One piece ONE SHOTS

Day 2

Ace

~{You're point of view}~

It's was the annual cooking knowing competition which is televised each year, it's always before Christmas and everyone loves to watch it and see everyone make their own food for the show.

Each year, everyone who joins the competition will be told what to recreate, but you're allowed to make you're own twist to it. The prize is obviously money, like any competition that's televised.

I was lucky enough to be able to join in this year as contestant and not someone who's watching the show. I'm so excited right now, I want to prove myself to everyone and show how good I am with cooking!

So here I am on stage with a pretty good amount of contestants this year, ready to be told what to recreate.

-"Hello and welcome everyone! Here are our new contestants this year, this year we we're able to get the double amount of contestants and here's the reason why! Our marvelous judges, wanted to have a twist to change things up! So they have decided to have everyone pared up by a partner by random and see how they'll cook!" My stomach dropped at the pit of mu stomach once I hear everything the announcer says. I'm going to be paired up with someone? Someone who I do not know? Oh god this'll go really bad.

-"And for the prize money we have decided to also double that amount so the two contestants that are paired up and win the prize will be able to split the money!" Right, the prize money. To be honest I don't really care about the prize money, but at least they took that into consideration.

-"As for the food creation's, you may pick anything you want to make, but I must be a desert and the desert must either be a cake, a pie, or some cookies that are different than you're usual store bought ones!" Well, that's going to be interesting with negotiation with some of the groups.

-"Now for the real fun to begin! The partners you're going to join up with is quite simple, you're all going to grab a piece of paper in this box here, the number on the paper will be who you're partnered up with. Once you obtain your paper wait to find your partner with the same number on the paper! Have fun!" Once the lady announces the rules for the partnership we're going to have to do, she then takes a white box and places it on a table and lets everyone to go and grab their paper.

Once I get my paper I look at the number to see whom I got. I got number "2".

I look around the crowded area where everyone was trying to find their partner, left and right I would see people finding their partner, but I hadn't yet. Just until I see a guy who was sitting on a table sound asleep. 

How could he sleep in this enormous crowd and fall asleep?

I shake him once or twice lightly trying to wake him up, but nothing happens. I try again, but he still seems to be sound asleep. That's when I decided not to go so gentle and kind of slap him out of his sleep. Which seems to be working as he now awake, stretching and yawning.

-"Oh shit! I fell asleep again!" Once the man realizes that he was asleep earlier he springs up trying to act as if it never happened. He looks again at the piece of paper he has that was in his pocket.

-"Hey, thank you for helping me get up." He whispers to me.

-"No problem, I'm just wondering how you were able to when it's so loud." The man awkwardly chuckles while scratching that back of his head.

-"Yeah. Can I ask a favour? I just need to find my partner who's got number 2. Would you know someone?" So the man who was sleeping is my partner? Huh. This'll be quite interesting.

-"Actually I'm your partner." I say, as I show him my paper showing that bold black number.

-"Oh wow! That's great!" The man smiles brightly.

-"Now since we've found each other how about we start off by figuring out what we want to bake?"

-"Sure. I'm not really much of a baker, so do you have any ideas to start off with?"

-"I was wondering if we could try to do a crème brûlée? I know how to make some really good ones."

-"Sounds great! Oh, right! What's your name?"

-"My name is (Y/n). How about you? Or should I just call you sleepy head?" the man chuckles.

-"Nah. Just call me Ace."

-"Alright then Ace, it's nice to meet you."

Now since we both agreed on cooking the crème brûlée we both go and find a station to start off, once we do I tell him all the ingredients that we'll need to use. Once I finish Ace rushes towards the pantry. I mean I was going to go too, but I guess he wanted me to do the other stuff?

I preheat the oven and I grab all the bowls, measuring cups, and containers that we'll need to use and once I finished with the quick prepping Ace comes rushing back with all the ingredients. Perfect.

Now with all the ingredients we now start actually cooking. We start by heating the cream in the saucepan with the vanilla pod inside for about five minutes. While I let Ace take care of that and keeping an eye on them I start with the whisking the egg yolks and the sugar. Once Ace was finished with the cream he puts the hot saucepan into my bowl so I can finish mixing. 

Once finished we put the mixture into the containers and we bake it for 40 minutes. 

While we waited for those 40 minutes to finish we got to talk and know each other, because what else could we do? He's an interesting person that's for sure.

Once we heard the ding from the oven we pull out the tray and let it cool off quickly before we put it into the refrigerator. After I put the containers into the refrigerator for it to cool off Ace brings out a timer so we don't make it into blocks of ice if we leave it in for too long.

And again we wait, and boy o we wait a long time, we look around to see how the other contestants are doing, someone is making apple pie, another station is making a five tear cake! Everyone is making their own thing and it's actually pretty fun to watch. 

Ace and I still talk, but this time we make a few little bets as jokes to see who's going to be the first to burn their food or who's going to drop their pans and so on. We both laugh and have fun. But of course at some random time he goes to sleep. I panic, but then I remember what he said to me earlier that he has narcolepsy, which now makes sense why he's asleep right now and when I first met him.

Luckily he's asleep while we we're talking and not when we we're cooking as that could've gone much worse. I profusely shake Ace again which wakes him up. He apologizes, but I can't respond him as the timer for our food make the largest noise possible. 

We both try to shut it up, but it seems to have a mind of it's own and just wants to make itself annoying. That's when we realize there's a button to shut it up. We both laugh but rush our way towards our food and taking it out of the freezer. 

We put the sugar coting on top, but I couldn't find the torch for burning the sugar. I slightly panic as that's what makes it a crème brûlée, but Ace comes to the rescue. 

-"Don't worry, I am a human torch." He lifts up a finger and a flame appears. For the most part he does the torching, but I guess his mind was wandering while doing so because he asks me to actually use him as a torch. 

I stare at him as if he's talking a different language, but I agree none a less because I can't lie, it's probably going to look dumb but funny.

He let's me grab his arm, and I use his hand to burn the top sugary part of the crème brûlée.

Once we finish with our desert, the timer runs out. We just made it. 

We bring our desert to the judges and they do like the idea of making a crème brûlée for the competition. They try it and they really like it. We don't go in the top five but they do reward us for our great efforts and they even say that they found it hilarious how I used Ace as a human torch. We get 7th place.

Still me and ace cheer as we still got in the top 10 from 30 different teams.

-End-

~~~

Hello sorry this was a day late, I was just so exhausted and fell asleep for too long. Part 3 is coming soon!

-Rin