Disclaimer: I don't own it

A/N: thanks to my wonderfulbeta johi!
Aeris: Thank you very much for your long review! I has really made me happy. And you don't have to be sorry that your review actually was long! I was really happy about that. I appreciate very much that you did tell me what exactly you liked! It was very encouraging for me... yeah, sometimes I get a bit depressed when I get few reviews, but as long as there are such as yours, I find, that I don't mind anymore. Anyway, I love writing and I will keep writing anyway, so I hope you enjoy the next chapter as well!...ah yes, I speak German, English and French... and you?

so then... enjoy reading. Thischapter is written in a different style than the others.

Chapter 9: Chaos made clear

Arriving at the open porch door Rei suddenly stopped dead.

Kai who happened to be walking a step behind, only just avoided crashing into him. But as soon as his eyes became aware of the sight that greeted him in the kitchen he froze as well in his movements. Completely gobsmacked, the two boys stood and looked as one single word flashed up in their otherwise empty-stunned brains: CHAOS. Complete and utter chaos.

Intermezzo: Chaos made clear

There is a fourfold attack on the senses of our poor newcomers. The sight of pure chaos greets them first. Upon realising what the black smoke drifting out of the porch door is, the sense of smell adds its discomfort, telling that some kind of food is burning to the degree of being reduced to coal. Maybe at the same time, there is an assault on the eardrums, five times louder than the maximum volume of every discman. And there is the unmistakable feeling of dread that grips the nerves of the two teenagers on the doorstep.

The scene presents itself as such:

Currently, there are four people located in the kitchen: Tyson, Max, Kenny and Hilary. And a laptop, that should not be omitted, because of its considerable contribution to the chaos. Thus, making five persons in the total.

Everyone knows that situations such as the given favour chaotic development. And maybe some know as well that the degree of disruption of order (the increase of chaos) increases logarithmically. In other words: if you have five persons in a kitchen, all contributing to chaos, the net amount of chaos is not, I repeat: not, chaos multiplied with five. A chaos of five persons is chaos of one person to the power of five. Which means that every person doesn't add his/her inherent amount of chaos, but the inherent chaos of each person increases with each next person added to the system.

That's the theory. Let's have a look at the practice.

The first question that floods the mind of the two onlookers is: What the hell is Tyson doing in the kitchen?

Tyson is at the moment shouting at the top of his lungs, easily being the loudest of the attendant persons. He bawls unintelligible sounds, but it is clear what he means. He is torn between two actions: first, he is trying to get the food the others are trying to cook into meals. Second, telling from the movements of his hands, he is trying to strangle Hilary. But, as he is unable to do so, he tries to kill her by shouting (evidently to no avail, because no one has ever heard of someone being shouted to death).

Then there is the reason Tyson neither reaches the food nor Hilary: Max.

Max is holding Tyson back. And he is holding a huge knife in his right hand. Fortunately for Tyson, Max isn't intending to use the knife on him. But somehow, Tyson is still cowed by Max, because the blonde blader, who now wears a yellow apron over his orange dungarees, is gesticulating when he speaks (or rather, shouts). Thus the knife is sometimes objectionably near to Tyson's nose.

The knife's original purpose had been chopping carrots. The carrots, some cut into irregular pieces, some cut in half, some still whole lie strewn around the table. They lie open or hide between bags of onions and potatoes. Or in the shopping bag that still is on the table. Or they hide behind the bottle of coke that - of course without lid - stands too near to the edge of the table. Some carrots are decorating the uncooked meat waiting to be processed. In short, the carrots are everywhere but on the chopping board, where they are supposed to be.

One half of Max is trying to stop Tyson. The other is shouting to Kenny, who is trying to shout back. They barely understand each other, but in truth, the conversation is pretty much like this.

Max: Kenny, where is the rum? I can't see the rum! Where is it! We can't cook without rum! There always has to be rum in desserts! Grandma says, every cake needs rum! The alcohol leaves when baking, but the taste remains. If the rum isn't there, we have to buy rum. Kenny, where is the rum? I can't see the rum! Where is it! We can't cook without rum!

Kenny's answer is always pretty much like this: What did you say? I don't know.

A rather one-sided conversation, but as no one understands the other, it doesn't really matter.

The reason, why Max is talking to Kenny about the rum is that Kenny is emptying the shopping bags and putting their content into the various cupboards and into the fridge. He is trying to put things into order. But in the chaos, he is overlooking the fact that in the cupboards and the fridge there isn't nearly enough free space as to accommodate all the stuff.

But instead there is the floor. No one should be made to imagine what the kitchen floor looks like.

Another hindrance in Kenny's task is the fact that, despite Max' efforts at holding Tyson back, Kenny has to be very careful to dodge Tyson's greedy grip. The bluehead has very good intuition and reflexes when groping for food.

Additionally, in between, he is washing the dishes that have remained from the last week. So sometimes it happens that he uses a plate full of dish liquid foam to shield the food from Tyson.

Kenny is shouting as well, mostly for people to get out of his way. His voice is the smallest of all, so nobody heeds him. But as Kenny is a pretty small boy he is able to scurry like a mouse between the others.

Then, of course, there is the girl, Hilary. She is the one producing most of the smells. Actually, not she herself. She stands in front of the stove, two wooden spoons in every hand, trying to stir in three pots at once. The reward of her efforts is – the black smoke irritating everyone's noses.

At least the kitchen is not on flames.

Even though all of her food is burning in the pans, only half of her attention is on the stirring. (Which is pretty useless at this state of cooking anyway. If three different kinds of food in three different pans all look the same indistinguishable grey-black, then where is the point of stirring any more?) Of course it could be useful to turn the stove off, but unfortunately Hilary is too distracted for that. Because? Because she is shouting at Tyson. (Who is trying to strangle her, remember?) And what is she shouting at Tyson? Among all possible, nutty things to do or to say, she is commanding him! Yes, commanding. She is commanding him to help them! She is commanding him to stir, to chop, to mash and to wash up!

A very unwise thing to do. Especially if Tyson is not supposed to be doing any work on this dinner. It's a reconciliation deed of the others for him. So, no wonder he is irate about her demands.

Well, be it as it is. This is the practical explanation of the mathematical theory at the beginning. It should be pretty clear by now, neh? Chaos to the power of five. Just imagine the noise and the smell and the food lying everywhere and rolling around everywhere and people shouting, panicking; lots of colourful pictures, people with aprons…

And, of course, there is Dizzi. Since she can't move around, one should think her chaotic abilities decreased. But fear not! You can rely on Dizzi! She is able to compensate for that. This laptop has very high-developed loudspeakers.

Dizzi is evidently enjoying the whole cooking business. Sometimes she shouts something at people. Something useless, maybe. Telling the others to get to work. Or telling them recipes. But, really, most of the time she uses the laptop's loudspeakers for atmospheric value. She plays music. Very loud, very cheerful music. She doesn't care that people have eardrums or that they are shouting. She thinks people have more fun when working with music. Sometimes Dizzi is singing with the songs but fortunately most of the time, she isn't. It's bad enough as it is.

Her other, likewise not inconsiderable contribution to the chaos is that she keeps mixing up the recipes, giving the poor, inexperienced cooks not one chance to get anything right. No one knows if she's doing it on purpose or if she is just infected by the atmosphere of chaos in the room.

Anyway, no one notices. Because fact is that any kind of information tends to get lost in chaotic surroundings.

So. All of these things of course happen at once. Tyson shouting, trying to strangle Hilary, being held back by Max, who is holding a knife in his hands and shouting for rum. Kenny, who, like a mouse, dodges between the feet of people carrying food from here to there and using half-washed plates as shields against a greedy Tyson. Hilary, who burns all the food on the stove and commands Tyson to help and Dizzi, who provides background music to the shouting and tells people wrong recipes. Maybe now you can understand why the two just arrived teenagers seem to be frozen in time and why they are considerably paler than before.

It takes them only one second to see everything described above.

But it takes them further nine seconds to believe it.

Rei's nightmares had already shown him a disaster in the kitchen, but this reality is something even his nightmares shy back from. But at least he had been rudimentarily prepared. This is why it only takes him five more seconds to react.

Which makes a total of fifteen seconds. Needless to say, that none of the attendees in the kitchen have noticed them yet.

As said before, chaos increases logarithmically to the amount of persons involved. To the bliss of the Bladebreakers there are some people who don't care for mathematics.

Rei is one of these persons.

He surveys the situation for another second, thus sixteen and then decides on action.

First thing, he leans over to Kai so his mouth almost touches the Russian's ear. He asks him for a favour. Kai doesn't even really notice this, as he is still in a state of shock. Only later will he realize that he nodded in answer to Rei's request.

The neko-jin is satisfied.

Rei drew himself up to his full height. (It didn't have much effect, because he usually stood as upright as possible. But still he did it, just for good measure.) He took a step forward, now standing in the open porch door, surveying the whole kitchen. He drew in a deep breath, stretching his lungs as far as possible.

"QUIET!"

A/N: I loooove cooking! hihi...

I hope you weren't too confused by the 'theory of chaos' at the beginning, but it really was just for fun...writing kind of 'scientific' stuff. And the practice explains it pretty much, I think. :)
My favorite sentence is: '... there are some people who don't care for mathematics.'
I think I am one of these people. I'm not very good at it, I don't like it very much, and I live in the blissful -though illusional- conviction that I don't need it... :-)
Alas, like in the situation above, mathematics is really unnecessary... hehe