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xp_logsKyle senses out April doing a symbiote-y lurk, and has some creative thoughts about snacks that you can eat when your teeth are wrong. He also has a Completely Incorrect Theory about the symbiotes being deep sea fish.
April's white, pupiless eyes stayed on Kyle as he came in and out of the kitchen and pantry, watching him from the shadowy spot near the patio door she'd decided to lounge in. The cats could have the sunny spots, she'd decided already, but lounging in the shadows had more opportunity for hilarity.
She understood why Sharon enjoyed lurking so much, now. But today, she knew she was lurking here, and she was pretty sure Kyle knew she was here too, even though she hadn't done anything to announce her presence other than opening her eyes to watch him.
Kyle hadn't quite had a plan when he came down to the kitchen to search for better snacks than his own kitchen had. He was just bored of grading papers, which was the state of most career teachers. Imparting knowledge onto people, cool. Imparting grading onto the very assignments he'd set, not cool.
At first he'd thought the movement in the shadows was Sharon, and then the light hit and it was blue-black, both the shade of black so black that it was blue, and true blue, just a hint in the mottled shadows. Which meant April, still recovering from the District X riot, still stuck in a form that was all teeth, limited communication, tentacle hair.
He set down the leftover rice he'd been investigating, and opened the big freezer, digging through the assorted Everything in the freezer. "So." he said, still digging and moving a bag of frozen hash browns to another shelf. "So I know too many teeth isn't quite no teeth, but you're on the drinkable diet right now, right?"
"GROSSSS" April rumbled. She'd figured out a few basic words around her mouth, but full sentences and longer syllables still eluded her. "NO SSSHAKE" she added, S-tones adding a growling sibilance completely absent from her normal speech. They were both aware, so lurking was no longer necessary. She slunk from the shadows, forgoing her hands and using her tendrils to boost herself onto a stool. "WHAT MAKE" Her tendrils added the question mark in visible form, head tilting sideways with some curiosity.
"I feel you." Kyle finally found the bag he was looking for, frozen mango cubes, and tossed them over his shoulder onto the counter, and continued digging until he also found a container of strawberries someone had frozen. "I get about half a day into all shakes all the time and I hate life. I like soup but I get sick of soup, so - " He set the plastic tub of strawberries onto the counter and then made his way to the pantry, emerging with a box of pocky. "Last time, Ter and I figured out how to make popsicles with edible sticks, because wooden ones get stuck in my teeth. I figure you might have the same problem."
April leaned forward with interest, wide eyes watching Kyle's actions avidly. "SSSNACK?" Pocky, fruit... edible popsicles. Kyle and Terry were brilliant. A tentacle reached into the shadowy area she'd been lurking in, retracting with a small black bag attached. She slipped the tablet out and pulled up proloquo, wanting communication to be fuller than just the few words she'd managed with her mouth so far. "Chew-ing is difficult," the device said after a few careful presses. She snapped her teeth at him playfully, letting him see the ear-to-ear set of sharp, vicious teeth, fully designed for ripping and tearing but not much in the way of molars for chewing.
"Snack." Kyle finally opened the actual fridge, and found the orange juice. "Kay, are we a yogurt in our popsicles person, or are we are 'Kyle what the hell, yogurt's gross.' person?" He set the orange juice, and a tub of plain vanilla yogurt on the counter. "I am a yogurt person, but no judging if you'd like me never speak to you of the yog again." He turned himself around a few times after setting the yogurt down and then finally settled on climbing atop one of the counters, digging in a high cabinet until he found the silicone popsicle molds.
"KAY" And then she had a thought, just in case. "NO EGG" April didn't have a nose to wrinkle, but she brought a set of tendrils up to her mouth and then flung them forward like she was heaving. Cooked, maybe, if she could figure out eating scrambled eggs in this form without making a mess. But raw eggs. No.
Kyle's eyebrows furrowed for a moment, as though he was trying to figure out who put raw eggs in popsicles, and then remembered how many times everyone in the mansion had seen him literally eating a soft boiled egg as a snack. "Fair enough, no egg." He popped the top off the big blender, and worked about half the frozen mango out of the bag, and then poured the juice in. "Incoming horrible noise." he warned, giving April time to react before he pressed the puree button and let loose the grinding noise of pulverization.
It was a pretty terrible noise, but April made it worse by effectively singing along. "VRRRRRRRRRRRRRR" rumbled in tandem with the whirring and grinding as the frozen fruits were pulverized, and her feet kicked merrily as she watched.
He had locked the blender top on, and Kyle thanked Kyle of Thirty Seconds Ago for that, because he was laughing too hard to hold onto it, and the goal was popsicles, not juice all over the kitchen. He waited for the noise - the blender noise, not the April harmonizing accompaniment to smooth out to a whirr, popped the top off and added a handful of strawberries. The frozen berries made less of a clatter, and the mixture slowly turned an orangey-pink.
Pouring it into the molds was the easy part - holding the pocky so it would stay upright was less easy, and the popsicles required three pocky per mold, less, he'd found meant broken pocky and sticky hands. He filled three, then returned the blender to it's stand, added the yogurt, and resumed blending and then filling.
"Snack, and if things get dire you can hide protein powder in them. I don't, because protein powder smells like feet.'
"SSSHAKE" April said seriously, tendrils drooping downward. "NOT FEET" Later, she'd have to remember and ask Kyle what protein powder he used, because hers did not smell like feet. Blech. Maybe she could get him some samples. "OATS"
Kyle tilted his head, and then straightened. 'oh, Oats! like Oatmeal! I don't do a lot of most grains because, uh, reasons, but yeah, they'd work here. Wait, are you doing like overnight oats now? Because sometimes I do those savory, like, oats and beef broth, and..." He looked up at the ceiling, almost shamefully. "My diet is weird, but like, haggis filling without the stomach, so just the meat and oats. It's one of my go to foods when I'm healing up."
"HUH" April had never really considered oats and meat, and what the hell was haggis that you put meat in a stomach and THEN ate it? Like an oat sausage? Surely not. But she didn't have the words quite to ask that, so she let her single word and tendrils convey her confusion instead, the mass writhing and settling into curls and twists that looked a bit like question marks.
"Haggis is oats, meat, and herbs in a sheep's stomach. Basically sausage, only grosser." Kyle explained. He carried the popsicle molds to the walk-in freezer, and then popped right back out, rubbing his arms. "Those should be set in like half an hour. OKay, what else do they have you on, because I am all about finding alternate ways to fuel when shit goes down. Soft, easy to chew or drink, so hummus, mashed potatoes, soup... " He tilted his head, and actually stopped to look at April's face, and all those sharp teeth. "Okay I have a dumb mc'fucking question, but I don't heal right unless I eat right. Does your - the blue form, the symbiote, need a kind of food you're not getting right now? Because no shame if, I dunno, you need me to go get like, four whole rabbits or something."
That was a lot of questions she didn't have the words or answers for. "SSHAKE PROTEIN SSCOOP" Was she getting the right nutrition? Minimally, maybe, but even the best protein shakes were disgusting after a few days of nothing else, and she had no idea how her metabolism worked in this form. She was sleeping more, though, but conveying all that... Her whole body shrugged, the effect looking much like a spider on its back. A very large, strange spider.
"Gross." Kyle agreed. "Sounds like the couple of times I've healed big. Damn, and if you do need something, the teeth are probably a barrier to getting it in anything but soft or like..." He tilted his head, clearly trying to remember something. "Like, those are very deep sea fish teeth, but I don't know how those eat, but? I dunno I just know being stuck is probably bugging you so I'm like, thinking out loud, maybe it's a symbiote needs donuts things, only donuts is like, quinoa, or kelp or something else that grows in water."
"NO?" The rumble ticked distinctively upward at the end, a mark of a question or being unsure. "VIT-MIN."
"Like you need a vitamin, or you're taking them?" Kyle asked. "So not a deep sea fish though, unless you can make a glowy fishing pole on your head, which lets be real, would be rad as fuck."
"TAKE." That was more confident, at least. April concentrated briefly, letting a tendril spring out of her forehead like a fishing pole, but it didn't glow. She managed to get it all black except for the end though, and her mouth stretched wider in delight. "FISH!"
"Yeah, rad as fuck. Just gotta get one of those hairties with the LED on the end." Kyle noted. "Okay, lets see if we can find the oats though. I bet we can do soft oatmeal bars. Get you some actual texture with protein in it? Jesus I miss having an actual nutritionalist here. Clarice and Doc Jean do their best but both are emergency docs." He pulled the freezer door back open and started looking through shelves, and came back with a package of ground turkey. "What if we did thanksgiving stuffing bars. Soft bread, turkey, maybe some potato? Maybe cornmeal?"
"OATS IN SHAKE" April corrected. Stuffing bars sounded good. "YES. CRAN?" Or maybe carrot, but she could do... well, the chewing looked mostly like it'd been through a terrible food processor and ended up half smeared across her face like a toddler trying to feed themselves. But it wasn't a liquid, and that was the part she actually cared about.
"Yeah, gotta have cran. Gotta have something to cut all that heavy stuff." Kyle agreed. "Okay, lets do this. Even if it's not whatever your body needs for, I dunno, being not a human ink blot, it'll give you something you can eat that's not sweet and not a shake. We gotta plan, lets do this."
April's white, pupiless eyes stayed on Kyle as he came in and out of the kitchen and pantry, watching him from the shadowy spot near the patio door she'd decided to lounge in. The cats could have the sunny spots, she'd decided already, but lounging in the shadows had more opportunity for hilarity.
She understood why Sharon enjoyed lurking so much, now. But today, she knew she was lurking here, and she was pretty sure Kyle knew she was here too, even though she hadn't done anything to announce her presence other than opening her eyes to watch him.
Kyle hadn't quite had a plan when he came down to the kitchen to search for better snacks than his own kitchen had. He was just bored of grading papers, which was the state of most career teachers. Imparting knowledge onto people, cool. Imparting grading onto the very assignments he'd set, not cool.
At first he'd thought the movement in the shadows was Sharon, and then the light hit and it was blue-black, both the shade of black so black that it was blue, and true blue, just a hint in the mottled shadows. Which meant April, still recovering from the District X riot, still stuck in a form that was all teeth, limited communication, tentacle hair.
He set down the leftover rice he'd been investigating, and opened the big freezer, digging through the assorted Everything in the freezer. "So." he said, still digging and moving a bag of frozen hash browns to another shelf. "So I know too many teeth isn't quite no teeth, but you're on the drinkable diet right now, right?"
"GROSSSS" April rumbled. She'd figured out a few basic words around her mouth, but full sentences and longer syllables still eluded her. "NO SSSHAKE" she added, S-tones adding a growling sibilance completely absent from her normal speech. They were both aware, so lurking was no longer necessary. She slunk from the shadows, forgoing her hands and using her tendrils to boost herself onto a stool. "WHAT MAKE" Her tendrils added the question mark in visible form, head tilting sideways with some curiosity.
"I feel you." Kyle finally found the bag he was looking for, frozen mango cubes, and tossed them over his shoulder onto the counter, and continued digging until he also found a container of strawberries someone had frozen. "I get about half a day into all shakes all the time and I hate life. I like soup but I get sick of soup, so - " He set the plastic tub of strawberries onto the counter and then made his way to the pantry, emerging with a box of pocky. "Last time, Ter and I figured out how to make popsicles with edible sticks, because wooden ones get stuck in my teeth. I figure you might have the same problem."
April leaned forward with interest, wide eyes watching Kyle's actions avidly. "SSSNACK?" Pocky, fruit... edible popsicles. Kyle and Terry were brilliant. A tentacle reached into the shadowy area she'd been lurking in, retracting with a small black bag attached. She slipped the tablet out and pulled up proloquo, wanting communication to be fuller than just the few words she'd managed with her mouth so far. "Chew-ing is difficult," the device said after a few careful presses. She snapped her teeth at him playfully, letting him see the ear-to-ear set of sharp, vicious teeth, fully designed for ripping and tearing but not much in the way of molars for chewing.
"Snack." Kyle finally opened the actual fridge, and found the orange juice. "Kay, are we a yogurt in our popsicles person, or are we are 'Kyle what the hell, yogurt's gross.' person?" He set the orange juice, and a tub of plain vanilla yogurt on the counter. "I am a yogurt person, but no judging if you'd like me never speak to you of the yog again." He turned himself around a few times after setting the yogurt down and then finally settled on climbing atop one of the counters, digging in a high cabinet until he found the silicone popsicle molds.
"KAY" And then she had a thought, just in case. "NO EGG" April didn't have a nose to wrinkle, but she brought a set of tendrils up to her mouth and then flung them forward like she was heaving. Cooked, maybe, if she could figure out eating scrambled eggs in this form without making a mess. But raw eggs. No.
Kyle's eyebrows furrowed for a moment, as though he was trying to figure out who put raw eggs in popsicles, and then remembered how many times everyone in the mansion had seen him literally eating a soft boiled egg as a snack. "Fair enough, no egg." He popped the top off the big blender, and worked about half the frozen mango out of the bag, and then poured the juice in. "Incoming horrible noise." he warned, giving April time to react before he pressed the puree button and let loose the grinding noise of pulverization.
It was a pretty terrible noise, but April made it worse by effectively singing along. "VRRRRRRRRRRRRRR" rumbled in tandem with the whirring and grinding as the frozen fruits were pulverized, and her feet kicked merrily as she watched.
He had locked the blender top on, and Kyle thanked Kyle of Thirty Seconds Ago for that, because he was laughing too hard to hold onto it, and the goal was popsicles, not juice all over the kitchen. He waited for the noise - the blender noise, not the April harmonizing accompaniment to smooth out to a whirr, popped the top off and added a handful of strawberries. The frozen berries made less of a clatter, and the mixture slowly turned an orangey-pink.
Pouring it into the molds was the easy part - holding the pocky so it would stay upright was less easy, and the popsicles required three pocky per mold, less, he'd found meant broken pocky and sticky hands. He filled three, then returned the blender to it's stand, added the yogurt, and resumed blending and then filling.
"Snack, and if things get dire you can hide protein powder in them. I don't, because protein powder smells like feet.'
"SSSHAKE" April said seriously, tendrils drooping downward. "NOT FEET" Later, she'd have to remember and ask Kyle what protein powder he used, because hers did not smell like feet. Blech. Maybe she could get him some samples. "OATS"
Kyle tilted his head, and then straightened. 'oh, Oats! like Oatmeal! I don't do a lot of most grains because, uh, reasons, but yeah, they'd work here. Wait, are you doing like overnight oats now? Because sometimes I do those savory, like, oats and beef broth, and..." He looked up at the ceiling, almost shamefully. "My diet is weird, but like, haggis filling without the stomach, so just the meat and oats. It's one of my go to foods when I'm healing up."
"HUH" April had never really considered oats and meat, and what the hell was haggis that you put meat in a stomach and THEN ate it? Like an oat sausage? Surely not. But she didn't have the words quite to ask that, so she let her single word and tendrils convey her confusion instead, the mass writhing and settling into curls and twists that looked a bit like question marks.
"Haggis is oats, meat, and herbs in a sheep's stomach. Basically sausage, only grosser." Kyle explained. He carried the popsicle molds to the walk-in freezer, and then popped right back out, rubbing his arms. "Those should be set in like half an hour. OKay, what else do they have you on, because I am all about finding alternate ways to fuel when shit goes down. Soft, easy to chew or drink, so hummus, mashed potatoes, soup... " He tilted his head, and actually stopped to look at April's face, and all those sharp teeth. "Okay I have a dumb mc'fucking question, but I don't heal right unless I eat right. Does your - the blue form, the symbiote, need a kind of food you're not getting right now? Because no shame if, I dunno, you need me to go get like, four whole rabbits or something."
That was a lot of questions she didn't have the words or answers for. "SSHAKE PROTEIN SSCOOP" Was she getting the right nutrition? Minimally, maybe, but even the best protein shakes were disgusting after a few days of nothing else, and she had no idea how her metabolism worked in this form. She was sleeping more, though, but conveying all that... Her whole body shrugged, the effect looking much like a spider on its back. A very large, strange spider.
"Gross." Kyle agreed. "Sounds like the couple of times I've healed big. Damn, and if you do need something, the teeth are probably a barrier to getting it in anything but soft or like..." He tilted his head, clearly trying to remember something. "Like, those are very deep sea fish teeth, but I don't know how those eat, but? I dunno I just know being stuck is probably bugging you so I'm like, thinking out loud, maybe it's a symbiote needs donuts things, only donuts is like, quinoa, or kelp or something else that grows in water."
"NO?" The rumble ticked distinctively upward at the end, a mark of a question or being unsure. "VIT-MIN."
"Like you need a vitamin, or you're taking them?" Kyle asked. "So not a deep sea fish though, unless you can make a glowy fishing pole on your head, which lets be real, would be rad as fuck."
"TAKE." That was more confident, at least. April concentrated briefly, letting a tendril spring out of her forehead like a fishing pole, but it didn't glow. She managed to get it all black except for the end though, and her mouth stretched wider in delight. "FISH!"
"Yeah, rad as fuck. Just gotta get one of those hairties with the LED on the end." Kyle noted. "Okay, lets see if we can find the oats though. I bet we can do soft oatmeal bars. Get you some actual texture with protein in it? Jesus I miss having an actual nutritionalist here. Clarice and Doc Jean do their best but both are emergency docs." He pulled the freezer door back open and started looking through shelves, and came back with a package of ground turkey. "What if we did thanksgiving stuffing bars. Soft bread, turkey, maybe some potato? Maybe cornmeal?"
"OATS IN SHAKE" April corrected. Stuffing bars sounded good. "YES. CRAN?" Or maybe carrot, but she could do... well, the chewing looked mostly like it'd been through a terrible food processor and ended up half smeared across her face like a toddler trying to feed themselves. But it wasn't a liquid, and that was the part she actually cared about.
"Yeah, gotta have cran. Gotta have something to cut all that heavy stuff." Kyle agreed. "Okay, lets do this. Even if it's not whatever your body needs for, I dunno, being not a human ink blot, it'll give you something you can eat that's not sweet and not a shake. We gotta plan, lets do this."
