Confounded Christmas Cookies

[waterfell]

The warm aroma of gingerbread: spiced, aromatic, fragrant. The expansive kitchen is full of this delicious scent, beckoning and enticing. Decorated men sit in tidy little rows on cooling racks.That is, that's how it would be if any good smell like that weren't masked under the layers of burnt-to-a-crisp. Ami takes out yet another batch,

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[childishwisdom]

Miai suddenly finds herself in a place she doesn't quite expect to be in out of nowhere. But there's the smell of baked goods! Curiously she looks around until her eyes land on the person in the kitchen.

... For a moment she's torn on the decision. After all, she remembers what this - or at least a very close lookalike of her - version of Mizuno Ami told her. Should she really stay here when that girl was the senshi's enemy? But it was just baking cookies, that should be good, right? Besides, even if she's supposed to be the senshi's enemy, she's still an alternate of her mentor, right?

After a moment of thinking it over Miai finally succumbs to the cookies. Miai happily skips over to the kitchen. "Mizuno-san!" Hey, she needs some way to differentiate the different versions of her mentor. Honorifics is a start.

[waterfell]

The smell of burnt goods, anyway. Baked might be under there somewhere, though. Sigh.

Ami stiffens and looks around abruptly. When her eyes settle on Miai, she relaxes only the smallest bit. No point asking why she's here; it's obviously the nexus.

There's really only one thing she can still say in that case: "Want to bake cookies?" It might even be helpful to have someone else here.

[childishwisdom]

Her face lights up. What kind of question is that when the answer is this obvious. "Miai-chan would love to!" Her acting formal is slipping slightly more around this Ami who insisted on speaking the way Miai would want to. It's working subconsciously somewhere in her mind.

"How can Miai-chan help?" She smiles widely.

[waterfell]

Ami threw out those overly-proper habits and postures (unless she's being a brat and all but mocking them) the moment she went to the Dark Kingdom. Join the Dark Side, Miai. They have Fun. No cookies yet, though.

Miai is also to be congratulated on putting Ami at a loss. She hadn't really expected her offer to be taken up and she has to think for a moment. In the end, she settles for blunt honesty. That's her way these days.

"I haven't made a good batch yet, so, are you good with baking? They're for a scavenger hunt."

[rabbitofjustice]

The Nexus' timing seems to be pretty good for Usagi lately. Today she was in class before arriving here. Cookies instead of boring lessons, sounds like getting the better end of the deal, right? Cookies and Ami-chan, it's like a Usagi paradise! Watch out, Ami, they multiply.

"Ami-chan!" She cheerfully calls out, as if this is just any regular encounter. "What are you baking?"

She turns her head and sees the pile of rejects. Oh, hey, she's familiar with this! They could start a talk group for it! "Wait, did you make those?" No, Usagi, they obviously. just spawned out of thin air.

[waterfell]

She swears she feels dizzy from the sheer amount of sudden energy in the room, and Ami wonders to herself whether draining Usagi of a bit of that obvious excess might be a wise idea. For the greater good and all. Really! She shuffles the thought to the back of her mind to amuse herself with later.

Patience, Ami. Patience. This, too, shall pass. And if they multiply, you can put down poison.

Ami turns towards Usagi only after a moment to gather her thoughts and arrange her expression to carefully show Usagi the face she wants her to see.

"It's been awhile, Tsukino-san!" She doesn't even bother with the taunting Usagi-chan anymore. She also wouldn't bother answering the obvious question, except that it is a good way to taunt Usagi about the failed friendship: "I'm making gingerbread cookies for my friends!"

[rabbitofjustice]

If Usagi would have been a rude - or an even more oblivious than she already is - person, she would have just walked to the pile of rejects and ate one, because hey, she's a friend! But she isn't rude nor that oblivious, so she doesn't. See, Ami? There are good things about her!

"Gingerbread cookies?" By now Usagi is already jumping all over the kitchen to look around in every single spot. Perhaps she's looking for a hidden succeeded cookie. "Uwaah, that's so nice! Oh, Ami-chan, can I help? Pleeeaaase?"

How can you resist that face, huh? The answer is you don't.

[waterfell]

Not friends!

"You can bake?" This comes out bluntly skeptical, but surprised enough to forget to be mocking. She gives the younger girl (suddenly it's so obvious she's younger) a look that has a lot to teach about disbelief and lack of confidence.

Well, she knows Usagi likes burning things. It's a measure of Ami's resolution to try to be a little kinder and more tactful again that she doesn't make the sarcastic remark aloud.

Instead, she says, "Why not make it interesting? If you can bake a batch perfectly, I'll let you help with the rest." This can only end in fire.

[parallelbunny]

As I said, bunnies multiply.

Wait. Wait. Waaaait. This isn't home. Unless Kousagi's mom and dad changed the kitchen's interior. ... A lot.

Curiously (and slightly panicked) she looks around, trying to find anything that looks familiar. She was about to have delicious curry, what happened to that?! The girl raises her face as she smells something in the air, although she nearly winces when she discovers just what the smell is. The poor wasted cookies! Kousagi stares at the pile with a near pout. Poor gingerbread indeed.

"What a waste!" She exclaims, not quite aware of Ami's presence just yet. She has never been the most attention-paying of girls.

[waterfell]

Breeders, hmph.

This is not home, but instead the spacious, luxurious, and oh so wonderful Earth Palace. All-new and bright and shiny! This means the facilities are state-of-the-art, which means Ami really has no excuse for the poor mutilated men on the mass grave pile.

"It's not a waste!" she says, a bit more petulantly than she intended. So what is it? "It's practice."

Be good and she might let you have some, Kousagi. Or is that if you're bad?

[parallelbunny]

Too bad Kousagi knows of no palaces! Especially not some Earth Palace.

Now she turns around, half shocked by the fact that there was someone much older and taller than her in the kitchen. Kousagi recoils just slightly, after all, she's still a little kid. "B-but! Delicious cookies could have been made with this!"

... Now that proposal sounds inviting. Kousagi is known for her TONGUE THAT WILL SAVE THE WORLD so you should be delighted that someone that special is willing to try them out, Ami!

[waterfell]

"Are you saying you want them?" That takes a moment to process; Ami was assuming Kousagi was complaining about her obvious failure with the early batches.

Beat.

"Go ahead!" Ami grins with a cheerfulness that would put anyone who's seen it before on alert. Kousagi may get more than she bargained for with these!

[hells_shower]

"Coooookiiiiies!!!"

And suddenly, there is an Ishtar in the kitchen, dive bombing towards the burnt sacrifice cookies and sniffing them. Aah, the memories! It's as if she baked them herself.

[waterfell]

Stare. An appearance somewhat like Venus', but an outfit like Nabu.

That's not the point here! This isn't time to get confused; whoever it is, they're intruding!

"What are you doing?"

[hells_shower]

"Mmf!" She turns to face Ami, her mouth already stuffed with burnt cookie. She, too stares before pointing at the older girl.

"Mff meeef mffmmff mmrrrrf miiffinff!!"

[waterfell]

Uh... "What?"

"It's rude to talk with your mouth full," Ami adds a bit arrogantly. "Finish chewing and I'll listen to you."

[omuricerin]

What was this? Did she smell....BURNT COOKIES? This was unacceptable! Christmas cookies needed to be not burnt!

It looks like it's time for Ikuko-mama to the rescue! Amazingly, she doesn't seem to mind that she's no longer in her kitchen. Or that Ami has brown hair. Or really that she's in a different dimension for that matter. No. All that mattered was the cookies. The cookies needed to be saved!

"Ami-chan!" Her voice booms through the kitchen as she points towards the rejected pile. "What is this!"

[waterfell]

Tsukino-san's... mama? For a moment, Ami stares, stripped of everything from her false cheerfulness to her usual anger to anything but the gut-wrenching reality that her actions have consequences far beyond the people they directly impact.

She recovers in time to hope the stunned silence will be seen as no more than natural surprise at suddenly being intruded upon. She shakes her head to clear it of whatever disturbing thoughts are invading her, more and more by the moment.

"They were burnt," she says lamely. Don't save the cookies; save her, Ikuko-mama.

[omuricerin]

"Burnt!" The word is repeated. "The result of someone cooking it incorrectly and not wishing to rectify their mistake! It appears, Ami-chan, that your education is woefully inadequate in this respect! So, you shall have a new teacher!"

Saving Ami can come in a few minutes; maybe it will even come in the course of saving the cookies.

[waterfell]

At this moment, she and the cookies are one and the same in terms of needing to be saved. And Ami has the distinction of being a very good student! Usually.

"They were for a scavenger hunt," she explains. "So I thought I'd try to bake them myself..." Yes, Ami, because Ikuko really needs to know every little detail of why the deadly mountain keeps growing. For that matter, it seems like Ami would learn after long enough and stick to things she can do. What about knitting some gingerbread men?