“Chop chop, let’s get to work shall we.” My sister rubs her hands in excitement.

“Shouldn’t I do most of the chopping, you know… Just in case.”

My sister raises her finger at me and nods. “Probably a smart move. I’ll work around stuff that doesn’t involve knives for the time being.” She starts unpacking our bags. “I can use the blender, right?”

“As long as you don’t put your hand inside of it I suppose.” I nod.

“Right, I’ll make a memo not to do that.”

I chuckle and quickly go and help my sister.

Making all the different dip sauces is actually quite fun. It’s more work then just buying them ready-made in a jar, but it doesn’t take that long and you do get the added benefit of being able to flavour them just as you want it.

In the end we make a nacho cheese dip, a hot chili dip, your typical mild tomato salsa dip, a bit of guacamole, pico de gallo and last but not least a roasted red pepper dip. All of this without my sister cutting herself once. I call that a victory.

Then we go on to make the other more labour intensive snacks like our chicken tenders etcetera.

“You know what the advantage is when you are assembling snack platters like this?” My sister asks while I’m busy running some chicken tenders through their panko crumb jackets.

“Because it’s fun?”

“Well, yes but no.”

I giggle. “What’s the answer then?”

“That while you are assembling, you can snack along if you notice that you are gonna end up with too much anyway.”

I quickly turn around. “You are not eating the dough for the sausage bread, right?”

“No, no.” She laughs and presents a cherry tomato skewer to me. There’s also a little ball of mozzarella skewered on it and it’s drizzled with a bit of balsamic vinegar. “Open up there, kitty cat.”

“Aaaah.” I open my mouth and my sister gently puts the tomato and mozzarella in my mouth. Simple, but delicious. “Yum.”

“Hehe. We make a good snack team, Ami.”

“Very true.” I give her an enthusiastic nod and turn back around to go back to chicken tender business.

We are just finishing up with the last snack preparations when the door to the apartment opens. With a rather tired looking Nikki who walks in.

“Hmm, it smells quite nice here.” She comments as she deposits her handbag on one of the seats and starts getting out of her jacket.

“We are almost done with the snacks.” My sister replies. “And you can thank Ami for me not accidentally cutting myself.”

“Although she did almost burn the kitchen down while baking the sausage rolls though.” I add a little cheeky comments.

“That’s a total and complete utter lie.” Even though my sister was right, she didn’t sound sincere enough in her rebuke to make it look like a serious denial, but that was probably on purpose.

Nikki laughs. “When are your friends going to be here?”

“Sam was going to send a message when they left, but I haven’t gotten one yet. But they should be leaving rather soon.”

“I see.” Nikki walks over to us and peaks over the kitchen counter at me. She’s looking at my wrist. “That emotional meter is actually rather cute isn’t it? If you put aside the necessity of having it.”

“I suppose so.” I look at my wrist, right now there’s a rather big smiley staring back at me. Smiley good, angry bad. “It would be funnier if they had cat ears.”

“...” Nikki pauzes for a second. “I hadn’t even thought about that… It would.”

“Hehe.” I put a bit of mayo in a pot to serve together with the snacks as my phone that’s lying on the dinner table starts vibrating. “Oh!”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Go ahead, I’ll continue.” Nikki smiles and gets behind the counter.

I nod, put the mayo down and quickly run over to my phone. Sam’s calling me.

“Hey there, cutiepie.” She says as I pick up the phone.

“Hello there. Are the three of you heading over?”

“We are waiting on the tram as we speak.” Sam replies. “We’ll be there shortly.”

“Alrighty. We are just finishing off the last of the snacks now. We are pretty much ready.”

“I can’t wait. See ya in a bit?”

“Yeah. Be careful, okay?”

“I always am. Love you.”

“Love you too.” I put down the phone with a smile.

“I take it they are heading over?” Lise puts one of the cold snack platters on the table.

“Yep!”

“Alright, then we’ll put the sausage rolls back in the oven so they are nice and warm when they arrive.

“Yes!” Cold sausage rolls are great. Warm sausage rolls however, are even better.

A ring of the doorbell makes me run towards the door, eager to open it. When I do I am met with an embrace from Sam and two of my friends aww’ing when she does so.

“I’m never going to let you go, Ami.”

“But that would greatly inhibit my ability to snack!” I reply with a giggle.

“We’ll manage, somehow.” Sam tightens her squeeze a bit more before finally letting me go. She still holds me by my shoulders and gives me a big smile before she pulls in for a kiss.

“Welcome home.” I say when our lips part ways again.

“Thanks.” She smiles yet again and makes room so that my friends can come and give me a hug as well.

Hailey is the first to give me a hug. “Hope your day wasn’t too rough.”

“Nah, I’m fine.” I pat my friend on the back. “The circumstances are bit… shit… but it’s gonna be okay.”

Hailey chuckles. “I don’t think I’ve heard you curse before.”

“Now that you say so…” Carol behind her scratches her cheek. “I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I’ve heard Ami curse too. I always thought you were a pure girl, Ami.”

“I am!”

“Well, as long as she isn’t being an angel of vengeance.” My sister comments, walking up to us to greet our guests. “Welcome by the way.”

“Technically that’s still pure hatred of evilness though.” Nikki replies, doing the same.

“See. Totally pure.” I fake a smile. While I’m not a big fan of people talking about that form of me, it is a part of me after all.

Both Hailey and Carol chuckle as Hailey lets go of me so Carol can get her hug. Which I gladly give of course.

After our hugging we all get around the main dinner table. With my sister, Nikki and myself standing up.

“Ami, you can sit down for a bit too, I will make sure Lise doesn’t burn her hands while taking sausage rolls out of the oven.” Nikki says as she presses me down on a chair by my shoulders.

“Oooh! You made sausage rolls?” Carol excitedly exclaims.

“We did. Completely homemade.” My sister shines with a proud smile on her face.

“Woah!”

“In the matter of fact, most of these things are made by Amicia and I, apart from the chips, that was a bit too much work.”

“Wow. You really did make some snacks for us, didn’t you?” Sam looks at everything that’s on the table and then peaks at the kitchen.

“I promised you I would.” I stick out my tongue.

“I will make sure to cherish every single bite I take of this glorious meal.” Sam nods confidently.

“You are gonna make me blush.” It was too late, I am already blushing.

“Yet another one of my daily life goals completed.” Sam smirks and then quickly kisses me on the cheek.

“Got to love the lovebirds, right, Hails?” Carol laughs. “But the snacks do look great. I got to admit that I didn’t expect this either.”

“Indeed.” Hailey agrees.

“Talking about love birds…” I reply. “Where’s Max? Didn’t she want to come too?”

It’s now Carol’s time to blush. “Ah… She wanted to gets some things done at her house first. As Sam talked about wanting to quest together today in Turn of Destiny, Max wanted to make sure everything was completely ready.”

“Fair enough.” I nod.

“The funny thing is,” Sam picks up the conversation. “Apparently she is doing this because yesterday she was unsure if she had closed the door and turned off all the lights so she was stressing out for the entire first day.”

“Is that true?” I turn myself back to Carol.

Carol chuckles, rolls her eyes and gives me a nod. “It is. It was quite funny to see to be honest. But it’s going to be best for our adventure if she’s completely and totally focussed on having fun.”

“At least it wasn’t an oven.” My sister laughs as she puts the sausage rolls down on the table. “Watch out, they are still really warm.”

“Yeah, forgetting to turn off your oven would be an issue.” Sam nods and uses a tissue to pick up one of the rolls to put it on her plate.

“Funnily enough that’s actually part of the project I was working on.” Nikki ads ands puts down a smaller plate with the remaining rolls. “I’m trying to adapt one of the FullDive VR consoles to provide situational safety. Like smoke detectors that shut off the system completely when they detect smoke. The current ones have a bit of an oversight that you won’t hear smoke alarms going off when you are inside.”

“Oh, that sounds like a great idea.” I look at Nikki.

“My bosses agreed and that’s why they wanted a prototype by this evening. It can make us a lot of money in royalties if it gets picked up.”

-Wew. I suppose that’s definitely worth the work. And it helps people too!-