Billie Joe handed Frank a large item wrapped in thin tissue paper. Frank carefully tore the material off, revealing a red cylinder.

A fire extinguisher.

"You might need that." Billie Joe said, relieved.

They thanked Billie Joe and went back to their work. They weren't wasting any more time. After several bad ideas, they all came to an agreement on one thing: pancakes. In the words of Gerard, "You really can't go wrong with pancakes." Patrick claimed he had a recipe memorized and said he'd take the lead for the main meal. To spice up the pancakes, they decided on putting a little pumpkin in the batter after they doubled checked the kitchen for canned pumpkin.

As for a side dish, Ray came up with a brilliant idea. A fruit salad. Who doesn't like fruit salads? It was simple and quick, yet impressive and looks sophisticated. Gerard was going to lead for this one.

Frank assigned people to smaller tasks such as the dish washer, the fancy napkin folder, the ingredient getter and put awayer, and many more. The group finished planning with exactly 5 minutes to spare. Not wanting to waste a second of time, they hurried to the kitchen to get ready.

"Alright." Frank said, standing on a bar stool in front of everyone. "We want this to run smoothly and if it's gonna work out that way, you all have to listen to me. Any questions before we start? Mikey?"

"Why are you in charge?" Mikey asked.

"Yeah!" Joe chimed in.

"He's a good leader." Gerard said, smiling at Frank.

"I have no idea how I became the leader. But hey, I'm cool with that. Any more questions before we begin?" he said. "No? Okay then."

Frank bossed everyone around for the first twenty minutes until they got the hang of things. Everything was going great, no injuries, no fires, so far they had every ingredient they needed. He even made a list of everyone's job and pinned it to the fridge.

-Leader: Frank (duh)

-Pancakes: Patrick (leader), Mikey, Joe, Pete

-Fruit Salad: Gerard (leader), Dallon, Andy

-Fancy Napkin Folder: Brendon

-Dishwasher: Ray

-Ingredient Getter and Put Awayer: Ryan

Frank walked over to the fruit salad team to check in on them. "So, captain Gerard." Frank said, smirking. "How's the fruit salad going?"

Gerard blushed at Frank's nickname. "This is gonna be the best gourmet f******* fruit salad there ever was."

"That's great! I expect the best from you alwa-"

"FRANK!!!!!!!!!" Patrick, leader of the pumpkin pancake clan screamed.

"Be right back." Frank muttered to Gerard before excusing himself.

"Patrick is everything okay?"

"No! Mikey just spilled the whole gallon of milk on the floor!"

Frank looked down at his feet, realizing he was standing in a white puddle. Some of the milk was still coming out of the jug while the rest dripped from the counter onto the floor, adding to the small lake on the ground. Mikey frantically ripped paper towels off of the roll to try and stop the dripping mess. Ray (the dish washer), who at the moment was not needed for washing any dishes, found a cabinet with towels and helped Mikey.

The milk started spilling into Brendon's napkins next, making them soggy. He had already decided he was going to make origami swans out of the napkins. He didn't know how yet but he figured he could find a way. Patrick shoved Brendon's napkins aside trying to keep them dry. Since Brendon wasn't at his stand at the moment there was nobody to protect his napkins.

Everything was turning into utter chaos.

It took eight solid minutes for everything to get cleaned up and dry. Brendon was still nowhere to be seen but thanks to Joe, he had new, fresh napkins ready for when he returned. Now all they needed was new milk.

"Who's the Ingredient Getter and Put Awayer?" Patrick asked.

"Uh, Ryan." Mikey responded.

"Hey Ryan? Could you grab us some new milk from the fridge?" Patrick called to Ryan.

"M-Milk?" Ryan gasped.

"Yeah, it all spilled. Aren't you the Ingredient Getter and Put Awayer?"

"M-m-m-m-m-m-milk?!" Ryan shuddered.

"Yes! Please! Hurry!"

"MILK!" Ryan screamed before sobbing.

"Oh shoot! He's having one of those attacks!" Joe said.

"Oh yeah! Brendon told us about it that one night on the cruise ship!" Mikey exclaimed.

"Oh crap what do we do?" Frank asked.

"MILK!!!" Ryan screeched. "NO MORE!"

"Does anyone know where Brendon is? He will know what to do." Mikey said.

"No, he took a small break. He had to use the bathroom."

"Let's just dump him on the couch and move on. We're gonna run out of time." Andy said.

Andy flexed his giant crossfit muscles before cracking his knuckles. He picked Ryan up like a baby and carefully walked over to the couch. After gently setting him down he placed a pillow under Ryan's head and returned to his pancake station.

"All set. Now all we need to do is ignore his cries until Brendon gets back." Andy said.

"Yeah and find milk." Patrick added.

The pancake team inspected the fridge for milk. There had to be another gallon. Milk is a common ingredient, they would definitely need more than one gallon for the whole day.

"Dang it Mikey, why'd you have to spill it?" Joe asked, angry.

"I'm sorry, it was an accident!"

"Stop bickering. Somebody read me the recipe I wrote please." Patrick demanded, his head in the fridge.

"Eggs

Flour

Milk

Sugar

We're

Goin

Down

Swinging" Mikey read, slightly confused.

"What's that mean?" Pete asked.

"Oh shoot! I didn't mean to write that! My head just... slipped up, I don't know what happened there. I feel like I've seen that before..." Patrick said, closing the fridge before re-writing the recipe.

"So all we need is milk now. And clearly, there isn't anymore milk anywhere." Pete said, sighing.

Just then, Brendon walked by carrying a strange tub of some white powder. He weaved through the bar stools and headed upstairs for his room, trying to hide what he was holding.

"Hey Brendon, come help us and fix Ryan. He won't stop crying." Pete said.

"He's on the couch." Patrick said.

"Oh uh... Let me just um.. put this away." Brendon said, hiding his container behind his back. He accidentally left his powered milk somewhere downstairs last night and just remembered a few minutes ago. He had told Frank he needed a bathroom break and hunted it down.

"No please stop him now." Andy pleaded.

"No I uh, I need to put this away..." Brendon begged.

"Is that... milk?" Patrick asked, confused.

"NO!" Brendon yelled.

Ryan must have heard the M word because his cries increased in volume. He wailed louder than a firetruck. Joe started to cry quietly from the stress of the situation.

"We are fresh out of fresh milk so we could really use that for the pancakes. Somebody spilled it everywhere."

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Brendon lied.

"Are you not holding milk in your hands?"

"Yeah! Well I mean, no, I am not. This is not milk."

"Then why does it say "Insta-Milk: 2%." Patrick questioned. "Reduced fat milk. Non GMO." Patrick read. "Vitamin D mil-"

"IT DOESN'T SAY ANY OF THAT, I DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE READING." Brendon yelled before clearing his throat. "Er, I mean, uh, oh hey! I didn't know it said that! This is just where I store my uh... my old Pokemon cards."

"Oh that's cool! Maybe I can look at them some time! I got quite the collection myself. Can you please calm Ryan down now?"

"Y-yeah."

Brendon took a deep, shaky breath. They almost caught him. There was no way in heck was he explaining to everybody why he packed gallons of powered milk. He approached Ryan carefully and noted that the closer he got, the more Ryan screamed. He knew it was because of the powered milk. Ryan could sense it from far away.

"I'll be right back!" Brendon said before rushing upstairs to avoid an argument with Joe, Pete, Mikey, and Patrick.

"Huh. That was weird." Alright let's get down to business." Patrick said.

"To defeat the Huns?" Mikey asked.

"No Mikey... No. To finish these darned pancakes. Now where did I put that salt?" Patrick asked.

They looked and looked and the salt was nowhere to be seen. Eventually, Mikey spotted it high up on top of the fridge.

"Okay who did that?" Patrick asked, annoyed. "Who hid the salt on the fridge. Come on. Own up. Who did that?"

None of the pancake group answered.

"I'm in no mood for games. As your leader, I demand respect. Now who did it?"

Pete frowned. "I couldn't have done that! That's not me. Look at how little I am! I'm a lil guy!"

"Okay well if it wasn't Pete then who was it?" Patrick demanded, growing even more impatient.

"Okay fine! It was me!" Joe said.

"Joe why did you try to hide the salt. You know pancakes need salt."

"Well you tend to... overdo the salt sometimes. It's not always a bad thing! But like one time you baked me cupcakes for my birthday last year and it tasted like the freaking Atlantic ocean."

"What the heck, Joe! That hurt my feelings! You try baking cupcakes in thirty minutes and then come back to me and talk about salty cupcakes!"

"No don't start again you two!" Pete warned.

As expected, they ignored him and kept fighting.

~~~~~~~~~~~
Ten Minutes left
~~~~~~~~~~~

With only ten minutes left before 10:30, everyone was growing more and more frantic. Frank was running around the kitchen like a madman making sure every thing was going okay. He realized soon enough that he never assigned a clean up person so he chose Ray, the dishwasher, to clean up the various messes of all sizes along the way. After some objection, Ray agreed.

Thankfully there were very few accidents. There was the time Mikey tossed a can of pumpkin puree to Pete and Pete completely missed (Pete kept saying it was Mikey who had a poor throw while Mikey insisted Pete couldn't catch anything to save his life). And the other time Joe sent the container of flour flying through the air by accident and it came crashing to the ground creating a layer of snow-like dust all over the floor.

Other than those few incidents, there weren't too many issues between the pumpkin pancake group. They got along very well and the pancakes smelled pretty good on the stove. They ended up using half and half instead of milk. That may be the death of them but they hoped Pierce The Veil wouldn't notice.

The fruit salad group had a more rough time getting along. Gerard didn't quite take his leadership role too seriously and they all ended up slacking off until the final twenty minutes. Dallon's ankle injury got in the way a bit but eventually they assigned him to the fruit cutter and he sat at a bar stool chopping a variety of fruit. Later on Gerard accidentally dropped a full watermelon on his toe and complained about it for the rest of the challenge.

Brendon was seconds away from giving up on his napkin swans before remembering that he wasn't a quitter. He stuck it out until the very last fold. After Ryan's milk attack subsided he was able to continue getting ingredients for people. He learned his way around the kitchen fast, memorizing where a bunch of ingredients and utensils were. He claimed it was the biggest workout of his life.

Now here they were, ten minutes until Billie Joe came back and Pierce The Veil judged their cooking. The atmosphere was very stressful.

"LET'S GO LET'S GO LET'S GO!" Frank yelled above the chaos, standing on a barstool once again. "WE GOT NINE MINUTES TO GO!"

"Stop Frank, you're making me nervous!" Gerard said, dumping the blueberries in a strainer to wash them.

"Sorry, sugar." Frank said, smirking. Gerard laughed as he blasted water on the fruit.

A few feet away, Mikey flipped the last pancake to confirm it was done cooking. He tossed it on the plate to the left of the stove and picked it up to bring it to the table. Just as he was nearing the table, he tripped.

And fell.

Face first on the ground.

Their pumpkin pancakes fell with him.

The sound of glass shattering silenced the room.