Almost skipped this one by accident, but here it is!

Just a little "bonding," if you could call it that, between Kadlin and Xanador.

You know- her evil chef in a box.

It was early morning in the campground outside Seaside Town as Kadlin Bearsmasher went through the staff katas she had been training in for months now. Xanadon, her chef-in-a-box, also known as Fluffy, had been a skilled sauceror in his time. He had been supplementing her pastamancer training with some of his own skills. These katas, series of attacks and defenses were part of that training, teaching her to wield a staff with her focus, not with her muscles.

Xanadon didn’t like her, and he said he was only teaching her because he was sick of her doing things wrong. But Kadlin knew better. Xanadon was dead. His skull was in a box. His days of fighting great battles were over. His only way to experience that kind of glory now was vicariously, passing on his wisdom and watching someone else learn his tricks.

Kadlin tried to focus on her movements. Attack, attack, parry, ripost, attack, sweep the legs, and bring up to defend. Once more. Attack, attack, parry-

“Quit being lazy,” Xanadon said. “Your movements are tired. That’s all well and good if you’re doing it for show, but in real combat that’ll get you killed. Why if I’d pulled moves like that when I fought the seven paladins of light, there wouldn’t even be enough left of my brains for you to resurrect. Start over from the beginning, and this time do it like you mean it.”

Kadlin finished her katas and sat down. She had only practiced for twenty minutes today, not her usual hour and a half. There would be actual combat later, and she didn’t want to be tired. She looked at the wood in the fireplace, snapped her fingers, and it burst into flames.

She brought out her cooking supplies and started boiling water. Then, she crossed her legs, sat down, and focused her energy on summoning noodles. Xanadon hopped over to a pot and began calling forth scrumptious reagents. Sweat ran down Kadlin’s face as she brought all her mental energies together to bring forth noodles from the Delectable Plane. Xanadon was undead, and couldn’t sweat, but if she had any thought to spare at the moment she would have known that he was just as focused as her.

“Crunch!” went the sound of noodles hitting the skillet followed immediately by the “Plop!” of reagents landing in a pan.

“I win!” shouted Kadlin.

“It was a tie.”

“It was a tie between you and something that happened several seconds after I completed my summoning. I got it done first.”

“Look, let me take your brain out of your skull, bury it in the ground, have horrible experiments performed on it and let it get stuck in a jar and left in Fernswarthy’s Tower for a century, then get ripped out of its jar and stuck in someone else’s skull. See how good of a summoner you are then.”

“Look, Fluffy, admit it. I’m better than you.”

“I’ve forgotten more about magic than you’ll learn in a dozen lifetimes.”

“Someone need a ginko balboa supplement?”

Breakfast was cooked in silence. Kadlin made the pasta, Fluffy made the sauce, they combined their efforts, and Kadlin ate it all. Xanadon was beyond the need for mortal food.

Breakfast done, they broke camp and went into Seaside Town to do some Viking shopping.

“So what’s Viking shopping anyway,” Fluffy asked.

“It’s like regular shopping but it’s more challenging and less expensive. I’ve got the list here of things I need to get, and I go into town and look for them. For example, first I need some spider webs. Now, normally chumps can pay over a thousand meat for one of these things.” She turned the corner of the alleyway and a spider ran at her. Kadlin made a sharp jab with her staff and then wiped the spider guts off her staff. “There’s one,” she said.

She continued for awhile until a bum came up to her. “Exchoose me, muss,” the man said. “Can youse spare shum meat?”

“Let me guess,” said Kadlin, “you need it to buy food for your only son?”

“No, muss, jusht booze.”

“Sorry, can’t spare a nugget right now.”

“You’rhe jusht like my… pink elephant. You’re a punk eleephunt. I hate you!”

The bum rushed her, attacking ferociously. She backed into a better position and delivered a strike. There was the “whump” of a solid quarterstaff being driven into a man’s stomach, the “wham” of a solid hit to the temple, the “wizzle” of a series of slimy tentacles appearing in the air followed by the “pitter patter” of them repeatedly slapping his face. Then came the “slam” of a man being tripped and hitting the ground hard as he collapsed into a pile of vagrant, followed by the sobbing of said pile having its kidneys brutalized with a staff.

Kadlin took the bum’s gloves. “Okay, and there’s the component for stench potions.”

They traveled through several more alleys and Kadlin attacked spiders with such fury that Xanadon thought she was channeling the very spirit of Garfield the Spider Slayer. Finally, they reached their destination.

“This,” said Kadlin “Is the haunted pantry.”

“Hah!” said Fluffy “They call this a haunted pantry. My pantry back in the day was twice as big, and it was three times as haunted. I bet their poltergeists here can’t even levitate a house. Pantry my ass.”

“You don’t have an ass.”

“No, I stole the cheeks off that bum. Made myself a hat.”

“Fluffy!”

“I was naked,” said Fluffy.

“You don’t have a body. Or skin.”

“Well, if I don’t have skin then I’m not even wearing my birthday suit now am I? "

“Whatever.”

Kadlin opened the door and they both entered the pantry. The door closed eerily, but not eerily enough for Xanadon’s standards.

“…and then the thunder of it slamming shut would reverberate through the halls and the lights would dim, just to show you that you were doomed just for walking in the room. I tell you, standards have slipped.”

Kadlin saw a three cans of possessed food start to run toward her. She focused her energy, and as they drew closer she unleashed a rain of macaroni shards on them, pelting them into submission. A meatball rolled toward her, but she spoke the ineffable word of power. “CLEESH!” she shouted, and a green ray shot from her staff and turned the wad into a newt. Xanadon head butted it.

“You’re getting better at that spell,” Xanadon said, taking the newt’s eyes.

A fireball hurtled at Kadlin’s head and she instinctively threw up a counter spell. “No likum thata spellum,” she said, and the fireball fizzled out of the air.

She didn’t have to look far for the source of the attack, there was a ghost wreathed in flame standing next to her. “Why do you vex me, spirit?” she asked.

“I, I used to be a great chef back in the day. My sauces were the best. But a rival pastamancer shoved me into an oven, so that he could become the greatest chef in the tri-state-area! Now every time I see a pastamancer I’m so angered that I can’t help but attack. If you could expose the crimes and make right what happened then I could go on to the afterlife secure in-”

Slimy tentacles whipped him until he was no more. “I don’t like people who discriminate against me because of my job,” Kadlin said.

And with that said, she walked away, looting ingredients from the pantry as she went.

“Well,” said Xanadon, “Looks like you’ve gotten everything on our potion ingredients list except animal skin. Good luck finding that in Seaside Town.”

“There’s plenty of animals here,” Kadlin said.

“Yeah, right,” said Fluffy. “Look, find me yeti fur and I can turn you into a yeti. I can make a newt potion from that newt skin I picked up.”

“Thought you only took its eyes,” said Kadlin.

“No,” said Xanadon. “I grabbed its skin when the author wasn’t looking. Still, what kind of animals are you going to find in Seaside?”

“On our next quest. This tavern owner needs his basement cleared of rats and I-”

“Rats?”

“Yes,” said Kadlin.

“You want a potion that’ll turn you into a rat?”

“I thought it would have interesting tactical advantages.”

“But you’re still a rat!”

“Look, we work with what we’ve got. Besides, we’ve got a quest that’s going to be a cakewalk.”

* * *

Kadlin cast a healing spell on herself as she ran. “I need to get some armor,” she said.

“I thought you said this was going to be a cakewalk,” said Fluffy.

“Hey, I stepped in some cake back there. Look, I’m bordering on exhaustion. I’m out of mana. And I can’t kill all those rats with my staff.”

A flurry of rats chased her. She spied an open closet and jumped in, slamming the door behind her.

“Hey!” said Xanadon, “You slammed the door on me.” the chef-in-a-box said as his box was trapped in the doorframe. Kadlin opened it and shut it tightly. She spoke a word and her staff glowed.

Fluffy said, “I didn’t see that spell on your character sheet.”

“Shut up.”

Kadlin looked around the room. It was storage for empty bottles to be recycled and cans of Cloaca Cola.

“Wait,” Xanadon said. “You can drink that cola and restore your mana.”

“No I can’t.”

“Why not.”

“It’s Cloaca Cola. I’m a Dyspepsi girl.”

“A wise man once said that those entrusted with great power must sacrifice their desires for the greater good.”

“Let me guess, you killed him,” Kadlin said.

“He was trying to thwart me. I didn’t have a choice. The price of being evil.”

Kadlin forced herself to down a couple cans of cola. As the rats began chewing through the door, she chanted the words to open a gate to Hey Deze. Small holes began to appear, and in seconds the rats would be through. Kadlin shoved the door open and summoned the hellgate. Ghostly demons flew through the opened portal and lit the rats on fire, condemning them to a squeaky death. By the time the carnage was finished, all 23 rats were dead and the building was only slightly on fire.

“So,” said Xanadon “Know any cold elemental spells?”

“No.”

“Want to run?”

“Yes.”

Kadlin grabbed some cola and rat hair for potion ingredients and fled the building. As the tavern erupted into flames behind her, she figured she wouldn’t ask for a reward. Or show up near him ever again. In fact, it might be time to lay low for a bit.

Interesting. Funny.