Training
The Second and Third Children sat facing one another, each with a fork in hand.
"You first," Asuka said. "You made it."
Shinji looked down at what was, hypothetically, a casserole. Not tradition Japanese fair, but the only thing he knew how to make with the meager supply of actual food the Lieutenant had Okayed them to exhaust. Except for the whiskey, which she had snatched off the table and secreted in her room.
The casserole twitched. A pocket of sauce shifting, surely. Everything that had gone in to it had been dead a long time, down to the salted meat and the tinned tomato sauce.
But knowing everything that had gone into the casserole failed to explain why the lump of food was green. Or why it smelled like vinegar and mold and appeared to be turning the glass beneath it brown.
Shinji took a bit up in his fork, didn't examine it to closely, and ate.
Oh, what the hell.
It was not very good. In retrospect, the sushi hadn't been either. But it was real food. Real food. Shinji had spent most of his life eating A-rations and K-rations. And the occasional pre-Impact MRE. The meat and vegetables and fungus the horticultural sector of his shelter produced fed right into the ration processing plant.
Shinji had once been pulled into a double shift to cater some UN Executive event. They had made soup with green plants and wet red meat. It had smelled wonderful. He hadn't been allowed to taste it.
And though he was no longer a cook, Shinji was already noting how the casserole could be made passable to an officer's palette. Some sugar to even out the taste, a bit of starch scraped from an I-ration tin to thicken it out…
Shinji was halfway through the dish when Asuka started making hacking sounds. She had a fork in her mouth and was staring at him in a way that was... disquieting. She hacked again, her lips a tight line. She slowly got up, went to the washroom, and started throwing up.
A screech emanated from the Lieutenant's room, her alarm clock. Asuka continued her retching. Shinji hoped it was theatrical. The alarm was cut short and the Lieutenant emerged disheveled and very much wearing what Shinji had last seen her in. She trudged over to the table, glanced at the mostly-eaten casserole, sniffed it, and plopped down.
"Miss Sohryu seems to have a refined palette" Misato commented absently, digging Shinji's fork out of the casserole dish and helping herself. She took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. "Needs more sugar."
The Lieutenant leaned back in the chair and balanced it on two legs. "Pilot Sohryu," she called. "We have something official to discuss."
The Second Child was nothing if not a good soldier. She quickly emerged from the bathroom, a piece of coarse tissue against her mouth. Shinji noted some slime on her cheek and inwardly winced. She had really been sick.
Asuka sat between the Lieutenant and Shinji, and shot the Third Child a withering look before turning her attention to her superior.
"Ja, ma'am?"
"Japanese please, this concerns the both of you." Misato took another bite of the casserole.
"It was decided, while you two were playing house and drinking my liquor, that the two of you will receive private instruction from a NERV…" and here she seemed to be searching for a word "…tutor."
"This training will begin immediately for the Third Child" she nodded to Shinji, "and the Second Child, once she has recovered."
Asuka began to object, but Misato silenced her with a gesture. "This is not about the Evangelion Project, not directly."
"Now, while Pilot Sohryu is an experienced Eva pilot, you, Shinji, have virtually no experience. So in addition to your… tutelage, with the other pilots, you must also visit Rit… Dr. Akagi every day for additional training. Questions?"
Why are you addressing me as "Shinji" and her as "Pilot Sohryu"?
Asuka was up out of her chair, not looking like she needed time to recover at all. "I shouldn't need to take part in this idiotic training! All I have to do is pilot Eva, right? I should be working on Unit Two, not hanging out with this idiot..." she pointed to Shinji and wiped the smear of slime from her cheek, "…who can't even cook properly. I already know how to tie my shoes and count to ten. Taking part in his education for whatever reason, team-building? isn't necessary."
Shinji stared. Whatever pretense of camaraderie he and the Second Child had shared was gone. Calling him an idiot? What on fuck?
The Lieutenant was not at all phased. She just stared at the girl pilot for a moment, and asked her what she thought of the UN.
"They are fucking moles. Digging deeper holes as the wind strips the earth away. They have power only because they control the production of N2…" Asuka struggled to find the Nipponese word, "…items."
Misato leaned further back in her chair and Shinji was certain, so certain, that she would fall backward. "Miss Sohryu, are you aware of the Common Defense Treaty, put in to effect in 2012?" Now the Lieutenant wore a smirk.
Asuka's eyes got far away, and began to bounce from left to right, as though she were reading something inside her head.
"Oh…" she said, quietly. "Oh."
Misato's grin grew a bit, and with a nod she turned back to Shinji. "Do not worry about it, your tutor can probably explain it better. Oh, I forgot…" she slammed her chair back onto four legs, rose, and disappeared into her room. She came out with two watches, which she placed on the table. One watch had a narrow, black leather band, the other a band of white plastic. Misato pushed the black banded to Asuka, the white to Shinji.
"This is your watches, or 'chrono', if you're used to the UN slang. When the face is green," she indicated the green LCD on Asuka's watch, which displayed military time in thick black digits, "you're awake. When the face is black, you sleep. You kids probably don't have any concept of a day/night cycle, but these are to keep your circadian rhythm healthy. You should be at this location when the watches turn black, but if not, return here immediately and go to sleep. You are about to become very busy, and I doubt you will have much difficulty resting. If you try to sleep when the watch's face is green, it will administer a tiny shock that should stimulate your system and make sleep impossible. We are not cruel, but you must adjust to our norms to function well here."
Asuka snatched up the watch, then went to her room and shut the door. Misato watched her leave, then turned to Shinji.
"So, how'd I do?" she grinned. Shinji almost felt like grinning back. But Katsuragi was still the one that had knocked him out and dumped him into the Eva.
"Miss… Lieutenant?" he kept his speech formal. This business with using his first name still bothered him. "You said that I would be taught with the other pilots? Plural, ma'am?"
"Oh," Misato was up and opening the fridge. "Rei, I never mentioned Rei, did I? She is the First Child, sorry sorry, there just hasn't been time to bring her over."
Shinji looked at Asuka's closed door. "Is she…" are all pilots like Sohryu?
Misato brought out a jug of thick, brown liquid, and saw where he was looking. "Oh, I believe she and Miss Sohryu are very different." She opened a cupboard and got three glasses, which she filled with the brown liquid and placed on the table before seating herself.
"But I was not being very nice to Miss Sohryu. She is just as new to the way of things here as you are, I am afraid. Shouldn't be too hard on her, she comes from a very different situation, and she has just been through what might be a major trauma."
Shinji started to ask what major trauma, exactly, but Misato stopped him. "That is something you should ask her about."
He took a sip from the glass in front of him. Thick. Rich. Bitter-sweet. Chocolate milk? Shinji looked up at Misato, licking his lips, then drained the glass. Misato grinned and raised her eyebrows "Not everything here is stale or dry."
For a moment, Shinji took the Lieutenant's statement an entirely different way. Before he could examine it too closely though, Asuka emerged in her NERV uniform, watch strapped around her left wrist.
"Bere... Ready for duty, ma'am," Asuka belted out sharply.
Misato shook her head and handed the Second Child a glass of chocolate milk. "Here we do not stand on ceremony, Miss Sohryu. You may call me Misato if you like, so long as I can call you by your given name. I would appreciate this, because I'm getting really fucking tired of this military dialect."
Misato drained her glass of milk, Asuka had not yet sipped hers. "Anyway, if you are in such a hurry to feel the burn, be my guest. Simon will be overjoyed that you both will be playing catch-up at the same time."
The Lieutenant glanced at her own watch. "Oh, you're due in thirty minutes. Shinji, hurry up."
Shinji hurried past Asuka, who was sniffing her milk.
-
"It was a stupid idea to take her home, and a stupid idea to give her to Simon before she is fully recovered," Ritsuko commented absently to the form draped over the couch in her office. "Boy-people and girl-people are different, Misato. You see…"
"Spare me, Ritsu," the Lieutenant moaned. "If I had given her a direct order to stay put, she would have gone and done pushups in her room, and read Sun Tzu or something. Those guys in Germany fucked her up sideways. At least she hasn't assault the Third Child with an instrument tray yet."
"I... what?"
"Nothing. Nevermind. She's just got this military decorum thing going on that is, ah, humbling. And embarassing. People under my command are nothing like her."
Ritsuko noisily sipped her coffee, her sign she was not interested in playing psychologist. "I'd suggest you separate them. Major Greene will not go easy on them, and their new diet is going to make things even worse. They'll want a place to retire, some place their own. Rei's been fine in the barracks. We can put them all in the same private wing, the place is so huge they'd probably never find one another without a map, anyway."
Misato lifted the book off her eyes. "Haven't you been listening? Asuka is military. The fucking German Branch, I don't know what they're doing over there, but it sounds chickenshit. Old school chickenshit. We've relaxed regulations here because it boosts morale and actually made people work better, harder. We are a military facility, but we're also stuck here for the duration. The German branch, from what I've seen at the vid conferences, is fucking Draconian. I'll spare you the Nazi reference."
Ritsuko sipped her coffee again, quietly. "I see your point, even if her particular conditioning benefits us in the short term, her lack of social skills will lead to her isolating herself. That and the language barrier could lead to a breakdown. Bravo Lieutenant Katsuragi, you engaged me intellectually."
Lieutenant Katsuragi grinned, and tossed the book in her hands to Ritsuko. "You keep reading stuff like this, engaging you intellectually will just get easier."
In Ritsuko's hands was a romance novel. The scientist looked at it sadly, then at Misato.
"We've all got our dreams, Misato. Even if it hurts us, we've still got to feed them."
-
Misato had given Asuka and Shinji very clear instructions on how to locate Simon Greene. He would be waiting for them in the sixth exercise yard on the third floor of the Outer Sector. Everything that followed that information had apparently been a vicious lie, concocted by the Lieutenant to force the displeasure of Shinji's company on Asuka, Private First-Class, who was, in her own words, "loyal to a fault".
Shinji would have totally ignored Asuka's diatribe and concentrated on more personally relevant matters, like figuring out how to loosen the collar of his uniform, but every so often Asuka would need to stop and rest.
They would sit on a bench in one of many white corridors, distinct from the last white corridor they had been in by the alphanumeric designation painted in black where the hallways intersected. This theoretically gave anyone who got lost a sporting chance of getting out before succumbing to starvation. Shinji had developed the irrational that they would stumble on a corpse in a NERV uniform, skin dried and flakey in this damnable air so recycled it hurt to breath.
That image was familiar. Stirred deeper thoughts he did not wish to bear out at the moment. So something that should have seemed funny was instead a real fear.
Asuka kept her distance, even on the bench. Shinji had tried to apologize for the casserole, but the red-head just muttered in reply and ignored him. In a funny way, this behavior was actually become personable. Shinji couldn't help but notice how poorly Asuka filled out her uniform - how thin her arms were, the way her legs shook, the dents in the chest of her starched uniform that indicated a hollow cavity… and yet here she was alongside him. She was driven to a fault, he could see this, even with his meager experience.
The corridors were lined with many identical doors. Shinji and Asuka were supposed to find Greene by virtue of an open door. At each intersection they would stare off into what was often a fuzzy horizon, each identical hallway extending beyond their ability to focus.
They were currently traveling down corridor 3A. Their ultimate destination lay shortly after an intersection between 7R and G2. Asuka had quickly deduced that all corridors beginning with a number ran perpendicular to the ones beginning with a letter. This was the system to which Shinji was accustomed, and was standard in all shelters as far as he knew, but he kept his mouth shut because he was very certain that, despite her frail appearance, Asuka could hurt him if she wanted to.
The problem was, Asuka and Shinji were both wrong. The hall designations did not proceed with any rhyme or reason. Misato's directions were useless. Corridor 7G turned into 8O. The two other hallways at the intersection were 7A and 7L. The hallways were not alphabatized. The numbers seemed to build, but Shinji couldn't see how, couldn't understand how the system worked, and was beginning to wonder how long it would take them to find their way back to the Middle Sector.
The two pilots were starting to get thirsty when Rei found them.
-
Shinji had no idea they were being followed until a soft voice called from behind them.
"Are you pilots Sohryu and Ikari?"
Asuka spun around, and Shinji twitched. He was going to turn around, and there was going to be a dead body there, dead for so long and whispering to them. They had somehow avoided seeing it and now… he pushed those idiotic thoughts aside and turned.
Rei was small and ghostly. Her flesh was almost the same shade as the hallway, and her eyes... Shinji was used to seeing people with pink eyes, sometimes the body just stopped producing the melanin that colored the eye, if hidden from the sun long enough. He had never seen eyes with blood-red irises though. He had seen brown and black hair turn the color of strained seaweed, but had never seen hair as shockingly snow-white as Rei's before, either. It almost looked blue. She was clearly Nipponese.
The First Child had a uniform jacket tied around her waist. Above that she wore a gray tank top and sports bra. Her expression was utterly blank.
"Yeah, we are they, and you are Pilot Ayanami, right?" Asuka asked the girl in awkward Nipponese as she approached, folded one arm behind her back, and stuck the other forward. "I am Pilot Sohryu, pleased to make your acquaintance."
The First looked down at Asuka's hand, and gingerly shook it. She did not act shy, but uncertain, tentative. Then she stepped back and extended her hand to Shinji as Asuka had done, and Shinji shook it. "Nice to meet you, Pilot Rei… sorry, Ayanami?"
Dammit. Katsuragi had him using first names now.
The girl nodded. "Please follow me, Major Greene is waiting for us."
-
The Outer Sector was a hollow sphere around the rest of the Geo-Front. The hallways actually curved around, but the sector was so large Shinji and Asuka hadn't noticed. This sector was meant to be administrative offices for the city NERV planned to build once conditions outside became "more favorable" (as Rei described it), and evacuation shelters for the residents of that as-yet unrealized city.
For now these hallways, and most of the rooms they lead to, were empty. The numeric system was not based on the alphabet at all, but instead the motto of NERV, "God's in His Heaven, All's Right With the World." "God's in His Heaven" corridors ran North to South, "All's Right With the World" ran East to West. Relative to the four entrances one could enter the Outer Sector from, of course the hallways wrapped around. The two lost pilots had been on the G and O in "GOD", and between the A and L in "ALLS". This system, Rei explained, was devised to confuse any "military incursion".
Shinji didn't like the sound of that.
The First Child informed the two pilots of these things as she walked ahead. Asuka was glaring at the other girl, her eyes roaming from feet to shoulders. The red-head absently crossed her arms, squeezed them.
It took Shinji a moment to figure that out. Rei's body was compact, but solid. She was fit. Asuka was probably feeling intimidated.
No. That was the wrong word. Pilot Sohryu was probably feeling provoked. Shinji smiled at the thought. It wasn't really fair, he barely knew her at all.
And he supposed Asuka's condition wasn't really funny. At all.
Major trauma, Lt. Katsuragi had said.
After several turns, Rei stopped at a seemingly random door and pressed her hand into a depression in the door's middle. The portal opened with a hiss.
"We were informed that the door would be open." Asuka stiffly observed.
"It is opened when you are supposed to be here," Rei answered. "It will open for me because my hand-print is coded in to it. If you are late, you will not be able to enter."
Behind Rei, Asuka gritted her teeth.
They descended a darkened stairwell.
-
"So, do you have any new insight into the Third Child?" Ritsuko asked.
They were in the refactory now. Ritsuko claimed to be nervous about allowing Misato near the equipment in her office for any length of time, but they were really there because it was red meat day.
Misato tore off some beef kabob and chewed thoughtfully. "Can't get a read on him," she said she chewed. "Sometimes it's easy, he's a kid, you know? Other times he seems a lot older. Maybe that's his father in him. Wish we had an up-to-date psychological profile."
Ritsuko nibbled at her beef and studied Misato for a moment.
"You like him, don't you?"
Misato bit through her teriyaki stick. Then she glared at her friend and took a swig of water. "You're sick, Akagi, you know that?"
Ritsuko was grinning and shaking her head. "All I'm saying, Lieutenant Katsuragi, is that if you DID have a psychological profile of the Third Child, you'd be most interested in whether or not he preferred older women." Then Ritsuko laughed and spun in her chair just as Misato tried to kick her.
Katsuragi's face was red, Ritsuko knew her friend had never been good at hiding her emotions, aside from the military rote she spouted when talking to the Commander.
"I'm joking, dear Misato," Ritsuko knew she was pushing her luck. "After all, we both know you're so full of hormone repressent, you couldn't possibly get wet enough to…"
She barely dodged the punch.
-
Major Simon Greene was very tall and very broad. He had a buzz cut, and a surprising amount of neck for someone who seemed to be nothing but muscle. He wore a tank-top like Rei's, and shorts with small shoes, a type of which Shinji had never seen before.
From the entrance, they had descended three flights of darkened stairs and emerged into an entirely different world. The training yard was expansive, and lit by large halogen lamps in the ceiling. The air was wetter and easier to breath.
The sight of astroturf beneath halogens made Shinji uneasy again. More old memories. He bit it back though. Wouldn't be able to function if he turned everything into Hellish nostalgia.
They crossed a catwalk which ran across one side of the training yard. This gave them a view of a track and obstacle course before Rei guided them into a building that took up about a fourth of the space in the yard. Where Simon Greene was waiting.
Simon, who had not spoke at the stairwell, finally introduced himself when all three pilots were situated behind a long table, Shinji between Rei and Asuka.
"My name is Simon Greene," he started in English. "MAJOR, Simon Greene. Now, I know neither PFC Sohryu, nor Pilot Ikari understand me, so Miss Ayanami will act as translator until the two of you have a decent grasp of English." Rei recited what the Major had said. The Major nodded when she was done, then continued: "You will address me as Major or, since we cannot stand on ceremony at all times, Mr. Greene. I am here to put you through boot camp."
Shinji looked down at his feet, thinking he'd misunderstood. Simon didn't grin.
"Boot camp is what all soldier have to pass through before entering into the army. I have been charged with developing a program to take young adults born after Second Impact to an acceptable state of physical fitness. My methods in accomplishing this are entirely my prerogative. I will entertain criticism from any of you only after the program is complete."
Shinji began to feel queasy.
"Now, I understand you three are all part of Project E. I am classified to know this, but I have no interest in expanding that knowledge. You are not special here. I am not your parent. I am a very mean motherfucker and I am going to do my very best to remind you that every second you are here."
Asuka opened her mouth. Major Greene interrupted her. "Shut up, Private First Class, I'm not done yet." Rei repeated it impassively.
"Your training is not limited to physical activity. You will have a one hour period…" he motioned for them to stand, "follow me, please." He lead them back to the stairwell, where he flicked on the lights and opened a door Shinji hadn't noticed. Inside was a kitchen. Simon waited until they were all inside, then continued: "You will have a one hour period every morning to eat here. You are not to eat any food that does not come from here. If you are not on time, you will have less time to eat. If you are more then an hour late, I will remind you of this fact aggressively. Until you sweat blood, to be precise. Storage-boys stock this place, I don't know what is in here, and I'm not your fucking chef. That" he pointed to a box, "is a microwave, and that" he pointed to the refrigerator "is a fridge. Are we all clear? Good."
The Major lead them back through the stairwell and on to the catwalk, this time taking them down to the yard itself.
"This is Training Yard Six. It has, up to this point, been used by only myself and Miss Ayanami. You will exercise here twelve hours a day. When you are in this place, you're in my house, understand? You don't sleep or screw in my house, do you understand!"
Shinji blushed. Especially since the translation came from Rei.
"You all have your own beds in other parts of the Geo-Front, do whatever the fuck you want there. You don't sleep in the sand pits. You don't mess around behind equipment where you think I can't see you. You don't collapse outside my door and sleep in the hallways. I'm going to beat the living hell out of you, and then you're going to walk back to your beds and use them. And next time you get out of them, you'll be a'walkin' right back to me. Get used to the idea."
He walked over to the building in the yard and gestured through one of the paned windows to the bottom floor. "Designed it like there was an exterior, can't figure out why. This is the weight room." He rounded the building and led them through another door with a wire-latticed glass window in it that seemed to glow blue. Inside was a large pool. "This thing's filters only run while when you aren't here, so if you piss in it, you swim in it." He showed them where the changing rooms, scuba equipment, and other pool peripherals were kept. The smell of chlorine made the air thick and difficult to breath.
"In deference to the young ladies," Major Greene began as they left the pool room, "I have been instructed to give you this one minor option: the young ladies may be allowed privacy in the pool, should they decide they want it. I think that's too fucking carebear, but that allowance came from higher up. They also get their own locker and bathing facilities. Of course."
The Major led them along the side of the yard, away from the building and the pool, and opened another door. "This is the shooting gallery." The Major began, placing a pair of headphones on his ears. Rei did the same. Asuka quickly followed suit. Shinji was about to ask why when the Major picked up a small pistol and fired it down the range. The sound reverberating through the concrete room knocked Shinji off his feet. Behind his left eye, a seed of pain sprouted.
"We wear these," Major Greene indicated his headphones "to nullify the sound that would eventually render you completely deaf otherwise."
Shinji was trying to blink his headache away. Why the hell would anyone fire a weapon without those muting things on!
The Major showed them the more obvious parts of the training yard, the track and obstacle course and the pole vault. He showed them where the gear for these was stored, how it was stored, and then detailed what he would do if it was not stored properly. "If I find one thing out of place," Major Greene said in a distressingly affable tone, "I'll run all three of you ragged. I don't care who did it."
When this was done, he led them back to the meeting area above the weight room. "This," the Major pointed to a door opposite the entrance. "Is my office. You may knock on this door and enter only if there is a fire, gibbering amorphous somethings are erupting out of the wall, you really want to find out how far I can push you before a bone snaps, or if you smell a decomposing corpse and I am nowhere in evidence." Simon Greene hit the table with his open palm. "You are here, as you were before, at 0800 hours sharp. The outside door will open at 0630, you have until 0800 to do what you like. At 0800 I will distribute your exercise schedules, which you will follow until 1200. Then you can do whatever you like for an hour. I recommend food, and lots of it. 1300 to 1700 will be spent following an the schedule originally provided. From 1700 to 1900, you can do anything you want but leave. After this, the day is completed, you need to leave."
Simon gestured to Rei, "Miss Ayanami has been doing this for three weeks now, but her regime will be adjusted so you all complete it at the same time. After two weeks of training the door will open for you IF you are consistently prompt and IF I'm not feeling like a bastard, otherwise the door shuts at 0700, and I'll be the one letting you in."
Then Major Greene smiled.
"Do you have any questions, children?"
Shinji raised a tentative hand.
"Too fucking bad."