- Job Deets:
When presented with the opportunity to work in the cafeteria, Tsubasa took it with gusto. The Silver Wolf cafeteria was well stocked, had impressively new equipment, and best of all the freedom to try what he wanted. So far, he had put out a strawberry chocolate cake to rave reviews, and was now working on a sourwood honey infused shortbread that had been eluding him for the past few days. He’d tried other flavors of honey, of course, and the differences were subtle to most tasters, with people generally settling on clover honey as it was the most readily available, but the cafeteria had some special stock for him to play with, provided he also helped with the more often requested foods and desserts.
Also he had to keep Ahab in a corner after an incident with green fur being discovered in a lasagna. Currently he was working on the shortbread that had been troubling him. He had previously created a small batch, which hadn’t turned out quite right. “Make more failures,” Ahab said from his little corner. As expected, he was the disposal device for the batches that didn’t turn out quite right.
Clearly somewhat distracted, like a parent reading the newspaper while talking to their child, Tsubasa responded, “I think you’d rather eat them when I get them right.”
“How would you know? You haven’t gotten them right before.” He was laying on his stomach, with the thin wafer in front of him, casually picking pieces off then sliding them into his mouth, as though eating his own pillow.
Tsubasa stopped and stared at the little squirrel until he sheepishly retreated into his own fur, “Sorry.” Ahab offered, “But why is it so difficult for you? What’s missing? You made that cake and it was just bam-wham-whicham cake.”
Still distracted, Tsubasa continued talking, “Well these too, normally. Bam-wham-whicham shortbread, but the goal is to infuse it with the honey, to create a more natural spring of flavor than the sugar, which you know can fall a little flat. Honey holds on a little longer, and therefore doesn’t just fade away as you eat the cookie. The danger is in a balance of the natural crumbly texture of shortbread, the viscosity of the honey which depends on how I work with it, but also on the location from which it was harvested. Sourwood trees require a little more water than some other sources, so the resulting honey is a little easier to work with. It’s actually really popular when spread over muffins and cookies, like with a cup of tea,” Finally glancing up at Ahab, he added, “I’m just trying to cut out the middle man.”
Ahab flipped over to the other side of the cookie and started eating the opposite side of his pillow. “Why is it that this is what you’re most knowledgeable about?”
“Why is it that you don’t know more about shutting up.” Tsubasa turned back to his work.
“Ouch.” The squirrel said with a mouth full of shortbread.
“Tsubasa Kageyama?” A voice called from the other side of the kitchen. “Tsubasa?”
“Here!” Tsubasa said, pulling his attention from the recipe and looking up.
A short man with a mustache came into view. He was a little shorter than Tsubasa himself, and his mustache seemed to be growing so long that it covered up his top lip entirely. He wore a yellow button up shirt with white stripes that seemed to almost blend in with the yellow, making it rather difficult to see whether it was actually pure yellow until one got up close. “Ah, there you are, I was told I could find you here. My name is McKinley, I’m one of the guild staff here. I’ve got a job for you. I heard you’re interested in working with the scholars here.”
“Yeah, Miss Mercury and I were talking about it and the idea of being able to mess with things and potentially blow stuff up is kinda fun for me.”
“Rrright.” Whether he was caught up by Tsubasa referring to Mercury as “miss”, or mentioning that he wanted to blow stuff up, it took him a half a moment to recover. “Well I have a job request for you. Normally it would be given to one of the hunters, but strangely enough it has been sent to you specifically.”
“It’s for retrieval?” Tsubasa went to wash his hands before taking the job notice and looking it over.
“In a manner of speaking. It seems that there’s a report of an extremely dangerous bloodsport arena.”
“I am down so far,” His eyes squinted slightly as he continued reading the job notice.
“Yes, well, as it stands the client’s nephew seems to have been forced into this arena and, fearing for his life, the client has hired you to get in there and get him.”
“Uh huh,” Tsubasa lifted a finger to the notice. It seemed he hadn’t yet gotten very far into reading it.
“Well, it has been requested that you go in there and retrieve his nephew, additionally shutting down the arena if at all possible. Here’s the part that interests the Silver Wolf guild. One of the organizers seems to have an unusual lacrima that would be very interesting for us to look over. In addition, it seems that the organizers themselves are Fiorean renegades, and therefore having one of us recover them and that lacrima is in our best interest.”
“I’m down with all of this so far,” Tsubasa said. He was taking off his apron and setting the baking project in one of the cooling freezers. That way, it would get a little more shelf life as long as he could come back in time. “But why was the request for me? Is it a hazing thing? Send the new guy to a bloodsports arena?”
“Well I wouldn't quite say that. You see, the request didn’t come for your real name, but rather your LacTube handle. It seems that the Desiertian plutocrat that requested you for the job is… well… a subscriber.”
————
Wearing his signature hoodie which was, in turn, wrapped in a brownish cloak that made it a little difficult to see the signature clothing underneath. “TsuKo on location, yo! Okay so check this out,” Tsubasa said into his camera, “I am working with the Royal Knights today. Since hopefully this’ll all be wrapped up by the time we I get to post this, I’m gonna tell you now that I am part of a special covert operation that will shut down an evil organization and rescue some diplomats. Special thanks to the subscriber that sent this job for me, I hope I can do it justice! Alright I think the RK guys that I’m working with are coming up, I can feel some wicked strong magical energy coming in fast, let’s see if I can get them on camera.”
He turned the camera in front of him, watching out for their arrival. In a moment, however, the camera dropped down as he lowered his arm and said, “The hot people!”
WC: 1183/4670