Bakers, start your baking!

[indigo_league]

Who: Everybody!
Where: Riegfried and Soy's mansion
When: January 15th; day time for the cooking part, evening for the mingle part.
Summary: Come one, come all to the newest contest hosted by Riegfried and Soy. Today's theme: cooking!








[Daytime - The kitchens]

Throughout the day, the kitchens will be open to all contestants, though any casual onlookers --human, pokemon, or otherwise-- will be shooed out to prevent any cheating.

Each contestant will be directed to a gleaming counter, where they will be able to find everything from your basic whisk and spatula to gleaming kitchen machinery fancy enough to make any cook feel faint with envy. Each counter comes complete with a small fridge (should you need to chill any of your ingredients), an oven, a stove, a microwave -- really, anything you can imagine and it is there. Riegfried and Soy clearly didn't want anyone to run into the issue of not having the right equipment for the job.

At the back of the room are the fridges: tall, imposing fridges made of gleaming metal stocked full of every sort of ingredient you could possibly think of. And next to the fridges, contestants can find rows and rows of shelves, each nearly bowing under the weight of the products placed on them -- from fresh fruit, to spices, to rice and noodles. If you need it, you can find it.

Riegfried and Soy will be flitting around the room like a pair of extravagant Butterfrees, happy to engage contestants in small interviews. Everything for the camera, baby! Because those are also there; they are clearly trying to stay out of everybody's way, but small, Rotom-powered cameras flit around the room for close-ups, while cameramen and women with heavy-duty equipment get the distance shots. Hopefully, you haven't got an issue with stage fright.



[Evening - The show]

And when all is said and done, and the last dishes have been cooked, it's time for the actual show. There is some time between the actual cooking and this part of the evening, during which contestants have a chance to change their clothing and freshen up, but before too long, the mansion's doors open to the guests, who are herded by the cheerful hosts to an enormous hall.

The hall itself is set up with all manner of comforts. There are some small tables and chairs for anyone who wants to sit down for a while. Long tables line the sides of the room, absolutely laden with all manner of refreshments. There is even a special table set aside where the dishes the contestants made (at least the ones that made it to this part of the evening) are displayed and ready for tasting.

The schedule for the night is rather straightforward.

After some meet-and-greet and time for every last guest to arrive, the day's events (cut and edited by a very exhausted camera crew) will be projected onto a huge screen for all to enjoy. The votes will be tallied afterward and awards and prizes will be handed out. The rest of the evening will give the winners a chance to celebrate, the losers a chance to commiserate, and everybody else to clear the buffet of everything edible.

Comments

OH YES

[uncutetomboy]

"Please just make him go away," she whispers, cringing back. "I'm sorry, I know he's yours, just--"

She yanks up her feet and wiggles around so they're tucked under her, because otherwise she knows she'll kick the awful, terrible thing and she can tell it's this man's partner and she doesn't want to get kicked out of the party for fighting. She's already had an awful day.

[nastyboy]

A beat.

"Oh!" Dimitri says, surprised. "You meant Hob - yes, I'm sorry, I thought you were reacting badly for me-" Quickly, he turns to face his little giant rat. "Hob, could you please go check on Claude, and make sure that his curry is doing well?"

Hob, fully aware of Akane having issues and deciding that really wasn't her problem until just now, tilts her head to the side. There's a quick nibble of the rest of the cookie, stuffing it into her cheeks... and then, obediently, she turns tail and scurries off.

[uncutetomboy]

Once the rat is out of sight, Akane gradually relaxes, even lowering her feet back to the floor.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I just-- I don't like rat pokemon," she says, helplessly. "At all."

It's kind of obvious that they scare the crap out of her.

"I've got a Gumshoos that helps me with them sometimes, but he's still in the PC."

[nastyboy]

"No - it is all right." Dimitri shakes his head. "I can hardly blame you for any fear you have. I know some people back home who felt the same sort of uneasiness."

Mostly snooty nobles who think themselves better than their peers, but that's a conversation for another time. Maybe never.

"If I had known that you felt that way, I would have been more careful. I suppose with how common such creatures are, and how they are taken for pets and companions, I stopped thinking about such things..."

[uncutetomboy]

Akane shrugs. "No, no, it's fine. I know I'm... a little more squeamish about the kinds of Pokemon I don't like than a lot of trainers."

It wasn't just the rat lines she was afraid of. There was the entire Ghost-type... which was why she had an anti-ghost robot and an anti-ghost sword now that definitely weren't ghosts themselves, no matter what people said.

[nastyboy]

"Still... I will make sure it doesn't happen again." Once is an accident, more than that is just plain bastardry, as far as Dimitri is concerned.

Trying to give his most polite smile, he holds out his hand. "Let us try this again, for a more pleasant introduction. My name is Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd. Your cookies were nice."

He refrains, Just In Case, from mentioning that his rat is the one who's tried them.

[uncutetomboy]

She takes his hand after a moment and shakes it. "Akane Tendo. And... that's awfully nice of you to say." She doesn't quite believe it, after she saw how Riegfried and Soy reacted to trying one, but it is kind of him to pretend otherwise.

[nastyboy]

Dimitri shakes her hand carefully, and smiles. "You know, when you first started getting nervous, I thought I personally was the cause of it. Eyepatches seem intimidating to some people."

[uncutetomboy]

Akane shakes her head. "Maybe a little," she says, "but I've met people here with, um, prosthetic faces and extra fingers--not the same people--and way weirder-looking people back home too, so mostly it just makes you look like a pirate."

[nastyboy]

Dimitri hastily pulls his hand over his mouth, to muffle his sudden laugh. "That... is the first I have ever heard of that comparison," he says, when he's gotten himself put together. "I never heard of that, at least where I am from. So pirates have eyepatches where you are from?"

[uncutetomboy]

"Well," Akane says thoughtfully. "I think it kind of depends where they're from. It's mostly in the west that pirates have eyepatches, but you also look like a westerner."

[nastyboy]

"I see... That's interesting." Dimitri smiles a little bit. "That would be completely different as to what we know in my land. Funnily enough, in that respect, you would be the westerner. Funny how things like that end up as a matter of perspective."

[uncutetomboy]

"Well," Akane says, "the world is round. So I guess easterners and westerners depend on which direction you're looking."

[nastyboy]

"It really is a matter of perspective." Dimitri smiles, pleased. "And that's true for more than simply where a person is physically standing. I think that's rather why I like an event such as this - we get to see all the different ideas people have on food.

"For example, I never knew this curry dish was so popular and well known, before arriving here."

[uncutetomboy]

Akane blinks. "Really? Curry's everywhere back home. People eat it when they're camping and also it's supposed to be an easy dish that anyone can make. Even I can make curry that people will eat."

[nastyboy]

"I suppose my land simply doesn't have the ingredients for it," Dimitri chuckles, smiling. It's amusing, to see what things are so common in one's homeland that they can't think of them being absent from a place. "We don't often have spicy foods - or the weather that encourages them. Fodlan - and Faerghus, my home country, especially - may be too cold."

[uncutetomboy]

"Like Sapporo?" Akane wonders out loud. "Or like the North Pole?" Then she blushes. "Never mind. If I've never heard of any of the places in your world, then you wouldn't have heard of the places in mine. Is there snow all the time, though, or most of the time?"

[nastyboy]

"It is fine," Dimitri chuckles. "Although I will say that we are rather far north... Although not the most north. If I describe it, perhaps it can help you compare it to places you are familiar with."

It's just the describing part that is a little tricky, and Dimitri tilts his head to the side as he thinks. "However, there is certainly snow a great deal of the time. Winter is of course the worst of it, and many people hide away in their homes for it. Only messengers truly travel during times like that.

"The snows only start to thaw at the beginning of the new year, and it takes a while longer after that for any green to be seen. You see, Faerghus has rather rugged land. There are cold mountains, some of which hold reserves of snow even far into spring, and the earth is rather unforgiving, only giving way to the most stubborn or clever of plants.

"The trees that do best are pines - I saw some of them decorated during the Christmas holiday that passed just recently here, which I found interesting." Dimitri sweeps a hand out slightly. "Some of the densest forests are those, although you see them more along in lands like Gautier and Fraldarius. They can seem so dense and quiet, the world seems still..."

He trails off, realizing how much he's talked. "Ah, but I hope I'm not boring you with talk like that."

[uncutetomboy]

Akane shakes her head. "No," she says. "It sounds-- well. Nice, in a sort of chilly sort of way. And a lot like Sapporo. That's the northernmost island of my country. We went to a place sort of like it here for two weeks back in August, called Sinnoh.

"I'm from Furinkan. It's a town in Nerima ward, which is part of Tokyo, the capital. But by the time you get to my part of it, it's less big city and more town. It's on Honshu, which is the biggest island--my entire country is islands."

[nastyboy]

Sapporo and Sinnoh... Dimitri makes a note to remember those names, just in case. For now, he lets himself be the listener as Akane speaks, and smiles a little bit as she describes it all.

"That sounds nice," he says, nodding. "I like places like those - where you are not quite in the thick of so much hustle and bustle, but still surrounded by friends and family. Does your home being on a series of islands- well, I was going to ask if it affects living there, but I suppose it must."

OH MY GOD I HAVE NO BRAIN. PRETEND SHE SAID HOKKAIDO NOT SAPPORO

[uncutetomboy]

(Hopefully he's going to remember what Akane should have actually said before the person transcribing this got the city and the island mixed up. Hokkaido. Hokkaido is the island. Sapporo is the big city on it.)

"I mean, I guess?" Akane shrugs. "I don't really know what it's like to live on a proper continent and if there's anything different. It's easier for us to isolate ourselves, I guess, but we aren't doing that anymore."

LMAO I WAS JUST LIKE "THAT DOESN'T SOUND RIGHT, BUT I DON'T KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT JAPAN"

[nastyboy]

"No, I think it is just stubbornness that lends itself to isolation," Dimitri says, shaking his head. "Stubbornness, and thinking the only way you need to know is what you already know. That is how it was for Fodlan. If not for different groups splitting off to forge their own homes in the land, I sometimes think it would not even have the countries that it does."

GOD I WISH I'D NOTICED BEFORE YOU'D RESPONDED

[uncutetomboy]

"I think being an island chain helps with actually doing it, though," Akane says. "If you're on a continent with another country, then you can close your borders but people can still sneak in on foot. It's harder when they need boats to do it."

adlidfjjasf I'M SORRY I COULDN'T HELP CORRECT IT

[nastyboy]

"Possibly... Although I am afraid that I know less about that." Dimitri leans back thoughtfully in his seat, thinking about all of the different histories he was required to learn as crown prince. "The one island nation near Fodlan was caught up in at least one war with the mainland, so I cannot use that as a good point of reference."

Also, now that he's thinking about it, he thinks they all might be in different wars with all of their neighbors at any given time? Saints. Their continent is a mess.

IT'S FINE it's fine we caught it eventually

[uncutetomboy]

"Japan's had wars on the mainland too," Akane says. "I think last time we tried to take the war to the mainland and to a bunch of other islands instead first? But that was over forty years ago."