Thanksgiving, before game
"You know, I never thought about just how much food was at the school Thanksgiving dinners. This makes me almost guilty for all the food fights wasting it." Lorna knew she wasn't even half sincere as she said that but as she plopped the last of the groceries onto the bar she could pretend.
"Seriously, this turkey could be the thing of nightmares. Imagine this thing alive and actually live turkey shaped. It's Turkzilla."
"Are you sure it's not an ostrich? I mean, I've seen turkeys before... hell, I've almost hit turkeys back home..." The bird was big, definitely, but Bobby was more interested in the marshmallows sticking from the top of the closest bag. He couldn't resist. He poked.
"I don't know...," Lorna patted the bird carcas in question. "Tell me, fowl, were you an emu in a past life? We question your butterball label." The bird had no answers for them, however. "Well, if it's an ostrich we can say it's more multicultural."
"And I saw that, Bobby Drake." She tsked, then reached over and poked another marshmallow. "You think we got enough that we can crack a bag open?"
"Of course we have enough." He had no idea what for, but they certainly had enough to eat. He considered it payment for grocery fetching. Without further thought, he popped open the bag.
"So," he started, tossing one of the little nuggets of squishy goodness to Lorna, "what do we do with Ollie the Ostrich here? He's never gonna fit in the microwave unless we dismembered him first."
Bobby tilted his head at that. "In that case, lemme think Selene real hard and I bet she'd be thrilled to come help."
"Unless we want this bird stuffed to the gills with lemons and possibly made to look like a tortoise I think we had best leave Selene out of the cooking." Lorna eyed the bird over, catching the marshmallow popping and popping it in her mouth as she tried to figure out the logistics of it. "Maybe if we just put it in the sink and give it a hot bath?"
"I mean, birdy spa has to loosen it up some. Just as long as we don't leave it out long enough to poison the whole school we should be fine."
Bobby frowned at the bird, marshmallow forgotten halfway to his mouth, and reached out with his power. He could feel the ice, but couldn't affect it from where he was. "So we need it thawed out, huh? How soon?"
She gave a shrug. "I guess we can cheat or just let nature take it's course." Turkeys, how did they work? This was a mystery and Lorna couldn't help but feel like one of the apes from the beginning of 2001 circling the monolith.
"No, no, I can do this..." By God, if it killed him, which admittedly would be an embarrassing thing for her to put on his tombstone. Bobby hefted the bird from the bag and set it upright on the counter.
He stared at it.
"You know, even though it no longer has a head when you move it seems to follow you." Lorna muttered half in awe as she shifted from side to side, also staring at the bird.
Bobby snorted. This was ridiculous. Narrowing his eyes he reached out again and the ice within the turkey dissolved. Unfortunately, this made the once-rigid turkey suddenly flop over to the left.
When he caught it, he noticed something else. "....it's pissing on my leg." He nodded at the bloody juice streaming from a hole in the plastic bag.
"...Oh yuuuuuck." Lorna pulled a face at that horror. "I guess Ollie had his revenge...ostrichs are bastards." She stepped forward, trying to lift it to end the stream of gushing bird juices and open the packaging up.
"There's things we're supposed to remove, right?"
He helped her wrestle it into the sink and gave her a blank look. "...things?"
"Like inner bird thingy things?" The descriptions of such things left her as she bit her lip, hoisting the legs of the chicken up and, after pulling another face, fishing around for whatever these thingy things were.
Bobby's face matched hers although he wasn't elbow deep in any body cavities. "Shouldn't they gut it before they sell it to stupid people who can't cook?" He paused. "Y'know, us?"
"They...do." She frowned as she pulled out what appeared to be a strange little baggy of bits. "And then put it back in...Bobby I'm confused."
"There has to be instructions on here. I mean, everything comes with instructions." He searched the slippery plastic bag, still filled with pockets of turkey juices. "Aha!" He pointed, then frowned as he read it. "Congratulations on your purchase of a blah, blah, emu ...for further instructions, see the Web site..."
"...how the hell are we supposed to operate a computer when we're all juiced up from Odette?"
"Yeeeah." Bobby washed off his hands and evaporated the water before reaching into his back pocket for his phone. "Whoops, butt dialed Rogue." He fiddled with it for a moment before making a sound of triumph.
"I imagine she and your butt had a wonderful conversation." Lorna nodded, looking at the bird and frowning. "We probably should have had the stove doing things before this, shouldn't we have?"
"Yeah, apparently they frown on using a microwave." Bobby skimmed the page. "My butt is quite the delightful conversationist, you know." He made a dismissive sound and scrolled down. "Especially after the enchirito enchilada surprise."
"Apparently there are tools required. A pan. A big one. Some aluminum foil -- where's Cess when you need her? -- and ..." He looked up. "What's a baster?"
"Oh I remember that conversation. As a matter of fact I believe your butt got a bit saucy." That probably wasn't turkey making conversation but that didn't stop her one bit.
"Okay, so we get the oven ovening and we gather our tools!" She blinked at the word baster, however. "An old Jason Bateman movie...oh, wait! It's the squirty thing!" She made what would have been a slightly obscene gesture as a description, squeezing the squirty thing to...squirt.
Bobby pawed through a drawer, then another. He came up with a squirty thing and raised a suggestive eyebrow at her.
"Yeaaaah, that! We take what the turkey leaks and squirt it back at it."
"...."
"You're shitting me?" His expression, while not priceless, was at least Mastercardless.
"No, seriously. We're giving the bird a facial."
Deciding this needed demonstrating, Lorna took to the sink, swapping the faucet over to the side not full of bird and sucked up some water with her wonderful tool. "Like this!" She took aim at Bobby and squeezed.
"Ack! Woman!" Bobby ducked and froze, the water tinkling to the floor.
"I should have asked first, shouldn't I have?"
"Well, yeah! I mean, I ask!" He got close enough to slip some ice down the back of her jeans, then gave her a nice pat on the ass, taking the squeezy thing back in the confusion.
"Well except for tha-Hey!" Much flailing and trying to reach down her pants was had as well as a squack of indignation at the removal of her weapon of squeesy destruction.
Bobby cackled and enjoyed the show. "You know, it doesn't make sense to squirt the bird now. It'd be like... basting it in liquid salmonella." A light bulb came on over his head. "Basting it. Baster. Okay, now I get it. You do that when it's cooking. I've seen my mom do it."
He squeezed the thing a couple times for extra emphasis. Hmm, she looked extra good at that angle, except for the arm flapping. He cocked his head and smirked.
"...that makes so much more sense now." Lorna nodded as the finer points of bird basting clicked into her head and also the ice was removed from her pants. "We can beat this bird after all!" They had made drunk souffle, they could do this!
"Okay, pan. Check." He dragged it from the cabinet and flopped the bird into it. "Cavity search. Check." He reached in and grabbed the gut bag, flicking it into the sink. "Um, oven..." He'd made mac and cheese casserole in the oven once, when the microwave had exploded, so he knew how to turn on the oven.
He also knew it took a while. "Um... done?"
"What are your feelings about stuffing? Put it in the bird or just make it in a pan so it's crispy?" She still frowned at the gut bag, absolutely not getting why people would gut the bird and then put it all back in but just...neater. "I...think so."
He coughed a bit at the first question. "As much as I like stuffing..." His inner twelve-year-old snickered. "I think we'll be doing good to get the bird itself done without killing anything." Bobby ran his hand through his hair. "Well, except for the emurkey here."
"The emurkey sacrificed itself for the most noble and sacred holiday of Turkey Day. Long may we honour it's giving nature." Reaching for the marshmallow bag, Lorna flicked one at him for the stuffing snickering...even though she snickered herself now.
The marshmallow bounced off his nose when he tried the dive for it. Catching it with a chuckle in his hand, he tossed it back. "I think Stove Top here is plenty good as the name suggests." Bobby started pulling boxes of the same from the bags.
Finished, he sucked the sweetness from his teeth and jumped up on the counter. "How did we end up the cooks anyway?"
"Something about Hank wanting to bread everything with twinkies and Farouk just absorbing it all...I think Xavier was joking but I can never really tell."
"If this happens next year, we're finding a student or two that actually likes to cook though and we're putting them to work in ways that might break child labour laws."
"Amen." Bobby ate another marshmallow. "You know, I think my butt was smarter than the both of us."
"I've always been a fan of your butt. This situation proved to be no different."
Bobby made a face at her, then grinned. "Noo." He dragged out the word. "My brilliant ass called Rogue. She can cook. We should totally call her. Help. It is a good thing, and we can beg for it."
"...but then we'd have to share the marshmallows."
