"As you can see, this... is gonna get spicy." -Ainsley Harriott
"You're sick."
Mordekaiser wanted to punch a bear apart when he heard that.
Especially considering that it was Shen would told him that.
"I'm not sick. I'm a freaking undead warlord. I'm not sick."
"You are."
"Shut your mouth, you sack of ninja stars. I'll kill your girlfriend."
"My girlfriend? What girlfriend?"
"Your balls."
Sitting in the same office he had once stayed in for an entire day was an odd feeling for Mordekaiser. The odder feeling that plagued his mind, however, was the fact that he was getting his health diagnosed by Shen of all people. How did the Shadow Isles get their health checked in the first place, anyway? Mordekaiser had no idea.
He actually was one of the few who had become sick in the Isles before, now that he thought about it. Even Sadako got sick once in a while, despite being very resistant to colds and the like.
It simply never occurred to him that he would not feel well in the League out of all places.
After visiting the ninja, he went back to his dormitory. He leaned on his elbow as he watched television from his metallic sofa, blankly watching the news spew out random politics and conflicts. Trendy.
As for how Mordekaiser got to visit Shen after collapsing in the first place…
"Hey, Morde! Y' want coke or milk?" Vi called out from the kitchen.
A pink-haired Enforcer happened to find him in his dormitory after a good League match.
"Coke."
"Milk? Gotcha."
"I said coke, you dunce."
"You want the healthiest milk in the world, you say?"
"Vi, you little sh-"
Despite his hatred for how much she stuck around his dormitory like a leech sapping off the little brainpower he had, Vi was quite useful.
"Ha ha, serves you right!" She laughed at the rare sight of an unwell Master of Metal. But aside from the remarks that threatened to test his patience with her, she kept glancing at him as if he could just explode at any moment. It was a strange thing for Mordekaiser to not be abrasively loud and remain dead silent.
A Morde not screaming while going on a killing spree in a video game admittedly felt different from a quiet Morde.
Vi handed a metal cup of milk to the lord of undead. He rolled his eyes as he took it from her. She warmed it up for him. Without a word, he took the cup from her.
A few minutes later, Vi came back with a burrito. She rarely made those for him, as he was usually the one who lazily tossed some at her to make her stop pestering about lunch. Handing it over to the lord of undead, she mumbled,
"Eat it."
"…The heck- What's gotten into you?"
The Piltover Enforcer stared at Mordekaiser as if he was the weirdest thing in the world. She was not far off, but still, the Master of Metal had yet to do anything weird.
Which seemed to be what weirded her out. The fact that he did nothing out of the ordinary disturbed her too much.
"Shut up," Vi grumbled as she marched off to the kitchen. "I'll do whatever I want."
"Did you ever go through puberty? Because I think it's starting to kick in- OW, DAMMIT!"
With her bare hands, the pink-haired woman finally prevented herself from holding back and delivered a punch on Mordekaiser's head.
Sitting in a café with Ahri, a certain Maven of Strings blinked at the Nine-Tailed Fox.
"Eh? Sick?" Sona tilted her head in confusion.
"Yeah, the big oaf of a tin can is sick," Ahri grumbled before sipping her coffee. The thought of Mordekaiser getting sick at such a perfect moment before the food contest began infuriated her.
He promised he'd jump out and make food. That could have been a perfect moment for him to publicly display him and Sona's tender(?) relationship to the world! But instead of the juicy moment she wished to witness, the fox-girl found calamity falling upon her plans with a metal giant getting sick out of all things.
She wished it was an excuse, but a surprising explanation from Thresh killed her hopes.
"Morde gets sick sometimes, actually," the Chain Warden mused when she had questioned him after his shift at his creepy prison finished for the day. "When he gets better, though, he really kicks it up a notch and gets hyper energized with power. None of us ever really saw what he did when he got souped up with energy because he usually ran off to his home back when we lived at the Isles."
A big sigh came from the fox.
Shortly after exhaling, she kicked her legs frantically as she complained, "Geez, he's so inconsistent sometimes!"
"Perhaps we should let him rest, Ahri," Sona proposed with a worried smile. "I fear that pushing him would possibly hurt him."
"When you say it like that, Sona, it makes me look evil."
A thoughtful look entered the dark-haired fox-lady's hair. Aside from the disappointments Ahri felt, Sona was right. Mordekaiser never really showed it, but he tended to go through quite a lot outside of lazing around his dormitory and participating in League matches. Some stupid summoner attempted to assassinate him, he went out with Sona to the prom (much to Ahri's glee), and he, in some way, participated in fighting a giant octopus at the beach, though nobody actually saw him fighting it aside from Riven.
There was also a handful of tales Sona shared with her about Mordekaiser, many of them not sounding like the most pleasant thing in the world.
Cooking… Mordekaiser tried to cook for Sona. Suddenly, an odd thought struck Ahri with brilliance.
Unfortunately, it was also an idea that could possibly drive Mordekaiser insane.
"Sona!"
"Yes?"
Cupping her hands over Sona's, Ahri's eyes shined like jewels.
"I got a great idea, and you have to hear me out!"
"…?"
"Trust me, I'm sure it'll be great!"
"Um…"
Sona knew there was a high chance that Ahri was up to no good for Mordekaiser's well-being again. Alas, her friend's excitement was something the Maven of Strings refused to quell.
"A-Alright, then."
Life was like a box of randomized chocolates. You never knew what flavor you'd taste next unless you tried it out yourself.
In Mordekaiser's case, he never asked for any chocolates. The chocolates, somehow, asked for him. Standing in his room was a bunch of people he knew of, all of them familiar to him at that point. Garen, the Might of Demacia, stood with his arms crossed in the kitchen along with the other guests that invaded Mordekaiser's dormitory.
Rengar scratched the back of his head as he continued to invent ways to defeat Kha'Zix using different methods of battling. A confused Riven stared at Diana, who stood next to her while fixating her gaze on Mordekaiser. Meanwhile, Thresh and Kha'Zix were playing Rock Paper Scissors with each other, neither of them actually caring about what was going on. At the far end of the humorously mixed line stood Sona, her etwahl in hand.
All of them except for Rengar, Kha'Zix, and Thresh wore fairly casual clothes. Cooking with armor on sounded like a disadvantage for flexibility, especially for someone like Garen, so much of the equipment usually worn by everyone was not present on them.
"And so," Ahri said, standing in the middle of his kitchen with her arms spread out, "we're going to hold a contest in your kitchen!"
"I DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS!" Mordekaiser roared, poking his head up from the sofa to see what was going on behind him. "WHY ARE YOU ALL HERE, ANYWAY?!"
Giggling, Ahri wagged a finger as she told him, "Now, now. We're not here to hurt you at all. In fact, we're here to do the complete opposite! All of these champions were willing to cook for you in their dear free time, so that should be an honor for both sides, right?"
The lord of undead's eyes twitched. The girl had just brought in a boat of potentially insane champions into one enclosed dormitory. How was he to not worry? Then again, the Master of Metal himself was considered to be insane, so perhaps he would at least survive at the end of the day.
As he assured himself that things would go well, a sudden realization peaked in his mind.
"…Cook?" He asked, wondering whether he heard it correctly or not.
"Yeah! For you. And it won't just be cooking, it'll be a cooking contest! Whoever impresses you the most wins, how's that? Easy?"
The iron man groaned in annoyance as he returned to laying down on the sofa. Taking it as a sign of defeat, Ahri clapped and brought the champions' attentions to her.
"All right! So everyone has their ingredients ready in the kitchen, correct?"
Garen nodded with a small smile. "I organized all of it myself, so everyone should have enough to construct their recipes."
"Sounds good. Let's get started!" Ahri chirped.
Kha'Zix was the only one to throw up a claw in the air as he shouted, "Yeah!" Noticing that everyone else had already gone off to work on the food they had in mind, he looked around before pretending that nothing happened.
The kitchen was massive, and it had two water boiler sets to them! Two! Rengar noticed this as he stared at a pot being boiled on one of the boilers. The heat was low, so the pot did not seem like it would overflow with random stuff at any moment.
Was someone here? The hunter wondered as he looked back at the tired Master of Metal. He doesn't seem like he's intent on making food at the moment, though. Strange.
Looking around, the Pridestalker found a post-it note and scribbled something on it. He pasted the thing next to the boiler. "Don't move this pot," the note read. At the very most, that was a sign of manners he could show to a metallic fighter whose fangs had not yet been dulled.
Still, he wondered what was inside the pot. He resisted the temptation to open it and left it there instead. His curiosity quickly subsided when he found Kha'Zix lying on top of one of his cow meat packages.
"…Kha'Zix," Rengar seethed.
"I tripped," Kha'Zix explained the instant moment the Pridestalker leapt towards the Voidreaver with raw fury and a balled fist.
The lord of undead remained still with his eyes closed. The sound of others cooking for him did not sound as annoying as he thought it'd be, much to his own surprise. It felt odd, having others do things he usually did by himself.
He would never admit it felt nice, though. Like hell he'd admit that to the likes of them.
Suddenly, an eruption roared from the kitchen as Thresh screamed. "OH SH*T, I DROPPED ALL THE OIL ON THE BOILER! GET ME A- AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"I knew it," Riven shouted under the sound of flames crackling right on top of the boiler. "I knew something was wrong when he held the oil bottle with his hook instead of his hand!"
"Everyone back off, I got th- ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH!"
"GAREN, YOU JUST MADE IT WORSE, YOU BRAWNBAG!"
"Thresh, you're in NO position to say that! You're the one who started it, anyway- AGH, MY TAILS ARE ON FIRE!"
"HA HA HA HA, SERVES YOU RI- OH F**K, MY ENTIRE BODY'S ON FIRE! I'M ON FIIIIIIIIRRRRRE!"
"Wait, but aren't you always on fire?!"
"SHUT UP RENGAR, I'M ON FIRE! I- Oh, now that you mention it, I'm always on fire."
"Just SHUT UP and HELP US OUT HERE, THRESH!"
Yes. The sound of others doing the work he usually did felt odd.
Mordekaiser wanted to kill himself so badly.
Talon walked into his dormitory's kitchen. Having cooked himself up a pot of stew, he took out a bowl and opened the lid.
Suddenly, Kassadin popped out of the pot and punched Talon straight across the face with a fistful of hot stew on him. The Void Walker vanished almost immediately after the Blade's Shadow started screaming in pain.
Author's Notes:
Next chapter – "Food War Part 3!"
