TITLE: Getting Over It
AUTHOR: The Buttons Master
RATING: PG, for the moment.
TRANSMISSION: 2
CHAPTER: 2
TRANSMISSION TITLE: The Macarroni and Cheese Disaster
SUMMARY: Kojiro is temporarily unable to cook due to a broken foot. Ookami complains and is punished by cooking dinner. Ookami can't cook, so she inlists some help....
(//
Well, sorry this took so long, everyone. I've been busy lately. I've had a ton of homework, then a week of exams, and then an icky speech to write; if that wasn't enough, I've been busy out of my mind and hardly getting any sleep at all! I haven't had much time to work on this, but, *points* I DID get it done, so, HA! *blows raspberries at the baka who said she couldn't get it done in a week or less* And, without further ado, my friends, THIS is why wolf spirits shouldn't be allowed in the kitchen unattended....
Buttons - THE AUTHOR
\\)
Transmission Two:
"The Macaroni and Cheese Disaster"
Ookami was skipping around the kitchen table in a purple apron and waving a wooden spoon in the air, while Sirius was sitting down like a normal person, flipping through a cookbook of recipes.
"Okay now, Ookami....Ookami? OOKAMI!" He yelled. "SIT DOWN--" boing, boing, boing, "OOKAMI!! SIT DOWN AND STOP THAT JUMPING BEFORE YOU GIVE ME A BLOODY HEADACHE!"
Ookami stopped jumping promptly and hopped down a in a chair. "Well, then what am I SUPPOSED to do if I can't jump?"
"You have to help me find a recipe, that's what." Sirius said. "I wanted to find something that isn't going to be too hard, since you haven't cooked anything before, but most of these are pretty complicated....it must be Kojiro's or something." Sirius tossed the book willy-nilly out a window; there was a loud splat and a squirrel chattered. "Now would be an excellent time for one of your so-called brilliant lupine ituitions to strike."
"Hold on; don't move! I'll be right back!" With that, Ookami jumped out of her chair, and ran to the pantry, where she began digging through and discarded unwanted items over her shoulder.
Sirius sighed. Oh great....this COULDN'T possibly be a good thing.
A few minutes later, she tapped him on the shoulder, holding an odd blue box full of something.
"Oh good grief....what on earth is that?"
"It's a box." Ookami said mystically as she gestured in the air.
"I can see it's a box, you mindless twit!" Sirius rubbed his head in frustration. "I mean, what's IN the box. For Pete's sake...."
"Oh," Ookami said. She turned the box around. The box was blue. Very blue. Possibly the bluest box she had ever seen. That's why she picked it out; Ookami liked blue. Ookami liked blue a lot. Blue berries were blue, too, and Ookami also liked those--Anyway, the box read, in large yellow letters: KRAFT Macarroni and Cheese - EASY MAC. Below this, it had an extremely disturbing drawing of an orange dinosaur riding on a jet ski.
"It says Easy Mac!" Ookami said. "That must mean it's easy, and you said I should start out with something easy."
"Right," said Sirius, "now, let's begin then, if that's what you want to make....we'll start out by gathering the ingredients."
"Okay." Ookami said. There was a moment of silence. "Um....Sirius?"
"What?"
"How do I know what we're going to need if I don't know how to cook?"
"Look on the side of the box," Sirius said, "there should be some instructions."
Instructions on the side of the box, indeed! Ookami thought....sometimes silly humans put things in the strangest places!
But, sure enough, there they were, right on the side of the box, just as Sirius said. But of course, Sirius was usually right. He was smart. Very smart. One of the smartest humans Ookami knew. Usually when he told her something, he was right, and most humans were almost never right! Humans could be SO silly!
"We need to boil water." Ookami read. "Six cups of it, the box says. Smart, old box...."
Sirius sighed. "Right....anyway, do you know how to boil water?"
"Err--sort of....but I don't think I have a kettle big enough to put over the fire."
Sirius smacked himself in the middle of the forehead and shook his head. "That's NOT how you boil water, Ookami."
"It's not?" Ookami blinked curiously. "That's how I'VE always done it....then what's the right way?"
"We'll need a bowl and a liquid measuring cup."
"A liquid measuring cup? Why can't we just use a normal one?"
"Just go get the glass measuring cup in the cabinet!"
"Okay!" Ookami said brightly.
Ookami stood by the sink measuring out the water, and Sirius went hunting for a bowl. Once they had put the water in the bowl, Ookami stood by the counter with an odd look on her face.
"Okay, umm...." Ookami fumbled with the blue box, "what do we do next?"
"The the pasta in the bowl, idiot."
"Oh....I see now!" Ookami dumped the contents of the package into the bowl with the water and pulled out the white paper package. Paper didn't belong in food, as Mr. K had told Hector many times over dinner.
"What's in the package?"
"I think it's the cheese," Sirius said, "don't worry about that now. I think we do that last....this is why I hate muggle cooking! It's too complicated!"
"Now we boil the water, right?"
"Yes," Sirius said, "next we have to boil the water."
A moment of silence.
"Umm....how do you boil water?"
"Oi! Ookami, do you know how to do ANYTHING like a human does?!" Sirius griped.
"Not a lot of things," Ookami smiled too cutely for it to be natural; Sirius scowled. "I'm still learning."
Sirius rubbed his head and growled. "I need an asprin...." He stalked towards the door and turned to Ookami. "I'm going to leave the room for FIVE MINUTES. Don't touch ANYTHING while I'm gone, got me? I want the kitchen to be in one piece when I get back."
"Hai hai!" Ookami said, "I wouldn't dream of blowing anything up without you!"
Sirius shuddered and left the kitchen rather quickly.
Ookami looked at the the water and the pasta in the bowl. It COULDN'T POSSIBLY that difficult....maybe she could go ahead and boil the water....
She knew she wasn't even supposed to be in the kitchen unless there was someone to tell her what to do and make sure nothing exploded, but everything was so SHINY....it's like it was calling her name....
It woudn't hurt if she were to try it by herself....after all, it was just ONE bowl of macaroni and cheese....
Ookami picked up the box. It read: MICROWAVE, uncovered, on HIGH 8 to 10 minutes or until water is absorbed, stirring every 3 minutes. Continued as directed above.
That didn't sound so hard....well, when Ookami thought about it, it DID sound a LITTLE hard, but, Ookami was a smart wolf; she could figure things out.
Kojiro had talked about something called a "micromave" before. This "microwave" was shiny; VERY shiny. Possibly one of the shiniest things Ookami had ever seen. And it had buttons; lots and lots of SHINY buttons. Breathtaken, Ookami pushed the biggest button on the pannel.
To Ookam's amusement, the door opened! Ooh....it was even more shiny on the inside! Ookami congratulated herself in her native language and put the bowl in. The box said 8 to 10 minutes; maybe there was some way to select how many minutes the bowl needed to stay in? Ookami looked at the buttons.
"Some human built this microwave wrong," Ookami pondered to herself, "there's only numbers....how am I supposed to spell 8 minutes with just numbers?!"
Then, Ookami got an idea....
"I know!~!" Ookami said to herself. "It's a L33T BOX! Now I get it--you're supposed to spell out what you can in l33t!" Ookami smiled at her own ingenius and began to type in "319h7 m1nu735", which, due to the fact that microwaves don't have letters or symbols, turned out to be: 31,971,735.
Ookami, being a wolf spirit, didn't have any clue that she was supposed to enter the power level before the number of minutes, or she probably wouldn't have set it on power level 31 for 971 minutes and 735 seconds. But Ookami, being a wolf spirit, didn't have a clue; not even a little one.
So, Ookami pushed the button that said "START".
And the l33t box started spinning and glowing, which amused Ookami to no end. The bowl went around and around, and the light got brighter and brighter, just like the bowl, which was glowing an unnatural shade of bright orange. Ookami however, didn't take notice at all as the bowl turned neon yellow, and then purplish blue. All the while, the microwave began to shake and emit smoke.
"Uh oh....," Ookami said, picking up the box with a slight hint of what appeared to be common sense, "Is it supposed to do that....?"
Sirius, who had just walked back into the room looking like he'd rather be run over with a semi-truck, knew the answer to this.
"NOOOO, OOKAMI! NOOO!"
"Huh?" Ookami turned. "Look! I made it all by myself!"
"OOKAMI!" Sirius yelled. "NO! TURN--IT--OFF! QUICK!"
Ookami looked at the microwave; the bowl was glowing blue violently, and the microwave was smoking, shaking and spitting sparks, nearly rattling off the counter. Even Ookami had enough sense to know that microwaves aren't supposed to do that.
"Uh oh." Ookami said. But it was too late.
"Beeeep! Beeeep! Beeeep!" said the microwave.
At that moment, butterflies flew in a field in New York, an Eskimo fed a fish to his dog, an old chinese man swept out his apartment; somewhere, children played. A bell rang, and a man sang in the shower. But, unfortunately, there was no happiness at 13 14th Boulevard St. Rd. Ct.
The l33t box exploded; goo went flying in every direction; a boom loud enough to make the dead roll over in their graves echoed through the hills; a mushroom cloud rose from where the kitchen once stood.
Sirius stood in what was once the doorway, covered in pasta goo and ashes and stray pieces of burnt plastic. His left eye twitched madly.
"Oops...." Ookami smiled, tapping her fingers nervously.
"OOPS?! WHAT DO YOU MEAN, OOPS!?" Sirius yelled; his left eye was still twitching, and he was obviously loosing a mental war within his mind about whether or not to strangle Ookami with his bare hands.
"I didn't know it was going to blow up, or I would have waited for you." Ookami said in a disturbingly calm way.
"I TOLD you not to touch ANYTHING, YOU IDIOT!" Sirius yelled as he pulled out clumps of his own hair. "THAT--INCLUDES--THE MICROWAVE!"
"Oops." Ookami said again. "Well, never to worry--I'll clean up! Wait here--I'll go get the broom!"
"No! NO, Ookami! NO CLEANING UP!" Sirius yelled in a paranoid manner. "You done enough damag--I mean, YOU'VE HELPED OUT ENOUGH FOR ONE DAY."
"Are you sure?" Ookami said innocently, shaking the ashes from her purple and black hair. "It's my fault the l33t box blew up, so it's only fair that I have to clean it."
"The l33t WHAT?" Sirius smacked himself in the forehead and looked like he was about to cry. "Ookami, you idiot...."
Kojiro stopped at the door, his eyes as big as saucers.
"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! MY KITCHEEEEEEEN!" was all he could scream before he fell backwards in his wheelchair and had a heart attack.
***
Twenty minutes later, Ookami and Sirius sat on the porch with Draco and Hector, watching the blinking lights fade into the darkness after Vash and Mr. K called the ambulence to take Kojiro away.
"Now do you see why you need to listen to me when I tell you to do something?" Sirius lectured.
"I know," Ookami sighed, "I just wanted to prove I could learn how, that's all."
"Learn to what?" Sirius said. "Cook? Ookami, you've never been able to cook; you know that!"
"No," Ookami said stubbornly, "being human! It's a lot more complicated than it looks, isn't it?"
Hector gasped and ran around the side of the house, muttering about Wolf Skywalker going to the Dark Side; Draco ran after him with a butterfly net.
Sirius sighed. "Yes, it can be," he said to the downfallen wolf, "and there's nothing wrong with wanting to learn--"
Ookami looked proud of herself.
"--but," Sirius continued, "don't try to learn everything at once!"
"But I want to!" Ookami said. "The faster I can learn, the more I can learn; I'll show everyone yet! Spirits are people, too--err, sort of....kind of....not really....well YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN...."
"I know you want to learn to live like humans do," Sirius said with exasperation, "but you're going to have to pace yourself. This is a whole different world from where you or I grew up, and you're going to have to learn to move at a slow pace if you ever want to get anywhere at all!"
"Move at a....slow pace?" Ookami said as if the phrase 'slow pace' were some sort of vile curse word. "But won't that take a long time? Heck--it's going to take forever!"
"Don't lose your temper, wolf." Sirius sneered. "And you're right; it probably will take forever. But you have to crawl before you can walk. Take it one step at a time and I'll bet you really can learn to be human."
"Wow," Ookami breathed, looking at the smoldering rubble heap that was once the kitchen, "I never thought of it like that! Gee....thanks, Sirius!"
"I could even help you, if you want. I'm not a muggle, but I know a lot about them...."
"Really!?" Ookami perked up and began hopping up and down excitedly. "When can we start?"
"Now's fine with me." Sirius took a deep breath and stepped back. "Lesson one: humans don't wear aprons as casual clothing."
Ookami blinked. "They don't?"
"No," Sirius said firmly, "THEY DON'T."
"Oh...." Ookami frowned disappointedly.
"Now that you know, please go put on some NORMAL clothing! The neighbors are staring at us...."
/ OWARI
BUTTON NOTES
(// Well, wasn't that fun? ^^ There are references to the "l33t box" in later transmissions, so if Ookami says l33t box, she's talking about the microwave. Well, looking at this as a whole now, I can see some characters who are going to get some more.... *drumroll* character-building! *crowd cheers at THE AUTHOR's brilliance* I'm not going to do some more on Hector for a while (Sirius, Ookami and Hector have major rolls later on in the story--yes! This is actually going to have a plot!), but in the next few transmissions, you'll be seeing a lot more of Draco, Mr. K, Vash and Kojiro. In about 15 more transmissions, you can be looking forward to some NEW characters, not to mention some fellow females for Ookami to talk to. That's all I'm going to say for now--not going to give much away! I'm not getting these out quite as fast as I'd hoped, but then again, they're turning out a lot better as well! Have any ideas? Drop me a line: Haru@authors.zzn.com, OR you could leave me a nice review. ^^
Until next time! \\ Buttons - THE AUTHOR )
/ BUTTON NOTES