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“Hey, Power, do you know how to make coffee?”
“Obviously I do,” Power drawls from where she’s stretched out on the couch, Meowy on her lap. “What kind of idiot doesn’t know how to make coffee?”
“Uh, me, I guess?” Denji says. “Can you show me?”
She sighs. “Sorry, Meowy. I have to help the lowly mortal.” She sets Meowy down gently on the couch and joins Denji at the counter, hip-checking him out of the way.
“Listen up, because I’m only going to explain this once. Coffee is juice made from beans. Got it?” Denji nods. “So give me the beans.”
He passes her the bag he found in the cupboard. She tears it open viciously with her nails, beans flying everywhere.
“You put the beans in here,” she continues, opening a little drawer-like compartment in the machine, “and then you put the water in, and then it dissolves into juice!”
“That makes sense!” Denji says. Thank god for Power! He didn’t even see the drawer. She starts shaking beans into it from the bag. “But wait. Doesn’t Aki usually grind them up first?”
Power touches a finger to her chin. “I guess that could make them dissolve faster.” She thinks about it, then upends the bag of beans onto the counter, summons a hammer of blood, and begins smashing them to bits.
“Whoa, whoa!”
“What!?”
“The blood’s kind of gross.” Denji can’t think of a better option, though. Aki uses some kind of machine to grind the beans, but he doesn’t know where it is. Maybe he could use his chainsaws…
“Eh,” he says, “it’s probably fine.”
Power finishes pounding the beans and starts dumping them in the coffee drawer. Denji helps her scoop them up from the counter. “How much do we need?”
“Fill it up all the way, unless you like your coffee weak!”
“I don’t!” Denji fills the drawer to the brim, packing the powdered beans in for extra strength.
“Now we put the water in,” Power says. She holds the drawer under the tap and turns it on.
Everything is fine until water starts leaking out of the bottom. “It’s pouring out of the hole!” Denji says.
“Then cover it with your finger! Do I have to tell you every step!?”
“Okay, okay.” Denji plugs the hole, and they manage to get the drawer filled up with water and back into the coffee machine. When he moves his finger, water—no, coffee!—starts dripping into the pot.
“See?” Power says, dusting her hands off proudly. “Easy.”
“So that’s it?”
“Yep.”
Denji frowns. “But how does it get hot?”
“Ah! That’s what this is for!” Power presses the switch on the bottom of the machine. “Now we just wait.”
They’re still waiting when Aki gets home a few minutes later. “What are you doing?” he asks.
“Making coffee.”
He looks at the pot. “Are you sure?”
The pot has filled up, and now that Denji looks closer, the liquid in it is definitely not the colour coffee normally is.
He points a finger at Power. “She said she knew how!”
“I do know! You wanted bean juice, I gave you bean juice!”
“And you didn’t notice that the machine’s not plugged in?” Aki says.
Power crosses her arms defiantly. “How was I supposed to know you have to do that?”
“Can you just show me how to do it?” Denji asks Aki. “She obviously doesn’t know shit.” Power sticks her tongue out at him.
“Sure. Step one, plug in the machine. Step two, I will make you coffee if you promise to never touch this again.”
“Fine by me!” Denji says. Seems like a sweet deal, actually.
“Both of you, out,” Aki says.
Power and Denji head back to the couch. “You see?” Power whispers. “I knew what I was doing. If you’re bad enough at something, you can just have your human servant do it for you.”
Denji’s jaw drops. He had no idea this was her plan all along!
“Power,” he says reverently, “I think you might be a genius.”