Ello, its been 3 weeks again XD idk why i keep doing this. Anyway, you guys, i might not here from me for about 2-3 weeks since college online classes finals are hitting from the skies unfortunately. I am dying in the world of studying. Hopefully it hasnt impacted my writing too much

Also, I realized how smol Alina is next to Connor and Hank. I thought it would be cute to make her smol. But a feet difference is much larger than i thought apparently XD her being like 5'1" and connor & hank 6 ft

Other than that, its showtime!

And also ofc q & a session the very end

Last chapter . . .

Connor and Hank are assigned to a new case, one that involves a carbon monoxide homicide with an android witness. They come back home after a tired day of interviewing Serendipity, the android witness.

It's around 7:30pm when the three of them get back to Hank's house. Alina greatly enjoyed the grocery store run as it gave her a sense of familiarity being in an Asian supermarket. There was a sense of comfort to be among the hustle and bustle of Asian Aunties with their booming voices echoing in the supermarket. At first, Hank and Connor had mistaken the Asian Auntie customers as being really grumpy and mad, but she explained to them that this is just how a lot of them talked. Particularly in some provinces of China, she explained that some dialect speeches simply emphasized their words a lot while speaking.

She was lucky that her mother was soft-spoken and didn't carry that same level of tone with her. When Alina was younger, it took a while to get used to the louder voiced Asian Aunties in the streets of Chinatown. She could say it was a bit emotionally scarring to deal with their blaring voices every time she went to the supermarket, but her mother wasn't as startled. So she simply followed her mother's lead and got used to the thunderous rumble of Asian talk.

When Alina got to Hank's kitchen, she quickly shook away these thoughts, focused on preparing a meal quickly enough so that Hank wouldn't feel too hungry. That's when she realized that she wasn't familiar with his kitchen and that the mechanisms might be different in 2038.

"Sorry, dinner might take a bit longer to make." She said sheepishly, scratching her hair as she looked back to Hank still taking off his coat. "I'm not as familiar with how your kitchen works."

He gave back a tired, but soft expression as he landed on the couch.

"It's alright kid, sometimes I don't even eat dinner and go straight to bed."

She saw Connor throw a concerned look at Hank, but he didn't say anything and simply moved to where she was in the kitchen.

"I'll show you around the kitchen. Is there any specific cookware or ingredients you're looking for?" Connor said as he opened the cabinets one by one and instructed her on where everything is.

"Hmmm, I would like to work with a wok pan," She replied back, gently tapping her fingers on her chin. "But I don't think you'll have that. A regular stir fry pan should work fine though."

He nodded back and made a beeline for the 4th cabinet from the left, taking out a medium sized stir frying pan. She gratefully took the pan from him, a small smile perking from her lips as she marveled at the pan. It was a nonstick type, which she knew was going to make her life a whole lot easier. She gave it a good twirl as she noticed that it was in relatively good condition despite the fact that it seemed a bit worn out. She had half expected Hank's kitchen cookware to be old and grimy since he didn't seem to type to cook, but it looked like Connor probably took care of it in Hank's steed.

She listed out all the other cookware she needed and with each mentioned Connor speedily brought it out a second later. Well, he is CyberLife's most advanced android. After managing to find everything she needed, Connor proceeded to give her a mini tour of all kitchen instrument placements. Her head ended up spinning from the tour of the kitchen and she could have sworn in the middle of it all she saw Hank smirking at her predicament.

Minutes of the tour of kitchen placement felt longer than it should have and by the end of it she felt like she learned almost nothing from the sheer volume overload.

Connor must have noticed her confusion because he paused for a brief moment before turning his attention back to her.

"Should I go over it again?" He said with an innocent look on his face.

"No!" She said a little too quickly back. Her voice pitch being a bit louder and higher than she expected.

"I-I'm good," She stammered back, quickly composing herself to make a seamless transition from her abrupt cry. "I think I'll just ask you if I can't find anything. Thank you though!"

After that, Connor left for the living room while Alina rolled up her sleeves to get to work. She pulled out a medium sized pot and filled it with 2 cups of rice. She then filled up the pot with some cold water to rinse it and then drained it before filling it up a second time with cold water. After washing her hands, she placed her index finger in the pot of rice and water to measure the water level. Hmmm, just a little bit over my first knuckle. Probably should get rid of the excess water so it won't be too moist. She diligently poured out a little bit of water before testing the water level a second time. Perfect! I haven't lost my touch after all! She beamed as she turned on the gas knob just as Connor demonstrated a while ago.

Normally, she had a rice cooker to just put in the rice, so it's been a while since she used a pot to cook rice. She made sure to promptly place a lid on the pot. It would be nice if I had a timer to monitor the rice. She turned back to the left side of the kitchen when she yelped in surprise bumping into something big and sturdy.

As she stepped back from the recoil, she looked up in surprise to see Connor was in the kitchen again. His hands were on her shoulders, steadying her as her brows furrowed in confusion to see him back.

"I-I, um, came to see if you needed help." He said as his eyes flicked to the ground for a moment and he shuffled his feet.

"Um, I think I'm good for the most part," She said, giving an honest reply. But the instance she said those words his shoulders drooped and she found herself following up with, "But it'll be nice to have an extra helping hand."

Connor instantly perked up and she directed him to where she had the cutting board laid out earlier from Connor's mini tour extravaganza.

"I was going to get started with cutting the vegetables, but maybe you can do that while I stir fry some eggs." From the grocery bags, she pulled out a stalk of broccoli flower, garlic, carrots and a bag of frozen kernel corn.

Connor tilted his head upon seeing Alina open up the frozen kernel bag.

"We need to cut the kernel corn too?"

Alina gave a lop-sided grin back, "No, I'm just taking a cup of kernel corn out to defrost in warm water. You don't need to worry about that." She took out a tiny bowl from one of the top cabinets and promptly did as she said, while she heard the chopping sounds from Connor in the background.

She then directed her attention to the eggs in the fridge, cracking them into another plastic bowl neatly with no shells leaking out to the egg yolk. Another successful egg crack, she smiled fondly as her mind suddenly pulled her back to a faint memory to when she was 10.

Back then, when she was first learning how to make fried rice, her mother was chopping vegetables right alongside her, just like where Connor was right now. Alina remembered how her younger self was desperate to be as amazing of a cook as her mother and wanted to learn everything there was to cooking.

"Mom! Let me try! I wanna help! I wanna chop the vegetables!" 10 year old Alina eagerly said, cheerfully jumping up and down so that her view of sigh just barely reached above the countertop. Even back then, she was very short and needed a stepping stool to see her mother's work.

Her mother gently pulled back the younger girl's bangs and giggled at Alina.

"You're too young, you'll hurt yourself. Mama doesn't want to see you get hurt."

Alina crossed her arms in frustration, pouting and giving pleading eyes as her mother continued chopping. Finally, her mother relented, giving a sigh and placed the girl on a stepping stool. Her mother handed her a bowl of egg yolks and directed the young girl to mix them with a pair of chopsticks.

Alina squinted at the egg yolk mixture while focusing all her motor skills on mixing it perfectly for her mother, she marveled at how the color changed from light to darker shades of yellow. It was like a moving painting as the egg yolk swirled together slowly and her mother hummed softly in the background while chopping the vegetables.

What was it again? The song na-

"-Lina"

Alina suddenly jolted up to the voice, the egg yolk bowl nearly spilling over the side.

"Hm?" She looked to her left, only now gaining awareness that someone was next to her.

Connor's forehead had puckered together and he hovered over her with a gentle but worried expression.

"You've been stirring those eggs together for a while and spacing out, so I was wondering if you were alright."

"Oh," She looked down to the eggs and they were indeed already mixed together. "Sorry. I was just thinking of a memory, when I was first learning how to cook this with my mum."

Alina placed the stir fry pan on the stovetop, turned on the fire and patiently waited for the pan to heat up to a proper temperature. She took a quick look at the rice to check to make sure it wasn't boiling over, before rushing to the fridge to get out the soy sauce, cooking wine and light fish sauce. She almost bumped into Connor a second time when putting down the items and took a glance at Connor's work.

Surprised.

That was one way to describe how Alina felt when she saw the result of his chopping skills. It wasn't necessarily bad. . .

Just unique?

For the broccoli, he had left the stalk stem on and the big broccoli flower was technically cut into smaller versions of them. But each one was like the size of an index finger. The carrot skin was skinned off and the inner part of the carrots were chopped as well. Similar to the style of the broccoli cuts, the carrots were chopped into big clumps. She would say that the dimensions were about 1 inch in height, width, and length. They were mostly cut into squares except for some rounded parts, but WAY too big for fried rice style.

Then again, it was her fault in not specifying details. She kinda assumed that Connor would know how small the vegetables would be in a fried rice recipe that he could look them up from the images of the internet.

"Um, good job on the vegetables." She said, blinking a couple of times in trying to figure out how to phrase her next set of words. "But, I think they needa be a little bit smaller for fried rice."

His LED swirled from light blue to yellow in response and he didn't appear distressed so that was good.

"I did cut them pretty small this time in comparison to my past cooking attempts. Hmmm, I guess it needs to be more miniscule than I thought."

From the living room, Alina heard a soft chuckle and a couple of chokes mixed in with Hank's laughter.

"Yeah, Connor wants to let me know that I should be eating my veggies alright."

Alina simply stared blankly back at the two and then gestured to the knife in Connor's hand.

"May I?"

Connor nodded back to her and handed over the knife, when his LED suddenly blared red and he whirled behind him to the stovetop. He let out a huff of relief after turning off the gas and hovered his hand over the pan.

"Luckily you didn't have any oil in it so it's not really burnt," Connor then took a second glance at the pot of rice boiling in water. "Your rice will also be done in about 15 minutes, I can monitor that for you if you want."

"I AM SO SORRY." Alina apologized as she felt the blood draining from her face while rushing to the pan. I am so stupid! How could I forget about the stove?! She set down the kitchen knife back onto the cutting board before directing her full attention to the pan.

"Normally I'm not like this, I am so sorry. I think I'm just not used to having someone next to me while cooking, and got distracted." She quickly poured some oil into the pan, picked up the pan and started circulating it around before dropping in the eggs to stir fry. "It's kinda nice having someone else in the kitchen with me."

This time while maintaining the right amount of heat and properly monitoring it, she was able to make some light fluffy eggs and set it aside before attacking the vegetables again.

"You're normally alone?"

Alina jumped up a bit a second time from Connor's voice, the kitchen knife just a mere centimeter away from nearly cutting her fingers.

"Yeah," She replied back while cutting the stem of the broccoli from the rest of the stalks. "It's like a ghost town at home every night for me. Well, more like ever since I was 14 or 15?"

Alina paused and scrunched up his face while attempting to recall the most recent memory of cooking with her mother. It's been years actually, wow didn't think of that till just now.

"My mother worked late so I always cooked dinner alone and then subsequently ate dinner alone too. But I got used to it, I guess?" Her voice strained a bit toward the end of the sentence as she felt her throat close up a bit from another flash of memory. She silently shuttered at the recollection of how the big dark empty house seemed to swallow her when she was younger. It got weird when sometimes she'll get random bouts of loneliness that loomed over as if they were crawling over her skin.

"Thats-That's too bad." Connor said back, with some layers of remorse and concern intertwined into his voice.

She simply shrugged back, "I got used to it."

"Now when it comes to broccoli, especially with picky vegetable eaters you should have them in much smaller bits." She instructed, chopping all the broccoli stem parts into 1cm by 1cm cubicles. "The same with the broccoli flower bunch. Having them too big also takes longer time to cook, especially with broccoli stalks still intact and you could overcook certain parts making them too limpy." She continued cutting Connor's flower bunches into smaller pieces, about the length of one finger knuckle.

She then placed all the broccoli into a large bowl of warm water and added some salt into the mixture. Connor gave her a quizzical look in return.

"It's something my mother taught me to do prior. She says it gets rid of the pesticides."

She then tackled the huge blocky carrots chopped up and minced them. Right next to her was Connor trying to get the wrapper layers of the garlic off. Her mouth curved into a smile as she fondly watched Connor try his best and struggle a bit. She broke off a piece of garlic of her own, smashed it with the blunt part of the kitchen knife, which startled Connor and sent him jolting upward. She then proceeded to peel off the garlic wrapper with ease while chuckling at Connor's gapped mouth stare.

Alina smushed a couple more garlic pieces and once Connor was done peeling them she minced the garlic as well in addition to the carrots. Egg? Check. Corn? Check. Broccoli? Check. Garlic? Yup. Rice?

WAIT. How long has it been since the rice was cooking?

She normally also had a phone as her timer, but the universe didn't give her that when she got into this world. Connor seemed to have read her thoughts because as soon as she spun her back to the stovetop he was shutting off the gas valve.

"The rice should be done, 15 minutes are up." He said, taking off the lid of the pot.

She peeked inside and true to his words, the rice was nice and fluffy without being too soggy. Next she went to the fridge, pulling out a pre-cooked cut up flank steak stir fry they got at the supermarket. It was sorta a last minute decision at the market simply because she realized at the last moment that stir fry beef was better when marinated for some time. And the time needed for the beef to marinate and soak up flavors wasn't something she wanted to prep up at 7pm in the night.

It wasn't cheating right? She technically did cook everything else so in the end it's still a homemade fried rice? Oh well.

She started stir frying the beef a bit to heat up the pre-cut pieces. Once she was done, she set them aside and then went to stir fry all the vegetables. Connor was diligently watching the entire process, sticking around even when he was done helping. Once she was done cooking everything, she put all the ingredients into the stir fry pan including the rice. While keeping the pan in low heat, she began to mix everything together and cued Connor for the seasoning and her other sauces she needed to finish off the dish.

While halfway done mixing together the final pieces, Connor suddenly spoke up softly.

"Is it alright if I ask you a question?"

"Hm? Go for it. All I need to do is mix this together so it doesn't need much concentration luckily." She grinned back.

"I asked Hank about this earlier, but I wanted your opinion on it too." Connor stopped short for a moment, his eyes trained on the pan but with a glazed look. "When humans cry, it means that they're sad right?"

"It depends," She replied back, shifting her weight to her right foot as she contemplated. "Sometimes when we cry, it's because we're happy. Can you give me the context of the situation? That might help me a bit."

Connor leaned forward, resting his arms on the kitchen top as his LED whirled yellow.

"Her name was Serendipity. She was an android that just lost her human fiancé. It was the case Hank and I were working on today. She was the girl you saw walk into the precinct with us and later brought to Jericho. I wasn't really sure on how to approach her at first at the crime scene and when I asked her name, apparently it brought some unpleasant memories to the surface that made her start crying."

"What kind of memories?" Alina knitted her brows in a frown as she turned off the stove and moved all the fried rice into a large dish on the side.

Connor looked back at Alina, his gaze still sort of dazed even though they had turned their attention to each other.

"When I asked her name and I mentioned that it was a pretty name, she started telling me about how Eris, the human, named her that. She mentioned that the reason why Eris named her that was because 'she was the best thing that happened to her'. She started crying and I wasn't sure how to comfort her, yet her stress levels went down after crying." Connor shuffled his hands and feet before following up with another comment.

"It was. . . peculiar. From my knowledge, crying is an expression of sadness and is considered related to high stress levels in deviants. Yet crying somehow brought down the stress levels at the same time. I was wondering if it was the same with you? Or humans in general?"

"Well, yes. At least as far as I know. Crying makes you feel better because a lot of times it's because you feel helpless and you need to relieve that stress somehow. Sometimes, it's because people reached their breaking point. It's like a volcano in a sense? Like the lava in a volcano is all the stress you accumulate over time, and then BOOM!" Alina flailed her arms about, mimicking the gesture. "It comes pouring out after a lot of pressure. Other times, the lava leaks out in different ways like through some small crevices and comes out slowly. But in the end you're still releasing your emotions even if isn't necessarily like one big explosion."

She took a moment to pause and see Connor's reaction to her explanation. Connor's arms were crossed and fingers were slowly drumming along his long sleeves as his LED continued whirling yellow.

"Does that make sense?"

Connor slowly nodded back as he seemed to be deep in thought so Alina took that time to set up the dinner table with the utensils.

"Was-," Connor paused, before opening up again with his voice just slightly above a whisper. "Was I the final trigger then? For the explosion."

Alina suddenly paused midway while setting up the table, stunned at what Connor said.

"No." She responded quickly back, a bit of panic raising her voice. "No, no, no, no. You never were at any fault." She briskly walked back to Connor's spot by the countertop, looked at his eyes with a soft expression, despite the fact that his eyes were cast downward.

"Just because you were there when she started crying doesn't mean you're at any fault," She gently reassured him. "Sometimes we need people to be that gentle prod and guide us to talk about our feelings before it's too late and we explode on our own. And the fact that you were there for her, even just being there, that helps a lot. It really does." Her words seemed to have worked because his eyes brightened up and she could see the corners of his mouth tug into a small smile.

She thought some more about how to connect things to Serendipity as she rubbed her hands together.

"I think in this case, it was probably just Serendipity's name having a lot of meaning and powerful emotions attached to it. And you helped her release those emotions properly with someone to rely on nearby." She chewed the bottom of her lip trying to think of what else to say. "Serendipity, it is a beautiful name though. You were right on that. For me, I only know the meaning behind my Chinese name though. My mother picked it out for me." She scrunched up her face as she attempted to recall the meaning.

"It's 梁爱艳[Niu Ai Yan]. In Chinese culture, your surname is first. Hence why it starts with 'Niu' even though it's pronounced last in American culture when introducing yourself. It was passed down from my father's end even though he is only half Chinese. For 'Ai Yan', my first name in Chinese, it was something my mother decided upon. Ai means 'love' and Yan means 'beauty'. She said I was a representation of her and my father's love and their hope that their family life would be blissful. Apparently the word 'beautiful' was the first thing my father said when he met my mother and also when I was born. That was why she decided upon that name for me."

Connor stared wide-eyed at her story, "Your mother really put in a lot of thought in your name, it sounds like an amazing backstory. What about your American name of 'Alina'? Did your father choose it for you?"

"Yes," She nodded her head in response. "Though I don't really know his reasoning behind it. He never mentioned it before. But it's not a bad name either."

"I never knew that names were so important to humans before. For me, I was simply designated the name 'Connor' by CyberLife and it just stuck with me."

"Well, it's different for everyone," She said, taking a seat at the dining table after she finished setting up the table. "I think Connor is a good name for you too."

Connor pulled out a chair too, sitting at the table next to her, "Thanks."

She simply nodded back as she reclined her back to the chair to rest from the cooking.

"No, really." Connor said, speaking up again with a grateful expression. "For the talk about emotions. I'm still getting used to being a deviant and this conversation helped. Is it alright if I ask you more about emotions in the future?"

"Sure, I don't mind." She beamed back, happy that she was able to help Connor out.

"Oh yeah."

"Hm?" Alina looked to Connor's attention puzzled as he played around with the spoons.

"I think you forgot that I don't eat." He said, chuckling as he tapped the plate. "I just need to drink Thirium and I'm good."

"Oh shooot, sorry!" Alina shot up. "Where did you say the thirium packets were again?"

Connor didn't end up responding as he was laughing too much. Instead, he opted to get up and show her directly. Needless to say it was definitely going to take a while to get used to being in this new world. Hopefully she won't accidentally write 2018 on dates either. Externally she groaned at that settlement as Connor continued teasing her on her kitchen mishaps.

Connor teased her even more when he woke up Hank from the older man's nap.

Welp at least she got the majority of Day 2 in a new world down. Sorta.

I am going to be honest, for our little cooking session thing in the story, I legitimately forgot about the stovetop being on and then i realized i forgot and had to like write it in xD

I also wrote half of the story while starving XD bc my parents were arguing in the kitchen so idk y i just started story wrting bc i didnt want to get breakfast at 12pm soooo hopefully my grammar is correct? I should not have written a kitchen scene while starving

Also i wanted this to be a sorta step by step process of how to make fried rice to spread amazing asian food but then it ended up sorta getting intertwined with teh story line so imma just post a link to a fun youtube video i liked in the past that has different ways to do fried rice. Was going to make an original tumblr post on it but finals got me hunkered down :( but i hope u guys will still check it out, this channel is super fun n amazing, i love them a lot:just add youtube to this following extention watch?v=qH_o17xHls [5 mins easy Egg Fried Rice recipe) Check out their other vids tooooo. YAYYY FOR AMAZING DELICIOUS FOOOD

Welp story thoughts:

-Not as fluffy as I wanted it to be but i think for emotional development on Connor's end this was pretty nice

-it was also funny writing the cooking scene because I basically used my dad's horrible cooking skills as like my inspiration

-"梁爱艳" this chinese last name of 'niu' is actually pronounced as liang in mandarin, but 'niu' is a variation of it and also shorter too

Q&A!

Do you guys know why your parents chose the name that they had for you? Any stories behind it? Or nicknames too?