There was the distinctive snap-hiss sound of a portal closing in the lobby, as Illyana walked into the kitchen, carrying her samovar from her room.

Yes, she had absolutely just teleported downstairs, rather than risk tripping down the steps.

"Careful, hot," she said, setting it down on a counter. "Proper tea, Russian style, to fuel my lesson."

"Yes, well, you set-up all this," she replied, gesturing to the kitchen. "Providing us with tea seemed the least I could do."

Illyana glanced around at the supplies, then back over to Watts. "...I do not even know where to start."

"Chocolate isn't vegan?" she asked, slightly confused.

...sorry, Watts, but Illyana wasn't joking when she said she knew nothing about cooking.

"That's right, vegan is the 'no animal products,' not just 'no meat,' right?" Yana confirmed, looking over the supplies.

"Maybe we start with not-vegan, and then do the vegan batch separate, so they're not my first experiment."

Illyana would eat her own cupcakes no matter how terrible they were, but she wasn't going to subject Watts to her first round of experiments.

"Eh... pre-packaged first," Illyana decided. "Then we can eat icing out of the tin as we go, and make more if we need to."

"Did everyone have fun with the eclipse yesterday? I had to run back to New York after class for magic-stuff."

The science of eclipses? Awesome. The magical creatures that tried crossing between worlds while magical barriers were thin? NOT FUN.

"I'm a little surprised nothing weirder than usual happened here," Illyana admitted, as she grabbed a mug and poured herself some tea. "I had to deal with a weird moon-alien circus trying to steal people's 'pure hearts,' carnivorous plants, and other assorted weirdness in my universe."

"The great part about being a teleporter is that when a very angry alien tries to put you through a wall, you can instead use your momentum to come out behind them and put them into the wall, instead of needing to dramatically get up and shake it off," she said cheerfully.

"Mutants...we tend to be more durable than humans. We still bruise, and cut, and get concussed, but it takes more. A side-effect of our bodies needing to be able to handle our powers, I guess. A regular body would tear itself apart." Illyana grinned at him. "I've endured worse, though trying to wash the plant bits out of my hair sucked."

They were making cupcakes. Telling him 'I came of age in a place where we cut each other for fun' was not conducive to the fun that Illyana was hoping to have.

"Oh, please don't misunderstand," she said, leaning over his arm to read the recipe. "It is not that I take it lightly, especially for other people, it's simply, after a point... you either decide that, for you, it is normal, or you go insane from thinking about how many times you should have perished."

"As I am already slightly mad, I opt for the humor in it all, yes?" She tapped the piece of paper. "I make jokes, I listen to music, I learn how to make cupcakes, and it grounds me with real people, in a reality where things aren't terrible behind every corner"

"What does it mean to pre-heat the oven?" she asked. "I thought an oven could only be on or off."

"Ah yes, the joys of thermal energy, that makes sense," she said. "I assume it's so things cook evenly, instead of waiting for it to heat up while cooking?"

"How humanity survived to this point, we may never know," Illyana said dryly. "We do things like stick our hands in fire to guess temperatures, or eat kiwi fruits that have fur, or chew on cacti to get high."

"We are so lucky to have figured out cupcakes." She looked at the recipe again. "Okay, we preheat oven, and then mix the dry parts, yes?"

Illyana grabbed the measuring cups first, turning them over in her hands as she read all the little numbers, figuring out which one was which.

"Right, sugar," she repeated, reaching for the bag after she had selected the right size.

It was probably pretty clear her instinct was just to grab a scoop and throw it in, but she followed Watt's motions, leveling it off properly first before dumping it in.

"Only one cup? I would think something sweet would have more."

"Is coco powder the same as hot chocolate mix?" she asked, finding the smaller cup and repeating her earlier actions. "Should I just be buying big bins of coco powder, instead of boxes of hot chocolate packets? Have I just been buying into Big Chocolate?"

Well, there was one way to find out, wasn't there?

Yana added the cocoa to the mix, as directed, then grabbed her frosting spoon and dug it into the cocoa powder container before popping it in her mouth.

Beat.

"I've had worse," she said thoughtfully, wrinkling her nose, "--but it's still not pleasant."

"Even dark chocolate is sweeter than that," she commented, but still licked the spoon clean anyway.

Chocolate was chocolate.

"Now...next up..." she said, checking the recipe again. "Baking soda is a dry thing? Weird. I think of anything soda as like the beverage, with the bubbles."

"Ah, so baking is chemistry, not magic," Illyana said, a lightbulb going on inside her brain. "I am more of a physics person, but knowing the how helps."

"...wait, teaspoons and tablespoons are different? Why?"