The Attack of the Kitchen Blobs!

Log Info

Title: The Attack of The Kitchen Blobs!
Emitter: N/A
Characters: Synapse, Cordelia
NPCs: N/A
Place: Siegal Dining Hall
Time: Sunday, Lunchtime
Summary: Synapse and Cordelia meet. This inevitably involves a new lifeform. Unfortunately, it's lunch.

Siegal Dining Hall - The Quad - Steranko Institute
Siegal Dining Hall is less a cafeteria than a mini food court. Starting from the entrance and moving left around the edge of the room there is a salad bar, a soup station, a grill, a sandwich station, and a more traditional cafeteria line. Finally, right before the checkout, are the desserts and soft serve ice cream machine. Small digital signs at each station list the names of each item, and if one watches closely you might catch the signs changing languages, or flashing allergy warnings as they detect the proximity of certain students. No cash is needed in the dining hall, rather students swipe their ids at check out, and purchases are counted against their meal plan.
The center of the hall is where people sit to eat. The room is broken up by tall planters in areas of five or six tables, the tables ranging in size from tiny tables that sit just two people to larger ones that might sit a dozen.

So. Lunches are cafeteria food, but depending on just who of the cook staff's actually doing the cooking, it's of variable quality at best. Today… today it's the worst thing possible: mystery meat with green vegetable puree and lumpy brown gravy, and the inevitable french fries.

At a tentative poke from a fork, the vegetable puree emits a *blorp* of foul-smelling gas that makes the goggles-wearing scientist recoil, then snag a test tube out of her bandolier. "I think," she says with the air of a scientist recording new findings, "that we have discovered a new life-form." Now, if she can just coax a sample into the tube, life will be /brilliant/.

Synapse normally just eats too fast to even notice things like 'taste' or 'texture'. It's impossible not to notice this today, since the slop on the tray is actually moving without him touching it. "I think my dad fought one of these once." He's not far from where Cordelia's seated, and as she snatches up the testtube, he blinks. "Oh, hey, that's a neat idea. I normally just keep all my junk in my room and run off to get it when I need it." He does so now, blurring briefly and returning with a proper sample-collecting kit of his own. A moment later, he's frowning, as the glop -eats- his tweezers. Not acidically, but by being so viscous that it pulls -them in-. "We…uh. May have a problem."

"IS it developing sentience?" Cordelia sounds more interested than horrified, really. "Or motion?" The blonde twists just in time to catch the glop eating the tweezers, and her eyes widen with interested observation. "Quick, see if it's digesting anything, or if it's actually not living yet. Because we can fix the latter."

Synapse hmms, and pulls one of a pair of leather work gloves from his belt. He places it on the tray next to the glop, and waits. Nothing happens, and so he places the glove carefully on -top- of the glop, which is when it reacts and starts to dissolve it. "Seems to be a simple defensive response, but it's definitely digesting the organic matter." The glove's melting, in point of fact. "We…should probably find the main pot before anyone else eats this."

"Kitchen infiltration!" Cordelia declares in the same tone she'd use to declare 'FOR ADVENTURE!' and bounces to her feet, sliding a larger sample jar from a pouch at her waist down the table to Synapse for the remainder of his glop. Her own is a little less active, having simply attempted to dissolve her spoon and the tray it's resting in. She pushes back her chair, bouncing to her feet. "It must be that one cook today if it's this bad. Either that, or the science lab's playing another prank…" She's already heading for the kitchen, intent on making her way past the usual barriers.

Synapse transfers his goo to the sample jar and seals it before it can cause any mayhem, then blurs to his feet. "Hmm. If you're up for it I can get us around and into the back before they can rally a defense." At her theory, he nods. "Or worse, it's my old neighbor trying to be -helpful- and dispose of things for me. I understand he's attending here this year."

"You have a slow lab assistant?" Eyes brightening, Cordelia looks Synapse up and down. "You're a rung up on the Science! ladder already; my lab assistant isn't dumb at all. More's the pity, I could get away with more if he were." She sighs wistfully, then holds a hand out to Synapse. "Let's go save the w— school!" Pause. "… or just lunch."

Synapse says "It's not that he's stupid, he's just…gormless." Synapse sighs, taking her hand, and blurs. "And he's not my assistant so much as a hazard." A pause. "And an accidental experimental subject. You know how he got his powers? I tried to give him a knockout drug so I could get some work done, and he'd -rearranged all my shelves!-" A snarl. "By -color-." The plan here, apparently, is to take the long route, and come in through the side door, which bursts inwards at super-speed as they arrive. "See anything with tendrils around? It might grow more aggressive with more mass.""

"That sounds like the clueless lab assistant type," Cordelia points out blandly. "I mean, take Frankenstein's Monster and all that. Wrong brain and all." She takes the blurring speed with a broad grin, keeping her balance easily enough once they stop. "/That's/ got to be useful for experiments." She's made the connection pretty quickly, but she unholsters her ray-gun in preparation for anything with tentacles. The kitchen staff may regret this: innocent pots and pans will be sacrificed in the name of SCIENCE.

"I -guess-, if you take into account that I didn't ask for one. But I suppose that sort's usually inherited anyway. And it really is. Makes it a lot easier to build things. Things you can't speed up are -torture-, mind you." He blurs around himself, checking pots by hand…which backfires spectacularly when one of them -checks back, a tendril wrapping around his wrist. "I…think I found it!"

"I'd love to inherit some of my parents' assistants-" *BZZZZAP!* What follows is comedically /bad/, really: while Cordelia's aim is fine, the fact that it's a metal pot versus a ray gun, and said metal pot has a living goo-being in it, well… goo goes everywhere, then coalesces into a huge number of individual blobs of formerly-vegetable-puree. "… they have independent motion!" she declares, wide-eyed. "I wonder if it's a hive mind or if they're all individuals after being spl— oh it's trying to eat my /boots/!"

The kitchen staff is all fleeing now, being more sensible than either teen mad scientist. "I don't suppose you have a freeze ray setting on that, by chance?" Synapse is, at least freed by the blast, and blurs towards the one thing every kitchen should have- a fire extinguisher. "If we chill them enough we should be able to collect them!" Of course, just as he reaches the extinguisher is when the fact that one of them is visible on his back for Cordelia. Gross.

Cordelia's hand creeps towards her bandolier, snagging a chill blue vial from it and snapping it on top of the ray-gun. It whines on a different key now. "It's going to be one by one," she says grimly, "Unless I want to freeze everything in this entire kitchen and I don't think the professors'd let us get away with /THAT/." And it'd make them look at her tinkering with the fire system in her dorm. Awkward. "Bend over!" she calls to him, spotting the oozeling on Synapse's back. "It's trying to eat your /brain/!" And she's going to take a shot at it.

Synapse at least listens to instructions quickly, and bends over once he has the extinquisher in hands. He moves so quickly in fact that the former meal goes to splat against the wall. Of course, he can't see it from his angle. "Oh hell, get it off!" The one eating Cordelia's boots is having some measure of success. This could get very awkward very quickly.

"You spun it off!" See, the logical thing in this situation would be to sound an alarm, but /no/, not these two. There's SCIENCE afoot (in one case, literally), and thus, they are distracted. Once the leather upper is dissolved, the oozeling trying to devour Cordelia's foot starts in on the sock. And /that's/ when she remembers it's there, grabs a ladel, and plays golf with oozeling, sending it to splat next to the one formerly on Synapse's back. Then she fires a beam at one particularly large sample, which freezes in place, crackling. "One down!" Pause. "… only another fifty to go.

Synapse snaps back upright at this warning, and sprays the two of them down with the fire extinguisher after some hasty modifications; they freeze in place and -thump- to the countertop. "You know that 'freeze the entire kitchen' plan is starting to look like a good idea!"

"… as long as you'll help me explain that no, I /didn't/ just do this in protest of what they call 'curry' here—" It sounds like there's a story behind that, but Cordelia's already reaching for three more vials that gleam with a faint blue light, tossing one to Synapse. "On my mark, break that and when I smash the others, get us out of here fast!"

"I will totally explain. What are they going to do, suspend me from classes I haven't started yet? Pfft." Synapse takes the vial. "Right. Ready when you are!" He raises the vial with one hand while blasting at a puree-thing with the extinguisher in the other. "On three? One, two…"

This /may/ not be the best plan. At the very least, it'll result in a menu-change for dinner (which in itself, not a bad idea: pizza is infinitely better than whatever the current cook was planning). Cordelia sets one of the vials on a countertop, moving quickly to another point and changing the dial on her ray-gun. "THREE!" She simultaneously shoots and smashes the last vials, and a wave of subarctic cold begins to spread.

Synapse throws his down on the floor at the same moment, then blurs into motion, scooping up Cordelia and carrying out of the kitchen through the front entrance and out of the dining hall for that matter, it being far safer than sticking inside the building as ice creeps over the counters. And the blobs on the counters. "That? That was the best lunch -ever-."

Meanwhile, Cordelia is cackling happily at the effect of her makeshift ice-bomb on the kitchens. As it is, the freezers won't have to work hard for a while. She peers over Synapse's shoulder towards the nearest kitchen window, spotting one of the blobs clinging helplessly to the glass as frost creeps over it. "Try to eat /my/ boots, why don't you!" Her socks, it must be noted, are red and white striped. "You seem to know your way around all-consuming blobs. Don't think I've met you. I'm Cordelia Savage."

"Alan Thorne, but everyone just calls me Synapse. Even my parents, actually." He still hasn't put her down, but possibly he just hasn't -noticed- yet. "Savage? As in James and Tricia Savage's daughter? The adventurers? I think my folks know yours."

"Oh hey, you're Mr. and Mrs. Thorne's kid. My mom keeps wanting to spend more time with your mom and talk about her adventures." Pause. "But you were just a couple months old last time— oh. Hyper-aging due to speed?" She jumps to the right conclusions, but wiggles free, landing on her feet and grimacing down at her missing boot. "I'll have to get the Babbage Engine to craft a new boot. Yecht. And socks."

"Yeah. Once I finally got some motor control I worked out how to cure it myself, or else I'd probably be…a lot older by now." He eyes her unshod foot. "I think I'm glad I reinforced my costume with forcefields instead of chemical treatments. I'm guessing that's what you used, anyway?"

"Yeah, and a bit of a reinforcement field in a power-sheath, but evidently the ooze corrodes through that sort of aetheric barrier," Cordelia says glumly, wiggling her toes. There's a hole in her sock that her big toe pokes through. "Going to be a new freshman this year, or did you get to skip a few? At least the professors here aren't as boring as normal schools are supposed to be."

Synapse rolls his eyes. "New Freshman. Apparently once I was stable they figured I needed to be around other neohuman kids." A pause. "And as long as possible."

"Well, you're the first one to actually get what I'm talking about, so I'm sure I'll see you in some of the science and math classes." Cordelia spares another glum look at her socks, then back at Synapse. "I'm going to head back to my dorm and get a new pair of boots on the make, though. And maybe some food."

Synapse offers her a candybar. "Emergency rations. My metabolism isn't fully adjusted yet, so I go through a lot of these. "See you around!"

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