A side bowl of kimchi and saurkraut. A main dish of stir-fried and diced capsicums, cashews, broccolini, onion, served over rice, seasoned with fiery central asian spices. A main of eggplant roasted deep and golden, a crunchy exterior shell that melted into butter inside. Chopsticks, spoon, water. A moment of consideration from magenta eyes before Machia picked up the chopsticks and lifted a cashew to Madeleine's lips.

"Hmmmm?" hummed Machia, finally converting that omnipresent observation into sound again. "Madeleine. This doesn't get solved in a day. We're planning on defeating the personal attention of the Demon Princess of the Hexadrome. One training session does not get you there. You're going to train for this every day up to the finals. It still might not be enough." 

"But -" she flicked up the chopsticks again, this time holding a piece of eggplant. "I need you to [i]get [/i]to the finals too. That means going through Sammy. Might even be the harder problem. Though maybe..."

Her ears went straight up, her hands stopped a bit too far away with the onion, making you lean in for it. "... A beautiful, impractical idea. I'll refine it on my own time. But for now, I want to come back to an assessment of my own abilities."

She set down the chopsticks on your side of the table, picked up the spoon, unlaced the ribbon-tied box she had found while cooking, and took a bite of the long delayed cake. Her eyelids fluttered in the first moment of less than perfect control she had shown since the ropes had gone on.

"I did not have a lot of lede time so I went with a soundstage I had prepared earlier," she said, setting the spoon down and picking up a pen. It felt almost like a penance for her tiny slip to delay her second bite like this. "But I need to make it more specialized. You already gave me some cues. You said you wanted it sharper. More painful." Her eyes flicked up. "You wanted me to bite you. Do you have any other feedback for my next attempt?"