2010-04-13 - ...Better...

NUTRITIONIST'S OFFICE

EXELION

DECK OU812

Jung Freud, having gotten briefed by Dr. Twin'Klehtitz and armed with an assortment of documents, guides, and a cooler full of sample materials stuck underneath the table with her ankle brushing against it, taps papers on the steely table. Clank, clank, clank.

"Wow," she says aloud to her compatriot in fitness advising, looking crossways at Noriko. "This is pretty crazy, isn't it? I never thought I'd be doing this sort of thing two years ago." She glances at the clock, which is /less than a minute/ before Rei's scheduled arrival.

"You're sure she'll eat dairy, right."

Noriko Takaya has apparently decided to just completely ignore the A-LAWS uniform, because at the moment she's dressed in an outfit she could only /possibly/ have gotten from someone from her own time period, which is to say, ten years ago: A white tee shirt with the sleeves and bottom rolled up so that it bares her arms and midriff, a pair of worn jeans, and, of course, her traditional blue headband. And a whistle. To be heard over all of Rei's girlish chatter, or something.

Jung may or may not be able to spot that this is Reiko Kashihara's doing.

In her usual fashion she is giving the lie to the more-grown-up-than-Noriko's-face-can-really-pull-off outfit by means of sitting on the table, feet kicking lazily every so often. "I know, right?" says the apparently quite proud new 'Coach.' "I never thought in a million years anyone would ask me for this kind of help. Still...it's pretty cool, right?" Grin!! "I'm pumped! She's got a long way to go, but I think we'll do it!"

Pause. Noriko tips her head. "Well, she said she would. Hell, it's practically the only thing she said on her own."

Rei Ayanami enters on cue -- to the second. She's wearing her The Littlest Top Squadron Member outfit, which aren't technically the only workout clothes she owns (A-LAWS gave her the A-LAWS standard set), but the ones she considers most appropriate for training on the Exelion. She still looks ill at ease in the revealing garb, and her body is the sort that's ill at ease with being revealed -- she's all angles and elbows, and pale chicken legs.

Rei doesn't say hello, doesn't wave, doesn't do anything other than walk up to Noriko and Jung and stand perfectly still with her arms at her sides. Her feet are perfectly aligned. It's as if she expects to be drilled then and there, or possibly subjected to some kind of examination -- in any event, there's something very military and ritualistic about it. Her red eyes stare straight ahead, looking at neither woman.

And that's Rei Ayanami's bombastic entrance. She stands there, in silence, waiting to be bossed around. It's almost sad. Rei's hair is getting a bit long. Blue bangs hang in her eyes, and she doesn't seem to care that it looks sloppy and undisciplined.

Jung, for her part, was in the standard Top Squadron uniform, plus a leather jacket. She is perhaps more amused than anything at Noriko's intense pleasure at being called 'Coach', but hasn't brought it up /directly/... /yet/.

When Rei comes inwards, she straightens upwards, putting on her thousand lumens smile. "Rei!" she says, rising upwards and stepping around the table, putting one hand on it as she wheels around, reaching out /by force/ as may be necessary to take Rei's hand and give it a nice if ladylike squeeze. "It's great to meet you - been a long day?"

She doesn't comment on the hair, beyond the faint urge to ruffle it. "Anyway, I'm Jung Freud; we've spoken on the radio once or twice but I don't think we've formally met... and of course, you know," a glance to the left, "'Coach' Takaya. Why don't you have a seat?"

Noriko can be deeply amused by the simple pleasures - a good anime, a decent video game, and apparently someone calling her Coach with as close to enthusiasm as Rei Ayanami can muster, which if we must be honest is not actually very close at all.

In fact it's pretty far.

But Noriko does hop to her feet when Rei walks in, puffing up a little as if sticking her chest out makes her more authoritative. This is probably a trick she got from Jung and misintuited the meaning of. "Hello, Rei," she says, with a big smile. "Are you doing OK?" She still looks awful, she thinks - even setting aside how uncomfortable people seem to find the Top uniform in general, Rei does not have the body or skin tone for it. Noriko chooses to take it as a challenge: How long will it take her to make Rei look good in that? Though, she does wonder if she shouldn't let her wear the A-LAWS outfit more, for now...just for her own comfort's sake. Her hair's getting longer, too - but that's Rei's own choice, and Noriko clearly doesn't mind non-regulation hair, considering the disorganized mop she wears from day to day. Noriko hangs at the back, because it's the Coach's job to be aloof and driven!! That said, she completely fails to stop herself from blushing and giggling like an idiot when Jung calls her 'coach'. "Er!" she manages, afterward. "Th-that is, today we wanted to talk to you a little about your diet, and maybe give you some things you can do when you're away from the Exelion."

Jung's grip on Rei's hand is met with an amount of resistance that could really only be called 'zero' because it's not really possible to quantify a negative amount. It's like lifting a spaghetti noodle, and not just because Rei's so skinny. She accepts the handling blankly, and returns none of the enthusiasm. When prompted, the tiny girl walks over to a chair and sits down.

Rei is then silent for a long moment before replying, "I was taking part in zero-gravity training." That's as much as she's likely to give, and true to form, her explanation goes no further than that. She doesn't seem annoyed or terse, just hollow inside, like the words coming out of her mouth were really coming from some internal tape deck.

Then, the introduction to the meeting's purpose. Rei's unblinking eyes are turned toward Noriko -- her whole head, in fact. She nods once, gently but slowly. "Acknowledged, Coach," she replies. If she's trying to provoke a giggling reaction again, then she's very, very, very good at hiding it. "And yes. I'm doing okay." Spoken with the monotone of someone who's survived a lobotomy.

Some subtle part of Jung's mind feels like she's just handled dead meat. She ignores this, and that's why she's a lousy Newtype.

She settles back into her chair. "Oh, that must be really rough; you're still getting used to it, right? It SEEMS easy if you're just screwing around." She glances at Noriko for a moment, as if to confirm with her expression: This is normal, right?

Despite this, it is not the first conversation that Jung has carried, as she flips open the packet of papers and clicks on an official A-LAWS issue pen (Motto: "The Write To Freedom") before lowering the tip of it to the page. "Anyway, Takaya's worried you're not eating right. I understand you're probably used to your current diet, though, and we don't want to force you to break your familiar habits immediately. Could you tell me what you ate throughout yesterday?"

Noriko, of course, is a terrible newtype because she's an oldtype, and apparently too stupid to just...develop psychic powers spontaneously, like a proper protagonist.

"Yeah, the gravity training's hard stuff, especially the first couple times," she says - catches Jung's glance, and nods. Yes; she is /always/ like this. That Noriko's seen, anyway. She grins a little, again, because Rei did, but she's got to /keep it under control, dammit/, so she just crosses her arms and leans back, saying, "Glad you're OK!" with a big smile. "I'll be here. Just answer Jung's questions, for now, and we'll figure out the rest in a bit."

Should anyone check the logs of one of the zero-g obstacle courses later, they will show that 'Ayanami, R.' completed it no less than thirty times during their session. The first time took forever. The thirtieth, slightly less. Still, Rei doesn't actually volunteer this information. The comments on gravity training pass by her without comment of her own.

Rei's vacant attention shifts when Noriko tells her to answer the questions. "Acknowledged, Coach," she says again, exactly the same monotone as before. Her head turns toward Jung, and now Jung has the fun of perhaps realizing that Rei does not, you know, blink.

Rei's hands fold delicately in her lap. Sitting in the chair, in her dance-recital uniform, she looks like a child who happens to be in a teenager's body, if only barely. "Yesterday, in addition to my pharmaceutical requirements, I ate..." Rei has to pause and think. "For lunch, I ate garlic ramen from the Minerva mess hall vending machine, and drank a bottle of water. For dinner, I ate a bean sprouts sandwich and drank a bottle of water. I did not eat breakfast." Rei doesn't seem self-conscious about the answer she gives. She recites it as if she were rattling off a license plate number.

Jung looks mildly horrified. She doesn't look back at Noriko directly, though, but she does make down some notes, estimating the garlic ramen - that was the highest value thing, she thinks, the figuring coming out to approximately one thousand calories for a teenaged girl. Suddenly, many things become clearer.

"Alright," she says, clearing her throat slightly. "It sounds like you're doing alright on carbohyrdates and vegetables, but this doesn't sound like a balanced diet. Is this, you know, typical?" she asks, even as she leans over to pop open the cooler.

Pop open the cooler and murmur to Noriko, "How can she /get out of bed/ on that," even over the cryogenic gas hiss of the thing opening. Jung fishes into it and produces an enigmatic can, which she places on the table: "Here, first thing, drink this."

It appears to be NUTRI THIRST.

Chocolate flavor.

There is no ingredients label.

Noriko's happy look fades a little into a kind of blank, stunned stare when Rei recites her eating habits. That unblinking stare...Noriko only just noticed it by the end of their last session, and it's still really, extremely, creepy as hell. Still, she does her best not to think poorly of her new student, because she's her NEW STUDENT and that's COMPLETELY FANTASTIC.

Also fantastic, but in a different kind of way, as in 'ludicrously odd', is Rei's diet. Noriko follows Jung when her partner in crime mutters incredulously, and Noriko replies in equal turn, "I have /no/ idea," sotto voce.

Still lets Jung handle this, because Jung's...prepared for it, mostly. And mentally revising her plans for workouts. No freakin' wonder she got winded by the /warmup/!

"It is typical, yes," Rei says without emotion (par for the course). "The most significant alteration was... last week. Agent Johnny Domino fed me cake." It's a bizarre choice of words, but she stands by it, since she doesn't seem to notice anything weird in saying it.

Rei stays in her obedient little position until the can of Nutri Thirst is put down. Rei doesn't reach over and take it -- she stands up, walks over, takes up the can, walks back to her chair, sits down, and /then/ opens the can with a crack of the tab.

Rei doesn't even question it, though. She doesn't look at the can. Doesn't look for a label -- doesn't even ask what she's drinking. She just tips the can up and drinks it. She has to stop for breath twice, but she drinks the entire can. Then she gets up, walks over, sets it back down, walks back to her chair, and sits down again, re-folding her hands in her lap.

"OK, well, the main problems you're going to have here is that your diet is pretty short on protein, fats, and calori...es..." Jung says, before she watches that little song and dance number with the standing up, stepping forward, etc.

She has no idea what that means. She clicks the pen two times. The drink itself is Chocolate Flavored, which means it's mildly disgusting, but it is, at least, not in any way tainted with vomit. "Anyway, you're probably consuming about twelve hundred calories a day, which is a very low level for your age and desired activity level. Now, the good news is that this is a lot easier to deal with than the other way around, which is a lot more common!"

Rei shifts in her seat, slightly. She might be getting comfortable. She might be redistributing her weight. She might be processing the chocolate shake she just drank. Or she might just be experiencing the worst foe faced by anyone who wears a Top Squadron uniform, 'what if a seat is really cold.' Who knows. It's Rei.

The blue-haired girl nods slowly again -- just a single, solitary nod. Her eyes stay fixed on Jung's through the conversation, following her without fail. "Do you want me to eat more?" Rei asks. Her monotone smothers the sentence's question mark, and her lack of enthusiasm makes it sound like Jung is proposing she do a fun new set of chores.

Chores like 'eating.'

If that seat is cold you sit on it. With your ass. Until it's warm! Like the burning heart of Coach!!

Alternately: you get a towel.

Jung smiles, faintly. "Yeah, I do," she says. "But I bet you don't want to, do you?" she says as she points the pen forwards. As Noriko doubtless basks, or at least lets Jung run her mouth, she continues, "I bet you're thinking something like - what a bossy old cow, I don't feel like this, but maybe if I do what she says, she'll leave me alone."

Her eyebrows raise. "Close?"

Noriko Takaya, pretty much just basking.

And looking thoughtful. Noriko may be SLOW but she's not an IDIOT. Any piloting program worth a tenth of its budget knows to keep its pilots better fed than THAT. NERV has a /big/ budget. More to the point, even a basic piloting program keeps certain health minimums, don't they? So why? Why do they let her malnourish herself to that level? And why the sudden interest in her health /now/, when she's been on NERV's payroll since before Noriko even returned from the Exelion Expedition? Eyes are narrowing, thoughtfully, as her thoughts pick up speed - but she doesn't really say much of anything out loud. Listen, her heart recalls. Learn.

Rei stares at Jung Freud for a long, long moment. It's a pause that could mean anything but probably means some kind of offense being taken. Except... Rei doesn't even let that much show. It's as if Jung were trying to guess at the feelings of a post. Which -- well, might not be far off.

"No," Rei Ayanami replies, softly, neutrally, non-judgmentally.

"If you would like me to eat more, I will eat more." Rei says this like she's a robot, as if she were a Teddy Ruxpin just waiting to have the cassette placed into its belly and its play button jammed down. "I have no preference of my own, and no opinion regarding your authority."

Jung is puzzled more directly. This is a sort of apathy she has not seen before; even when it's been present it's usually been a pose, something hidden there. Her brow furrows; she had never quite learned to reach out, and besides which, that would be something of an invasion of privacy, wouldn't it, Admiral Scirocco? Of course it would be.

She clicks the pen once, and gives Noriko a somewhat baffled look. Then back towards Rei, to which she asks curiously, "Will you clean my quarters, too? My current maid's pretty lousy at it."

She laughs then. See, it's a /joke/. "Anyway, we just want to help you out. It's not just a question of eating 'more,' you have to eat good stuff. Takaya told me you're a vegetarian, which makes it a little more complicated to get the proper intake of protein, which is probably really what you need other than just, you know, 'more'."

Noriko talked to Leo Stenbuck beforehand, so she was....a /little/ prepared. Which is to say she knew the guidelines, but even she isn't really...you can't prepare, not for Rei Ayanami. She just kind of...absorbs? That's a great word for it, Noriko decides. The ambience, the energy, everything in the room except an awkward sense that something is wrong, she just...eats it.

Maybe that's why she has the energy to get out of bed in the morning? She adds, suddenly, "She's kidding, you don't have to clean ehr room," to Jung's joke, with an uneasy grin. "...You really should be eating more, though."

Reaching out to Rei Ayanami is in many ways like touching the void. Just ask Amuro Ray. Or the fragment of Amuro Ray's soul that didn't quite make it back out. But that's a whole other mess of problems. The small girl radiates unease -- not her own, but a general pervading feeling, like hearing a dog whistle. Forever.

"Acknowledged," is Rei's sole response to the discussion of her dietary needs. The thing about jokes is that Rei does understand them. Or, okay, maybe she doesn't understand them, but she can spot them when she hears them. She just doesn't laugh at them. Or smile at them. Or react to them. Ask Leo Stenbuck how many times he tried. Rei just lets the whole thing roll past her, focusing on the important part -- but then, this focus just gets an 'Acknowledged' out of her. Considering her demeanor, she may well just be waiting for her orders.

Jung is wondering vaguely why Leo was porking this. She is of course trying not to judge - but /damn/.

She rubs the bridge of her nose. "So," she continues onwards, bravely, "what you ought to do with that diet you were describing, is try to eat at least once more a day, and something fairly rich. Ideally you want to have some protein twice a day, not all at once or you can't absorb it to its best effect. Cheese or tofu, or beans and rice together, that would probably do well for you; or eggs, those are great too."

She considers for a moment. "Give me an example of what you might eat in a day under this policy," she decides to try, resting her elbows on the table and her chin in her folded hands.

Rei is given pause. Maybe. It could just be occasion for one of Rei's trademark 'inordinately long pauses that treat the rhythm of conversation as something to be strangled in the crib.' Whatever the case, Rei sits silently for nearly sixty seconds.

"I base this on what I recall of the Minerva's mess hall menu options," Rei notes, as if her answer required a preface. "For breakfast, an omelet with toast and orange juice. For lunch..." Rei pauses again. "Soup and water." Whatever the process is going into these decisions, Rei doesn't share. "For dinner, 'cheesy rice'--" (Rei even pronounces it with scare quotes, because 'cheesy rice' is A-LAWS' attempt to make the troops think they're eating something more substantial than 'velveeta and rice.') "--a salad, and water."

Rei falls back into her uncomfortable silence, but finally her eyes turn away from Jung. She still doesn't blink, but now she looks at Noriko, as if... what? Seeking the approval of her 'Coach,' maybe?

Noriko is beginning to be able to spot Rei's weirder mannerisms. The not blinking, that was the first. The bizarre moments where she just sits there and /thinks/, or chugs, like a computer you're trying to make do too much...she wonders just what kind of problems the girl /has/, given all the pills they give her, constantly. It's beginning to come together, but...but what does it MEAN?

Noriko looks up at Rei's prompt, and nods. "That sounds alright," she confirms, with a glance at Jung. "Lunch is a little plain, but if that's what they've got..."

Jung had fished herself a NUTRI THIRST out of the cooler as well, because she got the impression - this one perhaps not due to her freaky brain powers - that Rei was giving the matter, in the words of her mother, 'a short stack of thick thought'. She's not sure what the girl's deal is, but it makes more sense now; she dimly recalls hearing that Evangelion piloting runs on something even rarer than Newtypes, and if it was in this creepy young girl, well...

Try to be encouraging. "That's not bad," she says. "That'll probably be a lot more robust than what you're eating now. In a few days you'd probably start to feel better, though you'll also gain a little weight - don't worry about that, though." Sometimes it's an issue. "You might have a glass of milk with lunch or breakfast, too. Do you have any sweets or anything you like to have sometimes?"

Rei again drifts away into thought, with the catch being that she's still staring at Noriko as she does this. It's not really that much of a difference between 'alert and engaged Rei' and 'thinking and musing Rei' so really, it just looks like she's... staring at Noriko for an uncomfortably long stretch.

Rei's thoughts take her back to the only sweets she's ever even had. A cookie. Some cake. Both given to her by Johnny Domino. She has to work out her feelings on sweets, because they seem confusing. Eventually, though, Rei announces that she's about to speak by returning her attention to Jung. "I have had a cookie, and cake," she says, her word choice bizarre but honest. "I would not object to eating either again."

Noriko nods at Jung's assessment, because she was totally thinking that. Try to be a good Coach, now, she thinks; try to figure out what the apparently malevolent mystery group full of creepy images and a scary guy who always hides behind a pair of sunglasses is doing to your student later.

The irony is lost on her.

She fidgets when Rei just kind of...meditates on her. "Uh," she says, uneasily. "Uhm." A long, long time. But she just swallows and tries not to feel too much like she's being analyzed for proper disection. Or perhaps for carving.

A glance at Jung, because this is just getting weird. "Cookies and cake," she says. "Well, that's not bad." Noriko likes cake.

"Sure!" Jung says, cheerily. "Just don't load up on them too much. You should be able to get cookies /or/ cake in the mess hall. And this-" Here she pushes the cooler forwards with her foot, "is some other stuff we put together for you. There's some sliced tofu, a few more of those drinks, some stuff Takaya picked out I didn't recognize... You know, for when you're cooking at home!"

She smiles again. With /feeling/. "You can keep it too if you want. Keep to it, and listen to 'Coach's' instructions, and you'll do great!"