One morning, at the beginning of a school day, Mr. Kiriya announced we would be taking place in a cooking competition against the other ninja schools.

"Do we really have time for that?" Tris asked, as impatient as ever. "You know, with all this other crap we're facing?"

"We will have to make time," he said. "If we didn't compete, it would look as though we were insulting the other schools."

"Well, they're facing the same stuff we are, so maybe they shouldn't be doing it either. Plus, don't we, like, legitimately fight against some of these other schools? Like Hebijo? And now we're suddenly making nice enough with them to have a cooking competition?"

I tried to send Tris a mental note to get her to shut up. It didn't work. And seriously, who gave her the right to say that? She definitely "made nice" with a certain Hebijo student, a lot.

"Who's judging this anyway?"

"Asuka's grandfather," Mr. Kiriya said. "He runs a sushi restaurant, so he's experienced with cooking."

"Won't he favor us, since Asuka goes here?"

"We trust him to be impartial."

I was tired of Tris acting like this, so I jumped to my feet and nodded enthusiastically, like, let's get going on cooking then. Maybe then we'd finally be able to move on.

Mr. Kiriya nodded. "That's the right attitude. Let's head down to the school kitchen and you can start on your dishes."

"Aren't we not supposed to mix in with the other, normal, non shinobi students?"

Tris needed to stop. We had to cook, regardless of whether it was relevant to everything else or not. Besides, I always liked cooking. In fact, Tris always liked it even more than me. She did the meal planning at home, even though I'm pretty sure her primary motivation for that was to keep me from ever cooking. Still, she was especially into baking, especially baking cookies. So why was she complaining now? Just to be contrary? Or maybe she'd just rather be fooling around with Ryona. Again.

Finally, on the way down, the other students began to chatter about what they were going to make.

"I'm making sushi!" Asuka said, as full of enthusiasm as ever.

"I wanna make sweets," Hibari said. "But I can't decide which kind."

"Make something that can be shaped like a bunny," Yagyuu said. "I'm trying to think of something interesting to do with squid."

"I'm making ramen!" Kat also seemed pretty excited about this.

"I guess I'll do cookies," Tris said, sharply, still seeming like she thought the whole thing was stupid.

"I'm still deciding what I'll make. What are you making, Linkle?" Ikaruga asked.

I just stared blankly at her. I had some ideas, but she should know by now I wasn't the best communicator. She paused, seeming to realize her error.

"Ah, I guess we'll find out?" She gave a forced, sheepish laugh.

As we started filtering into the school kitchen, Tris caught up with me, and leaned in close to murmur something in my ear.

"I'm not complaining just to be contrary. I'm just worried, you know? I don't want to have to have any... run-ins with any Hebijo students." She paused. "I know what you're thinking. I'm in a friends with benefits relationship with a Hebijo student. And that's exactly it. I don't want anyone to be able to figure it out. I don't want to make our school look bad."

I rolled my eyes at her and took my place around the central counter.

"I have an idea!" Asuka said, calling out to everyone as we gathered. "Maybe, instead of us all making a bunch of separate dishes, we can make one big dish that represents all of us as a class! Wouldn't that be fun? It would be like... a super friendship dish!"

I nodded at her. That would be a lot less work than all of us cooking individually.

"Do we really have to do that again?" Ikaruga asked. "There was already that one incident where none of us could decide what to have for lunch, and we ended up combining all our ideas, and it was... interesting, at best."

"You were the one who had the idea to combine all our ideas," Yagyuu said. "And, it wasn't bad. At least not as bad as it sounds like a sweet squid ramen roll is going to be."

Tris stepped in, her arms crossed. "Well, now it isn't just the five of you. Now Linkle and I are here too. So, if we tried to combine everyone else's idea, plus our ideas, we'd have another new idea." This was getting to be too many... ideas. "So, what's everyone else's idea? I'm good at cooking, so I can think of a way to combine them in a way that makes sense. Like that cooking competition where they give the chefs a bunch of seemingly unrelated ingredients and they have to figure out how to combine them to make a cohesive dish."

Ikaruga sighed. "Asuka loves sushi, Kat loves ramen, Yagyuu loves squid, and Hibari loves anything sweet. That's how we ended up with the sweet squid ramen roll."

"Well, my favorite thing is cookies, so..." Tris tapped her chin in thought. "Maybe we can make two different dishes, one sweet and one savory. Hibari and I can work together on some sweet sugary cookies—you said bunny shaped things, so we could make bunny cookies—and then the rest of you can work together on a savory meal."

"So, a non-sweet squid ramen roll?" Ikaruga asked. "But wait a moment. For this dish to be truly representative of our entire class, we have to add in Linkle's favorite food. Linkle, what's your favorite—oh." She seemed to remember yet again that I couldn't really form words.

I didn't really have a favorite food. I personally liked, well... anything and everything. I did drink a lot of milk, I guess? But how would milk fit in with all these other... ideas? I was getting tired of the back and forth. At least Tris decided she was going to make cookies with Hibari, but as for the rest of us?

I was ready to take matters into my own hands.

I started rummaging through the ingredients as quickly as I could, before anyone could tell me to stop. I grabbed the best ramen noodles I could find, for Kat. I grabbed the sushi nori, for Asuka. I grabbed squid, for Yagyuu. And I grabbed some milk. But wait, that didn't seem like... enough. Maybe I needed to throw in butter. And garlic? It didn't matter. I grabbed the largest pot and just started to toss the stuff in, the way I always did. Whole raw squid, whole sheets of nori, the brick of ramen with its seasoning packet. The whole bulb of garlic would work, as would the whole stick of butter. And then I'd just need to pour the milk over all of it...

It was at that point that I realized the rest of the class—except for Tris, who knew how this was about to go down—was staring at me like I was crazy.

"You're not going to clean the squid?" Yagyuu asked.

"Maybe you should, uh, cut up the seaweed," Asuka suggested.

"You have to open the seasoning packet before you put it in the ramen," Kat said, sounding exasperated already.

Hibari was practically hiding behind Yagyuu, and Ikaruga just... stared, her mouth hanging open. But I ignored them and turned on the stove. I grabbed a spoon and gave the mix of ingredients a few stirs, and with a sudden burst of energy and light...

We had a soup. A soup with perfectly cooked squid floating in a creamy, savory, garlicky broth, made heartier with the ramen noodles, and accented with thinly sliced strips of nori. I decided it should probably be called cream of squid noodle soup.

"What the f—" Ikaruga bit down on her tongue to stop herself from cussing, because she was all proper like that.

"It's how she does it," Tris said, shrugging. "I'm not even entirely sure how it works. The only reason I don't let her cook at home is because she puts in weird ingredients. If she made normal stuff, it'd be super convenient, but no, she's got to put in weird herbs and mushrooms she finds outside, and weird meats, and..." She shuddered. "But... this soup looks... kinda tasty." She grabbed a spoon, and dipped it in, fishing around to make sure she got some squid, noodle, and seaweed. Then, she tasted it. "Damn. This is... way better than you'd guess."

Pretty soon, the whole class was grabbing spoons to try some of the soup. And they were all agreeing it tasted damn good.

"Can you help us with the bunny cookies too?" Hibari asked, beaming at me. I nodded, trying my best to mentally reassure Tris that I'd only put in the ingredients she told me to, and not anything else extra and strange. Tris tossed me the ingredients, and Hibari tossed me the frosting colors and sprinkles she wanted to use to decorate with, and I mixed them together in the bowl, then poured the mixture onto a sheet and baked it in the oven. Bam! Pink bunny shaped cookies with sprinkles.

At the end of that day, I went home feeling like a particularly valuable member of my class. Like... sure, I was kind of burdening them with the whole Triforce crap that no one asked to be a part of but everyone got roped into anyway. But maybe, just maybe, I could offset it a little, with my freakish cooking capabilities.

Of course, as soon as I settled down that evening, Zelda burst into my head again, as was her way. "Hmm, so how's the cooking competition thing going for you?"

I puffed out my cheeks in defiance even though she couldn't see me, before giving her a sharp mental response. "Not telling. If you know what my class is making then you'll... I don't know. You'll have an advantage against us, somehow."

"I could look really deeply into your mind if I really did want to know. But I won't. I'll wait until the day of the competition to see. And you'll have to wait until that day, too, to see what I made." I could feel her smirking. "You thought earlier about how Tris was worried to be face to face with Ryona in front of other people, where it could come out that the two of them were an item. I think that's a valid concern, don't you? It surprises me that you don't have the same concern with you and Murasaki."

I didn't even have to finish my thought before she responded to it.

"I see you still don't think you and Murasaki are an item. Well, you'd better get around to accepting it. I mean, what if she thinks you are, and you somehow indicate that you don't think so, and you hurt her feelings?"

I gasped aloud. Hurting her feelings was the last thing I ever wanted to do. "Okay, okay. She's basically my girlfriend, and I really like her, in a friendship way and also more than that. Are you happy now?!"

"I'm very happy for you." Still, I could practically hear her shaking her head. "You know, sometimes it's incredibly frustrating, the way you're so oblivious to romantic advances sometimes. There was one time, when we were incredibly close from the time we were twelve or so, and once we got older, I... well, you went from a dweeb to a hot dweeb. So I tried flirting with you the only way I knew how, but it took you absolute ages to notice."

I paused for a while then, reaching deep into my subconscious, rummaging through my past lives to see if I could recall. And I did. "I think I remember this, actually. If we're talking about the same time, then... uh. That was the time when you suddenly started being really, really mean to me, and I didn't know what I did, and I started to get, like, genuinely upset."

I could feel her flinch and grimace at herself. "Oh, crap... sorry. In my defense, I had absolutely no female role models in my life that time, so, uh... yeah. I should've told you... you didn't do anything wrong. The only thing you did was grow up and get hot." She laughed sheepishly.

A thought struck me. "Huh, so you thought I was hot then. Does that mean... you're like the only shinobi student in this whole city that's actually heterosexual?"

I could feel her flinch again. "W-well, I wouldn't say that."

"No?" I paused. "Is there a girl you like?" No response. I persisted. "Do you have like, a crush on one of your classmates?"

"Well. If you even think about telling anyone this, I'm going to use your phone for target practice. That way, you won't even be able to tell anyone."

"I won't tell a soul." And I meant it. "Now spill."

"It's... Yumi." I could feel her blushing. "You've met her before. That's the awkward part. She was one of the girls that was all enamored with you. She asks me about you all the time. I think she thought it was all cool how you're all a heroic defender of justice and stuff. She's... really into justice. A little too rigidly, if you ask me. She seems to really distrust the Hebijo students and even the Crimson Squad, when I think they're not as bad as she makes out. Still, though... Yumi is very cute. She reminds me of Mipha a bit."

"Mipha?" I felt like I should remember this, but I didn't.

"Mipha was also very sweet and cute and delicate, and she was also very into you. Like, really. Stop being such a chick magnet, and leave some for the rest of us, will you?"

"I mean, I'm sorry?" I shrugged. "Maybe just drop into conversation with her sometime that I'm taken? Don't say by who, obviously, or she'd have a fit. But then, once she knows I'm taken, you need to make sure she knows you're available."

"That seems so presumptuous, though." Zelda sighed. "To assume that she'd be interested in me?"

"Well, since you were so eager to push Murasaki and me together, now it's my job to do the same thing to you and Yumi," I thought. "I mean, I'm not going to tell Yumi, or anyone, about how you feel. I'm just going to, y'know, encourage you to do stuff. To actually make moves on Yumi. She's sure to notice you eventually. You are really pretty and sweet."

"You think so?"

"Of course I think so. And we're going to make sure Yumi thinks so, too, damn it." And I meant it. If she got to push me around with my love life, I was going to help her out with hers.

Finally, the day of the cooking competition came. All the students from Gessen and Hebijo—and even the Crimson Squad girls, who were supposed to be renegades—had brought their dishes to the Hanzo school auditorium, for Asuka's grandfather to taste test. He was sitting at a table in the middle of everything, and he looked... kinda intimidating. Asuka had said before that he used to be a great shinobi himself, but was just retired now, so I guessed it made sense.

In the meantime, we walked around, looking at all the dishes that had been brought, that had been lined up on a long table. There was the Hanzo class' cream of squid noodle soup, with its dessert of bunny shaped sugar cookies. The Crimson Squad had done the same thing as us and turned in one big dish for the whole group of them, but it was... a stir fry of bean sprouts. Just bean sprouts. Wow. From what I knew about Yomi, that wasn't a surprise.

Gessen and Hebijo, though, had each student make their own separate dish. And, to be honest, they all looked really good. Yumi had made ice cream from scratch. Minori had made—big surprise—pancakes. Shiki made tomato soup. Murakumo made mochi with red bean filling. Yozakura—I hadn't met her yet, but Zelda said she was cool—made onigiri with pickled plum. Zelda's dish was a big tray of cream filled buns made in the shapes of little hearts. Obnoxiously cute and dainty little hearts. I shouldn't have been surprised at all.

I then moved down to the Hebijo section. Miyabi had made a chicken and egg rice bowl. Imu made inari sushi. Ryobi made some cute funfetti cake pops, which surprised me. Given how much of a hot headed sadist she was, I didn't know she had any cute sweet in her. Ryona's dish was curry, which smelled so spicy it made my eyes water just standing near it. Because of course she'd make something pain flavored. Murasaki made a pizza. And it seemed they'd even forced Ganondorf into participating, though I bet she thought she was above it. She'd made kibbeh.

Part of me wondered if it was, like, poisoned or something. She could probably do that without getting caught, since if Asuka's grandpa ate a little of each of these dishes, no one would know which one had the poison. I swallowed hard. But I was probably just freaking myself out, right? She wouldn't do something like that so openly. She wasn't stupid.

Then, though, I noticed what was on Murasaki's pizza, and did a double take. It had mushroom, onion, and pineapple. That'd been the weird topping combo I thought of when I was sleeping over her place. Had it left that much of an effect on her? Was that a subtle shout out to me? I could feel myself blushing, so I rushed away.

We all stood around like idiots while Asuka's grandpa tasted some of each dish. One after another, he just kept at it, making notes on a piece of paper as he did so. And, after he'd tasted each thing, it didn't take him long to come to a conclusion.

"And the winner of the shinobi school cooking contest, and the prize of a secret ninja art scroll capable of granting one wish, is..."

A scroll that could grant a wish?! I didn't know that would be the prize. Please not Ganondorf, I thought. Don't give her that power. Not here. Not now.

"Miss Zelda from Gessen Academy!"

And of course she pranced over as daintily as could be and took the scroll, beaming at the perfect combination between proud and humble. We all applauded her, especially me. Although I couldn't help but wonder what it was she was going to use that scroll for. I figured I'd ask her later that night...

Turns out I didn't even have to ask. She butted into my head before I could.

"You're wondering what I used that scroll for, aren't you?" It almost sounded accusatory.

"Well, yeah? But first let me tell you I'm proud of you for winning? Those cream filled buns did look awesome, and they were all cute with the heart shapes. You're a very talented chef."

"Thank you..." She seemed sheepish. "But... I have to tell you what I used the scroll for. I have to get it off my chest. You won't tell anyone, will you? If you do, I'll—"

"You'll use my phone for target practice, I know."

"Well, yes." I could feel her nod. "You see, I know it said one wish, but I wished for two things, sort of. I wished that something good would happen to me within the next week. Then I said, maybe something like Yumi noticing me and thinking I'm cute, or maybe something like Ganondorf falling down a flight of stairs and breaking her neck. You know. I was going to just wish for Yumi to notice me, but I felt like just wishing that would be too selfish, given all that's going on with us and the Triforce, so—"

"You are a sociopath sometimes," I couldn't help but think at her.

"I'm not. We've been over this. Plus, you know what kind of evil Ganondorf is capable of. If she injured herself horrifically, it would be well deserved."

"I know, I know, but still. The way you just think it so casually, and yet in such detail. Like oh, wouldn't it be nice if she died in this very specific way that I thought of? Sociopath."

"Hmph. You're just jealous you didn't win with your cream of squid noodle soup." At least I could tell by her tone that she was joking.

"Maybe. Maybe I'll do way better next time."

Little did I know that this wouldn't be the only ridiculous contest us shinobi students would be forced to participate in.