etrayamemes | TDM 005

⏵ arrival ⏴
Arrival goes as anticipated. Characters awaken in a sterile hospital bed in a clean, white room to the hum of machines under the unnatural lighting common to well-kept institutions. Every bit was designed to be comforting and calming, even with the jarring undercurrent of this situation.

The first face they see is Aurora's: her smile appears to be warm, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. She might offer a quick explanation, or leave characters to figure it out for themselves depending on their approach.

The door to the room swings open, revealing a hallway that stretches out ahead of them. There’s noise from outside and strong pumpkin spice scents coming from the lobby. Ah, muffins and tea. Grab one and head into the crisp, sunny fall morning ahead.

⏵ potluck ⏴
Cutthroat Iron Etrayan Bake-Off

As you step out of the arrival holding area into the main thoroughfare, the entire street has been turned into tents and chef stations to accommodate the activities of thirty people at once. There’s seats, trailers, and robots bustling about to make sure everyone is ready.

A couple of cheerful robots in aprons and colorful sweaters approach and redirect you as you step towards the cooking area. There’s gas ranges, ovens, grills, blast chillers, mixers, and set walk-ins and pantries with just about every ingredient you can imagine. There are cameramen (also robots) patrolling the area to capture all your best moments and to broadcast them directly to your fellow citizens’ devices.

Your instruction? “Make your signature dish. You have one hour, chef.”

It can’t just be straightforward, can it? The land itself is held together with pure chaotic energy. If you’re lucky, all goes as planned. If you aren’t… well…

Roll a Die

1	Your leg is now tied to another chef’s	2	Your meal is continually un-cooking itself.
3	All of your ingredients are pickled now	4	The longer you touch an ingredient, the bigger it gets.
5	Every time you lift your pot lid, a component changes.	6	The aromatics are glowing and flashing like LED lights.
7	Your knife has been replaced with a cheese grater.	8	The ingredients are now magnetically stuck together.
9	Your meal is becoming deep fried.	10	Kittens are multiplying out of the cupboard. *
11	All of your ingredients have become incredibly heavy.	12	Your cook pot moves burners whenever you turn around.
13	Eggs scream when you crack them	14	The kitchen has become incredibly slippery.
15	It’s soup now.	16	All utensils have been replaced with crustaceans. **
17	Your knife has a mind of its own. Watch out!	18	Your fridge catches fire.
19	Your pasta is trying to escape. Go get it.	20	Any ingredient not in the pot starts to float away.

* All kittens disappear at the end.
** These however, stay.

⏵ share a meal ⏴
As all the cooking concludes, you will be invited to plate your meal into one of many casserole dishes, regardless of what was made. A ladle will be tucked into the corner and placed on the table with a folded bit of cardstock declaring the chef’s name and the name of the dish. A helper camerabot will come around to each participant and ask for their thinking and their process.

Even if you got away without having to cook, even looking towards the table of dishes will spur a helper bot to start making you a plate with one of everything. The helperbot will insist that it is rude to not at least try what their peers have made.

In fact, if you are to fill out the score card for each person, you really must taste everything! The robots can’t try the food, so it’s up to you.

The cards look like so. The grading system is opaque. Is it meant to be numbers? Stars? Letter grades? Well, you’re the judge. You figure it out.

Chef: ___________ Dish:_____________ Judge:___________ Overall Rating:_______

Flavor
Presentation
Stackability
Wet
Originality
Rizz

⏵ tummy ache survivor ⏴
No matter how well your compatriots cooked or baked their dishes, there are… factors. You see that carrot? It’s really just condensed chaos in the shape of a carrot. No matter how powerful you are, these particular ingredients may not mesh with your being.

…And even if it is truly a carrot, do all the chefs know the proper cooking temperature of chicken? Even chickens are aliens to many.

(Optional) Roll a Die

1	Tummy Ache. Go lay in bed. Complaining alleviates symptoms.
2	That plate of food has energized you. You feel compelled to race or spar.
3	The food has reminded you of home. You must tell someone a detail of your childhood.
4	That food was so horrible that it simply must be washed out somehow. Spicy peppers? Booze? Gravel??? You’re going to over do it.
5	You have now discovered your new favorite dish. Make them teach it to you or you’ll lose sleep over it. This is all you want to eat for the next week.
6	The oddity of the ingredients has transferred to you. You start floating away.
7	The range of food and textures have inspired you. Acquire an annoying new hobby or habit.
8	You are now haunted by the digital souls of chickens.

⏵ NOTES ⏴

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⏵FULL NAVIGATION⏴

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[in truth, wanda hasn't been doing much better.

every attempt on her part to use magic to assuage the chaos has gone from bad to worse; trying to telekinetically banish the crabs from the kitchen has made even more of them multiply, a desperate effort to conjure ingredients that aren't present has only turned up in kittens. it's these events, and so many more, that have her hands shaking, her breaths short, her hair in disarray, and just generally looking like a deeply frazzled woman who's experienced the worst day of her life —

and that's before the rope snakes around her leg, too, tying her to someone at the next station.

it's not his fault, or the fault of anything he's actually saying, but just the simple nature of someone speaking to her at all in this moment has her on the verge of tears. she manages to blink them back, fortunately, but she can't keep the tremor out of her voice when she says,]

I'm sorry. I'm not — [she gestures vaguely around them with a shaking hand.] I'm not doing this. [or, at least she thinks; at the moment, she's not quite so sure, because it's reminiscent of when everything in westview had started to fall apart around her. slowly, she takes in a steadying breath.] But I can make it better.

[this time, when she waves her hand, there's a red glow — and in that one sweep, all of the bots fall back at least thirty feet, giving them more space to breathe.

better, right?]

[ Better. Not great, but Tommy feels less like bolting with the close overbearing presence of the robot overloaded with their aprons and their “helpful advice” like they’re not floating around just to keep everyone in line. He can take a second and just be.

Her overt use of powers helps too. That’s basically permission to act freely. Tommy usually does, but even he knows that if you randomly turn up in a place that you absolutely don’t belong, like, the first thing you do shouldn’t be show off that you’re superhuman. People get antsy.

He blurs but goes nowhere, remembering the magic rope before he accidentally drags the lady away. Okay, so he can’t go find a cardboard box. There’s a stock pot. That’ll work.

He starts gathering up the kittens at just above reasonable human speed. They’re only babies, after all. One or two even get a scritch on the way into the pot. ]

I’m not doing “it” either. Kitchen show of my nightmares isn’t my thing. It isn’t anyone’s thing so I don’t know why you’re doing this.

[ The last is loudly, pointedly directed at the nearest robot. ]

We’re stuck together, but you’re okay.

[ He guesses. Hard to tell what’s frizzed from the menagerie and what’s real. Adults always look stressed to a 17 year old. She looks like he feels, which is that a shit day became a great day and then suddenly a bewildering shit day. She might’ve skipped the great part. ]

If you want to try and cook for the droids, I won’t get in your way. But this pot stays away from the stove at all times. F the crabs though.

[they can, at least, have that breath; she's confident that the bots will be back before long, as is their overeager tendency here in general, but there's a moment. it's enough for the knot to loosen in wanda's chest, for her to recenter and not feel so close to fraying. for the first time in what feels like an eternity (it hasn't actually been that long), there's actual hope of making it out of this intact.

but the thought leaves her mind the instant she watches him form a blur in a way that's achingly familiar — because that's when everything stops. a utensil that she's picked up clatters out of her grip, into the pot by the stove.

her gasp is sharp. tears return to her eyes, stinging in the corners. but that's —

purely a coincidence. among an infinite number of universes, the odds that someone could have a power like that surely aren't so rare.

she has to get it together.

scrunching her eyes tightly shut for a moment, wanda nods furiously to herself, until she's no longer being dragged around, and still on her feet again. by the time the boy looks back, it's possible that he doesn't see anything at all.]

Maybe if we ignore the crabs, they'll just go away? [it sounds unconvincing, even to her own ears. but:] They didn't like it when I tried to send them somewhere else.

[who likes being banished somewhere, wanda

anyway:]

And we'll keep working. Find the — [what are they making here, exactly?] cheese.

[yes. good start.]

[ By the time he looks back? Wanda should know better, with a speedster in the room. Tommy looked back as soon as she gasped. There are crabs and kittens and robots flying around - if she gasps, he's gonna look.

And then he's going to look around, because Tommy can't tell if it's something new or I she's slipping further into crisis over cooking in a Salvador Dali painting.

Did something just happen? Was it the superspeed? Althouh. You you did whip out the telekinesis first. Yeah, you don't get to gasp over that, lady. Because my day so far is hey man welcome what the fuck stop wrecking the hospital cool it! Nobody's gonna hurt you now. This dude Echo stole you to make you champion your world, bet you're sorry you wanted to be a hero, Tommy, but holdup you don't get to fight now and you definitely don't get to meet him. Go do this cooking show! We promise it's helping. How? Reasons. You probably had the same day. So I'm going to find the cheese and you're gonna stay there and be fine because we're on camera.

Actually you're not staying here, you're moving with me cause they tied us together, but you'll still be fine.

Edited 2024-11-23 18:17 (UTC)

[for a moment, it had looked like they might actually avert the crisis; she'd been looking around, searching for potential utensils and ingredients. but out of all the words coming out of his mouth in a rush, there's one that undoes all that progress in one fell swoop. there's one that has her brain slipping right into a blue screen of death.

a speedster. named —]

Tommy.

[wanda sounds like she's on the verge of fracturing as she repeats. yes, here, among all the cameras and the chaos — that she's all but forgotten about. all that she knows converges on a disbelieving stare, fixated on him as she's frozen. helpless.]

You can't be Tommy. That's not possible.

That’s not possible.

[ Tommy mimics her churlishly. He can’t be Tommy, but everything else he said is totally plausible and normal? What kind of weird line is that to draw? Who hears a recap about how you landed in Etraya and gets hung up on the name? ]

I think I know my name better than you.

[ It’s not as churlish as it could be. She’s weirdly upset about it, but then they’re both having a day. He gets it. But he is trying to make the best of it here until he can figure out what’s going on, and he’s not about to let her pick on him to make herself feel better. ]

But go ahead. Explain why I can’t be Tommy. Get it out of your system and then I need to nuke a hot dog or boil a crab so the robots let us go and I will be mocking you the entire time.

Edited 2024-11-24 06:17 (UTC)

TDM 005

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