Post by Kazura Uzaki on Sept 14, 2022 22:01:53 GMT -5
Training for CTP
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Who? Kazura Uzaki, CEO of Uzaki Enterprises, son of the late founder of said company. When? 8am on a Saturday. Where? A specific couch belonging to a specific friend. Why? ... Hard to say why. The offer had been extended to sleep on the couch of this friend at her apartment and he wasn't sure why he had taken her up on it, but for once he felt... calmer. He hadn't slept all night, tossing and turning, hopefully not keeping her up in the other room, but he felt calmer and less... panicked. Less... terrified. He didn't have such a bad nightmare as before, just felt sleepless in a weird location. Plus, he was pretty sure he was allergic to beastie the cat. And beastie's fur was everywhere it seemed like.
When eight o'clock rolled around and he still hadn't slept, Kazura rolled off the couch and started the morning with a bit of body weight exercises. He had already seen Irina leave for her morning jog and had a feeling she'd be gone for awhile... especially if he pulled a favor with Karen his secretary to get Irina into the office for a few hours for "whatever you can do to stall her." Once he knew she was hooked in, he started his plan to make the best blueberry muffins he could. After all, he had promised to make up the whole "saving his life" thing with a blueberry muffin with the crumblies on top.
Step one: Google a blueberry muffin recipe. Top three results: Someone from New York's blueberry muffin recipe, quick and easy blueberry muffins, and to die for blueberry muffins. Gotta go with the third one, even though it would take 40 minutes... Yeah, he had time to have a few tries at it. He had already prepared ahead of time and ordered plenty of blueberries to Irina's apartment through the local grocery delivery service, and he had thought ahead enough to order flour, oil, and eggs as well. He was pretty sure that was the main ingredients. Hopefully she had the other ingredients he needed.
The recipe called for 1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour. Check. 3/4 cup sugar? Okay, she had to have sugar around here... yup, plenty of sugar. Perfect. Next was... 2 teaspoons baking powder. She also had that, close to the sugar. 1/2 teaspoon salt. Easy. 1/3 cup vegetable oil. Check, already ordered. 1 egg. Only 1? He had ordered like, two dozen. Oh well, plenty of room for error. 1/3 cup milk, or more as needed. He glanced in the fridge, found plenty of milk. Check. And lastly, but not least importantly, 1 cup fresh blueberries. Once the groceries arrived, he had everything he needed for the muffins.
Next, crumb topping. 1/2 cup white sugar. Check, already found that for the muffins. 1/3 cup all-purpose flour. Double check. 1/4 cup butter, cubed. Glancing in the fridge again, found plenty of butter sticks. Hopefully unsalted was fine. Lastly, 1 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon. That one took him awhile to find in Irina's spice cabinet, but found plenty thankfully so he avoided needing to go out and grab just one last item for these muffins. There was no time to waste, so he launched into the recipe.
Step one: Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Grease 8 muffin cups or line with muffin liners. He hadn't thought about muffin liners, and Irina didn't seem to have any, so he just greased the cups with cooking spray. That was greasy, right? Hopefully greasy enough. Step two: Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together in a large bowl. Easy enough, he knew what a whisk was and he just needed to combine dry ingredients. Done. Step three: Pour oil into a small liquid measuring cup. Add egg and enough milk to reach the 1-cup mark. Stir until combined. Pour into flour mixture and mix just until batter is combined. Fold in blueberries. Set batter aside.
This is where things got more complicated. He poured the oil in a small liquid measuring cup, 1/3 cup worth. Then he dropped the egg in, splashing oil all over the sides. He figured that he needed to not lose any oil, so he fished out the egg, filled it back up to 1/3 cup of oil, then gently put the egg back in to avoid spilling. He obviously didn't think about cleaning up the tiny bit of oil that was now dripping down the side of the counters onto the tile floor. He topped off the egg and oil with milk as instructed, then stirred it all together. The egg broke in the process, which he was pretty sure was intentional.
He poured the egg/oil/milk into the dry ingredients, stirred until combined, then did his best to "fold in" the blueberries. Figuring that just meant be gentle while mixing, he plopped them in with the batter and mixed them up a little more, but gently. He set that aside. No sweat, this was going to be easy. Step four: Combine sugar, flour, butter, and cinnamon for crumb topping in a small bowl. Mix with a fork until crumbly. Eaaasssyyy. He Soul Commanded the butter to become into cubes, then mixed everything together with a fork as instructed. It looked perfect, to him.
Step Five: Spoon batter into the prepared muffin cups, filling right to the top. Sprinkle with crumb topping. That was easy. He filled up the muffin pan with seven liquid muffins, keeping one portion of the 8 the recipe said it made still in the bowl. For purposes he had for it. Step Six: Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Setting the pan in the oven, Kazura turned the timer to 20 minutes and began to work on the portion of the batter he had set aside. He extended his awareness and reiatsu into the bowl, Tracing the batter and probing its composition.
There were chunks of blueberries alongside egg shells, which probably wasn't supposed to be that way but he didn't have a way to fix it now, they were already in the oven. He ignored that part and instead focused on the way the batter reacted to being poked with his finger, heated gently with a very focused use of Soul Dominance vibrating the batter at various "heats". That's all heat was, anyways, just the molecules moving faster and bumping into each other. For the whole twenty minutes he experimented with trying to "bake" the batter with his Soul Manipulation abilities.
He checked the muffins and they looked perfect, the toothpick came out clean, so out they came from the oven. Waiting for them to cool slightly, he took a big bite out of one of them once it was an appropriate temperature. Bad idea. He nearly cut his tongue and the roof of his mouth with the large amount of baked egg shells that was in the muffin. He spit the bite into the sink, washed it down, and emptied the tin of the rest of the six muffins, setting them aside and ignoring them due to their failure.
Using Soul Command to wipe the tin clean of any leftover muffin, then regreasing the pan with cooking spray, Kazura began to whip up another batch of muffin mix. This time, he broke the egg first and made sure the shells weren't in the batter. When he moved to put the batter in the pan, he slipped on some of the oil that had collected on the floor. With his instincts he managed to catch himself and the bowl before he completely fell over, but the batter went flying all over the counter and floor.
Looking at his watch, he figured Irina would be starting to leave from her distraction soon. Dang it. Wiping up the mess with a paper towel the best he could, the flustered Kazura didn't even think to keep using his powers to clean and instead left a spread out mess all over the floor. He again tried to whip up a fast set of batter, which was easier the third time as he was getting the hang of it. He was adept at Learning, after all. He cranked up the oven to broil, letting it sit at 300 C. That would let it cook faster, right? He nearly threw the pan into the oven and set the timer for 10 minutes.
Trying his best to clean up some more, the oven started to smoke very quickly. Pulling the absolutely torched muffins out of the oven, he let the oven cool back to 200 C and tossed the very burnt muffins next to the egg shelled ones. His fourth batch of mix was ready when the oven was again at the proper temperature. Kazura put another batch of 6 muffins into the oven, set the timer for 20 minutes, and ignored the state of Irina's kitchen to focus on cooking with Soul Dominance. Tracing a cooked muffin, he compared it to the raw batter to figure out what he needed to do to accomplish a fully baked piece of muffin.
He couldn't manage to get the temperature of his Will up to the relative heat of 200 degrees that they were supposed to cook at, so he sharpened his Reiatsu Strength by focusing away from his reserves and into raw power. That seemed to work just swimmingly, so he heated up the muffin mix as best he could by vibrating the batter extremely rapidly. Doing this was taxing, exhausting even, but he had a well cooked muffin to compare it to, even if it contained sharp egg shells. The two muffins he made with his powers were ready about the same time as the ones in the oven, so he admired his work in both the muffin pan and the bowl and set one of each out for Irina to taste.
There was no time to clean, no time to taste them himself as he heard a key enter the lock of the apartment door...
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Who? Kazura Uzaki, CEO of Uzaki Enterprises, son of the late founder of said company. When? 8am on a Saturday. Where? A specific couch belonging to a specific friend. Why? ... Hard to say why. The offer had been extended to sleep on the couch of this friend at her apartment and he wasn't sure why he had taken her up on it, but for once he felt... calmer. He hadn't slept all night, tossing and turning, hopefully not keeping her up in the other room, but he felt calmer and less... panicked. Less... terrified. He didn't have such a bad nightmare as before, just felt sleepless in a weird location. Plus, he was pretty sure he was allergic to beastie the cat. And beastie's fur was everywhere it seemed like.
When eight o'clock rolled around and he still hadn't slept, Kazura rolled off the couch and started the morning with a bit of body weight exercises. He had already seen Irina leave for her morning jog and had a feeling she'd be gone for awhile... especially if he pulled a favor with Karen his secretary to get Irina into the office for a few hours for "whatever you can do to stall her." Once he knew she was hooked in, he started his plan to make the best blueberry muffins he could. After all, he had promised to make up the whole "saving his life" thing with a blueberry muffin with the crumblies on top.
Step one: Google a blueberry muffin recipe. Top three results: Someone from New York's blueberry muffin recipe, quick and easy blueberry muffins, and to die for blueberry muffins. Gotta go with the third one, even though it would take 40 minutes... Yeah, he had time to have a few tries at it. He had already prepared ahead of time and ordered plenty of blueberries to Irina's apartment through the local grocery delivery service, and he had thought ahead enough to order flour, oil, and eggs as well. He was pretty sure that was the main ingredients. Hopefully she had the other ingredients he needed.
The recipe called for 1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour. Check. 3/4 cup sugar? Okay, she had to have sugar around here... yup, plenty of sugar. Perfect. Next was... 2 teaspoons baking powder. She also had that, close to the sugar. 1/2 teaspoon salt. Easy. 1/3 cup vegetable oil. Check, already ordered. 1 egg. Only 1? He had ordered like, two dozen. Oh well, plenty of room for error. 1/3 cup milk, or more as needed. He glanced in the fridge, found plenty of milk. Check. And lastly, but not least importantly, 1 cup fresh blueberries. Once the groceries arrived, he had everything he needed for the muffins.
Next, crumb topping. 1/2 cup white sugar. Check, already found that for the muffins. 1/3 cup all-purpose flour. Double check. 1/4 cup butter, cubed. Glancing in the fridge again, found plenty of butter sticks. Hopefully unsalted was fine. Lastly, 1 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon. That one took him awhile to find in Irina's spice cabinet, but found plenty thankfully so he avoided needing to go out and grab just one last item for these muffins. There was no time to waste, so he launched into the recipe.
Step one: Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Grease 8 muffin cups or line with muffin liners. He hadn't thought about muffin liners, and Irina didn't seem to have any, so he just greased the cups with cooking spray. That was greasy, right? Hopefully greasy enough. Step two: Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together in a large bowl. Easy enough, he knew what a whisk was and he just needed to combine dry ingredients. Done. Step three: Pour oil into a small liquid measuring cup. Add egg and enough milk to reach the 1-cup mark. Stir until combined. Pour into flour mixture and mix just until batter is combined. Fold in blueberries. Set batter aside.
This is where things got more complicated. He poured the oil in a small liquid measuring cup, 1/3 cup worth. Then he dropped the egg in, splashing oil all over the sides. He figured that he needed to not lose any oil, so he fished out the egg, filled it back up to 1/3 cup of oil, then gently put the egg back in to avoid spilling. He obviously didn't think about cleaning up the tiny bit of oil that was now dripping down the side of the counters onto the tile floor. He topped off the egg and oil with milk as instructed, then stirred it all together. The egg broke in the process, which he was pretty sure was intentional.
He poured the egg/oil/milk into the dry ingredients, stirred until combined, then did his best to "fold in" the blueberries. Figuring that just meant be gentle while mixing, he plopped them in with the batter and mixed them up a little more, but gently. He set that aside. No sweat, this was going to be easy. Step four: Combine sugar, flour, butter, and cinnamon for crumb topping in a small bowl. Mix with a fork until crumbly. Eaaasssyyy. He Soul Commanded the butter to become into cubes, then mixed everything together with a fork as instructed. It looked perfect, to him.
Step Five: Spoon batter into the prepared muffin cups, filling right to the top. Sprinkle with crumb topping. That was easy. He filled up the muffin pan with seven liquid muffins, keeping one portion of the 8 the recipe said it made still in the bowl. For purposes he had for it. Step Six: Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Setting the pan in the oven, Kazura turned the timer to 20 minutes and began to work on the portion of the batter he had set aside. He extended his awareness and reiatsu into the bowl, Tracing the batter and probing its composition.
There were chunks of blueberries alongside egg shells, which probably wasn't supposed to be that way but he didn't have a way to fix it now, they were already in the oven. He ignored that part and instead focused on the way the batter reacted to being poked with his finger, heated gently with a very focused use of Soul Dominance vibrating the batter at various "heats". That's all heat was, anyways, just the molecules moving faster and bumping into each other. For the whole twenty minutes he experimented with trying to "bake" the batter with his Soul Manipulation abilities.
He checked the muffins and they looked perfect, the toothpick came out clean, so out they came from the oven. Waiting for them to cool slightly, he took a big bite out of one of them once it was an appropriate temperature. Bad idea. He nearly cut his tongue and the roof of his mouth with the large amount of baked egg shells that was in the muffin. He spit the bite into the sink, washed it down, and emptied the tin of the rest of the six muffins, setting them aside and ignoring them due to their failure.
Using Soul Command to wipe the tin clean of any leftover muffin, then regreasing the pan with cooking spray, Kazura began to whip up another batch of muffin mix. This time, he broke the egg first and made sure the shells weren't in the batter. When he moved to put the batter in the pan, he slipped on some of the oil that had collected on the floor. With his instincts he managed to catch himself and the bowl before he completely fell over, but the batter went flying all over the counter and floor.
Looking at his watch, he figured Irina would be starting to leave from her distraction soon. Dang it. Wiping up the mess with a paper towel the best he could, the flustered Kazura didn't even think to keep using his powers to clean and instead left a spread out mess all over the floor. He again tried to whip up a fast set of batter, which was easier the third time as he was getting the hang of it. He was adept at Learning, after all. He cranked up the oven to broil, letting it sit at 300 C. That would let it cook faster, right? He nearly threw the pan into the oven and set the timer for 10 minutes.
Trying his best to clean up some more, the oven started to smoke very quickly. Pulling the absolutely torched muffins out of the oven, he let the oven cool back to 200 C and tossed the very burnt muffins next to the egg shelled ones. His fourth batch of mix was ready when the oven was again at the proper temperature. Kazura put another batch of 6 muffins into the oven, set the timer for 20 minutes, and ignored the state of Irina's kitchen to focus on cooking with Soul Dominance. Tracing a cooked muffin, he compared it to the raw batter to figure out what he needed to do to accomplish a fully baked piece of muffin.
He couldn't manage to get the temperature of his Will up to the relative heat of 200 degrees that they were supposed to cook at, so he sharpened his Reiatsu Strength by focusing away from his reserves and into raw power. That seemed to work just swimmingly, so he heated up the muffin mix as best he could by vibrating the batter extremely rapidly. Doing this was taxing, exhausting even, but he had a well cooked muffin to compare it to, even if it contained sharp egg shells. The two muffins he made with his powers were ready about the same time as the ones in the oven, so he admired his work in both the muffin pan and the bowl and set one of each out for Irina to taste.
There was no time to clean, no time to taste them himself as he heard a key enter the lock of the apartment door...