"Well then! Ahem... The sacrifice shall be prepared shortly, so long as the rest of the potion is too..."

Amaris grins and digs out a specific tupperware, then gets a big bowl and another knife to start leafing pasta out of the way and scooping up chilled ground beef.

"Ooh, mind if I put on music?"

"Not at all, go ahead!"

Cherry gets out her onion and starts dicing it as well. 

System, can I get a basic recipe for mexican burrito filling using ground beef, beans, onion and chili powder displayed in a nice corner of my vision? Also if you can prompt Amaris if she wants to see it that would be great. 

Search results are provided. There's a 'share link' icon.

Amaris puts on... Some kind of video game soundtrack? It's rock-y and techno-y and rhythmic, no vocals. Sounds like boss fight music. It's coming from what seem like built in room speakers.

Nice, nice. She can jam to this. 

She dices half the onion and tupperwares the other half, then estimates the proportions from the recipe. It doesn't need to be super precise for a dish like this, she mostly wants to get the spice level right. Her family would know a better spice blend than just chili powder, but she's on a budget and salsa covers many faults. 

She drains off the beans and sets them up with a spoon, along with the diced tomato's tupperware container and the jar of salsa. She gets down two plates and fishes out the tortillas from her shopping bag. 

Then she puts her pan on the stove. 

Here goes for her Skill... She wants to sauté the onions so they can get mixed with the ground beef. She knows how to check for doneness - they should turn transparent, no need to carmelize them. The ground beef is already cooked so it can be saved and just reheated when the onions are close to done.

She turns up the heat, then puts in the onions to cook. 

How's the ground beef extraction going?

"Like eighty percent done!" She half-shouts over the music. "Also, I don't like texting someone who's right next to me!"

"Alright!" Cherry half-shouts back. 

She fishes through the drawers and gets out a mixing bowl, then quickly returns to stirring her onions so they don't burn. "Just dump it in there with about an equal amount of beans and mix it up."

The end result of Amaris's beef extraction efforts is a blob of mixed sauce and ground beef with a few flecks of pasta and cheese in it. Instead of just dumping it in, she presents the bowl first.

"How's this? I'll just toss out the pasta sheets."

"Super great! The recipe I'm using actually calls for tomato sauce and I sure don't mind a little extra cheese. It'll reduce down. Lemme measure in the chili powder and dump in some beans and then we can get this show on the road."

The onion looks nice and translucent when she checks it, so she turns off the pan for the moment, then tosses a tablespoon of chili powder into the bowl and mixes in about half the beans. 

"Here goes!"

She globs generous portions into the pan until it's about half full, and then turns the heat up again. 

Amaris watches closely for any signs of ✨magic✨. "It smells good!"

She keeps the mixture at a simmer, stirring constantly to keep it from sticking and burning, and slowly it reduces down from a bit of a wet mess to something more suitable for burrito mix. She's not the best at eyeballing but it looks about the consistency of her mother's burrito mix. Nothing obviously magic happens if you don't count how the pan is completely self-heating and changes temperatures instantly.

Cherry reduces the pan down to low heat and leaves it to keep the mixture warm, then spreads a tortilla out on a plate next to the stove. She globs a big spoonful of the mixture into the tortilla, sprinkles diced tomato and salsa over it and wraps it up. 

"Here goes, moment of truth!"

And a sudden awareness appears.

Beef and Bean Burrito +

A classic Mexican dish known througout the world. Restores a moderate amount of energy and helps to resist the cold.

+ Diced Tomato (Energy +)

+ Salsa (Cold Resist +)

"Sweet, I just got skill feedback!"

"Ooh, what's it like? I can feel things, but one of my skills is literally called Feel Ground, so."

"I have a sense of what the burrito does. It restores energy and protects against the cold."

She picks it up and takes a big bite, and salsa and bean and tomato and beef explode across her tongue.

"....mmmh, and it's really good. Go ahead and put your own together from the mix if you want one, it's your ground beef."

Amaris smiles and does so, digging in straight away.

"Mmm, nabbad. I wonder how much energy, and how much protection? If it interferes with other kinds of buffs? What is 'energy', anyway?"

"Beats me. I guess I'll have to try things. I gotta go for a walk to pick up a spare outfit anyway, maybe I'll wear my coat around my waist and see if I get chilly."

"There are labs specifically designed for testing and measuring buffs! Not here, but Westgate Arch has them, all sorts of medical scans to measure baseline versus buffed." Nom nom! "Now if 'energy' pushed back skill fatigue that would be huge. Maybe I should go outside and mess with dirt until I can't, then see if I can again!"

"Sure, feel free to try!"

She looks down at her burrito. "Man, I made this whole thing up but I just had pizza. I should probably stow it for supper later and eat it then, I can always reheat it. Even if it does taste pretty good. I just wanted to try out my skill so bad." She shakes her head. 

"Eh, is what it is." She starts scooping the burrito mixture into one of Amaris' tupperwares and putting away the ingredients. "Thanks for lending the ground beef, that was super helpful."

"No, that's completely legit! Everyone plays around with their skills! Even the more destructive ones. Now I want to show off for you."

She continues working on her burrito. "I think it's making me less tired from the tour? Less frustrated and grumpy."

"Glad to hear it!"

She covers over her own single-bitten burrito with plastic wrap and sticks it back in the fridge on a small plate. "If you wanted to show me what you can do I'd love to see it. I gotta get something to wear for tomorrow before it gets too late but I can def spare ten minutes to fuck around a bit outside."

"Hell yeah. My mighty, C-rank powers shall leave you in shock and awe."

She points at her potted plant. "So, first off, 'ground' is an Artonan concept that the skills are built around, it's a little tricky. It turns out actual Earth dirt with a live plant in it still counts as 'ground' even if it's on the third floor. I have two Skills and one spell impression, pretty standard for a C. Feel Ground, which gives me, like, tactile feedback when I'm touching some. I could close my eyes and tell you exactly when you poke the dirt in this pot. Second one is the real trick, because concrete? If you do it right, it's still ground. My second skill is Reinforce Ground. And my spell impression is called Division of the Soil. Those, I have to show you outside." 

"Yeah, I don't wanna be in a building you start heaving around the concrete of nilly willy. No offence." She grins. "Sounds cool that you get a sense for what the earth is like around you, it's like Tremorsense from D&D." 

She puts the remains of the pan in the sink to soak and dusts off her hands. "Let's go outside and try - I mean, once you finish your burrito."

"Oh, I can't do anything to the building. I'll be a minute."

She turns off the music and finishes the burrito, making sure to properly savor it and being careful of crumbs.

Then they can go outside and play with some dirt. There's even a small dirt lot near the Wright building with a few random rocks strewn around. Someone else is there, arranging rocks by some arcane set of angles and distances.

Amaris takes a small trowel and some of the random rocks and, over a few minutes, builds a small pillar and overhang that looks like it really oughtn't hold up the way it is by mushing dirt in between the rocks and then 'reinforcing' it- Which does seem to actually change the dirt somehow, compacting it down and making it oddly uniform- Until the whole structure is more like one solid piece of rock that happens to be in the shape of a four foot tall half-arch in a bunch of different colors.

"Tada!"

Cherry watches with increasingly wider eyes as the arch takes shape. 

"Wow, that's super cool! I see why you want to be a civil engineer, that would be super solid for laying foundations, building cores of buildings and stuff like that. I bet you could also make some pretty cool sculpture pieces if you wanted to take it in a more artsy direction."

"Yep! It's not the worst thing I could do with my C at all. Any dreams of heroing pop." She really exaggerates the P, and snaps her finger. "Like a soap bubble. But this is still nice. What you can with what you have, yeah? So I'm glad for the sandbox here. Exercising your powers a lot, and creatively, makes you level faster. Okay, I'm gonna bring it down again now, stand back?"