A Stir-Fry Sit Down

Mid-day always proved to be a lull period in the Big Base. With half the team on patrols and the other half… well… at school, there were few who remained in the clean, yet lived-in halls. Silence reigned mostly supreme, save for the scant echo of a door sliding open and close. Perhaps a series of steps, another door, a book being taken off a shelf and the distant murmur of a radio someone forgot to turn off.

And amongst that, the sound of metal rhythmically bouncing off wood.

Despite the kitchen being hardly his territory, Dominik appeared to have made himself somewhat comfortable. His coat was off, his waist draped by a simple blank apron instead. The empty sounds came from before him, from the wood board he used to cut celery into small slices. All things considered, he did not move overly fast and neither did his strikes seem impatient. There was time. He was having his fun. His foot tapped against the floor, and his lips whistled a merry tune.

As he continued chopping, Olivia’s sensors pick up on the sound and she springs into the kitchen sneakily, equipping an apron of her own and sneaking up behind Dom to get a better view of his horns and the vegetable he was cutting up. She stretched taller behind him, counting all of her blessings that she wore leggings and a long sweater today.

For all intents and purposes, Olivia’s subterfuge was flawless. Dominik continued to chop absent-mindedly. He was completely unaware of the stretched-out robot looming menacingly behind his back. Even with his furthest movement - a bend forward to reach for a bottle here or there - it was no challenge to keep herself peeled to his back.

The young man’s hair was less pointy here, in the base. He appeared to have fewer reservations than out in the street, leaving the two dark-bronze horns bare and plain visible - especially to someone of vantage similar to Olivia’s. They were pointy, slightly curved, originating apparently from somewhere at the top-front of his skull. The ridges were shallow, and the surface matte.

Olivia extended a hand to brush against them but quickly retracted, opting instead to ask what he was cooking. After all, it is rude to just go up and touch someone’s head- regardless if they had special features or not

“Whatcha making DomDom?” She asked, compressing down to her regular height as though she’d only just arrived behind him. It would have been an awkward sight if he’d turned to see her looming over him, stretching beyond the depths of the uncanny valley.

“Oh, hey Olivia,” Dom turned side to face the girl. He gave her a soft smile and refocused on the cutting board. The vegetable was steadily disappearing as he resumed cutting. “Just thought of making some salad, maybe… bake something? I’m not sure, I’m experimenting.”

He paused and turned once more to Olivia with a risen eyebrow. “...should you be up and about here? Are you feeling okay?” he asked, sincerity blatant in his tone.

She grabbed some chicken from the freezer and filled a bowl with hot water, submerging the frozen meat. “Yea I’m in tip-top shape, don’t see any reason I wouldn’t be,” her eyes glanced up toward Dom, but they focused instead on the horns peeking out from the very top of his head. She quickly looked back at the counter. Tying up her hair, Olivia started chopping some hot peppers, hoping Dom didn’t notice.

“You’ve never had my famous stir-fry! How about I help you help me whip some up?” changing the subject, she twirled the knife between her fingers. The robot’s eyes darted back towards Dom “So, since you and Jake, well… experienced the full power of Deep spirits, you’ve certainly gone through some changes, eh?” she waggled her eyebrows at him while chopping, stirring the chicken from time to time.

Dominik’s reaction was anything but stable understanding. He was confused. His eyes lingered on the girl, while his fingers slowed down their chopping. Eventually, a glint of understanding came to the teenager. His eyes trailed up. His hand rose along with the knife. Carefully, he prodded one of his horn and once more looked at Olivia with a disarming smile… and an awkward blush.

“You could’ve just asked about these. By this point, I feel like… almost everyone knows. Anyway, yeah, they’ll be gone soon. Maybe. I’m… uh… thinking about it.”

“Thanks for the offer, though. It’s nice to have a helping hand. And uh…” he stammered shyly, “sorry for making it sound like doubt. I’m just a little concerned and all, you know. RhiRhi’s still a little off… being taken is no laughing matter. I’m still happy you feel good again.”

Olivia dropped the knife in the middle of twirling it, the blade clanging onto the ground as she tried and failed to grab it. “Well, I’d like to think that experiences like those are in the past. We go through them, learn from them, and eventually, they become another part of us. Why let that affect how we feel now?” she responded with a peppy tone.

She grabbed the cutlery off the ground, putting it in the sink and getting another to chop the chicken. “So, how does it uh… feel I guess to have them? The horns I mean, heh…” Olivia looked back up at him while cutting the meat.

“Uh… sentiment…? To answer your previous question, that is,” Dom answered with momentary hesitation. His eyes slowly meandered to the ceiling, his chin high in thought. Coming to an unspoken conclusion, he turned to Olivia and gave the girl another light beam. “With bad experiences, you just can’t help it. Your mind will just loop over it… unless if ‘figure it out’,” he said putting down the knife next to the cut celery. “Whatever that might mean…”

Before speaking on, Dominik took a step back and around. He walked behind Olivia. As she busied herself with preparing the meat, Dom stood directly behind the girl. He rose his hands and twisted his wrists. Bending his hands, he placed them against Olivia’s head. Palms inwards, fingers outwards. With that, he essentially made a pair of finger-horns he held while suppressing welcome laughter.

“Something like this, I imagine, e-hehe…”

Olivia jumped, cutting part of her thumb. She set down the knife and reached up with both her hands, poking and prodding Dom’s own hands. “Very interesting data indeed. Well, in case I ever decide on a new look, horns are definitely going to the top of the list,” she replied giggling slightly. The sound itself was light and bubbly mixed with some machine reverb.

She put her hands back down and threw the chicken into a frying pan “How about we get this bad boy cooked up and talk some more over a nice steaming bowl?” She knelt down, sifting through the counter’s storage before spotting a large bag of rice and trying to pull it out. The bag was about half her size and, as she pulled, her arms stretched back before snapping to their original length.

“I think this might be your strong suit, rice doesn’t seem to share my opinion that it should be cooked,”

The boy winced upon the sight of the finger. Upon the sight of the rest of the tomfoolery, he froze and observed with a measure of distance and shock.

Dominik shook his head. At once, he began the damage control. “I’m all for some rice, but… your finger…” he mentioned, and subtly began to position himself to Olivia’s side, ever-so-slowly sliding himself between the android and the counter.

His hand slowly descended to the rice bag, and he gave it the cursory glance-over. His eyes were, after all, still glued to Olivia’s thumb.

“Shoot, I’ve really got to be more careful,” she squirmed around for a towel and wrapped it around the extremity. “It should heal up once I get a proper covering. Can you watch things so that they don’t burn?” Olivia scrambled back up, stirred the chicken with a spoon using her good hand and quickly ran to the medical bay.

She re-appeared a few moments later, giving Dom a freshly-bandaged thumb up. Just as Olivia was about to drop the peppers into the pot, she looked up towards Dom. “Here, you drop them in and experience the sound of sizzling goodness,”

The bowl of chopped vegetables was thrust in his face, the android’s eyes expectant with a hint of curious impatience.

Dom rolled his eyes. “You really… you know, back off and take it slow,” he sighed exasperatedly, taking the bowl from Olivia’s hands in a painfully contrasting pace. He turned around and set the bowl against the edge of the table - scooping the last bits of celery off the cutting board.

“I’ll handle the rice, and you simmer the meat and the veggies,” Dominik added, kneeling down to reach for the rice bag. Unlike the android, he simply pulled it up - both hands, careful not to have the bag rip in two. Rising up, he gave Olivia a once-over again, finally putting up a curl on his lips from the prior colder, neutral face.

“...did you even feel pain from that, by the way?”

Olivia raised an eyebrow and almost did a double take after seeing the other teen lift the bag so easily before compiling her composure once more. “This? No, I don’t technically feel pain the way humans do I guess. All of the sensory information is there like ‘exterior layer breached’ and ‘bio-gel leak’ along with other stuff,” she looked back towards her thumb, the soft hiss of the cooking oils filling the void of silence.

“Now that I think about it more, most of my emotions and senses differ from what you’d call true emotions I guess,”

She locked her eyes with Dom’s, curiosity lingering as she pondered what was running through his head at that very moment. What kind of emotions was he experiencing at this moment? Could she hope to even grasp at an understanding of how they worked? An idea entered her mind.

“Say, how do you think I would perceive the Dragon? Yea, I guess I’ve seen him manifest here in the real world and in the spirit realm, but I’m curious. It’s a variable that seems interesting to try and sort out,”

The rice bag hit the counter with a heavy thud, despite Dominik’s apparent ease of handling the weight. He pulled his hands off the rice and placed them instead wide on his hips. For a moment, he truly looked like his elders.

Still, no words came from his lips. He merely rolled his eyes and walked around the girl, reaching out for an empty bowl, and meandering towards the sink.

“Before we start asking such questions… well, it might sound a bit harsh,” he spoke, water pouring into the bowl, “but… how do you perceive memory? Or experience? You said before, it becomes part of us and all that.”

Momentarily, he seized. The faintest of blushes painted itself rose on his cheeks.

“...you did kiss Gwen before, right?”

At that comment, Olivia became red as the grilling peppers. She recalled the memory of the first time they properly kissed on the submarine.

“Well, it plays out like a short movie that I can bring at any point kind of? It’s all stored in my actual hardware memory so I can pull the exact file up. Although…” she closed her eyes, a soft smile appearing on her lips, and looked closer at the memory. The sound was faint, like two people having a conversation in another room. “Some of the audio is compressed and the out of focus stuff is lower quality,”

The stovetop ran hot as Olivia poured some sesame sauce over the vegetables and meat, mixing the aromas together.

“So, for example, here I can smell all of the individual vegetables cooking and mixing with the chicken and sauce which I logically deduce to be stir-fry. Once that connection is made, I come to the result that it’s supposed to smell good based on info I’ve gathered from the experience of others?”

She waved Dom over to gauge his reaction to the scent. “Every memory is a lesson that builds us up. The difference between you and me I guess is that contradictions don’t break your understanding of humanity. But… there’s more to that right?”

“Well, those ‘contradictions’ are merely a few rotten apples in the basket of good, at least that’s how I want to see it,” the teenager nodded in agreement. He shimmered over next to Olivia and put the rice bowl on the spot nearby the meat and veggies.

“You say, uh, info. Information. And I sort of get that…” he mused. His eyes were focused primarily on the rice. “...but that’s sort of, kinda… knowing, if you know what I mean. And I’m just curious, when you think back to that memory, replay the audio and the video…” he paused. Dom’s voice dropped. He was now just about as quiet as Olivia the first time she spoke.

“...how do you feel about that? Because, uh… I’ve had a similar experience.”

The girl opened her mouth to try and respond but found it difficult to answer his question.

“How do I feel about that… I guess it was similar to what being elated would feel like? A sense that, even if the world crumbled, we would still be there,”

Olivia paused for a second. She looked back up at Dom, a devious smile curling up on her lips. “That similar experience wouldn’t by any chance include a certain Thang of the Wild would it?”

A few soft giggles erupted as she casually poked Dom in the arm.

“Well, yeah,” Dom spoke back, unmoved yet not unshaken by the gentle prod.

“...it’s spread far and wide by now, hasn’t it? Jeeze, it feels a little embarrassing to think about,” the teenager added and shook his head. The blush on his cheeks was fiery. It grew oh so much. He turned to Olivia - and said nothing.

After a second of silence, and a deep gulp down Dominik’s throat, he finally mustered words to follow on. “I was just… I guess I just wanted to know how it ‘feels’ for you, and see if it’s anything similar… but I guess it is. Even if the world crumbled, we would still be there ready to take on whatever’s left…” he mused. “I guess I would call that feeling ‘safety’. I just hope he feels the same…”

“Of course he feels the same way, you oaf!” Olivia stirred the veggies, the sizzling reaching an agreeing crescendo. She turned back towards Dom and planted a hand on her hip, the other wielding the stirring spoon at him. “Don’t think for a second that he doesn’t share the same feelings. The Tiger dude probably would’ve taken advantage of any doubts Jake had and used them against you,”

She poked him square in the chest with the spoon, staining the apron with some sesame sauce. “But it didn’t, which shows that Jake really cares about you! Now that rice looks pretty cooked, so how about you grab some forks and I’ll take some plates and we enjoy a solid meal,”

Dom all but gave a simple nod, rolling his shoulders and pulling the rice free from its boiling point, with the help of the wealth of utensils right beneath the counter. Sooner, rather than later, the rice was clean from excess water, rinsed and ready to be served. As instructed, he did - carrying not only the main filling of the meal but also the sought-after forks.

As he did, in tandem and within Olivia’s vicinity, he could only shake his head and smile a silly smile. “You know, I never expected to hear that back like this, heh…” he muttered. “I mean, I guess what I was trying to get at is that, uh… when you go over the whole ‘registering sensations’ thing, you know what I mean, the actual feelings and emotions we have deep down are indeed the same.”

And with that, he sat himself down - placing the rice bowl on a nearby table, free for the willing to scoop their share.

“We’re not at all different in the end, right?”

Olivia reached up to the top shelf to grab the plates, setting them down on the counter next to the stove. “It seems like we aren’t after all,” she scraped the finished product into a large bowl. The fold-out table in the kitchen wasn’t much compared to how many members it had to sit but it was enough for two friends sharing a meal.

“Say, have you thought about what you might do later on? Like college or a job or something in Halcyon. I might become a general practice lawyer, help the Big Team and League of Heroes with the legal side of things here,”

To this question, Dominik turned his head slightly away. For some reason, his eyes darted away from Olivia. He was unable to keep eye contact. Still, his face did not break. He remained mostly stoic. A small, soft smile still curled on his lips. He chuckled.

“Well,” he began, turning towards his friend, “not… really. At least not that far into the future, really. There’s a big roadblock on up ahead I need to deal with first before… I decide to do anything larger or long-term…” he said, in a half-musing, half-somber tone.

The response caused Olivia to raise her eyebrow. Her light expression betrayed nothing as she kept an eye on him, only pausing to scoop some rice on her plate.

“Best of wishes in breaking that down then. It’s good to tackle the little things- in a lot of cases here literally- before jumping in to get onto the larger ones,” she responded with a determined expression.

She turned her eyes down to the plate and began to dig in, an even third of rice on the fork while two-thirds was occupied by chicken and vegetables.

For the short moment, Dominik mirrored the girl’s movements. He scooped some rice for himself, he got the chicken, he began turning it all with his utensils. Yet, he looked absent. His gaze empty, or in thought. He didn’t look up to face Olivia, eventually rising a spoon with a portion almost to his face. He stopped right before.

“You can’t exactly be a lawyer and be a superhero at the same time,” he said, biting down on his portion. Moments later chewed and swallowed, he continued. With a bit more confidence, he looked at Olivia back. “I mean… this would mean leaving the team… right?”

After a short pause to process the realization, she shrugged. Olivia took another bite of food and explained: “I wouldn’t really be ‘leaving’ the team- I’ve got a special side project for that- it would be more like helping the team deal with something that we can’t quite tackle in a personal sense as, well, kids.” she covered her mouth while chewing but her voice came just clear, only slightly muffled by the interference of the food.

A small lavender disc manifested in her free hand and she began to roll it across her knuckles. “Average ordinary lawyer by day, superheroine robo-girl by night- if I can recharge at dusk and dawn,” she put down the fork and flexed her arm holding the disk, the other hand on her hip. On her face was a mock-smolder as she stared into the middle distance, the stoic hero’s facade interrupted by a small smear of sauce above her lip.

Dominik glanced at the girl, and could not truly hold back laughter. It came as a snicker. Holding his hand over his face, he abruptly ceased eating so as to not spray his portion all over the table. He snorted and evened himself out after the gesture.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to. You… uh… just have a bit of…” he gestured to Olivia and wiped his own lip with his finger in a meaningful gesture. His spirits restored, he ate normally. His tone not quite crestfallen no longer.

“Well, you’re right on that front. There’s… ah, a good few hours during the day… and you can help in more ways than one. No need to schedule good deeds, right?” he asked a rhetorical question.

“Thanks. I think I have a good idea now.”

She smiled and wiped the sauce away with a napkin, dropping the serious adult hero guise for now. “Always ready to inspire, no matter the hour of the day,” Olivia responded. The disk flicked between her fingers as she ate with the other hand.

“That’s you, actually,” Dominik winked. His mood back to jovial, he dug into his plate soon after without further ado.

Not long afterward, both were all but done with their meals. The tap water ran in a steady stream, scraped and scooped dishes tended to by Dom’s hands. The leftovers were placed into the fridge wholesale, enough additional rice to last for a good next meal or two. The two worked candidly, one helping the other, swapping places and carrying plates, pots, and pans as necessary.

Betwixt this little kitchen chaos, a small speck of green made manifest itself from behind Dominik - like his tail, yet shrivelled and tiny in size. It poked itself against Olivia’s lower back before disappearing, likewise simply phasing through the cloth and skin unnoticed. By the time the two were mostly done, the kitchen looked almost as if they never touched it in the first place.

“Don’t worry ‘bout me, I need to get going soon anyway. Still need to cook at home before Ms. Mansick or Jake come back, so… I’ll wrap these dishes and be on my way,” Dom called out to Olivia before she could vacate the kitchen for good. “Thanks for finishing up then, we gotta do this again,” she said as she hung her apron and put a pot back onto the shelf.

Innocent as his words were, at that very moment, something came flaring inside the robot girl.

Deep inside, beneath the skin-membrane, beneath the chassis. Within the circuitry, yet deeper than the wires and circuit boards. Someplace so deep and internal, no proper words describing even the most minute physical attribute could do it justice. For a moment, within what one could call a ‘soul’ a sensation spread itself as quickly as it washed away into memory.

A truly vivid taste of rice and chicken.