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“Musse, may I ask you a question?”
“Certainly, Altina,” said Musse, not looking up from her latest romance novel. “How may I be of assistance?”
“If you were preparing a meal for a friend, and you wanted to impress them, what would you prepare?”
Musse paused, carefully placed a bookmark to save her spot, and closed the book, setting it on the coffee table as she turned to look at Altina.
“Why, Altina, that would depend entirely on how, precisely, I wished to impress them! A meal I cooked for, say, Juna, would be quite different from a delectable dish prepared for the professor. In fact-”
Altina raised a hand to cut her off.
“I do not wish to hear about your inappropriate fixation on Instructor Rean at this time. If you cannot help I shall ask elsewhere.”
Musse quickly shook her head.
“No, no, point taken. More pertinently, what sort of impression do you wish to make?”
Altina cocked her head, her greenish yellow eyes staring into Musse’s own.
“I am unsure what you mean.”
Musse cleared her throat.
“Right, well, do you want this person to think highly of you in a platonic sense? Do you intend for this meal to make up for a recent argument? Do you, by chance, have romantic intentions?”
At this, Altina looked at the floor, her hands fiddling with the hem of her shirt.
“I...do not know if it’s romantic. I am not very familiar with the concept, and Instructor Rean confiscated that book you lent me on the subject.”
“Yes, that one may have been a bit...above your pay grade, as it were.”
“However, I do know that I wish for this person to think highly of me. And I enjoy spending time with them. I feel that cooking a meal for us all to share would be an efficient way to raise our cohesion as a social unit while simultaneously achieving these goals.”
Musse nodded.
“Now, when you say ‘our cohesion as a social unit’, do you mean Class VII?”
“No,” said Altina, shaking her head. “I will be preparing dinner for the swimming club tomorrow night, and I am unsure what to make.”
Before Musse could reply, the dorm’s front door flew open, and Ash strode in. He noticed the girls and jerked his chin upward in greeting.
“Hey, you two.”
The girls said their hellos as Ash collapsed on the couch across from Musse, tossing his arms across the back.
“Oh, Musse, Tania was looking for you.”
Musse smirked, noticing the diminutive.
“Tania?”
Ash coughed and Musse thought she detected a faint blush creep across his tanned skin.
“Er, uh, Tatiana. From Class IX, you know. We’re in the literature club together, so. Yeah.”
Eager to change the subject, Ash looked to Altina.
“What have you been up to, Rabbit?”
“I am asking Musse for her assistance in preparing a meal for the swimming club. I wish to strengthen our interpersonal bonds.”
“Plus,” added Musse with a mischievous wink, “our little Allie has a crush!”
“Musse!” yelled Altina at the same time that Ash interjected with “No shit?”, prompting the blonde boy to begin laughing.
“Aw, come on, Altina, who is it?”
“No one. I do not have a crush. Musse was mistaken. I don’t have a crush.” Altina said, trying to keep her face expressionless as a blush crept into her cheeks.
“Who doesn’t have a crush?”
Altina pinched the bridge of her nose as Juna entered, still wearing her tennis outfit from practice. “No one, Juna. I was simply asking Musse to assist me in preparing a meal for the swimming club, as I would like to invite them to dinner.”
Ash shrugged.
“I just got here, so I know just about as much as you, little miss Crossbell.”
Juna lightly whacked him on the head with her racket as she passed by.
“I’m gonna go clean off in the baths, but I’d be more than happy to help you and Musse make something!”
Ash rubbed the back of his head, glowering at Juna.
“This filly’s a wild one. But, more importantly, rabbit, you want my help? I’m no Sandy, but I can cook a mean omelette.”
Musse tapped her chin in thought.
“I’m not certain that an omelette is what we’re looking for, Ash, but of course your help is welcome. You know what they say, the more the merrier! Perhaps I should ask Kurt to assist as well. We could make it a group activity!”
Altina nodded.
“That might be best. Combining our various skills works well in combat exercises, so it stands to reason it would be effective in this situation as well. Just as long as none of you talk about any crushes, that I do not have.”
Musse winked.
“No promises!”
Altina groaned.
---
After Musse had contacted Kurt, and Juna was finished bathing, Class VII congregated in the common area to hash out a plan for the meal.
“What about pizza? Everyone loves pizza!”
Kurt shook his head.
“While I agree that many people, myself included, enjoy pizza, there’s that pizza place in town, and we cannot hope to compete with them.”
Juna wilted a little.
“Oh, yeah.”
“I would like to try to make pasta.”
“Ooh, I love pasta! That’s a great idea, Allie!” said Juna, perking up immediately.
“We toss in some meatballs and I’m down,” said Ash. Musse and Kurt similarly assented to Altina’s suggestion.
“Then it’s settled!” said Musse confidently. “We will create the greatest spaghetti dinner that the Thors Branch Campus has ever served!”
“Not a high bar to clear,” muttered Ash, earning him another smack from Juna.
“With all of us working together, I’m sure we’ll make a fine meal,” said Kurt.
---
“This appears to be an unmitigated disaster,” said Kurt, provoking Musse into screeching wordlessly and swiping at him with a wooden spoon, her normally neatly combed hair flying away in tangles.
“Enough, Kurt!! Ash, where are those Aidios-forsaken meatballs!?”
Ash looked up from the pot of sauce he was frantically stirring in a futile effort to keep it from burning. “Meatballs? I thought you were making them.”
Musse blinked, and then launched into a string of such fearsome profanity that Juna knocked over a bottle of olive oil in her rush to cover Altina’s ears, while Ash frantically tried to indicate that he had been joking, presenting a tray of misshapen lumps of alternately burnt and raw ground pork with onions haphazardly shoved in. Altina swatted Juna’s hands away and returned her attention to the pot of noodles, merrily boiling over. “Oh, Ash. The sauce is smoking again.”
“Crap!” Ash shouted, rushing to the stove, meatball tray in hand, while Musse shook with barely suppressed rage.
When Ash slipped on the small puddle of olive oil on the floor, time seemed to slow down as the other four watched him slip backwards, the tray of meatballs sailing through the air. Reflexively, Juna grabbed an unused frying pan to swat a meatball away from her face, but her hand, slick with oil and sweat, instead lost grip, sending the pan sailing through the air, smashing into the pot of boiling spaghetti with enough force to knock it over, immediately flooding the stovetop and extinguishing all the burners with a hiss, as the noodles slithered out in one sticky mass, the meatballs bouncing pell mell across the kitchen.
For a moment, the only sound was the sizzling of the stovetop and the bubbling of the cooling sauce.
Ash groaned from his position on the floor, both in pain and exasperation.
“Maybe we should just order some goddamn pizzas.”
Musse took a deep breath.
“Altina, Kurt, Juna, would you leave the room for a moment?”
“Why?” asked Juna, still staring at the pan she had hurled into the stovetop.
“So you don’t have to see this.”
With a wordless shriek, Musse threw herself at Ash, who was struggling to his feet, knocking him to the ground. The others leapt to pull them apart, and soon all five of them were on the floor, slipping around in the olive oil.
“Um, did we come at a bad time?”
The five looked up, Musse still pulling on Ash’s hair, to see Stark from the swimming club standing in the doorway to the kitchen.
“Oh. Hello Stark.”
“Hello, Altina.”
“I can explain.”
---
After Class VII had cleaned up the kitchen, with the aid of the swimming club, and after a quick explanation and a call to the pizzeria in town, the students sat around the dining table enjoying their dinner, albeit not the one that Altina had initially planned.
Stark and Wayne were engaging Kurt in a discussion about their classes, while Juna had mandated Ash and Musse sit in the corner for a bit to cool down, and was herself engaging in a lively conversation with Leonora and Altina . Musse was the first to break the silence between her and Ash.
“I apologize for...flying off the handle like that, Ash. I guess I’m not as cool under pressure as I thought.”
“Hey, it’s fine. A kitchen is a totally different place than a battlefield. I’m sorry for screwing up the meatballs that bad. Plus, you punch like a girl anyway.”
“Careful, or I’ll tell Juna you said that. I bet she can hit a lot harder than me. And don’t worry about the meatballs.”
“Thanks, and yeah, I don’t fancy my odds in a fistfight with her. So, who do you think Altina’s got her eye on, anyway? Stark and Wayne are both kinda stuffed shirt nerds, but maybe she’s into that sort of thing?”
“Hmm,” said Musse, thinking. At that moment, Leonora laughed uproariously at something Altina said, and ruffled the smaller girl’s hair, whereupon Altina’s face turned a bright, vibrant red.
“Oh, I think I might have an idea, Ash.”