death?" Famine asked a woman he got near.
"In a holding cell," she answered him, "down near Terminal Dogma."
"Thank you," he praised her, and then knocked her out. "I am terribly sorry."
They ran down the halls and broke up to cover more of the base.
War, without any effort on his part, ended up in Central Dogma, on the bridge, in front of the personnel present, whom weren't pleased to see him.
"Viper bosoms," he grunted, unsheathing his sword. "Don't none of you try anything stupid, or else you'll get scorched from the Earth."
Misato, having took out her gun, froze in hesitation as the horseman's sword ignited into flames.
"Where's Death?" War questioned them.
"Don't you mean, the Third Child?" Asuka, who was present, asked him back.
Looking at her, recognizing her red hair and fiery temper, the Knight of the Restorative responded, "I'd forget about Death right now and spend my time killing you out of a murderous lust for violent souls. But business comes before pleasure, I'm afraid. I won't ask again! Where is he?!"
The temperature began to rise in response to the horseman's own temper, and the people present were silent from the fear of being killed by this man.
"Nobody wants to talk? Fine. Let's see if I can find him from here." War expressed, and stepped over to Maya's control console, forcing the boyish woman away. "I may be from the medieval times, but I have learned to use modern-day technology."
Within three minutes of his takeover of the console, most of the speakers within the building were used to unleash a tune throughout the halls.
"I've got no strings to hold me down," a female voice sang, "make me fret…or make me frown. I had strings, but now I'm free."
"But how is that going to help you find Death?" Maya asked him.
"Are you free…or must you have strings to move about?" He answered with a question. "Or maybe you just need a bit of an incentive to do for yourself. My strings are attached to the violence people inflict on one another. But…you don't see them on me."
-x-
"…I've got no strings to hold me down," Famine heard the tune repeating itself as he ran down the hall he was in. "…No strings on me…"
"Why this song?" He wondered aloud.
Suddenly, before he could choose which path to take in the hall, left, right or continue forward, a trio of people he never seen before, but recognized their outfits not being associated with the NERV organization, run in front of him from left to right, and one of them was carrying an incapacitated Death, the Endgame.
"Hey!" He called out to them, pursuing them. "Stop! Relinquish the Horseman of Death!"
He leapt and caught one of the two women that was in the trio, and sent her to the ground.
"Unless you want to have your fluids sucked out through my hands," he threatened, "you'll surrender Death, the Endgame!"
The woman in rags then threw Famine against the wall and got back up.
"It looks like a battle of the Famines is underway," the woman said.
Famines? The Restorative Horseman of Famine thought, confused, and saw the arrow impaling Death in his head, which lacked a jaw. What did they do to him?
"It must be fate," the woman expressed, "Heaven's Horseman of Famine against Hell's."
"You're a horseman?" Famine asked, disbelieving her, since, as far as he knew from Mother Gaia, only men were ever chosen to become horsemen. "I don't think so."
She removed her ragged shawl and revealed her bare bones that made up her torso, covered in tiny strands of deteriorated tissues that connected to the flesh on her arms.
"Like you, I am Famine, but unlike you, I am one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," she revealed to him.
The Restorative Famine's hands morphed into large claws as he raised them up. It was a fear made real for him, that more than one Horseman of the Apocalypse had been brought to Earth. And it was a fear that he had to face now, for better or for worse.
-x-
"…There are no strings on me…no strings on me…no strings on me…" The song went on, and Conquest realized that the music was demonstrating a series of broken loops, repeating several lyrics over and over again, as he ran down the hall.
"And Death has strings on his body right now that must be severed," he uttered.
"Rrrraurgh!" He heard the cries of violence and brutality somewhere.
"If it's not War, it's Famine," he uttered, following the sounds.
-x-
"Aaaaurgh!" Famine grunted, removing himself from the wall his unholy counterpart slammed him into. "Is that all you got?"
The female Famine, now working in tandem with the female War, now appeared more inhuman and degraded, with spikes sprouting from her cheeks and forearms, and she just smirked at the Restorative Horseman with contempt.
"What chance do you possibly have against the likes of us?" She asked him. "You're just one person against two out of three out of four."
Famine looked over at the guy holding Death, and simply raised his claws up to fight again.
"It doesn't matter if your numbers are one or many," he declared, "for Heaven will make sure you won't have any after I devour you."
-x-
In the dark realm of where he'd been placed after the arrow was put in his head, Death found himself hanging from rafters suspending him in the air, strung up by dozens of wires, chains, ropes and impaled by knives and arrows, keeping him from acting out. Within this realm, his injuries were nonexistent, but his powers were drained from his body.
"Mako?" He called out for his twin, weakly. "Brother? Are you around?"
A see-through infant appeared in front of the horseman, its red blanket reduced to tatters, and its head bearing several cuts.
"I'm here, Death," the infant responded to him.
"What happened to us, Mako? How did we fall from grace and end up being back in the darkness that conceals all from the light?"
"This, my brother, is just another setback in a series of setbacks. We will find a way out. Or the other horsemen we will ride with will find a way for us."
"How can you have faith in the other horsemen to get us out of this predicament?"
"We are of the Restorative. We must have faith in each other, as well as ourselves. You may believe in Gaia, but you must also believe in Conquest, War and Famine…just as they must believe in you."
"I seem to frighten them in my presence and my choice to hunt down the criminal elements that exist in the mortal world," Death expressed. "I never expected of them to trust me in this venture. Help me every now and then, but never trust. Trust is something that needs to always be earned, not deserved."
"No matter what your beliefs are in regards to the other horsemen, so long as you have their backs, they will always have yours, just as I do, no matter what," Mako told him.
"If I can't free the girl's mother from her spiritual imprisonment, what will my trust in them mean?"
"You know what it will mean. But don't let it turn you inside-out before this is all over. We are close to the endgame, Death, the Endgame."
-x-
In her dreams, Mana had found herself separated from Death. She wasn't sure how they were separated, but she was wandering around the empty streets of an abandoned city that seemed similar to the city of Tokyo that she heard of from her father. She couldn't even remember if she was looking for the horseman.
Why can't I remember what to do? She wondered, stopping by one of the skyscrapers in the Shinjuku District, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. Why can't I remember?
Neigh! The whining of a horse caught her attention, and she turned around, seeing the pale-white unicorn of Death, the Endgame galloping towards her.
"Rumi?" She questioned, and the horse stopped in front of her. "What are you doing here in my dream? I mean, how are you here in my dream?"
Unfortunately, the horse couldn't answer her questions, even if she could. Instead, the horse motioned her head towards the street leading away from the building.
Mana wondered if Rumi was aware of Death's current predicament or location, and decided to follow her to him.
"Okay, Rumi," she expressed. "Lead the way to Death."
The unicorn walked away, leading the girl down the street. Wherever they turned, there was no sign of any other people present, as though the little girl and the unicorn were the only ones left in the world of dreams and fantasies.
"Death!" She called out for the horseman. "Death!"
Scrape. Scrape. Mana heard Rumi using her hooves to catch her attention, and saw her hitting a small object on the ground.
It was a microphone, slightly damaged, but still in good shape for use. Next to it was a small doll or figure with opposable limbs connected to severed pieces of string.
Neigh! Rumi whined, and scraped the ground in front of the two objects.
"You want me to pick those up off the ground?" Mana questioned her, and the horse moved her head.
So, she picked up the microphone and spoke in it to see if it could still work.
"Testing, testing," she uttered, and her voice sounded heightened. "Okay."
Then, she picked up the doll (actually a puppet) and found a tag on its side that read, "There are No Strings on Me."
"Okay… This is something…" She said.
Rumi snorted and lowered her head towards Mana. She motioned her left hand holding the microphone to her right hand holding the puppet. It was through this action that girl found a pull-string on the back of the puppet…and pulled it.
"I've got no strings to hold me down," the puppet spoke. "There are no strings on me."
Mana then held the microphone to her mouth and inhaled a new breath.
"I've got no strings to hold me down, make me fret or make me frown," she sang. "I had strings…but now I'm free. There are no strings on me."
-x-
In the darkness, Death and Mako heard Mana's voice, singing a song they hadn't heard before.
"I've got no strings to hold me down, make me fret…or make me frown," her voice echoed. "I had strings, but now I'm free… Now I'm free… Now I'm free… There are no strings on me."
"No strings on me?" Death spoke, confused by the song lyrics.
"It relates to the story of Pinnochio, brother," Mako explained. "A puppet brought to life and sets out on a journey to become a real boy. He had strings, but became free from them, becoming independent of the actions of others."
"There are no strings on me… No strings on me…" Mana continued to sing, though the lyrics were broken and not like the traditional song at all.
SNAP! Some of the restraints holding Death in place broke off, freeing his arms to a degree and allowing him some of their usage.
"But why would a puppet that had been given the capacity for self-awareness desire to become flesh and blood instead of remaining as wood?" Death questioned his twin. "Why become something as vulnerable as flesh when you could become something as strong as stone or steel?"
"There's no desire for eternity. To become flesh for Pinnochio is to be loved by his father, Geppetto. In some interpretations of the fable, Pinnochio dies before becoming flesh, but was revived at the end. Not many stories about what became of Pinnochio after he became a real boy, but there are beliefs that he grew up, found a wife, had a family of his own, and passed away years later."
"There are no strings on me…" Mana's voice continued on, and Death ripped himself free from the rest of the restraints. "There are no strings on me."
Landing on a surface as dark as the rest of the place, the Restorative Horseman and his ghostly twin began to follow the girl's voice out of there.
"You can't run away again," a different voice uttered out to them, blocking out Mana's singing. "We have no time to waste on a child's tantrum."
Death recognized it as Gendo's voice, and the dead man appeared in front of the pair, halting their progress in leaving this dark realm.
"You can't turn away, Third Child," he told Death, which made the horseman's sickle manifest in his right hand. "I have a use for you."
"Even for an illusion," he expressed, "even though you're one of the damned, you never seem to accept that I am not the boy you abandoned…and returned only to kill you before he himself died."
"And yet, you don't seem to be aware of the nightmares you keep bottled up inside that long to haunt you in any way possible."
"Hey, Shinji," a female voice, different from Mana's, was then heard. "Hey, Shinji."
Then Gendo disappeared, replaced by the purple-haired Misato Katsuragi, bare as the day she drew her first breath, glowing brightly in front of the horseman's perception.
"Hey, Shinji," she addressed him as the dead boy, lowering her upper body to meet his gaze, "do you want to become one with me? To be of one mind and body? I'm sure it would be really nice."
Death didn't answer her with his own voice, but instead responded with a swing from his sickle, causing her to disappear in a puff of smoke.
"Hey, Shinji, you idiot," he then heard the voice of the redhead, Asuka, appearing behind Mako, just as bare as the Misato illusion had been. "Do you want to become one with me? To be of one mind and body? I'm sure it would be really awesome. You should appreciate your good fortune. Give it a try. I'm waiting for you."
As with the previous illusion, Death slashed at this one, removing it from sight.
"Ikari," he now heard the voice of the blue-haired girl his past self had killed before killing Gendo, and she appeared beside him, bare as the multiple copies of her were in that large tank before they were disposed of. "Do you want to become one with me? To be of one mind and body? I'm sure it would be really…pleasant."
Instead of trying to drive this illusion away like the other ones, Death turned from the deception and walked away, with Mako floating close behind.
"They seem to be pieces of your past self, trying to make you think you're still alive when you're not," Mako suspected.
"And they left nothing to the pervasive," he added in response to the suspicion. "I grow weary and disgusted with the exposure of the flesh."
Mako looked behind them…and then quickly turned back to the front of them.
"Anything in particular about the exposure of the flesh that sickens you?" He asked him.
"Using flesh as a service to the sinners," Death expressed. "Flesh is meant to be lived in with a joyous sensation, not to barter to the highest bidder in human trafficking."
"Shinji," the voices of the three women that Death could care extremely less about uttered in the darkness towards him as he walked away. "Do you want to become one with me?"
-x-
"…Oh, no," Yui sighed as she returned to the cell that held the Restorative Horseman of Death, finding it empty. "He's loose. I gotta find him."
"He's not loose," she heard Gendo's voice as said man stepped out of the shadows in the cell. "He's just been removed from this cell to be taken back to Hell."
"And how do you know that he's been taken back to Hell?" She asked him.
"Because my fellow Horsemen of Conquest, War and Famine came and took him."
"Other members of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? And what makes you think that they can deal with him?"
"Against two or three members of the unholy quartet, he stands no chance for escaping. Against one of them, he stands on, more-or-less, even ground, able to either get away or pursue the enemy horseman in order to eliminate them."
Yui then realized something about the connection between the Restorative Horseman of Death and Gendo's position as the Apocalyptic Horseman of Death.
"You're nowhere near the level of power or skill as he is, are you?" She asked him.
"That is irrelevant," he responded, though that was enough of an answer; Gendo wasn't the type of person to ever admit that he was never in the same league or on the same level as someone else that was of a status greater than him. "I am stronger than him, Yui."
But Yui didn't believe him. She had to accept that their younger son had been on a level of rage and murder unlike any other killer that was within the country, and that his undead incarnation was even stronger because of his connection with the woman that brought him back. The mutilation of so many people that committed crimes against others and had been able to get away with them until they met with the horseman made it harder for her to find a sense of relation with the dead boy.
"It's completely irrelevant, Yui," he told her.
"How can it be irrelevant when it's more than relevant?" She questioned him.
"Because I'm better than he is. He has done nothing but cause trouble ever since he came back to the city, and he caused trouble out of hatred."
But the hatred was our fault, she thought. We left him alone… We expected too much from him… We didn't even tell him about his brother until the day he breathed his last breath. We hurt him, and so he hurt others because of us. His crimes became our shame.
As much as he wanted to get closer to her, to hold her with his arms, Gendo knew he couldn't. Not while he was a damned soul under enslavement. And so he retreated back into the shadows to head to his destination: Wherever it was in the base that Death was right now.
-x-
Swish! An arrow was fired from a bow in the hall…and it hit its target: A woman dressed in unholy armor.
"Aaaurgh!" She groaned, seeing the arrow lodged in her right shoulder.
"Next," the Poison Master uttered, firing another arrow at the other woman that was fighting Famine.
Pierce! It penetrated her right arm.
"Urgh! Hey!" The female Famine groaned, and pulled the arrow out of her arm. "What's your problem, anyway?! Shooting an arrow at me!"
Conquest didn't answer her with words, just another arrow to her head.
"You're an emissary from Hell, like any other embodiment of darkness," he then uttered. "I will shoot an arrow at any that dare to spread darkness and suffering. You're not an exception, regardless of your status or whatever."
"You must be pretty desperate to want to rescue the Restorative Horseman of Death," she told him. "Or pretty pathetic if you think you can stop us from taking him."
As the female War prepared to deal with this horseman, the Apocalyptic Horseman of Conquest had continued to take the Restorative Horseman of Death out of the facility.
-x-
"…There are no strings on me," Mana continued to sing, but found that it wasn't doing much to find Death any more than it had for her earlier. "Okay, maybe I should try something different."
Rumi snorted in agreement with the girl.
"Maybe we'll get better results with something like this," Mana suggested, and started a different song. "Ooh… Ooh… Tell me I'm crazy… Maybe I know, but I believe in happy endings… I know it's crazy… Still, even so, I believe in happy endings… Just as I believe in you, my friend… I believe things work out in the end… Sure as there's a moon and stars above… I believe in happy endings… I believe in love… Just as I believe in you, my friend… I believe things work out in the end… Sure as there's a moon and stars above… I believe in happy endings… I believe in love…"
NEIGH! Rumi whined.
-x-
"…Shinji," Death continued to hear the voices of those women that held no space his lifeless heart, "why won't you become one with me? To be of one mind and body. Surely, it'll ease your pain, remove your worries. Don't you desire that?"
As he wandered the darkness, the horseman's grip on the shaft of his kama sickle tightened. It was that name that had no meaning to him. That worthless designation that he cast aside when he died. These shadows, these echoes of a life that was no longer his…and could never be lived again, no matter what was did to him, continued to refer to him as that person, and it was sickening.
And then he stopped walking and turned to face the women that were right behind him. He started glowing on his own…and something within the glow manifested from his body, assuming the form of an ethereal humanoid. As the glow dimmed, the form looked no different from Death's appearance, but the young man's face seemed different, more lively than the horseman's lifeless expressions.
"Would you be nice to me?" The young man asked them.
"We are nice to you," they answered him.
CRACK! Their faces, like a mirror or glass, cracked and shattered in front of the horseman's body and the manifestation of his condemned soul.
"LIARS!" He shouted at them. "You just hide behind your smiles! Even in death, you hide behind your smiles, keeping me in the dark, keeping everything ambiguous! You can take your kindness and ambiguity and shove them up your lying asses!"
They disappeared in puffs of smoke and the horseman's spiritual manifestation was reabsorbed back into his body.
"Enough with the deception," he uttered. "You want me, I'm right here! Come out from the darkness and face me with some sense to own up to your worthlessness! Face me! COWARDS!"
"So, even a spiritual deception as emotional as this doesn't weaken you?" Death heard that female voice that belonged to the deceased Rei Ayanami uttered out to him, as her manifestation appeared again, dressed in that school uniform. "You're as unbreakable in death as you were in life."
"Rei Ayanami… Lilith… Still unable to move on, are you?"
"My inability to move on is your fault," she told him. "You put me in this position."
"You mean, Shinji put you this position. I'm not Shinji. I'm Death."
"Whatever. In due time, you'll be returned to the inferno you were condemned to."
"Hell rarely holds me. Even when some believe that Hell is for children, I cannot be bound by Hell…for I take it wherever I go, for better or worse."
The girl's red eyes glared daggers at the horseman, as if to intimidate him, but he stood his ground.
"This world of mortality is filled with sadness and despair," she told him.
"Even so, the power to grant hope is within reach," Death responded.
"You don't give hope."
"Neither do you."
"You're disgraceful."
"As are you…for looking like that disgrace."
"She had so much to expect from your past existence."
"All that she can expect from me is retribution. Retribution in every way that is horrifying. Eyes gouged out, fingers cut off, teeth knocked out, disembowelment, dismemberment, shot up, mutilation, whatever penalty that promises the end of her life. She doesn't deserve her flesh for long."
"But will you be able to do away with her? Will you be able to end her, just as you have ended the lives of all your other victims?"
"Don't tempt me," he threatened her. "You don't know what I'm capable of."
Then, the girl changed her appearance, now resembling a human-sized variation of her true form that resided in Terminal Dogma, but with a warped variation of Yui's head and face.
"I've been locked away for so long that I've forgotten what I looked like before that woman decided to play with my flesh," she expressed.
"If you expect me to feel sorry for you, I don't," the horseman responded. "Your…lack of an original identity is her fault for deciding to play with your flesh."
But before Lilith could respond to his comment about Yui being the one at fault for her lack of an original identity, a new voice spoke out in the darkness around them.
"Tell me I'm crazy," they heard a girl's voice. "Maybe I know, but I believe in happy endings."
"Who is that?" Lilith questioned.
Death recognized her as none other than Mana herself, singing throughout the darkness.
"I know it's crazy," she continued to sing. "Still, even so, I believe in happy endings… Just as I believe in you, my friend… I believe in happy endings… I believe in love…"
The horseman's infant twin manifested beside him and expressed, "She's looking for you, Death."
"Why would a girl be looking for him?" Lilith demanded of the ghostly infant.
"It's not my place to try and answer that question," he told her instead. "To each their own."
Death and his brother then walked away from Lilith, who took offense to such an act.
"Don't you dare walk away from me!" She shouted.
But Death and Mako walked on.
"I believe in happy endings… I believe in love…" Mana's singing eventually drowned out Lilith's yelling of Death being no better than the deceased Shinji Ikari.
-x-
"You're late," the Apocalyptic Horseman of Conquest informed Gendo, who emerged from the shadows. "Deal with this stiff. Make yourself useful."
Being handed the Restorative Horseman of Death, Gendo suddenly found himself backing away from the appointed leader of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse…and he frowned at such an act.
"He's got an arrow up his head," Conquest told him. "He's incapacitated! Take him!"
As he tried to hand him over again, Gendo went and backed away again.
"You either take him…or the next arrow I fire will be going through your head!" He threatened Gendo.
"I'm not laying a finger on him," Gendo told him. "Even if he is incapacitated."
Then, to justify and enforce his words, Conquest threw Death at Gendo, who grabbed him by the arrow in his head, nearly breaking it off, and letting him fall to the floor.
"Grraurgh!" Conquest leapt at Gendo and slammed him against the wall. "When you're given an order, you follow it, you pitiful disgrace! Hell demands obedience from its condemned!"
Grabbing him by his wrists and causing his skin to boil and blister, Gendo felt the pain of this horseman's wrath upon him, almost similar to the pain he experienced when he opened Rei's super-heated Entry Plug.
As they were pitted against each other, the fallen horseman began to stir.
-x-
"…I believe in love," Mana finished her singing for the seventh time before she considered singing something else.
"Who I used to be had strings," she heard the horseman's voice from down the street in front of her, appearing out of thin air. "He had strings…until he believed in the power of vengeance…and cut himself free from those strings. And now, his soul, entombed within flesh that isn't like his had once been, tries to believe in something much greater than vengeance."
As he now stood in front of Mana and Rumi, with his brother beside him, the horseman looked down at the girl, realizing that they were in a dream.
"Are you alright, Death?" She asked him.
"Physically or spiritually?" He responded.
"Both," she clarified.
"Physically, my body has been degraded by blood of Lilith and the ultraviolet light, weakening its durability and regenerative faculties. Spiritually, there is still conflict between the past that some refuse to let stay buried…and the present desiring to lead to the future free of the past."
"What do you mean?"
"Those that still view me as the late Shinji Ikari refuse to let him be forgotten. It is unbearable to endure the agony that comes with wearing a face similar to his…and those afflicted by his actions…and reactions. No matter how many times they're informed that I am not him, the message does not seem to sink in or whatever it is when people, living or dead, are able to understand and accept that a person that looks like someone from their past…is not and will never be that person, no matter how much they fear or desire of it to be so."
Mana turned away from him and sighed.
"I can understand that feeling," she told him, "looking at someone…and knowing that they're not someone you may know or knew from your past, that they have some similarity to them…but are not and will never be them."
"Do you really?" He asked her.
"Once or twice, outside of Japan, I would see a woman that had a similar appearance to my mother, and I would feel a little deceived that she had come back, even when I know she's not really there. My eyes…and my heart…play tricks on me because I do miss her. And then, there's you. I know that you look like the young man that made Tokyo-3 a ghost town…but that's where the similarity ends. When I snuck into the city just to meet with you, without any desire to fight or try to kill you, I couldn't imagine anyone that looked like him being able to do what you can do. Even when I read as much as I could about his crimes, his history and his end, I can't see him in you. I can't address you as him…because you're not him…just as I know that there's no other woman in existence that is my mother."
He was soon reminded that he still needed to do this one thing for the girl's family…and he couldn't return empty-handed without so much as either who he had returned to NERV HQ for…or an explanation reasonable to excuse him to a degree.
"I will bring her back to you," he told her.
"But…you don't have to risk yourself to do this, Death. It doesn't have to be like this."
"It's not something I have to do, Asagi," he revealed. "It's something I want to do. Something I can see get done. Nobody's telling me to risk my purgatory freedom that has no guarantee of a future beyond the scope of the choice."
"Okay, but say something that's worse than what has already happened happens to you? Something that may not involve trying to eliminate you…but exploiting you? I'm sure that we can both agree that the Eva is more trouble than it's truly worth, for everyone, but… What if they try to put you in one? What if they try to do to you what they tried to do with your past self that was bound by his mortality? And then…nobody's safe from the criminal elements that still exist in the world?"
Death knew where she was going with this conversation, and expressed, "Unless my condemned soul is that of a woman with a child or children born after the calamity from less than two decades ago, any abomination like the Eva would be as useless as it is disgraceful. And for that matter, I will do all that I can to ensure no more of those disgraces will harm anyone."
Mana saw that there was no swaying him from doing what he chose to do, and decided to support his decision, for better or worse.
"Please, be careful," she told him. "There's no Four Horsemen of the Restorative without you, and there's no hope for those of us that really want a future to be proud of without you helping to get it for us. It's not just our future… It's your future, too. And like the song itself, I want to believe in happy endings for everyone. That includes you."
-x-
"Aaurgh!" The Apocalyptic Horseman of Conquest took one of his arrows and jammed it into Gendo's right leg.
"Urgh!" Gendo groaned, and grabbed Conquest by his neck.
"You're not the one in charge here, Gendo of the Damned!" Conquest told him, taking another arrow and impaling him in his abdomen with it. "Those with experience on the field of battle and more have the authority! You've never been in a war, let alone on a battlefield! You think you can take control of the Four Horsemen from me?!"
He then grabbed Gendo and lifted him off his feet, throwing him up against the ceiling, letting him fall to the ground, causing the two arrows in him to drive deeper into his injuries.
"Aaah…" Gendo groaned again, and then saw his right hand get stepped on by Conquest. "Aaaurgh!"
"I am the leader…and you're one of the servants," he was told by him. "The masters of the inferno underworld gave me authority over you, War and Famine. You can either follow my orders when they're given…or you can return to your pit of damnation back in the depths of Hell. You can be replaced. There have been Horsemen of Death before you, and if necessary, there can be Horsemen of Death to succeed you…and follow orders."
As he slowly got back up, Gendo glared at him. No matter what he did, he wouldn't benefit from being a condemned soul, and that was his youngest son's fault because he wouldn't do as he was told. And he was given a limit to how many times he could fail as a Horseman of the Apocalypse before he wouldn't be allowed to fail again, even if there was a chance for him to succeed.
RIP! They both looked to where the Restorative Horseman of Death had been thrown aside, seeing him up and about, having ripped a layer of the metal wall off and holding it in his left hand, looking at them with malice.
What surprised Conquest was that arrow that had disabled him was still in his head…and it wasn't doing its job, anymore.
Even without a jaw to speak right now, Death, when motivated by other goals, was as intimidating as he was dangerous to those that stood between him and those goals.
"This is your fault, Gendo," Conquest told him. "If you had simply done as you were told, we wouldn't be in this mess."
Mako manifested beside Death's head and uttered, "I may be weakened, but I'm not helpless. Not yet."
Conquest then brandished his composite bow, prepared to fire additional arrows into this Restorative Horseman that made quite a name for himself.
But this Death wasn't foolish enough to allow himself to be taken out by his arrows like before when he was incapacitated enough to be harmed by his first arrow.
-x-
"If any of you so much as try to get in the way, I'll burn you beyond recognition," War threatened the people in Central Dogma as he turned to leave. "You hear me? I will burn you beyond recognition, and you'll wish I had killed you. So sit back and fear the real enemy that lurks around you. The real enemy! It could be anyone in this room right now. Him? Her? Her? Even you."
As the knight left the chamber, the people were questioning what he had meant by what he said.
-x-
SWAT! The Poison Master had shot another arrow into the woman's body, pinning her to the wall by her hands and head.
"You're so cruel!" She called Conquest. "How can you do such an unforgiving thing to a woman?!"
"An enemy is an enemy, regardless of whatever they feel defines them," he expressed, and then went over to the Restorative Famine, who was on the floor, regenerating his skinned, left leg. "Whether you're a woman or not is of no concern to me. You're an enemy, first and foremost, and everything else comes second. If you can't handle yourself on the battlefield, then you shouldn't be a horseman."
Helping Famine to his feet, Conquest then noticed something unusual between the two. It was like they had this connection that was faded, and it had nothing to do with their designations as the Horsemen of Famine at all.
"Famine, does this woman seem odd to you?" He asked his fellow horseman.
"Everyone's odd to me, Conquest, regardless of who they are," Famine told him.
"Look at her closely."
And he looked at her, turning his head left and right, viewing her from every angle. He even inhaled her twisted scent, but the only thing that came to mind…was a memory that was all but forgotten. Within the memory, there was…sand…and dirt…and stones, a cold breeze, light and darkness…and a pain that followed him to the ends of his mortal life. The one aspect that stood out in the memory…was that in the back of his mind…he left the mortal coil crying from a complete lack of care.
"You had a child in life," he told the woman, "and you walked away from it."
"I don't know what you're talking about," the female Famine responded, but it was the way she said that gave her away.
"You did. You had a child in your past life among the mortals…and you walked away from it. You let it die in a wasteland. You…left me to die."
The female Famine then took a closer look at the male Famine…and saw that he had a look almost identical to a young man she had known in life.
"You!" She gasped. "You're his son! You're the bastard child that man forced on me!"
Conquest now saw the strange familiarity between the two. The female Famine was once the Restorative Famine's mother in life…and she killed him.
"This is sick and disgraceful," he uttered; if there was one thing he learned to hate more than the flaws of his own past mortality, it was the people that had children…and, by one method or another, decided to kill them for one reason another or even for no reason.
"Your Horseman of Famine is this Horseman of Famine's condemned child?" The female War questioned. "Ain't this an ugly family reunion?"
"It's not a reunion," retorted the Restorative Famine, the flesh on his arms shredding away to reveal overdeveloped muscle tendons. "It's vengeance to free my soul which fell from grace! Aaaaurgh!"
He launched towards the female Famine that had once been his mother, intent of sending her back to Hell where she would burn for her sin.
-x-
Even when crippled and made more vulnerable from the blood of Lilith, Death still had considerable strength to aid him in facing these two unholy horsemen that had bickered against one another over him.
The Apocalyptic Conquest, now deprived of his bow, was forced to rely on his hand-to-hand combat skills, which were rather lacking against this young man that had fallen from grace.
SMACK! Death had delivered a bony, right hook to Conquest's face, sending him flying backwards against a wall.
He hit the wall with such force that the back of his head busted open.
"Aaaurgh!" He groaned, falling to the floor.
"Aaaaurgh! Aaaaurgh!" Gendo, who was next on Death's list, had his shoulders and collarbones shattered by Death's wrists that had slammed hard onto them.
Grip! Death then grabbed him by the top of his head and forced him back onto his feet.
"How is this possible?" Gendo asked the dead boy, though he lack a mouth to respond. "What the Hell are you?"
Mako manifested again and Death spoke through him.
"I am Heaven's wrath upon the sinners of this world," he told him, "and I will kill you as many times as necessary until you stay dead."
And then, with the little finger of his right arm, Death slit Gendo's neck and kicked him backwards against the same wall Conquest had fallen against.
Suddenly, as Conquest looked at the Restorative Death, black smoke manifested and enveloped the two horsemen before Death could make another move on them.
"Another day, Death, the Endgame," went Conquest to him. "Another day."
The smoke cleared, and the Apocalyptic Conquest and Death were gone, leaving the Restorative Death alone in the hall.
He then leaned against the wall on his left side, feeling like his considerable strength remaining had begun to fade from his body.
"Death!" He heard someone behind him. "Gaia, you look terrible. Dead man walking around, literally."
Death looked and saw that it was War.
"I'll take your bull at another time. For now, we need to get you away from here to recoup and regain your full power." War told him.
Death couldn't complain about his lack of progress in doing what he came here to do, but had to admit that he was almost at his limits because of the blood of Lilith degrading him. He fell into War's arms and became limp.
War gathered him and carried him through the hall towards the outside of the base.
-x-
Black smoke enveloped the Apocalyptic War and Famine, making the ladies disappear from the halls, leaving the Restorative Conquest and Famine the only ones there.
"I guess they were called away from us," Conquest expressed to Famine, whose arms returned to their original state, and he had calmed down after the revelation of his unholy counterpart being related to him. "Are you alright, Famine?"
"That was my mother in a past life, Poison Master," he told him, making it clear that he was anything but alright. "I feel I've been denied my right to justice and release of my fallen soul from the bondage of despair and torment."
"If we encounter her again in the future, you'll get your chance to do away with her for good," Conquest promised him.
-x-
Yui watched from a safe distance as the Restorative Horseman of War helped her dead son's purgatory incarnation out of the base. She saw how Death appeared to be absolutely no shape to be able of anything more than what he had been capable of.
Suddenly, War was forced to stop as Death went and pointed towards her.
"Oh!" She gasped, seeing Mako manifest beside the two.
"Don't think you'll be kept safe from me forever," she heard Death's voice coming out of the ghost infant's mouth. "This is only a setback, a pause in the game that is who will die at my hands…and who will evade my hands without needing to. Your soul stinks of sin, of deception, of a belief that can't be carried on. I will find you in the end…and you will suffer an eternity of inferno shame."
Mako then disappeared and the two horsemen resumed their escape to the outside, leaving the woman alone in the hall.
The knight made it out with the dead teen and approached his horse, placing the Grim Reaper of the Restorative onto the saddle before climbing on himself.
Rescue achieved, Conquest, he had sent his telepathic message to the leader. I shall await your return on Gaia's island.
He grabbed the reins and made the horse gallop away from the pyramidal building.
-x-
"War has Death and is returning him to the island," Conquest informed Famine, but then decided on something that was against his own judgment. "Famine, you get outta here."
"What about you?" Famine asked him.
"Someone has to stay as close to Gaia as possible. If worse comes after very difficult, she'll need the protection of one of her horsemen."
"I hope you know what you're doing."
"That's what I was hoping Death was up to before this plan was set into motion. I must say that, while this new Death is quite the unusual lost soul, he has made quite an impact on us. Make sure he recovers from this brutality at the hands of these hopeless mortals."
Before Famine could respond, the Poison Master jumped up…and smashed into the ceiling, entering a ventilation shaft. Then Famine ran down the hall to get away before someone got the idea to try and capture him; if there was one thing he knew he couldn't contend with at the moment, it was dealing with people so close to Death's turf when he himself might want to obtain payback against them.
-x-
As the sunlight slipped into her bedroom, Mana awoke from such an amazing dream that involved her interaction with Death, the Endgame. She knew it wasn't just a dream, for she did speak with the dead teen that appeared to be in poor condition. It was a new day, and the girl had to wonder if the horseman was at all alright.
He said rescuing my mother's soul was something he wanted to do, she thought, getting out of bed and stepping out of her room. As appreciated as that would be, it would be just as appreciable if he just came by and visited again.
Walking down the stairs and into the kitchen, the young girl found her grandfather sitting at the table, enjoying a cup of coffee.
"Good morning, Grandfather," she greeted him.
"Good morning, Mana," he responded. "Did you sleep well?"
"I did."
-x-
Unlike the previous time his mortal flesh had experienced the cleansing properties of hot water, Death, the Endgame found this new experience to be anything but welcoming. The pool he found himself immersed in was just as large as the one in his cave, but the water was much too hot for any human's flesh to tolerate. It was like something he heard of called acid, a chemical substance that could burn or eat away at other materials once it achieved certain levels necessary for it to take effect. So his own, lifeless flesh felt like it was being scalded or eaten away by the water.
"He's struggling to get out," he heard a woman's voice say to someone else, underneath the water as he reached out and grabbed the closest thing he could feel for, which ended up being a hand. "Aaah! Someone calm him down!"
"Death!" He heard War's voice. "Death, you have to calm down! Your body was supersaturated by Lilith's blood. You need to be immersed in boiling water to purged of it."
BURST! Death's head forced its way out of the pool and found himself inside a cave where there were people in white lab coats and medical uniforms.
"Aaaaurgh!" He groaned and growled, and fell back into the pool.
A full minute later, the Horseman of Death jumped out of the pool and landed on the ground behind the medical staff present. He looked at them all, panting heavily, as though he were truly out of breath or had been run ragged. In front of was a woman that was younger than the rest of them…and he grabbed her by her neck.
"Gaaurgh! Death, don't!" She choked, but the dead teen's eyes were completely white and on fire.
PIERCE! He felt something sharp penetrate him in the back and out the front of his chest, and he released the woman, seeing a blade sticking out of him.
War, taking precautions, used his katana and stabbed Death to keep him from unintentionally murdering one of the Restorative's followers.
Death tried to approach the knight, but soon fell to his knees…and then to his head. It felt like an eternity before he came to again, in his cave, inhaling the scent of tropical flowers.
"How do you feel?" He heard the woman he had tried to strangle ask him, keeping a safe distance from him as he turned his head to face her.
Blinking his eyes once, he rose up from the stone cot and uttered that he felt half as well as he had been the last time he was on the mend from exposure to Lilith's blood.
"Why…boiling water?" He asked her.
"It's more effective than cool water when purging you of the foreign blood," she explained. "It makes you groggy and causes some disorientation, but it's temporary. In another hour or so, you'll have made a complete recovery."
He stood up in front of her…and placed his left hand atop his head, feeling small strands of his hair regenerating, leaving a patchwork of flesh and hair.
"I am sorry for earlier," he apologized to her.
"It's not your fault. You were disoriented. You're forgiven, though."
The horseman then stepped out of the cave and into the hall, unaware that his upper layers of clothing were not on him, exposing his torso to the air. As he made his way to the outside world, several people that lived on the island saw him and murmured about his body's mirror injuries associated to the late Shinji Ikari.
The sunlight felt nice to him, but he recalled a problem that hadn't been resolved: Mana's mother was still in NERV's possession…and he had yet to free her from their hold. It was…shameful to be so close…and yet be so far from achieving what he had set out to do.
"Your jaw grew back while you were being cooked in that pool," he heard Mako say to him as he manifested in front of him, looking just as well as he did now that the blood of Lilith had been purged from the younger twin's body.
"You'll forgive me if I don't find that to be funny," Death told him.
Mako showed concern for his brother.
"Maybe we should see Mana," he suggested, but Death nodded in the negative on that possibility.
"I can't face her," he expressed. "I was supposed to return to her with her mother's soul. I can't face her empty-handed and with a pitiful excuse."
"There's nothing pitiful about having to retreat from the enemy stronghold to recoup, Death," the elder twin told him.
"It is when someone offers you their assistance and ends up in the possession of the enemy. Mother Gaia is still with those sinners, in who-knows-what state of body or mind."
"You think of what happened as some sort of failure?"
"I do."
"It's not a failure…if there's been no achievement. How can you fail to achieve something…when you haven't truly started yet?"
"Listen to your brother, Death," went Famine, stepping out of the woods nearby, having heard everything spoken between the twins. "Success can't be obtain…when nothing is truly achieved. We haven't done much of anything to achieve a measure of success outside our positions as horsemen. Well, that's not true. You've drastically reduced crime by a substantial amount. You've given the innocent people harmed by the guilty back their hope, avenged the innocent made dead by the sinners that have committed murder. True, there is shame, but there is no shame in what we're still doing. There is no shame in what we're still doing."
-x-
"Your goddamn horsemen have abandoned you," Ritsuko told Gaia, hoping to get a rile from her this morning.
Gaia looked at the faux-blond and responded to her, "How can they abandon me…when they weren't here for me? The goal was to rescue Death, the Endgame, not me."
"You're not the least bit concerned for your safety while here?"
"If I were you, I'd be more concerned about the impact you have on others. There is only so much harm you can inflict upon another person…before they decide to react on it. You haven't seen the last of Death. So long as who he's after is here, he will come back until they're set free."
"What's so important about Unit-03?"
"It's not Unit-03 that attracted him. It's what you put inside Unit-03 that brought him back here."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Gaia turned away from the wheelchair-bound woman and uttered, "Take this to heart, ma'am. Nobody of mortality, unless permitted to by divine authority, may touch the souls of others. It doesn't matter what your reason or reasons are for attempting so. To touch another's soul without consent is to violate such a spiritual presence that is sacred, and to violate said presence…is to welcome torment."
Ritsuko didn't like the fact that she felt threatened by this woman that brought the late Shinji Ikari back from the dead as one of her horsemen. It was like she was looking forward to seeing her suffer more.
"I hope that he does come back," she told Gaia. "Then, you can watch him drown in LCL."
Gaia didn't turn back to face her on the cot, but responded, "It doesn't matter what you try on him. I've seen Death numerous times, and he's on a level beyond anything mere mortals are capable of when striving to achieve beneficial wonders. You're destined to fail in your objectives."
To be continued…