Scene 1: The Cooking Catastrophe
The Guild was unusually quiet that morning, a deceptive calm before the storm of absurdity. Katherine, recently back from a recon mission, was greeted not with briefings or monster sightings, but with a bright poster on the hallway wall: "Tonight: Chaos Night — Cooking Showdown, Improv Skits, and Unofficial Talent Auditions. No powers allowed (unless it's funny)."
Jeremiah, arms folded and smirking, leaned on the doorway. "Apparently, it's Lyra's idea. She said we need a 'mental reset.'"
Lyra, of course, was bouncing between tables in the dining hall like a caffeinated squirrel, organizing teams. Haruto looked lost holding a wok. Cecelia raised a brow, unimpressed. Tousin had on a chef's hat three sizes too big. Leo was sharpening knives with suspicious glee.
Marcus reluctantly walked in wearing a pink apron that said 'Kiss the Meta'. "If anyone takes a photo of this, I swear I will breach your reality."
"Only if your soufflé collapses," Jeremiah said, already filming.
The chaos began. Teams scrambled for ingredients. Katherine and Lyra argued over whether mayonnaise belonged in hot food. Jax, who somehow mistook sugar for salt, served a horrifyingly sweet stew that nearly knocked Caleb unconscious. Ezra—yes, the new Sentinel—tried making pancakes but instead invented a new bio-adhesive glue that fused the frying pan to the stove.
"New military application," he mumbled, trying to peel the pan off. "Sticky bombs, anyone?"
Cecelia tried to play it cool, but one whiff of Haruto's over-flamed yakisoba had her coughing for five minutes. Tousin, somehow, summoned a goat instead of rice. "I don't know how. I swear I just followed the instructions."
By the end, the dining hall was filled with half-burnt dishes, a mysteriously upside-down cake made by Marcus (who swore he followed a Martian cookbook), and an unconscious training dummy that got knocked out when Leo's ladle flew across the room.
Winner? No one knew. But everyone was too full and too confused to care.
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Scene 2: The Skit That Broke Reality
Later, with the lights dimmed and snacks passed around, the skit night began. Leo and Lyra were first, reenacting a totally inaccurate version of how Katherine joined the Guild. It involved dragons, Jeremiah riding a space dolphin, and Katherine yelling, "I summon thee, Pizza Lord!"
Katherine had her face buried in her hands.
"I never said Pizza Lord," she muttered.
"Oh, you did," Jeremiah teased.
Then came Haruto and Cecelia, who tried performing a serious romantic scene set in a post-apocalyptic Kyoto. But halfway through, Cecelia burst into a fake Australian accent and declared, "I came for shrimp, not love!" Haruto couldn't stop laughing.
Tousin, meanwhile, took the stage alone to do "interpretive meta-dance."
No one was ready.
He flailed, he spun, he glitched reality (slightly), and at one point summoned a wind vortex that threw Leo's drink across the room.
"You broke the no-powers rule!" Ezra yelled from the back.
"It was interpretive!" Tousin shouted back, mid-cartwheel.
Marcus and Jeremiah went up last with an improvised skit titled "When Two Overpowered Boys Try to Do Laundry." It involved Marcus nearly burning the laundry room, Jeremiah freezing the detergent mid-air, and the two of them getting stuck in a dimensional spin cycle.
"Never let these two near civilian housing," Katherine whispered to Lyra, laughing.
The whole room roared in laughter as Marcus tried to mime folding a flaming shirt, only to freeze it solid by accident.
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Scene 3: Midnight Mayhem Hide and Seek
After the skits, someone suggested hide and seek. But not ordinary hide and seek. "Meta Hide and Seek: Chaos Mode."
"No powers!" Ezra shouted from the hallway, already regretting everything.
They didn't listen.
Katherine turned invisible (cheater), Cecelia created a mist to hide herself (also cheater), and Tousin straight up opened a micro-portal to a broom closet in Australia.
"Don't ask," he said.
Marcus tried playing fairly but kept scaring people by accidentally triggering his night vision eyes. Jeremiah used an ice clone decoy, leading everyone in the wrong direction while he hid in a ceiling vent.
Lyra? She disguised herself as a janitor and gave fake directions to the seekers.
Ezra tried to keep order, but a training bot activated mid-round and mistook everyone for invaders. Chaos reigned.
It ended when Haruto, running from the bot, tripped over Caleb's guitar case and launched it into the air. It landed perfectly in Cecelia's hands.
"Encore?" she smiled, strumming dramatically.
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Scene 4: Reflections and Rotten Soup
Finally, near 2 AM, everyone gathered back in the common room, breathless and tired. Someone made instant ramen. Marcus, staring at it suspiciously, muttered, "This is either food… or an alien artifact."
"Same difference," Jax mumbled, falling asleep with a cookie in his mouth.
Katherine leaned back, sipping tea, surrounded by her weird, wild, wonderful family. Even Ezra cracked a smile as Leo tried to balance spoons on his forehead while Haruto and Cecelia debated what counted as 'overcooked.'
Jeremiah sat beside Katherine, their shoulders brushing. "You know," he said quietly, "I've fought monsters, seen death, crossed dimensions. But this... might be the strangest night of my life."
Katherine grinned. "And you loved it."
"I did."
From a corner, Tousin groaned. "Next time… let's just do karaoke."
Everyone burst out laughing again.