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Just to show I haven't abandoned DW... - Bob Schroeck - 09-29-2025
This is a little something I've been working on, on and off, for a few years now. It's nowhere near done, but there's enough here to serve as a tasty teaser.
FAMILY UNION
A "Drunkard's Walk" Side Story
by Robert M. Schroeck
A "Drunkard's Walk" Side Story
by Robert M. Schroeck
A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another.
If these minds love one another the home will be as beautiful as
a flower garden. But if these minds get out of harmony with one
another it is like a storm that plays havoc with the garden.
-- Buddha (B.C. 568-488)
"Basically, I'm part of this large, creative, mildly crazy,
loosely connected loving family. But really, these days, who
isn't?"
-- Kate Burton
Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a
family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.
-- Jane Howard
*OK. So. It's a dream,* Shinji thought. *It's got to be.*
The last thing he remembered was going to bed, so suddenly
finding himself standing up and dressed in front of a perfectly
ordinary-looking door was understandably disorienting, at least
until he realized that he had to be dreaming.
That he'd never realized he was dreaming *while* dreaming before,
at least not without an Angel being involved, did occur to him.
But the Angels had been beaten back, completely and permanently,
more than a year ago, so he was pretty certain that one couldn't
be involved now.
*So...* he wondered. *What's going on?*
The door declined to answer.
Shinji slowly turned around and decided that whatever his
subconscious was up to in this dream, it was decidedly *not*
playing fair. White walls, white floor, white ceiling -- an
unfamiliar one, he thought with a small smile -- and no windows
or other doors. *Okay, so... either open the door or have the
most boring dream I've ever had.*
He had to admit that with his life there was some *attraction* to
the idea of a boring dream.
However, he knew perfectly well what Asuka would say if he
*didn't* open the door. Plus, he had to admit to a certain
amount of curiosity about what his subconscious had in mind. So
with a little laugh at his hesitation, Shinji reached out,
grasped the simple brass knob, and opened the door.
On the other side was a room out of a movie -- dark wood
paneling, built-in bookcases filled with books of all sizes,
colors and ages, and several chairs and sofas arranged in a
semicircle around a fireplace in which a fire was blazing
merrily.
He'd barely taken that in when he realized there was someone in
the room -- two someones, actually, the backs of whose heads he
could see over the top of the sofa on which they sat. From the
hairstyles he thought they might both be women. One had hair the
same color as Misato's, but what little of her skin he could see
was a warm chocolate color. The other had hair of the most
improbable shade of pink, and at the sound of the door closing
behind him she stood and faced him.
Shinji's breath caught for a moment. Ah, yes, definitely female.
Brilliant blue eyes in a heart-shaped face, perched atop a blue
jacket of a decidedly military design, red biker shorts and...
Shinji tore his eyes back up to hers -- he wasn't going to admire
anyone's legs other than Asuka's, not if he was going to survive
the inevitable telling of this dream in the morning.
"Um, hi?" he half-asked as the pink-haired girl -- and girl she
was, not much older than him if he was right -- smiled broadly.
"Oh, hey!" To his surprise she suddenly grabbed the back of the
sofa with her left hand and vaulted it, pivoting over the
overstuffed upholstery and dropping neatly on the carpet in front
of him. The other girl turned to follow her with a fond, amused
smile on her face. She had amazing emerald eyes, Shinji realized
before the pink-haired girl regained his attention by sticking
out her hand. "Shinji, right? I'm Utena." When he failed to
take her hand, she grabbed his and shook it anyway. "I'm your
sister."
*Yup, definitely dreaming,* Shinji thought.
* * *
Several minutes later Shinji found himself surrounded by more
people than he was normally comfortable being around. Moments
after Utena had introduced him to the dark-skinned girl -- Anthy,
her name was, and he was a bit stunned to learn that she was
Utena's *wife* (and thus, they pointed out to him, his
*sister-in-law*) -- the door had opened again to admit three more
people who were energetically chattering. Immediately
uncomfortable, Shinji tried to slide back against one of the
bookcases, but Utena hooked her arm around his before he could do
more than twitch, and drew him gently but inexorably forward.
The new three were two more girls and another guy, who all
quieted down and studied him speculatively when they spotted him
on Utena's arm. "Hey," said the guy, who was a Westerner with
messy black hair, green eyes just as striking as Anthy's behind
round glasses, and the faded remains of a nasty scar on his
forehead, "Is that...?"
Utena smiled. "I finally found him. Ladies and gentleman, may
I present our no-longer-missing sibling, Mister Shinji Ikari."
"Brilliant!" the guy responded while grabbing his hand and
enthusiastically shaking it, Western-style. "It's about time you
showed up! Now us guys are only outnumbered two to one, instead
of five to one. I'm Harry -- Harry Potter," he added, releasing
Shinji's hand. "And in case Big Sis here hasn't gotten to it,
I'm your brother."
"Um," Shinji offered. "Hi?"
"Oh, for..." said the smaller of the two girls. She was slender
and delicate and tiny, with wavy dark hair and hazel eyes no less
striking than Harry's green. "Can't you see you're crowding him,
Harry?" She elbowed Harry out of the way -- he gave a very
dramatic-sounding "oof!" but grinned at Shinji as he did -- and
to Shinji's surprise stepped forward and very gently hugged him.
"Right, and *I* was crowding him," Harry muttered with obvious
amusement in his tone.
Shinji went very still, not quite sure even after all he'd been
through how to react to a stranger -- and a girl, at that! --
hugging him. "Hi, little brother... I'm your sister Bibi
Summers," she said when she released him and stepped back. Then
she screwed up her face in concentration. "At least I think it's
'little brother'. I mean, physically and mentally I'm like
twenty-sevenish, but I'm really only five years old, so..." She
shrugged.
"Five years old...?" Shinji managed to ask before the other girl,
a tall, voluptuous brunette with her long hair in a high
ponytail, laughed.
"Well, I know for a fact that he's 'little brother' to me," she
said with a chuckle.
"Well, that's because you're a thousand years old to Bibi's five,
Grandma," Harry snarked good-naturedly.
"Watch it, wandboy, or I'll kick your butt again," she riposted
in exactly the same tones. "There's still some life in these old
bones." Shinji noted that while she didn't look any older than
Bibi or Utena, she didn't dispute the claim. "Hey, little bro.
I'm Kino Makoto, the oldest and best of your big sisters."
Bibi made a raspberry noise while Utena called out, "Hey!" To
the side, Harry laughed softly.
"They're always like this," he said when Shinji glanced at him.
"I'm... confused," Shinji murmured. "This is a very strange
dream."
Harry laughed. "That's because it's not a dream so much as a...
meeting of minds."
"What little bro number one is trying to say," Makoto interjected
as she linked her arm through Shinji's and led him over to one of
the couches, "is that we're all real, but we're all in different
universes and the only way we can meet up is like this -- when
our minds are relaxed and open to connections."
"But how?" Shinji asked as he sat down.
"That would be me," Utena said from the opposite sofa as Anthy
snuggled in under her arm. "I'm my world's avatar of Apollo, and
I can use Apollo's power to do things like, well, send dreams to
people in other universes."
"Why?" he asked, furrowing his brow.
"Isn't it obvious?" Bibi asked, plopping down onto the floor in
front of the fireplace to sit tailor-style. "We're all of us the
adopted kids of Doug Sangnoir."
Shinji's eyes grew wide and, unbidden, the memory played itself
out: after yet another Angel, with not a word from his ... from
Gendo, Doug-sensei had clapped him on the shoulder, shook his
hand, and said, "Well done" before smiling and adding, "I would be
proud to call you 'son'."
Apparently it had been more than just an empty sentiment.
Shaking his head, Shinji seized on a random detail. "You said
outnumbered five to one, before," he said to Harry. "But I only
see four... sisters."
"That's because HP was countin' me, and I wasn't here yet," came
a sultry voice. Shinji looked up to the door, which was once
more open and framing a seriously hot brunette who looked to be
in her early twenties, dressed in leather jacket and pants, and a
T-shirt with an utterly incongruous cartoon unicorn on it.
"Pink, Specs," she said, nodding at Utena and Anthy. "Hey,
Beebs, Mako," she continued as she stepped into the room and shut
the door behind her, "how's the search?"
"Best we can figure," Bibi said, "we're no more than a couple
timelines away."
"Cool," the new girl nodded as she navigated around the sofa to
stand in front of him. "So... this the kid who kicked those
angels' asses?"
Shinji looked up at the bombshell looming over him. "Yes?" he
ventured.
A lopsided grin grew across her face. "Wicked," she breathed,
then stuck a hand out. "'M Faith. Just Faith."
"Just like Tonks," Harry muttered sotto voce to Makoto, who
giggled. Without taking her eyes off Shinji, Faith made what
Shinji assumed was a rude gesture at Harry, who just laughed. He
cautiously took her hand to shake it, only to find himself yanked
up out of his seat and into another hug, this one a bit more
vigorous than Bibi's.
"Always wanted brothers and sisters when I was growin' up," she
said softly, and Shinji realized that she'd buried her face in
his hair and was almost whispering into his ear. "Now I got a
whole crop of'em. Gonna be the best big sis for you, kiddo."
"Thank you?" Shinji half-whispered back, trying to ignore how
close his face was to her breasts. Almost reluctantly Faith
released him, and he slowly sank back down into his seat. "This
is all very strange," he murmured, more to himself than the room
at large.
Faith laughed as she found herself a seat of her own. "You bet
yer ass it is, and believe me, I *know* strange." She glanced
around the room, a massive grin splitting her face. "But I'm
not complainin'."
"I don't think any of us are, Faith dear," Anthy said with a
small smile of her own.
"I still don't think it's fair Utena gets to have her girl with
her during these things and the rest of us don't," Harry said,
his tone anything but aggrieved. "I know Ginny's just dying to
meet you guys."
"Eh," Faith grunted, shrugging. "Maybe if I find the guy or gal
who can put up with me and the Slayin' gig I'll care about it,
but it ain't no big deal for me right now."
Makoto and Bibi shared a grin. "And we're a bit too busy
tracking down Dad right now to worry about it, either," Bibi
said.
"And after that we have Auntie Dee's war to deal with," Makoto
added.
"Who's Auntie Dee?" Shinji asked.
"Makoto and I," Bibi replied, gesturing at the taller brunette,
"are traveling across various universes with about a dozen other
girls who are all chasing after Dad. Delandra's one of the
leaders of the gang, inasmuch as we *have* leaders, and the first
of us that he met. She thinks of him as sort of a big brother,
unlike the rest of us, so... 'auntie'." She grinned.
"She comes from a kind of medieval world, only they have people
with magic and psychic powers," Makoto continued.
"And Valdemar, the country she comes from there, which from
everything we've learned is the kind of place you *want* to
protect, has gotten into a war with a neighboring country who
sound like such bad guys you'd expect them to be wearing top hats
and twirling their mustaches," Bibi said. "She wants to ask Dad
and maybe the rest of the Warriors -- you know about them,
right?" she asked, and Shinji nodded. "She wants to ask them if
they would help out in the war. The bunch of us traveling with
her have all promised to help out, too."
"I hear you've got a giant robot," Makoto said. "Want to join
the fun?"
Shinji stared at her for a moment before seizing on the first
objection that came to mind. "How would we get it there?"
Bibi laughed. "That's actually the easy part, believe it or not.
Between Dee, Lisa and Utena we can probably punch a hole to any
universe we know about -- and, well, now that we've found you,
we know about yours. We can open a portal to your universe or
any of ours if we need to." She grinned. "We just haven't
needed to, yet."
"Still want to do a real get-together somewhere," Faith said from
where she slouched with one leg hanging over the arm of her
chair.
"We will," Anthy assured her. "Eventually."
"Back to Shinji's robot," Bibi continued. "The real question is,
what kind of support does it need? I mean, a giant robot isn't
like a car, it probably needs a whole team to keep it in working
order." She narrowed her eyes in thought. "And just how 'giant'
are we talking about here?"
Shinji chewed his lip for a moment. "Unit 01 is about a hundred
meters tall. I think." Harry gave an appreciative whistle and
Faith swore softly. "And it isn't really a robot? They kind of
*grew* it around some robot parts? I don't really know all the
specifics. And I don't think I can get into it in the field --
the entry plug needs a whole scaffold to hold it and machines to
insert it into the EVA."
Bibi grimaced. "So much for that idea. Valdemar almost
certainly doesn't have the infrastructure needed to build that
kind of thing, from what I've learned. Too bad."
"Yeah, but it woulda been cool," Faith said. "Like the big
battle at the end of 'Avengers: Endgame' -- two armies goin' at
each other with the giant on the good guys' side. Those Hardon
fuckers'd be shittin' themselves when they saw Little Bro here."
"*'Hardorn'*, Faith dear," Anthy gently corrected. Faith shot
her a grin that made it clear she'd known exactly what she'd
said.
"I suppose it's for the best," Shinji said softly. "Fighting the
Angels was one thing -- they were alien things mindlessly trying
to complete a... I guess a program inside them would be the best
way to describe it, that would end up destroying the world. They
were like robots themselves." He remembered how things were,
right at the end before the four of them seized control of Third
Impact, and shuddered. "I don't think I could use my EVA against
real people."
------------------------------------
This work of fiction is copyright (C) 2025, Robert M. Schroeck,
and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
"Neon Genesis Evangelion", and the settings and the characters
thereof, are copyright by and trademarks of Hideaki Anno and
GAINAX, and are used without permission.
"Shojo Kakumei Utena" (aka "Revolutionary Girl Utena"), the
settings and the characters thereof are copyright by and
trademarks of Bepapas and Chiho Saito and are used without
permission. United States distribution rights belong to Central
Park Media/Software Sculptors.
The Harry Potter universe and the settings and the characters
thereof are the property of J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury and Warner
Brothers, and are used without permission.
The "Sailor Moon" universe and the settings and the characters
thereof are the property and/or licenses of Takeuchi Naoko, TOEI
Animation, DiC, Kodansha, Bandai, Cloverway and others, and are
used without permission.
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer", and the settings and characters
thereof, are copyright by and trademarks of Joss Whedon and
Mutant Enemy and their licensees and partners, and are used
without permission.
"Douglas Q. Sangnoir," "Looney Toons", "The Loon" and any
representations thereof are copyright by and trademarks of Robert
M. Schroeck.
Other parts of the Drunkard's Walk saga can be found at:
http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/dwmain.shtml
The Drunkard's Walk discussion forums are open for those who wish
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Many thanks to my prereaders on this story: ????.
C&C gratefully accepted.