Scene #3131: Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

Owner	Pose
Marisa Kirisame	GENSOKYO. It's an idyllic sort of place. All mountains and forest, except for the solitary outposts of civilization here and there. It seems the quintessential small, rural town, albeit one stuck in the 1700s. Still, there are a few anachronisms here and there: newspapers and book stores, importers selling trinkets and goods from across the multiverse. There's even electrical lighting and plumbing and heating! If the locals are to believed, it's all possible through the miracle of NUCLEAR FUSION. But all that is far away from Marisa's home. Tucked deep in the forest of magic, with only a handful of wooden signs and a worn (but oddly linear, and distinctly singed) trail leading from the forest's edge, one could be forgiven for thinking her little cottage as something out of a fairy tail. Moss crawls over its walls and up across the rooftop. Mushrooms of all stripes- one about as tall as a pine tree- grow in the grove surrounding it. Breaking the canopy, and competing with the local flora and fungi for space, is a turret that seems to have been attached haphazardly to an extension off one side of the house. A sign is hung over the doorway. It reads: Kirisame Magic Shop, Visitors Welcome. Below that, another, this one reading: 'No refunds.' BUT ALL THAT IS OUTSIDE. The REAL magic takes place inside the cottage. It's... Cluttered. There's stuff strewn positively everywhere. Though it looks like someone's been working at cleaning some of it up lately, they haven't really made much progress. Only the foyer and the kitchen and dining room have been cleared, the rest of the house is almost inaccessible with the piles and piles of books, scrolls, artifacts and miscellaneous junk scattered throughout the home. Marisa humms a sprightly tune* as she scrubs the inside of a... mixing bowl? It's an iron pot, bigger even than her torso. A book is propped open on a nearby... lectern. Where did she get a lectern? Why is it in her kitchen? "So we'll probably need to start with the base," she says, peeking over at the ELDRITCH COOKBOOK. "Milk and other things. You guys got that stuff, right?"
Sanary Rondel	Getting the chocolate was easy enough. Milk chocolate, dark chocolate, even white chocolate, semi-sweet, and dutch cocoa! Getting to Marisa's home is the hard part. It has been quite some time since Sanary last went anywhere untouched by human hands, so finding her way through the forest while also fending off TERRIBLE BRANCHES and VICIOUS FOREST SQUIRRELS takes a bit of time. Still, she arrives soon enough, and the chocolate bag is intact! Her hair's just in a bit of a mess. Still, she breathes a sigh of relief when she gets to Marisa's shop, and the inside just helps her realx even more with that controlled chaos. Of course, she's not going to just stand at the door, and Sanary makes her way in to peer at that odd-looking cookbook. "Hey, Marisa. I got milk chocolate if that counts! Uh... Does it?" And then she pauses. "... What are we making again?"
Kyra Hyral	KYRA HAS BEEN HERE BEFORE! But not this /specific/ place at least. Therefore it does take Kyra a good deal of time to get here. Much to Souji's dismay, no doubt, she DOES eventually arrive. Unlike the others, she hasn't tried to bring any ingredients with her because she actually has no idea how to make the flan Marisa's talking about. She'll let the other people who OBVIOUSLY KNOW MORE ABOUT COOKING handle that. "Marisa!" she shoves the door open to the cottage, "MARISA! I'm here! Whoah-you never told me you were a /hoarder/. I guess this is why you moved in to Heaven or Hell." Big cauldron-like pot? Not a surprise. That Cookbook on a lectern? Also not a surprise. In fact, Kyra scoots over to peek at it and look at the forbidden CULINARY KNOWLEDGE. "Wait, me? I didn't bring any ingredients, I thought everyone else was." Kyra turns a page on the cookbook, peeking ahead. Fortunately, she's not taking out her phone to photograph it this time.
Bertram Silent	Bertram arrives on foot, the wildlife doesn't apppear to have bothered him much. He's dressed in some kind of chef's outfit. "You are making Flan. Now I am uncertain if this is referring to the dish or the monster." Bertram invites himself to a seat, and then starts concentrating and pulling all kinds of bags and boxes out of the aether, "I brought the ingredients. I don't have any dark matter, but otherwise this should take care of it."
Marisa Kirisame	"Technically," Marisa grins, setting the IRON CAULDRON down on a (very) recently polished stone countertop, "We're making CHOCOLATE Flan. That's why we need all this chocolate." Marisa... looks like she should be doing this sort of thing, honestly. When she doesn't have that massive hat on, her dress is almost passable for a house maid's. "We can probably make do without dark matter, but might not taste exactly right. Maybe we can make up for it with more dark chocolate instead?" THE MODIFICATIONS BEGIN. "And I am not a hoarder," Marisa sniffs. "I just have a lot of stuff and not much space to keep it all. But it's okay! Some of it is merchandise." She pulls a metal hand-grater from one of her drawers and foists it on Sanary, "Go ahead and grate the chocolate into shreds, then we'll need to crush it." There's a beat. "The grater is not for sale." THE DREAD RECIPE BOOK contains a list of progressively more MIND BENDING ingredients, including a number of prayers to the dark gods of cooking, and at least one supplication towards Cho'gula, patron devil of the culinary arts. The pages hurt to look at. They seem to project an aura of tooth-ache. Reading it, it almost feels like Kyra is being watched. Or maybe that's the glowing, burgundy eyes peering at her from the impenetrable darkness of THE ROOM NEXT DOOR.
Kyra Hyral	"I don't have any dark matter either. I'll have to ask the rest of the Light Warriors to go out black pudding hunting or something so we can get some." Kyra admits to Bertram, revealing that apparently she is aware of some monsters that drop it. "I'm glad you have what we need, Bertram! At least one of us is prepared!" Kyra drums her hands on the lectern as she reads before looking away, a headache surging behind her eyes unpleasantly. She looks up and around at no one in particular until she sees those spying eyes from the darkness next door. "Uhhhhh...Marisa, what's that? Watching us? Do you have a familiar? Is that a cat or something?" Or Konoe maybe!?
Sanary Rondel	Sanary grins widely, looking from Marisa to Kyra to Bertram in turn. "Good thing I brought a lot, then!" She raises the bag of assorted chocolates triumphantly, approaching the countertop to set it down and organizing each type for easy access. "Could probably even mix it all together in the flan to get a lot of flavors in there." And then it's time for grating! Or it would be if she knew how to use the thing. Sanary's too stubborn to ask, of course, and she wastes a bit of time just trying to shove the milk chocolate directly into the grater, then pouring some of the Dutch cocoa through the holes. But at least she gets it eventually! Then it's time for the REAL GRATING to commence. Shreds of chocolate everywhere! If everywhere was the cauldron, anyway. She even pauses to take a few shreds and toss them in her mouth, her eye lighting up after that. "So what goes in flan, anyway? And... Wait. There's a monster-version of this?" She raises an eyebrow at Bertram in particular, then glances at the others. "We're... Making the food, right?" The eye go unnoticed, however, as her focus is almost entirely on getting the chocolate good and shredded.
Marisa Kirisame	"Uhhh, maybe not the white stuff," Marisa says, craning her neck over at Sanary. "White chocolate and dark chocolate should mix pretty okay, but I'm not so sure that the white stuff will taste as good, you know?" Plus, the recipe is for a DARK FLAN. Who ever heard of a DARK FLAN with white chocolate in it? "Oh, oh, but if you DO have some of that... chocolate liqueur stuff, that could be really good to throw in... maybe." GENSOKYO. It's full of alcoholics. The EYES IN THE DARKNESS seem distinctly perturbed at Sanary's tremendous disrespect for anything resembling cleanliness. Dutch cocoa gets all over one of the counters! It's awful! Everything is awful! The red eyes almost seem to vibrate in the darkness. A terrible pressure approaches, like a looming storm front of tremendous proportions-- And then there's a spitting hiss from by Sanary's feet. She might feel something scaly brush up against her ankle. It's... It's a fat, round, snake-like thing. It seems to be licking at a few flecks of chocolate that had fallen to the floor. Marisa glances to Kyra, then, as she pours out some fresh cream into a measuring cup. It looks like she's already poured out some sugar into a second cup, too. "Uhhh. Familiar...? I've got a... few." She peers over into THE DARKNESS at the jittering pair of red eyes, and then 'aha's! "Oh! That's Celly. She's my extra special magic book," the witch explains, "Hey Celly, come say hi!" Another pause. The growing sense of IMPENDING DOOM seems to abate briefly, though the red eyes grow, paradoxically, larger with each passing moment, until finally, FINALLY, they step out of the shadows, revealing-- A cute, barely-adolescent girl. She looks vaguely sylvan, with her rather impressively pointed ears, though her hair is much too dark- a deep shade of almost-violet- to be a proper elf. Also, she's in what looks to be an ACTUAL maid's dress. "..." Celly un-says, staring at the chocolate-munching mage. "I... Just cleaned that counter."
Kyra Hyral	"Yeah, I thought you said it was just you here-" First, Kyra sees the fat snake thing. It's...almost kind of cute. Like a puppy, but without arms and legs. "Oh, so she's one of those books who is a person? Like Al Azif?" She's still watching the ominious darkness and eyes peering out of it until... A teenager is something Kyra was expecting, actually. She's seen Homura with hers too. "Sorry, it's gonna get kind of messy in here. We're cooking!" Kyra says cheerfully to Celly. "Bertram is supervising. I'm...hey Marisa, what do you need me to do...?" Yeah, it has not gone unnoticed that Kyra hasn't touched any of the food yet. It's probably better that way.
Sanary Rondel	"None of the white stuff. Got it." Thankfully, Sanary hasn't shredded too much of the white chocolate in yet. She's mostly gotten milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and the Dutch Cocoa in with only a bit of white before stopping! Not that she really knows the flavor differences between any of them. The semi-sweet, by virtue of looking almost exactly like the dark, has gone untouched. "Don't think I got any of the drinking chocolate, though... Is that a thing?" That'd be something to keep in mind for next time. She shrugs and keeps on shredding, getting chocolate and cocoa dust both in and out of the cauldron! That strange pressure does draw her attention for a moment, but it's ignored as just being some weird Gensokyo atmosphere or something. Right until that thing brushes against her ankle. That... Fat snake creature. She pauses in her shredding to just stare at it, eventually looking towards Marisa. "I... Didn't know you had a pet. Or a daughter." Her gaze shifts between the snake and Celly rapidly, the barest of grins seeping through her TOUGH FACADE. "Hey there. Ah... Sorry about the mess! Kinda.. Still figuring this machine out. Good meeting ya, Celly. Name's Sanary." She grins broadly at the girl, then hums when KYra speaks up. "Oh! Wanna help with this chocolate shredder? It's more tiring than it feels like it should be."
Bertram Silent	"It seems I have forgotten to bring the liquor." Bertram says in a tone of voice that's entirely too cheerful about that. "I'm sure you can make this recipe without it." He is also not touching the food, he's just observing. The familiar, especially, is observed with the keen eye of an interested mage. "She did that because she's with the Confederacy, a large segment of them is callous and doesn't care if their actions harm people." He sounds like he's intending to tease Sanary.
Marisa Kirisame	"Pfft, she's not my DAUGHTER. What do you think I am, some kinda immortal, eternally young floozy?" Marisa barks a laugh, "Come on, I'm not that bad." She peers over at Bertram then... And shrugs, "Hey, what can you do? I'll just have to improvise." ...Improvise? Marisa dips under one of her counters. There's a brief rustle as she rummages through... whatever it is that's under there. At last, she emerges, with-- Is that rum? That is totally rum. "Got these off some sailor buddies I made this one time," she grins, setting the BOTTLE OF VOLATILE ALCOHOL next to the rest of the ingredients. "Won it off one of their guys in a poker game. That was a fun one. We can just mix a shot of this in, or five! SPEAKING OF BAD IDEAS. "Oh, uh, right!" Marisa reaches around her cauldron and fetches A GIANT SPOON. Or rather, it looks like a giant spoon, albeit one made of bamboo. "The recipe says to keep stirrin' the pot to make sure it mixes properly, and..." She pulls another thing-- a little, octagonal block. Kyra would recognize it instantly. It's that damn LASERBOX. Marisa takes it and... slides it underneath the cauldron. There's a brief series of shrill chirps before the thing opens up, and begins disgorging a plume of BRIGHTLY COLORED FLAME. It's like someone turned a rainbow into a bonfire, or something. "There. So just keep it mixed nice and smooth and ASK IF YOU WANT TO ADD ANYTHING." Seriously, there doesn't need to be a repeat of the Heaven or Hell incident. Meanwhile, Celly creeps up into the room, even as the little fatsnake wiggles (rolls, really) over towards another pile of chocolate to resume its holy duty. "...Sanary, Confederate," she murmurs, peering up at her with eyes that snap like little camera lenses. "Someone who makes a chocolate-flavored mess on my counters. Factional trait. Entry tagged. Categorized. Recorded. It is good to meet you," she bows, her cadence sliding back into something a little less... odd. "I am the Celaeno Manuscripts, second edition copy. Master calls me Celly." She inclines her head at the shredder, and offers to take it off her hands. "I would like to do that," she says, quiet yet firm. "But what will you be doing instead?"
Sanary Rondel	"H-hey! Even if that's... Kinda true for a lot of us, we're not assholes all the time. Only when we need to be." Sanary sticks her tongue out at Bertram, an amused smirk crossing her face moments later. That's replaced by a blank stare, then an awkward chuckle as she turns to Celly. "Uh. Don't worry. I'm not being an asshole here on purpose or anything. Not that I'm being an asshole at all or anything! I think. Unless I... Er." Now she's just gone and gotten herself flustered. Good thing Marisa's got THE BOOZE! So much booze. The mention of not adding stuff without asking does cause her to grin slightly, however, and she glances over at Kyra with a vague gesture at the cauldron with her eye. Her attention does go back to Celly once she comes closer with those strange movements of her eyes, though. "I.. Uh. I don't think it's chocolate-flavored if it's actually chocolate, does it? Er. Anyway." Sanary clears her throat, then returns to the bow with one of her own. She'd almost look fancy if she was wearing a suit instead of her casual outfit. Alas... T-shirt and shorts. She blinks a few times, then shrugs and offers the shredder and block of dark chocolate to Celly. "Guess I can... Hmm. Probably take a break, actually." Such a lazy Fed. At least she can really get a better look around the shop now! She's careful not to touch anything, at least, although she does come dangerously close to poking a thing or two. "If we put alcohol in that, though.. Uh. I heard there's this drinking age that's enforced in some places. Do we have to worry about that or...?" Then she shrugs. "Ah, nobody'll have to know if that's the case."
Kyra Hyral	At last! Sanary offers the opportunity to shred the chocolate. Kyra seems eager to accept even though it's a very basic task in the kitchen. No worries though because she seems very alright with the arragement so far. "...maybe we should add pictures. As in take pictures of what we've done. I can put 'em all up in Imgur or Pintrist and show the steps we went through. Oh, yeah, right, I'll keep that in mind, Marisa. No adding things unless you say it's okay." She pulls away from the lectern and mark to the counter where Sanary is shredding. "Here, you go help with something else. I've got this." Well the shredding doens't seem that bad. She doesn't make any less of a mess on the counters though. Only after she starts does it occur to her that the real 'owner' of the task might not actually be Kyra herself! Until then, she keeps her head down, focused on her task. "Nice to meet you, Celly." Kyra says to the guest.
Marisa Kirisame	Sanary might find herself being stared at... again. This time it's Marisa, who seems to be looking at her like she's grown a second head. "What's... a drinking age?" She asks, inclining her head slightly. "Is that, like, when you get so old that you get dibs on all the good alcohol? Because that's a thing I think we should do away with around here. I've had it up to here--" she holds a hand over her head. It's about where her hat would normally terminate. "--With Yakumo and all the rest buying the best booze." Clearly 'drinking age' has... different connotations around these parts. KYRA "Wh- no! We don't add pictures into the... oh." Beat. "Oh you meant take pictures, not... the other thing. Right." The witch nods firmly at Kyra, then. Good! Good. Maybe this'll go well after all. "Hold on," she says, pouring more of the NECESSARY INGREDIENTS into the pot. The whole thing seems to bubble cheerfully down in the depths of the cauldron. THINGS ARE GOING PRETTY GOOD ACTUALLY. See what following the recipe does? It makes good things! That's what recipes are there for! and then kyra steps away and marisa has to take up the stirring duties. COME ON GUYS. Meanwhile, Celly is being forced into socializing. Book does not know what to do! So she defaults to answering as many questions as she can, in the same order that she was asked them. "Chocolate is chocolate flavored," Celly answers with a slight cant of her head, as if not quite sure Sanary has ever tried chocolate before. "Chocolate tastes like chocolate, yes? So it must be chocolate flavored." This makes sense to her. She nods firmly because it does. And then, KYRA. Celly looks a little less nonplussed at this terrible invader of her personal space, in part because she sort of recognizes her from that time with Cthulhu. "Hello. It is good to meet you as well." She looks between Kyra and the grater now in her hands, and then offers it with a confused blink. "You wanted this?" She asks, a little... uncertain.