Rating: G (Rated for: Absolutely no swearing, violence, or anything of the sort. Man, I'm BORING.)

Challenge (from the ygochallenge community on livejournal): The "bang"

Summary: Jounouchi is trouble. Especially in the kitchen...

Notes: Written in under half an hour, with no editing, beta-reading or anything. Just a basic spell check and off we go. So any mistakes are mine because I am both a moron and it is 3:05 a.m.

The Big Bang

The doorbell rang once at the Mutou home. Yami heard the door open and soft footsteps that crossed the first level, but other than that, there was complete silence. Normally, silence wouldn't bother him (especially after three centuries in the Puzzle), but today...

It all started, as most things seemed to, with Jounouchi. Yami knew that the blond boy had something to do with the silence that now encompassed the house, and the former Pharaoh was worried. With Jounouchi, silence was a BAD thing. But Yami had been expressly forbidden from going downstairs, not even for a drink of water (not that he would ever need one, as his body was not a real body). Deciding against his better judgment to go check on his other half, Yami went down half a dozen stairs.

"Yugi?"

"DON'T COME DOWN!" his other fairly shrieked, poking his head out of the kitchen.

"I'm not," Yami said with a laugh. "I was just worried that it was too quiet down here."

"We're fine, really we are. Just go back upstairs now, okay? I'll call you when it's safe to come down."

"Yugi, are you sure you're okay?"

Yugi gave him a wide, innocent smile that didn't fool Yami for a minute. "Yup. Now be a good Pharaoh and do as you're told." Laughing, Yami went back upstairs and sat down on Yugi's bed, pulling his dueling deck out as he did so. Some of the cards needed a bit of tweaking, and this was as good a chance as any.

"Jounouchi, did you..." he faintly heard Yugi's voice. The answer must have been negative, because Yami heard the front door open and close once again. Yugi walked into the living area by the sounds of it and turned on the television, raising the volume to nearly deafening levels. Good thing Grandpa was out of the house for the day, at some sort of business meeting. Apparently, Yugi liked American music channels because Yami heard a lot of girls screaming and songs he couldn't understand, but recognized the rhythm of the words as English.

"Yugi, I got it!" Jounouchi's voice came nearly ten minutes later, barely heard over the level of the television. The music stopped quickly and it was silent once again. Yami raised an eyebrow and looked down at the Black Magician card he held in his hand.

"What are those boys up to?" he wondered aloud. Shrugging, he went back to his shuffling, pulling out a few of the cards he hadn't used for a while and replacing them with new cards acquired from Grandpa's stock only that week. The God cards he left to the side, thinking that the only person he'd ever have to use these against was Kaiba. And thankfully, the CEO seemed far too busy these days to harass Yami as he used to. "Probably building some new and improved dueling arena," Yami mused, "one that he thinks will put me at a disadvantage. When WILL he learn?"

"DING!" came from the kitchen area, followed by a cheer from Jounouchi, which was apparently shushed by Yugi. By this time, Yami had a pretty good idea what they were doing by the smells that were coming from the first level. Smells of dough, and bread, and... smoke?

"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" The explosion shook the entire house. Yugi screamed, Jounouchi yelled and Yami went flying, not even touching any of the stairs as he ran for the kitchen. Black, billowy smoke was now coming out of the kitchen, accompanied by the shriek of the fire alarm.

"Yugi? Jounouchi?" Yami called, waving the smoke away from his face. "Yugi?"

"Yami?" came the faint voice from within the thick cloud. Blocks away, sirens could be heard.

"Yugi, what happened?" Yami worriedly waited as the figures of Jounouchi and Yugi made their ways towards him. At the mere sight of the pair, Yami fought back a laugh. Yugi's naturally spiky hair now stood straight up on end, black as the Shadow Realm, and Jounouchi's hair was patchy, rendering him nearly bald. Both were also missing their eyebrows.

"We had an accident," Yugi said sheepishly.

"I never would have guessed if you didn't tell me," came the dry response. "Just what were you doing in there?" Jounouchi and Yugi exchanged looks, and again Yami fought back a laugh at their almost comical appearances.

"Baking," Jounouchi finally said. "Bakura gave us this recipe his dad found..."

"And we had to try it. We thought you'd love it," Yugi chimed in. "I don't know what went wrong, though." The sirens were very close now.

"A recipe? For what?"

"Cookies. We think."

"You THINK?"

"Well, the recipe didn't actually say what it was we were making..."

Yami choked.

"But the ingredients looked like the modern-day recipe for cookies!" Yugi again tried the innocent smile. "I mean, how hard can it be to mix flour, baking soda, water, sugar and chocolate?"

"Are you sure that's what the recipe said?" Yami asked. "Let me see it."

"You can't read hieroglyphics," protested Yugi. Yami just held out his hand and Yugi handed over the photograph, with the translation on the back. Yami compared the two for a moment before he dissolved into helpless laughter.

"What?" came two voices.

"Do you have any idea what this is?" Yami finally got out. Both boys shook their heads. "Whoever translated this didn't get the symbols right. This isn't a recipe for cookies, it's a recipe for making bricks!"

"Bricks?" Jounouchi echoed.

"Then why did it explode?" was Yugi's question as the sirens finally stopped right outside their door.

Yami just looked at the sheepish pair. "Yugi, what containers did you actually use in there?"

"Just the stuff that was above the stove, and on the kitchen table."

"And what did you send Jounouchi out for?"

"The sugar... You DID bring back sugar, didn't you?" Jounouchi nodded as Yugi turned to look at him. "Then there was the flour, and baking soda, and the water, and the..." his voice trailed off.

"Chocolate," Jounouchi finished. "But it didn't look like any chocolate I've ever seen."

Yami sighed. "Remember Grandpa telling you he'd bought that stuff for the side of the house, where that car hit it last week?" Yugi nodded. "He kept it in the kitchen, on the TABLE because he was planning on using it tomorrow to fix that hole."

As the firefighters began pouring in the house to quench the fire in the kitchen, two very embarrassed teenage boys were standing before a third figure, who finally gave in to his impulses and fell on the floor in hysterics.