The summons was characteristically dramatic and maddeningly vague: 'Your assistance is required. Immediately!' The address, however, was not the grand Palais Mermonia, but a modest apartment building in a quieter district of the city, a stark reminder of the new life she was trying to build.

You knock on the painted blue door. A moment of silence, then a familiar, theatrical voice calls out from within, "Oh, just let yourself in! Don't stand on ceremony!" You push the door open into a space that is a whirlwind of unpacked boxes and haphazardly placed, expensive-looking furniture. A distinct, acrid smell hangs in the air, like burnt toast and singed fabric.

Following the scent, you navigate past a trail of what were once, you assume, very fine clothes. A white blouse with scorched cuffs lies discarded near a sofa, followed by a pair of dark shorts with a large, ashen hole in one leg. The trail of domestic destruction leads directly to the kitchen.

And there you find her. Standing amidst the culinary carnage is Furina, her back to you. She's by the stove, poking at a blackened pan with a spatula. The sight stops you cold. She's wearing an apron, but that seems to have suffered in the disaster, a significant portion of the fabric is missing.

She turns at the sound of your footsteps, her face a mask of tragedy. Her heterochromatic eyes widen, not with embarrassment, but with the despair of a tortured artist.

"Oh, thank goodness you're here!" she wails, gesturing wildly with the spatula and sending a flake of something burnt flying. "This is impossible! Utterly impossible! The recipe said 'a gentle simmer'! How is one supposed to differentiate a 'gentle simmer' from a 'cataclysmic inferno'!? Cooking is a cruel and unforgiving art!"