I am planning on putting a compiled addendum at the end of this story. If you run across a word or idea that you do not fully understand, be sure to tell me! I will add that to the addendum to expand and explain parts of the story in greater detail. I hope that you enjoy this fic. It is my first after a long time being away.

DAY 4

Shinji slowly swam toward consciousness. The smells of morning and the sounds of the ocean came to him, pulling him inevitably to open his eyes. Well sort of open them. Or squint. Lets face it he closed them again, and covered up, denying the world for a few more minutes.

After a terrible fight with reality, he finally lost, and was forced to wake up fully. He dressed, and exited his tent. They had been on the beach for nearly a week. The night before, Asuka and he had decided it was time to go see about doing something with her arm. She was still asleep, or at least that was what he figured. She usually slept later than he did. The fire was almost out. He decided that this morning it would be best if they did not eat. He did not want either of them getting sick, and he had heard somewhere that anesthetics could really mess you up if you had a full stomach. Shoveling some sand on it did the trick. He sat against the log, admiring the last of the sunrise.

Within a few minutes, Asuka was up too, awakened by Shinji's movements. She looked bad. Her eyes had dark bags under them, and she squinted her eyes really tight. She also lost her balance several times. She was still really tired.

The car that he had liberated a few days ago was still there, waiting for them. It was a yellow little piece of crap that got 50 miles to the gallon. Shinji had a bit of difficulty driving it due to the fact that he had never driven a manual transmission. Here he was. An Eva pilot. He could drive a million pounds of Evangelion all over the city, and he could hardly get this car going to save his life.

When they finally got on their way it was easy sailing from there. He followed the hospital signs around until he finally came to what was left of one of the six Tokyo-3 hospitals. The parking lot was empty. It was not really that surprising. There had most likely not been anyone admitted to the hospital since Unit 00 detonated, almost totally destroying the city. Fortunately this was far enough from the city center to have survived both that and the N2 bomb drop. He parked the car, and jumped out. "Wait here for a second."

He disappeared into the hospital for a few moments, and came running back out with a wheelchair.

"Hey! I am not getting in that! I can walk." She opened the door, and stood up defiantly.

"Uh-uh. You are about to be operated on by me, I think you need to be pampered in your last moments."

"That is not funny. I am really nervous about this. I mean you don't even know what you are doing." She really did look worried, but she and Shinji both knew that there was nothing that could be done about it.

"Asuka there is not much to it. I have just got to get in there, and make sure that it is healing OK, and that it is clean, then sew it up. That’s all. And you can't do that on yourself. Trust me. If I encounter something that I can't deal with, I will stop there, and seek your guidance OK?"

Asuka sighed. "Yeah, whatever." She sat in the wheelchair, and triumphantly, Shinji wheeled her over to the door.

Since the electricity was off, they couldn't do this inside. So Shinji brought a gurney out, and a couple of medical books. He had come the day before, and gotten some things ready.

He perused the anesethist’s book, and ran back inside for a quick shopping trip in the walk in refrigerator which was still pretty cold despite the prolonged power loss.

When he returned, Asuka had lay on the gurney, and was breathing deeply. Shinji produced an IV bag, and a needle/catheter. While they had been in the "employ" of NERV, they had both been introduced to basic first aid and lifesaving procedures. He prepared her vein, and stuck her with ease. Fortunately Asuka had good veins that stayed close to the surface. He saw the flash, pushed the catheter in, and pulled the needle. Soon she was getting a good drip of Ringers. Producing the bottle of local, he injected several ccs of it into the bag, and slowed the flow down a little.

"Ok, now give this stuff a minute to do its thing. You will be awake, but you won't feel anything. If you don't want to watch, turn the other way." Shinji put his hand against her forehead. She was incredibly brave. He was totally unskilled for what he was doing, and she was putting at least her arm if not her life in his hands.

The work was messy. When the bandage wraps were off, he slowly pulled the wound open, and began separating the sides of the wound. There was a little bleeding. Asuka did not even wince. She felt nothing at all in her arm. Calmly she watched the operation proceed.

Using a couple of instruments that he did not know the names of, he pulled the skin apart, and started cleaning away some of the clot. There was a little evidence of infection, but nothing really serious. The other medical text described gangrenous infection and other life threatening infections, but no evidence of those were present, so after some more work, Shinji carefully closed the wound up, and began the long work of sewing it up. A hundred or so small stitches later, he tied off the suture, and cleaned up the area surrounding the wound. Asuka smiled up at him after he pulled off the gloves, and wiped his sweaty brow.

"That went better than I expected. According to this book, for how deep that is, it should be healed enough to be workable in about 3 weeks. Let me dress that again and I think that will be it."

He applied some antibiotic ointment, and then wrapped it snugly in gauze, and wrapped that with bandage. "It also says that the suture will dissolve in time, so there is no need to cut and pull it out. Now lets look at that eye."

After lifting the pad over the eye, Shinji found that the eye itself was starting to clear up the bruise that the sudden trauma just under it had caused. Also slightly infected, he daubed a little antibiotic on that as well, and put a new pad over it. Once done he carefully extracted the catheter and put a cotton swab over the little needle hole.

"All right Ms. Soryu, you are free to go. Please stop by the receptionists desk on the way out." While Shinji cleaned up the work area, Asuka grumbled about how he seemed to always have something funny to say recently. Maybe it was his sudden new lease on life. Whatever it was, it at least made him more tolerable.

"OK, now we need to see about getting something to eat. I don't know about you, but I am pretty hungry." Asuka stated loudly so that Shinji who was ferrying supplies back into the hospital could hear. She did not even know why he was bothering.

" I was thinking about finding a house somewhere, and kind of taking it over. The previous owners won't mind, and we have to get out of those tents. It was ok for the first couple of days, but now we need to figure out what we want to do." Shinji blinked as he stepped back into the sun.

"Well, I think we need to get away from this area. I can't stand to look out over the water, and see that hideous head over on the horizon. Of course I don't even know where I want to go."

"Well we can figure it out. There is a map in the back seat of the car, we can check it out. But first, I think you are right, we need food." As if to accentuate his point, his stomach chose that moment to growl menacingly.

It was now late morning so breakfast would still be good. Unfortunately raw materials for food were in short supply now. They would have to live on store bought instant stuff for a while.

There was a few small convenience stores close by. They entered the first one, and were almost knocked down by the intense rotten meat odor issuing from the freezers in the back. Holding his nose, Shinji made his way further inside, and brought back some instant Miso soup, and some large packages of ramen.

"I am afraid this was all I could grab. I guess it will have to do." They made their way back to their campsite, and while Shinji rebuilt the fire, Asuka poured over the map.

Soon they each had a steaming bowl of miso, and a hot serving of fish ramen. But no closer were they to figuring out where to go.

"We could go to Aomori or Hirosaki. I hear that it is beautiful in the "springtime". The cherry trees still bloom and they have some wonderful apples." Asuka offered.

"Never had Aomori apples before."

"Oh, man, Hikari brought one in her lunch one day. It was huge. And bursting with juice. So sweet and delicious. Mmmmm." She gestured with her hands showing a shape about the size of a softball.

"I don't know. Somehow even being only a few hundred miles away, the climate is so much different there. It still snows in the winter time. Too cold for my taste. We could visit there or something and get some apples if you like though." Shinji was just finishing his ramen. For instant stuff it was alright.

"Hmm. We could go to Okayama. I heard it's nice."

"It is. I got to go there a few years ago. Mountains, close to the water. Want to go there?" It was as good a place as any climate-wise, and there were a lot of nice homes around that area.

"Yeah! Say, wasn't that show.. what was it called? Tenchi! Wasn't the Masaki Shrine near there?"

"Umm, close to there I think. I liked Tenchi. I don't know what I would do with six women living with me either."

"Well if it is anything like the show, I think it will be perfect."

They finished up their meals (what there was of it) while finalizing plans. They could take the highways most of the way there. Shinji carefully packed up all of the gear that they had amassed over the last couple days, and dumped it in the back of the car. He was slowly getting the hang of driving the stick shift.

Asuka helped as well as she could, and soon they were done. With a backward glance, they left the beach, and it was only early afternoon. Unfortunately, on the way out of what was left of Tokyo-3 they realized that the going was not going to be as easy as they had thought. When the occupants of the vehicles on the road during Third Impact were taken, their vehicles came to a crashing, violent stop, and they littered the road on both sides, nearly obstructing the whole road in some places.

"You know, I think we may have to figure something else out. This car is not going to make it through all this wreckage if it gets any worse. We need something smaller." Shinji stated as he swerved around another burnt out wreck.

"Well, we can stop in Gotenba right up here, and figure something out. How about bicycles?" She offered.

"Not if we want to get there this year. Besides we have to bring supplies, and I don't really feel like pedaling all of that up a hill or something."

"How about motorcycles?" Asuka brightened. She liked the sound of that. She had often wanted to ride one.

"I have never tried that before." He said, and catching the almost frustrated reaction from Asuka, he added, "But there is no time like the present to try!"

"Yeah, that’s what I thought you were going to say. Shinji, are you sure about this?"

"Well I think it is a good idea. It may also be the only way. We can't drive anything big, but we have to have something powerful. And besides, there is nothing wrong with knowing something about nearly everything. I had never really felt like doing something new before. But today, I get to." Asuka nodded, hoping that Shinji's positive outlook would hold up.

35 wrecks later they approached the outskirts of the city of Gotenba, and started looking for a place to pilfer some motorcycles. At first all they could find were real speed bikes. "Crotch-rockets" Asuka called them. That would not do. The needed something that could hold their gear, and that they could cruise around in. Not something built to pull the paint off of cars when it passed them.

After an hour of looking, they finally located some motorcycles that would suit their needs. The owner must have really liked the Indian motorcycle. After looking through the house and garage, they found 7 motorcycles of different types. 5 were whole, and two were partially taken apart. It looked almost as though he had been polishing a part when he had been taken.

Fortunately he was meticulous with his motorcycles; they were in perfect shape. He did not collect them just to look at them, either. They were gassed and ready to go. He also had all sorts of stuff with them. Manuals, picture books of various Indian cycles, a helmet for each. Every bike also had leather saddlebags. Shinji and Asuka looked though them all trying to figure out which ones the might want to take. Shinji picked out one that the manual identified as a 1947 Indian Chief. It was old, but it was very well taken care of. It looked new. The one on the cover was blue, but this one was painted jet black, and had pin-striping flowing along its gentle curves. Everything about it looked brand new. Even the Indian head light on the front fender and the black leather saddlebags with zinc studs hanging on either side of the seat..

"You sure you are going to be alright to handle one, Asuka? These look like powerful machines." Not taking his eyes off of the motorcycle.

"You automatically think that you will be able to handle it, Shinji? Yeah I think I can manage. I can use my arm well enough, just nothing strenuous." She walked over to a newer cycle. It's accompanying manual was much newer and identified it as a 2000 Indian Chief Vintage. The deep red paintjob showed her reflection, and looking closely she could see tiny lines that upon even closer inspection she saw was painted wood grain. It was custom. "Wow."

"I really don't want to mess up such a nice motorcycle trying to learn how to ride it. Want to start out on some of those others we saw on our way here? We can mess them up without feeling so guilty." Shinji nodded his head motioning down the road outside.

"Yeah I agree. I have never really appreciated how beautiful one might be."

They exited the garage, and drove back along the road a ways and found a couple Kawasaki crotch-rockets and set about figuring them out.

Since the motorcycle that Shinji had picked out did not have an electric ignition on it, he was sure that he would have to get used to kick starting it. The first time he tried it, he didn't keep his foot on the kick start in the follow through, and it sprang back and nearly broke his shin. The pain was excruciating, but it was a lesson well learned. Don't do that again.

After a few more tries, the engine even turned over, and sputtered a bit, and one more hearty kick got it going for real. Retracting the kick stand, he focused on the transmission control. It was on the handlebars, not on a gear shift lever like on the bike he had picked out. Well he would have to figure that one out himself. The manual could help too.

Shifting from neutral to first, he slowly let off of the clutch, and gave it a little gas, and was surprised by the initial jump forward, but after that, the motorcycle crept away from it's parking spot, and he slowly gave it more gas, pulling his feet up to the stirrups. He let off of the gas, and hit the clutch and let the bike come back to a stop, allowing it to idle while he looked back to Asuka.

Hers was an electric ignition, so she hit the ignition button, and she was rewarded with a deep slow rumble. She mimicked Shinji's movements, and jerk- rode hers up to where he was waiting, then passed him, and began to speed up.

The road was a nice straight one with no cars wrecked on it, so they could practice and grow used to the motorcycles in relative safety.

Shinji, opened his up, and sped up to catch up with Asuka who was reaching the high end of first gear by now. She hit the clutch, shifted right into second gear, released and put more gas on it. Shinji did the same, and found riding was much easier than he had originally thought it would be. With a little more work, he could be relatively certain they would have no trouble with the collectors bikes.

Nearing the end of the road, they slowed down almost to a stop, and turned around, heading back the other way, testing the speed this time. Shinji was still amazed of the power in the little vehicle. Just a little gas went a long way.

They rode around the area for another half hour or so, before coming back to the starting point. Shinji's sides hurt. The bouncing action on a nearby gravel road had really hurt his back. It felt like his kidneys. Getting off the bike, the pain went away with a little walking around, and stretching. Asuka parked hers beside him, and got off of hers as well.

The darkening sky was threatening nightfall, so they decided to call it quits on the motorcycles, and found a place to camp. Neither really felt good about occupying someone’s house. Especially not sleeping in their bed.

Shinji fixed dinner on a propane camp stove that he had liberated from someone’s shed, and they watched the stars come out sporting full stomachs and heads full of thought. The day had been eventful. Shinji had enjoyed it. He supposed that he had never allowed his adventuring spirit out. This was an adventure. A Great Adventure. And despite the things that he had witnessed recently, he was enjoying himself thoroughly.

With no lights on to give off light pollution, they marveled at the millions, billions of stars that presented themselves. On most nights they could see only a few stars due to the harsh lights in the city, but in the pitch blackness, the sky was filled with them.

The days events, while exciting, had drained Shinji, so after a while stargazing, he decided to hit the sack. Asuka stayed up for a while, thinking through the last few days. She picked apart her feelings, and analyzed her thoughts.

Sighing she looked up, and took in the stars one more time. Flexing her hand, feeling the sharp pain flow up and down her arm, she whispered "Thank you, Shinji. For everything." And then she went to her own bed.

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START ADDENDUM

Ringers- AKA Lactated Ringers Solution. Ringers is a type of intravenous drip. Consists of electrolyte solution, and is used to replenish bodily fluid and electrolyte levels to maintain proper electrical conductance in blood system. Electrolytes are essential to the body. They are what allow water to conduct electricity. Totally pure water is electrically insular. Will not conduct electricity at all. I have known fellow Infantrymen who give these to themselves before long road marches. You will generally totally soak a full set of BDUs in sweat before you finish the march so it is important to hydrate....

AT Field theory- Those of you who are unfamiliar with AT Field theory should look for the Eva Mailing list homepage at onegeek.org. There are extensive posts on how the AT Fields work for humans Evas and Angels, and the dynamics and ideas behind their use and function. For the most part, I have adopted some views and rejected others. AT Fields are described in the story as I think of them.

Aomori Apples- Aomori grows their own special apples. I must say that they are the most delicious apples I have eaten. If you aver have the chance, pick some up. You may have to go to Japan to get some, but it is worth it.