Anti-antithesis

“Breakfast might not be the most important meal of the day, but it is the one that indicates the mood for the day. Say you get a full night's sleep but only make a few pieces of toast. That means you didn’t get restful sleep and are thus going to be lethargic all day. Say you get up after a few hours but make a full-course spread for yourself. Then, even though you think you might need more sleep, you really don’t and will rock the day.

“Finally, say you were in the middle of making coffee and were still deciding on what you wanted to make, but some dick-waffle blows up your kitchen because you slept with his girlfriend the other night, ruining your coffee maker in the process. Then it is going to be a shitty day for everyone around you, mostly because those people are dying or losing limbs, ya’ feel me?”

-Conversation between Samurai MurderDeathKill and a local barista after she demolished a penthouse, 2055

Buddy

My eyes opened slowly as my alarm rang silently in my eyes, the soft glow of greens and oranges doing wonders to make sure I knew it was five AM and time to get ready to make breakfast. Though the small, warm gremlin on my chest did make me consider staying in bed for another hour. Her stomach grumbling made the decision for us, however.

Our relationship had quickly settled into something more akin to a squirrel and her nest, rather than anything specifically romantic. Not that I minded, of course. The most romantic thing I have ever done before was while I was undercover, as I was a shoulder for a rich lady to cry on while Cody hacked into her augs for her company’s secrets. Romance was not something I craved, but the constant comfort and contact Wanda gave me was soothing to me.

I adjusted myself slightly in order to allow my robotic arms to activate from their mounting on my back. It was a bit of a struggle to adapt to them initially, as having four mechanical tentacles with various active features and sensors suddenly attached to their brain would be jarring for anyone. I had been working hard over the last two months to move them as if I had grown up with them, and while they still felt off sometimes, I was able to maneuver them with surprising accuracy and gentleness.

As they extended from their subspace storage, going through their wake-up procedures, I made sure my original arms had a good grasp on my wife. I chuckled softly at that thought, considering the fact that there was no ceremony nor paperwork binding us, yet we still considered each other, well, each other’s. Such a simple ritual of untainted, uncompromised trust was truly enough for the both of us, even if Roger and Yerlette wanted to throw us a more lavish reception.

I sat up and moved two of my robotic arms to make the bed, with the other two gathering Wanda’s clothes from the dresser to dress her, as she had developed the habit of sleeping in her underwear. She claimed that I was too warm to need to worry about covers while hinting at the fact that she felt safe with me, as she stopped bringing her knife to bed a few weeks ago.

She didn’t so much as twitch as I dressed her in her casual outfit of an oversized shirt and stretchy yoga pants and thick socks, rather than her officer's or training uniform. It was one of Wanda’s sparse days off today, so she was looking forward to doing nothing more than being pampered by me. A task that I enjoyed to no end, especially considering that her palate had developed nicely after her recent gene therapy, assisting me with my cooking experiments.

After my robotic arms finished their current tasks, I felt Wanda grumble and shift into her more preferred position for her to be held and fed. Turning sideways with her head on my shoulder and her feet dangling over my right arm, I placed a gentle kiss on her forehead, feeling the heft of her new, healthy body.

She was still petite, only having chosen to grow another six inches from her original height of four feet, something she was very adamant was the limit of how tall she should be. Her desire to remain small conflicted slightly with my desire to fill her out, as she often felt way too light and thin to me. Whatever enhancements she chose from the bio-shifter seemed to have locked in her frame, as no matter what foods I gave her or the quantity, she remained the same size. I mean, her muscle mass was well above average, but I believed she would look good with a bit more meat around her thighs, at least. As she stood now, she looked as though a stiff breeze could carry her away.

I did have to use the bio-shifter myself to grow a bit to better carry her, going from my old six feet, four inches to nearly seven feet tall while retaining the same width-to-height ratio as before. I added a few other things, such as enhanced musculature and skeletal reinforcement, as well as sense enhancers for cooking and spatial awareness. And while these things can be used for combat, I mostly obtained them to make sure I could carry Wanda without issue or strain on my end.

As slightly impure thoughts of a more curvy Wanda filled my head as I exited our bedroom, I accessed the menu app Baba Yaga and I made in order to plan out breakfast for the family. I saw that it would be a full house today, with everyone, minus Daliah, Yerlette, Alice, and surprisingly Opal, being here this morning, yet no RSVP on a group breakfast. Meaning that everyone would be waking up on their own and making their way to the dining room at odd times.

Victor and Cari would be up both first and soon, yet they would be heading to the training hall after eating, per Victor’s new routine, so something light would satisfy them for now. I marked them down for vegetable and tofu spring rolls, as I had been enjoying experimenting with tofu recently. Roger would be next, but I saw Baba Yaga had claimed his meal slot, probably so she could make sure he enjoyed eating his food before he got to work.

Cody would be waking from his Mesh pod after his long security dive. As such, a hearty, yet mild, porridge would be good for him, as I am certain a palate cleanser and grounder would be necessary for him. As for Jill, she had a very intense training session with both her teacher and Ulrich’s troops yesterday, so she should wake up closer to noon and would want something heavy. I took a page from her girlfriend’s recipe book and decided on a large supreme pizza, setting aside one of the “real” beef seasoning experiments for that.

I was ever so thankful for Ms. Ambrosia’s assistance in building up my baking recipe book, as it was a massive blind spot in my skills. We didn’t exactly have an oven I could bake out of in the old dorm, not to mention that baking soda was a luxury we could not afford. More specifically, it was not something any of the stores near us stocked, and we could not simply set up an account with any of the suppliers that did stock it. It was already pushing it, ordering drone delivery to the dorm, with our handlers having to approve each order and adjust the personal information to a controlled, basic account. Ordering through a specialty store would trigger too many alarms as they required more stringent identity checks, so our handlers vetoed the entire idea.

Moving down the list while shaking my head clear of memories of the past, I noticed that the various AI commanders had already put in their desired orders with Baba Yaga’s minion staff, though I did claim a few as they looked interesting to cook. Namely Bahamut, Leman, and Outsider with Gimbal, who requested spicy salmon rice balls, a ham steak with hollandaise sauce and a cinnamon roll, and a couple of ostrich egg omelets with sautéed mushrooms and spinach, respectively. Bahamut’s order would take me no time to do but would be fun to make, while I did not get the chance to make hollandaise sauce that often. The technical skill required for it was intriguing for the flavor it possessed, yet there were so few uses for it besides eggs and ham.

As for Outsider, I loved to cook for her, as her thoughts and experience with her food were effortless to decipher, considering it would often be written on her face or in her small dances. While I may enjoy feeding Wanda, Outsider often gave me the best reports on my flaws and strengths out of everyone else. Not to mention that her orders would more often than not challenge my skills, as she rarely ordered the same thing twice.

“All in order to experience more of humanity,” she told me when I asked her about it. As for Gimbal, that girl relished in Baba Yaga and my cooking, never being picky with what was on her plate and often asking for seconds. From what I knew of her past, I believed that she was making up for lost meals and fully indulging in her new lease on life Outsider gave her. Yet, unlike Wanda, she was filling out with each meal, much to Outsider’s enjoyment.

As I walked past the living room, I received a whiff of the real flower garden Roger had taken to tending over the last month. While Daliah, Cari, Opal, and Alice were a bit confused as to why he suddenly started gardening, the rest of us understood pretty immediately, having grown up watching old villains in old media always having a garden of sorts to tend. Yerlette didn’t care for why Roger started gardening, as she instead took on the role of his gardening instructor in order to make certain he knew how to properly take care of his plants.

Stepping into the kitchen, I took a deep breath in and adjusted my armor to its “cooking” mode. The simple blue shirt and jeans combo shifted into an all-white chef’s frock, with the sleeves gaining extra padding and heat dispersal lines, as well as a mesh netting, to make sure Wanda remained comfortable, no matter the recipe I was using. The smells of the kitchen had awoken my little gremlin, as she had nuzzled into my neck mumbling about boiled eggs.

I walked over to my station, passing the various mannequin minions who were doing food prep, and activated the ingredient retrieval program while doing a basic check on my utensils. My stovetop had its maintenance checked before I went to bed, and the oven was preheating to five hundred degrees Celsius in expectation for the pizza. Was it too early to preheat the oven to that temperature? Yes. However, I did intend to make a few different breads to pass out to the Gremlin staff in the DM Screen, not to mention a few other experiments later.

All of my ingredients arrived via the vacuum tubes Morrigan had set up both above and below the kitchen for her own amusement. Though I did appreciate the spectacle, myself. Meats, vegetables, grains, and liquids, all arriving in prepackaged, premeasured containers, yet not pre-prepared, as the preparation of the ingredients was one of my favorite parts of cooking.

Once I confirmed the status of the seasoned beef and fresh eggs, as those came from actual animals rather than being grown, I focused on my robotic arms and flexed, activating my coprocessors to allow for the level of multitasking required for this morning. The surrounding space became clearly visible through my robotic arms, the advanced echolocation nodules along each arm allowing me to visualize the entire kitchen without opening my eyes.

Pots and pans clinked onto the stovetop with water filling them to exact measurements, while salt and seasonings and eggs entered them in different amounts. I chuckled at the comical amount of egg solution that an ostrich egg was recorded to once hold before placing a half dozen normal, fresh chicken eggs into a pot for Wanda.

I grabbed a few scoops of rice from the half-ton rice cooker installed in the center of the kitchen and set them aside to cool. While one arm was prepping vegetables for the spring rolls and other dishes, another was whisking together salmon, Kewpie mayo, and spices for the rice balls, while a third was prepping broth for both the porridge and my own meal of thickened chicken noodle soup. My final arm was beginning the process of making the dough for all the pizza, the cinnamon rolls, and the breads I had planned.

Not long into the process, Wanda’s eggs were finished boiling to her preferred medium-boiled consistency. I moved them from the pot into a metal bowl filled with ice water before shifting the end of one of my arms into a more delicate multitouch tool in order to shell the eggs quickly. After peeling the first one, I handed it to Wanda with some salt and spicy mayo, as she liked it. The way she nibbled on each egg was far too adorable for words, yet I made sure to not interrupt her until tasting needed to be done.

With each step in the process, I made sure to bring a spoon or a fork up to both myself and Wanda in order to taste each dish. We would often agree on if a dish needed more spice or salt, even if she leaned towards more savory flavors, while I favored salty dishes.

“The salmon mix is good, but the tofu for the spring roll needs to be cooked a bit longer.” Wanda explained between bites.

I agreed that the tofu had to be a bit firmer; unfortunately, Victor and Cari had just stepped out from their room, so I was out of time. I wrapped the dozen rolls and set them on the counter with a healthy side of peanut sauce as they approached, smiling at my brother and sister-in-law while hiding my disappointment at the subpar rolls.

“Good morning, Victor. Good morning, Cari,” I said cheerfully while waving at them with one of my robotic arms. Wanda waved at them from her position but chose not to say anything.

Victor smiled tiredly at Wanda and me, “Morning, Buddy. Wanda. Smells amazing in there.”

I was still amazed that, after all the upgrades he went through and the sleep schedule he set up, he still looked tired, though nowhere near his old state from before his initialization. I suppose it was his constant multi-processing that kept his mind active even when he rested. Not to mention that I was still having a hard time getting used to his new physique.

From a lithe, yet well-built young man, he now looked thinner and smaller, going from five foot six to five foot one while having his muscles lose some definition. I knew that Opal had some hand in his new shape, yet his height was something he decided himself, claiming that it made cuddling nicer. Yet his general shape remained the same, as did his deep green eyes and his dirty brown hair, at least, while he was in his human form. Even still, even with his changes, he was still my younger brother.

Cari took a seat at the counter and grabbed a spring roll, her eyes lighting up in nostalgia. “I haven’t had these in years. Mother tried a few times but would always tear the rice wrapping. Thank you, Buddy.”

As for Cari, she had not changed at all, remaining the same height of five foot nine with the same eyes and general body shape. If anything, she took the definition Victor lost, with her arms and legs gaining noticeable muscle mass. Considering her combat style relied on pugilistic forms, it made sense.

We chatted for a few more minutes while I made the other dishes, and Victor did his best to savor the food in front of him. Cari did an outstanding job in facilitating the flow of conversation, yet all things must end. The food was eaten, and their day must begin.

As they walked out of the living area to head to the training section of The Tower, Wanda muttered a question. “He didn’t notice the tofu was undercooked, did he?”

I chuckled as I turned back to the kitchen. “No, he probably didn’t. But Cari did. She only ate four rolls, after all.”

Wanda grunted in dissatisfaction, grabbing another boiled egg to eat instead of speaking about Cari. For some reason that Wanda could not articulate beyond “vibes”, she disliked Cari. Not to the point of inhospitality, but she limited her interactions noticeably.

Choosing not to pry, I got to work on the hollandaise sauce, using it as extra training for my arms delicate control.

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