“Thor’s been providing a lot of Lightning Elements for us recently, so the additional tonnage just sort of blended in, if that’s where it came from. Haaaaa...” I sat back and fanned as I broke a sweat. “Dammit, Deal, you just had to use combicha, didn’t you?”
“Only the basic level. Too many superhumans around thinking they could tolerate everything!” she grinned shamelessly, looking at all the gasping post-humans around in satisfaction.
“Do we want to know?” Gwen asked around her own milk, face red as an apple.
“It’s an alchemical seasoning that gets stronger the higher your resistance and internal energy is,” I exhaled, as the Burn moved down. My fingers twitched towards my glass of milk, ready and cool and inviting.
Inna minute. Big thick drops of sweat were coming down as heat that shouldn’t be affecting me had its way.
More shouts were arising all around as unsuspecting superhumans were starting to feel the Burn, and a lot of milk was being grabbed for with curses. I noted Mr. Hill and Marko were sitting back and basking in the Burn while the likes of the Abomination and Juggernaut were bawling and grabbing for the milk.
At last I had to TK it to my hand, and slowly drink it down. Dealer smirked, everyone was staring at me. I gave Dealer The Look, she smirked more, and I sighed and put down the empty glass.
“Uh-oh, gotta go.” Dealer hopped to her feet and flitted out the door in a blur of motion, fwit-fwit-gone and out of sight.
The table of gods had grown by Hercules, Hippolyta, Ares (perhaps not surprising he’d be here), and the two Slav brother gods with the two Russian muscle women, Tundra and Ohseyny, who had turned out to be their daughters. All of them were shouting and pounding the table, daring one another to be the first to drink milk, of all things. Ale and mead just made The Burn worse, of course. Seeing a bunch of red-faced gods trying not to grab the cool jugs of milk right in front of them was quite funny.
A wave of silence and conversation spread outside the room, the break in attention providing the necessary distraction for all the gods to grab the milk without being first as everyone turned to see what was going on, sluuuuurp...
“Champion just walked up to the bar and ordered the spiciest thing Dealer has!” Pietro beat Cindy to the news for everyone.
“Ah, shit,” I muttered into the considering quiet.
“There is something worse than this lava in the mouth?!” Ares called out in disbelief.
“You ate an Eternal Special, combicha Level Three,” I called back to the God of War without turning around. “Combicha goes all the way up to Ten!”
Cindy pointed delicately at our burritos. I raised one finger. Her lips pursed.
“Lord Thor, this may sound presumptuous, but can you seal the airflow coming in from the rest of the place into here and keep the air fresh?”
The Asgardian god of thunder wiped the sweat off his brow, looked at me, and made a point of gently tapping Mjolnir on the floor.
Some of the spiciness in the air freshened up with a cool mountain breeze.
“I gotta see this!” Peter bounced to his feet, and others started to rise.
“Sit down. Cindy, Pietro, pipe in the restaurant holos to the tables for everyone.”
It took the pair less than a minute to get everyone set up with a view, hopping from table to table and zipping through the holo commands deftly.
The first thing I noticed was that the serving staff were quietly encouraging everyone up front to pay up, grab their food, and get the heck out of there. The second thing was the big blue guy with deep scarlet hair sitting at the Bar, Dealer working on the sole stove and oven there, with a swing-out custom mixing set next to her.
Champion was flanked by two honor guards taller than he was, with full armor and ornamental weapons in hand. They weren’t there for protection, just to keep people out of the way and not bothering the big guy.
The people at the bar were served, paid, and skedaddled.
I noticed Dealer was selling the footage on graduated commission to multiple media platforms, too...
---
Burritos again. She made them all up right in front of him, ingredients obvious and easy to scan, and then started to make the sauce as it was all cooking.
There was a cry from the nearest seats watching this. Eyes tearing madly, the formerly-interested spectators fled urgently. With a voop, the force fields at the restaurant entry came down to cut off the airflow. The two honor guards coughed, and suddenly found themselves blinking madly as their suits suddenly snapped to airtight status, but it was too late, and now they were sealed in with the fumes.
Champion’s confidence and easy banter with Dealer faded off as he inhaled the first iteration, and Combicha Three was sent through the refining process again with a couple more additions to the formula.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The first tear came out of the side of his eye, the camera zoomed right in to catch it. The entire front of the restaurant had emptied out, leaving a bunch of swearing sapients out in the hall outside, watching what was going on despite themselves and their tears... and the number of holo-viewers was spiking every second across every media outlet.
The servers had vacated to the kitchens or the back rooms, blocked off by airflow field restrictors, and the purifiers were starting to whine in protest as they tried to filter the air. Dealer actually pointed to a holo-switch and turned them off before they fried.
Champion’s guards staggered. He turned to look at them, saw their eyes bulging and the pair shuddering in agony, and waved them off as a second tear came down his face.
Dealer sprayed them down with milk before they could leave and chase away the crowd watching outside. Trailing white droplets, the two grabbed up glasses of white stuff to pour over their faces and drink down as they ran out of the bar.
Third run through. The sauce looked like liquid rubies at this point. Dealer’s hands and TK were manipulating everything expertly.
---
I was giving a play-by-play as to what was happening, from the mundane cutting of the vegetables, the making of the wraps, the cooking of the meat, the patterns of the hands, and of course how the sauce, the powders, the garnishes, and everything was coming all together in what was an Alchemical Cooking Ritual a God of Chefs would be happy to call their own.
Three burritos flowed together in perfect form and colors, and that liquid ruby was drizzled over all of them. A handful of E-Salts of six different types ghosted over them, and the ruby liquid lit up softly with golden flames.
Damn, it looked sooooo good. Everybody there was drooling looking at it, even if they didn’t like cheese, veggies, or meat.
---
“Don’t get any on your lips,” Dealer said softly, “and you will finish the plate.”
She set down a steel one-gallon pitcher of milk right in front of him, dripping with condensation. No instructions.
---
“You’ve got sixty to sixty-five seconds of Burn before you have to take the milk, or you’re going to suffer permanent damage to your taste buds, olfactory system, and digestive system at Ten,” I informed everyone watching. “There’s a one-minute delay before it hits. So, you’ve two minutes to finish the plate.”
---
Glittering tears were coming off Champion’s eyes in a solid stream. He noted no such thing on Dealer under her Mask, but welts were rising on her pale hands, and some of the fresh paint was starting to bubble on the walls.
“Can you eat this?” he asked her directly, staring at the sizzling, flaming plate begging him to devour it, the first drop of drool falling from his mouth unnoticed, but soon joined by more.
“I would not enjoy it. I’ve never gone above Five,” she replied directly, stepping back and hiding her hands in her blouse’s sleeves as she crossed her arms.
He nodded as she told him to cut it up ahead of time, and then eat constantly once it was set up. His large hands flickered across it, impossibly deft for their size, and it was done. Without hesitation, he speared the first piece, lifted it up, and bit down on it entirely inside his mouth, getting none on his lips.
His eyes popped wide open, everyone saw it. He chewed with energy, eyes swiveling on something else she set down.
There was a timer on the counter now, counting down.
Despite wanting to savor each mouthful, he began spearing and eating, spending less than five seconds per piece, of which there were eighteen.
A dozen in, a tic started in his cheek, and the veins in his hands and arms abruptly popped out. Fifteen, and blood vessels were starting to bulge out on his head and neck. He ate faster, and it sounded like something was sizzling inside his nose... nope, his nose was actually steaming...
He tore off his shirt so fast it was just a blur, dozens of massive blood vessels like cables rising across his chest like serpents as he chewed down the last piece, and beads of sweat erupted across him and began to fall.
He tilted his head back, a solid river of tears coming down his face, and thumb-sized drops of sweat glowing with internal energies were dropping off him in an audible pitter-patter on the floor. The blue of his skin was turning greenish-golden in odd mottlings and ripples, and his massive hands were twitching on the bar despite himself.
The clock was still counting down. His eyes were huge and bulging as he stared at it, resisting until the last second to grab the metal pitcher, raise it up, open wide, and pour it all down his throat at one time.
Cool whiteness covered his mouth, splashed on his face and eyes, and went down his throat.
The writhing blood vessels receded as if diving for cover. Champion clamped his eyes shut as he slammed the pitcher down, his hand closing to crumple it and send steel squeezing out between his fingers like Playdoh.
He said nothing for a full minute, simply breathing deeply as The Burn was quietly chased away from his system, and milk and glowing sweat and tears dripped on the bar together.
Dealer was calmly putting the mixing array away as she watched him carefully.
“How long,” he asked in a hoarse voice, “before I can eat this again?”
“Combicha at Ten?” Dealer considered the question, and flicked out a bottle of jellied pills. “A minimum of ten days for someone like you, I think, Elder. I’ve never had anyone dare to eat Combicha Ten. When you can taste these pills, you should be safe, and we both will know how long.”
“So, I am the first to endure such hell and heaven?” he muttered, throwing back his head, and managing a low and knowing laugh as he took the pills.
He was the Champion, after all!
“To my personal knowledge,” Dealer agreed politely, whipping out two Cards, which circled around him trailing sparkles. They cleaned him off, his sweat, and everything from the bar and floor. He’d shed over a gallon of everything during The Burn. “You’re not going to be able to taste anything until it’s gone.”
---
Well, so much for gambling on more vintages. I had hissed that particular tidbit of news to Pietro softly, even though I was pretty sure Stark was watching Champion doing all this. Pietro had dashed it off to Stark and Richards as a reminder several minutes ago, and I was sure Stark was exiting the liquor futures market adroitly and to a profit, and would buy them back up at a steep discount as Combicha Ten’s effects waned and Champion wanted to try more booze.
I was also absolutely certain Champion’s sweat was going to be used in some sort of Alchemy and made available for some genetic testing, too...
---
“That was a meal worthy of the Champion of the Universe.” He rose to his feet, vaguely waving at his golden armband. “Let us see if any dare to match my achievement!”
---
“Lord Thor,” I called out calmly, “if you could cleanse the air and all surfaces within the restaurant, I think we can avoid having to shut the place down to replace the purifiers and filters.”
Mjolnir tapped the floor again. It had been excellent entertainment, after all.