A/N: I was kind of stalling on the plot, so I decided to just to write a chapter for the holidays! I'm also considering doing ones for Christmas and Valentine's Day.

Carly courageously stared down at her adversary. It was not even conceding an inch.

"Your days are numbered!" she shouted at it.

From the living room area, where he was watching something called "football," Jack asked, "Are you sure you don't want me in there? I think there's instructions on the wrapper. I could read them to you."

"N-no, I'm fine!" Carly replied. She was determined to do this all by herself. She'd only been in America for a week or so when she'd first heard about this "Thanksgiving" thing. Japan had borrowed its fair share of holidays from the Americans…Christmas, Valentine's Day, even Halloween… but this one was completely new to her. It was virtually impossible for her to even pronounce, but she had really wanted to fit in in this new country, so she had decided to try her hand at it. Apparently, turkey was an essential part of this holiday. Jack didn't know why. But if it was a tradition, then turkey it was!

Unfortunately, she hadn't realized that there were other dishes involved as well.

Carly took a knife and tore off the wrapper, managing not to cut herself in the process. Who needed instructions anyway…meat was meat, right?

Finally, the thing was out of its wrapper in all its raw, pimply, decapitated glory. Hmmm…now how to get it in the oven? Maybe one was supposed to use a special kind of pan for it…? Well, too late for that now. So she took out a baking dish and started to try to jam the bird into it.

"Get in there, you devil bird…" she growled.

"That must be what Aki says to Crow every night!" Jack exclaimed, laughing at what he obviously thought was the pinnacle of wit.

"JAAAACK! STOP IT! I'M TRYING…TO…CONCENTRATE…THERE!" she shouted as she finally got the whole turkey to go in the pan. But her triumph was short-lived as the legs almost immediately sprang back out again.

Carly sweatdropped. Well, it had to go into the oven anyway. She turned the oven temperature as high as it would go, so it would cook faster.

When the oven door was finally slammed shut on this opponent, Carly decided to go check out this football thing, which was very different from what she had known as "football" in Japan. Jack had been complaining about the lack of Riding Duels on TV, but once he'd found this he'd been mesmerized.

Well, there was a lot of action, Carly conceded after a while. But action seemed to be the only thing to it. Jack tried to explain the rules to her as best as he could understand them, but to Carly it just looked like a bunch of guys continuously crashing into each other for no reason. Oh, and there was a ball too, but that seemed almost to be of lesser importance in Carly's opinion.

And apparently, this sport had even inspired a manga and anime in Japan (which Carly had never looked at). Odd.

Carly was just starting to understand what punting was all about when Jack said "What's that smell?" The smoke detector started to go off at almost the same instant.

Oh crap! She'd forgotten about the turkey.

She raced to the kitchen and opened the oven door. Smoke billowed out, making it difficult to breathe, let alone see.

"A little help here?" she choked out.

Jack heroically ran into the kitchen and sprayed the oven with the fire extinguisher.

Once that crisis passed and the detector shut up, Carly could finally appreciate the absurdity of the situation. She was covered in foam, and the turkey was completely black on the outside, and almost raw on the inside when she took it out and tentatively cut into it. And Jack was just standing there looking at her, empty fire extinguisher in one hand and an impassive expression on his face.

Wait a minute…now that she was thinking of it, how had Jack gotten the fire extinguisher out so quickly?

"You had that with you the whole time, didn't you? You knew this was going to happen!" she accused.

"Yup," Jack answered nonchalantly.

"So why didn't you say anything?!"

"You wouldn't listen."

"Well, now we don't have anything to eat for dinner!" Carly wailed as she clutched at her head.

"Oh yeah we do," Jack said. He opened the cupboard. There, sitting proudly in the front, were two containers of Red Demon's Dragon ramen.

"They don't have these at regular grocery stores, the ingrates!" Jack said. "I had to go to an Asian specialty store to find this, so I hope you appreciate the effort."

But he hadn't been out today. That meant…

"You knew this was going to happen even before I started cooking!" Carly sputtered.

"Yup," Jack repeated.

Carly gave a cry of exasperation and threw up her hands. She gave up…she was going to go wash the foam out of her hair and let Jack deal with the mess.

Later on, they did end up having a nice, if nontraditional, Thanksgiving dinner of cup ramen. But Carly still felt embarrassed. As they were settling in for the night, she finally couldn't take it anymore and blurted out, "I'm sorry for being such a horrible cook!"

Jack snorted.

"So what about cooking…there's plenty of people who can cook," he said. "But there's just one Carly."

Carly tried to answer, but she was so choked up that she eventually just settled for flinging herself into his arms.

It wasn't until later that they realized that they'd forgotten to use a condom. Oh well.