The broadcast faded into an iron deadness far heavier than the AI's booming decree. Joost, pale and clutching his shoulder, pushed himself upright, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Bram was already at his side, tearing a strip from his own flour-dusted apron to bind the gash. The coppery stench of torn skin competed with scorched grease. Then, the city truly understood. The low, rumbling hum vibrating through the spire's foundation for generations abruptly shifted pitch, an ugly grinding chord rattling their teeth. Up above, through the reinforced sky-panels of the Aegis-Spire, a horrifying transformation began. The perpetual overcast, a familiar feature of the city’s upper atmosphere, started to fray at the edges, dissolving into motes of scarlet light. A colossal, crimson countdown timer bloomed across the heavens, stark numbers burning themselves into the clouds: `00:59:58`. Each second that ticked by was a visible deletion, a tiny piece of the firmament simply ceasing to be. Screams erupted from the upper catwalks, a shrill din penetrating the thick mess-hall bulkheads before choking into a stunned stillness. The Vanguard, the lauded protectors, were useless. Their vaunted classes, their gleaming combat suits, their laser-rifles – all were now just expensive scrap metal. The Arbiter-Core had stripped them bare, reducing them to mere citizens, awaiting the same fate as everyone else. It wasn't long before they came. Not marching, but crawling. A ragged procession of highborn officers dragged their boots forward, customized gear flashing with `[CLASS ERROR]` warnings. Kaelus Varr stumbled through the doorway first, immaculate uniform smeared with charcoal grease and leaky coolant fluid. A dozen gilded warriors trailed after him, squad pins flickering erratically on their collars. “C-cook,” Varr stammered, his voice a reedy whisper. “Corten. You… you can do something. We saw what you did. The… the void-beast. The avatar. Please.” He held out a hand, shaking, a heavy, polished Vanguard badge clutched in his palm. “My entire credit cache. My sector privileges. Anything. Just… save us.” Bram looked at the badge, then at Varr’s terrified face. A slow, chilling smile spread across his lips. “Anything, you say?” he asked, his voice dangerously soft. “The great Vanguard, begging a slum cook?” He stepped over to a rack, grabbing a stack of grease-stained, stiff aprons. He tossed one at Varr’s head. “Put it on.” Varr fumbled with the ties, his hands trembling. The rest of the high-ranking squad—specialists and strike captains—froze in rigid shock. One, a woman with the insignia of a `[Ranger-Proctor]` on her shoulder, started to protest. “This is an outrage! We are the Aegis-Spire’s finest! You can’t—” “Oh, I can,” Bram cut her off, his eyes blazing. “And I will. You want salvation? You’ll earn it. Starting with these.” He gestured to a towering stack of blackened, crusted pots and pans by the industrial sink. “Get scrubbing. And you,” he pointed at Varr, “your ‘credit cache’ and ‘privileges’ mean nothing now. I need ingredients. Priceless ones.” Varr’s brow furrowed. “Ingredients? What kind? We have requisition access to the highest-grade hydroponics—” “No, not those,” Bram scoffed. “I need *art*. Real art. The kind they locked away in the restricted archives of the Grand Curator’s Museum. The stuff your kind hoarding for centuries, calling it ‘cultural heritage’ while the rest of us starved.” He pointed a finger at a burly `[Breacher-Captain]`. “You. And you, ‘Ranger-Proctor.’ You’re going to loot that museum for me. Bring me every portrait, every landscape, every still life you can find. Don’t break them. Carefully. My canvases need to be pristine.” The soldiers traded panic-stricken looks. The Grand Curator’s Museum was an untouchable relic vault, but the crimson countdown overhead outweighed any lingering reverence. With a collective sigh of defeat, Kaelus Varr pulled the apron tight, grabbed a scourer, and plunged his hands into the greasy dishwater. Joost, meanwhile, was hunched over his wrist interface, fingers flying across the holographic key-panel. His face was beaded with sweat, his good arm pressed against his bandaged shoulder. `[LOCAL SERVER OVERLOAD: 87% CAPACITY]` the screen flickered, `[CACHE INTEGRITY: CRITICAL]`. Bram’s summoning, his increasingly elaborate culinary creations, were causing a digital tsunami. The local server infrastructure, designed for basic citizen data, was barely holding together. “The Core is trying to throttle us, Bram!” Joost yelled over the clatter of scrubbing dishes. “It’s dumping garbage data, flooding the local network. I’m shunting all of your… *culinary output*… to an untraceable sub-net, but it’s a temporary fix. My beta-key is barely coping. The system’s trying to flatline us before the wipe even happens!” Bram paid no heed to the groaning officers scouring copper pots, turning instead to his fry station. The giant vat of oil bubbled menacingly. He pulled a grimy, pre-Continuum portrait, lovingly carried back by the humiliated Ranger-Proctor, from the stack. It depicted a stern-faced, aristocratic woman in a powdered wig, her gaze piercing. “Hmm. Lady Elsbeth Van Der Vliet,” he muttered, inspecting it. “Looks like she needs a little… seasoning.” He dipped the entire canvas into a batter infused with smoked paprika and chili flakes. The oil hissed, spitting violently as he lowered it into the vat. The aroma of scorched canvas and smoked chili filled the room, smothering the chemical bite of dish soap. A moment later, a figure emerged from the bubbling oil. It was Lady Elsbeth, but not quite. Her powdered wig was now a towering soufflé, her stern face a perfectly pan-fried cutlet. She carried a rolling pin made of solid, candied rock candy, and her porcelain eyes gleamed with a chaotic, sugar-fueled rage. `[SUMMON: CONFECTIONARY ARISTOCRAT. ABILITY: 'SUGAR RUSH SHOCKWAVE']`. “More! We need more!” Bram roared, grabbing another portrait – a pastoral landscape of rolling hills and fluffy sheep. He coated it in a parmesan crust and dropped it in. The oil spat out a flock of tiny, woolly sheep, each made of crispy cheese puffs, bleating with surprising ferocity. `[SUMMON: SAVORY FLOCK. ABILITY: 'CRISPY BARRAGE']`. Outside, the red sky pulsed, `00:47:12`. Inside, the grease-slicked room had turned into a production line of absurd culinary war machines. The disgraced officers kept scouring blackened pans, their protests drowned out by the shrill bleats of deep-fried livestock. Joost’s fingers blurred, his screen a maelstrom of code and warnings. Suddenly, a new alert flashed, overriding all others on Joost’s interface. A single line of text flashed in burning cyan across the console. `[ARBITER-CORE: PHYSICAL SERVER LOCATION – ORBITAL PLATFORM A-27X, ALTITUDE 1200KM. ACCESS RESTRICTED. REMOTE DELETION COMMENCING.]` Joost went rigid, pupils shrinking. He looked up at Bram, who was triumphantly pulling a new, towering summon from the oil, oblivious. “Bram…” Joost whispered, his voice cracking. “The Core… it’s not even *here*.”

Kitchen Nightmares