- Location
- USA
Hego has been called a meathead and a beefcake before, but the meatlings will take it to a whole new level.
Last edited:
DoofQuest- a Disney Villains Victorious CK2-Style Quest
- Thread starter Made in Heaven
- Start date
- Crossover
- Location
- Somewhere nearby.
YOU FOOL! They have resinaferatoxin, fire can only make them stronger!
- Location
- The Hub
THE VAPORS ARE GOING UP MY NOSE! THE GOGGLES! THEY DON'T REALLY HELP AS MUCH AS I THOUGHT THEY WOULD!
Stratagemini
Totally a Fire Ferret.
- Location
- Central Park
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
Here's a neutral Inator:
The "All Humans Look The Same-inator"
The next Inator will apply to ALL human Kings, rather than just Doof. Because all humans look the same.
The "All Humans Look The Same-inator"
The next Inator will apply to ALL human Kings, rather than just Doof. Because all humans look the same.
Hm. Good, but might make more sense with the roles reversed.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That's what I said!
- Location
- The Hub
"A Psychopomp?"
*Figure pulls his hood down and puts on a Fedora*
"Perry the Psychopomp!"
- Location
- Pennsylvania
Votes closed!
Interlude: Grease Trap
- Location
- Pennsylvania
Hego was tired.
The attack that had engulfed Danville was nothing short of horrifying. All of the preparations he had made over the last few weeks had amounted to nothing. He had been outwitted at every turn, mentally crushed into a heap by his own co-worker, and barely been able to escape with a handful of innocent bystanders who, in all honesty, had accomplished more than he had. With water shooters. Even the last-minute rescue had done barely anything to lift his spirits.
Only a few hours had passed since the events that had beat him into the dirt. The city was trashed and the perpetrator escaped, and most of the cleanup was being done by Doofenshmirtz's own lackeys. Despite it all, the last thing Hego wanted to do was go home and rest. If he rested, he would need to think. So instead, he took off the mask, put on the tie, and hopped a red eye flight so that he could march slowly and blindly towards the one place that would never, ever change.
---
Bueno Nacho #582 had more customers waiting outside it than the restaurant had ever seen in its surprisingly long and incredibly greasy lifetime. Hego knew this because the restaurant's previous record of twenty-one customers was on the day that the Middleton High bus had broken down a block away.
They'd had to call a gastroenterologist.
A line of customers was stretching outside the door and down the block, the parking lot was filled beyond capacity, and most worrying of all… a camera crew was outside waiting for him?
Hego paused. Wait a second! He vaguely remembered something that his evil bossman had said about a film crew coming out to 'drum up business' or something, and all he had to do was play along! This was wonderful! Good publicity for the…
Hego's mental filter put up a valiant fight but bowed to the unstoppable.
Alright, publicity for the restaurant. Still!
Everyone was clustered around some blonde guy in a chef's outfit, though you could hardly tell with the lack of a hat. He didn't look like the type that was experienced in managing pseudo-Mexican fast food, but stranger things had happened. Maybe he would be just what this restaurant needed to pull itself up from the depths of mediocrity!
"Hello, my good sir! I am the manager of this fine establishment!"
"Right, so you're the one we're waiting for. I'm Bolton Gramercy, you probably know me from Hot Quesine. Ready for me to inside and take a look around? I've heard the same stories as everyone else, but before we can do this properly I need to see what I'm up against." The chef walked through the door as the camera crew left enough room for Hego to follow. "Smile kids, you're on camera."
The very first step into the establishment brought with it a miasma of aging grease, synthetic chemicals, and the all-too-faint tinge of antiseptic. Hego smiled at the familiar smell, a little curious why the chef was looking like he was standing against a gale.
Ned had done an admir- no, a vali- a…. Well. Ned had mopped the floor last night and wiped down the tables, and that was about all Hego could ask for. The vat of percolating cheese glistened in the dimly flickering fluorescent light, right behind Ned who was beaming with pride next to the cash register.
The chef's gaze was immediately drawn to the table a foot to the left of the door, where Ron Stoppable's ofrenda stared mournfully back at him. The table was adorned in plastic multicolored beads, paper flowers, votive candles, and several plates of food that were still as pristine as the day Ned had made them three years ago.
"In memoriam of Ron Stoppable, the Iron Gut." Bolton read. "Poor bastard. What happened to him?"
Ned sighed.
"Ron was always our greatest customer right up until he got into that accident. At least they say it was quick." Ned paused for a moment in respect.
The chef quirked an eyebrow. "And when did this happen?"
"Four years, eight months, and eleven days ago."
"And you've left this thing up all that time?" the chef asked in disbelief.
"Ron Stoppable single handedly kept this restaurant turning a profit!" Ned replied.
"Well it's certainly not helping to change that. It's scaring people off! Take it down and put up a picture or something, and for god's sake don't leave food out in the open." He spun around to address Hego and the cameras. "Now let's take a look at the kitchen."
The greasy miasma grew even more oppressive as the camera crew approached the double doors labeled "El Kitchéno."
"That's not Spanish."
"No, but it is trademarked!" Ned helpfully supplied.
---
Bolton Gramercy had heard all of the rumors surrounding Bueno Nacho. Everything from ground-up rats in the meat to sentient mushrooms crewing the kitchen. Much of it was nothing more than exaggerations, whether for comedic effect or to disparage the name even further. He had expected the restaurant to be lacking in some qualities, but with a few solid days of work and cooperation from the managers, he could really turn this place around.
Nothing could have prepared him for what was beyond those double doors.
Every single surface in the kitchen glistened with a thick layer of accumulated grease. The checkerboard pattern on the tile was nothing more than a series of stains and scorch marks. The deep fryers looked as if they hadn't been cleaned in years, and while three of the vats contained fresh oil the last one contained something the consistency and color of tar. Flies buzzed around the lights, refusing to land on any of the equipment. Most disturbingly, a gigantic vat of 'Baron Num-Num's High Flyin' Beans' was mounted next to the cooler.
Everything was absolutely silent for a minute. Not even the flies dared to cause a sound.
"WHAT THE FFFFFF-"
The attack that had engulfed Danville was nothing short of horrifying. All of the preparations he had made over the last few weeks had amounted to nothing. He had been outwitted at every turn, mentally crushed into a heap by his own co-worker, and barely been able to escape with a handful of innocent bystanders who, in all honesty, had accomplished more than he had. With water shooters. Even the last-minute rescue had done barely anything to lift his spirits.
Only a few hours had passed since the events that had beat him into the dirt. The city was trashed and the perpetrator escaped, and most of the cleanup was being done by Doofenshmirtz's own lackeys. Despite it all, the last thing Hego wanted to do was go home and rest. If he rested, he would need to think. So instead, he took off the mask, put on the tie, and hopped a red eye flight so that he could march slowly and blindly towards the one place that would never, ever change.
---
Bueno Nacho #582 had more customers waiting outside it than the restaurant had ever seen in its surprisingly long and incredibly greasy lifetime. Hego knew this because the restaurant's previous record of twenty-one customers was on the day that the Middleton High bus had broken down a block away.
They'd had to call a gastroenterologist.
A line of customers was stretching outside the door and down the block, the parking lot was filled beyond capacity, and most worrying of all… a camera crew was outside waiting for him?
Hego paused. Wait a second! He vaguely remembered something that his evil bossman had said about a film crew coming out to 'drum up business' or something, and all he had to do was play along! This was wonderful! Good publicity for the…
Hego's mental filter put up a valiant fight but bowed to the unstoppable.
Alright, publicity for the restaurant. Still!
Everyone was clustered around some blonde guy in a chef's outfit, though you could hardly tell with the lack of a hat. He didn't look like the type that was experienced in managing pseudo-Mexican fast food, but stranger things had happened. Maybe he would be just what this restaurant needed to pull itself up from the depths of mediocrity!
"Hello, my good sir! I am the manager of this fine establishment!"
"Right, so you're the one we're waiting for. I'm Bolton Gramercy, you probably know me from Hot Quesine. Ready for me to inside and take a look around? I've heard the same stories as everyone else, but before we can do this properly I need to see what I'm up against." The chef walked through the door as the camera crew left enough room for Hego to follow. "Smile kids, you're on camera."
The very first step into the establishment brought with it a miasma of aging grease, synthetic chemicals, and the all-too-faint tinge of antiseptic. Hego smiled at the familiar smell, a little curious why the chef was looking like he was standing against a gale.
Ned had done an admir- no, a vali- a…. Well. Ned had mopped the floor last night and wiped down the tables, and that was about all Hego could ask for. The vat of percolating cheese glistened in the dimly flickering fluorescent light, right behind Ned who was beaming with pride next to the cash register.
The chef's gaze was immediately drawn to the table a foot to the left of the door, where Ron Stoppable's ofrenda stared mournfully back at him. The table was adorned in plastic multicolored beads, paper flowers, votive candles, and several plates of food that were still as pristine as the day Ned had made them three years ago.
"In memoriam of Ron Stoppable, the Iron Gut." Bolton read. "Poor bastard. What happened to him?"
Ned sighed.
"Ron was always our greatest customer right up until he got into that accident. At least they say it was quick." Ned paused for a moment in respect.
The chef quirked an eyebrow. "And when did this happen?"
"Four years, eight months, and eleven days ago."
"And you've left this thing up all that time?" the chef asked in disbelief.
"Ron Stoppable single handedly kept this restaurant turning a profit!" Ned replied.
"Well it's certainly not helping to change that. It's scaring people off! Take it down and put up a picture or something, and for god's sake don't leave food out in the open." He spun around to address Hego and the cameras. "Now let's take a look at the kitchen."
The greasy miasma grew even more oppressive as the camera crew approached the double doors labeled "El Kitchéno."
"That's not Spanish."
"No, but it is trademarked!" Ned helpfully supplied.
---
Bolton Gramercy had heard all of the rumors surrounding Bueno Nacho. Everything from ground-up rats in the meat to sentient mushrooms crewing the kitchen. Much of it was nothing more than exaggerations, whether for comedic effect or to disparage the name even further. He had expected the restaurant to be lacking in some qualities, but with a few solid days of work and cooperation from the managers, he could really turn this place around.
Nothing could have prepared him for what was beyond those double doors.
Every single surface in the kitchen glistened with a thick layer of accumulated grease. The checkerboard pattern on the tile was nothing more than a series of stains and scorch marks. The deep fryers looked as if they hadn't been cleaned in years, and while three of the vats contained fresh oil the last one contained something the consistency and color of tar. Flies buzzed around the lights, refusing to land on any of the equipment. Most disturbingly, a gigantic vat of 'Baron Num-Num's High Flyin' Beans' was mounted next to the cooler.
Everything was absolutely silent for a minute. Not even the flies dared to cause a sound.
"WHAT THE FFFFFF-"
- Location
- Ivory Tower of Education
A preemptive moment of silence for Hego's last shred of optimism. 🕯️
Interlude: Malo Nacho
- Location
- Pennsylvania
"-UUUUUUCK?!"
Bolton Gramercy had a tendency to exaggerate his rage, both for the cameras and to get through some particularly pigheaded managers' skulls. A good eight out of ten of the restaurants he had helped weren't deserving of his full wrath. It wasn't too often that something really got through to him.
That horrible seafood place in San Fransokyo. The self-absorbed cafe down in New Mexico. Even that dismal Italian bistro in New York. Every last one of them paled in comparison to the scene of culinary horror unfolding before him. Not in the most confusing and horrific Food Wars challenge had anything approaching the inedible morass before him appeared. Bolton had never, never, seen anything as horrendous as the crime against god, nature, and food itself unfolding before him.
"What… is this?" Bolton asked slowly, walking towards the Cheeze percolator while being careful not to slip on the grease-encrusted floor. The machine was mounted in the wall, allowing one to pour out its viscous yellow fluid from the kitchen or the counter and coincidentally making it nearly impossible to properly clean.
"Ah! That's our nacho-licious pasteurized synthetic Cheeze product!" Ned responded. "It's bueno-tastic, and high in Vitamin L!"
"What's it made of, you donkey?!!" Bolton demanded, the first of many effusive outbursts the evening would entail.
"Uh, let's see here…" Hego said, pulling out a tin of the stabilized Cheeze product and examining an ingredients list taking up one entire side of the industrial-sized can. "Synthetic whey protein, guar gum, ascorbic acid, annatto…" Hego continued for some time. "...calcium phosphate, sodium phosphate, lactic acid, and milk extract."
"Why the fuck is milk the last ingredient on that list?!" The producer made a note of where the censors would need to do their work. America was picky about that sort of thing.
Hego frowned slightly. "Well, technically it's milk extract, not actual milk."
"Oh well that makes it better then?!?" Bolton asked, then sighed internally as he saw Hego cringe. The manager at least had some idea what a mess he'd made. This was going to be difficult to deal with.
"Well, I'll have you know that Malk brand lactate extract is some of the finest dairy-adjacent comestibles pesos can buy!" Ned interrupted snidely. "Besides, you should have known that anyway, Mr. Fancy Chef. Everyone knows 'cheeze' with a z indicates that it's less than 7.9% milkfat by volume!"
This one on the other hand, Bolton thought, would be an absolute joy to obliterate.
Several members of the camera crew exchanged nervous looks. Gramercy's genuine outbursts were few and far between, but nothing set him on the warpath like a lack of quality ingredients.
"You serve this… swill to paying customers and you're surprised when they never come back?! Come on! This is basic! You use quality, fresh ingredients to make the most out of your meals!"
"The Bueno Nacho handbook specifies the exact ingredient list for every meal." Hego explained meekly.
"Yeah, it's not the Bueno Nacho way!" Ned agreed.
"Oh, because your 'Bueno Nacho Way' got you so far before. Let's see. Voted least popular chain in the nation twelve years running, dealing with financial difficulties since '94, and that tiny problem of every other branch getting shut down. The only ones who care about your fucking 'Bueno Nacho Way' are probably off in Cuba with whatever money they grabbed before the feds hit."
"Bueno Nacho only got shut down because of some vicious rumors about rat meat in the ground beef!" Ned insisted, getting angrier by the minute at the man.
"Nobody shuts down half a franchise because of rumors, you stupid pig! Please tell me you've fixed that problem, at least?"
"Bueno Nacho follows all federal guidelines as to the legally acceptable proportion of foreign material within commercial foodstuffs." Hego replied by rote.
Ned snarled. "Even if it was true, what's the big deal about rat anyway?! Everyone seems to love those DEI rations, and those are filled with rats and pond scum!"
"'Rodent', not rat, you idiot! If I served you goat on a bun would you call it a hamburger?!? And correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe I'd prefer a nutria meal raised on a farm than scampering out of a bloody sewer!"
"There's no blood in our sewer!" Ned replied with the tone of a man accomplishing verbal checkmate. "All of our meat arrives pre-cooked!"
A look halfway between disgust and horror crept onto Bolton's face. "I… you- all right. I'm probably gonna regret this, but if I'm going to fix this shitshow then I need to see how your kitchen functions. Make me your best-selling item."
"Right away!" Ned happily scurried off to the walk-in fridge. "You'll see, one taste of our bueno-rific Naco and your life will be changed!"
Somehow, Bolton believed him.
The inside of the walk-in cooler could be likened to a morgue. Pallid lumps of grey meat rested inside plastic containers, waiting beneath formless blobs of what could arguably be described as having once been vegetation. Tortillas lay uncovered next to the door, the cyclopean stacks wobbling dangerously as Ned plucked one off of the top, depositing within it a scoop of nameless meat, three squirts of the unknowable 'cheeze' and a scant three shavings of former lettuce before departing. This horrific amalgam had a handful of nacho chips and cheap restaurant ketchup added to it before it was tied up and deposited, whole and unaltered, into the deep fryer.
Bolton felt something akin to hope bloom in his chest when he saw that the fry oil was clear. Maybe, just maybe, this restaurant wasn't totally beyond redemption.
That hope died a horrifying death when he looked three feet to his right. Inside that fry vat was something that seemed to absorb the ambient light, barely even rippling from the vents above. Every so often a bubble percolated to the surface, sending a splash of the tarlike ooze bursting like a broken lesion onto the surrounding equipment.
Before he could find the proper words to describe this monstrosity, Ned pulled the basket from the first fryer and deposited it straight into the void. Bolton noticed how it seemed to resist, almost as if a thick layer of scum had formed on the surface.
"WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!"
"It's Bueno Nacho's very first vat of fry oil!" Ned seemed to take pride in this declaration. "That means that it contains a little bit of the flavor of every single meal cooked before this one. I make sure to fry all of our food in it for just a little bit so that our contiguous history of flavor gets passed on to each and every customer!"
Bolton felt himself physically retch for the first time in years. Nothing had done this to him since that truck stop outside of Phoenix back in Season 2.
As he watched, Ned carefully unfolded the now blackened meal and began scooping a pile of dark brown beans into it from an open container. After a moment, Bolton realized that the container was an industrial sized can of a product he could barely remember.
"Baron Num Nums High Flyin' Beans?!?" Bolton asked in shock and confusion as he took in the bespectacled aviator grinning from the can's front. "I haven't seen these since the 80s!"
"Well yeah duh!" Ned replied. "They stopped making them back in '97. Good thing we stocked up! Just ignore the sell by date, they keep!"
"How can you feed this to people?" Bolton asked in disbelief.
"All burritos and burrito-adjacent products must be made using authorized ingredient brands." Hego said. "To ensure… quality."
"Give it a rest already." Bolton practically begged.
Hego frowned morosely. "Sorry."
"Do you want to grande your mucho picante con carne?" Ned asked obliviously.
"...What?" Bolton asked.
"Ugh… do you want it spicy?" Ned asked with the air of one speaking to a toddler.
"I don't know why I assumed you spoke Spanish." Bolton muttered just loud enough for the cameras to hear. "Sure, why the fuck not. I'm not walking out of here without stomach problems, I might as well go all the way."
"Excellent! So you aren't a total wimp after all!"
Ned extracted a jar from the fridge that was filled with a substance so luminescently red that it seemed to glow. As the top of the jar opened, Bolton- along with all the camera crew- could feel their eyes and noses start to tingle, as if warning them of what was to come. Ned deposited a large quantity of what seemed for all the world to be the devil's own nose drippings into the middle of the glistening meat pile before twisting the tortilla shut once more and slapping the entire thing onto a plate with a wet smack.
"Here you go! Our finest and most popular culinary creation, the Naco! I shouldn't even have to mention this, but you should totally disregard any vicious rumors you might've heard about it."
Bolton hadn't heard any rumors, as a matter of fact. He made a mental note to look them up later. With the air of a man walking to his execution, he stepped forward and lifted the creation from its resting place.
A veritable deluge of grease poured down from the sodden tortilla, pouring onto the plate like a grotesque parody of rain. Bolton had expected it to stop after a few seconds, but it just kept coming. Eventually the plate overflowed and the grease dripped onto the floor as everyone aside from Ned and Hego looked on in mute horror.
"Oh, fuck me…" Bolton muttered as he raised the travesty to his lips. He could do this, he had to. Despite how everything looked, he had to give his objective opinion on the food in order to make the right changes. He stomached that surströmming pie during the last round of Food Wars, he could deal with a single bite of this.
His first impression was one of shock. It didn't taste that bad. In fact, it didn't taste like anything at all. He noted, half a second too late, that his lips felt numb.
"This is a war crime!" Bolton bellowed as a sensation more unbearable than ghost peppers assaulted his entire digestive tract at once. The pain of hell's own spice blend mixed with the churning palpitations of a stomach desperate to reject the physical matter so cruelly introduced to it. "They should use this for crowd control!"
Ned stepped carefully in front of the recently erected sign labeled 'Bueno Nacho! Home of Resiniferatoxin!' beneath an image of a smiling Normbot shooting an orange-red mist into the face of a snarling cat.
When the napalm barrage on his entire being had finally ceased, Bolton was left with exactly what he had expected. A greasy, disturbingly gummy mess of a burrito, stuffed with stale tortilla chips and the worst artificial cheese he had ever tasted. Grease continued to pour from the bite he had taken, making a mess of his apron and making the floor look shinier than it had in years.
The worst part was, the idea of a naco wasn't even that bad. Once upon a time, Bolton could even imagine this being the best-seller it was billed as. But the horrific, inedible, unbearable travesty in front of him bore only the most tangential relation to food it was possible to describe.
"Shut it down." Bolton said icily. Hego, at least, seemed to recognize the danger in his tone. Ned was doing no such thing.
"What are you talking about?! We've got more customers out there than we ever have before! We can't turn them away from the bueno-lickin'-good flavor they crave!"
"BUENO MEANS GOOD, YOU FUCKING DONKEY! AND THIS KITCHEN IS THE SINGULAR MOST DISGUSTING THING I HAVE EVER SEEN, DURING ALL MY YEARS ON THIS SHOW! SHUT IT DOWN AND GET OUT!"
"You can't do that!" Ned protested. "The Bueno Nacho Bylaws clearly say-"
"FUCK THE BUENO NACHO BYLAWS! THIS PLACE IS CONTAMINATED AND WE'RE GOING TO NEED A FUCKING HAZMAT TEAM!" His rage finally boiling over, Bolton whipped out his cell phone and dialed a number he had long kept on hand, for the special cases like these.
"Now you've gone too far!" Ned snarled. "Not only are you insulting the dignity of Bueno Nacho, you're also insinuating that we can't even clean properly! I should- hey! Get back here!"
Pushing past Ned, Bolton approached the front doors to address the growing crowd. "Listen, everyone, I am so sorry that you're not going to eat here today, but trust me. It's for your own good. I promise that if you come back in a few days you can get the very best and most authentic Mexican food your money can buy."
"You can't do this!" Ned screeched violently as the cameras eagerly drank his breakdown in. "This is Bueno Nacho, you hear me?"
"BUENO?! MORE LIKE MALO NACHO! For fuck's sake, your head's so far up your own ass you'll get to taste how shit your food is twice!"
"I've just about had enough of you! You come in here with your ugly jacket and your stupid chef's knives, and you think that just because you're off from some fancy-schmancy city in Jolly Old England that you're too good for us?! You're a hack!"
A hush descended across the parking lot. Bolton's entire crew and several of the more empathic crowd members took an immediate step back. The chef's pride may not have been as bad as it was back when he was undefeated in any culinary competition you care to name, but one thing still held true. You did not call Bolton Gramercy a hack.
The chef turned around, slowly, and cricked his neck.
"Listen to me, carefully." the chef began, seeming to loom over the utterly unprepared college dropout. "I grew up working as a pot-scrubber in a restaurant too small to have heard of labor laws. I first learned my craft at a technical college in St. Ebbes. I've worked in hotel bars and haute cuisine. I have spent decades working in more kitchens than you have ever seen, you little piss stain, and I will not be talked down to by a fucking fuckface too fucking invested in the world's worst brand identity to see the fucking health hazard he's serving up to his fucking customers!!!
Bolton leaned in dangerously close. "The only reason I am here is because your manager agreed to a meeting, to pull this restaurant out of the pits of hell. If you don't like it, then the door is right behind you."
Ned's response was to throw a wild haymaker at Bolton's face.
Bolton Gramercy had a black belt, a training regime, and hundreds of hours in an underground bloodsport cooking arena. Ned had his delusions of grandeur and a three-week losing streak at Fight Fighters.
The cameras were able to capture every detail as Bolton simply leaned back, dodging Ned's wild punch and letting the idiot's own momentum carry him to a painful landing on the ground. The lanky man flipped over, stumbled, and collapsed into a pile of cardboard boxes, unconscious before he even hit the ground.
Bolton exhaled. "Right, so now that's taken care of, let's get started on this madhouse. Everything in the kitchen goes, do you hear me? Then I'll have the place decontaminated, and maybe after that we can start to get everything back in order."
Bit by bit, the monstrosity that was Bueno Nacho's kitchen was slowly disassembled. As aging crates of food, grease-encrusted utensils, and even the horrifying deep fryer itself were hauled out, no one noticed as Hego watched without an expression on his face.
---
Hego stared blankly into the middle distance. As he watched a crew pull the place he had worked for years apart piece by piece, he felt a void like the soundless expanse of space.
What now?
"What's eating you?" Bolton asked, walking over with his crew. "It'll be a rough fumigation, but we'll have this place back up to standard in no time."
"It's… gone." Hego said slowly, watching as the last crate of expired sour cream was carted out of the husk of Bueno Nacho.
A flicker of pity passed across Bolton's face. After a moment, he waved for his camera crew to stop recording.
"Look." Bolton said gently, sitting down with Hego at the least disgusting looking plastic bench in the building. "It's obvious to me you care about this place. You want it to succeed, yeah? But there's a reason it's fallen so far. You'll never fix anything by just papering over problems and insisting if you just keep working then maybe this time things'll turn out different."
"But… but this is the way we've always done things!" Hego insisted.
Bolton sighed. "And what exactly has doing things this way accomplished? Are you filled to capacity every night while people rave about this place online?"
"No, but-"
"Do people come in from all over the city to enjoy your food? Do you even enjoy cooking the swill that gets served up here every day?"
When he got no affirmation from Hego, he continued. "You want to cook good food. I can feel it, you do. But you can't keep clinging to the past. Those rules were made in a time that isn't here anymore. Maybe they never even made much sense back then. You can't just rely on what some pissant wrote down in a book about the thing you love! Cooking has rules, but it's an art! You need to make mistakes and learn from them, not keep repeating the same ones other people have already made!" Bolton put a hand on Hego's shoulder. "You're never going to match Auguste Gusteau by making Gusteau's Frozen Foods!"
Hego looked up.
"Come on. Nobody ever made a good meal loafing around. Let's give them a hand."
---
A few days later, you were surprised to see Hego walk into your office. He said nothing, simply handing you a piece of paper with a polite but firm resignation.
What was it for?
[ ] Hego resigns from DEI
Hego leaves DEI due to not fitting with the company culture. Hego will not be angry at you for this decision, and Shego won't care one way or another.
[ ] Hego resigns from Bueno Nacho
Hego quits Bueno Nacho to devote his time fully to other pursuits. Hego will remain a hero unit, but his preferences may become more difficult to manage.
(There will be a twelve hour moratorium on voting.)
Hego has accepted that sometimes change needs to be made, but he's still very upset with you for facilitating the downfall of the Bueno Nacho of the past! Hego suffers -10 loyalty.
Ned is absolutely furious with you for murdering Bueno Nacho! He has sworn eternal vengeance and insists that he will make you pay, but if you're going to be honest with yourself, you can't see him ever amounting to much.
Bolton Gramercy has accomplished the impossible and revitalized Bueno Nacho into an acceptable restaurant! There's still a lot of PR work to do to overcome the decades of bad press and heartburn, and that falls on your shoulders. The DC for revitalizing Bueno Nacho has been reduced to something far more reasonable!
Bolton Gramercy had a tendency to exaggerate his rage, both for the cameras and to get through some particularly pigheaded managers' skulls. A good eight out of ten of the restaurants he had helped weren't deserving of his full wrath. It wasn't too often that something really got through to him.
That horrible seafood place in San Fransokyo. The self-absorbed cafe down in New Mexico. Even that dismal Italian bistro in New York. Every last one of them paled in comparison to the scene of culinary horror unfolding before him. Not in the most confusing and horrific Food Wars challenge had anything approaching the inedible morass before him appeared. Bolton had never, never, seen anything as horrendous as the crime against god, nature, and food itself unfolding before him.
"What… is this?" Bolton asked slowly, walking towards the Cheeze percolator while being careful not to slip on the grease-encrusted floor. The machine was mounted in the wall, allowing one to pour out its viscous yellow fluid from the kitchen or the counter and coincidentally making it nearly impossible to properly clean.
"Ah! That's our nacho-licious pasteurized synthetic Cheeze product!" Ned responded. "It's bueno-tastic, and high in Vitamin L!"
"What's it made of, you donkey?!!" Bolton demanded, the first of many effusive outbursts the evening would entail.
"Uh, let's see here…" Hego said, pulling out a tin of the stabilized Cheeze product and examining an ingredients list taking up one entire side of the industrial-sized can. "Synthetic whey protein, guar gum, ascorbic acid, annatto…" Hego continued for some time. "...calcium phosphate, sodium phosphate, lactic acid, and milk extract."
"Why the fuck is milk the last ingredient on that list?!" The producer made a note of where the censors would need to do their work. America was picky about that sort of thing.
Hego frowned slightly. "Well, technically it's milk extract, not actual milk."
"Oh well that makes it better then?!?" Bolton asked, then sighed internally as he saw Hego cringe. The manager at least had some idea what a mess he'd made. This was going to be difficult to deal with.
"Well, I'll have you know that Malk brand lactate extract is some of the finest dairy-adjacent comestibles pesos can buy!" Ned interrupted snidely. "Besides, you should have known that anyway, Mr. Fancy Chef. Everyone knows 'cheeze' with a z indicates that it's less than 7.9% milkfat by volume!"
This one on the other hand, Bolton thought, would be an absolute joy to obliterate.
Several members of the camera crew exchanged nervous looks. Gramercy's genuine outbursts were few and far between, but nothing set him on the warpath like a lack of quality ingredients.
"You serve this… swill to paying customers and you're surprised when they never come back?! Come on! This is basic! You use quality, fresh ingredients to make the most out of your meals!"
"The Bueno Nacho handbook specifies the exact ingredient list for every meal." Hego explained meekly.
"Yeah, it's not the Bueno Nacho way!" Ned agreed.
"Oh, because your 'Bueno Nacho Way' got you so far before. Let's see. Voted least popular chain in the nation twelve years running, dealing with financial difficulties since '94, and that tiny problem of every other branch getting shut down. The only ones who care about your fucking 'Bueno Nacho Way' are probably off in Cuba with whatever money they grabbed before the feds hit."
"Bueno Nacho only got shut down because of some vicious rumors about rat meat in the ground beef!" Ned insisted, getting angrier by the minute at the man.
"Nobody shuts down half a franchise because of rumors, you stupid pig! Please tell me you've fixed that problem, at least?"
"Bueno Nacho follows all federal guidelines as to the legally acceptable proportion of foreign material within commercial foodstuffs." Hego replied by rote.
Ned snarled. "Even if it was true, what's the big deal about rat anyway?! Everyone seems to love those DEI rations, and those are filled with rats and pond scum!"
"'Rodent', not rat, you idiot! If I served you goat on a bun would you call it a hamburger?!? And correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe I'd prefer a nutria meal raised on a farm than scampering out of a bloody sewer!"
"There's no blood in our sewer!" Ned replied with the tone of a man accomplishing verbal checkmate. "All of our meat arrives pre-cooked!"
A look halfway between disgust and horror crept onto Bolton's face. "I… you- all right. I'm probably gonna regret this, but if I'm going to fix this shitshow then I need to see how your kitchen functions. Make me your best-selling item."
"Right away!" Ned happily scurried off to the walk-in fridge. "You'll see, one taste of our bueno-rific Naco and your life will be changed!"
Somehow, Bolton believed him.
The inside of the walk-in cooler could be likened to a morgue. Pallid lumps of grey meat rested inside plastic containers, waiting beneath formless blobs of what could arguably be described as having once been vegetation. Tortillas lay uncovered next to the door, the cyclopean stacks wobbling dangerously as Ned plucked one off of the top, depositing within it a scoop of nameless meat, three squirts of the unknowable 'cheeze' and a scant three shavings of former lettuce before departing. This horrific amalgam had a handful of nacho chips and cheap restaurant ketchup added to it before it was tied up and deposited, whole and unaltered, into the deep fryer.
Bolton felt something akin to hope bloom in his chest when he saw that the fry oil was clear. Maybe, just maybe, this restaurant wasn't totally beyond redemption.
That hope died a horrifying death when he looked three feet to his right. Inside that fry vat was something that seemed to absorb the ambient light, barely even rippling from the vents above. Every so often a bubble percolated to the surface, sending a splash of the tarlike ooze bursting like a broken lesion onto the surrounding equipment.
Before he could find the proper words to describe this monstrosity, Ned pulled the basket from the first fryer and deposited it straight into the void. Bolton noticed how it seemed to resist, almost as if a thick layer of scum had formed on the surface.
"WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!"
"It's Bueno Nacho's very first vat of fry oil!" Ned seemed to take pride in this declaration. "That means that it contains a little bit of the flavor of every single meal cooked before this one. I make sure to fry all of our food in it for just a little bit so that our contiguous history of flavor gets passed on to each and every customer!"
Bolton felt himself physically retch for the first time in years. Nothing had done this to him since that truck stop outside of Phoenix back in Season 2.
As he watched, Ned carefully unfolded the now blackened meal and began scooping a pile of dark brown beans into it from an open container. After a moment, Bolton realized that the container was an industrial sized can of a product he could barely remember.
"Baron Num Nums High Flyin' Beans?!?" Bolton asked in shock and confusion as he took in the bespectacled aviator grinning from the can's front. "I haven't seen these since the 80s!"
"Well yeah duh!" Ned replied. "They stopped making them back in '97. Good thing we stocked up! Just ignore the sell by date, they keep!"
"How can you feed this to people?" Bolton asked in disbelief.
"All burritos and burrito-adjacent products must be made using authorized ingredient brands." Hego said. "To ensure… quality."
"Give it a rest already." Bolton practically begged.
Hego frowned morosely. "Sorry."
"Do you want to grande your mucho picante con carne?" Ned asked obliviously.
"...What?" Bolton asked.
"Ugh… do you want it spicy?" Ned asked with the air of one speaking to a toddler.
"I don't know why I assumed you spoke Spanish." Bolton muttered just loud enough for the cameras to hear. "Sure, why the fuck not. I'm not walking out of here without stomach problems, I might as well go all the way."
"Excellent! So you aren't a total wimp after all!"
Ned extracted a jar from the fridge that was filled with a substance so luminescently red that it seemed to glow. As the top of the jar opened, Bolton- along with all the camera crew- could feel their eyes and noses start to tingle, as if warning them of what was to come. Ned deposited a large quantity of what seemed for all the world to be the devil's own nose drippings into the middle of the glistening meat pile before twisting the tortilla shut once more and slapping the entire thing onto a plate with a wet smack.
"Here you go! Our finest and most popular culinary creation, the Naco! I shouldn't even have to mention this, but you should totally disregard any vicious rumors you might've heard about it."
Bolton hadn't heard any rumors, as a matter of fact. He made a mental note to look them up later. With the air of a man walking to his execution, he stepped forward and lifted the creation from its resting place.
A veritable deluge of grease poured down from the sodden tortilla, pouring onto the plate like a grotesque parody of rain. Bolton had expected it to stop after a few seconds, but it just kept coming. Eventually the plate overflowed and the grease dripped onto the floor as everyone aside from Ned and Hego looked on in mute horror.
"Oh, fuck me…" Bolton muttered as he raised the travesty to his lips. He could do this, he had to. Despite how everything looked, he had to give his objective opinion on the food in order to make the right changes. He stomached that surströmming pie during the last round of Food Wars, he could deal with a single bite of this.
His first impression was one of shock. It didn't taste that bad. In fact, it didn't taste like anything at all. He noted, half a second too late, that his lips felt numb.
"This is a war crime!" Bolton bellowed as a sensation more unbearable than ghost peppers assaulted his entire digestive tract at once. The pain of hell's own spice blend mixed with the churning palpitations of a stomach desperate to reject the physical matter so cruelly introduced to it. "They should use this for crowd control!"
Ned stepped carefully in front of the recently erected sign labeled 'Bueno Nacho! Home of Resiniferatoxin!' beneath an image of a smiling Normbot shooting an orange-red mist into the face of a snarling cat.
When the napalm barrage on his entire being had finally ceased, Bolton was left with exactly what he had expected. A greasy, disturbingly gummy mess of a burrito, stuffed with stale tortilla chips and the worst artificial cheese he had ever tasted. Grease continued to pour from the bite he had taken, making a mess of his apron and making the floor look shinier than it had in years.
The worst part was, the idea of a naco wasn't even that bad. Once upon a time, Bolton could even imagine this being the best-seller it was billed as. But the horrific, inedible, unbearable travesty in front of him bore only the most tangential relation to food it was possible to describe.
"Shut it down." Bolton said icily. Hego, at least, seemed to recognize the danger in his tone. Ned was doing no such thing.
"What are you talking about?! We've got more customers out there than we ever have before! We can't turn them away from the bueno-lickin'-good flavor they crave!"
"BUENO MEANS GOOD, YOU FUCKING DONKEY! AND THIS KITCHEN IS THE SINGULAR MOST DISGUSTING THING I HAVE EVER SEEN, DURING ALL MY YEARS ON THIS SHOW! SHUT IT DOWN AND GET OUT!"
"You can't do that!" Ned protested. "The Bueno Nacho Bylaws clearly say-"
"FUCK THE BUENO NACHO BYLAWS! THIS PLACE IS CONTAMINATED AND WE'RE GOING TO NEED A FUCKING HAZMAT TEAM!" His rage finally boiling over, Bolton whipped out his cell phone and dialed a number he had long kept on hand, for the special cases like these.
"Now you've gone too far!" Ned snarled. "Not only are you insulting the dignity of Bueno Nacho, you're also insinuating that we can't even clean properly! I should- hey! Get back here!"
Pushing past Ned, Bolton approached the front doors to address the growing crowd. "Listen, everyone, I am so sorry that you're not going to eat here today, but trust me. It's for your own good. I promise that if you come back in a few days you can get the very best and most authentic Mexican food your money can buy."
"You can't do this!" Ned screeched violently as the cameras eagerly drank his breakdown in. "This is Bueno Nacho, you hear me?"
"BUENO?! MORE LIKE MALO NACHO! For fuck's sake, your head's so far up your own ass you'll get to taste how shit your food is twice!"
"I've just about had enough of you! You come in here with your ugly jacket and your stupid chef's knives, and you think that just because you're off from some fancy-schmancy city in Jolly Old England that you're too good for us?! You're a hack!"
A hush descended across the parking lot. Bolton's entire crew and several of the more empathic crowd members took an immediate step back. The chef's pride may not have been as bad as it was back when he was undefeated in any culinary competition you care to name, but one thing still held true. You did not call Bolton Gramercy a hack.
The chef turned around, slowly, and cricked his neck.
"Listen to me, carefully." the chef began, seeming to loom over the utterly unprepared college dropout. "I grew up working as a pot-scrubber in a restaurant too small to have heard of labor laws. I first learned my craft at a technical college in St. Ebbes. I've worked in hotel bars and haute cuisine. I have spent decades working in more kitchens than you have ever seen, you little piss stain, and I will not be talked down to by a fucking fuckface too fucking invested in the world's worst brand identity to see the fucking health hazard he's serving up to his fucking customers!!!
Bolton leaned in dangerously close. "The only reason I am here is because your manager agreed to a meeting, to pull this restaurant out of the pits of hell. If you don't like it, then the door is right behind you."
Ned's response was to throw a wild haymaker at Bolton's face.
Bolton Gramercy had a black belt, a training regime, and hundreds of hours in an underground bloodsport cooking arena. Ned had his delusions of grandeur and a three-week losing streak at Fight Fighters.
The cameras were able to capture every detail as Bolton simply leaned back, dodging Ned's wild punch and letting the idiot's own momentum carry him to a painful landing on the ground. The lanky man flipped over, stumbled, and collapsed into a pile of cardboard boxes, unconscious before he even hit the ground.
Bolton exhaled. "Right, so now that's taken care of, let's get started on this madhouse. Everything in the kitchen goes, do you hear me? Then I'll have the place decontaminated, and maybe after that we can start to get everything back in order."
Bit by bit, the monstrosity that was Bueno Nacho's kitchen was slowly disassembled. As aging crates of food, grease-encrusted utensils, and even the horrifying deep fryer itself were hauled out, no one noticed as Hego watched without an expression on his face.
---
Hego stared blankly into the middle distance. As he watched a crew pull the place he had worked for years apart piece by piece, he felt a void like the soundless expanse of space.
What now?
"What's eating you?" Bolton asked, walking over with his crew. "It'll be a rough fumigation, but we'll have this place back up to standard in no time."
"It's… gone." Hego said slowly, watching as the last crate of expired sour cream was carted out of the husk of Bueno Nacho.
A flicker of pity passed across Bolton's face. After a moment, he waved for his camera crew to stop recording.
"Look." Bolton said gently, sitting down with Hego at the least disgusting looking plastic bench in the building. "It's obvious to me you care about this place. You want it to succeed, yeah? But there's a reason it's fallen so far. You'll never fix anything by just papering over problems and insisting if you just keep working then maybe this time things'll turn out different."
"But… but this is the way we've always done things!" Hego insisted.
Bolton sighed. "And what exactly has doing things this way accomplished? Are you filled to capacity every night while people rave about this place online?"
"No, but-"
"Do people come in from all over the city to enjoy your food? Do you even enjoy cooking the swill that gets served up here every day?"
When he got no affirmation from Hego, he continued. "You want to cook good food. I can feel it, you do. But you can't keep clinging to the past. Those rules were made in a time that isn't here anymore. Maybe they never even made much sense back then. You can't just rely on what some pissant wrote down in a book about the thing you love! Cooking has rules, but it's an art! You need to make mistakes and learn from them, not keep repeating the same ones other people have already made!" Bolton put a hand on Hego's shoulder. "You're never going to match Auguste Gusteau by making Gusteau's Frozen Foods!"
Hego looked up.
"Come on. Nobody ever made a good meal loafing around. Let's give them a hand."
---
A few days later, you were surprised to see Hego walk into your office. He said nothing, simply handing you a piece of paper with a polite but firm resignation.
What was it for?
[ ] Hego resigns from DEI
Hego leaves DEI due to not fitting with the company culture. Hego will not be angry at you for this decision, and Shego won't care one way or another.
[ ] Hego resigns from Bueno Nacho
Hego quits Bueno Nacho to devote his time fully to other pursuits. Hego will remain a hero unit, but his preferences may become more difficult to manage.
(There will be a twelve hour moratorium on voting.)
Hego has accepted that sometimes change needs to be made, but he's still very upset with you for facilitating the downfall of the Bueno Nacho of the past! Hego suffers -10 loyalty.
Ned is absolutely furious with you for murdering Bueno Nacho! He has sworn eternal vengeance and insists that he will make you pay, but if you're going to be honest with yourself, you can't see him ever amounting to much.
Neither can we.
Bolton Gramercy has accomplished the impossible and revitalized Bueno Nacho into an acceptable restaurant! There's still a lot of PR work to do to overcome the decades of bad press and heartburn, and that falls on your shoulders. The DC for revitalizing Bueno Nacho has been reduced to something far more reasonable!
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Man Who Thought He'd Lost All Hope Loses Last Additional Bit Of Hope He Didn't Even Know He Still Had
INDIANAPOLIS–Despite assuming that he had lost every last possible ounce of hope long ago, area office-supply coordinator Bob Dempsey, 31, was surprised to discover Monday that he did, in fact, possess one tiny additional shred of hope, which he subsequently lost.
www.theonion.com
Lifeandlice
Practitioning side-character
- Location
- Usa
sigh oh Hego. I pray your sanity manages to hold out over the coming years for your current history is not one of success.
Man, I didn't know it's be actually painful watching a cartoon turned quest character lose at literally every turn he possibly could.
Man, I didn't know it's be actually painful watching a cartoon turned quest character lose at literally every turn he possibly could.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
I feel like Hego resigns from DEI would make more sense, if we want to continue this analogy about cleaning up his workplace to him cleaning up his life. It wouldn't even necessarily mean he stops heroing, he might just start doing it differently.
I feel like letting him work at the resteraunt would be better for him and for us, we need the hero space, and he needs to succeed at something for once.
BlueWerewolf25
The Dreamer
- Location
- Wouldn't You Like To Know?
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Fatality!
Gordon Ramsey--I mean, Bolton Gramercy comes through yet again on another failing restaurant. Honestly, I'd vote for having him resign from DEI. For both practical reasons, and well, have him pursue other things aside from his failed heroism. Poor bastard.
Gordon Ramsey--I mean, Bolton Gramercy comes through yet again on another failing restaurant. Honestly, I'd vote for having him resign from DEI. For both practical reasons, and well, have him pursue other things aside from his failed heroism. Poor bastard.