Creation began on 07-22-17
Creation ended on 11-29-17
Neon Genesis Evangelion
A New Cause: Inferno Escalation
Rumors spread like pestilence from prison to prison, from inmates who were doing hard time to guards that put up with the disrespect they got from the ex-cons, about a new wave of murders that occurred right after Halloween. The video footage was their proof of who was behind them…and nobody was happy to know that Death, the Endgame was knocking off inmates and guards in their prison facilities and leaving blood messages explaining why he did so. So, when word reached SEELE, they were none the happier to know of this.
"He's escalating," went SEELE 01 to the others of the council and the Apocalyptic Horseman of Pestilence. "Now, he's attacking the prisons for their sinners."
"And the Apocalyptic Horsemen have nothing to show for it," said SEELE 04. "They've been unable to get rid of the dead boy."
Pestilence frowned, still upset that he was bested by Heaven's Horseman of Death, and he was the best the infernal masters of Hell had. He wouldn't take this sitting down and swore vengeance upon Death, no matter what it took him.
"This game doesn't end until the opposing players have been dealt with," he told the council. "These Four Horsemen still can't ride together until the eighth and final messenger arrives. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will deal with these…fallen souls that Heaven promised salvation upon."
"What guarantee do you have that this particular horseman will be disposed of?" SEELE 07 asked him. "Neither you or Ikari have been able to deal with him in your respective encounters."
"If Gendo of the Damned fails in the next encounter with him, he will learn of a new way of suffering that will never end. Unlike the other three Horsemen of the Apocalypse, I am not human, never was, never will be, and I don't tolerate the incompetence of the insignificant human souls I'm paired with to serve a greater purpose. I…am a merciless plague of misery that will sweep across the land and leave victims coughing in their own blood."
-x-
Mana awoke to the next morning, rested from the previous night, and noticed something new on her bedside stand. It was a small rabbit carved from wood, albeit done with a degree of amateurism, indicating that whoever had done this hadn't done so before. But she had a guess on who this work was done by.
"Good morning, everyone," she greeted her family once she was dressed for the day, stepping into the kitchen with the wood carving.
"Good morning, Mana," her father responded, taking his eyes off a wood carving he was examining at the table.
"How are you feeling today?" Her mother asked, preparing eggs and pancakes.
"I'm feeling fine, Mother. Did everyone here receive an animal wood carving?"
"Yes," said her grandfather to her, holding up his carving for all of them to see. "Death has gotten into a new hobby and has taken pride in his achievements. He gave me a pig."
"He gave me a tiger," Mordecai revealed.
"I got a rabbit from him," Mana showed them. "What did he make for you, Mother?"
Himeko pointed to the other side of the kitchen counter where the bowls were…and to a wooden carving of a bear.
"When he asked me about wood carving, I thought he was going to try and make a chair or a table," she explained her opinion on how the horseman was getting into this new hobby. "I didn't think he'd go and make animal carvings. He must've hurt himself a few times during his carving of my bear. He has dedication to his craft."
Mana looked at her rabbit and suspected that Death may have cut himself while carving it, but even if his blood did get on it, she didn't want to throw it aside. It was done with a lot of effort thrown into, an extension of his past self's artistic expression, an upgrade from paper, pencils and crayons to his sickle (probably) and pieces of wood to go with his inspiration and motivation.
"Even so, you gotta admire his efforts to make these," she told her mother. "I like my rabbit."
-x-
The more she observed the footage of the Asagis that was taken on Halloween Night, the more Yui found herself feeling resentment towards the Restorative Horseman of Death. It wasn't like she felt jealousy towards them because the late Shinji Ikari brought back to life had gone and resurrected Himeko. No, it was more than that. She was disgusted by the fact that their family was together when she had to own up to the truth that their personal loss was her fault…and her youngest son had to smear it in front of her by doing this.
It was like he did this, brought Himeko back from the dead, freed her soul from the Eva, a virtual prison where one could live forever as eternal proof of mankind's existence, all to spite her beliefs in favor of another's that he chose to believe in. This, and to remind her that her own family was shattered, tattered, and lost in the drift…was humiliating for the scientist that she was left as.
"You know, the Committee consider the Asagi girl to be a lost cause after they discovered her mother had been resurrected," Namu told her, trying to remind the woman that the Asagi child was not a part of the current situation any longer. "While they're confused by this, as well, they don't want to do anything to this family that brings them unwanted attention from unnecessary sources."
"And what do you think of them?" She asked him. "What do you think of the horseman? What he did for this family?"
"As a scientist, I find it fascinating that revival from long-term death is within his ability to perform on those that were put into the Evangelion program… But as a person, I feel that he, as Death, did what he did more for the little girl than for anyone else. She was, what, less than three when she lost her mother? That's over a decade of time that they'll never get back, but her return to life allows them to build their relationship. Maybe, if it's even possible, the girl feels indebted to the horseman."
Except by doing this, my contingency plan for the future of mankind has become undone, she thought; nobody, not even her own husband, really knew this, but Yui had made a backup plan in case the one with Shinji failed, despite any impossibility of that ever happening.
If the Third Child had experienced a situation where he were to be dead or compromised, Yui intended to exploit Mana Asagi as a precautionary backup. And her Shinji did experience a series of situations where he ended up dead and compromised, but her secondary plan did not include some sort of resurrection of her former colleague.
"Oh, I wouldn't dare go after her a second time just because she refused you once before," she heard the voice of her younger son's child-like hallucination, seeing him hovering above Namu's head. "You know she didn't deserve what you did to her then…and she doesn't deserve it now. She told you she wouldn't help you. Live with it."
"Are you alright?" Namu asked her, oblivious to her subtle hallucinations.
"I'm fine," she answered him. "Just old ghosts."
-x-
"…Sir, all the guards and inmates are accounted for," said a man over a walkie-talkie to the warden as the guards with him saw a figure sitting on the large gates that they jumped onto, just as the floodlights were being re-positioned to illuminate them.
"Then who's the fucking newbie?!" He asked.
The lights illuminated the one and only Death, the Endgame, his clothes and face streaked in the blood of his latest victims. He stood atop the gates and gave the innocent guards that tried to catch him a bow before falling backwards, disappearing from sight.
"How many did he killed?" The warden questioned.
"Five-hundred-forty-seven inmates," one of the guards revealed, "and thirteen guards."
"The guards were suspected of being hard on some of the inmates that weren't doing anything, but the inmates he butchered and shot up were all here for keeps. Serial killers, wife beaters, child molesters, kidnappers, human traffickers, you name it. They were the worst of the worst. It's not even a question on why he would kill them, but why come into a prison to murder them?"
"This makes fourteen prisons he's hit…and this is the third one he's hit tonight!" Another guard added. "He's a dead man on a new mission."
-x-
Standing under the Iguazu Falls as the blood was washed from his clothes and flesh, Death had counted over three-thousand guilty souls he had condemned to the depths of Hell for their crimes, their unforgivable sins. Unforgivable because the souls of their victims left their echoes upon their untimely demise…and those echoes couldn't move on to join the rest of their true selves until those responsible for their misery were dealt with. He became their avenging angel, a spirit of vengeance that spoke for the victims in his own way with results that guaranteed the victims could put their pain behind them and move on. But these visits to each prison weren't just his way to continue ridding the world of its excess darkness that clung to humanity with an iron grip like a weed. He was straying from the Asagi family by doing this, as well.
"Rrrraurgh!" He heard Rumi, in her dragon form, roar at him, her head plunging into the waterfall beside him. "Rrraurgh!"
Somehow, he was able to understand her much closer than before. He didn't hear a voice from her or anything, but just felt her reasons for everything she did, and right now, she was telling him that he should go back to Japan, to go see the Asagis.
"I don't know how, either," he heard Mako say to him as he manifested, unaffected by the water due to his ghost state. "Something in you has changed, brother. You've become much stronger since Halloween Night. It can't have anything to do with the uptick in your body count, though. Will you go to Gaia about this later on?"
"I intend to," he answered. "But…should I really go see them?"
"Why are you asking me when you already know the answer?"
Mako vanished with a smile and Rumi removed her head from the waterfall. Then, Death walked out from under the water, drenched to the very bones in his exposed, right arm. He walked onto Rumi's tail and along her back to the saddle where he grabbed the reins.
"Back to Japan, girl," he told her, stroking the left side of her slender neck.
"Grr," she growled in response, spreading her wings and taking to the skies, surprising several people as they never thought they'd live to see a pale dragon, let alone one that was ridden by someone.
-x-
"…You never did answer my question, Maya," Ritsuko told her protégé as they were running another synchronization test with Asuka and Unit-02.
"And what was it again?" Maya asked her.
"How did Commander Chansu convince you to return to NERV after what happened down here? Before the Third Angel appeared, I mean."
Pausing on her terminal, the boyish-looking young woman sighed and expressed, "It didn't take him much convincing. He just…promised that he'd have people he could trust look after my mother in my absence while I was here."
"And you didn't think about coming back at all?" Ritsuko questioned.
"Not after I was asked to share my opinion on the news about…him," she explained; while she might've gotten the third degree from most of her fellow workers, Maya felt she had to defend and grant minor justification to the actions the psychotic Shinji Ikari had taken to get revenge on his family. "He was hurt by his family in ways that there was no forgiveness for. Anyone in his position could sympathize with the depths to which he was driven to rectify his mistreatment and abandonment at the hands of the Ikaris. He even wanted to rid himself of his mother."
"I want him eliminated," the faux-blond expressed. "I don't care if he's alive or dead and walking around. I don't even care how much he tries to claim that he's not the same boy that took my legs from me. He is the same boy, and one that made a Devil's deal with a woman that calls herself a deity."
Maya resumed her typing and recorded the current score of the Second Child's synchronization ratio.
-x-
He didn't feel the same, being back at the Asagi house. There was just something about his presence here that…made him feel uncomfortable. It was like he was unwelcome.
Why do I feel this way? He wondered, standing on the walkway leading to the front door; he hadn't taken a step onto the property since Rumi brought him here. Why do I feel I shouldn't be here?
"So, this is where you come to spend time away when you're not doing your duties as the Restorative Horseman of Death," he heard a female voice say to him as he turned to face the person near. "I must say, the family that lives here must be what people have come to consider as a godsend in your eyes."
It was Gaia's sister, the Wind Goddess Malu, but dressed in an orange dress that either covered or replaced her previous attire and hid her wings from sight. And her hair (which she lacked in their original encounter) was shoulder-length and salt and pepper-colored.
"Why are you here?" He questioned her.
"Gaia asked me to deliver to you a message," she answered him. "Your questions have answers when you return to face her for revelations. As for me, I have been told that Japan still has some nice settings that haven't been completely maimed by what happened fifteen years ago. Ta-ta, Death."
And then, she was gone like a leaf in the wind.
"Death?" He turned back to the house…and to the sight of Mana, who called out to him as she stepped outside. "You're back."
"Yes, I…" He started, but then sighed and bowed his head to her. "Many apologies, Ms. Asagi. I have been staying away from you."
"Staying away? But why?"
"After Halloween…or rather, during Halloween after I left you, I had experienced something that I couldn't understand. I was here…but for a while, I was elsewhere…and then back here. Then, I strayed away to prisons…to refrain from coming back here. Now, I don't even know why I feel I shouldn't be here right now."
Mana sighed and held up her rabbit carving in front of him.
"You don't stray too far away from here to leave small trinkets like these for us," she told him. "Thank you for them."
Death bowed his head to her again.
"Please, come inside," she offered. "My mother and I were about to watch another film that she hadn't seen in a long time."
Then, with little encouragement, the Horseman of Death entered the residence.
"Thank you," he praised Mana.
-x-
"…Traditional Asian dancing has lost its taste for me, Gaia," said Kai to the Earth Goddess as she and several young women were practicing the old dance style in front of the Water God in the meadow on the Earth Goddess' island domain.
"But it's only because of the old styles of dance that people today have new styles that they do embrace," Gaia told her brother, covering the left side of her face with a fan in front of him. "You cannot move forward into the future without looking backwards into the past."
When the dance ceased, the two deities were visited by the Aether God, who was accompanied by several elders that seemed very energetic than they appeared previously.
"Genki, I presume that you've granted the elders a day's worth of youthful energy?" Gaia asked him.
"They wished to be more helpful to others today." He explained to her.
Grip! He then reached out in front of himself…and snatched an arrow out the air…that was aimed towards his head.
"Conquest," Gaia sighed.
"Only because I told him to," Genki expressed.
"You wanted one of the Four Horsemen to try and hit you in the head? It doesn't matter if we are immortal and everlasting, any injury we sustain in our bodies is a hindrance if not treated in places we need in our bodies to function properly, including our heads."
"I merely wanted to see if he had a chance of coming close to harming one of us…and he hasn't come close to doing so just yet."
"If he held back, that's the only reason he didn't come close. The more one holds back on their true strength, their unlimited potential, the less harm they can truly cause to one they don't intend to harm."
Throwing the arrow to the ground as it evaporated, the Aether God sighed and bowed his head to Gaia.
"You taught your horsemen well, sister," he told her.
Just as she was about to speak, the Earth Goddess' eyes widened as she turned to face one of her island domain's few ocean coves, feeling a presence of divine energy that she hadn't felt in many lifetimes.
"Only an instant," said Genki, "but there's no denying that presence of energy."
"The five of us haven't been brought together in many lifetimes since the day he broke his ties with us," Kai expressed.
Genki raised his left hand towards the cove their estranged deity's energy was being felt near…and pulled back, feeling like a cringe took hold of his fingers.
"This energy is one of rage," he told Gaia and Kai. "Something isn't right."
"Ladies," went Gaia to the followers of the Restorative, "elders. That will be all for today. I must ask that you vacate this area for the time being. My divine brethren and I may be having an…unexpected guest that we haven't seen in a long time."
They bowed to her and left, leaving the Earth Goddess less concerned with ensuring their safety now.
Whoosh! Malu appeared in a short breeze, having felt the same presence on the island.
"Is this who I know it is?" She asked her fellow deities.
"Yes," answered Kai to her.
Suddenly, smoke started appearing from within the cove, forming into a burning geyser of flame.
Crack! It streaked across the ground and stopped five feet from the four deities, dying down in intensity as they saw something new emerge from the fire.
"Every time, it's all the same with you," they heard a male voice say to them. "You reach for the unreachable and strive for what is impossible for everyone that deserves it."
A man with ash-like skin and hair, wrapped in armor with fiery and draconian features, stepped out of the dissipating flames and stood in front of them, earning a gasp from Gaia and a frown from Kai.
"Pyre," Genki uttered. "How nice of you to return after so long."
"I come only with a warning," the Fire God, Pyre, stated. "Stay out the future affairs of mortals…or else the consequences will be severe."
"If select mortals are trying to end existence, making deals the denizens of Hell, the consequences are already severe, brother," said Malu to him. "This has happened many times before, and we try to stop it from going on…with limited success that we can live with until this happens again."
"Malu…I've severed my ties with the rest of you for a good reason. I don't believe in what you want for the world. I haven't believed in your cause ever since… For a very long time. You can keep believing in your attempts if you want, but it's all for naught."
"Pyre…you know we can't walk away from what is our eternal duty to preserve the existence of the innocent life that still lingers upon the planet, my true body. Even if we wanted to, we're bound by a greater authority to do as necessary for the preservation of the souls of the living…and recollection of the fallen souls of the departed." Gaia reminded him.
"I wouldn't expect you to understand, Gaia. Then again, I wouldn't expect any of you to understand. You can't expect to save everyone that deserves to be preserved to live out their lives until some natural repercussion ends them. Maybe it's better this way, to end all forms of suffering by removing the thin boundaries that keep mortals from trespassing upon the sanctity of the divine while among the living. There'd be no need for anything that those corrupted by the negatives of existence do…and no need for your Four Horsemen of the Restorative, which are hardly worth any efforts. They've failed several times, yet you forgive them each time. You're always forgiving of their failures."
"That's because they never failed. They always did their best and gave the people a chance to go on."
"You continue to put your so-called faith in their servitude to you and the Restorative?"
"My faith in the Four Horsemen is my greatest reward."
Hearing this made Pyre frown.
"As we all know, it's against the rules we follow for any Restorative Horsemen to stand up to a deity," he expressed, "but any infighting isn't against the rules."
"Infighting?" Kai questioned. "You make it sound as though you intend to fight us."
"That's exactly what I mean, brother."
They watched as Pyre's arms burned with fire as he brought them together, creating a fireball.
"You drove me to this," he told them, and unleashed the fireball!
-x-
Gasp. Death, as he sat with Mana in front of the television watching Mrs. Doubtfire, nearly dropped the bowl of popcorn as he felt like someone set fire to where his heart resided.
"Uh, Death?" Mordecai asked. "Are you alright?"
He handed Mana the popcorn and slowly got up.
"My apologies," he informed the family. "I have to go now. Something has happened to one of the deities I serve."
"You mean Mother Gaia?" Mana asked him as he redressed in his arms and ammunition.
"Maybe. I don't really know."
He walked out the front door and turned around to bow to the girl before he simply vanished from sight, leaving no trace of his presence.
"Yikes," she shuddered; it wasn't every so often that she saw the literal embodiment of the Grim Reaper disappear from sight in such an instant. He must have something like that Instant Transmission technique that they have in the Dragon Ball Z series.
-x-
Bash! Conquest was knocked back in his face by Pyre and sent flying to the ground beside an incapacitated Mother Gaia and Kai.
"Pathetic," Pyre expressed; not only was the Restorative Horseman a shameful display, he tried to intervene in defense of Gaia, only to fail. "A horseman that is only half human is just an embarrassment in my eyes."
"You…know not what you say," said Conquest as he slowly got back up; he didn't care right now if what he said was viewed as disrespectful towards the Fire God, for he was disrespected and in front of Gaia, who was the only reason he was around to show his visage half the time. "My former status that followed me to my purgatory state is nobody's business but my own."
He raised his bow and aimed an arrow at the deity.
"You've disrespected Mother Gaia and her fellow deities," he told him. "Repent your transgression or face the wrath of an arrow."
"Really? You think you can defy the rules that prohibit the Four Horsemen of the Restorative from fighting a god?" Pyre asked him.
"I'm not the Four Horsemen of the Restorative," he responded. "I'm just Conquest, the Poison Master."
Neigh! The sounds of horses and galloping was heard…and Pyre saw three more individuals approaching their location.
"This is just wrong," the Black Rider expressed as he jumped his horse and slammed onto the ground to help the Wind Goddess up. "Who are you and why did you attack our deities?!"
War and Death helped Gaia and Kai up, respectively while Genki got up on his own.
"He is Pyre, the Restorative God of Fire," answered Genki to him.
"Wrong," Pyre retorted. "I'm just the God of Fire. The only ties that connect me to the Restorative…are the other deities."
Death looked at him and the other deities…and tilted his head to the left.
"You lost me at you just being the God of Fire," he uttered. "You attacked your fellow deities, and without any degree of justifiable or probable cause to do so. What right did you have to do so?"
"What right did I have? Because of you four. Especially you, Pale Rider."
"What?" Gaia questioned him. "What have they done to you to warrant your fury?"
"Do you have any idea how much trouble your boys create for the denizens of the underworld? How one of the Four Horsemen there has developed a vendetta against your Pale Rider? And are these truly the lost souls you handpicked to carry out your cause? You have very reduced standards."
"There are no standards, Pyre," said Malu to him, "and they meet the criteria of each mantle perfectly."
"Is that so? Am I to be amused? The Four Horsemen of the Restorative? When altogether, they're an impressive force to be reckoned with if you're on the side of wrong, but individually, this incarnation is just pathetic…and even more so because you support them. The Horseman of War. Some lost reject from the Arthurian periods that fought for his people and was betrayed by his own mother? The Horseman of Famine. An abandoned infant whose mother condemned him to death? And the Horsemen of Conquest and Death. A pair of damaged, shameless displays of flawed heritages."
Reject?! War thought.
Infant? Famine felt disrespected by that comment, even though it was very true.
Shameless display of a flawed heritage? Conquest went, immensely disrespected by this deity.
"So, you think we're not up to par with the previous horsemen that came before us?" Death questioned Pyre. "The only one that doesn't get with the times that are the present days out there…is you, Fire God. Maybe you're not up to par with the changed world."
This was the first time in a long time that any of the horsemen, including one under the mantle of Death, had spoken to a deity of such high status with such a degree of disrespect that was undoubtedly justifiable. But this was unlikely tolerated by the Fire God. If anything, this only solidified the deity's dislike of the horsemen.
"Is that so?" Pyre asked him.
"Yes," Death responded.
BASH! It was so sudden and the horseman had no time to react, but Death was sent flying sideways towards a tree, which the force of the impact broke.
"This was just a warning," Pyre, his left hand smoldering with fire before he up and slapped the lost soul that was the new Grim Reaper, uttered, looking at the other horsemen. "Stay out of the affairs of the infernal masters…or the next time we meet…I will burn you."
He then turned to walk away, but War unsheathed his sword and dashed forward, intending to get even for the disrespect they were dealt by the Fire God.
Thrust! War felt his blade pierce through something, but only saw one of the wings of the deity, outstretched and ablaze.
"Maybe you don't know this," went Pyre to him, "but the burning element is the power I was bestowed upon total dominion over. You may wield it, but it obeys me."
Grip! He grabbed War by his nape and lifted him off his feet, searing the flesh.
"Aaaaurgh! Aaaaurgh!" War grunted, trying to break free from Pyre's grasp.
"The Restorative has failed the world too many times," he told the knight. "You horsemen failed the world too many times. And I grow tired of your repeated failures that do nothing to help."
Pyre then threw War over the edge and into the cove before leaving the others alone. Despite everything that had occurred, he wasn't the least bit impressed by the horsemen. The only horseman that demonstrated the arrogance to speak out of turn to him was Death himself.
Why Gaia continues to delude herself in seeing potential in these lost souls is beyond me, he thought. They're useless and fail miserably each time. Nothing has changed since that time. Nothing has changed since that time at all.
-x-
"…So, the Fire God is disappointed by the Restorative, Huh?" Famine questioned as he and Conquest helped the other four deities up. "First time encountering an…angry god."
"Never thought I'd even feel this degree of contempt," went the Poison Master, "but Pyre may be the first deity I've met that I don't like."
They saw War climb out of the cove and was covered in charred seaweed.
"I want to beat him," he told them. "I want to beat that god and get away with it."
"Grrrr!" The horsemen and deities heard Death as he slowly got up from where he had fallen, looking like he had been mangled. "Aaaaurgh!"
His legs twisted as he started to walk over, his arms snapping back into place as his shoulders regenerated, and the skin on his face growing back over the partially-stripped and damaged skull. By the time he made it over, he was fully regenerated.
"I feel as though we were all denied…some very critical…need-to-know…information," he told them, his voice raspy and harsh, almost like a demonic creature, and he turned his head left and coughed out a few pines of tree bark.
"We owe you horsemen apology for Pyre's actions against you," Genki responded. "None of us have ever gone against any horsemen before. Ever."
"Pyre has…never been so vocal before he left," Kai explained. "Whatever drove him to leave us, he didn't tell us a thing."
Mako manifested beside Death on the right and uttered, "A deity that refuses to say what's bothering them or drives them to act the way they do…has to mean that something is seriously off with them. No disrespect to the deities that do say what troubles them."
"None taken," expressed Malu. "So, the question now is… Where do we go from here?"
To be continued…
A/N: Things will escalate from here on out, one important piece of change at a time.