The moon and stars were just starting to appear in the purple-welted skies by the time Shinji and Howard brought the shopping cart full of groceries over by the fire on the sands. Together they had taken opposite ends of the cart, and lopsidedly crab-walked the distance. Shinji grunted at the unexpected heaviness, but did his best without protesting. Asuka merely followed silently, still at a distance from the two men as she picked up all the fallen items.

They ate sparingly out of some canned foods and nursed their bottles of water, except for Asuka who greedily gulped down several of them before finally appearing satisfied. Without being asked to, the teacher started telling them about life back in the city, how evidence pointed to others still being there, though he couldn't find where. Shinji's heart rose at the news, but fell again when he doubted that Misato and his friends would be among them.

As the night drew on, and a chill settled in, it was several minutes before any of them noticed it had begun snowing again.

Shinji knew Howard was staring at him and Asuka, although he tried not to notice. Instead, he wondered about Misato, and Ritsuko and the rest of them, and, strangely enough, his father. Asuka merely looked catatonic, as usual the last few days.

"So how did you survive?" Shinji suddenly asked, surprising him and Howard.

The older man blinked for a second, and began rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "To tell the truth, I don't know. I remember the very last few hours before...before everything changed," he said, softly, with a faraway look in his eyes. He started fingering his left hand, where, Shinji noticed, he had a wedding band. He was married?

"I was on a commuter train, trying to get home to my wife and daughter," he said. "Little Keiko had been feeling sick the last couple of days, and I was in a rush to see her. I'd even brought her a teddy bear, though I left that behind, somewhere in my empty home. Just like the rest of my apartment building, the block...hell, the entire city!"

There was a moment of awkward silence before Shinji hesitantly asked, "Did you feel a need? A great need to see to, or go back to," he tried explaining when his teacher looked at him funny.

"My daughter, I suppose," Howard said, not sure where Shinji was going.

Shinji nodded. "I don't really undestand it myself. But I remember someone saying that there has to be a reason to want to return or come back to. A great need or something like that.

"Maybe it's nothing at all. Maybe it's just something stupid," he hastily corrected himself when the other man simply stared blankly.

Howard La nodded, albeit slowly. "No, I suppose that my daughter feeling sick was indeed enough to...bring me back. I remember seeing a bright light, and then Ayanami, looking at me from the back of the train car I was riding."

"Ayanami?" Shinji said, forcing himself to not look out over the waters, where the albino's massive head stared half out of the water like a rock.

"Yes, I thought it was very strange. And then... all of a sudden, I felt very free, but I knew something wasn't right." A light suddenly dawned in his eyes. "The orange puddles! I--- I became that! We all did! My God!" Howard's face contorted into utter confusion, as he pulled back the sides of his head in order to concentrate.

"The LCL?" Shinji asked, suddenly becoming very alarmed. "The orange puddles? You saw more of those too?"

"LCL?" he asked, but resisted asking about it when Shinji nodded his head hurriedly. "The puddles...yeah. I saw more of those. Entire blocks are submerged just because the liquid pooled at the lowest points in the city. How do you know what it is?"

Shinji opened his mouth, but caught himself, not sure if that information was confidential. Or if it even mattered anymore.

Howard saw his hesitation, and understood, nodding. "It has to do with your....job, doesn't it?"

Shinji looked down at the hands in his lap. "Job? What job?" On the far side of the fire, Asuka's head lifted, alarmed eyes revealing the first emotional response from her in days.

The older man smiled. "It's okay. You don't have to play dumb. I know about it... you, NERV, the Evangelions. I know about you, Ms. Langley over there, Ayanami, and even Suzuhara. I don't know all of it, and I don't think I ever will, but I know. The whole school did. Hell, sometimes I wonder if this entire city was built just for the secret that is Nerv.

"The point is," he continued, "you kids were our only hope against the Angels." He poked at the fire with a long stick, scattering firefly embers into the air, then took out a silver cross around his neck. After a long moment of looking at it without expression, he closed his eyes as he kissed it reverently, then put it away.

"You were our only hope, against demonic Angels." He gestured around him, at the tainted LCL-diluted waters and the dozens, if not hundreds, of dead fish laying with their pale bellies against the fine salt-white shoreline, and at the huge unnatural bruise of a sky. "This is our legacy, thanks to you."

Shinji stood up to protest, hands clutched into fists at his sides, but the teacher pressed on, calmly but with complete seriousness in his voice and his look.

"And the Rapture has taken place. We're the ones who've been left behind."