Run for your lives! It’s the Appetizer!

  “GAME OVER”

  The monitor Kai stood in front of flashed the words as he let out an exhausted sigh. He didn’t know how long he’d spent in front of the Gattaga cabinet after the ghost attack, but he had a very impressive score of 123,500 to show for his efforts. After chasing off a monster, he really needed a break. And what better way to get one than through the arcade he was already in? He could find someone to tell about the creature after he finished having his fun.

  With a look of triumph, the young man followed the prompts to the high scores list. He was thankful to be able to input his full name in the three character field he was given, and looked upon the screen in horror as he realized all his efforts only earned him 439th place.

  “What?!” he exclaimed as he scrolled upwards to see what kind of competition he was dealing with.

  The numbers began ticking up, from the hundreds of thousands to the two hundred thousands, and eventually to the millions. The top score of all time was 1,546,000, and belonged to a player named “ASS”.

  “Man, how am I supposed to beat that?”

  “With a lot of time and practice!” exclaimed a joyful voice from behind him.

  Kai turned around to find himself face to face with Sheila, who sported a bright smile that perfectly matched her rainbow-dyed hair.

  “Gattaga’s one of our oldest cabinets, so it’s got several years of people competing for the high score on it. But don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to catch up! So Kai, how did you enjoy the arcade?”

  “It was pretty good,” replied the young man with the kind of half-hearted smile you’d give to a distant relative asking about school. There really wasn’t much to say about his little excursion, beyond the fact that he met some interesting people and played on a single cabinet for the course of about an hour and a half. Well, there was that.

  “I met some pretty interesting people here, like the manager and this one technician, Rafael and Adilet,” he began.

  “Those are some good folks,” she nodded. “And how about Gus? What did you think of him?”

  “He’s pretty bland,” replied Kai with a shrug. “But he has a sense of humor underneath all of that.”

  “Yup, that’s Gus!” chuckled Sheila. “Now come on, let’s get some lunch!”

  Her words triggered a sudden rumble in Kai’s stomach, making him realize how much time had really passed since he’d woken up. Kai nodded in agreement, and followed Sheila out of the neon-emblazoned room.

  “By the way,” he added as they made their egress. “Is this place… haunted?”

  “Like with ghosts?”

  Kai nodded.

  “Nope, not that I’m aware of. Why do you ask? Did you encounter one or something?” Sheila asked with a chuckle.

  Kai nodded once more.

  “Like in a game or something?” she asked again, this time sounding more hurried. “Right?”

  The severity on Kai’s face made Sheila frown, the expression looking quite strange in contrast to her normally bouncy demeanor.

  “Oh, you’re not joking,” she sighed. “So what exactly did you find?”

  “I’m not sure exactly what it was,” began Kai. “But it seemed like some kind of information ghost. It flew through arcade machines to feed and momentarily broke them as it did. It even got a bite out of my head and learned all about me!”

  “Are you feeling fine? Do I need to take you to the infirmary?” asked the rainbow-haired woman with concern in her voice.

  “I swear I’m not crazy,” replied the young man with a forceful look that quickly softened. “I’m not.”

  “Kai,” began Sheila with kind eyes. “An information-eating ghost haunting the arcade doesn’t even make the top 10 of the craziest things I’ve seen. We take these reports seriously, and I’ll get Gus to start looking into things, so don’t you worry. I just want to know if it did anything to harm you.”

  Kai stared at the woman for several seconds before sagging his shoulders and exhaling. “No, I’m fine now. And thanks. It means a lot that you believe me.”

  “Don’t mention it! Just take a deep breath and think about what you want to eat for lunch.”

---

  “You know, I didn’t expect you all to have an arcade here,” said Kai as he walked alongside the rainbow-haired lady. “Any other surprises I should know about?”

  Several moments had passed since the previously tense conversation and the young man had calmed himself down enough to continue their previous smalltalk.

  “Hmm… there’s one more I have lined up for you today, but you’ll find out about it when it’s time!” exclaimed Sheila as she handed a piece of lined paper over to Kai. It was filled with a hand-written list of events and times for both that day and the next.

  “Oh hey, a schedule!” exclaimed Kai as he read through the loose sheet. “Alright, we’ve got lunch now, and then… surprise #2.” He continued walking with his eyes glued to that one line, to the point he bumped into another man carefully balancing a beaker of glowing, orange liquid.

  “Hey, watch it man! Do you want your flesh to explode?!” he shouted as he barely managed to keep hold of the glassware.

  “Why the hell are you even carrying that around here, then?” asked Kai, as he was snapped back to reality. “Can’t you put it in a box or something?”

  “Come on, Kris, don’t mess with the new kid,” chided Sheila. “He probably thought you were serious about it.”

  “Wait, new kid? Oh, sorry about that!” replied the strange man. “I like to say that whenever anyone gets in my way, it’s a great way to get them to give me some space. The stuff in here’s just some orange soda mix.”

  “Uh, that’s fine,” said Kai with a small sigh of relief. “But what kind of orange soda glows like that?”

  “The fancy kind. Check out the cafeteria if you want to see what else us magical food scientists have come up with!”

  “That’s where we’re headed now, actually!” exclaimed Sheila. “I’ll make sure Kai here gets a look at what you’ve all done for us.”

  “You two do that!” replied Kris as he continued down the hallway at a more careful pace.

  Kai looked back at the schedule, trying to ignore the nature of the second surprise; a surprise. He’d find out about it after lunch. And after that, he’d have more free time. Maybe he could talk to some of the other teens in his position and make some friends? Sheila was nice and all, but she was showing him around because it was her job, and he knew he’d have to get to know some actual peers if he didn’t want to go crazy. The brats from school didn’t count.

  He turned over the page and began scanning through tomorrow’s list of events. Breakfast, school, combat training, lunch, the library, a lab visit, and finally dinner and free time. No surprises then, it seemed.

  Satisfied with tomorrow’s events, he flipped back to the first page, a sudden curiosity flaring to life within him. “So, what exactly is surprise #2?” he finally asked, deciding to give in to his inquisitiveness. It never really was all that consistent. “I’m guessing #1 was the arcade?”

  “That’s right,” replied Sheila. “As for #2, you’re going to have to see for yourself. But don’t worry, it’s right after lunch, and I’m sure you’ll be just as happy as with the arcade.”

  Kai let out a sigh. He figured as much, that he’d get the same secretive response. However, the secrecy of his day-to-day life was starting to wear on him, even though it’d only been half of one so far.

  “Hey…” he began, stretching out the word in a diffident manner. “I’m glad you got me this schedule for now and tomorrow, but I was wondering what the plan is for me here in the long term?”

  “Hm? Whaddya mean?” asked Sheila, turning her head upwards at an angle to face the young man.

  “Well, at least back home, school had a graduation date and I knew what to expect after it passed. Here, I’m just running around with no idea how it’s all supposed to go. I mean, is there a graduation date, am I going to learn some real magic instead of just math or whatever, and what’s really waiting for me after all of this?”

  The rainbow-haired woman regarded Kai sincerely. Her eyes seemed to sparkle with sympathy as she looked into his.

  “I know you already told me, but it was pretty vague,” he added. “What really is your plan for me?”

  Sheila closed her eyes and exhaled, opening them up with a smile. “It’s funny, most of the people who come here usually just go with whatever we give them. I always thought it was because they liked the structure it provides in an unfamiliar situation. Or maybe because they always dreamed of going to isekai school.”

  Kai couldn’t help but snort at her last sentence. “It’s not that I’m ungrateful, or anything. I just want to know what the hell is going on.”

  “Don’t we all,” she chuckled back. “But in your case, the plan is to get you up to speed on whatever education you’d need for the equivalent of a high school diploma, and any extras you might be interested in. After that, it’s up to you! It’s only day 2 of your stay here, so you haven’t really had the chance to see what’s waiting out there, but I’m hoping that by the time you’re done with your schooling, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what you’d want to do afterwards, and we’ll let you decide. But it really boils down to settling down in another World or staying along with us as a soldier, scientist, or any other available career choice.”

  “That still sounds pretty vague,” he replied with a cocked eyebrow. “But it helps, I guess. Step one, and all that.”

  “I know it’s vague, but it won’t be soon enough!” Sheila flashed another wide smile at Kai and stopped in front of a large door. A sign labelled “Cafeteria” in big, bold lettering stood above it. “We can ‘discuss your options’ over lunch! So come on!”

---

  The cafeteria was the same one Kai ate at for breakfast. A shiny, tiled floor, metal tables, and bent-wire chairs made for easily cleaned surfaces expected out of a school or camp mess hall, while the food they served stood out as anything but.

  Sizzling steaks that looked like they’d fallen through a rainbow, plates full of perfectly aligned tacos, and curries that filled the room with the smell of exotic spices probably from even beyond Earth. Kai quickly forgot his worries for the future as his head darted between everyone’s trays, taking in the international and multiversal fare, trying to decide what he should get for himself.

  “Hold up, can I pick my order, or is there some kind of system for what I’m allowed to get?”

  “System?” asked Sheila. “I got you some oatmeal for breakfast because I thought it’d be what you were the most familiar with. Feel free to order whatever you’d like from now on!”

  Kai brightened up as the two took their place in the sprawling line in front of the counter. Above it and taking up most of the wall was a series of massive boards filled to the brim with various appetizers, entrees, drinks, and deserts. Kai carefully scanned the expansive menu, taking in all of the available dishes printed on the overhanging panels.

  It was split into various sections by both ethnicity and temporal appropriateness of the meal. The first board contained more convenient and to-go foods, and the rest held the larger entrees, with breakfast dishes mixed into each section. Kai didn’t really feel like speeding through his lunch with so much time before ‘Surprise #2’, so he decided to skip the various sandwiches and burritos to peruse the rest of the panels.

  Tacos, enchiladas, pupusas, and all varieties of South American fare took up half of an entire panel, with Italian courses taking up the next half. A variety of Indian foods, from naan and matching curries from the North to a dozen variations of dosas and rice and curry platters from the South, shared the entirety of the next section of the menu alongside a variety of regional cuisines from the rest of Asia. An assortment of traditionally named Chinese dishes with their own sub-sections featuring rice or noodles based on their region of origin, such as Cantonese or Szechuan, helped fill out the rest of the section alongside food from Korea and Vietnam, such as Bibimbap and Pho.

  More recognizable meals followed afterwards, with burgers, chili, and Americanized variations of the previous international cuisines. And finally, a series of strangely named dishes featuring ingredients Kai had never heard of took up the final menu panel. Gryphon steak, elven spiceweed salad, ironbody mushroom bowls, and Grotlord stew.

  “Word of advice,” whispered Sheila. “Don’t get the spiceweed salad. It’s literally just grass, and it tastes like butt.”

  “How do you fit so many things onto a single menu?” asked Kai as he continued staring at the massive list. “Any restaurant that has a menu that big absolutely cannot be good. I mean, there’d just be too many different groceries they’d have to keep on hand, and things’ll go bad before they get a chance to use them. Sorry, but I’m calling bullshit, something’s up.”

  “Ha!” laughed Sheila. “Getting dragged to another World, being shown the existence of magic, getting a chance to experience it all for yourself, and you’re perfectly fine accepting it. But a really big menu’s what finally gets you all worked up?”

  “Well, yeah,” replied Kai with a pout. “I mean, I got to see all of that stuff for myself first-hand.”

  “Alright then, I guess I’ll just have to show you how the kitchen works as well!”

  The rainbow-haired woman waved Kai to follow her behind the counter and through the waiter’s entrance. At first, the young man hesitated to follow his chaperone that far, but the lackadaisical reactions of the nearby attendants and customers helped him muster his courage to continue through the teal double doors.

  “You’ve seen that we have magic here, and this is just one of the ways we use it!” exclaimed Sheila in a soft voice as to not disturb the many men and women moving between countertops with determined focus.

  Beyond the plethora of chefs, the brightly lit kitchen Kai stepped into was anything beyond anything he’d seen in person or on TV back home. Numerous blazing stove tops, griddles, ovens, and esoteric heat sources made the room swelteringly hot to the point a layer of sweat was already beginning to form on Kai’s face.

  “Step inside, you two!” shouted a voice from inside. A portly looking man with a salt-and-pepper moustache, clean white apron, and hairnet motioned the two with his left hand while his right held a cast iron skillet. “You won’t feel the air conditioning unless you’re across the threshold.”

  Kai wondered to himself how that even worked. If the air conditioning couldn’t be felt from just another foot away, it probably wasn’t that potent to begin with. But as he followed Sheila further into the kitchen by a pair of steps, a wave of cool, dry air consumed him, almost immediately evaporating his sweat and making everything much more comfortable.

  “We really need to get that enchantment checked out,” said the chef. “This entire kitchen needs a check up, honestly.”

  “Don’t worry Mario, we’ll have an enchanter look through everything soon.” replied Sheila with an apologetic smile. “Everyone that has anything to do with magic’s been incredibly busy since we found those tier 5 runes, so hopefully they’ll be free once they realize they don’t even know anything about rune magic!”

  “Alright, thank you,” sighed Mario. “By the way, your bulk order’s almost finished. Just give us another half an hour and it’ll be packed and ready!”

  “Perfect! We were about to sit down for lunch anyway, so things should line up just right.”

  “And I’m guessing this is a new kid? Welcome to TOAL and the greatest kitchen in the multiverse! Nobody else can offer such a wide variety of food from back on Earth at the same quality, I guarantee it!”

  “And how exactly is that?” asked Kai, not bothering to hide the suspicion in his voice. “Your menu is massive, there’s no way you can offer all of those items at once with how big your kitchen is.”

  “Oh, it’s simple,” replied the chef with a devilish grin. “Like this!”

  As the words left his lips, a floating ball of metal with arms passed over their heads and dropped a pile of carrots, potatoes, and peas onto an open countertop. A human-sized figure made out of the same stone as the floor sprung to life and began swinging the knife in its right appendage, chopping the vegetables laid out in front of it into thin slices with perfect precision. As soon as it had finished, it slid the cut vegetables into an open orifice of another metal ball. The drone rose up into the air and delivered the prepared produce to a stovetop where a woman in a flat chef’s hat and apron began frying it with some oil.

  As soon as she’d finished, she added a ladleful of sauce from a nearby pot, fried it all some more, and threw it onto a waiting flour tortilla. Another autonomous figure next to it quickly added various accoutrements and deftly wrapped the entire stack of ingredients together, swaddling the final meal in aluminum foil. One more visit by a floating drone, and the wrap was on its way out to a hungry patron via conveyor belt.

  “So you see now?” asked Mario. “All of the tedium here is automated, leaving us chefs to only worry about the parts where a human touch is what makes all the difference! Delivery drones and cooking golems like these were never possible back home at this level and cost, but thanks to magic, my dreams have become a reality!”

  “Hey, it’s not just your dreams, you know!” shouted the lady who’d been handling the root vegetables and sauce.

  Kai stared slack jawed as he tried to take in all of the moving parts that were now beginning to present themselves to him. The metal drones carrying ingredients and prepared meals around, the stone golems chopping, wrapping, frying, and flipping, and the cooks running about pouring their own love and sweat into each and every meal.

  “Hold on, I can see how you can handle so many different types of food, but how the hell do you keep enough ingredients around for it?” finally asked Kai. “There’s no way they’re staying fresh.”

  “That’s simple,” replied the chef. “Once again, it’s all thanks to magic.” He walked over to a door in the back and pushed it open, revealing countless metal shelves filled with produce.

  What Kai noticed, however, was that each shelf had several glowing characters carved into them, similar to the ones he saw inside of the Gattaga arcade cabinet.

  “These, my friend, are preservation runes,” continued Mario. “They halt all sorts of biological processes from taking place inside, so it keeps all of our produce fresh almost indefinitely!”

  “It doesn’t work on people or anything cellular inside them, so they’re perfectly safe!” added Sheila. “We even have some in our library to keep the books from going bad!”

  “Huh, that’s pretty crazy,” replied Kai. “Kind of like how you guys made computers out of magic too. What else do you have?”

  “You’ll find out tomorrow when you visit the tech labs,” replied his chaperone. “In the meantime, let’s get something to eat and drink. So whaddya want?”

  “Hmm…” said Kai, as he held a hand up to his chin. At first, he was planning to order a steak, something more juicy and luxurious than anything he could’ve feasibly afforded from back home, but the chef’s name happened to exert some influence on his taste buds.

  “How about some pizza? And some of that glowy orange soda,” asked the young man. “A medium pie should be enough for me.” The last thing he ate before being portalled over was his school’s terrible excuse for the dish, which consisted of an actual cardboard crust, mucousy cheese, and overly processed greasy pepperoni.

  “I think I’ll have some too!” added Sheila. “So make it a large and we can share, if that’s fine with you Kai.”

  He nodded in response.

  “So be it,” said Mario. “One large pizza margherita and a pair of orange sodas, coming right up!”

  “Come on Kai, Let’s grab ourselves a table,” concluded Sheila as she began walking back towards the double doors to the rest of the cafeteria.

  “Hold on,” whispered Kai, a sudden realization painting his face with curiosity and suspicion. “Did you bring me back here just to skip the line?”

  “What?! No!” she replied with a nervous chuckle. “I mean, this is also an important part of your tour, showing you how things work with magic behind the scenes. That’s why I cancelled my lunchtime meeting to bring you here, even though Gus was perfectly fine accepting the task for himself.”

  Kai stared at Sheila with a blank expression. His mouth remained still as his eyes narrowed in a knowing look. Before his lips could follow suit, he dropped the look and turned around, sniffing at the air. “Hey, do you smell burning?”

  “Shit, the griddle!” shouted one of the chefs as he ran over to a cloud of black smoke that was beginning to rise from one of the flat cooking surfaces.

  The stone figure before it stood stock-still as the burgers and steaks under its purview began to char, completely oblivious to the chaos it was responsible for.

  “I’ll turn the griddle off and see if I can do some quick maintenance,” said the same chef, who was beginning to open up a back panel on the automated meat flipper. “Hey Sheila, see if you can’t send in a golemancer too! I swear, everything’s starting to act up around here.”

  “Got it!” she shouted back, before continuing her egress. “Come on Kai, they can handle themselves here. It’s what they’re good at!”

  Kai followed along with a nod, now even more content in his decision to have ordered pizza.

---

  Back in the cafeteria, the two Earthers sat at a modestly sized table as they waited for their food.

  “So Kai, how did you enjoy school? First day should’ve just been a primer on what to expect here and out there in the multiverse at large, so nothing too complex.”

  “Well, I beat up a couple of kids, so that was pretty fun,” replied the young man.

  “Looks like you played more than just Gattaga at the arcade! But I was asking about school,” Sheila replied with a hearty laugh, wiping away the beginnings of a single tear from her left eye.

  She began to quiet down when she saw that Kai’s expression hadn’t changed from the same casual gaze. Soon enough, the young woman’s laughs concluded in a confused sigh. She sat there staring at him, silently demanding an answer.

  “They were making a big deal about having to learn anything new because of their high levels, and Ms. Neal was having a real hard time convincing them otherwise. So I helped her out.”

  “By showing them that those levels were all they had, and that they didn’t have them anywhere else?” asked Sheila after a slight pause.

  “Yeah, that’s exactly it,” replied Kai with a surprised nod. “You’re really sharp.”

  “Thanks, but I just hope you didn’t send them to the infirmary,” she said with another sigh. “Claire doesn’t have too great of an opinion of you from yesterday. She said you’re too jumpy and quick to start a fight.”

  “I am not,” replied Kai with a frown. “And all I did was shove them to the floor, nothing bad enough that they need to go to the hospital.”

  “That’s a relief then. Honestly, give her a week and a chance for her to get to know you, and I’m sure you two will become quick friends!”

  Before Kai could reply with more than a nod, a waiter walked up to the two holding a large metal disc aloft. He carefully placed it down between the two while passing out a pair of plates and cups of glowing, orange soda. He regarded the two diners with a look of excitement and appreciation.

  “And our newest guest’s first order, a large pizza margherita!” exclaimed the waiter with a smooth voice. “Mario wanted to know your reaction, so he sent me to deliver it personally!”

  Kai looked upon the magnificent disk before them, a perfectly browned crust surrounded a wheel of pristine cheese speckled with slightly charred brown spots and oil floating on top, all covering a thick layer of deep red tomato sauce. A large mass of fresh basil cut into strips covered a third of the pizza’s surface area, complementing the yellow and brown with a veritable forest of rich green. The rich, savory smell coming from the pie was as utterly captivating as the sight of the magnificent culinary creation.

  “It appears you like what you see!” exclaimed the waiter upon seeing the saliva dripping from Kai’s lips. “The fresh san marzano tomatoes used to make the sauce were farmed along the coastal rivers of the volcanic plains. The soil is made rich by the volcanic ash of days long past, and the rivers are all fed from the glacial springs that form on the tallest calderas.”

  Kai carefully plated a slice using the provided wooden spatula. Rather than immediately taking a bite and invariably burning the roof of his mouth, he decided to turn back to the waiter and let him continue in appreciation for the work of art that would soon grace his taste buds.

  “The crust and basil come from the amber collective, the farming community where we get most of our produce from. The cheese is made from fresh buffalo milk from the fertile plains nomads, who travel alongside their cows and treat them better than their own children! So the milk is absolutely delicious, and the cheese even more so!”

  “Seriously,” asked Kai. “How do you people afford to serve this to everyone? Unless this is a special exception because it’s my first time ordering.”

  “We use these ingredients for everyone!” exclaimed the waiter. “Mario happens to be really picky about the pizza we serve, and made sure to use ingredients that are closest to the authentic stuff they use in Italy from back home. In fact, many of the chefs feel that way about the cuisine from their cultures, and use the best ingredients they can get!”

  “A lot of them finished their adventures as master chefs, and the TOAL kitchen is pretty much their retirement, so to speak,” added Sheila, her eyes entirely focused on the pizza. “TOAL has a lot of other business and deals going on with these communities, usually through any Earthers who decided to make a permanent home wherever they ended up. So don’t worry, we can afford it!”

  “Permanent home?” asked Kai. “Sounds like there are a lot of possibilities for me. When am I going to start checking them out?”

  Sheila didn’t reply, instead serving herself a slice and taking a bite of the pie, before trying to cool down the roof of her mouth as molten cheese scalded its surface.

  Along with the waiter taking his leave, Kai regarded that as an invitation to do the same, and took a somewhat more modest bite of the slice in front of him. When he did so, Kai knew that he really did die while back on Earth and was in heaven.

  The pizza truly was divine, hosting the perfect mix of sweet and tanginess from the sauce, the soft and cheesy flavor of the mozzarella perfectly balancing it out, and the crispy underside and soft top of the crust holding it all together wonderfully as the perfectly textured delivery vehicle. The basil on top served to add a cool and flavorful rush to round it out. He’d never tasted such perfection back home, and was sure he never would have if he had gone back.

  Sadly, that heaven didn’t last. Kai was broken out of his fugue by a loud crash from the kitchen, followed by a shrill scream. He opened his eyes and looked up at the teal double doors in worry. Silence blanketed the cafeteria as the rest of the diners followed suit with bated breath. Quiet few seconds passed, and then…

  The kitchen doors burst open and flew off their hinges. Amid the destruction was its source, a massive mound of crawling meat that let out a terrible scream that resembled metal scraping against concrete at high speeds. Everyone closed their ears as it finished its painful wail and continued crawling out.

  “Kill it! Kill that fucking thing!” shouted one of the chefs from the kitchen, pointing at what everyone was staring at.

  Once the lone attendant escaped by a surprisingly dexterous vault over the counter, a pair of diners dressed in the padded armor Kai had seen on Sheila’s guards from earlier that day pulled out a pair of pistols and began firing at the monster. Loud bangs were followed by wet squelches, as the pieces of metal were absorbed into the creature, with no sign of it slowing it down.

  Undeterred, one of the guards grabbed a vial and threw it at the ground next to the meaty abomination. Thick vines and brambles suddenly sprouted from the point of impact, quickly growing to surround and constrict the creature. It struggled against its constraints with another screeching roar, but was held firmly in place. But for how long?

  Kai partially froze at the scene, entering enough of an autopilot to put down his slice and stand up, ready to break into a run. Before he did, however, he looked at Sheila to see what her reaction was, and if she’d gotten the memo that they should all get the hell out of there.

  What met him was a cold and calculating gaze. Not one that was smart enough to choose to flee the oncoming meat golem as part of “fight or flight”, however. It was one that was readily embracing “fight.”

  The rainbow haired woman quickly scanned the room, taking count of who else was standing there amongst them, all of the available exits, and the nature of the monster itself. With a quick exhale, she turned to a particularly pale looking woman and shouted at her in a serious voice, completely different from her normal bubbly demeanor. “Alice! Blast it with a death bolt!”

  “I can do you one better,” replied the lady in a wispy voice as she slowly inhaled and launched a beam of black-purple light at the monstrosity that seemed to drain the warmth and life from the air. It struck the creature head-on, but barely elicited a reaction from it, as it opted to continue struggling against its vegetative chains instead.

  “That was my strongest spell! How did a death beam not do anything to it?!” exclaimed Alice as she took several deep breaths and readied herself to try again.

  In that time, several other spellcasters threw an elemental barrage at the creature in an attempt to harm it physically. Fire charred the cuts of meat that made up its surface pitch black, ice turned the point of impact a frostbitten blue as glacial slabs of its body began to fall off, and acid melted right through the haphazardly structured flesh.

  As the secondary assault continued, Sheila looked upon the enemy and the damage it was taking. Plenty of thoughts flew through her mind, questions that tried to make sense of how the battle was going. Were the elemental attacks doing damage? Was the damage doing anything to slow down or even stop the meat golem? And why hadn’t the death magic from earlier done anything against a creature made entirely of meat?

  The answers she gleaned from her observation were; “yes”, “most probably”, and “because the question itself was inherently flawed” in that order. As steaks and sausages continued to burn, fall, or melt off, both Sheila and Kai saw the distinctive gleam of the shiny kitchen floor stone at the core of the monster.

  “Sheila!” shouted Kai as his eyes widened in realization. “It’s the meat flipping golem! All of the meat’s just sticking to it!”

  “I just realized that,” she replied in the same urgent voice before turning to Alice and barking another order. “It’s a mechanical golem! Blast it with a Chaos EMP!”

  “One Electromagic Pulse, coming right up!” shouted the woman as she let loose a multicolored blast of light that could only be described as an 8-bit vomit seizure right at the gap in the golem’s meaty shell. The attack struck true, and the golem let loose one last scream as it slowed to a halt.

  Everyone stared at the creature for several seconds before the rest of the meat stuck to its body fell off all at once, revealing its stone structure underneath, holding a spatula in its right arm. The golem itself fell forward to the ground, making a squelch as it impacted the magically abused meat surrounding it.

  After several more seconds, the rest of the diners sat back down and returned to their seats, animatedly talking amongst themselves and enjoying their meals as if a rampaging meat monster hadn’t just tried to kill them all.

  “Sorry, everyone!” came a voice from the kitchen. Mario walked out with his arms raised in appeasement, a thick sheen of sweat sitting on his face despite the kitchen’s climate. “Our resident amateur golemancer thought they could fix our meat flipper, but apparently it was a bit too much for them. I’m not going to name any names, but I can assure you they’ve very sorry, and are going to be baking enough apology cakes to feed everyone at TOAL. And they’re going to make it a croquembouche, which happens to be very difficult to make, without any help from the golems and drones!”

  After a round of laughs and cheers, Mario went back into the kitchen, letting out a sigh when he walked past the broken down double doors.

  Still standing, Kai looked back at Sheila with mild shellshock lingering on his face. “Is that a common occurrence?”

  Already having taken a seat, she replied with a drawn out sigh. “Rogue meat golems usually aren’t, but there’s always something wild going on around here.”

  “But how can everyone just go back to their meals like that after a life or death situation?”

  “It wasn’t that bad, Kai,” she replied with a shrug. “Worst thing it could’ve done was force whoever it got to to take a bath. Besides, most of the people here have been through enough life or death situations to learn to keep their appetites despite the stress. Though honestly, I hope that’ll be something you won’t have to learn.”

  Kai regarded his chaperone with a tired look and joined her at the table. He picked his slice back up, now cool enough to eat comfortably, and took a large bite, savoring the masterfully crafted dish.

  “Well you’re a little late there,” he replied in between bites. “I’ve already learned how to do that a long time ago.”

  As the two continued their meal, Kai looked over to the golem and saw a familiar figure rise out of the stone and blearily rise into the ceiling.

  “Hey Sheila?”

  “Mhm?” asked the woman, her mouth full of food.

  “I just saw the ghost again. It came out of the golem.”

  Sheila swallowed her pizza in what looked like a painful gulp and sighed once more. “Damn, looks like the priority just went up. I’ll have Gus start looking into it as soon as possible… after lunch.”

  Kai nodded along. After all, with a meal like this in front of them, he really didn’t blame her. He was honestly just happy that an authority figure was actually taking him seriously, and about something as ridiculous as a ghost sighting no less. Whether that was because they were used to dealing with the supernatural, or they actually respected his words, he didn’t know. But the feeling was nice, and he hoped it wouldn’t be the last time he got to experience it.