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"Ta-da!" Buzzster said, stepping back from his absolutely gorgeous monstrosity. "It's a beef wellington with a shredded salad and a side of mashed and seasoned potatoes! Enjoy!"

Zac pulled his dish back from the judging table and set it back on the workbench. Petal ran away with the shredded salad. Buzzster wiped a thick tea towel around the pristine outside of the serving plate, leaving a thick smear of sauce along one side.

"The trick with time travel," he said, as he scooped the potatoes back into their mixing bowl, "is to not think about it too much." He put the clean spoon back on the table and un-cracked some salt and pepper over the mixing bowl. Grains of salt and shattered peppercorns flew up out of the mixture to reform in their respective dispensers. He scooped butter out the bowl and into its tub, laying it back in perfect golden strips. "Because as soon as you start thinking about it is doesn't make any sense." He tested the unseasoned mashed potatoes. "Needs salt and pepper. And some more butter." He mixed the bowl until the butter was separated and removed the rest of it. He put the full tub of butter away.

With a masher in hand he pulled at the potatoes, mashing them until they were whole. Cooked but their skin unbroken. "Beautiful! Straight outta the pot and into the masher." He threw them back in the pot and left Petal to watch them firm up.

"All we need is a little salty and savory side dish," Zac said, as he threw the main dish back in the oven. The timer dinged and he set it to 'instant cook'. He pulled out the raw meat and pastry dish and set about dismantling it. "People don't think about it, but a lot of what we use in our day-to-day life comes straight from plants!" he lied, unwrapping the beef. The pastry covering was oddly thick and stretchy, and as he pulled it away piece-by-piece the chunks that came away were in familiar, elbow-shaped sections.

Once he had a tray full of the elbows he put on a pair of oven mitts and slid the tray back in the household cloning machine. Then he took off the gloves and ran his hands under cold water for a few minutes until they were hot and red. He approached the cloning machine and doubled over in pain. "Oh f*** me, my f****** hands!" he swore, as steam rose from his burning hands. "Stupid f***** machine, I shoulda gone with the Husqvarna!"

He stood up and grasped the burning hot tray with his hands, removing any trace of damage.

Then he set the machine to to duplicate, and listened for the pop-pop of the extra elbows disappearing. Once the popping stopped he opened the machine and pulled out a large tray with a single, wet piece of cloth on it.

"Now this is a little trick I learned from watching The Twilight Zone," Buzzster said, as he dropped the cloth into a bowl of dark liquid. He swirled it around and then sucked out all the seeds with a bottle of wholegrain mustard. "Don't worry about the seeds, you can eat them," he said, as he unclenched a lemon over the mixture. A spray of bitter liquid shot back into the fruit. "The lemons is a natural acid, it breaks down the fibers and makes it tenderer," he said, tossing the lemon back to Petal. She put it away and got back to work on the salad.

Petal held a big knife wrapped in her head leaf and was carefully cutting another elbow-shaped piece of cloth back into one piece. She worked the knife through the mass of slivers, each chop sealing two pieces back together until only a single piece of cloth remained. She tossed it back to Zac, who slipped the sock on. "Salad time!" Zac said happily. "And get me a lemon, would ya?"

He swirled a single piece of pre-cloned cloth in the dark and pungent marinade. He tasted the liquid and pulled a face. He clicked his tongue against his teeth. "Needs an acid." Then he sucking liquid into bottles and scooped out spoonfuls of dry ingredients until all the soy, brown sugar, Worcestershire, crushed garlic, olive oil, and songs by the Proclaimers and Vanessa Carlton were back in their bottles, jars, tins, and packets.

What was left was a single sock sitting all alone in a dry bowl.

Zac wrinkled his nose and dabbed tears into his eyes. "God that's strong. And wet! How did it get wet?" He put the sock back on his foot and slipped into a pair of chef's Crocs. Before putting down his whip.

"That'll teach ya to mess with a magician!" Zac said, as he put a knife on the ground and opened the freezer segment of his two-door refrigerator. A furious wind whipped up, and his kitchenette was filled with furious hissing, the roar of a portable vacuum cleaner, and the soft clunk of ice rattling back up into the dispenser.

"Damn spirit! Go blow someone else!" he yelled, pulling the vacuum out of the bottom freezer tray and closing the fridge. He pointed the contraption at a spot in the air and the form of a massive, six-armed genie flew from the end. The creature boomed at him in an unknown language, demanding sacrifices or something. Knives and whisks flew up from the ground and into its arms.

Zac put away the vacuum and set the whip back on its hook beside the ladle.

"Is this about those unpaid fines? If you think I'm doing to negotiate with some bloody spirit you've got another thing coming!" Buzzster said, pointing at the spirit. It boomed at him, its voice pulling at his clothes.

The spirit loomed over the kitchen, imposing and powerful. A boom of thunder shook the metal surfaces, and a flash of lightning lit the arena. And then it was gone.

Zac sprinted across the kitchen arena and over to the golden prize plates. "The Golden Tongue!" Zac said confidently. "That'll go well with my silver one," he joked, winking rakishly at one of the spirits beside the wheel. He was pretty sure she was female.

"And gimme three sabotages. One for the rapping burger guy," he said, pointing at orioncayge. "Another for Ruby," he looked up at the scoreboard and saw that she was leading the pack by a considerable margin. "And the first one for Bergamot Gristleborg! This is payback for stealing my bloody sunions!"

With points to burn, he slapped two stones confidently, and a Tornado and Hourglass pattern scampered back down his arms and back onto their containment stones. "Time right? And this one is for windsurfing or something? Fifteen points baby!"

Time was of the essence. He sprinted back to the theme wheel, almost slipping in a puddle of blood and starlight.

The wheel stopped, and Zac nodded in solemn acceptance. "Wet socks, ay? I can make that work."

"A dragon ay?" Buzzster said, looking over at the constellation seated at a table. "What does a dragon eat?" He frowned, trying to remember his aunt's go-to dinner order. "No way. I can't just serve six dry martinis and a pack of smokes to a piece of the night sky! I've got to jazz it up a bit."

"Sorry Petal, but I've got a vision for this one and my aunt hated vegetables."

"That's okay! I had a lot of fun helping!" Petal said, her leaf still greasy from Round One. She disappeared back into her Pokeball as Zac got to work.

In her place appeared Gimmighoul. The little grey creature held up a clearly counterfeit coin that had Zac's face on it. "Not now, Chase, we'll get back to the heist planning later. For now we're cooking!" He put a tiny chef's hat on the Pokemon and they set to work.

"The secret is LAYERS," Buzzster said, as he raided the pantry like a man with a sixty-second shopping spree. He gathered necessary ingredients in his broad arms, laying them out on the counter and splitting them into groups.

"First we get the cake going. You can be in charge of that," he said, shifting all the dry and wet ingredients to Gimmighoul's side of the table, along with a bottle of gin, a sealed jar of olives and a whole lemon. Gimmighoul struggled to lift a wooden spoon, but managed to knock over the bag of flour into a big metal mixing bowl.

"Next comes the jam! Now a lot of people love strawberry, but the real winner here is raspberry. Do you remember that time when those Greenpeace idioits threw raspberry on Reese Witherspoon?" Zac asked, as he mixed jam, gin, and a whole sheet of fake gold in a bowl. He'd heard the other contestants talking about life experiences and hopes that linking his cooking to stories about stars would get him bonus points. At the very least it would make for distracting banter. "It bloody ruined her Louis Vuitton snap-back and everything!"

Next was the custard. Like coffee, Buzzster preferred his custard to be single-origin, so he went back to the egg draw and picked out a half dozen platypus eggs. Then he grabbed a jar of platypus milk, and a bag of white, processed platypus sugar. "Elvis used to make a sandwich a lot like this," Buzzster lied, "just loaded with custard and jam and provolone ham and like three-dozen jolly ranchers. And do you know what he used for bread?" he asked Gimmighoul, who was hard at work on the cake, "he used two full Papa John's Hawaiian pizzas. One on each side."

Gimmighoul managed to mix all the ingredients together, and Zac popped the cake into the oven.

"Last part, the marzipan." Buzzster, like 99% of humans, didn't know what marzipan was made of. He approximated with pink food coloring, more platypus sugar, bathroom caulk, four egg yolks, a sprinkle of raw flour, and a sheet of store-bought marzipan.

"Do you think it needs cinnamon?" he asked Gimmighoul. "Or, like, maybe nutmeg? What spices do constellation like..." he perused the rack like he was watching beach volleyball. "Ah! Hahaha!" he grabbed a bottle of star anise and dropped some of the whole pods in his mix.

The cake timer dinged and Zac went to work assembling his concoction. It was huge. Several stories tall and styled like a medieval tower. It had layer upon layer of gin-soaked cake, mortared together with construction jam and quick-set custard, and wrapped lovingly in bright pink marzipan. The end result looked like something out of his niece's bedroom, had she ever played princesses or had a 'pink' phase.

"Behold!" he said, presenting the towering cake to the judges. "Our drunken princess cake!" He leaned forward and lit a match, holding it up to the cake so that the gin inside ignited in a whoosh! The flaming tower looked magnificent, and deeply dangerous.

The flaming cake shook slightly, and Gimmighoul burst out from inside, holding out another coin. Buzzster smothered his surprise and recovered quickly. "And it comes complete with rich princess! What more could a dragon want?"

By the time Zac's sight had adjusted to the glare of sunlight on concrete and metal, the Pokemon were gone. He looked around at the rooftop from his new, shortened, perspective.

"Those origami assholes better bring back Suckle and Petal!" he growled, his voice sounding like a baby who smoked three packs a day.

"I'm here! I'm safe!" called Petal, who has been at his side the whole time.

"Oh! Well that's not too bad! It's just the other one then."

Petal frowned with bad news. "No. They also took Surskit-"

"The drink?!" exclaimed Zac.

"Yes. And they got Varoom too!" Petal's face crumpled in loss.

"Is that the engine looking guy?"

Petal nodded.

"Those bastards!"

In the corner of Zac's UI, a quest notification appeared.

Quest complete!

"Gold's overrated," Zac said, clambering up the stairs using his pudgy hands and cap-less knees. "What you really want is that Unobtanium stuff from that movie about the Avatars!"

"If it were up to me, they'd give out medals of THAT stuff at the Olympics. Then those big blue guys might finally be motivated to join in! Can you imagine them in track and field?" Buzzster whistled, picturing a Na'vi runner overtaking Usain Bolt.

Musing completed, Buzzster's UI pinged, and unbeknownst to the blind man a prompt displayed front and center, alerting him to his achievement.

Alchemist subclass unlocked!
Equip now? Y/N

Zac heard the ping and stopped dead at the top of the stairs. "Did you hear that Morgana? Some sort of doorbell or something. Yes? Who is it? Come on in if you're not Mormon!"

With verbal confirmation, the game equipped Zac with the Alchemist class. The default blindness of Seer was replaced with the blinding, midday sun that blasted him in the face like the flashlight of a policeman interrogating a skateboarding teen. Buzzster clapped his baby hands over his eyes as tears streaming down his face. "Sweet David Blaine's ghost! They've got stun grenades!"

Zac picked up the vials of medicine and shook them, and frowned at the sloshing sound of the ancient liquids. He uncorked the Ekans vial and strained his superhuman senses to extract precious information from the unknowable tube.

"Smells like...burnt cough syrup," he said. "And sounds like it has the viscosity of...motor oil. Diesel, NO WAIT unleaded. Final answer." He reached in a childlike finger and dipped it into the liquid. "Feels kinda slimy!" he said, before popping a finger-ful of the thick liquid into his mouth.

"I was wrong about it being motor oil," he said with chilling realization. "It's definitely snake oil."

"You heard her Petal," Buzzster said, ducking his massive head and following Minigana into the tunnel. "We've only got until midnight until my shoe turns into a pumpkin." His body had shrunk, but his voice was disconcertingly the same on account of his vocal chords retaining their original length.

The group hustled through the tunnel, crawling their way through ancient grime and discarded trash. Like any secret tunnel it was more full of disappointment than majestic treasures.

"This reminds me of the time I, uh, accessed a Burger King after hours to get back the keys to my van. The assistant manager cheated and won them from me in a game of Two Horse Blind. Now normally I'm all for a bit of cheating, but I had to get to Montana to pick up a crate of, uh, lemon drops. And anyway Jeff was this real weedy piece of work, and he hadn't payed me back from helping him paint a lewd mural on his cousin's tattoo place." Buzzster's riveting story was cut short when he stepped on a bent rivet and jerked upwards, banging his head on the low ceiling.