Issue 1 Downtime

Altamira, as part of her bet with Nailah, had to attend classes for a week. She chose to follow Kevin's schedule around, because that was a hell of a lot easier than making something up. This went fine, if boringly, during the traditional math and science courses, with Mira yawning her way through them.

When it came to Kevin's culinary classes, however, Mira was slightly more out of her depth.

Thus, the Phoenix found herself, wearing her apron, wrangling with a bag of flour in a kitchen, grumbling up a storm.

((Wiiiiiide open.))

"Ze mysteries of ze universe pale before zose of ze kitchen, no?" the nearby Kevin said in his best/worst French accent, smirking.

"This is so much easier if you don't have to think about raw ingredients," Mira pouted. "Just poof, and you have a cake. Why is that so difficult?"

"The rest of us don't have cosmic creation powers?"

"Well, hurry up and evolve, you crazy monkey," Mira said, flicking some flour at him, and probably drawing an annoyed glance from the lab instructor.

"Is that how creation happened the first time?" Victoria mused from her stove, where she was used to the annoyed glares. "Just poof, and there was the finished product?"

"That does seem a little uninspired for the creation of the universe. There should at least be a tremendous kaboom."

"Creation is creation," Victoria mused. Was she smirking? She wasn't looking over at her. But it was Victoria. She was probably smirking.

"These instructions are faulty." Ashlie complains in the background, a whisk instead of a hand, staring into her bowl that contains a clumpy mess of flour and water.

"It's a process that produces an end result that wasn't there to start with. Is there another way to describe creation?" Victoria countered conversationally.

"Oh, concentrate on your baking before, I dunno, I deconstruct you, molecule by molecule or something," she laughed, dismissively.

"Now now... I don't let people get that personal until they've bought me dinner."

"Sorry, hun, I already have a date," she said, winking at Kevin.

There's a the high-pitched whine and crash of a super accelerated mixing bowl full of badly mixed batter oscillating beyond it's braking point, resulting in Ashlie's chassis being coated in a flour/egg/water mixture.

"Though I prefer my molecules constructed. None of this kinky molecular deconstruction for moi."

Kevin used a wooden spoon give his mixed up cake batter a taste.

"And damn this cake is going to rock."

Frustrated, Altamira dumped the contents of the bowl into the sink.

"Cooking is dumb."

"You won't say that when you taste what I'm cooking you for dinner."

"The days you bring snacks to team practice are usually the best," Melody nodded from her station near Kevin and Mira.

"Though I think I do up snack day better than you," she smirked, pouring her batter into a cake pan.

"Of course I make the cheesy things. I make multiple kinds of cheesy things." she grinned.

'Mira opened a previously closed cabinet and pulled out a different bag of flour, of a different brand.

"Right. One more attempt at making cupcakes, and if it fails, I'm going to declare baking an enemy of life. Or something. I'd have to look up the bylaws about that."

Kevin poured his batter and put his cake pan into his oven.

"Those spicy Cheese Straw things? Those are awesome... and easy as hell to make."

"Yes. Spicy. The spicier, the better," Mira said, dumping in a shitload of cocoa into her flour mix.

"Not every meal need be beef Wellington," she smirked.

"Don't tell Lord More that; he might start a riot," she said, vigorously attacking her mixture with a wooden spoon.

"I might do that just to aggravate that pompous dbag," she snickered.

Mira poured her batter into a couple cupcake trays. "Stupid bet. I could get these things to work perfectly if I wanted to, but nooooo."

"You look like you're doing fine," she smiled helpfully. "Just don't pour so fast, you're spilling and all of that extra will burn."

"Yes. Yes! Burn, in the light of the Phoenix!" she said, overdramatically.

Melody smirked, “Look, I get that fire is kind of your schtick, but do you really enjoy the taste of burnt cupcakes?”

"Buy some Phoenix brand cupcakes today! They're chartastic!"

"Oh damn, you just got told," she grinned.

"Of course I will. Because the secret ingredient is love... and maybe long dead galaxies."

Melody put her cake into the oven and set a timer on the stove.

Man how do you even date a cosmic power? she mused to herself.

"Don't worry. Your cupcakes will probably turn out better than Kevin's cake," she teased.