Creation began on 10-31-16
Creation ended on 07-21-17
Neon Genesis Evangelion
A New Cause: Halloween
A/N: Can Halloween be a night of redemption and not just a night of retribution?
The sun was starting to set as the darkness began to envelop the sky. The streets were barely alive with the feet of many people, young and old. Mostly old people between the ages of thirty and sixty years. There weren't many younger people below the age of twenty years out and about due to the recent events of the past few days.
Japan had been one of many places to see its greatest decline in population in months than it had in years due to the Restorative Horseman of Death, but that wasn't going to stop most families from treating their children to the tradition of Halloween. So long as unforgivable sinning could be avoided, they had a slim chance of avoiding a chance encounter with the very young man that possessed the mantle of the Grim Reaper.
"Mana," went Himeko to her daughter outside her room, unable to hide her excitement for tonight, "are you ready?"
"Yes, Mother," Mana responded, opening her door and stepping out, decked out in her costume for this year.
It was their first Halloween as a family after a decade of separation, and it was another opportunity to catch up on quality time. This was why the women were going out as Disney princesses while the men were going as whatever they chose to be this year.
"How do I look?" They asked each other at the same time; while Mana was dressed as Aurora from Sleeping Beauty, Himeko was dressed as Snow White.
"You look beautiful, Mother," Mana told her.
"You do, too, Mana," Himeko expressed to her daughter.
"The ladies possess the beauty," they both turned to the stairway and saw Mordecai, dressed in ripped clothes and his face painted up like an injured, disfigured victim of the post-mortem variety, "while the men possess the frightening."
"Um, a zombie?" Himeko asked him.
"Halloween is, technically, the night when the dead walk the Earth," Mana explained.
Soon enough, Miroku came upstairs, dressed in a large bodysuit that was purple and came with a shirt that didn't fit well and a mask of a four-eyed creature.
"Father, who are you supposed to be?" Himeko asked him.
"Jumba Jookiba," he answered, but she didn't get it. "From Lilo & Stitch? The evil genius that made the secondary protagonist Stitch?"
But Himeko, despite having seen her daughter's memories from their shared time in Unit-03, still didn't get it.
"The idiot scientist that prefers to be called an evil genius, Mother," Mana explained for her grandfather. "He was later reduced to comic relief."
"Oh! Okay." Himeko got it. "So, two princesses, a zombie and an evil alien genius."
"Uh, I have a question about tonight," said Miroku to them. "I don't expect for there be no trouble out there…but do any of you suspect that we'll see Death and Mako?"
"I don't expect to see them," Mana responded. "If there is trouble, they'll be out in force."
"Would it be such a bad thing if we did see them?" Mordecai questioned.
"I didn't say that," Miroku kindly defended. "I'm only asking if we should expect to see them. This will probably be the only night within the year that Death could actually walk among the people and they'll barely have any idea who he really is."
"Also what he is," Himeko added; it was important to include this facet of the horseman's identity because, in many respects, as much as he appeared like a young man prior to dying a few months ago in Tokyo-3, he wasn't entirely like people.
Like people, he had a body for interaction with the world, but unlike living people, he lacked a pulse, body heat, respiratory function, possessed power that no mortal could ever top, and was accompanied by a ghost infant that was his elder twin.
"And what is he?" Mana asked her mother.
"An avenging angel," she answered.
-x-
"…With Halloween being celebrated, the chances of there being crime is high," said Misato to Chansu, trying to convince him to at least urge the police elsewhere in the country to be on the lookout for the Horseman of Death due to his preference for the criminal elements.
"I've already alerted the officials, but they're short-staffed as it is," Chansu told her. "Half the total police force was discovered to be corrupted when Death started knocking them off a few hundred at a time and he got the other half concerned that if they try to get in his way, he'll kill them. Most of whoever's left will be out on patrol, but if they get wind of any murders or kidnappings and hear of any horses being seen, their orders are to observe only until they're certain Death won't be involved."
"They get paid to do their job as civil servants for the public."
"Yes, and while the risk of getting killed comes with the job, it clearly didn't include getting killed by a dead boy brought back to life to get justice for the innocent victims of the world."
"Doctor Akagi went ahead and sent several ammunition cases of LCL bullets to several police stations to try and incapacitate the horseman should they see him in order to defend themselves from him while getting away."
"Beyond the limited aid from NERV, they're pretty much on their own."
-x-
"…Wow, I didn't expect there to be very few kids out," Mordecai expressed, seeing very few children out and about.
Mana could see several girls younger than her dressed as fairies or princesses and boys dressed as men of steel and dark knights. But the number of children she saw was barely in double-digits. Probably less than forty.
"It's not even seven yet," Miroku sighed, and saw a couple walking their way. "Um, excuse me! Are there any other kids out and about tonight?"
A man dressed as a vampire answered, "Not many of the parents want their kids out because of the fear of criminals dressed as costumed nut-cases…and those may attract…him."
"You mean, the Horseman of Death?" Himeko questioned.
The woman, dressed as Poison Ivy from The Batman, expressed, "Yeah. The guy's a prowler for these kind of people. Parents are afraid that he may try to hurt their children, so there's a curfew that none of them are to be out past eight."
"What?!" Mana gasped. "Oh, you gotta be kidding me!"
"We wish," the vampire responded.
"Surely, the guardians make exceptions to these curfews," a muffled, male voice said, and the Asagis turned around and saw a costumed figure dressed in a black, ragged robe and wielding a large scythe that seemed familiar to Mana for some reason.
The guy was dressed as a stereotypical Grim Reaper, complete with a skull-like mask.
"I'm sorry, but have we met somewhere?" She asked him.
The Grim Reaper raised his right hand up, revealing the limb was nothing but bones, moving without any muscles or nerves attached. He removed his mask, revealing the face that was worn by Death, the Endgame, which surprised the couple.
"I don't expect people to not scream and run at the sight of me," he expressed. "I'm merely wasting time by observing the culture of this Halloween."
"And you choose to be the stereotype Grim Reaper?" Mordecai asked him.
"Heh…what better costume for Death to hide in…than that of Death?" He questioned.
Mako then appeared beside Death, wearing a pair of angel wings and a halo.
The Asagis looked at him like they had something to say.
"Don't ask," he told them, removing his left arm from his red blanket. "I lost a coin toss and had to dress up as an angel infant."
"Who'd you lose a coin toss to?" Miroku asked him.
"Famine."
"Ouch."
"Yeah."
"We'll be in and out of places, though it's likely there won't be sinners out and about. My fellow horsemen will also be out in force, but they'll be more noticeable than I am."
"All four of you are here in Japan?" Mana asked him.
"Japan, China, wherever this Halloween is being celebrated at this very moment."
-x-
"…Man, I don't believe this!" A teenage girl dressed in a short skirt and tube top expressed, pointing at War and Famine, as they were scoping out the criminal activity in New Jersey. "They're wearing costumes over costumes! They're half and half!"
"Bitchin'!" A guy dressed as Chewbacca said.
War, wearing his armor, but had a cowboy costume over it while Famine had swapped his upper rags for the discarded clothes that Death had before he switched to clothes to better represent his status and covered his arms and legs in armor from an Iron Man costume.
"Damn, we should've did what they did," another man said, dressed as a werewolf.
The horsemen walked down the streets, on the lookout for any unusual activity.
"I don't know how we got this idea to wear costumes over costumes," went War, a little disgusted with his costume choice.
"I don't know, I got the perfect excuse to get out of my rags," said Famine to him.
"Yeah, even if you've traded your old rags for hand-me-downs."
"How does Conquest put up with you?"
-x-
Whoosh! Conquest, opting out of the costume mayhem that children and adults indulge themselves in, landed on the roof of a rural Chinese village, seeing there was nobody, not even an elder, out on the streets.
Looks like Halloween is nonexistent here this year, he thought, though he expected to see at least one child out and about for candy. Maybe there's trick or treating elsewhere in China.
He leapt off the roof and into the air again.
-x-
"…Hey!" Death went to a guy inside a house that was watching the tube. "Happy Halloween! We got a first-timer out here!"
The guy looked at the Grim Reaper and the Disney princesses, but looked back at the tube after a moment, turning the volume up.
"Hey, don't ignore us! It's Halloween! We want our treats in exchange for our tricks!"
The guy, probably in his late-forties, with half-gray hair, got up and approached the window…and gave them and a zombie and alien the finger before shutting the blinds.
"Okay, our first house was not very welcoming," went Miroku.
"I can remedy this sin," said Death, who suddenly disappeared in an instant, leaving the family on the stool.
"Okay, that was creepy," Himeko expressed.
"Not as creepy as this right here," went Mana, pointing to the blinds that were open now, revealing the Horseman of Death to be inside the room with the guy.
"Hey, you, bum," uttered Death to him, revealing himself in his true form, without the costume, guns and everything.
"Aah!" The guy screamed, fearing for his life.
"You know what you gotta do to avoid unnecessary retribution! Do it!"
"Okay! Okay!"
It wasn't a minute later when the front door of the house opened and the guy that offended them was behaving differently from earlier.
"Hello, kindly people," he greeted, and gave Mana a handful of candy. "Sorry about earlier."
Nobody said anything in response to the man. Even Mana kept a straight face.
"They're not happy," said Death, appearing behind the man. "What else have you got?"
The man then, rather begrudgingly, took out his wallet and gave the young lady a few yen.
Mana smiled gleefully.
"Don't forget to say 'Happy Halloween'," Death told him.
"Happy Halloween," he repeated to the family.
"Thank you, sir," Mana accepted, and they all turned away.
As Death followed them, his brother appeared in front of the man and expressed, "Next time, be prepared and don't be a jerk."
"Aaahh!" He screamed and ran back inside his home, pretty sure he had pissed his pants.
"I don't think I'll be forgetting your rather-deranged way of remedying the issue," said Mordecai to the twins.
"Oh, don't tell me it wasn't worth the treats," Death told him.
Mordecai looked at his wife and daughter, who were smiling.
"Okay, it was definitely worth it," he gave in, and Death was back in his costume.
As they walked down the street, the horseman was on the constant vigilance for any souls with cruel and unforgivable intentions. But with so few adults and children out and about, there was very little chance of encountering any that would sin for whatever reason, even without a reason to begin with. The sight of parents dressed as fairies, women of power or judges or doctors with those false bottoms sticking out, children dressed as princesses or superheroes, all Death could feel was the innocence that the people around him embraced. He couldn't detect the slightest degree of sin in any of their souls across the vast neighborhood of mortals; for miles in all four directions of where he went with the Asagis, there was only joy, not sorrow, pleasure, not pain, fun, not grief.
"It's so…peaceful all around us," he expressed.
"Peaceful?" Mordecai asked him.
"There's no sin," he explained. "Every one of these people running around for excitement and sweets, there's no shred of indecency in their souls. I can feel for the cruelty and darkness in their souls…and there is nothing of the sort in any of them for miles around us. No desire to harm, to take or exploit. Just…bliss on this night where the dead can walk among mortals."
As they stopped in front of a street that had been closed off to allow for a space to dance, Mana looked up at Death and saw in him what was probably the feeling of relief to not be in the presence of any human evil, but it could have been disappointment, too.
"Um, Death," she spoke, turning away from him to see a little boy dressed up like Batman from The Dark Knight trilogy dancing with a woman dressed like an adult Blossom from Powerpuff Girls, "if there's no trace of sin in any of these people for miles around us… You could go find some…if you wanted to, that is."
Death, possibly feigning hurt, looked down at the girl and asked, "Are you trying to dispose of me, Ms. Asagi?"
"Goodness, no," she defended. "I'm just saying that you could go if you wanted to. If there's no sin, then we're likely to be okay in your absence until you came back. You are the Grim Reaper, after all. Your work as one who guides away souls must take precedence over any one group or person that you're around."
While this was true, this horseman was, technically speaking, not on the job so long as the Angels were out of harm's way, allowing him to do as he pleased until further notice. And uncontainable by the laws of mortal society, he, like any of the other horsemen, was given, practically, the keys to the kingdom with his position as one of the Four Horsemen. He could go anywhere, do anything.
"This night shall be a long one," he told Mana. "It may unleash more repentance than retribution, even if I were to stay awhile."
Mana accepted his response with a nod and then turned to face her parents, who weren't near her right now. In their conversation, her parents had slipped away onto the open space where the costumed people were dancing; neither Mordecai nor Himeko had danced with one another ever since their daughter was two.
"Oh," she sighed.
Death could feel the mild envy in the girl's heart; it wasn't because of any resentment over her parents…but because she didn't have anyone to dance with, even if it was only for a minute.
"Would the young lady care to dance with a keeper of the fallen souls of the guilty?" He offered, extending his left hand to her.
Mana smiled and gave her bag to her grandfather.
-x-
From atop a skyscraper rooftop, a man dressed like some sort of dragon-themed knight, heavily-detailed and with a sense of inhumanity, watched the costumed people below with a lonely gaze. Looking further down, like he could observe everything transpiring without even moving off the roof, he saw a little girl with blond hair, dressed like one of the princesses that many little girls admire for their beauty, dancing with a tall man dressed like the stereotype Grim Reaper…and then went wide-eyed from the sight of him.
Ashes to ashes, he thought, seeing through the costume and recognizing a lost soul brought back to the mortal realm by a divine being, and the Horseman of Death of the Restorative walks among the living dust once more. If we cross paths in the future, this deity will see to it that he and his allies all burn to dust.
He turned away and the wings on his back opened up, revealing themselves to be functional, lifting him off his feet and into the air.
"Gaia, you and the others will stop at nothing to end this," he said to himself. "Your reliance upon these lost souls to serve as your horsemen is beyond my comprehension. They have failed numerous times in their servitude to your Restorative…and you still forgive their failures. What do you see in their failings? What do you see in their…pathetic shortcomings?"
-x-
"Pyre?" Gaia uttered, looking up at the night sky, feeling as though she just sensed the minor presence of brother deity that represented the fire element.
"Mother Gaia," one of the children she was chaperoning for Halloween got her attention, "are you alright? You seemed distracted."
"Oh, um, it's just an old feeling," the Earth Goddess confessed; it wasn't the truth, but it wasn't a lie, either. "They come and go."
"Well, your hair is out of place again," said another of the children to her, pointing to her forehead where a strand of dyed hair was out of place.
"Thank you for pointing that out, Michael," she told him.
She could've performed further shape-shifting like her fellow deities had and still could, but Gaia preferred to keep it simple and just dress up like others had over the centuries when the culture of Halloween first started, choosing to dress up as the spirit of the planet that was portrayed in that environmentalist cartoon series she had been introduced to by the older members of the Restorative she found in the Second Impact aftermath.
-x-
It felt…weird in such a way, but…it was a good kind of weird. It didn't feel wrong or anything to Mana, to be dancing with Death. To her, it felt no different from dancing with a friend that you invited to a party with you…or one that invited you over to a barbecue. She looked at the horseman…and saw only the teen that had been abandoned by his failure of a father, not the infamous murderer he'd been labeled as because of his brutality against his own family that dragged in everyone around him.
"Um, Death?" She asked him. "Do you think… No, never mind."
"No, please," he responded. "Finish what you were going to say."
"I was just going to ask…if this was the first time you've ever danced with anyone."
Death was silent…and then answered, "Yes. This is a first for dancing."
"Well, you dance well for a first timer."
"Th…thank you."
Swoosh! Death turned his head to the direction of the skyscrapers, past the skyscrapers, sensing the presence of sinful intentions from afar, miles away…and realized he would have to cut their dance short and attend other dances of a darker sort with partners of the same sort.
"My apologies, Ms. Asagi," he told her. "I must go now."
"Duty calls," she said in understanding. "Do be careful."
Death backed away from her and disappeared into the dancing crowd.
If this was anything like a Cinderella story, it a gender-reversal of the ancient story.
"He had to go?" Her grandfather asked her.
"Sin never sleeps," she responded.
-x-
"…Hmm?" Conquest went, seeing a man running with a bag that didn't belong to him. "Must be my evening."
He took an arrow to his longbow and fired at the guy's legs, disabling him and causing him to fall to the ground. The horseman then jumped off the roof he was on and slowly descended to the streets below him, landing two feet from the criminal.
"Aaurgh!" The guy groaned, trying to remove the arrow from his right leg.
"Why'd you take an elderly lady's bag?" Conquest asked him.
"What?" He asked back, and the White Rider removed his head to reveal his face to him. "Oh, my God."
"No, but I'll send you to the Devil for your crime. Why'd you do it?"
"You can't blame a guy looking for some quick cash, right?"
Conquest aimed another arrow at the man's head and responded, "Blame is five-fingered and full of cancer."
Swat! He shot the arrow through his head, lodging it between his eyes as he relieved him of the woman's bag.
"And now you're just another symptom of a disease that needs to be treated before it can spread any further," the horseman said, leaving the corpse as it began to shrivel up and become unrecognizable. I thought I'd feel the way Death feels when I kill someone that deserves it. I don't think I'm supposed to feel at all whatever he feels. I'm just supposed to feel as I feel…and I just felt sick from thinking about letting him go.
Conquest saw the elderly woman the bag belonged to, afraid of him because of his face, and he set the bag down in front of her.
"He won't be bothering you or anyone, anymore," he told her as he turned to leave.
"Thank you," he heard her say to him.
-x-
"…I was hoping that tonight would be peaceful for everyone," said Death to the man he just blew a hole in down the hallway of the building they were in. "You tried to have your way with an honest man's wife without her consent. You can't accept a refusal…and that is why you forfeit your right to live any longer."
Then, for good measure, the Pale Rider slammed his right foot down on the man's head, feeling it crack under the intensity of the impact, reducing the cranium into a jigsaw puzzle.
GASP! He heard someone react to his action against the copse.
Looking down the hall from where he stood, he saw another young woman with an elderly man in a wheelchair.
"Hey, you two haven't done anything you know is unforgivable," Death told them. "I'm not going to waste either of our time with you two. Move along, enjoy the night, go have fun or something. It is Halloween, after all."
He left the man he killed and walked past the pair like what he did was worth nothing. The scent of unforgivable intentions was still in the air, and he had to deal with the sinners that prey on the helpless that sought only a happy future. So far, he had travelled to six different cities and encountered thirty-six men of the unforgiving types…and eight women that were just in league with them for a good time…and an innocent couple that were out to party with their friends at a dance club. The work was progressing slowly for tonight, but it was progress, all the same.
Time seemed to warp around him with each step he took. The second he took his next step down a flight of stairs, Death found himself standing in front of a building within a different city, seeing three different men run inside, armed with small-caliber pistols.
I need to master this thing I'm doing, he thought, looking up at the building and seeing that it was a temple. Mother Gaia did say that holy ground was the one place I couldn't express the full power of my position as the Horseman of Death… Holy ground is a no-kill zone…but so long as I don't do my killing on holy ground, just a simple beating and non-fatal injuries, I'm not breaking any rules laid down by the deities.
He took a step onto the temple stairs and entered the holy place. Suddenly, he felt displaced for a short while. It looked like he was still outside, but was in a primitive town, with brick or tiled streets and wooden houses. There was a scent of tranquility and happiness restored to the place, like it had been abandoned for a time and had slowly been retaken.
Up ahead, behind some sort of massive wall, was the Eva he despised, but with an unusual symbol painted on one of its arms. Some sort of winged insignia, half blue and half white. The Eva was facing away from the settlement, like it was protecting the people from an unseen foe. There was no hint of malice for this behemoth, despite the fact that he should've felt some degree of hatred for the woman that was directly involved in its creation; it was like it was being used for a different purpose that didn't involve destroying the world and recreating it to suit one's twisted desires.
"…The boy's in that house down there," a man's voice uttered, and Death saw some people with torches and small knives coming from down the street.
"If we get rid of him, the Survey Corps can't use the purple giant any further," a woman said. "Shinji Ikari. The people's so-called hope from the sky. He probably means well, but we can't risk that he'll make it so that the Walls are abandoned. So he must be dealt with for the good of the people."
"The world out there is not for us, anymore," another woman stated.
Death wasn't sure what was going on here, but he knew sin when he heard it and smelled it emanating from these people outside. His eyes gazed towards the building that was believed to house someone that might've been his former identity…and saw someone who looked like a livelier incarnation of his past self, oblivious to the danger he was about to face from these people that wanted to kill him.
I can't believe I'm doing this, he thought.
Neigh. He heard a horse beside him…and saw that it was Rumi, looking at the people that needed to be dealt with.
Whether this was some sort of new hallucination or not, there was a pack of sinners out and about…and Death, the Endgame needed to send them to Hell. So he climbed atop his horse and pulled the reins to engage the enemy.
"Let's go show them what it means to bring Hell," he told her.
-x-
"It looks like you had more fun than we did," said War to Conquest, seeing him on the streets in a random, rural town.
"I only killed one bad guy, and that was a purse snatcher," Conquest explained how his night was going. "What of you two?"
"Nothing," went Famine, deciding to shed off his costume. "No murders where we were, no kidnappings where we went, no car thefts, domestic assaults, just a long night with people dressing up as superheroes and ghouls."
"Maybe Death had better luck than we did. Even if some of the remaining elements of crime turned themselves over to the authorities and condemned themselves to life without the possibility of parole, there would still be new harbingers of the same elements of sin. Unless, of course, the power of Halloween covered the full potential of sin being unleashed."
"You can cover your sins with the curtain of the night," went War, "but as the new day arises, your sins will come to light…and the wraiths of vengeance shall scream out in desires of retribution as those that come after you do so in the name of justice."
"Well spoken, Violent One," praised Famine, now dressed in the old clothes Death wore when he was still playing casual, though the pants remained the same, comprised of rags and stitches.
-x-
Something felt different tonight with Death. For one, the sickle he regularly used wasn't the one he had just used to murder these nonentities whose lives echoed through him, telling him many things, including why they were going to kill a young man named Shinji Ikari. The second strange thing was that he was in a place where the only danger these people really knew of were these giants that looked like naked people that preyed on them as a food source and were protected by three walls. They were a select few belonging to a cult that worshipped the walls as sacred and divine, believing that the boy and his purple behemoth were a threat to the people if they were able to live beyond them, retaking the world that wasn't theirs to reclaim. And the third strange thing was that he had no idea how he ended up here…or why he ended up here.
"You must've accidentally slipped in between one of the other worlds between worlds," he heard a little girl's voice, and looked further down the street, littered with the corpses of his new victims, seeing the same girl he hadn't seen in a while since he started out as a horseman. "But don't worry. The sooner you depart, the sooner you'll return to where you need to be."
"Eventually, I'll question this," Death told the girl, "but not now. I don't want him to see me."
"This boy, who is just another side of yourself, still bound to life, can't see you. You're too far away to be seen as nothing more than an obscured figure. Go down that street…and you'll get back to where you need to be."
Death got back on his horse and rode away, leaving the sickle that wasn't his and wanting to bury the confusion that he had. Maybe he had a spike in his intellectual development, but he must've seen something like this happening in some form or another. Possibly an hallucination or even a dream from when he was still alive. Either way, he found it unusual to have seen himself in the flesh and…doing something he was never able to do: He saw himself living, really living, or trying to live among people he had no affiliation with, but was approached by a group or two that fought against these giants and he offered his aid to them.
Perceived as a threat to their own existence, and now they have been been removed from existence, he thought, going over their memories, their secrets; nothing belonging to his murdered victims was hidden from him. Walls, Titans, the hidden truths. One can hope for this boy to be able to escape from his dark fate and obtain a future full of hope and freedom from his parents that may never receive his understanding.
Flash! The horseman found himself on his horse, within the shrine, in front of a stained glass depiction of a Shinto deity.
While there were many deities in religious groups and cultures, Death only knew of the ones he met with the other horsemen on Mother Gaia's island domain that were able to walk among the mortals. In his mind, these were the deities that actually existed, that spoke to those that listened. But he wasn't going to shatter the beliefs of others that believed in their deities; he might've been the Grim Reaper under the servitude of Heaven, a former child that became a killer due to the cruel words of a family that despised him, but he was not one to destroy one's religious beliefs. If people believed in one deity, then they believed in one deity, but if they believed in twenty deities of various cultures, then they believed in those, too.
BANG! A gunshot occurred…and Death was hit in his head on the right side.
The bullet passed through right cheek and out the left side of his head, but he barely reacted to it. Instead, he turned to face the woman that shot him, regenerating his injury.
"Tell me," he spoke up, "do you believe in life after death?"
"Aren't you living proof of it?" She asked him, unable to believe that he didn't die from a headshot. "You're dead."
"I am not," he answered her as he got off Rumi, wielding his sickle. "I simply am. Death is Death, no more, no less."
He approached her and swung his blade across her neck.
"No more, no less," he repeated, and her hair fell off from her head.
"Aaahh!" The woman gasped, and realized that her gun had also been sliced in half.
"You're lucky I can't kill you on holy ground, but by the time I'm through with each of you, you'll be longing for your end to come."
With what remained of her hair, she ran down the hall to hide from this dead boy.
-x-
"…Hmm?" Mana, slightly tired, looked down the street and saw a woman dressed in shades of purple, accompanied by several children who were in the same state of weariness as she was, and thought she had seen her from somewhere before. "That lady in purple."
"Oh?" Himeko, carrying her daughter on her back, saw the woman and knew where she'd seen her from. "Mother Gaia?"
The woman in purple stopped in front of the Asagis and bowed her head to the quartet.
"I didn't expect to see you so soon after your revival, Mrs. Asagi," she addressed the family's matriarch. "Happy Halloween."
"Daddy, Grandfather, this is Mother Gaia," Mana introduced the primary men in her life to the Earth Goddess. "She's the one oversees the Four Horsemen of the Restorative."
Of course, Mordecai and Miroku felt that Mana using "oversee" was an oversimplification of what she really meant, but this was the first time they had seen the person that, more or less brought the boy that was once Shinji Ikari back from the dead to serve as the Restorative Horseman of Death. Maybe this woman was simply in charge of keeping the horsemen in line or bestowing them their powers, but whatever the truth was, she seemed to be an important person.
"Ma'am," they both greeted her.
"What brings you out here?" Himeko asked her.
"The free candy for the children to indulge themselves in," she answered her.
"Chaperone?" Mordecai asked, referring to the children with her.
"Yes," she answered him. "My apologies, but I thought that Death and Mako were with you."
"They were," Mana expressed, yawning, "but duty calls Death to answer."
"It would be nice if the bad guys took a break someplace where they can't do no harm."
"But then the police and Death would be out of work," said Miroku.
"Actually, Death wouldn't be out of work," Gaia explained. "Hunting the people that commit unforgivable acts against the innocent is something he and the other horsemen can do when they're not protecting the messengers."
"Yes, that's right," went Mana, recalling what she read in the book. "The Four Horsemen's primary duty is to restore the planet. They're not bound by anything to do with nations or governments. The mountains, rivers, forests and human settlements."
"Just how close are we to seeing the planet restored?" Mordecai questioned.
"Close…but still a ways to go," Gaia answered, albeit cryptically. "It's not something you can rush, for better or for worse."
"Like cultivating a garden," said Himeko.
"Yes," Gaia agreed with her.
"Aah," yawned one of the costumed little boys with Gaia, and the Earth Goddess picked him up.
"I really should get them back to their parents," she told them.
"Yeah, and we should get Mana to bed, too," Himeko agreed that they spent enough time conversing, and bowed her head to the goddess. "Happy evening."
The two groups walked around each other and onward to their destination.
Mother Gaia chuckled slightly at the thought of why Death enjoyed his time with this particular family…and why it seemed that he valued their lives among the innocent souls that resided in the mortal coil.
-x-
"…Bah!" A man Death was after gasped as he hid in a bathroom stall, hoping to evade the wrath of the horseman, unlike his comrades had when he got to them.
"Oh-ho-ho, Hell, no," said Death as he grabbed the stall door and ripped it off its hinges, exposing the guy on the toilet. "Death outside the temple or a beat-down in the bathroom? Either way, you're going to get inflicted with immense pain."
He grabbed him by his sides and pulled him out of the stall, dragging him towards a mirror and slamming him against it.
Smash! The mirror shattered, and the man was cut up by small shards.
"Aaah! Stop! Please!" He begged Death.
"Oh, but I just got started," he told him, "and you're not dead yet. And I emphasize 'yet'."
He raised up his left arm…and snapped the wrist.
"Aaaahh!" He screamed from the broken bones.
"Now, I think I'll take your right leg," Death expressed, and then kicked him with enough force that his leg's kneecap fractured.
"Aaaaaahh!" He screamed again. "Kill me! Please, just kill me!"
"You still got one, good leg, you carry yourself out to the streets and let your days of cruelty end there." Death told him, walking away. "I'll be out front."
The horseman stepped out of the bathroom and walked over the moaning bodies of his other victims who were trying to get up.
"We certainly had loads of fun this evening, didn't we?" He asked them, putting his hands together in front of them.
"No, we didn't!" The girl whose hair got cut by him responded, sporting several bruises, a shiner and fractured left leg. "What the Hell are you?"
As he turned to walked away, he responded, "I am Death, no more, no less."
He returned to the room where Rumi waited for him, having assumed her dragon form, spread out around the place like a snake.
Mako manifested in front of Death and looked like he wanted to say something to his brother.
"Yes?" Death asked him.
"You should've checked them for candy," he answered him. "It is Halloween, after all."
"I'm not sure they even have candy, brother."
"No shame in checking, still."
"But you can't eat."
"But you can."
Death saw where this was going and how Mako was suggesting that he indulge in the pleasure of sweets and sugar.
"It's not midnight yet elsewhere around the planet," he told him. "Once these cretins are disposed of, gathering candy will be a simple task."
Mako accepted his brother's decision and disappeared.
"Tell me," one of the men groaned behind the horseman, feeling agony from the broken bones he had in his body. "Is Hell any worse than you have been to us?"
He turned to face the man and his companions and expressed, "Oh, Hell is likely to be many times worse than what I've done. One's suffering doesn't end in Hell. You writhe in displeasure, struggle for release…and just when you think it's over…the agony starts over or continues on. And it isn't always fire and brimstone. Sometimes, it's just like here, only darker. Your worst enemies are the lives you've harmed, echoes of your past that won't rest. In Hell, your darkest fears are no different from the depravity you indulged in with the flesh, pushing you to the limits of your endurance, physically and mentally. You'll cry for release, beg for relief, for aid, some form of mercy that simply doesn't exist where you're sent for your retribution. And when you see someone that's in charge of where you reside, an infernal master, you'll want to run…but you can't, not even to hide in a crevice. But for those that want to repent, even though they've committed so many wrongs that any hope for their souls is most likely impossible…the suffering they face when they take their final breath…isn't entirely as brutal as they would expect it to be."
"How can you possibly know that?" The woman asked, being aided by one of the other men to limp towards the entrance.
"Who I used to be in the flesh, the fourteen-year-old boy that murdered his father…and took other lives in the process…died as the agonizing his body was in faded from his conscious," Death told her as he walked towards the entrance with them.
"And yet, you are him…aren't you?"
"That's what any that see me want to believe…but that is only a falsehood belief. I may look and sound like him, even have his memories and soul residing within this vessel, I am not him. As the law states that a person is declared legally dead when their bodies have been found, identified and disposed of through the usual means, and he met each and every criteria for legal death."
"Except there was a rumor on the streets going as far as Tokai that the kid was never buried," another man said, then groaned as he held his stomach.
Death walked down the steps and took out his Glocks.
"What makes you believe in such a rumor?" He asked.
"Some guy told some woman who heard from some other guy that the kid was never buried at that cemetery, that his grave marker was just for show. Some other woman even told some other guy that no time was ever spent digging a hole for him."
But Death found these rumors to be nothing more than that: Rumors. Even if it were within his boundaries to investigate, the horseman wanted to be as far removed from who he was once in the flesh and despised the ties that still kept the ghost of his past from fading away from people's memory. Still, if such was true, then he would need to ask Mother Gaia about how this affected him…if it could affect him at all.
"Truth and lies are two sides of a coin one can never spend without being dealt the worst of outcomes," he told them as they all fell to the ground, unable to get away. "I'll allow each of you a moment to pray for forgiveness for your sins."
-x-
"…You're back," said Genki to Gaia as the Earth Goddess sat in front of the grave of her deceased daughter.
"The children enjoyed the few hours of Halloween out there," she told her brother, never taking her eyes off the grave marker.
"And what of you?"
"Heh-heh… Seeing them happy brings joy to my eternal soul."
"You've always enjoyed the innocence of children more than you do the innocence of adults."
"Genki, earlier when I was out…I think I felt the presence of Pyre."
"Pyre? Are you sure?"
"If it were one of you, yes. But Pyre's been gone ever since… For a very long time."
The Aether God became curious as to why his sister deity felt the presence of their long-absent Fire God after so many generations of men and women rose and fell from grace in life. He could feel the energy all around him, even the faintest energy within the heart of a fetus thousands of miles away from wherever he was, but he hadn't been able to detect the energies that were present in Pyre, not even any sparks he might've created to pass time.
"Genki," Gaia expressed, "if he's returned after so long, we should know why."
"Pyre's never been one to share his reasons for why he left. He just…shut us all out."
"This time, then, we must make sure he tells us why."
-x-
There was still three hours left till midnight, but the spirit of Halloween was beginning to depart this world for yet another year. When morning came, people would concern themselves with the aftermath of the night before. And how much a dead boy could do in just a single night.
"Just another night of retribution for those with darkness in their hearts," said Death as he walked to the Asagi house with a small bag of candy that he made sure was of no harm to any that ate it…with the exceptions of the sugar and risk of cavities.
He stopped in front of the wall surrounding the house, separating its grounds from the other houses in the small neighborhood. The girl he danced with was probably asleep and her parents and grandfather were likely doing the same. So he took a candy bar out of the bag and leapt into the air, landing on a tree branch near the Asagi house and tied the bag to it. His plan was to see them at a later time in the daylight hours where they were rested, but for now…he would continue his Halloween in solitude and seek out the souls of those that hurt others without limit or restraint.
Looking down at the window leading into Mana's room, the horseman sighed and found himself uttering the two words he hadn't used in years, not since the day his mortal self had been pushed over the edge of his sanity and morality.
"Forgive me," he went, and disappeared.
In her room, asleep in her bed, Mana turned from her right side to her left, mumbling something in her sleep. In her dreams, she found herself in an expansive meadow carpeted with many flowers, the sky a palette of blues, yellows, oranges and pinks. She was dressed in a blue and green dress of silk and satin, modeled somewhat like the attire of a Shinto shrine maiden, but the pants were more skort-like than those of a skirt.
"What is this place?" She wondered.
She turned to her left and saw a brown-haired woman a few feet away with her back facing her.
"Hello?" She called out to her.
"Priestess of the Restorative," the woman was heard, turning to face her. "You're much younger than the previous priestesses."
"I'm sorry? I'm almost thirteen."
"That's exactly what I mean, young lady. Your age, your stature. You're the youngest incarnation of the Restorative Priestess to date. The others were all grown up or nearing their passage into adulthood. But you… Twelve years old, nearing your thirteenth year of life… No matter how you view it, you're practically a baby."
Mana didn't really agree with her. In modern society, most children had to grow up fast and let go of their childhood, and Second Impact just made some people's lives border between difficult half the time and very difficult. She just hoped that she would be in the category that only difficult half the time.
"Still, I can see why the new horseman finds his dealing with his fancying you such a challenge."
"Huh? You mean, Death?"
"Bright, but not too much."
"Death…isn't looking for something of whatever it is you're probably thinking he is."
"Oh, I know that Death seeks not a romantic tie to life. What he desires is less than what he had in life, which was a life without a cruel weight upon him. But what keeps him near, even when he is distant, is a power only someone of your status can possess."
"But…I have no powers. I'm just a girl."
"You had the power bestowed upon you the night you went to see one of the horsemen. You'll understand in due time. In the meantime…take joy in your days. Think of the horseman as your guardian angel of sorts. He will need your help to face him when he appears."
"I'm sorry…but who?"
The brown-haired woman's fair skin and simple, white dress began to turn to ash in front of Mana, frightening her.
"Pyre," she answered, and a breeze blew her body to dust. "Pyre of the Primordial Fire. A deity lost in the sea of pain."
-x-
All he could consider as he ate his candy bar was that despite prisons being meant to house criminals, Death was attracted to the degree of sin emanating from the walls of the United States prison he stood in front of, meaning that he had to deal with the depravity and send those souls to Hell, no matter who they were. It reminded him of the time in the institute, his own mistreatment and how being a horseman enabled him to exact brutal justice for every victim, not just himself.
Not all guards are good,he thought as he finished the bar and jumped over the large gate that kept the prisoners from escaping, and not every inmate is bad. No sinner is safe.
To be continued…
A/N: What did you think of what I did with Shinji/Death? For those of you that read Hope from the Sky, this helps to explain who killed those people that were going to kill Shinji in the Titan universe. I bet you never saw it coming.