Scene #7059: Intercontinental Cuisine, Domestic

Owner	Pose
Lilian Rook	Tamamo's request for fresh eastern ingredients has been met, as it would by anyone with means and a positive disposition towards her. The difficulty of procuring them on-world and the possibility of getting them from somewhere else is left unsaid. It honestly doesn't matter. Lilian could have picked it up straight from the source and spent a few hours going through warpgates and it still wouldn't have made a difference, because she's Lilian. Use of the kitchen is also permitted, albeit somewhat nervously by the maids. After all, with the Family's general disinterest in cooking, it's one of their few private spaces --a place their employers almost never visit, and so a usual hub of chatter, gossip, and downtime, where everything is organized exactly the way they prefer it. They're sort of shooed out on short notice. Obviously it's a big kitchen. And western style. That goes without saying for basically anywhere in the house by now. There's no particular need for it to be tremendous, with the extreme unlikelihood of ever catering for more than a few special visitors at a quasi-business dinner meeting, but it's still significantly too big for that, like it was originally built for a bustling family that'd fill up most of the rooms that are now spares, though now primarily serves the large number of staff more than anything. Dark varnished wood with baroque embellishments and silver handles and rails, striped white granite countertops polished to a mirror shine, cupboards loaded with all kinds of ingredients, and racks of immaculately kept knives, whisks, tongs, corkscrews, pots, pans, and all sorts of traditional implements stand alongside some modernities (black and silver to match) that were deemed valuable enough to remodel around. Two different refrigeration units, one far larger than the other, for the Family and then whatever the Help wants, with only the latter having a freezer. An extremely fancy triple wide stove. Things like toasters and blenders, and modern sinks, though without a microwave to be seen, or dishwasher. Most things stored out in the open are voluminous racks of spices and some of the types of vegetables and herbs that best keep dry. Lilian evidently feels a little awkward hanging around it. Restlessly shifting around with her elbows on a countertop. This is the staff's space. She doesn't cook, ever. There's never anyone not home and requiring her to reheat something. She's mostly just here to watch Tamamo, not being able to envision the fox woman doing domestic tasks otherwise.
Tamamo	Tamamo has changed outfits for the occasion, because of course it was necessary. Before she'd even entered the kitchen, she was already in a simpler, plain outfit of the same general style as her usual, some traditional Japanese wear in a faded blue, but mostly hidden for the large, white apron she wears over it. Her hair disappears into an angular, rather than cylindrical in the French style, chef's hat, and her sleeves are necessarily short. In terms of wardrobe and styling, at least, it is a complete transformation to the perfectly, even professionally sensible, though if she's not still wearing makeup then she really must be that fabled legend of a woman who has literally no use for it. No trail of evidence exists to indicate the source of these garments, which fit her precisely, only as loose as cloth would need comfortably be while moving quickly. And she does move quickly, inspecting the facilities, acquiring this item or that, moving those things she needs from wherever they resided under the maids' arrangements to a center table. It's not so much classically graceful as dangerously precise, with knives and pots flying from hand to hand, spinning under her fingers and into place with perhaps a wasted motion, but certainly no wasted time. She doesn't stop to inquire about anything unfamiliar, but in that intensely focused state, merely finds whatever will work for her purposes, leaving the clatter of instruments the only noise in the room. Steamers seem to be necessary. Rice, obviously. Boiling water, for some reason. Icewater, for another. Salt and sugar dangerously close together. Vinegar, ginger, various spices. A perhaps surprising variety of vegetables. She sets things in place one at a time, letting this heat, this stand, not technically cooking anything just yet past the white rice, but preparing the space.
Lilian Rook	Lilian watches Tamamo go about her task with a certain amount of fascination. Of course she'd seen the maids cook before, and more importantly, the actual professional chef or two that they keep on retainer, but never really had much interest in it past six years old. Tamamo has such a completely different style about it, though, and is such a completely different, even out of place woman for this, that it feels somehow elucidating to see. That and she really wants to take in that eastern chef outfit too. It's genuinely kind of fascinating to see a kitsune wearing it. It keeps her distracted while waiting. "Where did you learn to do all of that?" she asks in innocent wonderment. "It looks like you're absolutely wicked in the kitchen. I wouldn't have expected it like this." she adds, seemingly unconcerned about bothering the chef during work, and much more interested in socializing. Tamamo had insisted on showing off a little, even if it'd probably meant to be in the food itself.
Tamamo	Some of the intensity leaves Tamamo's expression as more of her preparations are completed. She's not moving much more slowly, but it's like the expression of someone who's already solved the hard, timed problem, and now knows they can handle the rest. Enough attention left over to look toward Lilian, glancing at her while rapidly chopping vegetables into equal slices before looking back down again as the knife nears her fingers. "Where did I...? Oh, I suppose I gleaned some knowledge here and there. It was something of particular interest to me, these necessary tasks of the family, do you see?" She'd asked for fresh, and though the chance of eating a number of whole fish is rather small in a single sitting, here she pulls out a whole red snapper, dropping it onto the board and scaling it with quick motions. A single slice beheads, and more careful motions follow in washing, then gutting, separating out pale pink, almost translucent raw fillet. Mackerel follows, with the scaling step skipped. Tuna being a fully necessary but excessively large creature, she'd requested only certain cuts in the first place, though this kitchen at least has the space to work with whole tuna. "Or, perhaps, it is not nearly so obvious," she says as she works, "and I never did mention, did I?" Her fingers are quick and sure, but her speech clearly evasive. She might actually be unsure how to explain it. Or, maybe, working while explaining something merely related is just a bit too distracting. "I stated that I was interested in humans, did I not? And in finding an answer to a question. It is a very important question." The fish doesn't end up entirely uncooked, at least in the case of the cuts she's already laid out. They're transferred from boiling water to ice water to a marinating tub of soy-based sauce with too little time in between to be much better than raw, but cooking may as well be its own magic, and the rituals serve a grand, culinary purpose. The cooked rice is mixed with both salt and sugar, as well as the vinegar, before Tamamo rolls it between her hands, eschewing the use of any tools in favor of crafting what turn out to be quite consistently shaped oblong mounds. "A question about families." All this just to reach the point of slicing a single piece of each of the types of fish so far prepared, lay each over a bite-sized, if for a fairly large bite, mound of rice, and present these to Lilian together with, should she so choose, black lacquer chopsticks, wherever those came from. The other apparent option is to use her fingers, which happens to /not/ be considered a sign of barbarism in the matter of sushi. "Ah, to speak of family... do you know a knight by name of Seifer Almasy? He came to see you train, and declared himself my brother-in-law."
Lilian Rook	"Well, no, it's not really obvious. I thought you spent most of your time with, well, more or less royals in your previous life, right? I'd have thought they'd have Help as well." Lilian says, cheeks in her palms, rocking back and forth slightly from the counter. "That important question again, huh? Well, I'm sure I'll be glad to help you find the answer, whatever it is." she muses vaguely. She doesn't seem too terribly put off by the essential rawness. She knows what sushi is. She's eaten plenty of weird stuff, given the higher class culture here --high class culture in general, really. She's also familiar enough with chopsticks to pick them up with a fair level of dexterity; it's of course unlikely she's never eaten anywhere that uses them in her life, even if just an immigrant restaurant, given that the United Kingdom used to love those. Cultural norms about eating with fingers are beyond her. She wants to be polite about it, or rather, the thought of the seemingly impolite option doesn't even cross her mind, hammered out long ago. "That's an incredibly complicated process for something that turns out looking so simple." she muses again, pausing just a little to think about something or other before trying it. Whatever her expectations were for Tamamo's cooking, the kitsune would be able to tell from the first minute that she's exceeded them, given that look of highly pleasant surprise moving Lilian's features, tempered just enough to not seem rude, in that reflexive way. Brushing some of her long hair back so as not to get in her way, she goes about trying each different type of fish at least once before saying anything, though probably not much need be said about her approval. "Wow. You weren't just casually dabbling in the kitchen back then. I'd wondered if, you know, kitsune, would taste things different from humans, but this is really good. I mean, obviously I expected it'd be good, but . . ." She trails off thoughtfully long enough for Tamamo to casually mention Seifer. Lilian pauses with a new bite halfway to her mouth, then closes it for a moment. "I know of him more than I really know him. He's in the Concord, which isn't nominally great, if not necessarily a gigantic problem. He seems . . . competent. Eccentric, like most of them are, but more . . . together than most of them. I get the feeling he's lead a somewhat similar life, albeit of a much lower social class." she says, starting to frown. "He didn't harass you did he? I know he married some kind of . . . some kind of 'magical moon computer' generated a spiritual copy of the Tamamo no Mae of some other world, from some kind of central databank. A summoned thing made out of mana. He married her for some reason. 'Romantic dream', he calls it. I've never really interacted with her. He seems . . . okay with it?" "But seriously. That's really weird." An even frownier pause. "He didn't come on to you right?"
Tamamo	Tamamo still has things to do while Lilian is tasting, though quietly enough to chat, and slowly, safely enough to not be constantly looking at her fingers while the knife is blurring. It still does blur, because doing less wouldn't produce the same cuts. She smiles cheerily at the praise, moving on to some other type of related dish next, though it may not be immediately obvious what, if Lilian has seen that sort of preparation. "Oh, there was royalty, of course... of a sort. It may be different than that of kings and princes in other lands. And there were many women about me, whenever I resided within the palace. Some were of noble standing, and most were not, and I did, by one occasion after another, speak with many of them, and learn such matters of their lives." A small mat of thin pieces of bamboo was probably not in the kitchen previously, but is now, as Tamamo layers over the same sweetened rice on top of a rectangular piece of dried seaweed, the latter perhaps not so appetizing on its own. On top of that she arranges a complex configuration of vegetables and meat, then rolls up the whole, evenly constructed pile of ingredients in the flexible mat, squeezing between her fingers. The resulting roll, to be sliced into bite-sized portions, has the rice on the outside in consideration for a palate unused to nori, and this time requiring chopsticks, but she doesn't mention these parts. "'The Concord,'" she says, later. "There were others of that faction in Strawberry-Princess's world this past night, yes? Is this sir Almasy like them? The mage, the man named Lezard Valeth, did strike me as a very different sort." No sooner has one roll finished than Tamamo is crafting another, changing the ingredients without reference to any list of recipe. She has either memorized an extensive menu or is adjusting things on the fly while tossing small pieces of this diced vegetable or that crabmeat into her mouth and thoughtfully chewing, taking into account the tastes she has available to combine. "Oh, but no, he did not... behave inappropriately. On the contrary, to see what sort of man he was, I may have provoked him in jest. He grew terribly offended, then calmed, then... happy, ascribing to my words some similarity with his wife, though he admits we have in no manner similar speech. And yet, he calls us sisters." Though still offering food to Lilian, even should she not finish half of everything, Tamamo takes one instance of a seaweed-wrapped roll and lifts it in her fingers, pausing long enough to savor her work in full. "I suspect him confused, but I could not disregard such good will as he offered me. So long as it does not harm 'his side,' he said, he might aid me, should I ask. 'His side,' 'the Concord,' on these matters, I am not well acquainted. As it was this night past, when we worked alongside those other factions... there were at least three, perhaps more, yes? Being unfamiliar as I am, I knew not how to consider his qualification."
Lilian Rook	"No, I wouldn't say he's anything like those three." Lilian replies without hesitation to the further questions regarding Seifer. "They're a . . . let's say varied bunch. The sorcerer, as far as I can tell, is just pure evil. His pet magical girl is pathetic and angry and tries to change to please people every day of the week. The robot animal I don't really know. She seemed to not be paying attention to each other. There are bunches like that, where they all work across each other. That's when they're the weakest." "Almasy is more on the professional side. He has military training, I'm sure. He knows how to keep his side together. Direct them. Treats them vaguely like a family, but he's an officer at any rate." She attempts to go through things as Tamamo belts them out, but she can't eat as fast as the fox woman can blur through it all. It gets to the point where she has to stop for a breathing partway through one of those nori rolls, though not for lack of taste for the thing. She growns just a little bit again. "Well. I'm glad he wasn't getting weird and handsy. You never know, when he married some kind of computer clone already. I suspect thinking of you is sisters is probably his way of rationalizing you as different people; you do have different personalities, as far as I've seen the other one, but obviously I'd consider you the authentic article by comparison." That doesn't seem to be what's bugging her though. 'Provoking him in jest' is probably what's sticking with her. Still though, she tries to move on, at least a little. "You can consider the Concord a heavyweight in this area. They have a lot of presence. A lot of money and manpower --Elite manpower-- and they like throwing it around. They don't seem to have a lot of rules, though they usually seem to stick it out together like some kind of organized family crime ring, uncharitably, or bloodline fraternity, if I'm in a better mood to describe them." "I can appreciate the idea, at least. That there are people who matter and people who don't. That the former should be given every opportunity to move the rest along towards the future. I can't say I agree with their view of who is allowed to 'matter' though. That's not . . . what I chose to get involved in, in the end. Pushing people around for the sake of it. People gratifying their own ideas over what really matters to everyone, detached from the humanity of it. I don't know." ". . . seriously though, nothing happened, right? Why was he at Arx Zenith? Was he following you?"
Tamamo	Tamamo does eventually slow, after restocking the table with nigiri, the nearly-raw ingredients laid over rice, to go with the remaining rolls. She then places down her tools, lays aside her apron, moves about the counter to join Lilian's side, rather than remain across from her. She is far more slow and sparing in the matter of sampling her own dishes than she was in creating them. Some give her a thoughtful pause, as she critically examines her own creations, though that criticism is kept largely silent. "There is some strangeness to it, the blurring of a difference in nation from that of philosophy, and yet, every piece of the vision is quite familiar. This matter of a family, bloodline, fraternity, an 'order,' perhaps, as they would be known in another time." She pauses to say, "Ah, there was no eel, nor sea urchin, was there? Another time, then." Before continuing as if uninterrupted, "That sorcerer was a concerning fellow, and I did wonder how much of his words could be taken as truth, but I had no reason to doubt him, in any case. He mentioned that a 'blue' wished him to act, he said... Sparkle Blue? I would not quickly pen his motivations just yet." The others two, she doesn't mention again, but, "Did you recognize those others, by chance?" There were three others present Tamamo hadn't met before, if you counted that mysterious government(?) assassin with the guns and the exceedingly fancy car. But there's still the matter of Seifer to return to. "No, no, nothing untoward. I would most easily suspect him of seeking knowledge of this world's military forces, if he is truly an opposing force. But I could not say whether that is a truly accurate frame about the picture, if he does not, as he seems to not, consider me an enemy merely for being 'on another side.' Still, perhaps, he came to see me, suspecting I would be nearby. Perhaps he came to see you, though you were quite busy at the time. Perhaps it was someone else present, though I saw him speak, for the most part, to master Gerart." Another pause, another bite, the pause lengthened. "The training, yes. Strawberry-Princess said something along the spirit of 'if it comes to fists, the battle is already lost,' as I recall. Though I expected it would be as such, when master Gerart described for us what the training was like, and though I had seen the museum, and though I have seen war and death and..." Tamamo's breath catches, uncharacteristic to happen at all, then quickly recovered, "killing, and though I thought myself somewhat inured, and though I understood every point of reason for it to be, still I found the sight of striking the downed opponent not to leave defeated, nor to kill, but to teach pain, to be... something from which I could not easily look away."
Lilian Rook	"I know Lowell. Better than I know Seifer, though not perfectly well." Lilian considers. I don't know of the man with the rifle at all. He might have been on a government contract list. I only barely know the one with cat ears, as some kind of folk hero from a specific country currently in the Concord's line of interest especially. I barely know Powell, except as unpredictable and aggravating. They're, at least allegedly, agents of the Watch. People who consider themselves freelance 'good guys' whom the world needs to perform the heroism others will not." She goes over the last part with both an audible and visible roll of her eyes. "Lowell isn't bad. Loud and selectively stupid, but trustworthy, and more competent than he lets on." Finally, Lilian leaves BOY TROUBLE alone. Instead, Tamamo has a more pointed question, that causes Lilian to slow, and then finally stop, going through the backlog of food. "I'm not . . . particularly happy with the timing that the MC chose. It wasn't what I expected when I got there either. They're deadly serious, but not about what you'd expect. They're not in the business of making volunteers into heroes. They're in the practice of sifting the few who have what it takes out of the rest. I did the physical training for the entry and all, but . . ." "Well, it took a little getting used to, being expected to look at my classmates as competition like that. Not just a status thing. A survival of the fittest regimen. I stay in it or they do. If you won't do it to them, they'll do it to you, because they want it more. You know, being told to hit them --strangers I thought I'd spend a little while getting to know-- on the first day." "But I've started to understand the wisdom since then. Gerart is a veteran. Start to finish. Through and through. He's seen as much, if not more, than anyone. He knows who lives and who dies out there. He knows what you have to be prepared to do, and prepared to go through, to not end up another casualty. If he's being tough like that --if he expects you to be tough-- it's for good reason. That's what I think, anyways." Lilian continues, oddly quiet, not quite sure to say it confidently or shamefully, "I've never actually killed anyone. Not yet, at least. I've . . . done my best to do better than that. Killing people is a low bar. Anyone can do it in the right mindset. It's a cheap, easy, permanent solution to being unable to deal with someone else. What should be an absolute last resort so frequently goes as a first choice out here, with the wrong people. Instead of besting someone completely, beating them in every way that matters, they see it as their prerogative to get rid of them. I think if you can't get anything done because someone else is alive then . . ." She shakes her head. "Beating the crap out of people who are there for the same reason as you isn't nearly the same thing. They'd do the same to you. You learn from it. They learn from it. You can't just be good enough; you have to be the best you can be. Just because I'd prefer not to kill a human being if I don't have to doesn't mean that I shouldn't be perfectly capable of taking them out. You have to train it out of you. The hesitation. The uncertainty. Being afraid of being hurt back. Wanting to run away once you do get hurt. The enemy --the real enemy-- doesn't think like you, doesn't feel like you, doesn't have a concept of mercy or conscious, or rarely even self-preservation. You should better each other while you have the chance, before you throw them to that." "Plus, that guy is a prick." Lilian adds, not entirely clear if it was meant for levity or not.
Tamamo	Tamamo makes some thoughtful noises as Lilian lists the other attendants of that mess of a battle, then turns silent as the conversation turns to Arx Zenith. She remains so, except for one point. "'Permanent,' it is not always. For those who fall, yes, their story has finished." This is the most somberly melancholic she has yet sounded. "For those who remain, they sometimes find, that they are awarded not with the silence of the graves, but with the anguish of the bereaved. The one who chose that solution, whatever their reason or circumstance, may find that to stand atop a hill of corpses only makes them that much more tempting a target. There will ever be another to look at the victor, and say, 'There stands the monster!' until there remains not one survivor upon the Earth." Her tone isn't 'light,' but it does shift upward when she continues, "And so did I feel glad for saving merely one soul who finally reached out her hand. Might you tell me, then, of what has become of the Onyx Witch? I did tell her that, should she ask, I would grant her aid. I did not promise her a miracle, yet I could not be a goddess if I shrank from the task of providing one, now could I?"
Lilian Rook	Lilian's frown thins out. Her face becomes harder, more impassive. She stares at the opposite wall, thinking about something that somehow feels only sympathetically related. "Yes. I'm not sure if I could ever say the cost was worth it, but I can say I'm glad to live somewhere that has at least put that behind them. She lets out a deep breath when the subject of Onyx Witch comes up, glad to move on. "I've spoken with Strawberry Princess. We agreed that remanding Anna to custody of the government or a program wouldn't be good for her. Neither staying exclusively with the Paladins. She doesn't need 'care' and she doesn't want sympathy. She wants to get better. She needs something to do. Ergo, now that she'll be in stable condition shortly, I've asked Allison for a favour. She's interested in picking up this particularly interesting case for her research. She runs a big, cutting edge HTO initiative. 'What makes people inherently magical and how our known systems apply within human beings'. It's a perfect fit, honestly. She'll have plenty to do, without being whipped by a government institute that she'd obviously mistrust, and she'll likely get better more quickly." Lilian blinks, just realizing she'd skipped a detail. "Oh. Allison is my mother, by the way. I didn't really need to pull strings." The fact that she hadn't just used some variation of 'mom' (or properly, 'mum') kind of speaks a lot.