Good afternoon, another Sunday and another prompt for everyone to mull over! But after so many weeks, it shouldn't come as any surprise to us by now!

Bradbury's Jar Prompt #283 Surprise "Guys, I'm really excited!" Jun gushed, fairly bouncing over to the bar, where Ken and Joe were seated. Joe's hand was curled around a cup of coffee, while Ken had his nose buried in a book and was picking at the chocolate and peanut snack mix left in a bowl on the counter. Arching an eyebrow, Joe looked up from his newspaper and kicked Ken in the calf. His commander raised his shaggy head, tearing his eyes away from whatever airplane manual he was currently reading and giving Joe an annoyed sideways glance. "Why's that Jun?" Joe asked, laying his paper down on the counter. "I've been taking a cooking class at the University in the evenings...." Her teammates, glanced at each other, and Ken seemed to sink ever so slightly in his seat. "Oh stop!" Jun exclaimed, swatting him with her dishtowel. "I know what you're both thinking." She crossed her arms over her chest. "And you're WRONG." A smug look worked its way over her face. Joe opened his mouth to speak, then thought the better of it and closed it. "My teacher said I've made progress in leaps and bounds." "Err, that's great Jun...." Ken replied, cracking a lopsided grin and kicked Joe in the shin. "Yeah, good work Junie." Both of then returned to their reading, trying to ignore the sound of Jun's tapping foot on the linoleum floor. Both of them reaching for the snack mix and bumping hands, looking to stuff their faces in order to have the excuse not to have to talk . She finally let out a huge sigh. "Don't you want to know what we've been studying? What we've learned?" "Sure, Jun." Joe said even not looking up, taking sip of his coffee. She leaned both elbows on the bar, eye shining. "We've been studying desserts! Exotic things like flambé, flan...you name it! It's been a ton of fun and I've learned so much." Ken poked his finger around in the bowl of snack mix, then looked at it and frowned. "Jun? Do you have any more of this snack mix?. We're running low, especially on the chocolate covered raisins." "Or course, Ken!" Jun reached under the counter and brought out a small plastic tub in her hands. "I even made those myself. "What the raisins?" Joe asked, licking a finger and turning the page to his paper, glancing up at her. "No silly." she giggled. "Haven't you boys been listening to a single word I've said? I said we've been studying exotic desserts." The two guys looked at one another, then stared at her blankly. "Those aren't chocolate covered raisins." she quipped. "They're chocolate covered ants!" Joe's mouth dropped open, Ken began sputtering and coughing. A big grin spread across Jun's face. "Surprise!"

Ha! Is that set before or after the ant episode? Because I had an immediate mental image of the robot ant with the tiny muffler poking out its bum, covered in chocolate.

It's funny you mentioned the ant episode, GGO, because it did cross my mind as I was writing it!

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LOLOL. Poor Jason..... Wait....no.....no birthday cake?! They don't even get to eat ANY cake? That's just cruel......

I think the cake will go in the fridge for tomorrow's morning tea. They're all a bit shaken to be eating cake after Jason's reaction to his 'surprise.' The cake itself is gluten-free vanilla sponge with buttercream and sprinkles, and on the top is written 'no message' in pink, because the R&D crew are followers of the Cake Wrecks blog and didn't want to take any chances. Naturally, the baker saw 'no message' on the order and wrote that on the cake, so it will probably end up on http://cakewrecks.com/ anyway.

G...gl....gluten free? Don't tell me the Condor has a....*looks around and whispers*....special diet?

Originally posted by Redbird LOLOL. Poor Jason..... Wait....no.....no birthday cake?! They don't even get to eat ANY cake? That's just cruel......

I thought Doctor Kew was probably holding the cake and dropped it when he saw the shiruken heading his way! (And, unless somebody there actually has one of the digestive disorders requiring a gluten-free diet, that's an appropriate end for it!)

Nah, it's just in my head, the R&D team are a bunch of stereotypical geeks with plastic-rimmed glasses, asthma inhalers and a bunch of food intolerances. I envision them as being a lot like the crew from The Big Bang Theory developing cool stuff for spies and G-Force (to Zark's specifications, of course, since he insists on taking credit for everything) and when they screw up, there's usually an explosion of some kind. Their head of department is an expy of Q from the James Bond movies.