FIC: High Tea with the Duke of Pastries (Bro♥Mom)
Creator: viewtiful_jeff
Title: High Tea With the Duke of Pastries
Cliche: Age-down
Rating: Probably PG-13 - R for some swearing.
Trigger Warnings (if applicable): Swearing?
Summary: One of Dave's time turntables breaks. If you'd think it'd be hard for that to affect Mom and Bro two years prior, you clearly don't pay very much attention to this comic.
It took a lot to knock Bro Strider on his ass. He was a man whose afterimages moved fast enough to dodge gunfire. To describe him as "fast" might as well have just been an insult for how woefully inadequate a descriptor it was.
Yet, he still found himself completely unable to dodge a pair of lips aimed by a young astronomer. 20 years old, only one year his senior.
"...what the hell was that?" It took him about 90 seconds to get the question out.
"My, I had assumed you'd already know," she responded airily. "Don't tell me I'll have to explain 'kissing' to you, Ambrose."
"For God's sake, stop fuckin' calling me that!" How did she keep managing to do this. Nobody else ever managed to get under his skin this easily, how did this chick throw him off without even trying goddammit HOW.
She smiled, her face showing satisfaction as she turned to look at him briefly, then looked away. "If you must know, I got a little tired of your smart mouth, so I decided to silence it." She glanced down the sights of her rifle. "I considered shooting you, but I didn't want to waste a bullet."
"..." Strider crossed his arms. "Y'never would've hit me anyway."
"Please. You're not as inscrutable as you think you are. You're just fast. An expert marksman could hit you easily."
"Fuck that. I'm a motherfucking ninja, taught by all kinds of Japanese masters and shit. They showed me the secrets of moving at superspeed, swordsmanship and dropping ill beats all at once. I had to transcend this mortal coi-" He was effectively silenced, for the second time in a row, by the slightly older woman placing her lips against his. Again, it left him dumbstruck after she stepped back.
"Apparently they never taught you pattern recognition," she said, walking away. It took Strider a minute to start following.
"Y'know what? Next time you start throwing all that snarky horseshit of yours every way, I'm gonna do the same thing to you." It was a pretty lameass threat, but it was all he could muster at the moment.
"You'd never catch me."
"Bullshit, I wouldn't."
"It's true. You're simply too slow to catch me, Ambrose."
"Stop calling me that!"
---
Dave took a long hard look at the man in front of him. Did "man" even count as an accurate description for this guy? Dersite. Whatever. He was pretty sure this guy was one of Jack's high-ranking stooges. He didn't know exactly who, but the bigass diamond on the end of his spear wa more pressing at the moment anyway.
This guy made him really nervous, but he didn't know why. Didn't matter. He brought out his turntables and prepared to jump through time -
The spear came up. He dodged. It caught one of his turntables, scratching it and sending it flying through the window. He, Rose and the Dersite were all overcome with curiosity at the exact same time and stared out the window. The turntable slowly floated away for a couple seconds...
Then it was hit by a meteor.
The meteor flew through a portal a couple seconds later.
"Well, there's no telling what can come from this," Rose intoned helpfully.
---
"Sup L-"
BANG.
"-alonde."
It took a very special kind of person to continue a greeting with only slight hesitation when a very powerful rifle was fired nearby their head, missing it by only inches. But, then, Bro Strider had never been a particularly normal person.
"I must adjust the sights on this thing," was Lalonde's only response as he turned away from both Strider and the tree she had just split in half with her shot, before continuing on her way through the forest surrounding her house. "You're following me."
"Yup."
"Why?"
"Shit, do I need a reason to wanna look at you from behind?" He bit down on his bottom lip. "By the way: Damn." Lalonde made a show of taking another bullet from her labcoat and loading it into her rifle. Strider, wisely, relented. "Your memo said you saw a meteor."
"It also said I would be looking for it alone." She took a glance - sure enough, that rocketboard was under his arms. "Why did you come out here for something I could easily handle myself?"
"Shit, Lalonde, you know me. I'm the charitable type."
"David is so lucky to have someone so responsible to keep watch over him."
"Jesus Christ, don't call him that, it makes him sound like a grade A tool."
"I don't suppose he's hiding somewhere out here too, is he?" She sniffed the air lightly; she smelled charred wood and grass. She was close.
"He's stayin' at a friend's," Strider said. "How's Rose?"
"She chipped a tooth on a wizard statue trying to preform some kind of somersault away from me today. When I offered her some ice cream, she gave me a pamphlet on the dangers of preadolescent tooth decay." She found herself obstructed by a fallen tree. "Make yourself useful and-" she was interrupted by the sound of metal cleaving through wood. The tree suddenly wasn't in her way anymore. Strider didn't get a thank you. Lalonde walked forward and stared downwards into the still smoking crater. Something caught her eye. "Look there," she pointed.
"What?"
"There. It looks like some kind of machine." She entered the crater, sliding down it towards the center. By the time she reached the bottom, Strider was already there. He pointed his sword down at what looked like...
"...that a turntable?" He asked.
"Hm." Lalonde kneeled down. She reached out a hand and touched it to the turntable, just as the record jerked and the sound of a scratch echoed throughout the forest. A large amount of electricity discharged, and Strider was briefly blinded, despite his kicking shades. After a few seconds, he tilted his shades up. "Lalonde, what the fuck was th-"
He looked down.
He saw a girl that looked roughly 10 years younger than him, swimming in a labcoat that was way too big for her.
"...what."
Bro Strider considered himself a pretty unflappable person.
"WHAT."
But this was a bit much, even for him.
---
"And then she touched this fucking piece of space garbage and-" Strider repeatedly gestured to the young woman sitting next to him. "THIS happened!"
"My, that is quite the quandary..." Egbert muttered.
"I dunno what you guys are freaking out about so much," Lalonde said, cutting a small piece of cheesecake away with her fork and eating it. "I feel fine. This is some great dessert, by the way."
"Why, thank you, young lady!" Egbert beamed. "The recipe was actually passed down to me by my mother, you see..."
"Hey dad," a small voice interrupted Egbert's explanation. All three looked to see a small boy who looked to be about 10 or 11 years old standing in the doorway. "Who are your friends?"
"JOHN, LOOK BEHIND YOU!" Egbert exclaimed.
"Huh?!" John spun around. The distraction gave his father just enough time to wing him with the cheesecake that had just been on the table (not before Lalonde could get herself a bigger piece though), sending John flying through the doorway. Egbert went and closed and locked the door shortly after.
"Cute kid, Egbert," Strider said, attempting to remain ambivalent to the pastry-throttling that had just occurred. "Looks like he's got kind of a uh..." He gestured to his mouth. "Kind of an overbite thing going on there."
"Oh, yes, but I don't want to make him get braces just yet. I'm afraid it'd just make him feel awful about himself," Egbert said as he sat down again.
"What, he got self-esteem issues or something?" Strider quirked an eyebrow, glancing at the door John had just departed through. Egbert let out a long sigh that indicated just how well he had guessed. "Oh." Before either could say anything else...
"That sucks. Sorry to hear that, Mr. Egbert," Lalonde said, now holding a glass of liquid in one hand and her plate in another. She took a drink from her glass. "This is amazing whiskey, by the way." Both immediately stared at her.
"Where the hell did you-" Before Strider could finish the question, he was pointed in the direction of Egbert's liquor cabinet, which was now wide open and missing a bottle. Strider snatched the glass out of her hand. "You're 19! You're not drinking whiskey, for god's sake!"
"...Strider." Egbert quirked an eyebrow, seemingly taking the conversation's diversion from his son and running with it. "You were drunk out of your mind our entire freshman year."
"That's horseshit, I sobered up when your mom came to visit," Strider immediately countered. "...she kept an airhorn in her purse." That got a laugh from Lalonde.
"My mom tried that," she said, having now decaptachalogued the bottle of whiskey and a second glass, which she immediately started filling. Strider managed to get the glass away, but she recaptchalogued the bottle before he could get a hand on it. "I took up knitting and made myself a pair of earmuffs. When that didn't work, I started puncturing the horns with the needles." She decaptchalogued the bottle and a third glass. This time, Strider got both before she started pouring. "Okay, you are bordering dangerously on party foul!"
"This isn't a goddamn party! This is like, fucking tea and crumpets at high noon with the Duke of Pastries!" He shot back, moving the bottle out of her way as she tried to grab it back. She had done a good job keeping Strider from grabbing it, but his hands were about a hundred times too quick for her to even get a hand on it now. The two only stopped when a pair of cupcakes, each given a generous helping of frosting, smacked them both in the side of the head.
"Strider, there is no cursing under my roof. Mrs. Lalonde, I must object both to you jimmying open my liquor cabinet, and then partaking of such when you are underage," Egbert said, holding a tray with about 10 more cupcakes in one hand.
"Oh my god, you just called me a Mrs." Lalonde slowly stared at the ground, and brought both hands up to her head, one removing the cupcake, the other slowly massaging her temple. "Wow."
"You've got an 11 year old daughter, dunkass," Strider muttered. Another cupcake smacked him upside the head. He didn't seem surprised.
"It's true, Mrs. Lalonde," Egbert confirmed. The look on Lalonde's face at this revelation could only be described as taken aback.
"What - I already told you that you had a daughter!"
"You're like some 40 year old guy with a sword and a baseball cap, like I'm gonna trust you!" She gestured to Egbert. "This guy has a son and a house and a pipe and everything!" Egbert nodded sagely, his pipe letting out a small puff of smoke.
"...how old do you think Egbert is?" Strider asked, wiping the cupcakes off his brow.
"I dunno," she looked him up and down. "28?"
"27," Egbert corrected, nodding slightly.
"He just said we were in college together."
"You still look like you're 40 years old."
Strider pinched the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up slightly. He pointed at the door. "Go wait by the rocketboard."
"Ugh." Lalonde threw up her arms. She stomped out. Strider had to move fast to slam Egbert's liquor cabinet shut before she could snag something from it on the way out. For his trouble, he got an even more exaggerated "UGH." and a door slammed in his face.
"So, what're you going to do?" Egbert asked.
"I dunno. Try fixing the turntable? Maybe if she touches it again, she'll turn back to normal."
"Mmn," Egbert nodded. "Sort of nostalgic seeing her that young."
"Maybe for you," Strider groused. "She was already an Ancient Mistress of Snarky Horseshit by the time I met her."
"She was always like that. She just acts different around adults, for some reason." Egbert said. The two were silent for a moment. "If you become a teenager, you can't stay here."
"If I become a teenager, I'm pretty sure I'm goin' back to my apartment, startin' a hugeass rager of a party and never stoppin'."
"I'm sad I'll have to miss it." He held up a fist. "Good luck, Strider."
Egbert's fist was met with another. "Thanks, Egbert." Before he made it to the door, he was hit upside the head with one more cupcake. He didn't bother to clean it off. Lalonde pointed and laughed at him when he came back outside.
Title: High Tea With the Duke of Pastries
Cliche: Age-down
Rating: Probably PG-13 - R for some swearing.
Trigger Warnings (if applicable): Swearing?
Summary: One of Dave's time turntables breaks. If you'd think it'd be hard for that to affect Mom and Bro two years prior, you clearly don't pay very much attention to this comic.
It took a lot to knock Bro Strider on his ass. He was a man whose afterimages moved fast enough to dodge gunfire. To describe him as "fast" might as well have just been an insult for how woefully inadequate a descriptor it was.
Yet, he still found himself completely unable to dodge a pair of lips aimed by a young astronomer. 20 years old, only one year his senior.
"...what the hell was that?" It took him about 90 seconds to get the question out.
"My, I had assumed you'd already know," she responded airily. "Don't tell me I'll have to explain 'kissing' to you, Ambrose."
"For God's sake, stop fuckin' calling me that!" How did she keep managing to do this. Nobody else ever managed to get under his skin this easily, how did this chick throw him off without even trying goddammit HOW.
She smiled, her face showing satisfaction as she turned to look at him briefly, then looked away. "If you must know, I got a little tired of your smart mouth, so I decided to silence it." She glanced down the sights of her rifle. "I considered shooting you, but I didn't want to waste a bullet."
"..." Strider crossed his arms. "Y'never would've hit me anyway."
"Please. You're not as inscrutable as you think you are. You're just fast. An expert marksman could hit you easily."
"Fuck that. I'm a motherfucking ninja, taught by all kinds of Japanese masters and shit. They showed me the secrets of moving at superspeed, swordsmanship and dropping ill beats all at once. I had to transcend this mortal coi-" He was effectively silenced, for the second time in a row, by the slightly older woman placing her lips against his. Again, it left him dumbstruck after she stepped back.
"Apparently they never taught you pattern recognition," she said, walking away. It took Strider a minute to start following.
"Y'know what? Next time you start throwing all that snarky horseshit of yours every way, I'm gonna do the same thing to you." It was a pretty lameass threat, but it was all he could muster at the moment.
"You'd never catch me."
"Bullshit, I wouldn't."
"It's true. You're simply too slow to catch me, Ambrose."
"Stop calling me that!"
---
Dave took a long hard look at the man in front of him. Did "man" even count as an accurate description for this guy? Dersite. Whatever. He was pretty sure this guy was one of Jack's high-ranking stooges. He didn't know exactly who, but the bigass diamond on the end of his spear wa more pressing at the moment anyway.
This guy made him really nervous, but he didn't know why. Didn't matter. He brought out his turntables and prepared to jump through time -
The spear came up. He dodged. It caught one of his turntables, scratching it and sending it flying through the window. He, Rose and the Dersite were all overcome with curiosity at the exact same time and stared out the window. The turntable slowly floated away for a couple seconds...
Then it was hit by a meteor.
The meteor flew through a portal a couple seconds later.
"Well, there's no telling what can come from this," Rose intoned helpfully.
---
"Sup L-"
BANG.
"-alonde."
It took a very special kind of person to continue a greeting with only slight hesitation when a very powerful rifle was fired nearby their head, missing it by only inches. But, then, Bro Strider had never been a particularly normal person.
"I must adjust the sights on this thing," was Lalonde's only response as he turned away from both Strider and the tree she had just split in half with her shot, before continuing on her way through the forest surrounding her house. "You're following me."
"Yup."
"Why?"
"Shit, do I need a reason to wanna look at you from behind?" He bit down on his bottom lip. "By the way: Damn." Lalonde made a show of taking another bullet from her labcoat and loading it into her rifle. Strider, wisely, relented. "Your memo said you saw a meteor."
"It also said I would be looking for it alone." She took a glance - sure enough, that rocketboard was under his arms. "Why did you come out here for something I could easily handle myself?"
"Shit, Lalonde, you know me. I'm the charitable type."
"David is so lucky to have someone so responsible to keep watch over him."
"Jesus Christ, don't call him that, it makes him sound like a grade A tool."
"I don't suppose he's hiding somewhere out here too, is he?" She sniffed the air lightly; she smelled charred wood and grass. She was close.
"He's stayin' at a friend's," Strider said. "How's Rose?"
"She chipped a tooth on a wizard statue trying to preform some kind of somersault away from me today. When I offered her some ice cream, she gave me a pamphlet on the dangers of preadolescent tooth decay." She found herself obstructed by a fallen tree. "Make yourself useful and-" she was interrupted by the sound of metal cleaving through wood. The tree suddenly wasn't in her way anymore. Strider didn't get a thank you. Lalonde walked forward and stared downwards into the still smoking crater. Something caught her eye. "Look there," she pointed.
"What?"
"There. It looks like some kind of machine." She entered the crater, sliding down it towards the center. By the time she reached the bottom, Strider was already there. He pointed his sword down at what looked like...
"...that a turntable?" He asked.
"Hm." Lalonde kneeled down. She reached out a hand and touched it to the turntable, just as the record jerked and the sound of a scratch echoed throughout the forest. A large amount of electricity discharged, and Strider was briefly blinded, despite his kicking shades. After a few seconds, he tilted his shades up. "Lalonde, what the fuck was th-"
He looked down.
He saw a girl that looked roughly 10 years younger than him, swimming in a labcoat that was way too big for her.
"...what."
Bro Strider considered himself a pretty unflappable person.
"WHAT."
But this was a bit much, even for him.
---
"And then she touched this fucking piece of space garbage and-" Strider repeatedly gestured to the young woman sitting next to him. "THIS happened!"
"My, that is quite the quandary..." Egbert muttered.
"I dunno what you guys are freaking out about so much," Lalonde said, cutting a small piece of cheesecake away with her fork and eating it. "I feel fine. This is some great dessert, by the way."
"Why, thank you, young lady!" Egbert beamed. "The recipe was actually passed down to me by my mother, you see..."
"Hey dad," a small voice interrupted Egbert's explanation. All three looked to see a small boy who looked to be about 10 or 11 years old standing in the doorway. "Who are your friends?"
"JOHN, LOOK BEHIND YOU!" Egbert exclaimed.
"Huh?!" John spun around. The distraction gave his father just enough time to wing him with the cheesecake that had just been on the table (not before Lalonde could get herself a bigger piece though), sending John flying through the doorway. Egbert went and closed and locked the door shortly after.
"Cute kid, Egbert," Strider said, attempting to remain ambivalent to the pastry-throttling that had just occurred. "Looks like he's got kind of a uh..." He gestured to his mouth. "Kind of an overbite thing going on there."
"Oh, yes, but I don't want to make him get braces just yet. I'm afraid it'd just make him feel awful about himself," Egbert said as he sat down again.
"What, he got self-esteem issues or something?" Strider quirked an eyebrow, glancing at the door John had just departed through. Egbert let out a long sigh that indicated just how well he had guessed. "Oh." Before either could say anything else...
"That sucks. Sorry to hear that, Mr. Egbert," Lalonde said, now holding a glass of liquid in one hand and her plate in another. She took a drink from her glass. "This is amazing whiskey, by the way." Both immediately stared at her.
"Where the hell did you-" Before Strider could finish the question, he was pointed in the direction of Egbert's liquor cabinet, which was now wide open and missing a bottle. Strider snatched the glass out of her hand. "You're 19! You're not drinking whiskey, for god's sake!"
"...Strider." Egbert quirked an eyebrow, seemingly taking the conversation's diversion from his son and running with it. "You were drunk out of your mind our entire freshman year."
"That's horseshit, I sobered up when your mom came to visit," Strider immediately countered. "...she kept an airhorn in her purse." That got a laugh from Lalonde.
"My mom tried that," she said, having now decaptachalogued the bottle of whiskey and a second glass, which she immediately started filling. Strider managed to get the glass away, but she recaptchalogued the bottle before he could get a hand on it. "I took up knitting and made myself a pair of earmuffs. When that didn't work, I started puncturing the horns with the needles." She decaptchalogued the bottle and a third glass. This time, Strider got both before she started pouring. "Okay, you are bordering dangerously on party foul!"
"This isn't a goddamn party! This is like, fucking tea and crumpets at high noon with the Duke of Pastries!" He shot back, moving the bottle out of her way as she tried to grab it back. She had done a good job keeping Strider from grabbing it, but his hands were about a hundred times too quick for her to even get a hand on it now. The two only stopped when a pair of cupcakes, each given a generous helping of frosting, smacked them both in the side of the head.
"Strider, there is no cursing under my roof. Mrs. Lalonde, I must object both to you jimmying open my liquor cabinet, and then partaking of such when you are underage," Egbert said, holding a tray with about 10 more cupcakes in one hand.
"Oh my god, you just called me a Mrs." Lalonde slowly stared at the ground, and brought both hands up to her head, one removing the cupcake, the other slowly massaging her temple. "Wow."
"You've got an 11 year old daughter, dunkass," Strider muttered. Another cupcake smacked him upside the head. He didn't seem surprised.
"It's true, Mrs. Lalonde," Egbert confirmed. The look on Lalonde's face at this revelation could only be described as taken aback.
"What - I already told you that you had a daughter!"
"You're like some 40 year old guy with a sword and a baseball cap, like I'm gonna trust you!" She gestured to Egbert. "This guy has a son and a house and a pipe and everything!" Egbert nodded sagely, his pipe letting out a small puff of smoke.
"...how old do you think Egbert is?" Strider asked, wiping the cupcakes off his brow.
"I dunno," she looked him up and down. "28?"
"27," Egbert corrected, nodding slightly.
"He just said we were in college together."
"You still look like you're 40 years old."
Strider pinched the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up slightly. He pointed at the door. "Go wait by the rocketboard."
"Ugh." Lalonde threw up her arms. She stomped out. Strider had to move fast to slam Egbert's liquor cabinet shut before she could snag something from it on the way out. For his trouble, he got an even more exaggerated "UGH." and a door slammed in his face.
"So, what're you going to do?" Egbert asked.
"I dunno. Try fixing the turntable? Maybe if she touches it again, she'll turn back to normal."
"Mmn," Egbert nodded. "Sort of nostalgic seeing her that young."
"Maybe for you," Strider groused. "She was already an Ancient Mistress of Snarky Horseshit by the time I met her."
"She was always like that. She just acts different around adults, for some reason." Egbert said. The two were silent for a moment. "If you become a teenager, you can't stay here."
"If I become a teenager, I'm pretty sure I'm goin' back to my apartment, startin' a hugeass rager of a party and never stoppin'."
"I'm sad I'll have to miss it." He held up a fist. "Good luck, Strider."
Egbert's fist was met with another. "Thanks, Egbert." Before he made it to the door, he was hit upside the head with one more cupcake. He didn't bother to clean it off. Lalonde pointed and laughed at him when he came back outside.