It was strange to hear Glitch talk. The robot girl didn't even have a mouth. Still, despite her robot-ness (was that even a word) she seemed full of energy and personality. Just hearing her say....

<<“Ooo! Group work's fun,”>>

 Yes, Allegra thought she was going to like her.

This was quite different from the girl that completely freaked her out. It wasn’t bad enough that Amber was seriously discussing the idea of eating people. Everything about that girl was freakshow nightmare crazy! Just the way she grinned at Allegra with that psycho smile that seemed to say ‘I’d love to eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.’

Yikes!

“merp,” Allegra stammered weakly as she gasped for air. This was just nervous gibberish. It was just Allegra’s unsuccessful attempt to get through her fear and form a coherent sentence. It wasn’t working very well.

<<"Who here is normal?" >>

“What does that have to do with anything?” Allegra challenged Amber. She had finally found the courage to speak real words. “So, if you’re not normal then it’s okay to eat people? Is that what you’re saying? What kind of crazy mutant logic is that?”

Allegra had a habit of speaking before thinking and that last line might have sounded like a slight against mutants. Allegra didn’t think she was a bigot. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to be around mutants and she certainly didn’t want to be one. But otherwise, she was fine with them.

“Look, I’m just saying that eating people shouldn’t be normal anywhere. I don’t care who you are,” Allegra said. “I’m anti-cannibal, not anti-mutant okay. I’m a mutant myself, after all.”

God those were hard words to say. Allegra still hadn’t convinced herself of that truth. She had been brought up to believe most mutants were drug dealers and thugs who mostly lived in gang infested neighborhoods. Allegra was a cheerleader dammit! She couldn’t be a mutant.

But some of these kids seemed nice. Not scary at all. There was Aoi, for example. She looked sweet and a lot of fun. “I love your hair,”Allegra said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m so jealous.”

Aoi asked about everyone's experience cooking. Allegra had basically none but she wanted to change the subject quickly after sticking her foot in her mouth. Plus she came up with a plan.

“I’m not the Iron Chef or anything but I’ve got a little experience,” Allegra said. “When I was a little girl I had an Easy Bake Oven and I’d bake for all my friends. Also, I would always talk to my housekeeper, Imelda, when she was cooking. I learned lots of stuff. See that part in the recipe where it says to preheat the oven? That just means you turn the oven on and let it warm up before sticking the food in. In other words you’re heating the oven.”

Why did they call it preheating then? Preheating seemed to imply something you did before you heated. That didn’t make any sense. Well, Allegra certainly wasn’t going to dwell on that. She was busy trying to sound like an expert.

Then Chase eloquently mentioned that there wasn't enough room for more than three butts per station.
Chase seemed to want Amber on his team which was fine with Allegra who was terrified of Amber. But if Allegra was on a team with just two other people, she’d probably have to do more work and Allegra wasn’t too fond of work. Plus she’d want to keep an eye on Amber. What was that saying? Keep your friends close, but keep flesh eating zombies closer.

“No, we should all be on a team,” Allegra said. “There’s no rule we can’t use two work stations as long as we don’t take #13 or #14, right? Now I’m looking at the recipes. The chicken’s going to take the longest to cook so we should start prepping for that. Aoi, you said you have experience prepping so how would you like to start on that? And, Amber, why don’t you get the chicken ready and preheat the oven like I just explained?  Just please don’t eat the raw chicken or we’re all gonna fail.”

“Now the cookies and the mac and cheese both only take about half an hour each so...um… I don’t think I got your name,” she said to Glitch. “How would you like to start getting the stuff for the mac and cheese ready? The mac and cheese should go in the oven half an hour after the chicken goes in, so we’ll want to have everything ready by then.”

“Same with the cookies. How would you like to handle that?” she asked Chase. “You can even lick the bowl.”

Allegra surprised herself. She was not take-charge-girl at all. It’s amazing how not wanting to do work and fear of being eaten alive can motivate someone.

Of course, she couldn’t look like she was doing absolutely nothing. “I’ll be what’s known as the floater,” Allegra announced. She didn’t know if ‘floater’ was a real term or if it was a made up word like ‘merp’ but Allegra was trying to sound as confident as she could to cover up how unconfident she felt.

“A floater is someone who floats around and makes sure everything’s going good. Plus if you fall behind or are having problems, just call me and I’ll come floating. What’s important is that we work as a team and support each other. We don’t need scare tactics. We just need to come together and shine together!”

Allegra said that extra loud so Mr. Turner could hear. If he didn’t like passivity, he probably liked passive aggressive even worse. But Allegra was on a roll.

“So let’s get to our stations and get cooking!” Allegra said. She clapped loudly and smiled with the same enthusiasm she radiated when cheerleading for her home team even though she thought football was the most boring sport in the world. If she smiled and grinned through this godforsaken class, it would be over before she knew it. 

And hopefully she'd make a new friend or two through the experience.

Day One, and they were being threatened with shared grades and permanent groups. Mr. Turner was joking, right? Once they were finished, he was going to shout “Psych!” and laugh at how freaked out they all acted. Maybe? How was she supposed to know?!

Nonetheless, everyone wanted to be in a group. Glitch sure wasn't going to be that awkward loner. Besides, cooking with someone with an actual sense of taste was practically a necessity.

“I've got some experience, but it's been a while,” she stated to Amber. She might have looked a bit undead, but zombies, vampires and the like had lost most of their scare factor. The deal with eating people had to be a joke, she figured.

She nodded to the silver-haired girl. “I'm down with divvying things up.”Dividing the duties between themselves would make them go faster.

She gave Allegra a funny look. Suddenly giving out orders wasn't something she'd expected her to do. It soon turned into a stifled laugh. Floater. Allegra had called herself a floater. The definition Glitch was thinking of was hilarious, albeit pretty gross. Perhaps a fitting term for a person who dictated what other did without doing any real work themself.

Glitch herself was content with working on the mac and cheese. The recipe wasn't all that different from one she'd used in the past, so she didn't need to worry much about screwing it up. Yet, she had to wonder if the others were okay with those arrangements. Chase in particular, as he'd asked Amber to work with him. “I'm Glitch. And I can do mac and cheese no problem. But is this really all right?” she asked, looking towards the others.

She then leaned towards Allegra. “Remember what he said,” she whispered, motioning in the drill sergeant's direction. Slacking off herself was tempting, but Glitch did not want to test how serious Mr. Turner's words were.

And so it began.

Henry watched as the students stood around discussing how to pair of and how to assign tasks. The small boy that had asked him a question earlier seemed to be looking at teaming up. A girl with an unhealthy complexion stood nearby. A silver haired Asian girl stepped up to proclaim she knew what she was doing, only to have a blonde girl that Henry expected hadn't worked a full day in her life step up and start giving orders. The robot girl responded with concern.

He kept a grin off his face. Seconds were ticking by and they needed to get started above all else. He started compiling information on the kids in his mind. There were leaders trying to break through that was for sure, and followers who would be willing to do whatever they were asked. The blonde had been right in one regard, they needed teamwork.

Henry waited till they were all engaged in this conversation and walked back around the teachers desk. As quietly as possible he reached underneath and pulled out three trays that had all the ingredients for the dishes on them.

He flipped a switch and turned on a burner on the desk. It functioned as a stove. He placed a pot on it and poured water and waited for it to boil as he began chopping chicken.

He was going to make the dishes too. He hadn't volunteered that information to the class. If they were quick they could watch him and see what to do. If they allowed themselves to get caught up planning and trying to dictate tasks they'd miss him demonstrating and have to do it on their own. His class could teach them alot more than cooking, like how to cooperate or how to utilize resources. But where was the fun in teaching if he just spelled it out.

"I'm good at hunting," Amber offered, in answer to the question from the Asian girl.  That was kind of like pre-cooking, going to acquire the meat before the cooking began.  The gathering part of hunter gatherer left a bit to be desired given that she wasn't fond of herbivorous forms.  She was the hunter, not the hunted.  That made her strong and capable.

"I agree with Chase, more than 3 people at a station could get crowded."  So far, she liked the kid. He was friendly and his anxiety about the whole exercise was obvious, making her feel less anxious about her own mounting anxiety.  Nor did he judge her for her own people eating ways.  Er, not that she actually ate people, of course.  Only the once and that had been a long time ago and it hadn't really been her fault.  Honest.

"I'd love to work together," she answered the boy, feeling relieved.  Two minds were better than one, so to speak.  Together, surely they'd be able to make sense of the things that could be read on the internet and turn them into something edible.  Because the internet knew everything.

“What does that have to do with anything? So, if you’re not normal then it’s okay to eat people? Is that what you’re saying? What kind of crazy mutant logic is that?”

If her eyes had been capable of rolling they would have rolled right out of her head.  "First, its way more fun to be a freak.  Who wants to be normal and boring?"  Obviously.  "Second, I don't actually eat people, ok?  That was a joke?  You do understand jokes, right?"  Obviously she did not.

One thing she could say about the blond, is that as bossy and annoying as she was, at least someone was giving them direction because clearly some direction was needed.  But oh, how tempting it was just to take a big bite of raw chicken just to see her reaction.  Maybe she'd even throw up!  That could be really funny!  It could also possibly fail them and so she refrained.  Barely.

"Chicken.  Got it."  Pre-heating she understood and went about turning the temperature on the oven up to the required temperature but how did one prepare the chicken?  It didn't appear to have feathers on it and she knew grocery store chicken wasn't likely to have organs still within.  So....now what?  She looked over at Chace, mentally imploring him with her eyes to have some kind of an idea on what to do next.

Sparing a glance up at their teacher, Amber wondered what he must be thinking about all this chaos.  Were they doing all right?  Off to a terrible start?  What were the chances of failing, really?  It was all very nerve wracking.

She agreed with deviding up their forces to do the work, it made sense and she had seen it done before quite well. well she had no issues with any of the things they were making she decided to help with the mac and cheese. She had more experience with chicken but Amber made her nervous and she knew being nervous was something she had to avoid so that unfortenent consequences did not wind up happening. With a deep breath she walked up to the girl who reminded her of some of the robots on cartoons she had watched.

"He, glitch, I am Aoi, it will be nice to work with you"[ she said as she oved closer to the mac and cheese station, She might not have cooked it before but her mother had taught her almost anything could be made as long as you followed the directions involved.

Aoi began gathering a bowl and the utensils they would need to make the stuff. "I have not made this before but it seems easy enough, just follow the directions right" she said offering a smile, as she pushed some silver hair behind her ear. She noticed however the measuring cups were not in the measurments she was used to. [/font]

Allegra seemed to take it seriously, when Amber asked if anyone was normal. She went on a soap-box about eating people being abnormal and “not being anti-mutant, just anti-cannibal, and a mutant herself”, bla… bla… bla… girls were so weird sometimes, but thankfully it seemed that the weirdness hadn’t spread to Amber. Allegra was bossy, too. She started telling everyone what to do.

“I don’t…” Chase trailed, when he was assigned the cookies. He didn’t really know how to cook, was what he wanted to say. At all. And Allegra elected herself as “the floater”, explaining that that’s who floated around and supervised.

“That’s the teacher’s job!” the boy declared, annoyed. And what was the teacher doing?? Apparently, making food, too. With the class food. Not. Teaching. Chase did not connect two-and-two, however, so he fixed the blonde with a stare that’d turned burnt-orange with annoyance. People didn’t take you seriously, when you were twelve. Especially when you were angry and twelve, but it was the only way to get those dumb big kids to listen sometimes. He heaved a sigh at Allegra.

“I don’t… I don’t know how to cook at all. And your ‘Imelda’ taught you how to cook a little, right?” Chase said to Allegra, “So, uh… please help me with the cookies. All of the cookies. So I don’t mess everyone up.”

He cast an apologetic glance at Amber, who’d been shooting him inquiring glances as well.

“We all need to work together, right?” he asked the older girls churlishly, “So Allegra, you should help me and Amber. And not fight! Okay? You can float... or whatever... but not all the time!”

He squinted at the board.

“The first step is to preheat the oven.”

Amber was closest. He nodded to her.

GLITCH:
“I'm Glitch. And I can do mac and cheese no problem. But is this really all right?” she asked, looking towards the others.


“Of course it is,” Allegra said answering for the others. “Like we say in cheerleading camp, it’s only a cheer if we’re all cheering the same thing.” Okay, that really didn’t have all that much to do with cooking but Allegra was very nervous and she was trying to be inspiring.

Glitch gave Allegra a friendly reminder about slacking, which wasn't completely lost on the girl. “Oh!” Allegra said. She finally caught on to what ‘floater’ might mean and she really wished she had given herself a better title..

AMBER:
"First, its way more fun to be a freak. Who wants to be normal and boring?" Obviously. "Second, I don't actually eat people, ok? That was a joke? You do understand jokes, right?"

“Eating people is not funny,” Allegra responded in a shaking flustered voice. “I don’t see how anyone could find that funny. Do you have more jokes about killing people? How about people dying in car crashes. Heard any good suicide jokes lately? I hope you’re not considering a career in stand up.”

“Also, who would be proud of being a freak?” Allegra asked. The more she self righteously rambled, the braver she got. “Oh, I guess you are one of those people that spends so much effort trying to prove how different they are because it’s so much easier to act like you don’t fit in and to put people down than actually contributing to anything. It’s scary to stand up for something positive.”

Back home, there were groups that bullied Allegra because she was in cheerleading and pep club. They seemed to excel at either wearing black or smoking copious amounts of marijuana. Other than that (and being really mean), they didn’t seem to have much to offer. Amber reminded Allegra of  some of those people. The only difference was that Amber looked like a walking corpse and she seemed to advocate chowing down on human flesh. That made her even worse.

Still, Amber agreed to start working on the chicken for which Allegra was grateful. “Thank you,” Allegra said.

AOI:
"I have not made this before but it seems easy enough, just follow the directions right"

“That’s the spirit!” Allegra cheered. “Go team! If you need any help, I’ll be floating...er...I’ll be right over.”

Chase proved to be the most obstinate in the group. He asserted that floating was the teacher’s job and, following this logic, Allegra couldn’t float all the time.

“The teacher isn’t floating. He’s just sitting there doing nothing,” Allegra pointed out. “That’s why you need me. That’s my job.”

Chase glared at her with an angry orange stare. Allegra was new here and this kind of thing still freaked her out. She was halfway convinced her life was in danger.

“Don’t you dare do a glowing eye thing on me!” Allegra warned. She wasn’t positive what a ‘glowing eye thing’ was but she was sure that, whatever it was, Chase could do it.


CHASE:
“I don’t… I don’t know how to cook at all. And your ‘Imelda’ taught you how to cook a little, right?” Chase said to Allegra, “So, uh… please help me with the cookies. All of the cookies. So I don’t mess everyone up.”


Allegra adored children but a lot of that was because they usually did what she said. Chance was quite the opposite.

“If I did everything, you wouldn’t learn anything, now would you?” Allegra lectured. She felt this was a good argument to cover up for the fact that she had no clue what she was doing and didn’t want to do any work herself. “Preheating the oven is the first step. I already explained all about that. Next, you want to get all the ingredients together. Mr. Turner wrote them all down under where it says ‘ingredients.’ Stop me if I’m going too fast.”

Allegra was being snappy and she usually wasn’t like that, but this class was taking a toll on her and being questioned by an 12 year-old wasn’t helping. “First you need to get all the ingredients out and put them on the counter,” she explained. “The ingredients are sugar and brown sugar which should be right next to each other. You also need eggs which should be in the fridge. And flour and baking soda and salt and chopped nuts and of course, chocolate chips. And we need vanilla. Wait! That doesn’t make sense. Vanilla what?” Allegra was thoroughly confused by this. Vanilla was just a flavor wasn’t it? She sure wished her housekeeper, Imelda, was here to explain this all to her.

“Mr. Turner. How do we get the vanilla into the cookies?” Allegra asked

While Allegra stood there with her hand raised, she finally noticed that Mr. Turner wasn’t just sitting there doing nothing. He was actually sitting and doing something. She propped her phone up so it was facing the teacher and pressed RECORD. Being able to refer to a video of someone who actually knew how to cook would help immensely with her floating duties.

Glitch could swear that teacher was enjoying this. He was making the dishes as well, but there was no effort to catch the class's attention, no helpful tips, and nothing else she found useful. She could only guess he would try to pass his “lesson” off as a “genius teaching method.”

Nope. Allegra had no clue what she was talking about. “Heh. Cheering. Right...” Glitch shook her head.

She then turned her attention to Aoi. Thus far, the silver-haired girl seemed quiet and well-mannered, a nice contrast to Allegra's “I'll pretend I know what I'm doing and will boss everyone around” schtick. “I'm sure it'll be nice to work with you too, Aoi.” She gave a thumbs up in lieu of a smile.

>>"I have not made this before but it seems easy enough, just follow the directions right"

“Pretty much. I think we're going to make some nice mac and cheese.” Which she sadly wasn't going to be able to eat. Sob.

The heated conversation between the other three classmates did not go unnoticed. Amber and Chase were getting an earful. Glitch felt kind of bad for them, but they had mac and cheese they needed to focus on. For now, she was just going to tune Allegra out.

While Aoi was pulling out the cooking utensils, Glitch went to retrieve the ingredients. Macaroni pasta, milk, butter, flour, and... aw nuts, the cheese was in a block. She sat it next to the grater and placed the other stuff next to the stove.

Glitch eyed the directions for a refresher. “I guess we'd better start boiling water first, then get the sauce going,” she said to Aoi. She turned the dial on the stove to preheat the burner.

The class was dispersing nicely. Some small groups had already formed and we're heading to their stations. Henry's attention was brought to a bigger group that seemed to be having some issues with delegation. He gave a little chuckle as he continued preparing his food.

It was mechanical. He had a bowl that he had started the cookies in. His noodles were starting to boil for his macaroni and the chicken sat in a glass dish waiting for him to work with it. Cooking was familiar, simple and Henry worked without having to focus on the task too much. Instead he focused on the group.

They seemed to have made a little progress. The robot girl had at least turned the oven on and gathered ingredients. He noticed she had placed the cheese next to the grater he had put out and suppressed a chuckle. For the Mac and cheese you could just throw the whole block in with the noodles milk and butter and let it melt as it cooked, no muss no fuss. It was the dish that took the least skill and effort to make. He had purposely left out tools that weren't needed to see how students would respond.

The black eyed girl seemed to be working with the small boy. They seemed an odd pair, but that was fine. It takes all kinds. The silver haired girl seemed mostly pleasant to the rest and spoke with the subtle confidence that told Henry she might actually know what she was doing. It was the blonde however that seemed to be the loudest.

She had mentioned being a floater, going around and helping where it was needed and Henry sneered to himself as the young boy responded in annoyance. The kid had guts, Henry would give him that. The blonde seemed to be simultaneously attempting to boss everyone around and put them down all at the same time. It was then that she turned to Henry and asked him how to add vanilla to the cookies.

"Hmm let me think. I'm a little busy proving how different I am. I don't know if I have the time to...how did you phrase it? Do something positive." He replied dryly.

She pulled out a phone and started recording him cooking. Henry hated cameras.

He picked up a small plastic bottle and held it label out. Printed in large letters was the word "Vanilla". He popped the cap and poured some into his own cookie mix.

"Let me help you with that. Ill adapt it to help comprehension. Give me a V- give me an A- give me a Nilla. Put it together and what do you get?" He mocked.

He put the bottle back down and continued working on his food. It was with great effort he resisted the urge to use only his middle finger while cooking, a pleasant idea for the girls video. Who said he didn't have self restraint?

Amber stood in solidarity with Chase, nodding her agreement with every statement he made.  Sure, he may have been the youngest among them but when he was right he was right.  Floater was just a glorified title that basically meant 'I want to boss people around and not do anything productive myself.'  Of course she knew that direction was important but so was actually pulling your weight.  She glared at Allegra because seeing people squirm under her unnerving black eyes was fun.  At least when they kind of deserved it.

A request was made to preheat the oven, which she did.  Following basic instructions didn't seem so hard and there were recipes written down for them.  It shouldn't be too different than any other kind of direction following, right?  Maybe she should have spent more time in the Sanctuary kitchen learning to cook things rather than just eating the food.  

"So, um, what does one do to prepare chicken, exactly?"  She looked at the list of instructions for the chicken which included the chopping of vegetables.  Well, she might not know the first thing about whatever 'preparing' chicken was, but she certainly knew the basics about chopping vegetables.  Now that the oven was on, chopping was officially where she was going to begin and she grabbed said vegetables, a cutting board and a knife.

"Cheerleading camp?"  She stopped her chopping a moment to look at the other girl and raise an incredulous eyebrow at her.  "I'm glad you can be all self righteous about your quest to be normal, or whatever, but some of us don't have that option."  Her own tone of voice rose as she confronted the other girl.  "Some of us don't have a choice but to be a freak.  You've got your nice blond face and your perfect complexion and you can pretend to be normal all you like.  Me?  I'm a walking, talking corpse and either I learn to embrace it or I just kill myself in truth because there's not a damn thing I can do about it!"  She glared, only now realizing just how angry she was.

Rant over, she returned to her chopping.  That felt damn good to get out.  At least no one else seemed to have a problem with being a self-righteous princess.  And then the teacher started mocking the blond too and she just couldn't help the little giggle she let out.  Maybe she was going to like this class, after all.

Aoi tried to tune the others out her annoyance rising. She had never been a fan of arguing and some of the current arguments topics struck close to home. She worried about thinks like the possibility she might be a monster or at least do something monstrous like eat or hurt someone. Better to focus on the school work so they did well she told herself getting herself under control.

She moved to the cheese grader as the robot girl started the water to boil, she grated the cheese, focusing on the task as hand rather then those around her other then the robot mutant. "Can you assume a human form" she asked curiously as she grated the cheese.

With the arguing of the others she was beginning to worry about their grade however. Not watching the other s her mind imagined the worst even as she told herself her imaginings were flights of fancy. She glanced up in time to hear Amber fire back at the blond cheerleader and quickly resumed trying to tune them out, afraid they might cause her enough stress or anger to trigger her power. That was the last thing she needed, to start tearing the place apart in bear mode.

Chase puffed his cheeks at Allegra, his eyes rolling back in his skull. Ugh, some girls were so… stupid! It was like their brain cells fell out when their hair got long! The boy stamped his foot and didn’t dignify Allegra with a retort. He didn’t expect her to do it herself, he wanted help! Helping and doing were two completely different things. Stupid girls! Finally she started explaining what needed to be done. Ingredients! Chase could get ingredients. He knew how to read, didn’t he?

The boy ran to the front of the room, collecting the necessary ingredients—sugar was in its own plastic tub, but brown sugar was in a tin. He collected those into his arms, feeling the dull prickle of illegible genetic residue on the insides of his arms. After some struggling, he also grabbed flour. However, finding his arms full, he trotted to the station, and deposited these onto the counter. Chase looked back at the board. Baking soda… soda?! Chopped walnuts… chocolate chips… vanilla, just like Allegra had said. Chase went back to the table of ingredients.

Well, sure, there were whole walnuts, but no chopped ones… Chase grabbed those and the chocolate chips. Out of the corner of his eye he saw baking soda which, no surprise, came in a can. Cool. Chase returned to the station. All he needed was the fabled vanilla, milk, and eggs. Chase was retrieving the milk and eggs when Mr. Turner showed them the vanilla, dragging Allegra on the way. Well, no wonder he couldn’t find it, that bottle was so tiny!! There were identical bottles in the diminished collection of ingredients, so Chase retrieved them before returning home.

“Okay,” the boy reported, depositing his final haul onto the counter, “I think that’s everything.”

He looked towards Allegra. Team effort, he told himself. Team effort.

"What next?"