Time for yet another prompt and this one doesn't run the risk of being late for once! Yay! This time, it's cooking. I may like to watch a lot of food shows, but I'll openly admit that I really don't know how to cook. I just get scared of causing fire or other accidents because of my lack of knowledge.

And, an honest wonder, why is it that Byleth/Ryuko ends up calling upon someone else to aid them while cooking? Do they just not know how to cook? Just something I wondered about. Also, I will say this point. During the first instance where I could do that cooking thing in Three Houses, I actually remembered a conversation me and my good buddy KKD had. He said that Bernadetta was a good cook and I actually ended up remembering that when I was playing and picked her. It worked out. Yay for my memory!

Not much else I wanna say here, other than a quick shout out and thanks to my pal Hotzo Thotzo for doing a brief sampling on one scene in this story. Thanks a lot.

Disclaimers: Fire Emblem belongs to Nintendo, Intelligent Systems, Koei Techmo, etc.

Byleth let out a gentle sigh as he looked over the kitchen. The display for what had to be done for lunch was out, as well as the ingredients he needed, but the teacher had a bit of an annoyed expression on his face as he looked at the prospect.

"The fact you can't cook is finally catching up to you…" Sothis chimed in with a small grin, "And your usual little helper from the Black Eagles has a test she needs to redo, so you can't get her help."

All Byleth could do was heavily sigh as he looked at some of the stuff that needed to be done by lunch. He could only put his hands in his palms as he tried to think of some way out of his current predicament...

"And, so, I need help cooking…" Byleth explained to his students, although the only three that were there were Claude, Lorenz, and Marianne, "I cannot finish it by myself…"

"In that case, Marianne is your best bet. I have training that I need to finish, and Claude cannot cook to save his life," Lorenz informed.

"Hey!" Claude responded.

"You gave half of the class food poisoning for nearly a whole week the last time you tried…"

"...fair point. And Lorenz here can't cook either, so Marianne is really your best option."

Lorenz just glared daggers at Claude before Marianne simply gave a nervous look towards Byleth.

"I'm counting on you…"

Marianne soon got on an apron and a small hat before joining Byleth in the kitchen. She gently looked over the menu items that needed to be prepped and got started on cutting some of the vegetables for a salad. Byleth slowly tried to mimic what she was doing, but was clearly doing it at a much slower pace.

"Alright…" Marianne muttered as she moved the cut vegetables into a bowl and then went over to some dough. She pulled up her sleeves and started to knead it, "Professor, can you go make sure the meat is cold?"

"Uh… sure…" he nodded. He walked over to check on the cuts of meat that were there and could see that the ice magic being used to keep them cold was still being maintained, "I… think it looks good?"

"Alright then."

Byleth continued to assist Marianne as best he possibly could, albeit it was very slowly, and the meal was proceeding along at a smooth rate. Some dough was currently in the middle of rising, while Byleth was working on getting another piece of it ready to be put into the heat.

"I don't get how anyone can get this stuff done in an afternoon…" Byleth admitted as he tried to roll out the dough, "It's just so slow and difficult…"

"Why is it you don't know how to cook?" Marianne ended up asking as she took out the finished piece of bread, "...sorry if I'm overstepping…"

The teacher just let out a small exhale as he put the dough into the heat spot to let it rise, "I just never learned how to. Most of the other mercenaries just knew how to do it, so I never picked it up…"

"I learned a little bit before I left home…" Marianne nervously admitted as she walked over to her professor's side, "But I'm not the best cook in the school…"

"Anyone's better than what I can do…" Byleth exhaled.

"Did… you forget that Lorenz said that Claude got everybody sick?" Marianne asked him.

He simply nodded a little bit and then chuckled slightly. The two remained side by side for a little bit longer before Byleth walked over to check on something that was being cooked. He saw that it was going alright, but a bit slower than he was anticipating.

"Is… is the meat supposed to be cooking this long?" Byleth asked.

"It is. Just needs enough time to be good enough to eat," Marianne explained to him.

"Alright…" Byleth nervously nodded.

The two continued to cook a bit longer, with Marianne proceeding to work on plating the food and Byleth starting to do some clean up work.

"Okay, I think that's everything," Marianne told Byleth.

"I think so… but… um… does it smell like something's burning?"

Marianne looked over to the back area of the kitchen and could see there was dough that was still rising… looking ready to pop. Before she could react, though, time came to a total halt for everyone except for Byleth.

"You're seriously going to rewind time to make sure this doesn't happen? Seriously?" Sothis questioned.

"That thing blows, she may get in trouble. I don't want to take that chance," Byleth responded before time began to move backwards…

Marianne started to take out some of the plates for the food, only for Byleth to go over to the hot spot and quickly pull out the unfinished dough.

"...why did you take that out?"

"Just… had a feeling that if it kept cooking… it may get too big…" Byleth told her cautiously, "Better to not risk the hard work."

"Okay then."

The food was soon finished being plated and other people started to pile on in for lunch. Byleth let out an exhausted exhale as he sat down to get some food. As he was about to start eating, Marianne took the seat across from him and simply gave a small smile to him.

"Hi," Byleth greeted, "Um… thanks for your help today. Without you, it would've been a bit of a disaster."

"No problem," Marianne told him before she started to eat.

Byleth just gave her a small smile back and soon started to eat his own meal with a bit of a relaxed smile on his face. It was calm and quiet for the two of them that they both rejoiced with as they enjoyed the meal that they had prepped together.

I'll admit that I was a little stumped on how to make this one flow, but am happy with how this turned out. May once again be on the short side, but I had fun with it.

Not really sure what my favorite part would be here.

Anyway, next time is the prompt I am the most excited about. It's really going to be a fun one. Next time will be crossover. What IP? Well… it's something that male Byleth's English VA is also in. That's the only clue you get.

Just Live More.