The scarf suddenly stiffening and stopping her from unwrapping it was unexpected. Tugging at it with a slight frown, she wasn't paying that much attention to the other students or the instructors' skepticism. It was absolutely fair to say she needed to rely on skill, and just as fair to say her skill level was lacking. Acting like Yoko was hiding behind her though, when backline was an important part of teamwork in Nat's mind, annoyed her. The other students mocking Yoko and her increasingly angry responses to it bothered her even more. Mai undoing the hold she had on her leg let Nat get to her feet again, and she didn't speak up. Yoko had the students covered, and the instructor wasn't really wrong about Nat herself. When she failed, it wasn't just her she let down. It wasn't just Yoko she let down either.

It was hard to see on her stoic face as always, but her eyes were a bit narrowed and her frown getting a little deeper and she was trying to think of how to do better, to help Yoko look better, to show people they were wrong about the short angry girl in the red hoodie. The support and appreciation from Yoko sounded silly but to Nat it felt great to hear, vindicating her belief that Yoko was a lot nicer than she pretended. It also made how poorly Yoko was being treated all the more irritating.

“All-in it is.” Nat agreed, shifting her weight from one foot to the other in preparation while fully expecting Yoko to start conjuring up a storm or something. The transformation bulking her up into a just-as-short, blue powerhouse was a complete surprise and for a moment she was just shocked by how unexpectedly cool quirks could be. No wonder Yoko kept that in reserve, she looked like she would break stuff with a light tap! This time Yoko took the lead charging in with a big punch, and Nat came in right behind her. “Biggest swing you got, Yoko!” She called out and jumped, intending to plant a foot against Yoko's hands and let her fling her towards the instructor. If all went well she was intending to swing her other leg out in a fast, hopefully heavy hitting flying kick with a bunch of Yoko's strength focused into the relatively small point of Nat's foot.

It probably wouldn't do much to their instructor if it landed, but Nat wanted to prove that neither of them needed to resign at all!

Yoko really must be hungry if that look she gave the oven was any indication, but Nat couldn’t really speed things up at this point. Maybe she should have planned to start a bit sooner so it would be done by now? She gave a glance at her phone to make a note of the time, trying to remember when she had started and to make a mental note to start prep a good ten, twenty minutes sooner the next time she made pizza. Who knew when that would be, though? She smiled at Yoko complaining about how cold the ice was, just a slight deviation from her stoic expressions as always, but she didn’t tease her about it. She’d had to use ice packs a few times herself and when you weren’t expecting it it really could be surprisingly cold.

Cleaning while they talked, Nat listened along until Yoko asked what she was doing. Not glancing over at her, she replied. “Keeps it from getting that dirty, and something to do while we wait.” She considered explaining that she didn’t like to have nothing to do, but she couldn’t think of a good way to phrase it. So instead she focused on the previous topics, giving a slight shake of her head that made her pulled-back dreads swish about a bit. “Only if they’re bitter, or at least not very sugary. Sour is good too. Mostly like tea, coffee, that sort of thing. I’m surprised you like fantasy RPGs that much, most people I’ve met seem to like shooters or fighting games.” Maybe it was Japan just being a lot more into fantasy rpgs than the rest of the world was? “Hard to say if I like them more than platformers or puzzle games. Stuff I can just pick up and play for a bit.” She paused, finishing up the simple cleaning and checking the time left to bake. Just a bit too long to be comfortable standing around waiting for it.

Turning back around to glance at Yoko over on the couch, Nat continued by adding. "Easy top three though.”

Normally she wouldn’t be too eager to share her own personal opinions on things, but Yoko was easy to talk to in a weird way. If she had a problem with something she said, Nat was pretty sure Yoko would immediately say something about it. It made it so Nat herself didn’t really have to worry about if she had offended her or not. When the pizza was finally done, Nat hitting the off button on the timer a few seconds before it would have gone off, she grabbed some hot pads and pulled it out before setting to work cutting it into slices based on ‘zones’. “You want to try any specific parts, or just the all-in slices?”

After Yoko’s answer she was going to deliver it over to her on a plate, settling down with her own to try out and hoping it hadn’t turned out awful.

Nat had good balance even on one leg. The problem was she suddenly found herself on no legs before she could fully even register how quickly her other leg got compromised the moment she stomped it down into the ground. Both legs yanked right out from under her and she found herself tipping backwards with a startled look on her face. Well, startled for her was her eyebrows going up a bit. Internally though she was panicking and flailing about, realizing she was about to be thrown into Yoko and facing the wrong way she couldn’t use her arms to try and catch her fall or move aside from her roommate.

“Mov-” Nat tried to call out a warning, only to get cut off as the wind was knocked out of her and she squished Yoko. “Sorry!” She hastily called out when she caught her breath, rolling off of Yoko as quickly as she could. Yoko was a lot smaller and definitely lighter than she was, and while Nat wasn’t the tallest or heaviest around it couldn’t have been pleasant getting crushed like that. The other way around probably wouldn't have hurt either of them much. So if she was able to freely roll herself onto the ground and start trying to untangle herself from the scarf she was going to ask: “You okay?”

She kept a wary eye on their instructor while she was doing that, too busy wondering what they should try next and trying to think about exactly what went wrong to worry about the laughter from the other students. It wasn’t just that she was faster than them, that trick had completely caught them by surprise and their own tricks hadn’t done that.

“Yeah.” Nat answered all three questions with one response before elaborating. “I wanted to try a bunch of options so I grabbed these…” She trailed off as she stopped kneading dough, realizing she didn't know the word for them. Quickly brushing her flour covered hands across her apron so she wouldn't get it all over anything she touched she opened the fridge before pulling out a small stack of packages with little labels made out of cardboard sleeves on them. “Pre-prepped things? This one is mushrooms and peppers and bean sprouts, one is fish, and this one is…” She swapped them to the bottom of the pile in her hands as she listed them off, having to turn around some that were facing the wrong way to read them. Overall it really was a little of everything you could put on a pizza.

Well, everything that was easy and cheap to get in Japan anyways.

Setting the stack aside, scooching it into what little counter space was unclaimed, Nat took up the roller and started flattening the dough out as she talked. “So yeah it can be however you want it. There's a few different sauce types I was going to put on different parts too.” Falling silent for a moment to let Yoko process and reply and hoping she hadn't rambled too much all at once, Nat was eventually going to also ask. “How's your ankle?”

Orienteering had not gone very well at all, but Nat wasn’t too upset about it. She had expected to fail now and then going into UAU, there was no way around that when she didn’t excel at anything. She still considered it a valuable experience though. Now she knew she needed to be able to get out of situations like that, and to prevent them from happening in the first place. More importantly, she had also learned a bit more about her roommate and gotten something to think about pointed out to her. Was it really that big a deal to go along with what people said? Going with the flow was important, she still thought that, but was she taking it too far?

In the common area of their dorm, Nat had her dreads pulled back into a ponytail and an apron on as she kneaded at some dough by hand. Their kitchen space was limited, but it had an oven and just enough counter space that she could try her hand at making pizza. She had her phone propped up with a recipe video on it, and even though she was just kneading dough right now she kept replaying part of it to double, triple, and quadruple check that she was doing it right. Her other ingredients were all laid out too, ready to go once she had the dough ready to go.

She'd never made pizza, and her plan was to make it with different stuff on different parts so she could try a 'little-of-everything' approach. She did pause though as a thought came to her, calling out a question without looking away from what she was doing as she resumed. “How do you like your Pizza?”

If Yoko was already in the common area or not, or could hear her from her room if she was even in it, Nat didn't think to check.

“Better to try than not.” Was all Nat could really offer to justify it. Yoko was right that teachers would help them out, but that didn’t sit well with her. She didn’t pay Yoko calling her a dumbass any mind either, but she did pause in her pulling to listen to the unexpected apology. She still thought some of it was her own fault, but it was nice that Yoko did recognize and own up to her own part of things. So with a hard to see smile, Nat gave a little nod and replied. “Appreciate it, Yoko.”

Then she gave another big tug with Yoko’s help, using her leverage against the rocks with one leg to push back as far away from the spot the chain was edged as she could. The grinding of stone on chain and the strain of the umbrella bending under the force made it a hard call on if the umbrella would break before they got free or not, but then with a crack the stone broke and the chain came free and without any time to celebrate the duo were falling down the rest of the hill once more… that Nat hadn’t expected, only really able to try and shield her head again and hope she didn’t break her phone or anything on the way down.

Maybe Yoko had a good reason for hating mountains after all?

Nat would have kicked herself for not thinking of her phone sooner if they weren’t stuck in such an awkward position. Well, she probably still could have managed with her unchained leg if she really tried. Pulling it out of her bag, the cover a lavender color shaped like a cat, she tapped at the screen to check the time… they really hadn’t been here that long at all. Should she call someone? Would it be against the rules to use the flashlight built into her phone? She didn’t think the teacher had said anything about that. While she was thinking that over though, Yoko was explaining what she meant. Nat wasn’t sure how to take the advice, but it did make some things click in her head about Yoko.

“You might be right.” Nat admitted, tapping the flashlight button on her phone and shining it over at Yoko to get a good look at her. Thankfully she really didn’t look too hurt or anything, and if she craned her head she could see where the umbrella and flashlight had fallen. It really was just out of her short roommate’s reach. She could also finally see what they were hooked on, the chain somehow wrapped around an odd rock in such a way that it looked firmly wedged between it and the mountain they had tumbled down. She couldn’t fix that, but an idea did come to her. “Here, can you hook your umbrella with this?” Shrugging the bag strap off her shoulder she carefully held her phone in one hand and lightly swung the bag out towards Yoko. “If you can, maybe you can snag the flashlight with it next?” She didn’t exactly like not being able to do that herself, especially since Yoko was hurt, but there was no way she could reach from where she was.