[Neo Zone] Population: 23 Kids

Worst of the Worst

If anyone had been paying attention to what Skip was doing, they would've realized that's why their salt keeps getting replaced with curry powder and their water with Sprite. Well, Renjun knew what Skip was doing, he was just choosing to ignore him at the moment.

"We're halfway through our allotted time, ladies and gentlemen. Lucas has already finished with his dish, he hasn't let us see it yet, but he says it's done, we have no idea why Jeno's cooking, he's not even in this-"

"I told you, I'm making homemade strawberry milk." Jeno interrupted, Hendery continuing regardless.

"-and Jisung is spacing out when he's supposed to be washing vegetables, but it's an interesting match. Stay tuned for the results." Hendery announced as if he was hosting a cooking show.

They might as well have been doing a cooking show, except instead of finding who was the best of the best, they were finding who was the worst cook out of the worst. 

So Xiaojun, Lucas, Jisung, WinWin, and Ten were competing. Mark and Shotaro would have been dragged into the competition, but they were at their actual parents' house. They also could've added more into the competition, but for space reasons they went with the worst five.

Taeil, Kun, Jaemin and Chenle were on the judges panel waiting for the allotted hour to finish while everyone else just watched. They were allowed to be used for help, but only if they agreed to surrender half a point from their final score if they did.

Chenle was making sure to tally every time a miniscule piece of advice was given, so Jungwoo had a separate chart of times someone was helped that wasn't for the safety of the group. Like telling Lucas to wash his hands after licking his finger or reminding WinWin to roll up his sleeves.

"Ji, something wrong with the vegetables?" Jeno asked, startling Jisung out of his daze.

"Hm? Yeah, do I use dish soap to wash them?"

"How in the world has he not accidentally killed himself yet?" Sungchan whispered to Jaehyun, genuinely concerned.

"Just use water." Jeno instructed, Chenle marking that as the tenth time Jisung has gotten help from someone.

Jisung nodded, saying something about how he thought so, as he started washing them. No one was sure what he was making, but all he had so far was the celery he was just now washing. Apparently he had been staring at it for half an hour.

After painfully watching them finish up what they were doing in the last half of their time frame- Xiaojun having got out a fire extinguisher when he himself was about to cook- Hendery announced that time was up.

"Would you like to explain your dish?" Hendery asked, holding a spatula out to Lucas as a microphone.

"It's ramen."

"Oh how very exquisite." YangYang quipped.

"Just ramen?" Hendery followed up, and Lucas motioned back to his work station.

"You guys saw me get out the ramen packet. It's still there."

The judges nodded, testing the ramen with straight faces and ever so secretly writing down their score out of eleven. Why eleven? Because they could.

"How many points does he get off for outside help?" Jaehyun asked Jungwoo, but Chenle answered instead.

"Two whole points."

"He gets a half off." Jungwoo corrected, the judges (except Chenle) subtracting Jungwoo's count instead of Chenle's.

"Thank you for your submission. Ten! Would you like to explain your dish?" Hendery asked, his spatula being swatted away.

"I made a traditional Thai dish passed down in my family for generations. It means a lot for me today to be here and make this." He wiped a fake tear from his eye as he set the pot down in front of the judges to the table with a full bow.

"This is just melted ice cream with fruity pebbles, marshmallows, rainbow sprinkles and chocolate syrup." Jaemin pointed out skeptically when he peeked into the pot.

Ten didn't seem to care, still caught up in his fake emotions.

"I'm going to die if I eat this." Jaemin said, which was Ten's plan. If one of the judges couldn't eat his dish, that was one less person to take points off from him.

"I'll do it!" Haechan offered, switching places with Jaemin for the time being and giving Ten a score instead.

Ten was surprisingly the only person who didn't have any points taken off for getting help, even on Chenle's paper. Though if you really look at what he made, it's not that surprising.

"Ten, we all know you can cook a lot better than that." Johnny commented with a sigh.

"Yeah, but if you all voted for me to be one of the worst with these losers, I'm going to act like I'm the worst."

"I think Ten's dish is amazing, groundbreaking even." Yuta said.

"Yeah, if you eat enough of it you'll be fat enough to be groundbreaking." Renjun muttered under his breath, the comment missed by Taeil suddenly getting up for water.

"Why is it so spicy?!"

"I didn't touch the spice."

"I was watching him, he didn't." Taeyong backed him up, but Taeil knew someone had dumped spice into his ice cream soup.

That of course, had been the doing of Skip, resulting in Ten loosing a lot of points from Taeil.

WinWin had made leek and potato stew (but without the leeks), which was for some reason very carbonated (again, Skip), and Xiaojun had made kimchi pancakes. At least, that's what they think they were supposed to be.

Jisung had taken a different approach, mainly because no one wanted him anywhere near a hot surface. So he made ants in a log. Better known as celery sticks with peanut butter in the middle and raisins on top.

Jisung's was the only one Skip hadn't tampered with, Lucas's tampering having been unnoticeable and Xioajun's was so messed up Skip didn't even bother with messing with it.

"We added up the scores, and it was a very close competition-" Kun started before Xiaojun interrupted.

"You should say second through fourth first instead of saying who is the worst."

"I was getting there."

The list of scores was then passed to Doyoung to announce, the contestants waiting anxiously.

"Second place, as in the second worst of the worst... is Ten. Third is Lucas, and fourth is Jisung."

"How is he not worse than I am?!" Lucas exclaimed, pointing to Jisung.

"Because his was adorable and not from a package." Jaemin explained, Lucas still finding that to be unfair.

"Fifth place, as in the best of the worst, goes to WinWin-"

"Does this mean he lost?" Sungchan asked, the room pausing.

"I mean, is being deemed the worst really winning?" WinWin pointed out, Xiaojun nodding excessively.

"Absolutely because I won.

"Did you really, though?"

That debate continued for the rest of the night, but there was one thing they were all certain of. None of them were going to be allowed to cook.

Chapter idea credit to Crimson (my little brother)