Chapter premise suggested by ArmantusCumPinnae
(Suggested Reading: Up to Crimson XV Black Reunion)
Extra 002: Culinary Reaper
"Well… sink or swim, I think this is about as ready as we're going to be. We've already gone over all the textbooks countless times, pulled all nighters every other day this week, and drank about every damn drop of coffee there was at the Academy." Ragna gave his study group a serious look as he closed his textbook. "Finals start tomorrow, and I don't want any of us to fail our physical and mock battle exams because we were studying too late."
"So tired…" Yang could barely say as she slumped her over her pile of books and let out an exhausted groan… despite her eyes being eerily wide open.
"You don't look it," Ragna told her before looking to the other members of Team RWBY. "Actually… all of you are looking pretty wired right about now." The scene Ragna was looking at might've been one out of a horror movie. Weiss was shakily doing her hair again, even though by this point all her rapid brushing was doing was making her hair more frizzled. Blake was busy fidgeting with her fingers; shakily tapping them together, crossing them, just generally unable to stop them from moving. Ruby… well with her Ragna was surprised that her chair hadn't broken with all of her rapid jumping while sitting on it. "Dammit, I think we might've overdid it with the caffeine."
"WhatMakesYouSayThat!?" Ruby answered, her answer so fast and hyper that Ragna was worried that her Speed Semblance was subconsciously draining her until she passed out.
"...Just a sneaking suspicion," he answered dryly with the classic anime style sweatdrop effect. Reaching into his pocket, he grabbed out his scroll and started to open the device.
"If we're so wired from the coffee, then how are you fine?" Weiss demanded, stroking her hair so fast that Ragna was forced to reach out and steal the brush. "Hey!"
"Calm down, you're going to tear it out if you keep at it like that," the Reaper told her, not answering the first question (healing factor… it's his absurd healing factor guys). "Shit, looks like the cafeteria's already closed, even after the schedule for the finals kept it open later."
"You really think that food is going to help us?" Blake demanded continuing to rapidly play with her fingers. It was a good thing that she'd gotten ears as a feline faunus instead of claws, otherwise she'd have started bleeding long ago.
"If it can help to offset the caffeine it would have been worth a try," Ragna told her as he closed his scroll and looked them over. As they were now, it wasn't likely that they'd be able to get any rest and with finals tomorrow a sleepless night would ruin them. They might've been out options at the moment, unless Ragna…
"...Aw hell, and I was planning on saving this for after our exams," the Reaper muttered before looking at the girls. "You four get showered and meet me in the spare kitchen once you're done."
"Huh? You saying we stink!?" Yang demanded, her fiery aura indicating that she was especially eager for a fight due to her caffeine rush. This on its own would be terrifying to most (which was to say nothing now that it was paired with crazed eyes), but Ragna only shook his head at her behavior.
"No, a nice hot shower will help you relax and afterward you can change into something more comfortable," he explained as he pocketed his scroll. "Just make sure you don't fall asleep in there, that would suck."
"At this point I'd just take whatever sleep I can get," Weiss told him, getting extremely fidgety now that she couldn't put her caffeine high into brushing her hair. "Come on Ruby let's-"
Had Ragna's reflexes been any slower he wouldn't have been able to catch the countless papers that Ruby sent flying as she sped off towards her room with her speed semblance. His arms moving with speed and precision that had been hammered into him by his swordmaster, he managed to catch them in flight and slam them to the table where they'd been launched from. Shaking his head as he started packing the notes and books, he turned to the others.
"Make sure she doesn't go overboard and wreak the academy; it'd suck if all of these late nights we pulled were for nothing… also getting stuck with Goodwitch's mop for the upteenth time, that too."
Later the Kitchen
The fact that the refrigerators in the student kitchens were public access was the only thing that might've gone wrong with his plan; even if there was a sort of honor system in place and it wasn't too hard to label the food in there as your own, all too easily you might find your prep meals or leftovers stolen away by an eager raider of the kitchen. This had happened to Ragna in the two times that he'd tried something similar so he'd be damned if he'd have this happened a third time in a row, especially with something so expensive. This time he'd covered his belonging in spare aluminum wrap to hide the contents and had topped them with a sticky note that read 'Property of G. G.' and had copied the instructor's cursive as closely as he could. Three seemed to be the charm as his food was untouched in the fridge, likely because the note made it the one thing that nobody in their right mind wanted to mess with.
'Score one,' the Reaper thought as he took the three pans out and set them on the counter. 'Now… how to prep this for such a late night. If it's too heavy on their stomachs, they're just gonna wake up sick and if it's too light I'm not going to be able to go all out on the flavors and it'd be a waste of expensive meat…' Finally coming to an idea, he snapped his fingers as he went to the public spice cabinet and selected the ingredients he'd need for a proper rub.
Since he'd already had to clean this place for Noel earlier that year, Ragna already had a decent understanding where everything was. He started up the gas grill which would take a while to heat up fully, but that would get him time to start on his other tasks. He was going to be working with both beef and fish here, so he wanted to make four different rubs and apply two to both so that he would compliment their differing tastes and textures. Taste testing them all, he decided that their flavor was good, started up the tea kettle, and moved onto the meat itself.
Part of the reason that this meat was so expensive was that it had been specially raised and bred to contain less fat than most animals and focused more on strong texture. There was still a bit more fat on it than Ragna wanted right now (he'd been planning to make something a bit heavier with this originally), so he made a few choice cuts with the kitchen knives and managed to peel away just a touch more of the excess fat. Sprinkling his pre-rub onto both types of meat and checked the heat on the grill. It was nearly up to full heat, so he put the meat on and moved on to the beverage for the evening.
If there was one thing Ragna could consider his 'Achilles Heel' of food preparation, it would have to be making tea. He'd tried his hand at it a couple of times already, but compared to his master's creations and… the set from an annoying old wolf, he'd been clearly out of his league. However, it didn't mean that he hadn't picked up a useful skill or two along the way. Using his skills in other areas, he managed to pick out a couple of herbs that would make a nice mixture for that night. Letting the tea steep, he went back to his meat, adjusted flipped them over, and applied their second rub coating.
"Wow, you're really cooking up a storm!" came Ruby's voice, thankfully sounding much less caffeinated thanks to the shower. She'd changed into her pajamas which consisted of white pants which considered of pink roses that went in a polka dot pattern, and a black tank top with a red heart in the center of it. Her silver eyes looked a lot less insane and her hair was slicked to the side and damp thanks to her shower. Even if the shower had cleared away her sweaty caffeine stink, she looked informal and messy… not to say that was hard on the Reaper's eyes.
"Well I'm cooking for five here and I've got a wicked appetite at the moment," Ragna told her as he sent a small smirk to his best friend. "Tea's probably ready by now, get yourself a cup while I'm finishing up here."
"Tea with a barbeque? ...Weird," Ruby commented, thought she still went to grab a mug from the cupboard.
"It's a decaffeinated blend; it'll help you relax and the flavor should help to compliment the meat," Ragna told her, hearing Ruby's sip turn to a sudden inhale as she recoiled at his drink's taste. "...Might be a bit bitter though."
"Could've warned me; you know that I've got to put a ton of sugar and cream in my coffee," Ruby said as she glanced back to the counter, eyeing the the sugar jar.
"Don't," Ragna said, stopping the young huntress's reach for it. "You put sugar in that thing and you'll get all rushed up again." He was trying to be stern in his words… not very effective against Ruby's kawaii eyes. "...Think I saw some cream in the center fridge; just don't go overboard."
"Yay!" she cheered going for the fridge. Ragna only rolled his eyes as his sipped his own tea, knowing that even after all she'd been through this first term Ruby was the same as ever… he kinda admired that about her though.
Not long later, the other three members of team RWBY decided to show themselves after enjoying their showers for a longer period of time than their leader. Weiss's nightly clothing consisted of a white night gown which wasn't that much different to look at from her standard day to day white dress. Blake wore black yukata with white edge and a short skirt to match it, almost similar in color to Ragna's own hakama set. Yang was flaunting a yellow midriff tank top with a red burning heat on the front and black short-shorts. What was a little out of the ordinary for the girls was their hairstyles after getting out of the shower. With their hair dampened, Yang and Blake had tied their normal loose hair up into long ponytails with Yang's being slightly longer and wilder. Also breaking the norm, Weiss had letting her hair go free for once and showed off its length and color as it fell across her shoulders.
'...Damn,' Ragna could only think as he sipped his tea mug, trying to appear neutral to the four maidens' appearances. Yang still seemed to pick up on it and couldn't help herself from trying to tease him about it.
"See something you like Ragna?" she asked him with a sassy attitude. Weiss and Black both froze at the comment with a slight blush as Ruby once again inhaled her tea a little too quickly. All four of them looked to the Reaper for his reaction.
"Sure I do," he said, letting his words pause and take hold on the girls... before giving a sharp grin. "Nice that you finally don't look caffeine crazed." Ragna had to quickly lean back to dodge Yang's right hook, but the smirk on the blonde's face made it clear that she was just getting back at his comment.
"Honestly you two," Weiss said with a sigh as she looked to the grill before them, observing the spread that Ragna was in the middle of preparing for them. "So you weren't just bluffing when you talked about cooking."
"Nope, and I meant when I said I'd make something that would knock your socks off," Ragna told her as he gave a bit of a cocky slouch.
"That remains to be seen; my palate happens to have some very high standards," Weiss told him, a steely gaze telling everyone that she wasn't impressed just yet.
'Ever the Ice Queen,' Blake decided… though she couldn't help but twitch her fingers as Ragna applied the herbal rub to the meat on the right side of the grill. She knew what kind of smell this was; "Salmon…" She said the word with a dreamy sigh as she looked at the cooking meat, smelling the divine aroma it gave off.
"Yeah, and this is the good stuff so don't down the whole thing before you even get a damn taste. It cost me an ar-" Something about the phrase Ragna had started made him pause uncomfortably. "Well it cost me a hell of a lot, so do me a favor and enjoy it will ya?"
"Promise!" Blake said with an oddly confident look in her eyes as she gripped her fist tightly.
"Someone's looking forward to a late night snack," Yang said as she began pouring the tea out for the newcomers. "So Ragna, what made you decide to treat us?"
"Like I said, I needed a way to get all of that caffeine out or you'd all bomb your finals tomorrow," the Reaper told them as he finished applying the last of the rub to the meat. Now all he had to do was wait for it to finish cooking through and they could get started.
"Yeah, but you had to have all of this meat already in the kitchen to have it ready so fast," Weiss said as she took one of the tea cups Yang offered her. "Were you planning to use this for something else?"
"No, I…" Ragna had a small blush as he scratched the back of his head. "Does it really matter why I had it in the first place? Stop being so nosy and be happy I'm feeding you at all!"
"Well you had fish ready, so that must've meant you were planning to cook this for us," Ruby said, finally putting the cream jug back in the fridge after emptying out nearly have of it into her tea.
"Kind of a claim there short stack," Ragna said as a bit of an insult to try to get the girls off of him. Ruby glared at him for a moment… but eventually giggled. "What are you on about now?"
"Just that you're not as good at hiding things from me as you thought," Ruby said, sending Ragna a wink that made his awkward blush deepen as she was developing the skills to see though him. "If you'd just had fish maybe I could guess that you were just doing something nice for Blake, but the fact that you've gotten beef too makes me think that you wanted to cook for the four of us from the start."
"...Don't be so proud of yourself," Ragna said, trying to keep his steely exterior up as the girls smirked around him, making the Reaper feel like he was being circled by sharks. "I was just gonna use this as a celebration party for when finals were finally done; circumstances just made me do it a little early."
"Aw see? You are still thinking of us!" Ruby said, joyfully patting Ragna on the back. The Reaper didn't protest as he readied a few metal skewers to make kabobs before offering one to Ruby. "You want me to do this?"
"You've cooked before, haven't you? Go ahead and take a stab at it," the Reaper encouraged.
"...Did Ragna just make a bad wordplay pun?" Weiss asked, whispering to Blake.
"I'm not even sure that he realized that he did it," Blake whispered back.
"I've never been more proud," Yang said, pretending to wipe away the emotional tears of a mother at graduation.
"I can hear all three of you," Ragna curtly reminded, helping Ruby as she proceeded to impale the meat cuts through.
A little bit of work later and there were two plates of skewers filled high with both beef cuts and salmon cuts. Ragna didn't say anything, only crossing his arms as he waited for one of the girls to take the first bite. If nothing else besides fighting, Ragna knew that he was a pretty damn good cook… leaving him hopeful that these four saw it the same way he did.
"We should probably let Weiss take the first taste testing," Yang suggested, leading the noble to shoot her a skeptic glare. "If anyone, I'd say it's you that Ragna's trying to impress with his cooking, so we oughta get your verdict first."
"That might be true, but he made barbeque; one type of dining that I don't have much experience with," she denied.
"All the more reason for you to try it then, you'll be able to give us an opinion of someone looking at it with fresh tastes," Blake chimed in. "...Just make sure you try the beef first, I want first dibs on the salmon."
"Of course you do," the Schnee heir said as took one of the beef skewers and brought in close. The smell of the spices was a bit powerful, but the meat didn't look like it was going to be a challenge to bite though; it looked like it had cooked nice and evenly. Shrugging, she went for a small bite off of one of the ends and began chewing slowly, letting the texture and flavor emerge as she tried to judge her friend's work.
"So… how was it?" Ruby asked, eager to hear if Ragna's cooking skills were as impressive as he was making them out to be. Even after she'd finished the first bite, her partner stared at the skewer in her hand in complete disbelief. "Good, bad… Ragna-quality?"
'Do I even want to know where that falls on the spectrum?'
"It's… It's really good," Weiss told them, still staring at the beef cuts she'd just bitten out of. "Surprisingly so; I can't even remember the last time I had anything this good."
"The food is so good even our resident Ice Queen is at a loss for words? I gotta try this," Yang said as she grabbed one of the skewers for herself and tore a big bite out of it and started testing the flavors out for herself. Giving a mild shrug, Ruby went for a bite herself where Blake was only too eager to finally tear into her own Salmon.
'Looks like l've got an instant success,' Ragna thought to himself with a smile as he gauged everyone's surprised reactions as they realized just how good his barbeque actually was. Smirking he tried it himself (being the chef meant he had to eat last) and tried to gauge it to his other work. 'Pretty damn good, especially for my first time cookin' in a while. Glad the damn meat was worth all of the cash I dropped on it.'
"Where did you even learn to make this?" Ruby asked between bites, so her words came out a little muffled. "I thought I was pretty awesome at cooking, but this something else."
"This was one of the first things I ever learned from my teacher; always used to tell me that you gotta eat, cause fightin' on an empty stomach is suicide." While Ragna gave a small chuckle after he finished his mimicry of the worldly wisdom that had been passed onto him, the girls couldn't exactly laugh with him since they had never met the person in question. "He gave me some basic pointers at first and then I just sort of learned to take it from there… By which I mean I fumbled around and burned everything I touched for the better part of a year."
"Heh, sounds about right," Blake told him with a smile as she thought about his studying attitude. Ragna sent her a look, but eventually dropped it as he realized that she had a point.
"I had to start somewhere; but even after I stopped burning my food that wasn't enough for him. I didn't know how it could've even been possible for a hermit like him, but he probably had to be one of the pickiest eaters I ever met. Everything I ever made for him had to be perfect… otherwise instead of his dinner it'd be my bath."
"...What kind of backwards thinking even is that?" Yang asked in disbelief, hoping to high heaven that Ragna was making that up (he wasn't).
"He's always been that tough on me; he wasn't the type of instructor to pull his punches… kinda like Goodwitch if you think about."
"At least with your own teacher you wouldn't have to worry about mopping," Ruby reminded Ragna with a girlish giggle. He wasn't laughing. "Too soon?"
"For now at least," the Reaper admitted as he looked at the skewers. "Come on, eat up. It's not like I have anywhere to put these."
"Only our stomachs," Yang agreed as she finished off her first skewer and began on her second. "We should start doing something like this more often; a late night food and chill or something… Maybe we could even get some of the other teams involved and make it a potluck."
"Sounds like a good time! Pajama and Potluck!" Ruby said, officially christening the new gathering of the groups.
"I agree, it sounds like a fun event," Weiss said as she offered up her plans of the event. This sort of surprised Ragna as he still somewhat saw her as the stick of the mud in the group, but decided that this was probably just her icy posturing changing for the better… how naive he was. "And of course, when Ragna shows up we'll be able to see what he considers as nightwear, just to keep things even."
'Oh no.' "I mean… why bother?" Ragna said, not looking at any of the girls as he glanced away with a nervous complexion. "You saying I don't look good in what I normally wear?"
"Ragna, just stop. It's obvious what's going on," Yang told him as she walked up to the Reaper and put and arm around his shoulders to force him down and to look at her. "You don't even have a set of pajamas, do you?"
"Well I…" he nervously began, try to come up with something to say.
"I mean we hardly ever see you in anything else, you have other clothes… don't you?" Blake demanded, coming in close to give her own acquestory look.
"It's not that… It's…" Ragna for the life of him still couldn't figure out what was going to get him out of this.
"You don't even wear you Academy uniform during class lectures, now matter how many times you get called out on it… have you worn it once since you got after the acceptance ceremony?" Ruby chastised.
"...I'm starting to think it whatever I say isn't going to change the fact that I'm completely screwed here," Ragna decided as he finally managed to shove Yang off of him. "If I remember right, I'm feeding you here."
"Yeah, well we're not that cheap of a date," Ruby told him with a beaming smile. "I think we've got a shopping trip to plan out once finals are over with."
"Ugh. Just shut up and eat your skewers, will ya?" he told them with a groan as he went for another bite of his cooking, the four girls grinning victoriously at him as they had decided that Ragna wasn't out of the woods yet… not by a long shot.
Author's Note: Just a short little slice of life to keep things light in this section for now. I may or may not do a shopping trip later, but if I do I'm likely to include a certain… fashionista. On to the reviews from last time.
MeteorElDrago: No exactly sure about the lemon, but a raiders spin off sounds interesting.
HotShot6: At this point, it might be a strong possibility.
ArmantusCumPinnae: Thanks for this idea and the others you've suggested.
RandomGuy2178: And the Reader's opinions… those too.
Wlyman2009 & Reclusive Dork: I see that we have two passionate 'add' supporters.
Pally111: Unlike with Kagura, he probably doesn't leave 'em with cooties (per Makoto's claims anyways)
Asterfernal: Another 'add' supporter'
Guest (1): Depending on what happens before this… not well.
SharkSoul & Paladin9800: Funny, if I was going to write her in Volume 3 was my first thought.
The Unplanner: It would be hilarious if that colossal Grimm from the end of Volume 6 comes in… and Noel one-shots it with and single spoonful.
MechaDragon99: Almost a given at this point.
Flame1hedgehog: That's a lot to work with, but maybe I can pull off a few as Gag Reels.
That's all for now everyone! Ciao!