Tsubaki looked at the table. There. Everything was perfect for her special dinner: the candles were lit, the good China dishware was set out, a bowl of toss salad sat at one end of the dining table, a steaming roast turkey at the other, with a cornucopia of fruit like a faceted jewel radiating the glow of the flames in the center.
Who was her special dinner with, do you ask? Well, the answer is absolutely no one. Tsubaki was eating by herself.
"Ah, a meal alone for once, without Black Star!" Tsubaki sighed blissfully. Oh sure, she loved her meister. But he was rambunctious and Tsubaki was subtle. Sometimes she needed time away from Black Star and his shenanigans. Tonight he and Soul were off at a concert of some sort, leaving Tsubaki alone with a hot meal and a novella to read by the fireplace.
"Well, let's eat!" she said to herself merrily, and had just begun to carve the turkey when a knock came upon her door.
She really wasn't tempted to answer it, but the purity of her conscious told her not to ignore the tidings. But as soon as she opened the door, she wished she had not: there stood Black Star, in a set of handcuffs and looking rather disgruntled, with two policemen hovering behind him.
"Tsubaki," the policeman greeted.
"Harry, Victor," Tsubaki replied with a polite nod of her head. Black Star had been arrested on so many occasions that the police and Tsubaki knew each other well enough for the formalities to evaporate. "What has he done this time…?"
Harry plunked Black Star in the entrance. "Tried to get into a concert with fake tickets."
Tsubaki sputtered, "Are you sure he didn't just make a stupid mistake, get tricked into buying the tickets? It's not the first time he'd do something like-"
"It was on purpose," Harry and Victor and Black Star answered in unison.
"… I see."
"This one's on us if you give us the turkey," Victor offered.
So Tsubaki waved good-bye as Victor and Harry and the turkey drove off. Then she turned around to Black Star, who was in the middle of doing push-ups.
"What are you…?" she questioned hesitantly.
"Getting stronger! A God can never afford to stop training! One hundred and seven!" Black Star chanted, and began doing claps in the middle of each push-up.
Tsubaki flopped down into a chair, exasperated, her night now utterly ruined. "Oh, Black Star… I don't know what to do with you…"
"I know what you can do for me: spot me!" Black Star commanded and began bench pressing a weight twice his mass. Tsubaki sighed heavily, realizing the Black Star had either forgotten or really didn't care about tonight's events, and spent the rest of the evening without her novella.
The next day was Friday. Tsubaki was emotionally drained.
"Gosh, Tsubaki, you look emotionally drained," Soul noted that morning as they walked to Shibusen together.
Tsubaki glared ahead in response. She was afraid if she opened her mouth she'd immediately start ranting.
"I beat the crud out of Soul last night for using illegal tickets to go to that concert. What did you do to Black Star?" Maka asked curiously.
Tsubaki shrugged. "I believe there was a turkey involved…"
Soul and Maka exchanged conversational glances to replace dialogue, then silently agreed that Tsubaki currently made little sense because she was emotionally drained.
"Good morning, my little underlings!" Black Star shouted, pretending a hair brush was a microphone as he stood atop one of Shibusen's pyres. "This is Black Star here, bringing you your daily dose of awesome! Give it up for the amazing me!"
The students beneath ignored the self-proclaimed deity. His antics were commonplace at this point.
"Fine! I see our hands are all too tired from the constant lifting of pencils to award me my round of applause! Your moment of silence is equally appreciated." Black Star grinned too wide, then jumped down from his spot up high to directly in front of his friends. "Hey guys! Did you see me?"
"You'd have to be blind and deaf and dead not to see you," Maka responded too truthfully.
"Last night was beast, man," Soul smirked, high-fiving Black Star.
"I'll set a beast on you if you ever do that again," his meister threatened sternly. "You both are idiots. I ought to knock your empty coconut heads together." So she did. Black Star's ricocheted off of Soul's with a metallic noise.
Soul looked confused. "And that was what?"
"Gel, he uses a lot of it, its made his hair almost impenetrable," Tsubaki responded monotonously.
Maka put her fist under her chin in thought. "You know what you need, Tsubaki? And I'm not the type to prescribe this, but you seriously look like you need a spa day."
"I'm not allowed at the spa. Last time I went there, Black Star was arrested for knocking over a window display of nail polish and spilling it all over the store owner's dog," Tsubaki explained unhappily.
"I think I have seen that dog," uttered Liz, who was suddenly there.
"Wasn't that the newspaper article 'Rainbow Dog Horrifies Master, Black Star Behind It But What Else Is New'?" inquired Death the Kid.
"Crona still works for Lady Medusa from the inside, plus Arachne is currently plotting all of Death City's downfall by using the power of the kishin Asura, and Eibon is the only one who can help us in our time of crisis, we should continue our search for him," said Patty, except that she didn't say it in Japanese/English/whatever, she said it in it animal talk, thus her dialogue was mistaken for lack of intelligence and was ignored.
"Well, don't worry, Tsubaki! We know you deserve time off, so we're all going to take care of your work around the house for you and let you relax!" Maka promised, which meant that everyone else promised so too, lest they want a Maka-chop to the head for the rest of the school year.
Tsubaki gave a half-smile and teared up, grateful for such a caring circle of friends. "Th… Thank you all so much…"
The next day was Saturday, the start of the weekend. Tsubaki stayed in bed until 7:15 and almost berated herself for severely oversleeping, then remembered that it was her day off.
"I'll make breakfast!" she decided. "After all, making breakfast isn't really work."
But as soon as she entered the kitchen, Maka, Liz, Patty, and Death the Kid were already there, with an unopened box of pancake mix on the counter and measurement tools strewn about.
"Ah," said Tsubaki.
"Tsubaki! No work for you! Shoo!" Maka ordered. "We're making you a surprise breakfast today- well it was a surprise breakfast - so you can't see what we're doing!"
"Wait, where's Black Star?" Tsubaki asked before they could push her out.
"We sent him to the arcade with fifty dollars and told him not to come back until he lost a game," Liz answered, "which we knew he'd never admit to, so I'm sure he'll be gone all day."
So Tsubaki scooted out of the kitchen.
"Oi, Tsubaki," called Soul from outside, walking up to her with muddied hands.
"Oh my," Tsubaki marveled, twitching. "You're quite dirty. I hope you weren't helping with breakfast."
"No, I was working on your garden," Soul explained, wondering how she could associate mud with breakfast. It was probably a Black Star-related memory, but he chose not ask. "I watered, weeded, and pesticided your garden for you."
Tsubaki put on a ghastly face.
"What does that ghastly face mean?" Soul asked.
"There are baby rabbits in that garden!" Tsubaki could barely talk above a whisper. "You sprayed it with pesticide?! Oh no!"
Tsubaki ran outside and went to the rabbits' burrow. All of them were gone.
"Oh no!" Tsubaki began to sob. "Where did they go? They should be able to hop yet!"
"This occurrence may have something to do with the particularly animate weeds I pulled," muttered Soul, showing her several squirming rabbit kits that most people wouldn't mistake for weeds.
"Oh thank goodness! Wait," Tsubaki stopped, "you're touching them with your bare hands."
"I thought gloves would make me look sissy," Soul admitted.
"Now the mother won't accept them as her children," Tsubaki said dolefully.
"No! I didn't mean to!" Soul dropped them in surprise, which only made everything worse.
"Nooo!" Tsubaki caught them. Her hands were also bare, so there was no hope of returning them to their hole. Oh well, guess she'd have to raise them in a cardboard box on the doorstep and feed them with an eyedropper just like last time.
As if that concern wasn't enough, the kitchen was fogging up with smoky black fumes.
Liz pushed the window open. "Air!" she panted, sticking her head out, Maka joining her seconds later. Kid, who is an all-magical Shinigami, could breathe smoke. In theory. Anyway, he didn't stick his head out the window.
As the kitchen cleared, it was clear that everything was either totally dirty or broken beyond compare.
"I don't get it!" Maka coughed. "What did we do wrong? How did we fail so epically?"
"My kitchen," Tsubaki choked.
Liz looked at the recipe. "Oven's on the right degree. We didn't overcook it. We used the right amount of ingredients. What went wrong?"
Tsubaki looked at the steaming oven. "It says it was last set to 888 degrees."
Everyone looked over at Death the Kid, who had chosen this particular moment to practice his absentminded whistling.
"Okay, so Kid changed the degrees," Maka growled, "but we can try again!"
Tsubaki's head was spinning. Everything was so horrible, she wished that she could tell her friends to leave and fix their mess on her own. Unfortunately, her overly-kind nature was constricting her.
As if things couldn't get worse, Black Star suddenly came in.
"Oi!" he shouted to announce his arrival. "It smells like up-dog in here!"
Liz raised one eyebrow. "What's 'up-dog'?"
"Well, since you asked," Black Star cut to the chase, "I won every prize in the store so they told me I had to leave! Tsubaki, I trust you'll donate them all to the children's hospital like usual."
"Tsubaki's broken!" Patty pointed and laughed.
"I think everyone should go now…" Tsubaki murmured robotically.
"Are you sure?" Maka asked.
Tsubaki nodded almost imperceptively. "Uh-huh."
So everyone shuffled out, feeling badly that they hadn't done well.
"Maybe this is just the way things should be," Tsubaki sighed as she began scrubbing at the walls with a towel.
And it is.
But because this should have a happy ending, after Tsubaki cleaned and repaired the kitchen for the entire day, she found a $150 gift certificate to a fondue shop that the author definitely didn't give her because they felt sorry that she's kept around for strictly fan service these days, and Black Star managed to lock himself in a closet for twelve hours so she could enjoy it.
THE END (Wait, seriously?)