Apeiron Makes a Vlog about Upgrading His Kitchen
by Amber
[The livestream begins. The scene is a tiny and cramped apartment building. The windows have all been covered with thick black curtains. Apeiron strides in from off-camera, looking wildly out-of-place and yet right at home in his shiny, dramatic armor.]
Aperion: Hey all, it's me, Apeiron. Thanks for tuning into the livestream. I'm currently broadcasting from my apartment, and as you can see...
[Apeiron gestures to the black curtains over the windows.]
Apeiron: I've blacked out the windows and taken all necessary measures to prevent my location from being deciphered--
[Apeiron leans forward and holds a hand beside his mouth.]
Apeiron (Whispered): And even a few unnecessary ones.
[Apeiron stands up straight and indicates a blank wall, barely large enough for a flatscreen TV.]
Apeiron: Today, I've decided to give this old place a few well-needed upgrades, starting off with perhaps the most important part of a home: the kitchen. Now, I intend for this to also serve as a guide on how to improve or install your own kitchen, so I'll be splitting this up into nice, digestible segments, starting from gathering tools and materials and moving on from there. If you have to leave the stream early or end up tuning in later on, don't worry; I'll be uploading an edited version of this livestream to my YouTube channel soon after this stream ends.
Across the nation, across the
world, people scramble. Thinkers, analysts, and general smarty-pants are ushered into meeting rooms and told to analyze as much of the livestream as they can for any scrap of information about Apeiron's capabilities. Forum-dwelling parahuman geeks assemble for the novelty that is a livestreaming parahuman who
isn't named Uber or Leet. Bored stay-at-home housewives tune in for lack of anything better to watch, and stay watching because holy smokes, Apeiron is building a kitchen live on camera. Accord drags his entire organization into the Ambassadors HQ Theater Room (which is totally a thing that has always existed) to watch the proceedings, giddy to experience yet more of Apeiron's excellent skill and design sense. Other people also tune in to watch for a myriad of reasons.
Apeiron: Now, me personally? I've been able to get by without screwdrivers, wrenches, drills, duct tape, and other such tools for a
while now. For the viewers at home who haven't evolved to the point where they can use their fingers in place of power tools, I've assembled a list of tools comprehensive enough to cover any sort of kitchen-related project, from construction to installation to maintenance. You can find it in the stream chat, or if you're watching the edited version of this stream, you can find a link to the list in the description below.
[For the full list, refer to PRT File No. XXX-XXX-XXX, Appendix 1.]
Apeiron: Now, I understand not everybody has access to Adamantium or Mythril or were even aware that they were materials that existed. Don't fret, for most situations, tool-grade steel and the stuff you can pick up from your local hardware store is perfectly suitable. Now that we've got our tools, we can move on to preparing our space for new appliances and furniture.
[The video feed swaps to what appears to be a camera installed in Apeiron's helmet. He looks around the apartment, gesturing with his hands.]
Apeiron: Now, as you can see, we don't exactly have space for a proper kitchen. To fix that, we're going to make some spacial manipulators to extend and warp the space we do have to fit our needs. This has the neat side-benefit of making a fold-away kitchen. Isn't that neat?
Vista glared at the television screen. She and the rest of the Wards were shoved into Commons room and instructed to watch Mammon's big dumb livestream about him upgrading his big dumb kitchen in his big dumb apartment. This was perhaps the last thing she wanted to watch involving Mammon; she really would've preferred watching him get taken down like a chump due to some easily exploitable weakness.
Of course, everybody else didn't seem to gather that they were supposed to be gathering intelligence on an enemy. Kid Win was taking notes like his life depended on it, Browbeat was just generally engrossed in the livestream, Weld and Flechette were discussing why Apeiron was making the design choices that he was, and Clockblocker was regularly asking questions in the stream chat. Even Shadow Stalker, who was doing her damndest to act like she didn't care about this at all, watched the screen with only the slightest of scoffs and eyerolls.
"Oh, and shout-out to Vista of the Brockton Bay Wards," Mammon's voice came through the speakers, frustratingly clear and soothing to listen to. "These space-manipulators actually make use of the exact same principles her power uses to operate. In a way, this project wouldn't be possible without her, so I'd like to extend my thanks."
Vista took a moment to process that. To ruminate on Mammon's words and what they meant to her.
"MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMOOOOOOOOOOOON!!!" Vista screamed, frothing at the mouth like a feral animal as the rest of the Wards rushed to restrain her. "YOU THIEVING ^%*@$&^!!"
Apeiron: If you aren't confident in your ability to build a space-manipulating doo-dad, other methods include building an extension on your house, taking out a few walls, moving to a more spacious home, claiming your neighbor's space as your own through conquest, and building your kitchen outdoors. It's doable, so long as you either accept the risks of exposing your appliances to the elements or install them underneath a covered patio or porch.
Apeiron: Now that our space is ready and our tools are assembled, let's move on to construction. I'll start things off with an oven...
[Apeiron gestures, and a massive pile of materials appears in the middle of the apartment.]
Apeiron: I like to build
everything from the ground-up. That includes making stuff like circuit boards and heating elements myself. I know not everybody has the patience or skill for that kind of thing, but I urge you to try and build up the skills necessary to do so; there's no feeling better than the pride that comes from knowing you made something entirely by yourself.
[Apeiron cracks his knuckles and stretches out his fingers.]
Apeiron: Now, I work pretty fast, so I'm going to make use of my helmet camera's super slow-mo features to allow the audience to follow along. Ready? In three, two, one... go!
[The footage slows down suddenly, by a factor of at least one million times. Apeiron's hands, blurry and indistinct even with the large amount of slow-down, scoop parts and ingots out of the pile of materials and start fashioning them into the shape of a sleek, futuristic oven. Heating elements, racks, knobs, and more are constructed at speeds that are fundamentally impossible to achieve, be it by humans or machines. The footage speeds back up.]
Apeiron: There we go! Nice and spiffy, isn't it? If you found that hard to follow, don't worry, the edited video will include a voiceover with further details on the construction process. Now, this took me a good five or so seconds to construct in real-time; I could've gone even faster if I used my Celestial Forge, but time doesn't exist when I use it, and I have no clue what that would've looked like on stream or how it would affect a person's sense of temporal perception, so...
At the ENE PRT, things are, perhaps surprisingly, rather calm. Oh, sure, more than a few analysts are complaining of headaches and Dragon is continually attempting to divine Apeiron's location despite multiple attempts to convince her to stop, but overall? All is calm, and all is well. Armsmaster watches the stream with a critical eye, observing Apeiron's construction in case he can adapt any of the legendary Tinker's methods to suit his own purposes. Deputy Director Renick is considering contracting Apeiron to improve the PRT facility's own kitchen. Dauntless focuses on the heating element for the oven and the coolant for the fridge, marveling at the shockingly mundane use for the same power that brought his Arclance to heights he never thought he'd reach.
Director Piggot, in a hitherto unseen state of absolute zen, finds herself enraptured with the stream. Sure, she's watching an S-class disaster of a Tinker put all of his efforts into building a kitchen, but well... it's a
kitchen, for goodness sake. Not even she could bring herself to be upset or bothered by this. Thus, Director Piggot calmly watched the stream, even as she signed the relevant papers to release Vista into the care of a psychiatric facility.
Apeiron: I'll bet some of you are wondering how I'm going to be powering all of this, and how I'm going to keep it from showing up on the power grid and thus giving away my location. Well, it's very simple: With just a few household items, including this standing fan, this hamster wheel I bought from a pet store, and some copper wire, I can do...
[Apeiron begins to construct the device. The process of building it is somehow entirely incomprehensible, and has thus far proven resistant to every form of analysis the PRT and Dragon have tried to utilize.]
Apeiron: ...this! Ta-dah! My very own infinite energy generator! I've got zero clue how it works, but this puppy can power an entire city with no issues. As for why I'm using it to power kitchen appliances...
[Apeiron shuffles from side to side, body language distinctly nervous.]
Apeiron: Look, if I try to use this tech for anything that isn't a household use, things get...
weird. I don't want to risk it. A-Anyways, let me just get this bad boy hooked up...
Within Cauldron Headquarters, Alexandria watched the livestream alongside her fellow conspirators. Apeiron had caught Cauldron's eye a while ago, and any information they had on him was important. Watching him make household appliances was an... unorthodox display of his capabilities, but it had already revealed so many things about his capabilities. Alexandria could already see how some of the principles shown here could be put to use against The Enemy.
"Here's the real
piece de resistance of this whole project," Apeiron announced, gleefully rubbing his hands together. "The utensils. If you're following along at home, the following instructions will produce some top-tier gear, but I managed to get something that'll take this set of kitchenware to the next level."
With another wave of his hands, a mass of crystalline flesh and limbs, like some demented biotinker's idea of a hedge maze, warped into the apartment. Somehow, it all managed to fit inside the cramped space.
It was a
very familiar mass of crystalline flesh and limbs.
"What I've got here is the flesh of an interdimensional space alien, codenamed 'Eden'. I picked this up from the headquarters of a group called Cauldron today--"
Alexandria heard Contessa shout for Doormaker to make a portal to Eden's location.
"--And let me tell you, nabbing this was the hardest thing I've done in three days. Their security is top-notch, it took me an entire minute to figure out how to bypass it and get the goods without being seen. With this, I can make it so that these utensils grant all sorts of beneficial Trump effects to any food made using them."
Alarms began to scream and blare, drowning out the livestream's audio.
"Well," Alexandria flatly spoke to herself even as everybody else in the room began to panic. "#$@!."
[Apeiron claps his hands and spreads them out again, waving toward all the things he's built over the course of the livestream.]
Apeiron: And there you go, folks! That's my kitchen all upgraded and spruced up! If you joined us late, be on the lookout for the edited version of this livestream, which'll be uploaded to YouTube soon; it'll cover everything you missed, and will even have some new scenes and voiceovers to cover things that didn't fit into a livestream format. Tune in for my next livestream on Saturday, where I'll cover the expansion and overhauling of this entire apartment to turn it into a veritable mansion. Remember to always strive for the stars above; this has been Apeiron...
[Apeiron salutes.]
Apeiron: Signing off.
[The livestream ends.]
