2010-05-25 - With a Little Help From My Friends

SOME TIME AGO

It was a week or so back. The days are blending into one another lately, and Tanith is having trouble keeping up on the calendar as she settles into the life of a junior Argama navigator -- life doesn't exist as Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday anymore, but as a series of duty rotations and breaks between. Rachel and Cagalli had gone into Captain Bright's ready room, and for some reason, Tanith found herself all but having a panic attack on the bridge. When she started having to work to keep herself from crying, she excused herself, and only barely kept it together the rest of the shift.

SOME TIME LATER

Tanith's sheets are tangled and coiled around her like snakes. Her nightgown -- just as gaudy a leopard-print as the spots on her jacket -- is twisted uncomfortably. Her face is down in her pillow and she pulls it to herself like she were receiving CPR from it. The sense of sadness and loss is so overwhelming that she feels like she's drowning (halfway suffocating herself with the pillow doesn't help) and her room feels so huge and empty and cold. Her sobs fill the dead air, broken up only by mucussy wails of "DAH-/DEEE/"--

NOW

Now, though, things are a lot better. Tanith O'Gasmeter managed to steal the Argama mess hall kitchen for private use -- or, half of it anyway, the other half still being used to do things like 'feed the ship.' She's managed to keep out of the way while getting the lay of the land, and through sweet-talking and flattery also managed to commandeer the radio, which is pumping out space techno at a steady 160 beats per minute while she works.

A tray of cookies is the only product of her efforts thus far. She got here early, though -- Tanith wanted to make sure /she/ knew what she was doing before she started trying to impart anything upon Rachel. She's wearing p. scandalously short wine-colored shorts and a teal t-shirt with the sleeves off. The shirt is unexecptional except for the fact that it has a stenciled, stylized image of Cagalli Yula Athha on the front, and some Chinese script more or less equating to Orb Union propaganda from way back.

Tanith O'Gasmeter: currently looking through a fridge, bent down, swaying her hips from side to side to the beat.

About a week ago, an old Haro v2 managed to make way onto the Argama. It floated and rolled and bounced down the halls of the ship, the wing-flaps occasionally beating a steady rhythm in the air to keep it moving, and then it ended up in the quarters of one Rachel Miu Athha. Within a few days' time, she was standing before Bright Noa with Cagalli, and she became an emotional wreck within fifteen seconds.

Now, poking her head into the mess hall, the short tuft of white hair preceeds her as she pushes inside. Dressed more in her work clothes, the Morgenroete logo branded across the chest of her black t-shirt and half-worn coveralls tied off at the waist and a pair of black wristbands, Amuro's young protoge is quickly followed by the bounding green ball-bot.

"Tanith...?" she asks, giving a quick glance around.

Moving toward the kitchen of the mess hall, the Haro bounces up into her arms, the sixteen-year old Murasame pilot holding it to her chest in a loose hug-- eyes out. "Oh, there you are. Di-- Did you start without me?" she asks, looking toward the nearest clock. "I'm not... late, am I?"

"RACHEL, HUNGRY! RACHEL, HUNGRY!"

... She's going to have to get used to this.

Tanith feels a familiar twinge in some theoretical muscle when Rachel drifts into the kitchen, even before the Haro blares like a car alarm. Jerking upward, the blonde turns around, braid whipping behind her. "Rachel!" she chirps, genuinely glad to see her friend. Without her cowboy hat on, her hair moves a little more freely, but her bangs still refuse to let slip any view of her eyes.

Tanith's grin only fades slightly. "Oh! Well, uh, yeah, I wanted to get to know the kitchen before you got here. I mean, like, I'm used to using... you know, the one in my mom's condo, not... a military spaceship kind of thing. I mean, what good's a teacher who doesn't know what they're doing?" Tanith's grin brightens again, and she comes over, bending down somewhat to peer at the Haro.

"And who's your handsome new boyfriend?" Tanith teases, reaching over and tapping the Haro with a thunk-thunk-thunk sound. Then, suddenly, as if remembering she'd left her keys back at Neo Hong Kong, the half-Neo-Irish half-Azadistani navigator straightens up. "Oh!"

A hand waves at the cookies. "I made those, but, uh, honestly the last thing I need right now is to eat cookies with how much I'm on the bridge feeling my butt get bigger, you know? So, like, I don't know, if Cagalli might like them, or something, or... she's not allergic to nuts, is she? I mean, I don't really care for them so I don't know why I put them in there /anyway/ -- like, yeah, I get why some people like them, but I dunno, pretty overrated, if you ask me."

The Princess is uncharacteristically late, mostly because she's spent the last day or so lying there wondering if she's actually cut out for this; Angel or no, cold feet on the battlefield isn't exactly a trait that's admirable. If Rachel was worried about being late, Cagalli /definitely/ should be.

She walks in, looking... not /great/, but she manages to at least avoid looking like she's been hit by a truck, either. She's in her casual clothes -- a red t-shirt and cargo pants, both fairly nondescript. "Hi, uh," Cagalli starts, seeing Tanith's shirt almost immediately and finding herself completely unsure how to follow that particular sentence up.

Sadly, she missed the question about whether she was allergic to nuts by about ten seconds, so of course, she can't rely on /that/, either. Whoops.

"Oh," she says, rather simply. "I understand."

Well, that makes sense. Tanith told her about her life, at least a little bit-- her mother, moving, and then her enlistment in the AEUG. Rachel has to keep telling herself that her blonde friend doesn't have the history, the issues, that she or Cagalli did, that she's reasonably normal when compared to others on the Argama.

Well. At least, the parts Tanith actually told her.

"O-Oh, this," the pilot says, looking down. "Amuro--" the word comes out hesitantly, as Amuro Ray is both a Bad and Popular topic of late, "He left it for me after he left. He's been... my tagalong, of a sort." The little green robot's eyes light up with a bright, "HARO'S HANDSOME! HARO'S HANDSOME!"

Following the smell of the batch of cookies, the carried Haro shifts to her left arm. Using the flat of a small (clean) kitchen knife to slide it off to the edge of the tray, Rachel seems to stare at it for a moment, a lot longer than someone really should. She picks it up, and she stares at it a bit more.

The look on her face is something akin to wonder. Has she never had a cookie before? Whatever the case, she brings it up to her mouth and takes a bite. Her jaw rolls with the chewing. In the middle of all of this, she missed her sister entering, because she suddenly exclaims,

"These are so full of nuts!"

And then she turns around to see Cagalli Yula Athha.

"Oh, Cagalli... I didn't know you were coming. You have to try these!"

The innocence is like a small child.

Tanith giggles when Haro shows off that even little green robots can feel ego gratification. Her attention is then drawn to two things, one after the other.

First, the caramel-skinned girl is unable to deny that it's a little weird, the way Rachel stares at that cookie (and who picks up a cookie with the flat of a knife?). The smile doesn't leave her face, but her lips tense just a bit, and she hooks her thumbs in her pockets, watching--

--Cagalli Yula Athha enter. That's the second thing. Her head turns to face the other blonde, and Tanith's hand comes up to give an excited little wave. "Hey!" Tanith skips over -- the gravity in the kitchen is a little denser than the rest of the ship, if only for safety reasons, and it shows that the girl is getting a little too used to the wonkier gravity of the corridors and such. "I wasn't sure you were gonna come! Yeah, uh, try a cookie if you want some, I just... I was asking Rachel if, uh, you know, you were into nuts."

Tanith turns to regard the pair, putting her hands on her hips. "Although, uh, it occurred to me when I was getting ready in here, Rach -- I never... asked what kind of foods you /like/..."

'Into nuts.' That's kind of an awkward way to put it.

"Rachel! Hi! Yeah, I, uh -- I kind of... need to learn to cook too," Cagalli says, sounding a little embarassed. "So... yeah, I'm here." Just seeing Rachel picks up her mood a good bit -- and cookies certainly help too. She walks over to the delicious nut-filled cookies, doing just what Rachel and Tanith suggest and taking a bite.

Looking to Tanith again and trying to keep her eyes off the girl's shirt (the idea of being a symbol of revolution still doesn't sit quite right with Cagalli), the Princess says, "Yeah, I like nuts. I mean -- I like other stuff more, but..." She wobbles a hand back and forth a bit, saying, "Nuts are OK."

She is a little nervous about the question of what kinds of foods Rachel likes -- does she have enough context to even /answer/ that?

THEN

7 + 2x - 5 = 18

SOLVE FOR X

"..."

Judau Ashta squints at the HOLOCHALKBOARD with an uncomprehending face. He scratches the inside of his ear as Leina Ashta stares at him expectantly.

"... what's an 'x'?"

Leina sighs. "It's the variable."

"So the answer is variable?"

"... No, the variable is what you have to solve for. How have you even survived up 'til today??"

"Is the answer 'lunch'? 'Cause, like, I could really go for some of your roast beef stew an' if I was a math problem that's what I'd want my very able to be--"

"/No/, /again/, it's not /lunch/," Leina hisses in an exasperated tone. Her expression suddenly grows more smug as she stands up fully, tapping the ruler she has been holding in the general direction of the holoboard.

"And I'm not gonna /make/ you lunch until you start doing your schoolwork!" Leina closes her eyes and smirks, smacking her ruler against her palm. Judau, meanwhile, flares his nostrils, suddenly looking towards the entrance to his room as he picks up the scent of something. "So I guess you could consider the variable 'the odds of you getting to eat today'! I bet /that'll/ inspire you, right Judau?" Leina's eyes crack open.

"Judau?"

Judau, notably, is not there.

"..."

NOW

"OH MAN LUNCH TIME!" shouts an all-too enthusiastic and recognizable voice as Judau stumbles into the mess hall, green eyes wide and expectant.

It's an expression that falters as he sees Tanith. Judau squints, and frowns. "What're you doin' here?" he asks, as if the mess hall were some thing that Tanith would never approach again lest she burst into flames. He gradually takes note of Rachel and Cagalli, giving a cheerful wave as he strolls in.

"Yo Rachel! Hey Cagalli!" his voice now notably friendlier, he looks at the materials being assembled. "Are you cookin' somethin'? ... oh man, are you makin' cookies?!"

And now there is no chance of Judau Ashta leaving.

The question evokes nothing short of a flustered, worried expression out of Rachel. How should she answer? Should she try to sound more elegant and princess-y? Should she try to sound like Cagalli? Or should she just be honest? Giving it a few moments, she looks down with the slightest bit of worry. "Well, I used to eat a lot of vegetables... granola, and ... health food, I guess..."

Her thoughts start to wander. Wandering thoughts lead to worry. Worry leads to her emotions rumbling around in a tightly-knit, jumbled circle. But... over a question as simple as /food/?

Releasing the Haro v2 and letting it bounce on the ground a bit while it rolls around at her feet, Rachel's attention is quickly stolen away by Judau Ashta. Well, no-- "stolen" isn't the right word. 'Grabbed by both ears and put blaringly into the forefront of her mind' is more accurate.

"Judau...!" Rachel says, the corners of her mouth quirking up a bit. It's ... almost a smile, but there's hints of it here and there that look like she's having some problems.

'... and, make friends with Judau.'

It becomes apparent from her expression that she's trying-- literally /trying/-- to sound more social. "It's... y-yes, we're trying to learn how to cook, and Tanith is going to teach us a bit. And. Um. You're welcome to have some!" The last part comes out more naturally, but her voice is slightly louder, as though she isn't quite sure how much inflection to put into it.

"-- I mean," the pilot suddenly stammers, fingers at her mouth and eyes widening up a little. She looks at Tanith, perhaps for guidance (ha ha ha). "I mean, if that's okay with you?"

Pascal kind of needs to take his mind off of things. A number of things, some related to his own occasionally malfunctioning psyche, loneliness, confusion, how to avoid letting the medics notice that he's been kind of chilly all the time lately, all that stuff. When he's stressed, he usually does one of two things to get his mind off of it: he cooks, or he eats.

This /may/ be why he sometimes has trouble keeping his weight down.

When he peers into the mess hall, he's wearing a heavy jacket over his shirt, which might be a bit strange considering that it isn't all that cold on the ship. Quite temperate and comfortable, really! But maybe he's just more comfortable that way. He doesn't quite burst in the way Judau does, but hangs in the doorway for a moment before stepping in, tilting his head.

"Oh, hello! Are you...-oh, you're baking? Do you need any help?" Perhaps he has eaten Cagalli's cooking before, and well...

Tanith keeps her hands on her hips, rocking on her heels somewhat while the sisters taste her work. She tries not to be self-conscious, especially since they seem to like what they're eating (especially Rachel -- you'd think she'd never eaten a cookie before). Tanith's heel-rocking happens to coincide with the high-tempo space techno that's still playing on the radio, all oontz oontz oontz oontz.

Tanith notices Cagalli trying to avoid looking at her shirt. She's not /completely/ oblivious. She is, however, singularly able to miss the point. Something clicks in her teenage Newtype brain. The way Cagalli was so awkward around her in her room. The way she made Tanith promise not to ever offer her wine again or whatever, or wear anything sexy around her -- Tanith thought that was weird, but not she realizes why Cagalli would want that. And now, observing what could be nothing else other than 'the Princess of Orb trying to steal looks at her boobs,' and that obvious innuendo about liking /other things/ more, Tanith is hit by the shock of realizing--

'Oh Jesus Christ,' Tanith thinks. 'Cagalli has a crush on--'

Then: Judau.

"What do you mean, what am /I/ doing here? What are /you/ doing here?" The blonde navigator huffs slightly, as if Judau were spoiling a perfectly good time. Still, Rahcel's response to him makes Tanith soften a bit. "Huh? Y-Yeah, he can have some..." Tanith turns her head to Judau and points, though. "Just don't eat them /all/, I've seen what a little piglet you can be."

Tanith scratches the back of her head. She doesn't know what that feeling that just passed by was, before Rachel spoke to Judau. Suddenly, the 30 Bunch survivor's anxiety ratcheted upward, as if she were about to have another panic attack. But it seems to have passed. "H-Health food?" Tanith asks, getting back onto her feet, so to speak. "Okay, well, I want to start you off with something easy, so let's... bend that just a little bit. I mean, I found some pizza dough while I was looting the storage room, so, like..."

Tanith shrugs, suddenly feeling a little self-conscious. She suddenly feels the need to justify it, on top of that -- as if pizza was somehow a waste of a princess' time. "It's easy to make, doesn't make a mess, pretty fast to cook, don't need to wait a long time before you can eat it... and, you know, you can put whatever you want on it, so you can, you know... express yourself. Plus, no matter where you go, it's like... I think anywhere you go in the galaxy, if you ever had to cook for someone, it'd work, you know? And then we can move onto cooler trickier stuff later. Uh." Tanith feels like she has crammed her entire leg into her mouth up to the hip when Pascal enters. "Oh! Hey! Uh, yeah, just kind of... helping the Princesses out with some cooking tips..."

Judau Ashta does not want to eat Cagalli's cooking; he just doesn't know it yet. "Well, uh, the cookies are... I guess you could have a couple -- but we haven't actually cooked anything as, uh, a group, yet," she says, gesturing a little to the cookies. "That was just Tanith by herself. They're really good, though!"

Then Pascal comes in; Cagalli hasn't seen him in entirely too long, and as such, the entire situation is equal parts happy and awkward. "I, uh -- yeah, this is more of a teaching thing," Cagalli says to Pascal; this probably goes a long way toward easing his mind on the topic of 'something Cagalli cooked existing maybe.' "And, uh -- hi!"

Pizza dough. Pizza sounds really good right about now; it's easy to make, it's filling, you can make it pretty much anywhere... plus it involves a lot of red sauce, and Cagalli definitely favors that. "All right, I love pizza! I... forget, Rachel, have you had pizza before?" This is a completely serious question.

She is completely oblivious to anything to do with Tanith, and herself, and any relations thereto. At least, other than the one she's already convinced exists.

'You're welcome to have some!'

'Y-yeah, he can ha--'

Tanith isn't even finished with her sentence by the time Judau is cramming two cookies directly into his mouth, chomping down on them with the remarkable efficiency and brutality of a trash compactor.

"What d'you mean," Judau says awkwardly as he gulps down the cookies, wiping crumbs off on his sleeve. "I don't remember doin' anything like that."

Leaning his arms against the countertop, Judau stares with dull eyes at the goings-ons. He scratches his head mildly, looking back towards Rachel with a bright grin. "So, you're learnin' how to cook, huh? Why're you learnin' from /her/?" Judau jerks a thumb pointedly at Tanith as he says this before leaning in conspiratorially towards Rachel. "I mean, you don't wanna learn how to cook from someone who doesn't have /ey--/"

Whatever Judau was going to say is cut off as Pascal makes his appearance. "Oh, hey, how's it goin' Pascal--" Judau pauses for all of a second, and then jabs a finger at Pascal. "You should have Pascal teach you, too! He's a great cook! And he's /French/ or somethin'!" The last part is emphasized pointedly, as if this had some sort of bearing on the ability to cook.

It is about then that Judau notices something odd out of the corner of his eye. Slowly, he turns around, leans in, and stares, very pointedly, at Tanith's shirt. Not really caring about the possibly awkwardness of such a thing, he purses his lips together and furrows his brows, and points directly at the picture.

"... Who the hell's that supposed to be?" Since apparently 'stylized' means 'incomprehensible' to Judau.

Something easy, simple for them to make? Pizza? Yes, Rachel thinks to herself, a pizza would be an excellent start! Even if, that is, she doesn't have anyone to really cook for. Looking at Cagalli, the answer that rolls off her lips is spoken with a rather creepy amount of honesty behind it; Rachel's golden-color eyes blink wide before she lets out a slightly submissive, "It was... just the one time..."

But then Judau's leaning in like the informant in the shadows, whispering truths from the Gospel of Judau Ashta and only that. She doesn't look horrified or offended by his suggestion that she has no eyes, in fact... her head tilts, and she looks at Tanith, then at Judau, then at Tanith, and back to Judau. "She... she has eyes, I'm sure of it."

"SPACE EYES!! SPACE EYES!!"

... said the Haro v2.

Rachel seems to ignore it while she takes her turn greeting Pascal with a small wave, then looking back at the pilot of the Gundam ZZ. Then, the t-shirt, and--

"... T-That's Cagalli..."

"Hello, Cagalli!" A bit oblivious to Tanith's T-shirt, at the moment at least, Pascal brightens when he sees his VIP girlfriend. She's usually away for long periods of time due to the nature of her position, which is to be expected, but still leaves the young man a little lonely sometimes. "Pizza, you say? It is not hard! A lot of fun, too, if you know how to toss it in the air..."

And then Judau jabs a finger at him and puts him on the spot, and he stammers for a moment. Well, he's never really /instructed/ before, but. "Uh...sure, I can teach...! Though I am not sure what my being /French/ has to do with it," he adds with a little eyeroll. "If you want to make some pizza, I can definitely help with that. We will need yeast, though."

Pascal can cook with the imitation ingredients that are often the only option on military ships, but he prefers, you know. Real food.

"And tomato sauce, olive oil, preferably some rock salt and cornmeal...flour, obviously..."

Yes, this is good! This is very good. He can work with his friends here, and help poor Rachel socialize, and get his mind off of the chills and headaches.

Judau leans in close, and Tanith leans /back/. "Jesus, do you even know what, like, personal space is?!" she protests, stepping backward -- and, in an uncommon show of gracelessness, bumping into Cagalli in the process, hand accidentally closing on the Princess' rear.

"!"

Tanith might as well suddenly develop the amazing power of teleportation with how quickly she puts space between herself and Cagalli. "Uh, well, we've got enough stuff to go around for everyone, I think," Tanith says, quickly trying to move past all of that by focusing on what's important. "Why don't we, um, uh, Pascal, did you want to join in? Because maybe, uh, you and Cagalli, you could... take some of the dough, and... and Rachel and I could take some, and..."

Tanith turns her head to look at Judau, and issues a vague frown. "And you can just take what's left, I guess?" Her Newtype brain flashes back to 'grilled greepes' and Tanith feels comfortable not trying to stick Judau into any of the groups.

"It might, you know, it might work better than all of us trying to do it all as one big group." Tanith's thumbs hook in her pockets. The music continues to pound along incongruously. Her self-confidence feels like it just got kicked in the throat.

Cagalli joins Tanith in manifesting the ability to Zero-Shift as she realizes just whose butt her butt has touched. "I, uh -- oh, sure, I can work with Pascal," Cagalli says, nodding once. "Though, uh -- maybe we can take Judau too, I guess?" She looks at it in exactly the opposite way Tanith does: left to his own devices, Judau Ashta will create something either so magnificent it invalidates theirs or so awful it will blow up the oven.

"Yeah, I, uh -- I'm pretty sure even people with long hair have eyes, Judau." Perhaps Cagalli, at some point in her life, picked that particular way to have her hair be 'an awful mess' too. "Anyway, get over here, Judau, let's figure this out."

She looks at Pascal, trying to figure out something to say; all at once, she gets a frog in her throat, which I promise is not a double-entendre regarding 'French racial slurs' and 'Cagalli and Pascal's love life.'

Really.

'SPACE EYES, SPACE EYES!'

Judau is glad at least the /cold unfeeling robot/ agrees with his /logical/ assumption.

"... It's Cagalli?" he asks, looking at Rachel quizzically. Slowly, his gaze rotates back to Tanith. "Why are you wearing a shirt with Cagalli's face on it?" Judau Ashta, who had been eating a cookie, slowly squints, stopping his chewing at roughly the same time to give the effect of looking like an incredulous, puffed-cheek squirrel.

"That's sorta weird, dude."

But then, Judau finds himself being roped into cooking. This is something he did not expect. It's an /unknown variable/ that Leina, no doubt, would be delighting over and likely is in her evil psychic way. As Cagalli demands he join her and Pascal, he rubs the back of his neck and awkwardly laughs, looking to the side.

"Well uhh, usually Leina does all the cookin', y'know? I'm more skilled at like -- the eatin'...? A-heh-heh-heh... haaah?" Judau keeps this appearance up for a long and silent moment before his shoulders finally sag, and he drags himself over.

"Besides, all I'm /sayin'/ is," he suddenly says to both Pascal and Cagalli as he abruptly interposes himself between the two, making /absolutely sure/ to keep his voice as hushed as possible. "Have you ever /seen/ her eyes? No, right? So you can't be /sure/--"

She can't even let herself get lost in her own thoughts; Judau's mouth opens, and ... in a strange way, Rachel finds herself capitvated by his actions. Amuro suggested for her to become his friend, but at the same time, he says and does things that are so... strange. Free-acting. Emotive. ... Loud? Comparatively, it's like watching a monorail wreck on a news feed-- a horrible thing, to be certain, all of that terrible carnage... and yet, you just can't look away.

Is this what it means to be human?

Still, the young budding Newtype turns her attention to their tasks, their pizzas. Looking around the kitchen, the young girl looks so absolutely lost that it's almost pitiful; her eyes moving from place to place in the kitchen while trying to figure it all out. A little bit of frustration can be felt through her emotions, worry, and a bit of embarassment. Her heartbeat feels like it's going about as fast as the music.

'I should've prepared for this in advance,' she chides herself.

Swallowing back those emotions, Rachel turns her gaze toward Cagalli and tries-- that being the key word-- to smile a little bit. "Good luck."

Something flashes in Pascal's mind, as he glances at Tanith and Cagalli. And--

Nah, it was probably just an accident. Definitely an accident, right? Even as the color of his face shifts slightly, reddening from what might be embarassment, confusion or mild jealousy, he ignores it and pushes it to the back of his mind. It's nothing! Tanith is Cagalli's friend, he knows this. He even chooses to defend her from Judau with a slight frown. "She has eyes under her hair," he insists.

Or perhaps he is just sensitive to issues regarding unusual eyes?

When he turns to Cagalli again, he's quiet, but he seems to want to brush away whatever was on his mind at the moment. So he smiles instead, back to his cheerful, accented self, it seems! "I am glad you're back! I'm sure we can work together and make decent pizza, yes? Just, uh, Judau, please follow my directions, okay? /Please/ follow my directions," he feels he needs to emphasize.

He does not sense Rachel's insecurity, though perhaps he should; he doesn't really need to, from the expression on her face. "It's easy once you get the hang of it," he reassures her uneasily.

Tanith is either oblivious to or willfully ignoring discussion of whether or not she has eyes. She does, however, screw her lips into a frown as Judau critiques her choice of shirt. "Yeah, well," Tanith replies, before faltering for a second. She's quick to rebound, though: "You know what's weird, is getting your little gang of sidekicks to--"

SOME TIME AGO

On a dare, Mondo walks up to Tanith in the Argama corridor, with the rest of the junk-trader set peering over a corner. The two talk for a minute, before Mondo just straight-up tries to lift Tanith's bangs. It doesn't work because she jerks her head away at just the right moment (Newtype) and ends up getting his thumb right to her covered eye.

"OW! WHAT THE FU--"

NOW

"So you just -- nngh!" Tanith bristles, and turns back to Rachel. She tries to keep her cool, and with some conscious effort and a deap breath, more or less succeeds. "Sorry," Tanith murmurs to Rachel, "that guy just..." She trails off, deciding it's not even worth continuing that sentence. "Okay, so, pizza, yeah."

The teenage navigator can see that her comrade is lost -- and so, like any good navigator does, Tanith shows the pilot where to go. "C'mon," Tanith says, biting back a momentary empathic swell of various Bad Feelings and forcing her enthusiasm level to jack up a bit. To try and get Rachel jazzed up, too, she all but rushes over to where the dough has been thawing -- and in the process, grabs Rachel by the hand to drag her along. There's a lot Tanith doesn't know about Rachel -- including the significance of this particular form of contact.

"Yeah, Pascal's right!" Tanith cuts the dough into two sections, passing one half over to the French Newtype. "Get the flour, Rachel? Then we can start stretching and tossing and blah blah."

"Look, Judau, do we really need to talk about whether Tanith has eyes or not...?" Cagalli asks of Judau, because it's /definitely/ better than talking about a shirt with her face on it and even more definitely better than focusing on the fact that Judau is an insufferable, insatiable pit.

Nodding to Rachel, she says, "Good luck to you too. I think we might, uh, need it more, though." Then again, Judau did come up with grilled greepes, in addition to all of the less good things he's come up with. Maybe lightning will strike twice.

"... all right, so, uh -- what's the most important step, with the pizza?" Cagalli asks of Pascal, getting right down to business -- and completely missing the part about cooking where /every/ step is important or else you end up with grilled greepes.

"Hey, I can't help what Mondo an' Beecha do! I'm not the boss of them!" Judau insists, perhaps too defensively for his own good.

THEN

"A-are you sure about this--"

"Of /course/ I'm sure, she was /askin'/ us to do it. She's just not comfortable about people doin' it to her when she's /awake./"

"I don't know. I'm just -- I'm really, really uncomfortable about this Judau, and--"

"It'll be /fine/ Iino, she'll thank you for it!"

"Why can't Mondo--"

"We've been over this, you're the only one who's got any experience doin' it! Now go, stop hesitating! You've gotta grab life by the balls, or somethin'!"

Iino Abbav hovers awkwardly over Tanith O'Gasmeter's bed as she sleeps. His hands slowly extend toward her; his left seems prepared to grab something; the right holds a simple pair of barber's scissors in it. He gradually descends upon Tanith, reaching out for her bangs--

"Judau! Iino! What're you doing here??"

Judau Ashta spins around to see Torres /glaring death daggers./ Instantly, the blood drains entirely from his skin. Iino has already bolted, shrieking something about "HE MADE ME DO IT I NEVER WANTED TO BE A BARBER"

"We're -- uh -- that is, we're doin' a -- science experiment on uhh--" And then, something dawns on Judau.

"What're /you/ doin' here?"

"..."

NOW

"I'd never tell /them/ t'do something like that!"

Clearing his throat awkwardly, Judau decides to instead focus on the task at hand: pizza. /Pizza./ He /loves/ pizza. "Don't worry, I got this," he insists. "I used to make pizzas with Leina all the time. In fact we could make my special sour cream and onion pizza! Man, it was so fun, gettin' to--

Something dawns on Judau as he abruptly pivots about, looking /directly at Rachel/ with all the seriousness and gravity in the world, as if everyone's very future depended on the answer to this next question:

"Do you... know how to toss a /pizza/?"

She feels a hand wrap around her own. It's sudden, it's alerting, and it vaguely reminds her of being with Quatre. The hand-holding and the tug-along to the pizza dough are what more or less blast away those emotions she seems to unconsciously broadcast almost all the time.

Eventually, Rachel finds herself tasked with gathering the flour for this. Her first instinct is a quick, "Right!" before she turns herself around and faces the cabinets. This leads her to stopping as her blood turns cold, as she stares at the galley setup and finally realizes that...

... she has no idea where it is.

Opening a few cabinets and looking for the appropriate label-- and feeling utterly foolish for doing it every single time-- she eventually manages to find a nondescript canister that, as with most other things in the Argama, is labelled quite clearly as "FLOUR."

Bringing it back to Tanith and setting it down, the confused sixteen-year old dusts her hands off on the backside of her coveralls and looks over the blonde's shoulder at a relatively close proximity. Then, ... /then/? Judau Ashta asks her what seems to be the most important question of all time.

"I-- I don't."

Cue Drama Button. Cue an expression so horrified and embarassed she might just die, in that melodramatic teenager way.

"Most important...step? Uhm, well..." Pascal clears his throat. "Actually, you see, there's no /important/ step. You just don't want to miss a step! Someone should dust the baking trays with cornmeal, if we have any. The dough is going to have to rise, and we'll have to mix up some yeast, if we have any, and..."

He'd best start from the beginning, especially since Rachel looks like she's about to fall apart. "-Well, we're going to want to mix up the dough, get it to rise and knead it, toss it-and I do know how to toss it, but throwing it is not really necessary-and brush it with some olive oil, add the sauce and cheese and-...well, do we have any sausage? Pepperoni? Mushrooms? It's okay if we don't but I kind of like sausage--"

He's getting carried away talking of fooood, so he stops himself.

"...Let's just mix dough to start," he suggests, finally, starting to measure flour and water as if he's done such a thing since childhood. Which it's possible he has.

"If it does not come out perfect," he notes, "it's really alright! It'll still be better than the frozen pizza from those vending machines, no? Uh...sorry, I did not want to just....take over and boss people around," he adds with a little embarrased wince. "It's just, you know, worked in a kitchen, it's the thing I'm good at..."

The only thing, without that robot of his.

Tanith looks over at Judau and it's pretty clear, somehow, that she is indignantly squinting at him.

If she has eyes, that is.

Tanith then turns and looks back over her shoulder, watching Rachel's hunt and tugging over the can of flour once it's been set down and Pascal's done with it. "Hey, relax," Tanith says, trying to give Rachel a reassuring smile. "Seriously, you can pilot a Murasame. And that is about a gazillion times more complex than this, seriously. Spread some flour around for us to knead it on while I get the dough ready, please?"

Tanith, too, sets about preparing the dough, humming along to some hyper-slick club-pop hook blaring from the radio. When it's risen, she turns to Rachel, noting, "Okay, now you're doing the next part. We wanna knead it into a kind of like big circle thing, maybe... like, half an inch thick, around there." Tanith has no idea if that's an accurate measurement, but she figures that to someone used to working with mechanical engineering, the more science-y terms (like "inch") she can work in, the easier it'll be.

Ushering Rachel over to the dough, Tanith again takes Rachel by the hand -- both hands, in fact. She stands behind the younger Athha, peering over her shoulder while she pushes her hands into position. "Okay, what you want to do is... you want to use your fingers and kind of like where your hand meets your wrist, but not too hard, but not too soft either, and just... push outward, from the middle..." Tanith shows no hesitation in being very hands-on in showing Rachel's hands how to move.

"I... I think we have some cornmeal," Cagalli says, going to get some; this brings her close to Rachel for a few moments as Rachel searches for the flour. She doesn't say anything to her, but she does give her sister a little smile; it's kinda good to be doing something /normal/ like this for once.

Sprinkling a little cornmeal on one of the baking trays (an easy job, which means she can actually do it without causing the pizza to explode), Cagalli says, "If Judau knows how to toss it, I think we could let him give it a shot... I mean, if it doesn't turn out, you can do it, right?" she asks Pascal, before nodding once to Judau.

Hopefully Judau does not screw up /earlier/ than tossing it. Like, say, 'mixing the dough' or 'finding nonexistent steps to ruin, being Judau Ashta.'

'I-- I don't.'

There is a long moment of silence. And then:

"Heh-heh!"

Looking oddly triumphant, Judau crosses his arms over his chest. "That's the funnest part of makin' a pizza! Don't worry, though -- I'm a pro at tossin' all sortsa thing--"

And then Tanith abruptly gets in the way to show Rachel how to flatten the dough, leaving Judau to stand there in his now-awkward VICTORY POSITION.

"Hey, stop interruptin' me when I'm tryin' to explain the most important part! Ghhhhhhhhhhh--" Judau snorts in sheer irritation, pivoting on his heel the second Cagalli speaks. Pausing, the young man grins, flicking a thumb under his nose and giving the classic 'V FOR VICTORY' sign.

"I got it covered! Don't worry, I got a special technique!"

Somehow, this is not reassuring.

Despite this, Judau relaxes a second later, watching with honest curiosity as Pascal prepares the dough. Tilting his head to the side, the young man furrows his brows as he listens.

"You don't hafta apologize, Pascal. It's good to be proud of somethin' you love doing, right?" Judau grins broadly, giving an encouraging thumbs up. "It's cool how much you know about this stuff, so show it off! That's what I think, anyway."

Smiled at, Rachel looks briefly confused before giving Cagalli a slight smile of her own before returning to Tanith, to the greatest question from the greatest Judau who ever Judau'd.

She looks at Judau for a few moments longer, listening with a completely dead-serious expression... and then Tanith starts giving her instructions, glancing at the blonde girl before pulling off her wristbands. "S-Sorry," she says, turning her attention to the task at hand. Tucked into her pockets, she looks to the canister of flour before twisting off the top and using the little plastic scoop to scatter a bit of the flour across the counter in a very deliberate, very careful manner.

It's like staging the field, almost.

Tanith brings Rachel over to the dough, to the flour, and then suddenly the young navigator is standing behind her and giving the white-haired girl a rather direct, hands-on lesson at how to pull all of this off.

It takes her a second to get the hang of it. At first, she's a little too harsh. Then, she's a little too fast. Her fingers slowly find the timing she needs to pull it off without messing up too much, and the younger Athha sister looks over her shoulder at Tanith with a curious face. "Like this?"

It's strange. She looks-- and /feels/-- like she's having fun?

Pascal, meanwhile, has been mixing dough, because that part is honestly kind of boring and really, do you want detailed descriptions of mixing flour, water and baking soda, shaping it and all of that? Really? We're sure you don't.

While he knows he, for sure, can toss pizza, he's a little...well, curious to see this secret amazing technique that Judau is boasting about. So in a moment, he hands Judua a ball of dough. "Well, here you go. Monsieur Expert, show us how it is done, alright?" He's smiling a little, probably from Judau's little pep talk. "Uh, it's nothing, you know, my dad owns a resturaunt, that's all.

"If it doesn't turn out, I'll do it, sure," he adds to Cagalli with a whisper.

Tanith keeps watching over Rachel's shoulders. Eventually, once the Murasame pilot gets the hang of it -- not too fast, not too harsh, just right -- Tanith slips her own hands away, bringing them back and up, to rest on Rachel's shoulders. She doesn't even think to realize that she's leaving handprints. She's having fun, and Rachel's having fun, and a recursive psychic fractal loop of having fun builds.

In fact, Tanith seems ready to just... disregard Judau, as annoying as he is, and let Pascal and Cagalli get on with their business unimpeded. She's not thinking about this consciously at all -- it's just that it feels like a bubble has formed around her, Rachel, and the task of making a pizza together and she's content in the feeling that anything outside that bubble just doesn't matter as much as long as it doesn't break through.

"Yes! Just like that! I told you you'd get the hang of it." Tanith sounds happy and feels perfectly at ease, delivering her encouragement with eager, delighted tones. "Okay, now check this part out. We've got it stretched a bit, but now I'm gonna..."

Tanith takes her hands off of Rachel's shoulders and gently but insistently takes the position of 'the one working the dough.' She takes the dough up, resting it on the back of one hand, and using the other to slowly and gently start spreading it out. She moves in a circular manner, lifting her hands kind of higher than they really need to be, just so Rachel can see how she's stretching it. "You want to give it a spin?" Tanith asks, apparently totally unaware of her lame pun.

Cagalli is dumb enough to actually be reassured by Judau's claim that he has a special technique. Considering she's also jazzed about the notion of grilled greepes, this is probably about expected behaviour.

Glancing over to Rachel, who seems to actually be enjoying herself, Cagalli resists the urge to smile widely at her; she settles for a small one as she turns back to Pascal. "Let's see if he manages it," she whispers back to Pascal, before saying, a little louder, "So, uh -- what's next after the cornmeal? I mean, I guess we can't do /that/ much until Judau finishes with the dough? Or... is there something else we should be doing?"

Maybe if she could think of it as like battlefield staging, the way Rachel does, it'd be a little easier for her. That she actually /is/ good at.

She's enjoying herself. It's the strangest feeling, one that she can't really describe-- but hopefully she'll get a chance to chat with Cagalli about it later. Once Tanith moves in to take over with the dough, Rachel takes a step back and watches her methods, her technique, and watches with all of the attentiveness of someone on their first day of gun safety training.

For the moment, she seems to have tuned out everything and everyone else in the kitchen, looking nervous as Tanith suggests that she takes the dough for a spin. Rachel looks at the dough, then Tanith, and then back at the dough with an almost hungry, eager look on her face. And then she smiles, just a little bit.

Reaching out slowly to get her hands under the dough, the white-haired Murasame pilot starts to work the pizza dough out, working it out in the same manner that Tanith did, attempting to virtually mimic every single one of her movements. Hands lift higher to check her own work, but then eventually lower to a more managable level.

Her voice is quiet. She's got that small smile.

"... this is ... kind of ... fun..."

Pascal's glad that everyone just seems to be, well, having fun! The atmosphere of the Argama can be so oppressive and gloomy, sometimes, and no matter what's going on with his own increasingly fractured mind, if others are still willing to enjoy themselves sometimes, so is he. "Well," he explains to Cagalli, slipping into hand gestures, "we can prep the tomato sauce and olive oil. Or shred some cheese, slice up pepperoni, something like that, you know? Get the toppings ready. You can't have a pizza without toppings. I mean you...can, but why would you bother making plain cheese pizza? If you are going to make something, go all the way!"

He realizes he's going a little too fast, and gives Cagalli a sheepish look. "You want to slice up the pepperoni?"

Tanith grins as she hands the reins -- well, the dough -- over to Rachel. Again, she's not shy about guiding Rachel's hands, but finds that she doesn't need to do it quite as much. It's uncanny, she thinks, seeing how Rachel almost... imitutes her exzarktly, stretching the dough as easily as Tanith would have. When Rachel admits the terrifying secret that she's having fun, Tanith giggles. "I know, right? I told you cooking was good for you. I mean, even if we're making pizza, which... okay, not, you know, good for you, but... I mean, do you know what I mean?"

Tanith bites her lip, realizing she's drifting back into 'incoherent babbling' territory. And she was doing so well, too. But she's proud of her new friend, and happy that she's enjoying doing something that Tanith also enjoys, and hopeful for more good times like this in the future, and Rachel smells a bit like body soap and engine grease and it's a combination that shouldn't work but Tanith finds herself musing that it kind of does, really, and--

"Oh! Uh! Okay, spin it a little faster... yeah, like that, get it stretched out and then you're gonna -- you're gonna kind of," Tanith mimes something vague and unhelpful, and realizes her demonstration is useless without an actual pizza dough to show what she's doing. "Keep it on the backs of your hands and kind of... give it a little toss, straight up and still spinning, and then you wanna catch it on the back of your hands again... not too hard, not too high. Don't sweat if you tear it, it's no big deal, you're doing /awesome/ for someone who's never even cooked before..."

Cagalli is, in fact, completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of things Pascal is considering doing more or less all at once; fortunately, he makes it a little clearer which one most needs to be done immediately. "Oh, okay!" Cagalli says, sounding pretty enthusiastic; she seems to have mostly forgotten about her frustration over what happened at the Geofront last night for the moment.

Isn't cooking the best?

Cagalli seems reasonably enthused about the notion of carving meat with a big-ass knife; she hums a little as she carves slice after slice, wondering briefly if it'll taste better than pre-cut pepperoni. "Can you get the olive oil and sauce and stuff, then?" she asks Pascal, glancing away from what she's doing for a second as she says as much -- and then continuing to as she watches Judau do his business with the dough.

"I dunno," Judau speaks up in the midst of his busywork, sounding oddly sedate for once. "I've never been all that great at cookin', so it's amazing to me to see how much you know about it, y'know?" Pressing out his dough into a small disk, Judau's knuckles dig into the soft material as he comes to a gradual stop, a smile tugging at his lips.

"It's like being able to solve for x!"

Really, that's a compliment.

Still, eventually Judau finishes his preparations. Lifting the floppy disk on his fingertips, he glances over at Cagalli and Pascal, grinning wide. It's not exactly promising. "ALL RIGHT!" Judau shouts, his voice ENTIRELY TOO LOUD.

"Time to go all the way!!"

Judau's right arm snaps upward. The toss is completely overshot, flying so high into the air that it seems to threaten scraping on the ceiling. Spinning around with a dangerously unstable warble, gravity begins to weigh down and the dough falls. It looms over Judau as it falls. It blows past his head as it falls. It spirals past his chest as it falls. It reaches his waist, threatening to hit the floor--

--before Judau sweeps down and catches it on his fingertips, starting to precariously spin it around against his right hand with a surprising level of dexterity.

"Heh-heh! See?? It's totally the best par-- whoa!" The dough twists off his fingers, only to be just barely caught in his left hand.

"Ah-heh-heh -- I totally got this!

"--Really!"

"Oh, sure! Let me get that from the cupboard," Pascal offers as he heads for the closet where the food supplies are kept. A can of sauce, check, though it's probably awful mass-produced stuff. A bottle of olive oil, check. And pizza needs oregano, too.

He reaches up on a shelf to grab the powdered oregano, when--

/it is too cold/

The chill and pounding headaches overtake him so quickly that he nearly drops the oil and sauce. He has to quickly lean against the closet door and take a few breaths before he can walk around again and just ignore the damn chills, returning to the counters as if nothing is wrong, as the last thing he wants to do is worry anyone.

And he arrives...just in time to watch Judau's Harlem Globetrotters pizza sauce.

"...Wow! You really /do/ get it!" The chills and voices are, once again, forgotten. Judau has saved his psyche for another day!!!

Well, no, but Pascal still thinks that was pretty awesome.

And so it goes.

Eventually, both despite and because of Judau's best efforts, pizzas get made. They turn out pretty good, too. Pascal and Cagalli and Judau turn out with something fancier and more gourmet (guess whose influence led to that); Tanith and Rachel end up with something more indulgent and spicy (a lot more spicy; blame the person who started their life on Texas Colony). People eat, and talk, and things actually go pretty okay.

All in all, it's nice to have a day where no one's trying to kill each other with beam weapons.

And it's maybe a little tragic that this simple joy is such a stark deviation from the norm.