Creation began on 10-28-18

Creation ended on 10-30-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Infinity Redemption

A/N: StraightEdgeWingEpyon inspired me to write this after reading the latest chapter of his Kingdom Hidden in the Clouds story. Maybe some good can come of it. May be a combination of both anime and manga, but mostly manga-based.

"…Please, sensei," Kozo Fuyutsuki recalled the last request of Yui Ikari a week prior to the failed activation test with Unit-01 (Unit-00 back then) as he heard Shinji had awoken from the aftermath of the Third Angel attack, "no matter what happens, make sure Shinji gets this pendant. He'll understand in his own time."

The pendant in question, a blue-colored Taoist emblem, was something that Yui had valued ever since she got it, but never elaborated on why, or even why she wanted to make sure Shinji got it after the activation experiment with the Eva. But Fuyutsuki, staying true to his promise to Yui, made sure he gave Shinji the pendant.

"Your mother wanted me to make sure that you got her pendant after what happened today, Shinji," he told the toddler Shinji shortly after the failed test.

"What happened to her?" He had asked him, putting the pendant around his neck. "Where is she?"

But Fuyutsuki couldn't answer his question, despite wanting to explain why his mother wouldn't be coming home, anymore.

Even after all these years, he still wears it, he thought, noticing that Shinji had still been wearing the pendant around his neck. I wonder if he ever found out why Yui wanted him to have it.

-x-

"…I honestly don't care what happens to you when you meet your father," Shinji recalled his aunt telling him the day he received a letter from his father telling him to come to Tokyo-3, "just don't come back here afterwards."

That was pretty much her way of telling him to never come back to her house, no matter what happened with his father. Of course, Shinji knew he couldn't go back, even if he wanted to; the fact that he never felt welcomed by his aunt and her family to begin with after being sent to live with them by his father left Shinji discontent with his relatives and unable to connect with them socially. He never felt like he belonged to anyplace or any group of people, and whenever people did speak of him, all they really did was bring up the rumors of how his mother died in a lab accident caused by his father, in their own way rejecting him out of disgust, and they didn't even know him.

"Why did she leave you nothing but that pendant, anyway?"

"It was Mommy's," he remembered telling his aunt. "She wanted me to have it, no matter what happened to her."

But the truth about the pendant was beyond Shinji's knowledge. He only knew that it belonged to her, but not any significance behind it. And yet, more than half of the time, he'd rather be anywhere else than surrounded by people that didn't want anything to do with him socially. Sometimes, he'd dream of places beyond the country, beyond the pictures of cities and wilderness that he only knew about from old books. It was through these dreams that he felt he could escape from this pitiful existence he was dealt with because of his family.

"…Sometimes, I think he'd go missing for a few hours or just a few minutes," he recalled his cousin saying one time, referring to a time in his childhood where Shinji…just didn't seem to be there…when he was awake, but nobody ever believed in this assumption.

Why did you want me to have this, Mother? He wondered, looking at his pendant. What is so special about it that you left it to me?

-x-

"…So, they don't want to live together?" Ritsuko Akagi questioned Makoto Hyuga in Central Dogma, overhearing that Shinji declined the idea of living with his father.

"It gets worse," Hyuga informed her, "he's refused to continue piloting the Eva. He just wants to leave the city."

"But…it's not like he can actually go back to his aunt and uncle's, can he?"

"Why couldn't he?"

"He was told never to come back by his own aunt."

"So, then, he's got nowhere else to go? What, he either pilots the Eva or lives on the streets?"

"More or less, he got dealt a bad hand."

"The worst hand imaginable. What is he supposed to do if he can't go back and doesn't want to pilot the Eva again?"

"His options are few to nonexistent."

-x-

Nothing was what he had. Shinji Ikari was a young man that had nothing. Maybe that was a lousy way to put up with the present, but there was no way he'd pilot the Eva again. Nobody told him that he'd feel pain from this synchronization that was to pair him with the cybernetic behemoth or even bothered to warn him that he could end up getting killed if he could feel like his arm was snapped to the bone.

As he walked down the street, his pendant started glowing; there were times in the past where it would do this, but nothing ever really happened…and there were times he felt like he was somewhere else, but he just chalked it up to random dreams.

"What in the Hell am I supposed to do now?" He uttered, taking off his pendant and holding it in his left hand. "I can't go back to my aunt's, not that I want to, I can't stay here, and all I have is pocket change and a Taoist pendant! Is there something I'm supposed to do? Just give me a hint or something, a sign that I'm meant for something better than this dismal lack of a life I have!"

The pendant glowed brighter and then blinded him.

"Aaaahh!" He yelled.

-x-

"What do you mean, he went missing?" Misato asked Shigeru; although Shinji wasn't really a NERV concern, that didn't stop the woman from worrying about his current situation.

"About eight minutes ago, he just disappeared on the streets," he explained. "I mean, he just…literally dropped off the map. Someone claimed to see him just vanish in a blue light after yelling something."

"Just a crazy, homeless guy looking for attention to get fast cash to buy drugs, perhaps?"

"Not unless the crazy, homeless guy was a twenty-one-year-old woman babysitting her best friend's four-year-old kid and taking him home after taking him to the park, and she swears she saw him disappear in blue light. She wasn't on drugs or anything."

"So, he disappears…and we have no means to find him or even communicate with him. Where could he have possibly gone?"

Even though it wasn't their concern, the fact that Shinji just disappeared after leaving NERV the day after an Angel attacked…was something that seemed like it was the paramilitary agency's fault. Their fault, meaning they had to rectify it.

-x-

It felt like he was surrounded by water, but he felt air entering and escaping his lungs. And the water itself was greenish instead of blue. There wasn't a sign of any aquatic life nearby.

"Where…am I?" Shinji asked.

"You are nowhere…and everywhere," a voice responded to him.

"What?"

"You're adrift in the abyss, here, there, everywhere. Wherever you think you are, you are…and wherever you think you're not, you still are. You've been waited on for many years, bearer of the Spirit of Space."

"The Spirit of Space?"

"The blue stone you wear around your neck."

Shinji looked at the pendant around his neck, seeing it glow dimly, but no longer looking like a Taoist symbol, but resembling a blue oval, smooth and beautiful.

"Those chosen to bear it are bestowed the freedom to go anywhere they desire," the voice told him.

"But…this belonged to my mother before she died. A man gave it to me, said she wanted me to have it. It's…all I have of her."

"Your mother knew of its power…but never could wield it. Anyone can possess it, but only those chosen by it or the others members of the Six Remnants can use them. But only those chosen by any of the Six Remnants…can possess the other five for their own benevolence."

"There are five others?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Yes, please."

"Very well, then. A long time ago, before the universe ever lived for even a second, there existed these four beings that gave birth to six singularities, each one representing a different aspect of the universe. When the Big Bang came and went, the four beings were lost to the abyss of existence…and the six singularities they brought into being were damaged, maimed, shattered, scattered and gathered back together over time into salvaged relics. From then on, they were called many names across many different races: The Spirits of the Six Singularities, Infinity Stones, Infinity Gems, the Souls of the Cosmos, the Absolution Crystals and so on. Each of the singularities can only be wielded by individuals with a heightened degree of resilience or were chosen by them of their own accord. They learn from their time with each possessor and apart to them as best they can. Controlling the universal aspects of Reality, Power, Mind, Soul, Time and Space, when brought together, they can make anything possible within the confines of the universe they reside in. At one point, one being that wasn't chosen by any of the six wielded them in a way that was both extremely cruel and unjustifiable. He used them to wipe out half of all life that existed in the universe. While his vile act was undone by those that remained, the six singularities, learning from the experience, realized that if anyone just as dangerous as he was were to repeat such an act, it would be just as worse than before, so they abandoned the universe they once resided in…and ended up in yours. While they ended up on your world, they hid away from each other in the hopes of never being brought together again unless it was for a benevolent purpose, saving lives or a planet, not ending them for one reason or another. That is the past and history of the six singularities."

So, there were six of these relics in total, each with a different power, representing a different aspect of the universe…and Shinji possessed the one representing space. When all six were brought together, anything was possible, even the impossible. They had been used once before to wipe out half of the universe and were used to undo that disaster…and they were capable of a degree of sentience, able to decide whether or not any one person was permitted to use their powers for their own benefit.

"Who are you?" Shinji then asked.

"I…am the Space Singularity," the voice answered.

"The…consciousness of the Space Stone?"

"I am."

"Why me? I mean…why was I chosen to wield the stone? Surely, there are those more qualified than myself out there."

"True, but none more deserving than you that fit the requisite for being able to hold the stone without repercussions to themselves. There are those that have known power for so long, they have lost any respect for it, and there have been those that have never had any measure of power that deserve to see where it will take them, to be tested, measured by their worthiness, to be judged by how they use it, whether it's to help others or harm them. It's usually the weakest of people that understand the true value of power…because they demonstrate the basic strengths of their kind. So…Shinji Ikari of the Space Stone…my most important question to you right now is this: If you could go anywhere in the universe, and you can go anywhere in the universe, where would you like to go?"

Shinji was at a loss for words right now, and not because of the fact that his pendant was asking him such a question. He was at a loss because it was the first time anyone had ever asked him what he wanted instead of what they thought he needed. Nobody had ever asked him before, so he never could speak his mind on his desires. He could go anywhere he wanted in the universe…and he knew where he wanted to try going to first.

"I know my mother is gone, but…can I go to where she is, please?" He asked the Space Singularity.

"Just because place like Heaven and Hell are domains of the afterlife, it doesn't mean they're not within the same universe as Earth is," it explained to the boy. "It just means they're not easy to reach while alive…but not for you. Yes, you can go to where she is, wherever she is."

-x-

"…So," uttered a female voice within a small building that served as a home for at least seventy-seven orphans of Second Impact, as an elderly woman was putting a little girl to sleep, "someone else has a member of the Infinity Stones just like I do."

In her sixties, her face wrinkled, dressed in white, wearing prayer beads with one of them colored orange on her left arm, she hadn't been a stranger to loss, but was weary of the loss of any more children to the ravages of sickness and war; she had to watch as another little boy whose parents were snatched away two years ago for seeking asylum in another country succumb to an illness he had that was treatable…but the medical practitioners had put profits over patients, letting them die if they couldn't pay for treatment when, as healers, it was their duty under the divine authority to give aid to those in need above their own desires or the authority of others. It was only through the prayer beads she had received from the previous mother superior that she was able to see the dying off to the other side and let them know that their lives, however small, however insignificant, had meaning to those that cared and would be waiting for them. But it was also because of the prayer beads that she knew of the other five stones that could provide more than the sum of their numbers…but she desired none of them beyond the one she had to provide some measure of relief. To have the power to do anything…was as intoxicating as it was unlimited in its ability to provide whatever was needed, whatever was desired by the heart of the one that obtained it.

"Will he come for this one, though?" She wondered, unafraid of the possibility of any of the other bearers coming for her stone.

To be continued…

A/N: Well, here is the first of a line of chapters in which I have no clue if I'll even continue in due time, but I'd like to see where it goes. I gave Shinji the Space Stone because he's someone that deserves to be free from others, and now has the freedom to go wherever he chooses, and the mystery woman the Soul Stone due to how those of holiness and servitude to a higher authority want only to see suffering end. Whether or not other people will have possession of the other four or they're yet to be discovered will depend upon how the future unfolds. Peace.