Havana Escapade

[Yugikun]

((Alvaro Vacanti, continued from Every day is great at your Junes))

Alvaro looked down at the mixture that he was currently stirring. It seemed to be a little too thick, but that was okay. While the recipe that he had been given didn't specify, he'd imagine that stirring it a little more would thin it out a little. He was currently in one of Cochise High's cooking classes and the task for today was to bake a chocolate cake. They were supposed to do it in groups, but his partner didn't seem to be here and since there were no other spares and he had experience at the café the teacher had decided that it was okay if Alvaro worked by himself today. He was okay with that, although he kinda wished that he had someone besides him, here.

Oh well, it didn't matter too much. As soon as the bell rang he'd be in another class and he'd be with his friends. It was a short term thing.

He loved cooking, anyway, so his lack of friends here mattered even less. He would have easily gotten rid of his job as a waiter if it meant that he could cook at Vacanti's. Sure, he was underage and was pretty sure he needed a degree for it, but he had done it before when somebody hadn't been able to reach work, so they knew about his capabilities. Plus, being the son of the owner could provide some advantages for that.

Even if he wasn't a professional cook, though, Alvaro still loved cooking. He figured that it was because of the feeling that he got when he saw people appreciate what he did. It made him feel loved. Made him feel that not everybody hated him like he had thought.

Yeah, that was probably why. He continued stirring the mixture, trying to make it a little less thick than it currently looked. He was currently humming something, he wasn't entirely sure what the song was, but he knew that it was something he liked. Probably something from a musical.

[Laurels]

((Alba Reyes: Pregame Start))

"Ohmanohmanohmanohmanohmanohmanohman"

Alba looked at her cell phone clock as she hurried down the halls of Cochise High's West Wing. How could she be so stupid as to not set her alarm clock for this morning? Her mom took Carlos and Sofia to school early, and her dad was sleeping in after a long night. There was no one to wake her up, and she was generally trusted to get to school on time. Now she was running to the Home Ec class tardy and hoping the teacher would be sympathetic. She had to be, considering Alba was wearing sweat pants and unwashed hair tied in a loose bun.

Alba hurried into the room and took a minute to catch her breath. Home Ec was a class Alba thought would be a fun and easy elective. She'd get to make yummy food and eat it before the next class. Granted, she often found herself defaulting to whoever else she was working with, but she still considered it one of the better electives she had taken in school that wasn't athletic.

After a quick apology to the teacher, Alba had an apron on and was directed to her partner. Alvaro Vacanti was the only student working alone, so she walked over to him.

"Hey, looks like I'm working with you," she said. "What's up?"

[Ruggahissy]

(Start Caleb Diamond)

Caleb was wandering down the hall, looking out the window at the bright sunshine. He shielded his eyes with a hand and squinted. His math class was on a short break before transitioning over to homework after lecture and he'd taken the opportunity to stroll.

His attention was drawn by a slight commotion in the closest classroom. A blur he vaguely recognized as Alba rushed in to the room, which he noticed smelled really good. He looked left and right briefly and followed her in.

In the commotion she'd caused, he'd gone unnoticed. He grabbed an apron off a counter, leisurely started munching on a square of baking chocolate and hovered near Alvaro's cooking station to look like he was a part of the class.

[Yugikun]

Alvaro stopped humming, not because something interrupted him, but because the song had ended. He couldn't quite think up of another song to hum that wasn't the one he just hummed. He didn't normally like to hum the same song twice in a row, especially considering the length of whatever song he was singing was actually pretty long (over five minutes, if he was taking the time on the microwave correctly, which he should be), and he didn't want to hum it again. He looked at the cake mix, it still needed some stirring.

"Oh, hey." Alvaro's voice raised a bit when his partner came, taking him by surprise a little. Alba wasn't part of his café crowd, but he knew her, a bit. She was very social, but they didn't talk to each other much. They didn't have any hobbies that really matched enough to be able to hold a conversation. He had heard rumours that she could be a bit of an airhead, but to him that remained to be seen and it wasn't quite something that Alvaro wasn't interested in seeing. He replied to her, so that they could be on good terms while they worked. "Not much, really."

He reached behind him and grabbed the recipe for what they were making, and handed it to Alba. "Read this, while I keep stirring the mix." That sounded... kinda robotic. He found himself flare up a little bit, but not much. He wanted this to be a social activity, not something where they worked together and then never talked again, and he was doing a job that pulled towards the latter, rather than the former.

He saw another person near his table in his peripheral vision. Not someone he had seen in this classroom before. Was he supposed to be here? If he wasn't he figured that he'd just tell the teacher on him, but Alvaro wasn't quite sure yet.

[Laurels]

Alba stood there while Alvaro tried to catch her up to speed on the task at hand. Well, sort of. He just handed her a box of cake mix and asked her to read it. She grabbed it and began to read it over. She started to mumble the directions to herself. It looked simple enough. She wasn't entirely sure where they were though.

"Okay, so we're stirring the batter," Alba said, looking at what Alvaro was doing and back at the recipe.

"So next we..." she continued, trying to understand if there was anything next to do.

She then noticed some guy nearby, also wearing an apron and eating chocolate.

"Uh...hey," she said to the guy. "Are you working with us too?"

[Ruggahissy]

'Yeah," he said quickly. "Yes. Let's do cake. Cake right?"

He looked at the box in Alba's hand and waved dismissively.

"It's box cake, we've got this. I thought this was cooking class, not a fucking- uh- cake walk class. A brain-dead monkey could make box cake."

He flashed a brief thumbs up, but didn't venture a smile. People seemed to think his fake smiles were off-putting and weird the few times he'd tried it, so he didn't bother.

He looked over Alba's shoulder and observed the stirring. In order to actually see the bowl he straightened his back out of his characteristic slouch, bringing him closer to his actual height. "If it's box cake, after you stir in the eggs and whatever, you just stick it right in the pre-heated oven. Someone preheated the thing, right?"

[Yugikun]

Alba read the instructions on the packet, and figured out that he was stirring the batter right now. That wasn't a good way to go, currently. He had messed up, it seemed. He said the wrong thing and now this wasn't going to be a friendship or anything like that, just a partnership made due to them having to work together in a class. She'd probably forget about him at the end of the day, once they weren't working anymore. Not that it mattered; anyway, they had never talked to each other outside of this. But he had still lost an opportunity to make a new friend, which sucked. She didn't hate him yet though; at least he didn't quite think so. Maybe another day, maybe even today!

Alba then asked the other kid a question, and apparently yes, he was supposed to be in this group. Alvaro wasn't quite so sure, though. For one thing, the way he was talking seemed like he was compensating for something, kinda like one of those awful spies in the TV shows who were so specific in their denial that they basically said "I'm evil, please capture me!" Whoever he was though, he hadn't quite made the same mistakes that the evil people in the shows had made, but something about what he said set Alvaro off, and that was the excuse that he was using to justify his paranoia at whoever he was.

Sometimes it did pay to be paranoid, though. He was fairly sure that this person wasn't supposed to be here. He wasn't going to act on it though, not yet, anyway; unless he did something that broke the rules or proved that he wasn't supposed to be here."

"Yeah, I preheated the oven earlier." He replied to the other person's question. Speaking of that; "By the way, what's your name?"

[Laurels]

Alba remained in place, holding the cake mix and letting the other two guys speak. The second guy seemed a little cocky about making cake from a box mix. Alba didn't really get why he was acting that way. She was late and didn't know where in the process they were. It looked like ingredients had to be mixed in during the stirring of the batter, so she just wasn't sure if everything was in the bowl or not. Part of her felt crappy if she enjoyed a cake that she didn't make at all.

She then shrugged to herself, and told herself that she could at least take the cake in and out of the oven if she had to. She set the box down and turned herself back to the baking.

"Okay, I think I'm up to speed," she said, emphasizing the word "think."

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

[Ruggahissy]

"Dude!" he said surprised. Caleb leaned in closer to Alvaro.

"Uh, hey man. We've been going to school together for years and you don't know who I am?" he said quietly.

"It's me, Andrew. Don't worry about it, we all have brain farts."

Caleb knew his identical twin Andy wouldn't mind. If he got caught he was 90% sure Andy would understand if it was for a snack.

He really didn't understand what was so difficult or arduous about this task that Alba was having so much trouble. The instructions were on the back and box cake had only three ingredients. Caleb reminded himself that people were at all different levels of capabilities.

In response to her question, Caleb waved a limp wrist in the direction of the cake pan, leaned against a counter and pulled his beanie down lower over his eyebrows.

[Yugikun]

The person Alvaro wasn't sure about introduced himself as Andrew Diamond. He wasn't really somebody that Alvaro knew well, he wasn't part of the cafe crowd and they didn't share a lot of classes together. He did know a little though. He was an internet person, but he was a fairly social person, with a considerable circle of friends. He also knew that he had a twin brother, named Caleb, but Alvaro didn't really know anything about him at all. Still, he checked out as a pretty okay individual, and while Alvaro hadn't seen Andrew in this class before, but it wasn't really a problem. Still, there was a little stab of paranoia left in him. Had Andrew been in this class before? Alvaro wasn't someone who memorized who he shared a class with so he could be wrong but for the third time, Alvaro hadn't seen him in this class before. Yeah, he had a reason for his now. Andrew was probably freeloading off them. Suspicion Level: High.

In other news, Alba wasn't quite sure what she had to do. That was understandable, Alvaro had done most of the work before they both came in. The batter still had to be stirred a little, but after that it could be put in the oven and then it'd be done. There wasn't really much more to do. The teacher said that they could put frosting on it if they wanted to, and put the ingredients for it out front. By himself, Alvaro was going to try and work on the frosting while the cake was in the oven, but now that he was in a group they could start making the frosting a little bit earlier.

"Uh, it's almost ready to put in the oven, so you can get the cake pan out." He then pointed to the front of the classroom, where the ingredients were.

"If you want, you can start making the frosting while I get this oven ready. I was going to do it while the cake was in the oven, but now that we have more people we can multitask."

He took a breath. In, out. He sometimes had issues with speaking for long periods of time, and he needed the breath a little.

[Laurels]

"Ooh, frosting. I'll start that."

Alba walked to the counter and found the recipe card. Fortunately for her, the frosting recipe was just four ingredients and two directions. It was one of those "toss everything in the bowl and mix" kind of foods, the kind Alba found the simplest. Then again, that's basically what box caked mix was.

Alba shrugged. At least they could lick the bowl and the beaters after making frosting.

"Okay, measuring cups. Measuring cups."

Alba began to look through the drawers of the cooking unit for measuring cups. She was prepared to pull her weight and make the best damn cake frosting she could.

[Ruggahissy]

It seemed like claiming Andrew's identity, the quickly running out of time to complete a cake and the general fact that he was some-what assisting them (or at the very least, not impeding their progress) was enough to get the Spanish inquisition of cake making off his back.

And even if that wasn't enough, Alba was running around and proving a pretty good secondary distraction. He would be fine.

Caleb eyed the set of measuring cups on the table while also occasionally looking back to Alba frantically looking for them. He watched for a moment and then picked up a new bowl and set it on the counter.

"I got us a bowl," he said.

He picked up the frosting recipe card and put one hand on his hip while he read it. "Easy buttercream vanilla," is what the card read. That sounded pretty good. He went to the class fridge, retrieved butter and milk and set them on the table near the bowl.

[Yugikun]

Alba went to get the frosting and Andrew went off to do something else. Alvaro wasn't entirely sure what that something else was, but he was doing it behind his back and it was taking something out of a cupboard, so whatever he was doing probably wasn't too bad. Alvaro ducked down so that he could open the oven, reaching his arm up so that he could grab the oven mitts. Sliding them onto each hand, he tried to spread his hands a little, but the... string thing (?) on them stopped that, which was a little annoying. Oh well!

Alvaro jumped to the side a little so that he could open the door. A surge of heat came out of the thing as he did so. Alvaro quivered a bit. He didn't really like fire, never really did. It just... scared him, in a way. Not as much as other people did, but still, he wouldn't exactly want to be near one if he had the option to. He had never been burned or anything, but still, he knew that burns didn't heal, at least not easily.

He got up, and put the cake in the oven, making sure that he didn't touch any other part of it. He closed the oven, carefully, and turned around to check what the other two were doing. Alba was looking for measuring cups which were... right in front of him, and Andrew had just gotten a bowl out. Neat.

"Okay, cake's in the oven, and the measuring cups are right in front of us." He said, pointing at the cups. "You have the ingredients, Alba?"

[Laurels]

"Oh, shit. They are there. Duh."

Alba shook her head upon being shown where the measuring cups were. She realized she must have still been a bit frazzled for arriving late to class and being behind on making the cake. Still, she had a chance to salvage this mess of a culinary class. All she had to do was make one kick-ass cake frosting, then sit and enjoy the cake with the guys when it was done.

"Yeah. We just need butter, sugar, milk, and vanilla extract. I'll start beating the butter."

She put the recipe card down.

"Could you guys start to measure these out?" she asked. "Once I say so, we just dump everything in."

Alba grabbed a stick of butter from nearby. She didn't get how they were able to look at a stick and figure out how it made a cup, but she just knew to cut it along the line and chuck it into the bowl. Oh, and to remove the paper. Alba was sure she could remember to take that off, but considering how loopy she had been today, she wasn't sure what she was capable of today.

Alba had the butter in the bowl and grabbed the nearby mixer.

"Alright," she said, holding the mixer straight up in the bowl, smushing the butter. "Let's beat the hell out of this butter."

Alba flicked the switch and let out a small cheer as the beaters came to life.

[Ruggahissy]

Suspicion had been diverted elsewhere, he thought sleepily. Moving robotically, Caleb picked up the milk and poured into the measuring cup, stooping down to be level with the cup to see that the exact amount of liquid had been poured. As with chemicals, trying to eye the measurement from above the cup did not yield accurate results.

Then he remembered it was frosting and not dangerous chemicals, and dumped the milk into the bowl unceremoniously. Using the teaspoons he threw an appropriate amount of vanilla extract in with the milk, reasoning that wet ingredients mixed with other wet ingredients would be fine.

"Alright alright, let's get this done and get to cake." He paused. "Uh, go team," he added halfheartedly.