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Chapter Text

The moment she arrived in Bilming, Design knew three things.

One: The Cognitive Realm here smelled like sulphur and paperwork.

Two: Her bonded idiot was, in his own words, “going on a journey of self-repair and regrettably cannot bring plus-ones.”

Three: If she did not find a distraction within the next thirty minutes, she was going to start narrating her own activities aloud again. In third person. With interpretive rhyme.

So.

She observed the streets. Watched as coaches rattled by, pulled by horses that looked entirely too self-important. Listened as men in wide-brimmed hats muttered conspiracies into cups of steaming black sludge. A tall woman shouted about tariffs. A shorter man replied with something about ventilation permits. It was all very… grounded. Dirty. Delightful.

“I suppose,” she said to no one in particular, “this is my life now.”

Flashback

“Bilming?” she had said. “Why Bilming?”

“Because it is exactly the kind of place that does not want me to be in it,” Wit replied, adjusting the straps on a coachman’s bag. “And because the Ghostbloods have made it a staging point. Your observational skills are… unique.”

“My observational skills are perfect.”

“They are loud,” he corrected gently. “Very loud. Perhaps you can try subtlety.”

“I can do subtlety,” she said, offended.

“I believe you believe that.”

She squinted at him, narrowing her fractal eyes into suspiciously perfect ellipses. “You’re leaving me.”

“I’m giving you freedom. And a mission.”

“Oh no. You are absolutely abandoning me in a cosmere backwater with no hat, no musical number, and no narrative arc.”

He opened his mouth.

She pointed a ribbonlike finger. “And if you say that’s how all the best stories begin, I will scream.”

He didn’t say it.

Instead, he reached into his satchel and pulled out a matchbook from an old inn somewhere in Elendel. He pressed it gently to her palm. “Light something, if you get bored,” he said. “And try not to burn down the city unless you really mean it.”

She turned it over. The back read, “Stories taste better with fire.”

Design did not answer aloud. But she kept the matchbook.

And, perhaps more importantly, she stayed.

—

So. Here she was.

Abandoned. Independent. Hungry.

Also, disguised. Mostly.

Design took stock of her form. Human-shaped. Mostly symmetrical. Two arms, two legs, one brilliant mind. All wrapped in a bright red apron that read Do Not Touch the Chouta Without Consent. She had created it herself. It was tasteful.

And now she needed a cart.

Two days later, after considerable argument with a builder who kept insisting that “food carts do not need nine wheels,” she unveiled her creation.

It was a chouta cart.

It had rotating spice dispensers.

It had a Stormlight-infused heating plate shaped like a Mobius strip.

It had a little bell that dinged whenever someone lied near it.

It did not have a license.

“Licensing,” Design said, as she rolled her cart into place, “is a construct of oppressive economic systems designed to stifle artistic expression and radical street cuisine.”

The city official who had tried to fine her for blocking traffic was still recovering from the volume of her speech.

Her stand stood proudly on a busy Bilming corner, wedged between a shop that sold dangerous hats and a very suspicious alleyway. She had everything she needed. Skewers. Meat. Naan. Sauce. A little chalkboard with “Chouta with a Cognitive Kick” written in nine languages, only four of which were from this planet.

Her first customer said, “What’s in the sauce?”

She answered, “Mild existential discomfort.”

They ordered two.

Business was going brilliantly.

Until he arrived.

“Bone Broth and Beyond,” read the sign. It was hand-carved. The wood was sanded. There was calligraphy.

Her new neighbour was a man with a gleaming ladle and the serene expression of someone who absolutely knew he had a permit.

He nodded politely. “Morning.”

Design narrowed her eyes. “Soup,” she said, voice flat.

“Bone broth,” he corrected. “Nourishing. Simple. Local.”

Design smiled with every tooth she could manifest. “Chouta,” she said sweetly. “Explosive. Personal. Interdimensional.”

The war had begun.

And she was going to win.

Probably.

Unless the Ghostbloods blew up her cart first.

Again.

She looked down at her cart, gleaming in the sun.

And whispered, reverently, “My chouta,” with the sort of fragile, swelling pride that could only belong to an immortal spren turned food vendor in the middle of a deeply inconvenient espionage plot.

Chapter Text

It was a beautiful day to be catastrophically wronged.

Design stood in the centre of Bilming’s lower market, arms akimbo, staring at the splintered remains of her chouta cart. Skewers lay scattered like the aftermath of a culinary war. A pot of her prized coriander-ginger broth gurgled mournfully as it soaked into the cobblestones.

"My angles!" she wailed to no one in particular. "The symmetry was perfect! The spice layering was deliberate! The meat was tender!"

A passing constable paused, looked at the scene, looked at Design, and very wisely decided to walk the other direction.

"This," Design muttered, brushing a flake of soulcast ash off her sleeve, "is sabotage. Or idiocy. Possibly both."

She glared at the departing backs of the three Ghostblood operatives responsible. They hadn’t meant to crash into her stall. Probably. But they had been chasing someone (or perhaps being chased, it was hard to tell with these people), and the resulting impact had reduced her beautiful culinary triangle of joy into a very uneven parallelogram of despair.

No apology. Not even a "pardon my foot pursuit." Rude.

Design knelt, scooping up a slightly dented chouta skewer. She stared at it solemnly.

"I crafted you. I nurtured you. And now... now you are a metaphor."

A light flicker of Investiture shimmered around her as she hummed to herself. "Rebuild. Reframe. Reinvent." Her soul vibrated with aesthetic defiance. "They will not win."

By noon the next day, the stall had returned.

It was not the same stall. It was better. Taller, with a triple-tiered rotating skewer rack that spun clockwise, unless you looked at it directly, in which case it judged you. The canopy bore a hand-painted slogan:

CHOUTA! WITH A COGNITIVE KICK!

Beneath it, another smaller sign read:

Now with 27% more flavour symmetry. You’re welcome.

Design had also added branding.

Her chalkboard menu was annotated with Cryptic slogans in six languages. One offered a “Polynomial Platter,” another warned “Now with extra perpendicularity!” The special of the day was Scholarly Skewers, served with “epistemological sauce.”

"I do not understand you," grumbled the soup vendor across the street.

"You don’t have to," Design replied sweetly. "Art never asks permission."

He muttered something about "bone broth," which Design pretended not to hear.

"Bone broth," she whispered derisively under her breath. "What even is that? Broth with a skeleton complex? Please."

As the day wore on, she began noticing them.

The same faces. Not customers, Ghostbloods. Always in a hurry. Always armed. Always looking just a little too determined for someone buying street food.

There was the tall one with three coats and too many teeth. She dubbed him "Mister Multicoat." Another had silver hair and a suspiciously rhythmic limp. She named her "Boomerang Betty." One wore a hood so deep his face could have hosted a minor Cognitive event. She labelled him "El Capuchón."

Design started keeping a log. A tiny, glittery notebook titled DEFINITELY NOT SPY NOTES (DON'T READ) .

In it, she recorded sightings, likely conspiracies, sandwich orders, and one drawing of Kelsier wearing a bad moustache disguise and holding a chouta like it was a gun.

She was fairly certain he hadn’t actually been there.

But you couldn’t be too careful.

Especially when your skewers were this good.

She looked at her rebuilt cart, adjusted a banner with calculated flair, and sighed with theatrical satisfaction.

"My chouta," she murmured, with the smouldering gravitas of someone preparing for war by way of lunch.

Chapter Text

The first thing to know about “Sprenfire Sauce” was that it had no fixed recipe.

The second thing to know was that Design claimed it “revealed truths.”

Not emotional truths, mind you. That would be ridiculous. No, hers were flavour truths. Revelations about your soul, if your soul happened to be mildly combustible and fond of cumin.

“Chouta!” she shouted, gesturing grandly at her reconstructed stall, which had expanded sideways into a tent-like shape and was now held up entirely by improbable angles and one angry windspren. “With Sprenfire Sauce! Guaranteed to make you see the taste of your own choices!”

Business was booming.

Warehouse Row had developed a habit of losing its food carts to sabotage, the wind, or unfortunate crossfire. Design, being immune to all three and unbothered by permits, was a revelation. Her chouta skewers were crisped to perfection, the spices layered like a sonnet, and her signage deeply confusing.

One read:
MEAT. TRUTH. STICKS.
Another, less helpfully:
WE KNOW WHAT YOU ATE LAST HIGHDAY.

People came out of sheer curiosity. They returned out of mild addiction.

“Spicy or enlightening?” she asked one customer, who blinked at the options.
“I… what’s the difference?”
“One hurts the tongue,” she said. “The other hurts the self.”

She handed over the skewer with a wink, then jotted a note in her very unofficial Ghostblood tracking journal under a new code name:
El Capuchón – suspiciously quiet. Asked for no onion. Why? Is he hiding his tears? A secret onion allergy assassin?

She had twelve similar entries. One was just a doodle of a woman with a suspiciously sleek ponytail labelled “Scarf Warden” and a question mark beside the word “Hemalurgy???”

Design was nothing if not committed to the bit.

By the end of the week, a local newspaper (which had never before reviewed food) had run a piece titled:
The Wailing Vendor of Warehouse Row: Cult or Cuisine?
She framed it next to the sauce list.

That night, after she sold out, she sat beside her stand and chewed contemplatively on the last skewer.

“My mentor abandoned me for a horse and a subplot,” she muttered to the air. “But did he have five consecutive five-star ratings on SnackCircle? I think not.”

The windspren tried to flap one of her banners off the pole. She batted it back into place with a ladle.

She looked out over the empty market street, eyes gleaming.

And whispered, fiercely and defiantly,
“My chouta.”

Chapter Text

Design was mid-lecture when the cart flipped.

"To achieve the perfect balance of zest and revelation," she was saying to a very confused customer, "one must embrace the cognitive resonance of cumin. It is the spice of-"

A blur of motion. Shouts. A figure in a rust-coloured cloak. Another in pursuit.

And then, impact.

Her chouta cart, recently stabilised with the bones of a defunct metalweaver’s scaffold and at least one small oath to Harmony, spun a full quarter rotation before toppling sideways into a sack of turnips.

Design blinked, perched atop a pile of spilled skewer sticks, her apron now artistically draped over her face.

"...how dare you," she whispered.

There was a moment of stunned silence.

Then she stood.

Grabbing the nearest unbroken skewer like a duelling cane, she bolted after the fleeing pair.

"You there! With the hood! I just realigned those shelves by scent profile! Come back and explain yourselves!"

They did not. Possibly because they were involved in high-stakes espionage. Possibly because Design was shouting phrases like "MEAT WILL REMEMBER THIS" and "I’M IN THE SPICE NOW."

Eventually, she lost sight of them, somewhere between the cargo crates and a stack of barrels labelled “Experimental Detergent: DO NOT INGEST.” She ducked under a cart and paused to catch her breath, which was admittedly unnecessary but quite dramatic.

Voices. Two of them. Nearby.

"...not secure anymore. The contact said there’s a watcher. Not sure if it’s Ghostblood, Set, or some new problem."

"Bilming’s full of new problems. This one’s selling chouta."

Laughter.

"Right. Tell the boss. We’ll shift east, reroute through the foundry."

Bootsteps. Fading.

Design sat very, very still.

A watcher? Her?

She puffed up slightly, entirely with pride.

"They noticed," she whispered, entirely to herself. "Of course they did. I am an institution."

Back at her fallen stand, she stood atop the wreckage, one hand raised to the sky, and made a solemn vow to the surrounding alley cats.

"From this day forth," she declared, "I shall defend Bilming with every skewer in my possession."

That night, she repainted her signage.

CHOUTA FOR THE SOUL. SECURITY FOR THE STOMACH.
NOW WITH SECRET SPICE CODES.

Each blend had its own meaning. Red pepper and turmeric? "Suspicious hat." Extra garlic? "Do not trust." A hint of cinnamon? "Please buy more chouta."

Was it effective espionage? Unclear.

But it was delicious.

And as she placed the final skewer back in its place, perfectly balanced on a rack that now spun only counterclockwise, she gazed at it with reverence.

"My chouta," she breathed, this time like a vow sworn under starlight, with sauce still under her fingernails.

Chapter Text

The man approached at dusk.
Coat too plain. Hat too wide. A limp that felt entirely unearned. He stood before her stall as if he had not abandoned her in a city full of crime, cremlings, and culinary risk.

“I’ll take the... vendor’s recommendation,” he said, voice too deep, too gravelly. He coughed. “Yes. The spiciest you have, stranger.”

Design did not even blink.

She leaned forward. Slowly. Dramatically. “You’re not fooling anyone.”

The man removed his hat.

Wit grinned. “I hoped the hat would sell it.”

“It never does,” Design said, pointing a skewer at his chest. “Where have you been? Do you know how many times this cart has exploded? Three. And a half. Do you know how many chouta-related epiphanies I’ve had without you? Seventeen!”

“I was busy saving the Cosmere,” he offered.

She narrowed her eyes. “From what? A shortage of flavour?”

He opened his mouth.

She cut him off. “No. You may not speak in metaphor until you pay your debt.”

He hesitated. “And what is the debt?”

She spread her arms, gesturing to her empire of wobbly wheels and over-seasoned justice.

“You left me. With no context. No dramatic exit. No monologue. No ‘farewell, my glorious spren, protect Bilming with your glorious meat-scented might.’”

Wit tilted his head. “That... would have been better.”

“I know,” she said.

He looked at her for a long moment. Then, with a quiet breath, removed his coat, stepped around the side of the stall, and picked up the bell.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he called, “and all flavours in between—welcome to the return of Design’s Chouta! The only street food this side of the Cognitive Realm that tastes like destiny and smells like vengeance!”

She smiled. Just a little.

“And?” she prompted.

He bowed deeply. “With sauces so sharp they reveal the truth of your soul!”

“Better,” she said.

He straightened. “I missed you, Design.”

“I know,” she replied, brushing a faint smudge off his cheek. “You’re very bad at staying gone.”

Before he could answer, a distant shout echoed down the street. Someone collided with a crate. A ripple of unstable Investiture fizzed in the air.

“Duck!” shouted someone who was not ducking.

A wave of light tore past the alley.
The cart exploded.
Again.

In the silence that followed, Design stood amid the smouldering remnants of skewers and justice.

She inhaled.

“MY CHOUTA!”