2023-10-18: Nigredo
- Log: 2023-10-18 Nigredo
- Cast: Roux Louka, Shinji Ikari
- Where: Ra Mari II
- OOC - IC Date: October 18, UC 0097 (2023)
- Summary: Roux reaches out to Shinji about teaching him the cooking method of blackening.
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
EARLIER, Roux Louka got a tip on something that she could do.
She was shocked to hear that the quiet boy who vaguely reminded her of a punier Iino was the pilot of an Evangelion. *WAS* the pilot of an Evangelion-- and that the situation had been rough.
And thus -- she sent a text.
> hey! this is roux, from the party. i'm kicking around the RM2 for a while since Eight is letting me save money on travel fare
> :tarabatan-BigSavings.stik:
> want to learn how to do that thing with the fish?
> i'll come by after your shift sometime
SOMETIME
IS
NOW
Roux Louka took steps in the central galley to secure a relevant station and arrange it and then realized that she has no real way to somehow summon Shinji Ikari into the area. She checked her texts - she did not Make an Appointment. One app-mediated room lookup and a short ride later and
*pinpon*
"Hey, Shinji! If you're not Shinji let me know, so I don't bug you too much," Roux continues. She is standing in front of the doorway - any peepholes or doorcams would reveal she is wearing a sleeves-rolled-up cook's jacket but is clearly in civilian clothing otherwise.
She leans an elbow against the door and tosses her hair back. "So I was going to try to show you how to blacken fish but it turns out that they're resupplying from Magellanica now and Magellanica was actually dead out of fish. The whole battle bumped the ag pod with the tilapia tanks and they lost, like, all of the adult fish, it was horrible! I thought it was cheap when I costed it out..."
"So I'm going to show you how to do it with chicken, and I hope that works out, because the principle is *pretty much* the same," Roux continues. "You can do it with honestly everything, although in my opinion it's kind of gilding the lily if you have like, high grade beef or pork roast or something really tender. A lot of these dishes work best with cheap meat, it's kind of funny!"
"Anyywwwwaayyyyy--"
Roux smiles at the camera.
Some of this may be vaguely nostalgiac - perhaps in a bad way - but at least Roux isn't drawing an arrow to point at her cleavage.
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
It's not that Shinji had a bad impression of Roux. She seemed nice enough, and they have cooking in common as an interest, and Shinji genuinely did want to learn about how to blacken fish from her like she offered. But when she sends that text, well... Shinji has a new phone now. An O-Sanshoo-san, popularized by Ranka Lee! It's very cute, and it has an extremely high learning curve due to having no visible buttons.
Shinji's read through the owner's manual. But he still is having trouble with making it work.
Consequently, Shinji never responds to that text. It's questionable if he would've responded even if he could read it.
He's in his room, lying on his bed, staring at the wall and doing nothing when the doorbell rings. The sound of it startles him, makes him tense up, and he looks over his shoulder at the door as if he might magically divine who's on the other side. Fortunately, he does recognize Roux's voice--they only met once, but it's been less than a month--and he slinks over to the door and opens it up a crack.
"What do you want?" he mumbles--not quite hostile, but there is a dour strain to his tone and expression. This is someone who was planning on being alone all night and is not appreciating the interruption.
He at least doesn't close the door in her face. As previously stated: Shinji has a more or less positive impression of Roux, and what she's talking about is something he was interested in. (More interested in than her cleavage, lack of arrow or not.) He frowns at the story about Magallanica being plum out of tilapia. "It's fine, we can do it some other time," he starts to say, but then Roux says they can just do it with chicken instead.
"...Chicken and fish don't really have the same texture," he points out. He didn't know about the technique working best on cheap meats, though, and he pauses to consider that.
That might be Roux's chance.
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
Roux had, of course, assumed that silence meant assent.
And now she sees a door opening before her. But only a crack.
When you're faced with opportunity...
"They don't, but that's the thing about blackening," Roux says, resting an elbow on the side of the door and leaning inwards a little. Her eyes are wide with genuine enthusiasm. "It's flexible. You have to kind of get a feel for it but you're usually getting something good even if you don't quite get the crust. With fish or with chicken, you can cook through, since at high heat they usually don't need long at all."
Roux has slid her foot into the door. She is wearing protective kitchen boots with metal toes underneath the black simu-leather. It's pretty discreet.
"But with something bigger you can par-cook and finish that way; I do that with big chicken breasts or if I'm working with a real big fish, like they have in the oceans."
"It'll be fun," Roux says, tilting her head. "It actually is kind of like burning things on purpose." She beams afterwards.
Roux attempts, too, to apply Newtype charm; unfortunately for Roux, Newtype charm (exhibit A: Paptimus Scirocco) is both kind of evil, and is really more of a matter of reading someone's moods intimately. It is not, in fact, a palpable wave that one can easily radiate into someone's head. And thus, from the outside -- and in objective fact -- nothing actually happens.
"Besides," Roux then says, "I--"
A pause.
Her eyes turn towards the O-Shansoo-San resting on a desk through the thin wedge of Shinji Room she can see.
"... Is that an - animal? ... is it alright??"
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
On the plus side, Roux works so slowly and is an engaging enough conversationalist that Shinji barely notices her squishing her way into his room. It isn't much of a room--there's a bed, a closet, a bedside table, and a desk with a shelf on top--and there's an old book and a cat plush on the shelf, and the aforementioned O-Sanshoo-san phone and also a baseball cap on the bedside table. The bed is unmade, thanks to Shinji just having been in it, and he himself is wearing a black-and-white hoodie along with jeans. A pair of sneakers are lined up next to the door.
"I don't know about that," Shinji replies, about burning things on purpose being fun. "Anyway, I'm not up for it right now." Indeed, Roux can tell with her Newtype charm that Shinji is in a low mood. But then, he's been in a low mood for literal weeks now, so it's not as though she could come back at a better time. It's not as though Shinji's hiding his feelings, either.
He pauses again when she pauses. Confused, he turns to look where she's looking, and sees the squishy blue salamander phone. "Oh. No," he says. "It's just a--a weird phone. Ranka Lee--you know, the idol--she uses them, so they're popular right now because of that, I guess. They're supposed to be cute. Mostly they're really hard to use."
He's still in the doorway, but distracted as he is, it won't be hard for her to push in--or to pull him out.
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
From Roux's expression, she does not seem to be vibing with O-Sanshoo-san, but then, you can't account for taste. Her eyes turn around the room wordlessly.
It could be worse, Roux thinks; but maybe he just has good habit. "Oh, yeah, isn't she the new hotness? I think I saw an ad for some kind of restaurant on a video site... she's the one with the green hair, right?" Roux kind of indicates a lower height, much nearer to Shinji than to Roux herself, afterwards.
A hand takes Shinji by the forearm. "C'mon," Roux says, tugging gently even as she uses the wedge of her leg and hip to open the door all the way. "If you're worn out I'll just demonstrate and you can tell me if it works for chicken."
There's a smile in her voice. It isn't feigned, though perhaps it is deliberate.
(This time, Roux thinks: It's going to work a lot better.)
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
It's fine. The phone was a gift, rather than something Shinji picked out for himself. The music features are nice, but he's still struggling to figure out how to use it in the first place. It's just as well that Shinji hasn't given out his new number much--just to Eight, and apparently by proxy, Roux.
The room itself is partly good habit, but also partly that he just doesn't have very much stuff. He left most of his belongings behind, after all. There's more, but the rest is either in the closet or in the desk drawer.
As for Ranka: "I guess. She debuted last spring. She's had a few concerts since," Shinji says vaguely. He's been to a couple of them--one of them before she debuted, even. His gaze goes distant for a while as he remembers attending them with Kaworu, to the point that he doesn't even hear what Roux says about the green hair...
And then she grabs his arm and is tugging him out a now-wide door. "Wha--I didn't--I don't--" he starts to protest.
But then he's already halfway out the door, and frankly it's more energy to keep protesting at this point. His eyes lid. "Fine. Whatever," he says, clipped.
...Technically, Roux was right!
He'll at least shut and lock the door behind him before following Roux to the Ra Mari II's kitchen. He's decently familiar with it by now--only "decently" because almost all of his job as assistant cook so far has been doing prep work. He doesn't feel much about it. It'd be better if he could listen to music while he did it. As it stands, he gives the area a long, dead-eyed look-ver before fixing his gaze on Roux, waiting without enthusiasm for her lessons. For all that she says she'll just demonstrate, he anticipates doing more prep work.
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
Roux beams at Shinji. "You'll love it!" And indeed it isn't that long at all until they're at a kitchen entrance. Roux pushes her way in, boldly.
(She didn't keep a hand on Shinji after the little bit of a tug, trusting, perhaps, that he would come along.)
"I still can't get over how there's gravity in this thing," Roux confides to Shinji. "I never even tried to cook in microgravity. They have to do crazy things with suction and salt just to even get started. Anything fried has to be in a full enclosure with a powered pump..."
The kitchen is not empty but it's not at full staff at this hour; dinner has mostly been deployed and prep is being done for midrats, which is always one of the simpler sorts of meals. At least in Roux's naval experience. A station has been set aside, and it is there that Roux heads, crouching down to pull out a couple of bowls of... stuff.
One bowl seems to have solidifed butter in it. Roux puts it on the range and clcks the stove top to 'barely any heat' to get that rolling.
"So I already blended up the spices and herbs," Roux says, as she uncovers a dish of reddish mixture and releases a subtly spicy complex aroma, "but I think we already chatted about that step..."
"Did you ever work in a big kitchen like this before you came up here?" Roux asks, a little more conversationally. (The impulse crosses her mind, implausibly, to pick Shinji up and put him on the table, but -- no, that would be insanely weird, Roux thinks to herself. He's what... fifteen? Maybe if he was eight. ha ha, if he was eight he'd be having twins, Roux continues to think, before the train of inner monologue lapses into quiet.)
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Shinji doubts that, and expresses that down through the flat look he gives Roux. Still, he doesn't protest--he doesn't even complain, for now--and he does follow her. The residential kitchen where he works is only a short walk away; there's not even a need for a tram, thank god. (It hasn't occurred to Shinji that Eight must have arranged that on purpose; he assumes this room just happened to be available.)
The idea of cooking in zero or microgravity is sort of appalling to Shinji, though he doesn't say so. The mental image of trying to deep fry is especially awful. He shakes his head quickly and stuff his hands in his hoodie pockets.
At least the kitchen is mostly empty at this hour. The other prep workers, noticing the two, leave them be; Shinji has been Shinji'ing long enough here for people to realize that social niceties are pointless with him right now.
Shinji looks down at the station where Roux stops. He's not so out of it that he doesn't realize that things have already been prepared here--there's the spice mix, there's the butter... He looks back at Roux, eyebrows furrowing. They only met once. Why is she going out of her way for him...? He averts his eyes, lips pulling down long and thin.
(It would be SO weird if Roux put Shinji on a table. He might look like a middle schooler, and he might have technically dropped out of school, but he was a high schooler when he dropped out, damn it.)
"Not really. I've had to make stuff for a bunch of people before, but... I just made a bunch of stuff in a small kitchen," he replies. "Mostly I made lunches for--for people."
oh that's a little crack in his voice
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
It's pretty awful. At least if the ship's moving you have a LITTLE downward pressure... enough to make something stay in a pan, anyway. Maybe.
Roux may not be the most sensitive Newtype that ever came into this sphere of an Earth; but she has ears to hear, and so she answers, quietly, "Lunches, huh? Like in a share house or something?"
Roux gets out the last few things - mostly a big, squat black pan. It looks like classic cast iron, although the lining on the bottom is probably not just black cast iron. THAT burner Roux cranks up to the top, and then she seems to be satisfied with how hot the butter's gotten - it's fragrant now, and liquid - and moves it to the table. Then a brief handwash trip. And then...
"So for the most part this is pretty straightforward," Roux says, picking up a modestly-sized deboned chicken breast from the collection of chicken bits. "It's sort of like breading. You dip the chicken, or tofu, or fish or whatever, in the butter -"
Dip, dip, swish.
"Then into the herbs - if you're just making a little use a plate instead of doing it like this -" Roux dredges the piece of chicken through the herbs, first one side, then the other, then a little rubbing with her hands, which are getting plenty of herb and spice mix on them. "And once it's nicely coated --" She pauses.
She flicks her fingers at the pan. It spatters a little.
"It needs a moment," says Roux, who then sort of... toys with the herb-and-spice encrusted chicken breast in her hand. There's a faint spatter-sizzle from the pan, but the droplets she flicked onto it have carbonized at this point. She seems to be counting down.
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
'Lunches, huh?' Roux asks, and presses for more details.
Shinji doesn't respond. He grits his teeth, a raggedness entering his breath for a moment. He manages, somehow, to keep his emotions under control. Fortunately, Roux's still working on her cooking, so when she goes off to wash her hands, Shinji joins her. It's something to do that doesn't require talking, at least.
%
"Right," he murmurs when they return to the stove with clean hands. For as unenthused as he's been so far, he does watch closely when Roux dredges the chicken in the butter and spice mix, back and forth, again and again. Tofu... Shinji finds himself wondering if Rei would've liked blackened tofu.
His throat closes up again, and he clutches his arms to his chest. For a moment, he stops paying attention.
TButter spattering on the hot pan breaks him from his internal spiral, startling him and making him retreat a step as he jerks his head up. "Huh? Oh." He pauses. He looks from the pan to Roux, to the pan to Roux. "...How do you know when it's ready?" he wonders, despite everything.
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
No answer on the lunches.
Roux doesn't probe at it. (Some things are learned through pain.)
But she can tell something reminded Shinji of *some*thing. How much of Newtype awareness is just paying attention to other people, anyway?
"Normally you flick a drop of water or oil or something on it and see what it does," Roux tells him, "but I was using this same exact stove and pan to cook for Eight's party - see, I even put that little twist tie in the handle so I could find it." She did! (Previously not mentioned.)
"So I just have to remember how long it was that it took to get hot enough last time, and I'm going to be off by like five seconds. And five seconds too long is about how long it takes me to say this SENtence," Roux says, turning around and then throwing the chicken on the pan!
There's a little actual flame and a sudden cloud of rising smoke! It's quickly muffled under the chicken - the hood's fume suction vent turns on, a low additional hum. As the chicken cooks furiously, Roux looks at Shinji with an experimental little grin. "Now you're practically broiling it at this temperature so you've got to be a little careful, but you can get *great* results." The smell is shockingly outdoorsy -- but after all, it was a (very small) actual fire of actual herbs and plants. What else could it be?
"You grab a piece and do it up," Roux adds, grasping the pan's handle and picking up a spatula. "This is great on basically everything. I saw they had this giant basket of bread rolls, we could fake up some sandwiches here."
After a moment, Roux says, "Hey--"
(okay what's my move here Roux. we have to get a little space under the clam shell here without poking at the former situation. what does he know. i am not going to ask him japan facts or something koji would love to explain that shit anyway. i know:)
"-- You grew up on Earth, right? Like on the surface. All your life?"
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
How much indeed? At least Shinji is real, real bad at hiding his feelings. ...Of course, right now, his feelings are pretty deadened beyond 'miserable' and 'angry,' so maybe it's just that there's not much to hide.
"Hm," he murmurs. That makes sense, both of the nature of the spattering (he's certainly noticed the way water or butter will sizzle on an appropriately hot pan, though he's never tried to use that as a way to gauge if it's hot enough) and the twist tie. Roux did cooking here before, so she'd be familiar with it already...
Of course, then she gets to the end of her five-second sentence and SLAMS that chicken into the pan. The resulting mini-explosion gets an alarmed yelp out of Shinji as he flails back several more steps and nearly trips over himself. Fortunately, he manages to grab the edge of the station and keep himself upright. "B-be more careful!" he says hotly. "You could've started a grease fire!"
The fact that Roux has clearly done this plenty of times before and knows what she's doing doesn't matter. Shinji huffs, partly out of nerves and partly out of anger, for a moment longer.
...It does smell good, though.
He grimaces when Roux prompts him to dredge his own piece of chicken and toss it in. "...Yeah, there's plenty of bread around," he mutters. Even so, he inches over towards the chicken pieces and starts tossing it between dry and wet ingredients to build up a good coating.
As he does, Roux asks a new question. He glances at her, his flat stare a little guarded. Not so guarded that he doesn't ultimately answer, though: "Yeah." And then: "Why?"
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
Roux smiles, in an obliquely catlike way. "Good habits," she says, pointing the spatula in approval at Shinji saying to be more careful. She positions herself so Shinji may approach and hurl his chicken like a colony drop of flavor when he is ready.
"Well - hm," Roux says, frowning in thought.
"So I was born on Blue Vision 3," Roux says, "which is in Side 1, and it's a colony, obviously. I grew up there; when we left, it was just to go to other colonies, and once when we went to the Moon to visit my grandmother." She pauses for a moment. "And when I was in high school I joined the AEUG - Anti Earth Union Group - I always have to like explain, that means they were anti-earth-union, not a union that was anti-Earth. Their big things were, rebuild the colonies, let the Earth alone and heal, and also, fuck the Titans."
She raises the spatula with a weak laugh. "Sorry. Not very ladylike of me."
"Anyway," Roux says, "after THAT -- the first time I went to Earth was during battles... it was just up through the desert and we left after Dublin. And after THAT I went to Jupiter... and then we came BACK, and it turns out my rich sister-in-law-to-be has this big house and wanted me and Judau to move in. It's in Spain, and I know, I'm humble-bragging here."
Roux flips the chicken, revealing a glistening, mostly-blackened (see??!) crusted chicken. She palpitates it a little with the spatula, to feel its doneness.
"... And to be honest with you, Earth... it's beautiful but I just... it's like it doesn't END, you know? Like you look up and you don't SEE anything if it's a clear day. It's just *blue*. At night it's beautiful, but..."
"... So I was just wondering if you've felt the, I don't know, the reverse of that, living in space now," Roux concludes. She shifts the pan a little, invitingly.
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
"Are you really going to praise me for the good habits you're NOT showing?" Shinji grouches. Yet at the same time that he's being crabby and complaining, there's a little more light in his eyes now. Continuing to grumble, he takes the unspoken cue Roux gives him and cautiously drops his chicken in too. It might not be a colony drop, but he's ready to jump back before the browned butter splatters on him and his hoodie.
...He needs to take good care of this hoodie, after all. It was tough enough letting it get grimy while he was homeless. Now that he can actually shower and do his laundry--and does so for no other reason than because this moon-themed hoodie is now his Look--he can't let himself get careless.
While Shinji had asked 'why,' he hadn't really meant for Roux to give her backstory. Still, while he may keep frowning, Shinji does pay attention. When she laughs and apologizes for cussing, he glances away and shrugs.
It does sound like a humble-brag. He can't bring himself to care about that. He does think he gets her point, though. He's lived on Earth his whole life, while she's lived in space her whole life. He looks over at the chicken when she prods it, then up at her. His expression is somewhere between quizzical and dubious.
"You lived in space your whole life and you think the Earth is endless?" he wonders. "That doesn't make any sense to me. Especially if you used to live near Jupiter." A worried grimace creases his lips; he manages to reel it in. "...I read that the Big Red Spot is the size of three Earths. How can you've gone to see that and think Earth is endless?"
...So that's a 'no' to her question, basically. But then, Shinji hasn't actually been looking out the windows much. It's the same as before...
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
Roux looks back at Shinji. Her eyes are a little melancholy but otherwise enigmatic. She doesn't prompt much. The chicken is cooking. She does crack a smile at the question.
"Because the Great Red Spot just turns into something you see out the window, eventually," Roux says, as the chicken sizzles. "Inside of the colonies... it's another colony. Closed type, like in Zeon, but there were lots of small view ports and park spaces."
"Space is immense... but it's also, like... it's just 'nothing', I suppose," Roux says, after another thoughtful moment. "It's dangerous because of the vacuum and radiation, and if there's a hole in the wall all the stuff inside tries to go outside. But the place where you live..."
"It's about thirty square kilometers," Roux says. "Or sixty in a closed colony. I guess about fifty-five in the ones near Jupiter. There's forests and ponds and we even had a river in Blue Vision 3, but it's... You're going places but you know where it *ends*. It ends at the end of the cylinder," Roux says, looking upwards. "you go inside another cylinder to go to another colony, and THAT colony's another thirty square kilometers."
"It's different, sure," Roux says, "but like... On Earth you could walk thirty kilometers in one direction and unless you hit the sea -- and oh my god don't get me started about the sea. It creeped me out. In a Mobile Suit it's not nearly as bad." At this point she scoops out the chicken and goes over to pop it on a convenient empty plate.
Then she proffers the spatula. "You're just the first person from Earth," don't say earthnoid, roux, do NOT say earthnoid to the sad boy "I really ever had a chance to even ask like this, believe it or not."
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
"..." Shinji averts his eyes. He's been to colonies before, but never all that long. It was always for something--a trip, a concert--rather than just to go around and take in the sights. He guesses there's a reason for that, based on what Roux's saying.
"I guess that's true," he concedes. "Space is big, but it's mostly empty, like you said." That's something he likes about space, honestly--from their perspective on Earth, or at least in the Solar System, the stars are fixed--never changing, always the same. It's something that brings him comfort.
...Begs the question why he hasn't gone stargazing now that he has a better view. But then, he never went stargazing during his trips to Luna II or the Orbit Base, either. Watching the stars is something you do from Earth--whether it's sea level ground or atop a mountain.
His eyes go distant for a moment. Then he shakes his head a bit. "...Yeah, I guess I get what you mean now. The ocean's really deep... I've been down pretty deep in it once. It is pretty creepy the further down you get." The deep sea is far from the creepiest place he's ever been, though. He accepts the spatula and prods at the piece of chicken left on the pan, now that Roux's taken hers out. It definitely needs to get flipped. He does so. It gives him a little space to blink up at Roux with open surprise.
"I am?" he utters. "But what about..." He looks around the kitchen. He turns in a different direction, as if he might take in the entire ship from this one room. His surprise visibly shifts into discomfort. No--he can't be the only person from Earth on this ship. Eight's from Earth, right? He's pretty sure she is. Roux just means that she hasn't talked to any of the other Earthlings about this kind of stuff before, surely.
"...Have you not met a lot of people from Earth?" he wonders quietly. "I guess now that I think about it, I don't know that many people from space... I have this one friend who..." He clutches at his hoodie, grimacing. "...he lived on the Moon for a while. But even he was originally from Earth."
I don't understand that.
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"Yeah," Roux says. "The colonies are like islands... we can see each other, but if you couldn't fly through space, then you'd never leave. The whole world would be inside of one colony."
She takes a deep breath and lets it out. "Right? It's like five hundred meters deep. More," Roux tells Shinji as he takes the spatula. She drifts over to rinse chicken juice and herbs and butter off her hands.
"I've met a ton of people on Earth," Roux says, "and a bunch of people who are FROM Earth, but like, it doesn't really have a chance to come up. Before I left for Jupiter it was this entire thing, because of the AEUG-- it was like..." Roux reaches for terms. "It was political," Roux says. "Like it'd be like if I went up to Judau when I had met him and I asked him 'hey, what's it like to pee standing up'? You know?"
Roux smiles a little lopsidedly. "And out at Jupiter, people didn't like to talk about their time in the Earth Sphere. Kind of an awkward topic for a lot of people. At least it was a little less political once we came back."
Shinji then brings up a friend. One he speaks of in the past tense.
"Mm," she says.
"Getting separated like that..."
Her eyes turn towards Shinji, and she isn't smiling, not really.
"It's awful," Roux says quietly.
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
"Hm."
Little isolated islands that you couldn't cross over to without flying through space...
...maybe he'd like living in space better than he thought. (Shinji, you're currently living in space, you just don't think of it like that because you never look out the window.)
"They say most of the Earth's oceans are still unexplored," he says instead. "It figures. You can only stay underwater for so long, and the deeper you go, the more intense the pressure gets... Most of the deep sea is pretty empty, anyway."
That's not true--even the bottom of the Marianas Trench has life in it (life, and garbage)--but that's how Shinji thinks of it.
He sputters a bit, red rising in his cheeks, as Roux brings up asking an apparent guy what it's like to pee standing up. Roux is very pretty, but she really doesn't have any class. She's just like Misato that way...!
...his eyes lid.
Getting separated... is awful.
He looks away.
"Mm," he non-answers, and prods at the chicken. It seems like it's ready, so he takes a plate and slides the chicken off onto it. He wasn't planning on cooking, but in retrospect, he easily got roped into it, he realizes. It's a lot differen when it's something you actually enjoy doing...
"Political sounds hard," he murmurs. "I don't really understand it. I don't see why people insist on fighting each other... But I'm a useless coward, so I guess I wouldn't."
He sits heavily on a nearby stool and prods halfheartedly at his blackened chicken with a fork and knife for a moment.
"You didn't need to explain about the Anti Earth-Union Group. I know what it stands for, and where the hyphen's supposed to be," he adds, possibly seemingly out of nowhere. "I was just a little kid when the 30 Bunch Incident happened, and I don't remember a lot of the details anymore, but I remember how I felt about it. It was terrifying to me that something so horrible could happen, and so many people just--didn't care about it. For a long time, I felt really sorry for people living in colonies. It--wasn't right, how people on Earth were treating them."
He pauses.
"But then Axis Shock happened," he continues quietly. "I know it wasn't the first colony drop, or attempted, anyway. But if it'd succeeded, so many people on Earth would've died. And that terrified me too, that someone could be so full of hate that they'd wipe out an entire world. No matter how horrible things like the 30 Bunch Incident were, committing genocide isn't the answer. So all of a sudden, I didn't know how to feel anymore. I even sort of sided with the Federation for a while out of some incredibly stupid sense of loyalty to my father. But that's all over now. And now... here I am."
He stabs the chicken. He drops the fork. It clatters on the side of his plate, despite still being wedged in the blackened white meat.
"I don't know why I said all that," he mumbles. "You know way better about all of that than me, I'm sure."
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
Shinji says things Roux didn't know.
For one thing, the thing about the oceans. The oceans don't come up a lot in space, for obvious reasons. She frowns in thought at that. After all this time?
She doesn't seem to take notice of Shinji's flushing, which may be a key point of difference. That or she's just self-absorbed. (Though she does feel it.)
"... Huh," she says, turning her head. "I'm impressed," she says. "You might hate politics but you paid more attention than most people. But I'm probably being unfair to people from Earth," Roux continues, even as she turns to begin preparing another piece of chicken meat - another thigh, this one - in the butter and the rub.
"Everybody's got their own life and their own concerns. People who are -- heh, I almost said 'lucky enough' to be on Earth, but now I'm kind of insulting everyone when I say that, right? I'm saying everyone on Earth is lucky, and everyone in space isn't..."
"And now here you are," Roux echoes.
Dip, dredge. Dip, dredge. Pat pat pat.
"I guess I know more," Roux exhales, "but I don't know if I know better. If Judau and I had stayed... maybe we would have made a difference. Or maybe we would have just died trying to stop Axis."
She looks over at Shinji. Subtly tired now, she says, "Loyalty does that, doesn't it? It gets a hook in you, like a fish on a string. It's one thing when it's a person; you can find you're both hooked together. When it turns into some kind of a 'group'..."
Roux turns to plop it on the pan. "But without those big groups, nothing gets done," she concludes with a sigh. "And they" chew people, Roux almost says.
Something tells her not to.
The sentence, severed, floats for a moment, and she shakes her head. "Maybe if the Federation's falling apart, people can make something better," Roux continues. "I don't know."
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Shinji flushes again, but this time for a different reason. He wasn't trying to impress Roux--he just starting babbling about something that's been in the back of his mind for a long, long time--and it feels disingenuous to have her compliment her for it. Like he somehow tricked her into thinking he's more thoughtful than he really is. Even though that's not what he was trying to do at all.
"Not really," he thus murmurs. "It's not like I did anything about it either." (Never mind that he was literally a child. That he's still literally a child.) "I think I was around four when I heard about it, and... I was going through a lot back then." He pauses, meaning to leave it at that; something in him prompts him to blurt out, "My mother had just passed away. That's when my father stopped--" He stops, throat freezing up. He looks away. "...being around."
Though it would been a long time after that before his father would outright give up on being a father and simply hand him off to be raised by his teacher.
"Anyway, it's not about the politics. Murder is wrong. That should be a fundamental of life, no matter where you're from," Shinji continues. His jaw tenses as he grits his teeth and glares at the chicken Roux is newly dredging--though it's not really the chicken he's glaring at. "I don't get why I'm the weird one for thinking that way," he mutters.
But everyone does have their own life and their own concerns. As awful as the 30 Bunch Incident was, Shinji, too, went on with his life doing nothing about it. He doesn't know if he'd call life on Earth 'lucky,' but maybe it seems that way to someone who lived in space colonies--even if Roux acknowledges that's insulting of her to say. He looks up at her, expression pinched.
Maybe staying would've made a different. Or maybe they'd have just died trying to make a difference. Which is better? He doesn't know. ...It turned out fine without them, and surely it's better that they're alive, so maybe that's answer enough.
Shinji doesn't say that, though. It feels weird to say that to someone he barely knows. Like an overstep.
"Mm," he mumbles, looking away at the talk of loyalty. He knows well what she means. Deep down, all along, he'd wanted his father to approve of him. But if the only way he could get his approval was to murder someone--to murder Asuka...
He shakes his head. It's very good that Roux didn't say what she was thinking. Shinji doesn't catch onto it at all. "I don't know either," he murmurs. "It's all beyond me, anyway." His shoulders slump. "...I'm no good to anyone."
He's certain Kaworu and Mari wouldn't agree with that. But they aren't here right now, are they?
"...anyway," he says, and instead of actually forming a sentence, he starts dredging a new piece of chicken of his own.
He has yet to taste the one on his plate.
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
Roux listens, although when Shinji speaks on murder - and the simple, fundamental idea of it being wrong--
Her mind falls into a familiar groove, just for a moment.
A man on a balcony; the front of a Mobile Suit.
The flickering reticule of the damaged Gundam's cockpit.
Amber to gentle green.
Roux Louka - it was you?
I'm sorry--
The chicken stopped being dragged, for a few seconds. Roux picks it back up, more slowly, moving to the side to let Shinji at the dish of herbs as well. She turns and tosses the chicken onto the pan, less enthusiastically; it smells the same, of course.
Don't say that, Roux thinks, but it doesn't reach her lips.
"I'm sorry," Roux says, instead, but it sits there, out of context, because she sucks in a breath and some of the light and brass comes back into her tone.
"I guess we're getting near enough to make some sandwiches... you look like you've gotten the idea, though." A beat or two passes.
"Sometimes it does all seem kind of meaningless, doesn't it?"
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
And that's how Roux can know that Shinji doesn't have any Newtype abilities of his own.
It takes a special amount of thoughtlessness to say something like that and not even notice it's hurt someone. There are all number of reasons why someone might murder someone else in this day and age. He's even aware that Asuka had committed murder as a soldier. He just didn't think about it--pushed it out of mind--made excuses for her--so that he wouldn't have to confront that someone he likes and cares about has done something he finds appalling.
But again: Shinji doesn't notice that he's made Roux uncomfortable. If she slows in her work, it's because she's giving him space to cook too, or it's because the topic itself is just that heavy.
He does blink at her in confusion when she apologizes. He doesn't ask her what she's apologizing for, though. He has a feeling if he did, he'd need to apologize back.
"Yeah, I guess. It's not too different from frying stuff," he replies. He carefully drops his next piece of chicken in the pan, yanking back his hand before it can get splattered with hot butter.
Sometimes it does all seem kind of meaningless, doesn't it?
Shinji doesn't have to ask Roux what she means. He understands perfectly. When he looks up at her again, it strikes him that he had a similar experience with Kaworu--how he kept understanding Shinji's worst feelings.
...Why does someone as pretty and vivacious as Roux feel that way too?
"...Yeah," he replies quietly, because he doesn't have the courage to ask that out loud. "It does."
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"Mm," Roux says. She gazes at the frying meat.
I should say something else, Roux thinks.
But what?
This isn't something newtype insight can feed you. Perhaps greater light and power might; perhaps it might not. The best it did for Roux was push her away from a cruelty. That's not nothing.
The chicken smokes and seethes.
"After the war - my, our war, I guess - we had to do that too. Get away from the whole rotten system. There wasn't any meaning to any of it. I guess we did great things, but then the EFSF showed up to mop up and so we didn't even get parades or anything. Alright, enough dumb war shit from the old hag," Roux continues, shaking her head and waving a hand. "God I am swearing too much."
"I'm going to go get the rolls," Roux says, and then she does; which leaves Shinji alone for the space of perhaps twenty-five seconds. She doesn't go FAR -- there's a big bin of the fresh and floury rolls, and Roux grabs enough of them that she's crooking her arm to carry them back. Five and a half (someone already tore one in half and put the other half back, which is disgusting, but at least they didn't bite into it first, so it's not *unsanitary*.)
When she's back, she puts them down on the metal table and picks up one, along with one of the ambient knives, to slice it open.
"How do you like it here on the RM2?" she asks, while stealing a glance away. (She isn't sawing while doing it.)
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Conversations with depressed, angry teenagers are awkward at best. It's no wonder even someone like Roux's struggling.
To Shinji, though, it feels as though he's bringing the mood down--that he's such a drag to be around that he's even dragging down this woman who started off the night bright and chipper. But then, if she's just smiling on the surface and is in pain underneath, like Kaworu, maybe it's just that he brought it to the surface...?
He's not sure if that's better or worse.
"It's fine. You're an adult, it doesn't matter if you curse," Shinji says in an attempt to reassure her. "I'm sure you've been through a lot. Stuff I couldn't even imagine."
Would having gotten a parade have made it better?
...no. The very idea makes him sick to his stomach.
He says nothing when she leaves to get rolls. He just continues on with making the chicken, because there's more left and no one has told him to stop. He doesn't crowd the pan--he knows better than that--but by the time she returns, he's finished up what remains of the chicken. There's only the two of them; there wasn't a ton left to make.
"I don't really feel much of anything about it," Shinji says as he watches the meat blacken. Some vague sense that he should at least try to be a bit positive about it to someone who's clearly trying to help him prompts him to add, "It's better than where I used to be."
But--for some weird reason--that doesn't really feel true. He's not sure why, and so he pushes it out of mind. It has to be true.
Anywhere is better than that city where his father lives.
"What about you?" he adds. "You don't live here all the time, right? Where are you usually?"
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"No, I just had a training contract for their MS squadrons and I made friends," Roux continues, smiling a little mordantly as she finishes slicing the bread. Another pause to wash off her hands.
"It's convenient, you know? I do a lot of travelling... I guess I'm a mercenary, ultimately, though it feels weird to say that. Right? Like you think a mercenary's going to be this scarred and grizzled guy, with like a six pack and a tragic scar, and stress disorders, and maybe he's always carrying a *gun*..."
"I guess if I had to put something on a form I'd say the place in Spain on Earth," Roux muses. "I did buy a condo in Londinium but I'm not really comfortable living there... I'm trying to sell it but I have to do everything by email." A beat or two passes.
"I did think about buying another place at Blue Vision 3, but if I live in the same colony with my parents..."
Roux trails off. She did not sound like she dreaded-dreaded it.
"What I *thought* I would do eventually is buy my own tanker or something," Roux muses. "Like a cargo ship on a regular route, right? Owner-operators can build out pretty fancy places in those, if you can put up with living in microgravity."
At this point Roux picks up a fork. "You mind if I taste some of yours?"
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
I guess I'm a mercenary, ultimately...
"Oh," Shinji utters, as he finally connects the dots.
She's really very right. She doesn't look like she'd be a mercenary or any kind of fighter, present or former. (But then, neither does he, huh?)
For a moment, he's uncomfortably silent. Does that mean you've killed people? he thinks about asking. He does not. It was hard enough with Asuka.
If it's something he can't actually do anything about, he'd rather not know. At least, not for right now.
"I hope you can find someplace you like," he offers awkwardly at the end. "I don't know if I'm going to stay here forever either..."
He has the money to pick up and leave now, thanks to Calibur. (That had been a shocking find. Shinji agonized about it for a while before deciding to trust that a part of Gridman's soul wouldn't have done anything shady or illegal to get that money, and the best thing Shinji could do is hide it and pretend he doesn't have it until it's absolutely necessary.)
"But for now, it's fine. I don't have anywhere else to go, anyway," he concludes. He gestures vaguely at her fork. "Go ahead."
His chicken is perfectly palatable, at least. It probably lacks the secret ingredient known as 'love,' but does that really exist in the first place? For his part, Shinji will take one of the rolls and fix himself up a chicken sandwich. He doesn't finish it, but he'll clean up properly and wrap up the leftovers for the fridge. At least he's got food for later.
And at the end of it all:
".......thanks."
He doesn't feel good, but he arguably feels better. That's worth a word of gratitude, surely.
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"Hey, you don't have to stay anywhere forever," Roux tells Shinji with a half-smile. And then she takes some of his blackened chicken and puts it in the roll. She tears a piece off a half-lettuce she'd brought out and set aside and tucks it in, maybe for vitamins.
She takes a bite.
Chewing, thoughtfully. "This is decent," Roux says. "For a first shot you really got it. I think the texture's lighter than I'm used to too." She takes a second bite afterwards. Nodding once.
"If you stick with cooking," Roux says, "let me know, I might be able to get you a restaurant job."
Then -- thanks?
Roux's head tilts a little to the side, even as she turns off the burner beneath the pan (which is still smouldering a little, from the burned-in oils of the chicken and the butter - she lets it sit there to cool. No rush.) "You're welcome," she says.
With a smile that gets a little past a half-smile, she says, "Stay in touch, alright? Tip me off if you get a secret special spice blend together!"
And from there, perhaps, it's all over but the cleanup. (Roux volunteers to do it; it helps that there's a dish pit, but the pan still needs some TLC.)
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Roux reassures him that he doesn't have to stay anywhere forever, but isn't that the problem? Nowhere seems to be 'home' for long for him. Can he really call the Ra Mari II 'home,' even? Everyone's been very kind to him so far, and it's not like he's ungrateful per se, but... he's only here because he couldn't stand to be in Tokyo-3 anymore, and he actually had considered that home for a while.
He doesn't know. It's all still so new and raw. At the very least, he recognizes Roux is trying to be supportive, so he simply responds with a noncommittal, "Mm."
It seems like she approves of the job he did at blackening, too--enough to offer her connections to get him a job in the future, if he wants it. Shinji doesn't know what else he would do if not cooking at this point, so he just nods once.
"I'll try," he replies, which is better than most things he could say.
The clean-up won't take too long. Roux might volunteer to do it, but it just feels weird to Shinji to not clean at this point, and letting her do it all herself would leave him feeling directionless and anxious. It's something to do.
And because he's had something to do this whole while, he hasn't paid any attention to the dark-skinned woman with the wavy black hair, a recent addition to the Ra Mari II crew, who's been having coffee and quietly chatting with one of the other cooks this whole time. She keeps Shinji in the corner of her eye and leaves shortly before he and Roux finish up.