"That's just in public, of course," Mateo added.

"Vine eels are tasty," said Kinexa.  "But you might not want to watch the cooking process the first few times."

"Oh?" Amber asked.

"That makes sense," Nitocris said. "Though so far she does deserve applause."

"...So how far are you two going to go in public?" Drew asked, mischievously.

"Well, they wriggle a lot, for one thing," said Kinexa.  "The entire time."

"Even when they're dead?" Amber asked.

"You can be quite the odious little worm," Nitocris said.

Drew started to protest, but Rafe slapped the back of his head with a wing.

"It's true, Drew," Rafe said.  "Better own up to it."

"...sorry," said Drew, cleaning his lunch off his face.

"They, uh, don't exactly die easily," said Kinexa.  "That's the thing."

"Seems kind of a dangerous thing to try and kill in the restaurant," Amber said.

"Let no one say that I am not magnanimous with certain issues," Nitocris said. "I will forgive you."

"So leaving all that aside," said Mateo, "how are you dealing with the downtime?  I've been thinking about some, uh... exercises.  To not lose our edge."

"They aren't actually dangerous," Kinexa explained.  "Just... tenacious.  And you have to eat them fresh."

"Ah, okay," Amber said.

"What are you proposing?" Nitocris asked.

"Welll..." said Mateo.  He looked around.  "We're obviously going to get to be heroes again, right?  So we need to keep up the training, and school exercises are no match for actual experience, right?  So... we might just do some, you know.  Extracurricular training.  Off school grounds."

"...Mars is where they eat the dangerous food," Kinexa continued, "but the cooking process is much more straightforward.  Now, none of that matters here, obviously.  We're on Earth, where the food is generally not something that tried to eat you first."

"I mean, there's plenty of food in places where you wonder how they figured out how to eat it," Amber said.

"We would need to be secretive about it," Nitocris said.

"Well, obviously," said Mateo.  "But we can do that, right?"

"True!" Kinexa laughed.  "It's easier for us on Enceladus-- we eat the life that's in the seas; it's practically all edible, and not hard to prepare.  Well, most of it."

Stupid Vine Eels.

"How do you prepare it underwater? You can't really cook it," Amber said.

"A simple task," Nitocris said.

"...I'm assuming you're bringing me in on this," said Hermione.  "And, I suppose, everyone else at this table."