Creation began on 02-26-19

Creation ended on 03-28-19

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Determination

He must've lost consciousness again, because Shinji found himself standing in the streets of Tokyo-3, noticing that it was vacant of people. There wasn't a person in sight.

"Hello?" He called out, but received no response. "Hello?!"

"Ikari-Kun," he turned around and saw Rei standing in front of him. "Please, come back."

"What? Ayanami, I…I'm dead, Ayanami. I can't come back."

"You could've come back."

"I wouldn't have been the same person. I wouldn't be me…and if I did go back, more people would suffer. I made a choice, Ayanami, and I have to live with it."

"And you chose a group of assassins fighting to save a worthless country over a paramilitary agency tasked with saving the human race?!" He turned back and saw Asuka. "You traded in the Eva for a stupid gun!"

In his left hand, Shinji had the Bullet of Salvation, wondering why it was in his dream.

"Asuka, me coming back just to pilot the Eva wouldn't amount to anything," he told her.

"If you're not going to do it, then you're just a waste of time," he back to face Rei, seeing Gendo nearby, again with a look of contempt on his face. "What good is a coward that took the easy way out?"

"I didn't take the easy way out. I was killed."

"You still could've come back had you chose to," he saw Ritsuko Akagi beside Asuka; it was then clear to him that he was being ganged up upon by people that felt he should've chose to return to life over there instead of remain where he was with Night Raid. "You abandoned us, Shinj."

"The dead can't abandon anyone if they were killed without ever making a decision regarding those left behind. Whatever led to my death back in the Eva, it was done without my knowledge, therefore, not my decision. You want me to feel guilty about the choice I made after discovering I was dead, but in the end, it was my choice, and I was the only one that could make it."

"You left us for some pretty face that wields a giant pair of scissors," said Asuka to him.

"That's my choice, and nothing you say or do can unmake it. I can't feel guilty over what I chose to do…just because it affects each of you in a negative way. If I had to make the same choice a second time, I'd do it…and again…and again…and again. I'd do it because…I'd rather be me than some husk that has no sense of free will, no sense of self. Whatever happened to you back in Tokyo-3 after my death, I'm sorry you had to go through that, but it's not my fault you had to go through that. Everyone likes to spout on about causality, about how there are causes and consequences to everything committed, for better or for worse, and this is just one of them. Something or someone caused me to die in the Eva and I ended up elsewhere in another world where I'm something more than human, and the cause is unknown to me, but the consequences were to either adapt to the new situation or not. Whatever you do or did after my death is or was up to you, and you had to decide what it was going to be, for better or for worse. If I'm dead, did any of you grieve for me? Did Misato grieve? Did my friends find out about my death? Does anyone even care?"

The four individuals didn't answer his questions. They couldn't answer them.

"The group I'm with is called Night Raid," he told them. "They serve as a small faction of the Revolutionary Army against the military of this large country called the Empire, ruled by a young man that's either as naïve as I wish he was led to be by the adults that serve him…or is as corrupted as the people that control him from behind the scenes. I chose to help the army against the Empire because they're trying to restore order and peace to the country that has become a twisted shadow of its former self. To do that, they need these relics that were made over one-thousand years ago, using ancient science and powerful beasts. The side that will win will be the side that has the most relics and the will to change the state of things. If this war ends, the Empire can be led into a better future free from its corruption. I want to see that become a reality."

"You're such a disappointment," Gendo uttered.

"Oh, yeah, well, then, you have to live with the disappointment, Father. I can't and won't change the outcome of my decision just so you can continue to express your disappointment towards me. Before I even piloted the Eva, you were disappointed in me, and nothing I said or did was going to change that. I'm not looking to please you or look for your acknowledgment here because you're not here and will never be here. And what does my being here right now in front of you four prove, anyway? What, that I need people that couldn't see past the Eva to remind me that it was a necessity, that you stressed the importance of piloting the Eva to face the Angels? You can stress that all you want. It doesn't matter to me, anymore, because I'm not an Evangelion pilot. I'm…just another person lost in the darkness, trying to find the light."

Then, Shinji raised his gun up and aimed it at Gendo's head. Because this was nothing more than something happening in his subconscious, these people weren't truly here…and he couldn't be held responsible for them any further, no matter what they thought of him.

"What do you think you're doing?" Gendo asked him.

"I'm ending the hardest and saddest chapter of my life," he answered, "and moving on to the next."

Bang! He shot Gendo in the chest and watched him fall to the ground, atomizing into ash.

"You stupid idiot," Asuka yelled at him. "You can't just walk away from your responsibility to NERV because you choose to!"

Bang! Asuka received a bullet her chest as she atomized in front of Shinji.

"Actually, I can," he told her, and she was gone. "I'm better this way."

Bang! He didn't give Ritsuko a chance to share her reaction to his decision and just ended her and watched as she atomized in front of him.

Then, looking at Rei, he sighed as he pointed his gun at her.

"I'm sorry, Ayanami, but this is my life now," he apologized to her. "I can't think about what might've been…but never was. I have to help Night Raid and the Revolutionary Army. I have to help stop the current rule of the Empire…and I'm among the only ones that can do it."

"I understand," she responded. "Save the people you can save."

Shinji inhaled…and then turned away as she just faded away. He didn't even need to shoot her.

"Congratulations on turning away, Shinji!" He heard Toji's voice as the jock appeared down the street.

"Congratulations on turning away, Shinji!" Kensuke praised as he appeared.

"Squawk, squawk!" Pen-Pen went as he showed up.

"Save the Empire, Shinji," Hikari told him as she appeared.

"Help your friends, Shinji," Misato encouraged him when he saw her.

"Do your best, Shinji!" They all told him.

He smiled and ran down the street.

-x-

"What do you mean, he's moved beyond his past?" Ritsuko asked the altered clone of Shinji.

"He has accepted that he can longer be bound by the ghosts of his past life," the clone uttered to her and Gendo. "His fate…is in his own hands…and he can only concern himself with what's in front of him, not behind him. The young man people either heard of, knew anything of, cared for or even loathed as Shinji Ikari…has crossed the threshold between acceptance and guilt…and is beyond those that can no longer possess him here."

"You mean to say that he's run away from us?" Gendo demanded.

"One can't run away…when they're killed against their will," the clone stated. "They can't be held responsible if they didn't choose to die of their own accord…or accepted their fate. But by accepting their fate, they can ascend from their past and grasp their future, whatever it is that they can see of it. Nobody, unless permitted by a greater will, may possess the souls of the dead. He once had strings, which bound him to the past here…but now, he is free, for his strings have been severed by himself…and he stands unaided by those that remain. None of you…may ever make him yours again."

Gendo frowned and walked away. This was a turn of events he didn't expect, even from a mutant clone of his dead son. If his soul was now truly beyond this plane of existence and on some other one (or even in another dimension as a result of the Twelfth Angel), then this clone's use as an Eva pilot was limited to his plans. To be unable to harness even a fragment of the soul of his son was like meeting the divine being known as God, to demand from him a desired prize…and to be denied outright. Now, he had to find another way to rework his scenario in time for the next Angel.

"He has no strings…so he's not tied down by anyone here," the clone expressed, "for any reason."

-x-

Within Unit-00, Rei Ayanami opened her eyes and felt something in her that was…full of pain that she had never experienced in its entirety. It was a pain…that indicated that someone she barely knew…was gone…and there was no getting them back.

Goodbye, Ikari-Kun, she thought.

-x-

"…How can you be sure frying his brain and freezing him will have the desired effect of wiping him clean enough to manipulate?" Shinji heard Esdeath's voice as he slowly stirred from unconsciousness, seeing her blurred form talking to another blurred form.

"With this hybrid between human and Imperial Arms, nothing is for sure," he heard Budo's voice respond to Esdeath. "He's already proven capable of regeneration, but memories are a different thing. His brain may recover…but his memories might not if enough brain cells are destroyed."

That's when Shinji recalled what was going on: Esdeath and Budo were attempting to wipe away his memories of Night Raid and convert him over to serving the Empire. And, for just a moment, they had almost succeeded in achieving this. But Shinji had to remind himself of something that mattered to his current status that kept him tethered to his affiliation to Night Raid.

To betray them is to abandon my soul, he thought, visualizing each member of Night Raid suffering because of his actions, and to cause their demise…is to kill my own heart.

The last member of Night Raid to suffer at his hands in his twisted perception if he had turned on them…was none other than Sheele, whose Extase was broken into pieces by him.

"Shinji," she had spoken, afraid of him right then and there.

"I am sorry," he envisioned himself saying to her, just before he pulled the trigger of his gun and caused her permanent paralysis.

"He's stirring," Esdeath uttered as his vision corrected. "Bullet of Salvation… How do you feel?"

Shinji looked at her…and uttered, "I've got no strings to hold me down, make me fret, or make me frown. I had strings, but now I'm free. There are no strings on me."

"What?" Budo asked him, confused. "What does that mean? Who are you loyal to? Who do you serve? Are you a servant to the Emperor?"

Shinji looked down at his feet and then back at them.

"My loyalty…is to those that know what must be done…and give up everything for it."

-x-

"This access route will take us up to one of the cellars under the palace," Leone told Sheele and Mine as they stood in front of a latter leading up to another manhole.

"Let's do this," said Mine as she brought up her Pumpkin.

"I will cut down any that get in the way," Sheele expressed coolly as she held onto one of the handles of Extase.

When she grabbed one of the latter handles, it felt like the entire building shook for a moment.

"What was that?" Mine questioned.

"You got me," Leone uttered; not even she, with her enhanced sense of hearing, knew what happened.

But Sheele didn't care what caused the palace to shake. Her only concern was saving one of their own from being made into a living weapon for the Empire.

-x-

The door to the chamber Shinji was placed in by Esdeath and Budo blew off its hinges…and Shinji walked out, wearing Aldramelech with a look of rage on his face, sending arcs of electrical energy surging across the halls.

"Come with it!" He yelled out to whoever heard his voice. "Come get it!"

A pair of guards came by and brandished spears at him.

"Halt!" They ordered. "Surrender, immediately!"

Shinji looked at them and uttered, "I'm getting out of here. Don't try to stop me."

But they persisted and raised their spears at him.

"By order of Prime Minister Honest, we're authorized to use force to subdue you," one of them told him, and he raised his Bullet of Salvation at them.

"Then you should lie down and take a nap," he responded, and then shot both of them in the chest, causing them to react in panic before falling to the floor, asleep.

Walking over them, he continued on to wherever this path took him.

Imperial Arms, he thought, feeling a measure of untapped power from somewhere within the palace. If I take the ones they have locked away, I'll cripple their forces further by reducing them to just a handful of Imperial…or at least two of them.

He ran into eight more guards and paralyzed them across the floor.

"So long as you serve a corrupt system, you will fall and suffer," he told them as he walked passed them. "You follow the rules of a flawed ego that has manipulated a ruler into their own downfall, and the anvil will fall harder than the hammer does to shake the world."

"You…bastard!" One of the guards called him.

-x-

"…Uhh…" Esdeath groaned as she came to in the chamber, finding Budo atop her. "Aah!"

She shoved and kicked him off as he regained consciousness, recalling what had happened minutes before…and both were infuriated to know that their plan to rework the Bullet of Salvation had failed.

"He's still loyal to the Revolutionary Army," Esdeath expressed.

"And he knocked us out without breaking a sweat," Budo added, looking at his arms where his Aldramelech used to reside. "He took my Imperial Arms! Did he take yours?"

Esdeath raised her left hand up…and conjured an ice dagger, revealing that her Demon's Extract was still in her possession.

"No," she answered, "meaning he either tried to, but couldn't, didn't have the time to take it…"

"Or he decided that taking mine would suffice for the time being," Budo cut her off, angry at being stripped of his Imperial Arms. "This is bad. He's immutable to the shifting of loyalties, unable to defect against his volition unless he chooses to. He's with that Night Raid till the end of time."

"Not just Night Raid," Esdeath muttered; as she was knocked out, she had a brief vision of Shinji holding hands…with that girl that possessed Extase! "He's loyal to that bitch."

-x-

Crash! Shinji kicked open a hole in the ceiling he was over and dropped into a room that held weapons and armor displayed around him, some sort of armory.

Looks like I hit one of their mother lodes, he thought, looking around for what he was after. Weapons are just one of the necessary resources in any war, but one of the resources that decides how they're ended. Where are you being hidden?

He stopped in front of a doorway and entered a small room that housed only a handful of items. Some were large enough to be wielded like swords or hammers while others were small enough to be overlooked or considered unimportant. But Shinji knew what these items were the second he laid eyes upon them…and smiled.

"Imperial Arms," he told himself, picking up Dimensional Formation: Shambhala from off the table. "I can't afford to risk it."

Harnessing the power of Shambhala, he opened a portal in the room…and began grabbing every Imperial Arms there; there were forty-eight in total, but there had to be less than twenty in here when you excluded Demon's Extract and Erastone among those in the possession of others in the Empire. After he cleared them out, he closed the portal; he could've used it to escape, but he had to have marked where he was going beforehand, not after. This meant he would have to escape the old-fashioned way: Out the front door. Not that it matter, though, since he had to make sure nobody else in the Empire had access to these powerful relics that would aid in its redemption.

"It's time to get out of here," he uttered as he slipped Shambhala into his pants' right pocket.

-x-

"The security here is light," Mine told Sheele and Leone as they had executed a dozen guards, "like they got weaker as the war progressed."

"Or they just never expected anyone to try and get in here," Leone responded. "In truth, though, with any infiltration or breach to the palace security, the strongest guards are sent to protect the Emperor. Everyone else around the palace is a newbie or inexperienced."

SMASH! A wall down the hall from them had a large hole blown into it, creating a dust cloud as someone emerged from wherever had been behind it.

"Now, there's a sight I'm happy to see," they heard a familiar male voice say to them as the dust cloud dissipated to reveal who was there. "I wasn't expecting to be rescued."

"We shouldn't leave our own, including you," Sheele expressed, but raised her Extase up at him defensively; just because they saw him didn't mean he was himself while he'd been here. "Are you…with us…or with the Empire, Bullet of Salvation: Shinji Ikari?"

Shinji nodded in the positive upon realizing their suspicions that he might've been turned against them when he was captured. He needed to show his allegiance to them to earn their trust that he was still with them. Taking his gun, he tossed it over to Sheele, followed by removing Aldramelech from his arms and taking Shambhala out of his pockets.

"I'd sooner die than fight any of you for any reason," he told them. "If you need to, then take out my eyes so that I can't see where you plan to take me."

Leone smelled the boy for any hint of deception on his part, any measure of a possible agenda to harm them…and couldn't see any sign that Shinji had any reason to want them dead or their Imperial Arms taken to empower the Empire further.

Mine raised her Pumpkin at Shinji, but couldn't pull the trigger; if he represented danger, she wouldn't have hesitated to devastate him up close and personal. If there was no indication of a threat, then he couldn't have been compromised by the Empire, meaning they hadn't been able to repurpose him to serve as their weapon.

"Say one thing to me that you know intimately," Sheele spoke, wanting to believe that Shinji was still Shinji, but couldn't, despite wanting to.

"You believe yourself to be good only at killing," Shinji expressed, "but I believed you could be good at other things, like cooking and housework, the stuff I'm good at. And you told me that I'm the only member of Night Raid that was incapable of killing. I respected that truth."

Sheele lowered Extase and picked up his gun.

"Let's get out of here," she told them.

Leone picked up Aldramelech while Mine took Shambhala from Shinji as the three ladies led him away to where they came through to get into the palace.

-x-

The Emperor's strongest guards stood just outside his personal chambers when Esdeath and Budo came to inform him of the situation's negative outcome.

"Has the breach been dealt with?" He asked them.

"Yes," Budo answered, "and no."

"What do you mean? Who were the intruders?"

"They were members of Night Raid, but they didn't get far inside when they infiltrated the palace," Esdeath explained, "but they weren't the cause of the breach. It was the Bullet of Salvation. He overpowered our attempt to sway him over to our side and escaped."

"He escaped with Night Raid?"

"Yes, Your Majesty, but he did worse than escape with them," Budo revealed. "Two of the sentries checking the palace discovered one of the armories had been ransacked by the Bullet of Salvation."

"What did he take?"

"He took only the Imperial Arms that were there," Esdeath revealed.

"All of them?"

"All of them."

This was a severe blow to the Empire's forces. The Imperial Arms they had that weren't in use by anyone would now undoubtedly be used by the Revolutionary Army because of this human/Imperial Arms hybrid. And with the way things were progressing, the war would end sooner than later.

"How many Imperial Arms do we have left?" The Emperor asked them.

"Only three, Your Majesty," Budo answered; the three Imperial Arms left were Esdeath's Demon's Extract, Honest's Erastone…and the Imperial Arms meant to serve the royal family.

"But…he didn't take the Shingu…did he?"

"No, Your Majesty. There was no indication that he even knew where to find them."

"That's good. We'll use them to defend the palace."

The Shingu, created over four-hundred years ago by the Emperor of that time in an attempt to make artifacts superior to the Imperial Arms, were in fact inferior to them, and sealed away by the shamed ruler. Now, after several years of disservice since the last time they were used, even for a brief period, they would be used yet again.

"They might be inferior, but what choice do we have?" The Emperor questioned.

Esdeath and Budo didn't answer him; if he told them they were to use the Shingu to defend the palace, they were to use the Shingu to defend the palace, no questions asked. But that wasn't what left them infuriated. By failing to gain control over the Bullet of Salvation, they had disgraced the Empire and allowed him into the palace, take most of the Imperial Arms and flee with Night Raid. This level of shame wasn't easily overlooked or forgiven.

-x-

"…That's Shambhala," said Bulat as the ladies brought Shinji back to the hideout, seeing that the boy was holding the Imperial Arms he had seen but never witnessed being used. "How'd you get Shambhala from the Empire?"

Shinji held the item up…and made a portal appear in the middle of the large room that had other items falling onto the floor in front of everyone.

"With the exception of three Imperial Arms I was unable to acquire, these were all the ones they had in storage," he told everyone. "When I came to after one of their attempts to control me, I took Budo's Aldramelech and escaped. I wandered around for a while and felt the presence of several Imperial Arms nearby, broke into one of their armories and took everything I saw there that was one. Sheele, Mine and Leone found me not too soon afterwards…or I found them when I went smashing through walls. I'm grateful they did, though; I didn't know which way was out."

Najenda picked up a large hammer with a large, curved blade on the other end of it that caught her interest and then at Shinji.

"This hammer," she spoke, "what is it called?"

"Thor's Ragnarok: Stormbreaker," he answered her. "It's believed to rival Aldramelech because it uses electrical discharges. You like it?"

Suddenly, electrical surges emanated from the weapon as Najenda held it up.

"I love it," she answered him.

-x-

"…So, all it's good for now is telling us in bits and pieces of what the boy is up to or has done," Gendo expressed in his office to Ritsuko, refusing to acknowledge the albino clone of his son anything but a person.

"I'll put him through synchronization training, but other than what he revealed," Ritsuko responded, "it would appear that the Third Child has indeed moved on wherever he ended up."

All Gendo could do now was wait for the next Angel to appear and see where anything took could take him until he could find something that would give him a means to restore his scenario. If nothing happened, then nothing would change for any of them.

-x-

Lying on the top of the hideout, Shinji looked up at the night sky as he reflected on his time at the palace. He had met the Emperor…and pitied his manipulated and corrupted state, knowing that any legacy he had was going to be met with disaster after disaster after disaster. How close he came to succumbing to being made to turn against Night Raid…and how close he came to wanting to give up. But if he had succumbed to the conversion by Esdeath and Budo, he would've just ended up suffering more than if they kept persisting.

"Shinji?" He heard Sheele call out to him, and he turned to face up to her.

"I won't lie, but I was relieved when you came to rescue me," he told her.

"By the time we got there, it looked like you had things under control to free yourself," she responded.

"Hardly, for even if I had defeated the security, I would've still had no clue on how to get out of that palace. I had never been there and had no knowledge of its infrastructure. It was a labyrinth for me in there, a series of halls and corridors I could get lost in. I owe you for coming to get me."

She came and sat down next to him.

"While you were there, I worried that you were going to be turned," she confessed to him. "I feared you would serve the Empire when they took you…and that the person you were, the friend and ally that you were…would've been just an illusion."

Shinji got up into a sitting position and said, "I couldn't have let that happen. You guys are the only people I trust in a country completely alien to me…and ruled by a kid that can't seem to tell the difference between trustworthy people that want to look out for him and people looking only to exploit his naïveté and influence him to make bad decisions or make such decisions without his knowledge. Whatever hope this Empire has for a future truly lies with the Revolutionary Army overthrowing the old reign and installing a new one that everyone can benefit from."

"Yeah…and hope for everyone that lives every day in it."

Shinji sighed and decided that he needed to inform Sheele of something else that might've been a game changer directed towards her.

"Sheele, there's something else you should know," he started. "While I was at the palace, when Esdeath and Budo were attempting to control me, I…unintentionally started something with Esdeath regarding people. I told her if she wasn't so cruel, maybe some men would want to date her, but her philosophical belief in survival of the fittest ended up making me say things that might've had the opposite effect on her than what I was looking for. I told her there was nothing wrong with being with someone weak…and that I'd have nothing against settling down with a weak woman if she liked me as much as I liked her. She brought you up as an example, despite not saying your name…and I answered that I would settle with someone like you. She might come after you the next time we see her. I put a target on your back without meaning to…and I apologize."

"Shinji…I had a target on my back long before I ever met Esdeath. I've learned to live with it."

Shinji nodded in understanding, but Sheele got the feeling that it was much worse than what she had gone through because of Esdeath; if it had been anyone else, the airhead of Night Raid would've overlooked it.

"Aaaurgh!" She remembered Shinji's scream when Esdeath stabbed him in order to protect her; she had taken that act as a sign that if it had been her that was stabbed by Esdeath, she wouldn't have survived, just like if Shinji hadn't shown up when Koro was about to eat her, she wouldn't have been alive to see the next day.

"But would you, really?" She asked him. "Would you settle down with a weak woman?"

"Only if she liked me as much as I liked her," he answered. "But what I'm getting at, though is…be careful if you see her again. I…I don't know what I'd do if something happened to you and I never saw you again."

Lately, it seemed as though Sheele's relationship with Shinji had, while not something she had initially felt was likely to happen, affected her in a way that was beneficial. He made feel like she could do more than be a killer, how she could do more with her life after the war was over…and she saw him differently from the other members of Night Raid.

"If the war over the Empire were over tomorrow, what would you do with your future?" She asked him.

"If the war were over? I'd just try to find a way to live in a world that seems very pleasant in a superficial sense…but should be pleasant in a literal sense."

"Yeah…same here, Shinji."

Then Sheele took something out of her shawl and tossed it over to Shinji.

"Shambhala?" He questioned the Imperial Arms she tossed over to him. "Sheele, what is the meaning of this?"

"I spoke with Najenda over this, and she believes you're best qualified to use Shambhala…among other Imperial Arms that suit you. You're the only one able to use multiple items without a serious drawback…if you consider sleeping for a while a minor drawback."

"Minor, and that was the first time I used that many. This time, I used three…and while I probably could've used more of them, I didn't want to risk exhausting myself. I still don't know what I'm capable of, but it's best not to gamble of one's own endurance just to see what could happen."

Picking up Shambhala, Shinji sighed as it glowed in his left hand like a large firefly.

Sheele considered Shinji other Imperial Arms that weren't weapons to aid in his versatility, but decided to let Shinji handle that on his own. For now, his gun and Shambhala seemed to be enough for him to work with.

"Hey, Sheele?"

"Yes, Shinji?"

"Thanks."

-x-

Honest felt danger was approaching the Empire faster than a champion horse outrunning the competition at a racetrack. With the loss of the majority of the Imperial Arms now in the possession of the Revolutionary Army, his very control over the Empire was in jeopardy. He now had a reason to be fearful of the Bullet of Salvation's possible attempt to come after him for his Imperial Arms.

"I promise you this," he recalled the boy's words, "I'm coming for you."

"That hybrid abomination," he called Shinji as he poured himself a drink in his chambers. "Ever since he showed up that night, he's thrown things out of order. He's made Night Raid the most dangerous force the Empire has ever encountered…and he's chosen to serve them. He's not under their control or defected. He's just embracing that human flaw that was part of his design: Free will, the ability to make his own choices. If he chooses to come back for the remaining Imperial Arms, we'll be powerless to stop him…unless I use Erastone to destroy him."

Honest was confident in the possibility that by using Erastone against the Bullet of Salvation, the Revolutionary Army and Night Raid would be stripped of their bonus ace. No matter how powerful this child was, part of him was still made from the leftovers of the materials and Danger Beasts used to create the forty-eight Imperial Arms. By destroying that part of him, he would destroy what made him the Bullet of Salvation…and like any bullet fired, his salvation was granted to those just once.

"If he had more than one bullet, he'd be more dangerous than even I care to admit," he told himself as he drank his glass cup dry. "Kill the salvation…and the Empire will be eternal."

To be continued…

A/N: Ooh, we're in trouble now. I bet none of you were expecting that to happen at all. I'm reliant upon the Akame ga Kill Wiki for information regarding the items that are mentioned as existing, but for the ones that were invented just for this story, I can get away with the possibilities. How many of you were surprised to see that Shinji found what Najenda was impressed with or how Honest felt threatened by Shinji now that he, Esdeath and the Emperor are the only ones in the Empire with Imperial Arms? Eventually, it's possible the genre of this story may change, but not yet. Peace out, yo!