He pushed his way into the kitchen, and a wash of heat blew past him. Someone was already in here, and his thoughts on these matters were swiftly cut out by a chorus of sizzling pans and produce tumbled out of a colander into the sink.

"Oh, brother! How are you?"

Up and down the narrow laneways of the Lookout kitchen, Zaofan zipped between each makeshift station. Fussing each hissing pan twice over, prodding their contents with whatever impliment he had nearby, Ochazuke saw the Chef's eyes widen obsessively as he stared intently at the fire crackle and surface sizzle, as if looking at it would will the sear to completion or bring a boil any nearer to fruition

Glancing over his shoulder, Ochazuke spotted the weighted Z cape laying in a heap in the entrance. The hook from the coatrack was torn clean off where it poked upward from underneath it.

"Just the person I need!" Zaofan called out as he beat a whisk into a sauce with such vigour it climbed into a tower of fouette. "We can't win on an empty stomach after all, ha ha!"

At the far end of the room a large, flat pan sat ominously over a pile of wood. Ochazuke widened his eyes, murmured something under his breath and sighed. Unfurling his traveller's cloak from his shoulders and the bloodied wraps upon his hands, he resigned himself to washing his hands.

Despite the fact that they'd eaten only hours ago and both of them had only just returned.

__


"Have you got that fillet going? You'll need to hit them from both sides." A dusting of some spice mixture hit the underside of the game bird, and nestled in between Zaofan's hands was vigourously worked in to the meat. The reply came in the hollow tack of metal falling upon wood as a pile of peppers were soon fallen to ribbons.

"In a moment." Ochazuke flipped the cleaver in his hand and swept strips of vegetables onto a plate.

"Ah-ah, we should know, 'time waits for no man'," Slapping the last bit of meat into a gathered pile, Zaofan's should slumped a little, before he spun about, dashed his hands under scalding hot water pouring from the faucet and scrubbed them around the towel that hung limply over his shoulder before examining his work. "Nice julienne! Told you the big knife, it's a multitasker!"

Pulling two knives out of a block, Zaofan set to work on preparing different cuts of meat with exacting precision - and using both hands. Ochazuke slowed his progress on an onion to watch him work, a dervish of clipping, quick incisions, and cartilagenous cracks of joints separated bone and skin from the prime material. If he hadn't chosen the culinary life or martial life, perhaps he could have been a surgeon.

"We only work with what we have, I suppose," the martial artist said to the chef, as he reached over with the flat of the cleaver. Bones, ends, and useless things gathered into a pile, he carried them over to the steaming vat against the wall. "Make the most of our means."

The martial chef said nothing, but his perennial smile seemed to curdle momentarily. "Consomme." Stuck in a boil for hours, this would became the stock to boost something else.

"Wellsir, onto the next step, we're going to need a few sacks of shortgrain rice-"

The 'puff' of a stovetop element rang out in the kitchen. Ochazuke killed the light of one of the stations, and a grey smoke twisted up towards the ceiling. "You've burned the eggs"

"Well...half of most modern recipes are made of accidents, I suppose. There's always a chance to fail upwards-"

"You were poaching them."

"No, I've got to-"

"Zao, stop."

One by one, they slowly killed the dozen or so burners in the kitchen. Zaofan whipped the towel from his shoulder, wringing it between his hands before dabbing it across his forehead. Perched halfway on a stool over the counter, he slumped over with a low sigh.

"Talk to me. What is this-" he gestured to the dying sizzle and simmer around them . "-all this about?"

The martial chef folded his arms and scrunched his face, his posture bunched where he sat, before ultimately clicking his tongue once as a glazed expression fell on his face.

"...alternate worlds, alternate timelines." Of course. "and alternate...other us-es, you know? -hand me that can?"

By his feet, Ochazuke tread near a portion of tomatoes in a foodservice size about the size of a paintcan, one among several others. He picked it up, but rather than hand it off, took the long way around as he seized a kettle to make a boil - and the brew he came in for.

"...anyway...I don't know. I've been thinking, you ever wonder why things are the way they are? Could they have been different somehow if only we decided at one moment to got another way?" The chef spread his hands wide, thin fingers balanced as if to juggle some invisible jellylike thing before he sputtered. "What are we even doing here?"