Soul Searcher- Chapter 01: This is (not) Evangelion

Link sat on the grass in the forest. He was done with his lessons for the day, and had nothing to do. He was about bored of twiddling his thumbs when he found that a shadow had been cast on the ground in front of him. He looked up, and to his delight, he saw Carrie. Carrie had brushed he head fur that morning, which she almost never did, so it was an extra pleasure looking at her. Carrie looked down at Link, her smile reaching from one ear to another. She stared at him for quite some time, and he stared at her for quite some time. When it became apparent that the situation was getting really awkward, Link broke the silence by talking. “So, what’s up?”

“Nothin’ with me. You know, your Awakening is pretty soon,” Carrie told Link.

“Yeah, what of it?” Link asked.

“Well, they say that the most powerful warriors get the most effective Awakening and the weak ones get the least effective Awakenings,” Carrie informed Link.

“What’s your point?”

“Link, you’re at the bottom of the class. Even if you win every fight from now until your Awakening, you still can’t even make it to the top 50%.”

“I don’t care. Loki always told me that that that was just a superstition. It doesn’t really matter.” Link shrugged and went back to twiddling his thumbs. “I’m just one guy.”

“You’re not just ‘one guy’ to me,” Carrie said sweetly.

“Thanks,” Link said back.

“So, what’s got you down?” Carrie asked.

“It’s just, Fae’s being a huge jerk,” Link told her.

“Don’t listen to him. He knows nothing about you.” Carrie wrapped her arms around Link. Link smiled and hugged her back. “Come on, let’s go. Your mom’s gonna be worried about you.”

“Yeah, alright,” Link muttered under his breath. He was too worn out to argue.

When the two got back to the village, they were greeted by balls of mud being thrown at them. One hit Link right in the face, but the other missed Carrie completely. “Hey!” Carrie shouted.

“Oh look, it’s Fae and his gang,” Links uttered emotionlessly. He ignored them and continued walking forward. However, as soon as one ball of mud hit Carrie, Link’s switch was flipped. He stormed up to Fae, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “Look, jackass, you’ve been pushing me around for quite some time. I’ve kept it in all this time, but now you gotta go pickin’ on Carrie? You’ve crossed a line, man.”

Fae looked down at Link, unfazed by his threats. “Ha! You wanna challenge me? I’m top of the class. What’s your win streak, again? Oh yeah, zero!” He and his friends bursted out laughing.

“Link, just let it go. I’m fine,” Carrie told Link.

“Stay out of this,” Link commanded. He took another step closer to Fae. Fae motioned for his group to move back, which they all do.

“So, it’s just you and me, huh?” Fae questioned.

“Yeah, it’s just you and me,” Link assured him.

“Alright, I’ll let you have the first punch,” Fae announced.

“Don’t need it,” Link retorted.

“Your pride get the better of you?” Fae asked.

“I dunno. Maybe,” Link answered.

Fae suddenly brings his fist down at Link, who puts his hand up and catches it. He proceeds to beat Fae in the gut a couple of times, before Fae recovers and knees Link in the head. Link is momentarily dazed, but is able to block Fae’s attacks and retort with his own. They go for each other’s faces and both land their hits. Both the combatants are knocked to the ground. Link recovers faster and charges at Fae. He leaps into the air and brings his fist down. The impact of Link’s fist to Fae’s stomach sends blood shooting out of Fae’s mouth. Just as Link was getting the advantage, Fae’s cronies toss a mud ball into Link’s face, momentarily blinding him. Fae is brought to his feet by his compatriots, who hand him a thick stick to use as a weapon. Two of Fae’s other buddies hold Link back as Fae beats his head in with the stick. By this point, the commotion has attracted everybody in the village, and the chief is forced to intervene.

Link and Fae are brought to the Circle, where they are accused of fighting unsupervised in a public area. Since Link started the fight, he was sentenced to no food for a half fortnight and spending the rest of the day and night in the dungeon. Fae got off easier, with just a half fortnight long Extended Supervision punishment. While Link was being dragged off to the dungeon, he found Fae giving him quite the putrid stink eye. Link stuck his tongue out in response.

The dungeon had a male population of 1, a female population of 0, a felon population of 0, a prisoner of war population of 0, and an overall population of 1. Link sat alone, in silence, for what seemed like hours, when he heard footsteps. Carrie appeared in front of his cell, and stared at him for a while. When she finally started talking, it went something like this, “I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”

“Yeah…” Link responded.

“Okay,” Carrie said. “Well, listen to me next time.”

“I guess so.”

“Good boy.”

Link looked away shyly. Carrie smiled and took a seat next to his cell. “So, how goes it?” she asked.

“Besides being locked up in prison? Fine,” Link replied, sarcastically.

They sat there for a while, chatting away. Eventually, Carrie went home and Link fell asleep. When he woke up, he was in his own bed, with his mother by his side and his brother looking down at him. “Dude, seriously? I’ve done some pretty crazy stuff, but I’ve never been locked up,” his brother teased.

“Shut up, Loki,” Link commanded.

“Make me,” Loki answered.

“I think I might just do that.” Link got up and prepared to fight Loki.

“Dude, I’ve been Awakened. You don’t stand a chance,” Loki replied.

“We’ll see,” Link retorted.

“Cut it out!” their mom ordered.

“Oh, come on,” Loki protested.

“You’re lucky you don’t have any lessons today,” Link’s mom said.

“Yeah.” Link was too tired to get out any more.

“Come on, Loki. Let’s let him rest for a while,” Link’s mom said. She and Loki exited the room, leaving Link by his lonesome. Without outside interference, Link was able to sleep a good long while. That, however, didn’t equate to him getting rest. Link’s dreams were often pretty normal. This time, however, it was really strange. He opened his eyes in his dream just to find himself in a pure white plane that either was the interior of a box or had no visible horizon. In front of him, he saw a… thing. This thing was definitely a female, Link knew that for sure. However, he couldn’t quite determine what it was. It had very little body fur. Instead, her skin was exposed. That skin was also a milky peachy color, instead of pale green. The creature only had head hair. This head hair black, but had red highlights in the front and around the hearing receptors. The limbs were all weird, too. They had arms that were about equal thickness in both the forearms and the sections connected to the elbows were about approximately the same width. Her hand also had five fingers instead of four. Her thigh was also thicker than her lower leg. She had five toes instead of toes, and they were all in the front of her foot.

“Hey,” the creature said abruptly.

“Oh, uh, hi,” Link answered.

“What are you doing, wasting your time in jail?” the creature asked, visibly upset.

“I… uh… what are you?” Link inquired.

“A Lilin. Wasn’t that obvious?” the creature replied.

“Uh… aren’t the Lilin just a myth?”

“You Lilis. You really are kinda ignorant, aren’t you?”

“Um, yeah?”

“Says the Lilin. So, answer my question.”

“What? What question?”

“What are you doing, wasting your time in jail?”

“Oh, uh, I got in a fight.”

“I know that. Why are you wasting your time?”

“I’m, uh…?”

“You’ve got a lot better things to do. Go find her, dude.”

“Who?”

“I can’t really tell you any more. It’d mess up the timeline, like, hardcore.”

“Please?”

“I’ll tell you this: She ends up marrying us and she’s cute.”

“I don’t… how does that help me?”

“Oh, never mind. Anyway, you’ve gotten all the hints I’m really allowed to tell you. Get ready to wake up.”

“Wait, no! Tell me more!”

“Sorry, I can’t.” The Lilin took sheets of paper off the surface of the plane. She held them up. “See, I did all the calculations. I just can’t tell you any more.”

“What are you even…?”

The Lilin walked over and hugged Link closely. “See you soon, Link. I can’t wait to see your face once this all gets started.”

Link woke up with cold sweats, breathing heavily. He surveyed the room. There were absolutely no Lilin around. “Was that…?” he asked himself. He shook his head and got out of bed. Just then, his mother walked in with Carrie.

“Look who came to visit, Link,” his mom said.

“Oh, hey, Carrie,” Link exclaimed. Carrie smiled and walked over. The two proceeded into a full embrace.

“Let’s hang out,” Carrie requested of Link.

“Sure. Where?” Link asked.

“Come with me. I found something cool,” Carrie told Link.

“Okay,” Link agreed.

Carrie took Link by the hand and ran out to the forest. Once they were deep into the forest, Carrie suddenly stopped and turned around. She leaned forward, and looked Link in the eyes. “Do you see it?” she asked.

“No. What should I see?” Link inquired.

Carrie pointed at a clearing in the forest. Link looked, and saw a tiny hole near the ground on the cliff. “See? I tried crawling to the other side, but there’s not much there.”

“Well, let’s give it another shot. Together,” Link said.

“Sure.” Carrie smiled and turned towards the opening. “I’ll go first.” Carrie proceeded to crawl through the cliff through the hole. Link nodded and followed after her. When he reached what should have been an exit, he instead found a blinding light. He ignored it and crawled all the way to the other side. When he got there, Carrie was nowhere to be seen. Instead, what he saw was a building. However, this building was special in that it was not made of stone, but instead of colored wood. Link was confused as to what this was. He walked up to the door and opened it. Inside, he found it to be cluttered. There were chairs and tables, blocks of wood with doors on them, blocks of other materials pressed against the walls. As Link shut the door behind him, he heard a noise emanating from somewhere within the building. He walked over to where it came from, just to see another Lilin, similar to the one in his dream, sitting on a chair. This one, however, was much smaller. Link deduced that it must be a child. This one also had different fur. Its head fur was jet black and reached down to its waist. However, in addition to that, it had body fur. The body fur was all black, but it ended at the forearms. It was also noticeably thin, as Link could see the Lilin’s skin through the fur on its legs. The Lilin looked up at Link. It had no fur on its face, and had black irises.

“Hey there,” Link greeted.

The Lilin looked at Link, confused, and tilted its head.

“Who are you?” Link asked.

The Lilin still didn’t answer.

“Can you understand me?” Link inquired.

The Lilin was still as lost as ever.

Link sighed and looked down at the Lilin. It suddenly spoke up. “Understand… you?” it asked.

“You do?”

The Lilin looked up at Link. It smiled and got up. It walked over to Link and put its hand on his fur. He looked down at her while she looked up at him. They continued in this state for a length of time, before Link asked, “Are you a Lilin?” As soon as he said the word “Lilin”, the Lilin’s face lit up, as if it remembered something really important. It ran to the staircase and disappeared to the second floor for a couple of minutes. It came down holding what seemed to be a gigantic egg. The Lilin dropped the egg at the ground near Link’s feet and looked up at him expectantly. Link tried to pick it up, but he suddenly felt a burning on his hands. He instantly dropped the egg, which suddenly had a red glow in its center, visible through the apparently translucent egg. The Lilin looked down at the egg sadly and brought it back upstairs. Link decided that whatever was happening was not his problem. While the Lilin was upstairs, Link left the building. However, where the hole that he came in through should have been, there was instead cliff face. In fact, in all directions around him besides upwards, he was surrounded by earth. He was trapped. Link sighed and walked back into the building. He found the Lilin sitting in the chair again. He approached her once more. He took a seat right next to her and said, “Well, if I’m trapped in here, I guess it’s the best idea to stick with another child of Lilith.”

The Lilin looked at him awkwardly.

“I think it’s time I taught you to speak.”

Link proceeded to attempt to teach her his language. It was quite simple, as she learned extremely quickly. By the end of the day, the Lilin child was already able to create simple sentences. When the sun fell and the moon came out, as if she were programmed to, the Lilin child got up and walked upstairs. Exhausted from teaching, Link decided to sleep as well. He laid his head down onto the table and drifted off.

Yet again, Link awoke in his dream in the same white plane. However, this time, the other female Lilin was already looking down at him. She reached out her hand, which Link instinctively put his into. She pulled him up and studied him closely for a while. When she finally spoke, it was quite the odd statement. “Such a shame. Your left hand is so cute.”

“What are you…?”

“Never mind. I’m here to congratulate you.”

“On what?”

“Finding her.”

“Wait, so that Lilin child was the one that I was supposed to find?”

“Yup. Now that that hurdle’s out of the way, I guess I could tell you some more information.”

“Well, I’m all ears.”

“I would tell you, but I don’t work for free. You of all people should know that. I’m going to need something in return, alright?”

“O-okay, like what?”

“Nevermind, you’ll give it to me when we meet for real. Too bad it won’t be me.”

“Huh?”

“Oh look, I confused you. I remember back when I was the one confused. Or maybe I remember when I will be confused. Huh. Whatever.”

“Okay, so what’s the information?”

“I’m gonna ask you a question now, okay? Of course it’s okay. So, do you wanna get out of here? The valley, I mean, not this dream.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Okay. You can leave tomorrow, but if you don’t come back, I’ll deck you in the schnoz.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Nothing. Just make sure to come back. Ugh, if this turns out to be a reverse-psychology type thing, I’ll kill myself.” The Lilin proceeded to laugh, and did so for about half a minute. “Anyway, wanna know why you have to come back?”

“Sure.”

“Well, you’re going to get it all going, of course.”

“Get what going?”

“The age of the Lilin. The rebuild of Humanity.”

NEXT TIME

Link returns home!

The Lilin Child learns her destiny!

Link and Sam have a competition to see who the most awkward one of the two is! (Not really)

More fanservice to come!