Peppermint

Chapter 19 - Sultans Of Swing

***GABE***

"Where's the rest of our friends?" TJ asks me. "Fionna, Kensi, and them?"

Yash, who's just shown up again, rolls his eyes behind TJ's back. "If you're gonna forget my name, at least do me the decency of not assuming my gender."

"Where'd you come from?" I ask. "Didn't you...weren't you..."

"The elevator's taking its sweet time to get up here," Yash mutters. "That Javi guy says when it gets reactivated after a long shutdown period, it's not moving at 100% speed. It'll take a couple of minutes for that to happen."

"Is that my fault?" TJ looks so bemused.

Just as we reach the elevator, the lights shut down again for two seconds, then come back on for one second, then flicker repeatedly. After about half a minute, they stay off for good. "Goddammit," I growl. "Penner must've really screwed this shit up." With Yash's helping hands, and TJ lighting the way for us, I force some ice in the gap between the elevator doors and push them open. The elevator is stuck several floors down from us, immobile.

"So who wants to climb down this shaft first?" asks TJ.

I pretend to look around. "Where's Violet Baudelaire when you need her?"

"Not here, 'cause she doesn't exist, I'm afraid." Yash snaps his fingers. "But I think I can do in a pinch." He looks around and finds Javi standing by, his hand on the gun holstered at his hip. "Dude, where's the kitchen?"

"The...oh yeah, this way." Javi beckons us forward. "Lucky you, man, it's on this floor. But what do you need to eat for? Brain food? We don't got too many of that here, we're a prison. Unless you're talkin' 'bout the chili, 'cause I'm pretty sure that shit's got actual mad cow brains in it-"

Yash sticks his fingers into his mouth and pretends to gag himself with a spoon. "No, that's not cow brains, that's cow's arse. Shredded strips of a cow's-"

"All right, all right, I get it. You young millennial vegetarians and your guacamole bull-"

"It's not just 'cause I'm a millennial-"

"And don't tell me I'm Mexican and should know all about guac, I'm not even Mexican, I'm Salvadoran-"

"Guys. Guys. GUYS!" I yell until they both shut up. Almost meekly, Javi unlocks the galley for us and stands aside so we can file in. "All right, Yash, what's the plan?" I ask. TJ bobs his head furiously as he nods along with me. He keeps his mouth shut, though, like he's afraid if he'll speak up, Penner will hijack his vocal chords again.

"Step 1, get ahold of all the donut batter and saffron this place has to offer." Yash starts doing so, raiding the pantry and tossing anything he doesn't need over his shoulder, heedless of how dirty he's now making the floor by dropping boxes full of Cheetos and Fritos bags. "Step 2, find a pot to cook it all in. Step 3, demonstrate my superpower for you guys at last, 'cause I know it's been on all your minds."

TJ finally opens his mouth with a well-placed joke. "Step 4, profit?"

I fist-bump him. "Couldn't have said it better myself."

Javi side-steps Yash and his avalanche of the worst of the mass-manufactured chip world. And here I thought a lot of the big brand names from Nabisco and shit were harder to come by around here. "Special imports," I remember Russell used to call them. "You said saffron?" He reaches into the pantry and plucks a small container from one of those spinning spice racks full of ingredients nobody ever uses for anything. In my family, that is.

Yash eyeballs the container and scoffs. "L'Aquila saffron? Please. Indian saffron or bust!"

"It's all we got," Javi says with a scoff of his own.