(Untitled)

[roulettespin]

Characters: Nero (roulettespin and anybody who wants to help put out a small grease fire?
Setting/Location: Kitchens
Date & Time: Day 2, late afternoon.
Warnings: Nero makes food.
Summary: It doesn't go so good.

Comments

[cowboyphase]

It'd been awhile since he'd seen the kid. Not a long time, not in Dante years, but still longer than it should've been, all things--and other worlds and giant ogres--considered. He'd seen him, or heard him, around on the network, so it wasn't like he didn't know how he was doing. Just that Dante didn't know exactly where he was. Which was good in some ways; the kid needed his independence. But the ways in which it was bad included there maybe being demons and witches and hell only knew what else flying at them from all sides and Dante hadn't exactly given Nero The Talk yet.

The Talk, of course, being how to handle all this demon hunting when you didn't have a personal stake in the matter. Maybe it wouldn't make a difference, but Dante didn't know that yet. Living as long as he did meant you learned not to make assumptions.

Anyway, he could find the kid when he wanted to. That meant giving him his space wasn't really a big deal, since Dante could always track him down when things got down to the wire. Why he could do it was another

[dissentive]

'Twas the terrible smell, not the idea of food nor running into two old-haired men, that brought Morrigan to the kitchen. Indeed, even if she were hungry, the smell itself would have eradicated such an appetite. The glower on her eyes would have done well enough to smother anyone, maybe even an aflame pan of eggs, but her words of telling off whomever was so inept as to burn down the kitchen failed against the fact that well enough the kitchen was, indeed, actually burning down. Some sort of insult was on her lips as she quickly strode forward, bustling her way past Dante and Nero to turn off the burner (which, she had earlier learned, supplied the flame) and, unalarmed by the flame, moved the pan in itself off of the coils to an unheated one. She whisked her cloak from her form, using it to smother and pat out the flame, all whilst not failing to scowl deeply

[roulettespin]

Man, his eggs! Now they were gonna taste all...cloaky.

Though to be honest, okay, fine. Maybe he needed that. He coulda done it himself, but he'd been trying to salvage them, and maybe there'd been some stubborn pride in there, too. His first eggs. He was used to being better at giving things a whirl than this. He'd been clinging to the idea that there was still some hope, even if they hadn't turned out quite the way he usually liked 'em. (A little bit runny, the yolk all nice, not too hard but not too raw, either.)

Now that this woman--whoever she was, probably one of Dante's friends, from the way she was dressed, not to mention the way she was acting--had shown up, Nero had to admit... It smelled pretty rank in here. "I'm gonna open a window. And for the record? I like her way of doing things better."

Heh.

[cowboyphase]

Oh sure. Come in and take all the glory. That was fine, whatever. Dante didn't need to help anyway. Not like he needed to win any points with the kid or anything. He sighed, straightening up and closing the cupboard.

"Fine by me. Maybe you can ask her the next time you wanna whip up a little lunch. So long as you've got some adult supervision..."

Two can play at being a jerk kid, and trust him when he says he's been doing this way longer than you. Dante's nose wrinkles a bit at the smell, but it isn't so bad. This is way less mess than that time he tried to make Trish pancakes in bed. Batter everywhere. Not a pretty sight. Maybe he'd tell the kid that story sometime, but now didn't exactly seem like the right moment. Especially not since they had company.

He whirled around, offering the woman a bow, and a slight smile.

"I don't believe we've been introduced. You are...?"

[likeagoodson]

It was still a strange pastime to have acquired: his wanting to explore the majority of the Caravan and make use of whatever he found. Charley, however, hadn't discovered any one thing relevant to his interests whatsoever. The floors were monotonous - creative outlets had not been in mind when designing it - and those he'd seen wandering about appeared harmless enough. There was no excitement, nothing threatening or in need of his services. Bluntly speaking, without work or Master to (God, help him) annoy him per usual, he was bored.

Until, as things happened to occur, he noticed something acrid in the air.

Even if Charley hadn't been connected to Sacra, had not downloaded that particular sense, he would have smelled it. In fact, he saw it first: smoke creeping along the edges of the room as something - and hopefully, he thought a few moments later, not someone - caught fire. He reacted quickly, assessing the situation as he approached the person slowly being engulfed by it. Male, young

[roulettespin]

What was he doing? Wasn't that obvious? He was cooking! And sure, all right, maybe it could've also been taken for starting a fire in the kitchen--there were bound to be a few screws loose in this circus of freaks that burning the place down was more important than having something to eat--but Nero wasn't one of them. And he resented the idea that he was doing this on purpose. Maybe because it would've been a little less embarrassing if he was.

"Making lunch! What's it look like I'm doing?" Nero shot back, reaching over to move the guy out of the way. Whoever he was. Voice sounded familiar, but a lot of voices did because of the chatter over the junogam--which Nero monitored but didn't eavesdrop on. There was a big difference. Somebody had to do it, and as far as Nero knew, Dante was off doing what he usually did when things got hairy: disappearing.And on the off shot that all of a sudden Nero'd hear somebody new, somebody he recognized, somebody from back home

[likeagoodson]

As a matter of habit, Charley immediately moved to the side as he was prompted, expression a mixture of both concern and its unhappy counterpart: displeasure. He wasn't paying attention, reinforcing his momentary theory with a firm hand; granted, it hadn't been the best plan to initiate. The smell was beginning to settle, and it'd probably remain stuck with him for a few days yet. A rather disheartening thought. Even more so when he caught movement through his peripheral.

This was almost worse than the time Master had nearly drowned himself in the bathtub--as accidental as he claimed it to be.

"You shouldn't do that," Charley advised him, double-checking that the stove was now off. He put his hand out, almost instinctive in the way he touched the young man's wrist to keep the spatula from meeting the still-hot burner. "Your lunch is better off there until it...cools down."

And though he hadn't had any use for mundane human practices like cooking in a long time, Charley knew most of it was just common sense. Either this boy

[roulettespin]

The guy was talking sense, and he was trying to help. That was all well and good, but there was one little problem here: the touching.

Nero was jumpy about that shit on the best of days. His personal space was his and his alone, and anything from being knocked into on the street to having someone sit too close during mass could bring about the kind of over-the-top, knee-jerk reaction that a little age and the chance to mellow out might cure. But in a world like the one Nero was used to--knowing what he knew now, that sometimes he couldn't even trust the people he'd always believed in--he was a little more tense than he might've been. He had his reasons, even if they were nothing but excuses in the end.

Point being, some stranger'd just put a hand on his arm, and it was an instinct to grab that hand and throw him down; to get the upper ground; to keep his guard up; to stay alive. Sure, things on the caravan were a hell of a lot different from how they were back home, but that didn't mean Nero could let himself be careless. Trouble

horrible first impression? MAYBE

[aveclumiere]

Lightning had meant to head up the main stairs for her room but she couldn't help but stop when she smelt smoke.

Her first instinct was to find the source and extinguish it, and she already began creating escape routes if the fire got too out of hand. How ready was the caravan for that sort of accident anyway? What about all the younger passengers who might get lost, or confused during the evacuation?

She barged into the kitchen and froze when she smelt burnt eggs. What a joke, it was just some idiot who didn't know how to cook. Urgh, it smelt awful, and the smoke in the room wasn't making it any easier for her to spot the culprit. She coughed into her hand as a waft of dark smoke trailed her way and she squinted through it, barely able to make out Nero's figure beside the frying pan.

OH FABULOUS :D

[roulettespin]

He knew what to do--he wasn't a total waste. You had to smother the fire, and of course he wasn't gonna let anyone else on board get hurt just because he was trying to rescue a couple of eggs. The problem was, he didn't want to throw out perfectly good food that was only singed a little around the edges, especially because he didn't know what the food situation was gonna be like on this caravan in a couple of days. How long were they gonna be on this thing, anyway? And where was the next village? It's not like they had a map of the entire world with them, and it's not like this was a vacation spot Nero'd ever been to before.

Point was, people could eat a lot, and a lot of the time, they didn't really plan ahead or pace themselves. Not like it was easy to walk up to the ogre and say, 'Hey, when do you think our next pit stop's going to be?' either. Something told Nero there might be some communications issues involved. Hell, it was hard enough talking to people most of the time

[aveclumiere]

Keeping it under control? Was he serious?

"It hardly looks like it."

She stalked over to the kitchen counter and turned off the burner, not wasting a second or a moment of hesitation as her arm reached over dangerously close to the edges of the flames. A little burn wouldn't bother her, she'd faced far worse things as well. Now, to clear the smoke and extinguish the fire was the next thing to do.

Lightning glared at Nero and raised an eyebrow, awaiting any further action on his part. She wasn't anyone's mom, and maybe she wanted to see just how "under control" he really had this situation.

[roulettespin]

"There's more smoke here than fire, that's for sure." Which meant he could open the window and clear the room out a little without risking giving too much air to the flames; first thing was first, now that she'd turned the burner off. Nero might've resented the implication that he didn't know what the hell he was doing, but since this wasn't about the stuff he knew he shouldn't be condescended to about? It wasn't necessary to have the same gut reaction of proving things first and doing everything else later.

He fanned some air in with the big hand--just made more sense; not that he knew too much about the principles of physics, but what was practical he definitely got--then turned back from the window, watching the smoke clear. It was better in there already, even if it'd taken care of his appetite in all the wrong ways. And everyone else's appetite who could smell it, too.