A hellish cooking room

Putting Siena in a maid outfit had several levels to it, depending on how severe her offense had been in John’s opinion. Minor obstruction of everyday life, paranoia causing pranks or overbearing insults? That was a level 1 and earned her the misfortune of wearing the maid outfit for a short period of time. She couldn’t hide with it on either, as the outfit wasn’t part of her and thus couldn’t be brought into the shadows. A level 2 came about when she blatantly did something people did not want her to do. That was already pretty rare, especially since Siena no longer was working against John’s interests whenever she got the chance. At that stage the rule that she had to obey everyone’s wishes for the duration of her dress-up was added.

For the third and final level, when John was extremely annoyed with Siena, he changed just one little thing about level 2. He gave Siena to her nemesis, which, in other words, meant that Aclysia had oversight over her for the duration of her punishment. If there was one thing Siena hated more than having to take orders, then it was getting schooled throughout the whole process about how she was doing it wrong.

Thus, he was now taking the unruly nightmare elemental to the kitchen, where Aclysia was currently helping the master chef that was creating artwork for the taste buds and trying to learn all his tricks in the process. Attempts to reach her mentally had failed; she was so heavily invested in her work that she didn’t hear him. He could have done the equivalent of shoving a stick into her stomach to get her attention, but he feared that he would cause her to drop something by doing that. Therefore, they were now going there without a warning.

They walked the way, instead of using the teleporter, just because John enjoyed that little bit extra humiliation that Siena endured as she walked one step behind him.

‘Where are we - Saudi-Arabia?!’ Siena hissed at him mentally.

‘If we were, you would be wearing a lot more than that,’ he mused right back at her.

‘Can I at least cut the hands of those who touch me?’

‘That is overly , but if anyone does grope you, you can hurt them in non-permanently damaging fashions.’

Lucky for the men on board, they knew better. Although there were many winks and whistles at the overly short skirt and the tightness of the cloth around her ample chest, nobody had the audacity to try to get a feel. John had a feeling that knowledge about him was now slowly seeping into the public, either that or manners weren’t as dead in the Abyss as he thought.

Anyway, they made their way over to the restaurant undisturbed. Once there they navigated towards the kitchen and, barring a short questioning by a waiter what they planned to do, were quickly let in. It seemed that Aclysia’s name already carried some weight with the staff.

“YOU DONKEY, YOU CALL THAT A CLEAR BROTH?! THIS IS PISS!” were the first words that reached John’s ears. “What are you standing there for, all fucking shocked?! Go simmer some more Grohoskies in it and try to salvage this yellow embarrassment!”

The cook in question, a small ant girl, ran away with the oversized pot in her four arms. Miraculously, she did so without spilling anything. “And who the fuck are you now?” the screaming person went over. “Who let this trunk wearing flubbersnicker into MY kitchen?!” he immediately turned onto everyone else without waiting for an answer.

Now John did not have an idea as to what he had expected from the chef, but a person with an afro like a sheep’s fur and the attitude of Gordon Ramsay was not it. Two horns pointed out of the giant hairnet he was wearing.

“Hey, I am John Newman, I am with Aclysia,” he quickly said despite the Don not even looking in his direction. That comment saw the immediate flipping of the relationship score from -25 to 50 in the positive range.

“Ahhh, you must be that master she is always on about, come in,” Ram said in something approaching a friendly tone. “BUT DON’T TOUCH ANY-FUCKING-THING! Clear?”

“Crystal,” John answered, keeping an eye on Siena, who clearly looked like she wanted to ruin someone’s day. The rules gripped tight though, so everyone was safe from any mischief she may cause.

“I have never seen an Artificial Spirit that great at cooking,” Ram immediately went into complimenting Aclysia. To John, that was wonderful to hear; the more appreciation she got, the better. “With their lack of normal taste buds and everything, they normally make passable cooks at best. They can prepare ingredients alright, dicing, cutting, grilling, the whole shebang, but only according to instructions so the final dish always lacks a personal note. She, well, she seems to have figured out to do everything by smell. At least that’s the only explanation I have. The other would be that she analysed someone else’s taste so thoroughly with every meal that she now got some sort of internalized feeling for it.”

“I actually think the latter is more likely,” John told him. “She can be a bit… obsessive with me and I don’t think her sense of smell is that outstandingly great. Perhaps a mixture of both?”

“Baaaa,” he bleated like normal people would say ‘huh’. “A mixture then.”

The kitchen was made of rows upon rows of stations, with each one of them having one to three people working on dishes. Despite their separated working stations, everyone in this kitchen was part of one fluid process. Ingredients travelled through the whole room, being put through different stages of preparation by whoever was currently best suited for it and were used in several dishes during their travels. The team at work here was well attuned to each other, communicating wordlessly to a degree that someone who had very little in the knowledge of cooking but very much in the way of group battles like John could appreciate at the face of it.

“Yo, Aclysia!” the chef’s tone became immediately harsher. Seemed like he had a habit of whipping his support staff into shape through some mean behaviour.

“Chef, yes, chef?” Aclysia didn’t look up from her current work. She was in the process of using her mithril knife to reduce a piece of cabbage into thousands of paper-thin stripes at a level of speed that made her hand just a blur. The constant clacking of the knife against the board underneath mingled perfectly with the symphony of a working kitchen.

“Take your fucking break already! You have been at this since eight in the morning.”

“I don’t require breaks, chef,” Aclysia told him. Meanwhile John was just amazed at how sexy she looked with her hair bound together at her neck. It would have gotten in the way otherwise, he guessed that much.

“I don’t fucking care. You have guests, so tend to them before they ruin the workflow!” the last word perfectly coincided with the cabbage being dumped into a large pot and then carried off by another ant-girl.

Aclysia turned around to see John and went into shocked wide eyes and then a deep bow. “I am deeply sorry for not noticing you, Master!” she declared.

“Just apologize while you are not in the way!” Ram shouted over his shoulder as he walked away. “Take him to the practice board or something, MOVE, MOVE, MOVE, MOOOOVE!”

Aclysia did as asked. In an act of consideration, they took the longest route to their destination, for the simple reason that someone was frying bacon on the way and John was not wearing a shirt. They arrived at a smaller cornerstone of the kitchen that was unused. By the fact that it had been named the practice board, chances were that this was the designated area for newcomers or, as Aclysia explained a moment later, the Don’s kid who wanted to try his hand at the craft early in life.

Currently that little furball wasn’t around, so they had the corner to themselves.

“I doubly apologize for not hearing you,” Aclysia bowed again when she heard what brought them here and why she hadn’t received a warning. “I was tasked with cleaning a six-legged turtle. They have a lot of poisonous ducts that need to be removed carefully, lest the poison spills out and ruins all of the meat.”

“Ah, that kind of cleaning,” John had been confused for a moment. “Anyway, Siena has been a terrible girl so I wanted to do the usual shtick.” He looked around, “Although it seems like you are preoccupied.”

“As the chef pointed out, I do still have my 30-minute break open, so I am available for a little bit,” she told him with a smile. “Although I can think of something that Siena can do regardless.”

The nightmare elemental raised any eyebrow. “And what would that be?” Thirty seconds later she stood there with a knife and an apple and a displeased look in her eyes, “I hate this.”

“That’s the idea. Now start preparing it for our master, chop chop!” Aclysia clapped in her hands. Seemed like she had picked up some leadership strategies from Ram. Thankfully not the swear words, John had enough girls that used them inflationary in his life.

Begrudgingly, Siena placed the apple on the counter and began cutting away at it. Even though her movements were , she had an unsurprising amount of skill with knives and quickly produced eight even sized pieces on a plate.

“As predicted, I can use you for preparation work,” Aclysia said and thus gave her some orders to continue where she herself had left off with the cabbage. The intention behind sending her off on her own was as transparent as possible, when she finished it all with, “Now leave me alone with John.”

With Siena out of the picture, Aclysia turned her whole loving attention to her creator. “Please, let’s sit down,” she offered the single stool around.

“It’s fine,” John said and looked her up and down. Unlike everyone else around, she had not been put into the white kitchen staff outfit, instead staying with the goth-maid esque dress. “I am surprised they let you cook in your regular outfit.”

“As I do not have bodily secretions, I do not provide a health hazard, therefore this exposure of skin was approved. However, my hair needed to be fixed in place,” she explained. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“I do not, not in the slightest,” John placed a quick kiss on her lips. It felt great to be around her after being bored out of his mind for three hours. Recently they had been in contact 24/7 and a bit of distance always helped him remember what he had in everyone. “You can wear your hair however you want.”

“I shall wear it fitting for the occasion and in this area perfect dishes are more important than your comment that my open hair looks beautiful,” she sounded slightly apologetic about that. John gave her a second kiss to calm her.

“That sounds perfectly fine,” he told her. “You on for the inspection of our new boat later?” They had taken it yesterday, but with all the time he had spent making amends to Sealy, he hadn’t taken a moment to look at the yacht from the inside yet.

Although, to be fair, he had used that time productively by allowing the former crew to clean out their rooms of personal belongings. Under supervision by Aclysia and Metra, of course. John had no interest in digging into their personal life, neither did he insist in searching for any files they may have been storing. He was keeping his part of the bargain to the letter, because he expected them to do the same.

They had been much more compliant afterwards as well. John just assumed that they had their cash reserves on the yacht and now they got enough to simply buy a new one. Good on them, as far as he was concerned.

“Anyway, can I ask you to show me a bit of cooking?” John asked after finishing the apple. It was an appetizer and now he was just reminded of how hungry he actually was.

“Certainly,” Aclysia smiled and grabbed the knife Siena had left behind.

“No, not like that,” John laughed, “I mean show me how to cook.”

The gears in her head turned as if he had just asked a question about quantum mechanics. “I do not compute, Master, please elaborate,” she finally stated.

“I just thought it would be fun if you taught me something,” he told her. “You know you can’t always be -and in fact weren’t- there for me to cook right?”

Aclysia shivered, “That is a dystopian vision I do not want to think about too long.”

“That is adorable,” John pointed out and pulled her close, “but seriously, why not? You have some more time, right? Just tell me how to do something simple, an omelette or something.”

“Scrambled eggs are advised for a beginner…” Aclysia said mindlessly, still not convinced by the idea.

“Look at it this way, if I get acceptable at it, I can cook with you,” John told her.

“And?” she tilted her head in confusion as they swayed to a non-existent melody in their shared embrace. “The goal of my cooking is to serve it to you, Master, not to waste your time.”

“But I would waste my time with you,” he told her. “You and me in a tiny room, joking and kneading dough together, forming some awful heart-shaped cookies. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“Let’s do it!” Aclysia’s answer came like a bullet. “First, let’s check if we still have eggs…”

They did and so Aclysia instructed John on the very simple art of the scrambled eggs with diced bacon and onions. Even in this simple dish, the difference in skill was evident. The onions came in pieces that were usually either too large or too small, the bacon was slightly burnt at one side because it hadn’t been turned enough, and the scrambled eggs weren’t quite as fluffy as Aclysia managed to make them.

Still, by the end of it, Aclysia looked quite proud of her pupil. “I have to admit that this was more fun than I imagined. If you desire to repeat it, I would be more than happy to give you further instructions in cooking.”

“I will think about it. I don’t think I will do it too often, at the end I still have you for my leisure,” he winked at her, “but yeah, this was fun and I would like to be able to at least sustain myself.” Grabbing a fork he began eating the fruit of his labour.

Now, ignoring the way 'abilities' was obviously badly edited in afterwards, that immediately begged for another window to open.

“Huh, well, there are classes for lots of things,” he said and went back to eating.