Gaius

Back to the box with the small bowl of white liquid, Gaius brushes the corner of this pastry down and begins to roll the whole thing into a tight-nit package. Crimping off some excess, it goes back into the ice for another 20 minutes, Gaius visibly irritated but following the information, he’s read. “It’s almost done, how does my victory taste almighty?” Gaius chuckles as Hestia struggles to find the words in rebuttal feeling they would be lost on such an idiot. Grabbing it out and placing it on a tin sheet, Gaius opens the oven and drops it in keeping an eye on it through the slit on its exterior. “I can’t wait to watch you fail, you and your strange food will end here.” 45 Minutes screech by as Gaius doesn’t break his gaze with the oven, as the white of the breaded wrapping starts to golden as it cooks.

Putting the seared flank of meat on top of this surface and using the cheesecloth to pull it tight in a blanket of meat on meat, Gaius heaves a bit and gets it as snug as he can. Hestia can’t help but stare on, it was a strange display of Gaius grunting while trying to strangle a steak. Back into the fridge, Gaius laughs and remarks “Now we wait again, let it cool fully into a brick. I prefer food that’s a bit quicker to prepare but you want the best your heinous and that’s what you’re going to get.” Gaius taunts crossing his legs and dropping to his butt. Time passes by before he snaps up “10 minutes done.” Snatching the log from the box and dusting it with flour as he holds it haphazardly like a loaf of bread before he starts on the pastry had laid out a half an hour prior.

Adding a dash of pepper to the mix Gaius adds this pan to the icebox as well. “Waiting time, good because I’ve worked up an appetite.” Gaius says picking out a slice of bacon from packaging on the floor and dropping it into the pan where the beef flank came from. “That’s not for you. I could strike you down where you stand.” Hestia threatened but Gaius paid her no mind. “Then do it, but you’ll never taste what I’ve got in store princess.” Gaius spoke with his signature grin as the bacon crackled in the pan before him. Finishing the cooking and consuming the bacon as 20 minutes pass by in a flash. Retrieving the pieces from the icebox confirming they’ve cooled down, Gaius gets to work on the final leg of the prep work. Spreading this mushroom mix over the dried meats where they lay, in even coating along the girth of the flat surface.

A size akin to the sliced dried ham he had, Gaius retrieves a couple eggs milk and the like from containers on the floor, tossing a few broken eggs away and adding them to a bowl with a whisk he beats them into a white substance. Disposing of the yoke back into the carton from whence it came, Gaius adds this small bowl to the ice chest taking to the countertop. Stirring his mixture with a tad more salt, tasting it with a small spoon. “Perfect.” Gaius remarks as he clips the string of the slab of seared beef. Adding a bit of mustard glaze around it with a few brushing strokes of his hand, coating it evenly in a barbaric fashion before adding it in to cool as well. The liquid was ready, Gaius shut off the burners and started the undercarriage heat of the oven with the turn of a dial.

“WHAT the He-” Hestia chokes out as the supplies inside are clattered to the ground, Gaius interrupts “I know what I’m doing, just shut your trap and enjoy the ride.” as he pulls out some doughed pastry from its interior. Tossing the container with the dough to the countertop knocking some of the silverware clattering to the floor, Gaius removes his seared beef from the heat. Flipping one of the plates over foolishly the first time as it flys back to a wall behind him and shatters into data. “Whoops.” Gaius remarks before grabbing another and flipping it upright and moving the flank of meat still tied to its surface. Its placed upon the countertop as Gaius shoves more of the crap out of the way. Next up was the dough, Gaius started to flatten out and prepare for the final steps with a silent hope he was remembering this properly.

Gaius pulls up another hunk of meat, this one dried pork that he quickly heaves up and dissects with his spear the same way he had prior. Sliced surprisingly thin in sheets of meats, Gaius grabs some cheesecloth and begins to layer them out in a sheet of meats. Hestia eases back in her chair, with a mix of irritation and interest painted on her face hoping the building will survive this chef she had invited. “I hope that weapon of yours is sanitary, as you keep using it as a cutting tool.” she whispers upon which Gaius acknowledges none of it. Blasting the meat and his mushroom mixture that are cooking with a dash of salt. Flipping his beef over a second time and stirring the fluid that was building under his thyme composition with another dash of salt, Gaius takes to a small chest littered with ice, scooping the crap that was inside onto the floor to build space.

Hestia cannot help but stretch to try and inspect what he was performing. Tossing some thyme, small mushrooms and shallots airborne with the gleam of his grin Gaius leaps and cleaves a few times with his weapon in a shower of sparks as it hits the ceiling once or twice. “You damned fool! You threaten to collapse the walls around us!” Hestia spits, Gaius lands and collects the food into a bowl as it falls “Shut up princess, you’ll get your meal my way.” Gaius chuckles as he checks the cut pieces. Diced fine enough to be sure, Gaius was convinced. Producing another small pan from his right, spewed across the counter in a pile of metal, Gaius adds a dollop of butter and drops the diced material into it and starts it cooking. Flipping the meat over to not let it burn, it turns to another side as the two minutes have passed.

Gaius had only read about such a meal in his manual that was in the shop he had obtained but was eager to put this entity in its place: beneath his heel. Uncorking a small vial of yellowish clear fluid, Gaius huffs it and dabs a pinky into the opening tasting the liquid with his finger. Olive oil, what he needed as Gaius pours a bit into a hot pan that began to bubble with friction. The pan started to heat and slight steam built, Gaius retracted the utensil to break the temperature, dropping the fire down just a tad to get it into a searing kindle. Hoping he was remembering this correctly, Gaius drops the flank of beef now hogtied into the pan and begins to braze the meat in a rotation to brown the exterior. Leaving it surface down while it browns, Gaius takes off to the side and starts another mixture.

Opening the manifested cabinets and drawers and upheaving everything inside Gaius shouts out while doing so in a reckless fashion of emptying everything across the countertops “So what’s your name, sweetheart?” as the contents of a drawer in his arms scatter. “Hestia, you buffoon. What the hell are you doing to my kitchen.” the girl says from her throne that she has found her way into, taking a deep breath to calm herself as the task was for him to complete this task in his fashion and she was determined to allow him to do so. However, the sheer destruction the dragoon was doing was troubling, to say the least. But she bid her anger and let him work, in her silent fury she was equally intrigued. Gaius was working hard over the metal cookware he was presented, using some cable to tie sections around uncooked beef with a tug.

She spoke from her orange concealment “Leave us!” She said with a wave of her hand, the Minotaur fell back toward the door, having been chastised by its master. Then with a snap of her fingers, with the sound a compliment of sparks that scattered from where it originated a solid section of cooking apparatus manifest in a flash of fire. “Heres the deal, cook a meal fit for a god you will receive my boon. Fail and you’re on the menu.” The girl smiled with a sinister grin, assuming the boy would falter in his actions and attempt to flee. “Deal, I’ll cook you some grub that will blow your a** away” Gaius shouted with gusto, his hand with a pointed thumb accentuating the grin on his face. Carrying himself to the cookware and getting to work. Lighting the burners aflame as he strips his armor to allow freedom of movement.

Gaius spoke as he stepped into the antechamber: A rounded room of spherical design, comprised with 7 altars, upon them lay 7 seats all but one filled with spectators with red eyes, shapeless black smoke that perk-up on his entry. “There you are boy, it’s about damn time.” Turning to face him was a small slender frame, a female clad in an orange cloak her features pretty well obscured underneath it. “Yeah, I’ve come now what the hell do you want?” Gaius spoke with a fire on his tongue. The minotaur behind him began to flare up in disagreement, Gaius flurried his spear in a rapid withdraw. “Enough!” The child spoke “It is not a fight I desire, though I bet it would be an equal show. No, you will show me your skills in a kitchen, I hope they do not pale in that fire you carry when you are trying to strike down my minion.” 

Gaius took this as a challenge but decided a bit reticently to follow suit instead of testing his luck against the mannish figure. A minute turned to hours, the path was longer than it appeared to be from the base of the mountain as the winding roads that tore up its sides. Gaius took note of the slight pulses in his feet, a sign that he had been traveling for some time now with a question “How much further, this is getting ridiculous.” The beast chuckles and remarks “We are here, halt your gripe while I get the door.” Two column-like slabs of meat lunge forward and clasp the door with two wide stretched palms on an ivory white door with gilded trim. Heaving its weight forward the doors begin to open slowly as tufts of dropping soot as the entryway scrapes against the floor. “Don’t mind if I do.”

Gaius was told this may come after his shop was obtained, such a thing would rear its head. It appeared this prediction was right on the money, like so many before it: pinpoint accurate. The journey was arduous to say the least, the path seeming to be made up of a mountainside that was ripe with decay. Time had begun to reduce the path to pitfalls, the ground was treacherous with each step feeling as though it could give way with each progression. The minotaur made note of Gaius as he was tapping chunks of the ground with his spears handle like a blind man with a walking cane. “Follow behind me and you have nothing to fear, don’t and the step you take could be your last.” The beast said with a firm declaration purveying its seriousness. It then began to walk ahead of Gaius, showing the path to take.

At the foot of the mountain, under the beating morning sun that danced off the polished surface of the dragoon’s armor stood Gaius taking eyes to his surroundings in a hunt for whatever had drawn him here. The silence breaks, with the hefty sound of hooved feet finding a dig in the stone and dirt underneath its massive frame. A man of sorts clad in fur with a bare and stacked chest, two large horse-like legs made up his lower extremities with two adorning horns atop a bald and glistening head. With a hearty bellow from somewhere deep within his belly, the easily seven-foot-tall beast began to speak “You must be the one my liege sent for, right this way chef”. Gaius scoffed at the notion, “Chef, hardly I just like eating good food. But lead the way I suppose.” he remarked with a thought finding his way to the past.

Welcome to Floor 17, Spartaia!

The prompt flashes on his HUD as his feet meet the red marble flooring, carved brick of such with a clack of his heels against the surface. A grin finds its way across Gaius’s mouth as he trouts through the city. Just north from the city walls was mount olympus as designated by a gold trail that tore its way a path in designation to his destination. Along the crags of stone and earth that created uneven footing making up the path toward the challenge from the gods, the mountainside being visible as a beacon of where to head in the distance. Gaius had a little pause, hopping from stone to stone and using his spear to clear what he wouldn’t be able to stand on as he made great strides toward where he was headed. The distance between the dragoon and the precipice of the mountain closed fast, due to his constant vaulting and jumping making short work of the difficult terrain.
 

Opening his inventory and producing his gear, Gaius begins to don his equipment not sure what to expect on floor 17 but wasn’t afraid in the slightest. On the contrary, Gaius was eager to see what the floor had to offer in the excitement of battle. Attaching the final belt buckle down, holding the pieces of his armor to his skin. “Let’s go see what this is all about.” Gaius says picking his spear up last, twirling it around before docking it on his back, almost knocking a chair to the floor in the process. Closing the threshold of his shop behind him, the sunlight is much brighter outside than in as his eyes struggle to adjust to the lighting change. Finding his way toward the warp gate contained within the city of Nimbus of floor 7, Gaius steps to the pad and yells out “Floor 17!” as a flash of blue energy takes him upward in a tear of reality.

Looking as a quest to test his capabilities as a chef, Gaius was minorly annoyed at the premise of the quest, but as instructed decided he had to partake of the event. It read as follows:

[Challenge of Olympus]
Greeting’s young chef, at Hestia’s behest you are invited to prove your worth by creating a meal fit for the gods. Prove your ability and prosper, fail and let the gods hold your soul for eternity!
Make your way to floor 17 and seek out our emissary at the foot of Mount Olympus, we await your arrival. Make haste, we will be waiting.
Do you accept it?
[Yes / No]

Tapping his finger on the small circle of green while taking a sip of his coffee, Gaius remarks “Sure, as soon as I damn well feel like it.” The plate lies clean, having been destroyed in fervor by the cook that had produced it, now finishing off the cup of coffee with a few brazen sips with no attempts at urgency as this was his morning, not this quest givers and he would take his time to climb a damn mountain. The cup empties as well, Gaius collecting the lot up to and taking it to where it was created, dropping the used utensils to water to scrub up later when he returned from this nonsense.
 

Now a complete breakfast produced by Gaius’s hand stares back at him, with a yawn Gaius grabs the plate and cup taking into the main body of his shop eager to start the day. Placing along a long drawn counter of what appears to be a bar, Gaius instinctively looks up to call for the keeper before realizing he was who he was seeking. Finding himself behind the counter as it started to sink in that the place was his, and his alone retrieving silverware and a glass of orange juice to go along with them. Gaius sits down to enjoy his meal, sliding his menu open and reading the HUD more intensely now that he wasn’t threatening to burn his food. While consuming his morning meal, Gaius reads the quest description with a piece of toast hanging from his gullet. What was this all about, the ring of an annoying buzzing on his HUD this early in the morning.

They continue to shrink from the heat, all the while shouting aggressively to the kitchen as the oil causes this reaction from the meat as it does so. Gaius finds a few pieces of uncut loaves of bread, and with the cut of a small knife produces a few slices of the same. Sliding the eggs from the apparatus they found themselves in with the completion of their cooking, Gaius tosses the bread in to brown up and become toast. It starts to stiffen as it lays in the slightly oil-drenched pan, browning a bit and Gaius flips it to its opposite end with a flip of his spatula. To each find the same plate, Gaius transferring each cookwares contents to the top of a platter before retrieving the blackened brew from his pot and begins to add a bit of creme and sugar to remove its bitterness with the stir of a spoon.

A soft crack as the egg swirls around at its base, the clear yellow starting to take on a fluffy white as his morning meal begins to become possible. A quick thought to the drawers and cupboards, Gaius retrieves a spatula while the egg cooks angrily in the oil it was submerged in. Producing the utensil and moving the now almost burning protein, Gaius manages to unstick it before it becomes a problem. Unattached itself from the pan it lay in, Gaius inhales deeply and adds another egg to his incoming breakfast. His coffee brewing to his side falls silent, the distillation coming to an end as Gaius pulls another smaller pan and tosses a few cuts of bacon into it with oil from before. These erupt in a crackle of the same oil, taking the grease in violent spurts of energy as they begin to crinkle from the fire.

While he’s waiting for the cup to fill to the brim with the coffee as it brews, Gaius checks the message that interrupted his coffee-making before hastily closing it up. A cough as the sunshine begins to find its way into his now open eyes that squint a bit from the light that felt blinding, the man was struggling to come to terms with the morning so this quest would have to wait its turn. Finding himself a pan, lacing it with a bit of oil from a small vial and rotating the device around to coat the bottom evenly Gaius starts a burner to get the heat running. A few pops of the oil signify the temperature transfer to the cookware from the element to its underside, Gaius reaches to a basket littered with small eggs and with a nice heft and delicate hands pops the egg’s shell ajar over its rim.

Just waking up after laying rest in his shop. Getting up Gaius decides to make some coffee to start the day. Cleaning off a spot on the counter top of his shop, grabbing some beans hoping it would make decent coffee. Crushing the beans against the counter and sweeping with his hand, he removes the smashed coffee beans onto a filter. With that he begins boiling water and prepares a cup. When the water gets to the boiling point he takes the filter with the crushed coffee beans and sets it on top of the cup he set aside. Pouring the hot water slowly over the crushed beans, a message appears in his vision. Keeping calm and collected as he had hot water in his hands not wanting to burn himself. Coffee drips into the cup underneath the filter with steam rising from the cup. Listening to the drops against the liquid in the cup, he opens his HUD. 

Given to Catlover220134:

"Well I hate it, I'd much rather be killing S***, this gathering crap is for the birds." Gaius expresses without tact as expected of him hopefully at this point to the others. A continued exclamation of his thoughts on the matter to Setsuna and Griswold: "Yeah I have to admit, my goose was cooked. The damn thing seemed to exploit my body and stun me quite a lot. If it wasn't for that glove I may have been dead." while he kept doing this task he could not stand to be performing but at least it wasn't a repeat of the apple incident and he was at least capable of finding ones that were acceptable. Retracting one for his mission, Gaius offered his input further "Well, I have never been one to think too hard on crap which I find pointless. The quickest way to end a problem is to kill it, why should I worry about the specifics when I can just leave it to him to brew those potions of his and just point me at what I should kill next."

ID# 136844 results: Loot: 9+2=11, Success!

1*T1 [Quest] Material Obtained!

Total [Quest] T1 Materials: 3

Gaius did what he was intended to and reluctantly worked the patch, there was much more he would rather be doing but grew tired of arguing. There was another reason he was doing this charade, finding himself interested in the path set before him and for what the boy in red had planned for him. He found himself allies in this game that made gaining his shop that he found he enjoyed much more than he initially perceived he would. Also, it seemed that the group, and by extension Raidou knew him well enough to prepare potions and the like for him to consume during his quest prior. How much ahead had Raidou planned, and where was the road he had set them upon to lead. Gaius wasn't one to dwell too much at the specifics of things, but he couldn't help but wonder at how deep the roots went.

ID# 136840 results: Loot: 15+2=17, Success!

1*T1 [Quest] Material Obtained!

Total [Quest] T1 Materials: 2