Disclaimer: With all my laziness, I couldn't even think of a good disclaimer! So no, I couldn't think up/draw TMM. It belongs to Mia Ikumi and co, nomeh!
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Tart had enjoying his sleep. He'd really loved that lovely sleep. Tart loved to sleep. Sleep was his friend. Like most of the population, Tart preferred to sleep until at least five-o-clock in the morning.
Unfortunately, Pudding was not amongst most of the population. And it seemed that she didn't think Tart ought to be either.
"Good morning sleepy-head!" Tart felt a pillow connect with his shoulder—why must people always wake him up by hitting him with pillows? "Iiiiiittttt'sss… FOUR-FOURTY-FIVE NA NO DA! TIME TO WAKE UP!"
"AH!" cried Tart, flailing around and falling out of bed. The diminutive alien hit the floor face down with a thud. "Ow," he muttered, reaching up and groping for his chronometer on the table near his bed. He glanced at the luminous, alien numbers, then glared at Pudding. "Pudding, it's not even five! Let me sleep!"
"You already slept Tar-tar!" Pudding countered, whacking the young alien again with the pillow. "It's time to get up now!"
"Pudding, since I don't have three thousand siblings to look after, I value the luxury of sleep," Tart groaned, shielding his head from further blows with his hands.
"Luxury being the key word. UP NA NO DA!" Pudding shrieked at the top of her lungs, abandoning the pillow to jump on the boy's back. "How long does it take to sink into your head that you're getting up?"
"GO AWAY! Aren't you scared of what I'll do to you?!" Tart roared, trying to play the 'tough kidnapper' and failing miserably.
"Nope!" Pudding answered cheerfully. "If you were Pai, I'd be scared. But you're not!" she cried, pulling Tart to a sitting position so that she could give him a hug.
"Can't… breathe… strangling… me…" Tart wheezed, blushing furiously. Pudding was very good at making his ribs want to crack.
"Oops! Sorry Tar-tar!" Pudding exclaimed, giggling, as she let the alien loose. "But… at least you're awake now!" she cried cheerfully, almost as an afterthought.
"Yeah, thanks," grumbled Tart, staggering to his feet. The child stumbled half-blindly to the bathroom and stuck his head under the cold water faucet, which always worked to wake people up in movies.
Tart made a mental note not to confuse movies with real life as he shook the water out of his oversized ears and messy, un-pigtailed hair. He was now not only tired, but sopping wet. Awesome.
"Come on Tar-tar! I want breakfast na no da!" Pudding cried, slamming open the bathroom door and barging in, apparently using some psychic powers to know that Tart was, in fact, decent and able to receive visitors in the bathroom with dignity. Or perhaps it never occurred to Pudding that Tart may not want her barging into his bathroom at any time.
"GET OUT OF MY BATHROOM!" Tart yelled furiously. Did this girl have no sense of decency or what?
"Okay!" Pudding agreed, skipping out of the bathroom and perching on the frame of Tart's bed. "But hurry, hurry, hurry—"
Tart slammed the door shut and proceeded to clean his teeth and fix his hair into pigtails, then to stand and wait for nearly ten minutes while his clothes were being cleaned. He wisely chose to lock the door while he waited, because if he hadn't, he just knew that Pudding would have forgotten that he ordered her out—and that would not be good.
Tart finished getting ready and exited the bathroom to find that Pudding was just letting herself back into his room. "Hey! How did you get out?" he demanded to know indignantly. "That door was commanded to only open with my DNA!"
"I know that!" Pudding answered cheerfully. "I used your pillow to unlock it," she explained, holding the boy's pillow aloft.
"Give me that!" Tart snapped, jumping up and seizing his pillow. "Do you want Pai to catch you wandering around the ship unescorted? Huh? Do you?"
"Nope! But he's still asleep! I looked! Now come on, I want breakfast!"
"Pudding, not now!" cried Tart. "We have to wait for Pai to get up!"
"Why?" the monkey girl asked.
"Because I can't cook!" the youngest alien replied, frustrated.
"I can—"
"No, you can't because you might poison us and hijack the ship, and then what?" Tart replied. It wasn't that he thought Pudding would do that, but Pai would kill him just for taking the chance.
"I wouldn't do that!" cried Pudding.
"Well, go tell that to Pai—when he wakes up!" Tart added hastily, seizing Pudding's arm as she started off towards Pai's room. "Geez, what are you, some sort of masochist?"
"Can't you just make cereal or something?" Pudding asked, clutching her stomach and feigning starvation—like Tart hadn't spent three hours last night convincing Pai to feed her a full meal.
"Well… actually, I can't," Tart muttered, ducking his head. "You see… I kind of burned it last time I tried to make cereal—"
"What? Silly Taru-taru, how can you burn cereal?" Pudding queried, chuckling.
The diminutive alien glared at her. "Shut up! It's not my fault! Kish can't cook either anyways! We leave that to Pai! So you'll just have to wait until ten or so until he gets up!"
"Well, can't I at least teach you how to cook?" Pudding pleaded. "I'm really, really, really, really—"
"Agh! Enough!" Tart cried. "I'm telling you, I can't cook!"
"Please? I promise—"
"Fine! FINE! See what I care when you get lit on fire or something!" Tart yelled, giving up trying to resist her tearing bambi-eyes. He knew she was just faking to get to him, but, well… What could he say? He couldn't refuse!
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"Great. Pai's going to kill me, you know that?" Tart mused five hours later, surveying the mess of the kitchen. Pudding had tried to teach him toast, then bagels, then cereal, then pancakes, then to cut grapefruit—with no success whatsoever. Juice from the grapefruit ran down all the surfaces, flour was encrusted everywhere, flakes of cereal had given the floor a whole new look, and the toaster was smoking, protesting having five pieces of toast crammed into each slot at once.
"Well, if you hadn't taken so much 'creative license…'" Pudding began, furiously scrubbing the stove. "Clean up the cereal!"
"Excuse me? Since when do you get to order me around?" Tart asked angrily.
"Since you wrecked the kitchen! Now, do you want to keep Pai from killing you or not?" Pudding demanded to know, rocking back onto her heels and glaring at Tart, hands on her hips.
"A little late for that," a bored voice observed from the doorway. "Taruto, what on earth have you done to my kitchen?"
Tart flinched and turned around guiltily. "Oh—Pai! Um… well, it's just… we were hungry…"
"We? So, you mean the prisoner told you to cook?" Pai asked dangerously.
"No! I mean, um, well, she said she was hungry, and I was kinda hungry too, so I asked her to teach me to cook…" Tart lied hastily, throwing Pudding a look, telling her to go with the lie.
"Therefore, she gave you false directions, and you wrecked my kitchen," Pai concluded calmly.
"No, I didn't really… well, I didn't feel like listening to her," Tart finished sheepishly, looking at his bare feet.
"I see," Pai said, observing the wreck of the kitchen. "Well, you two get the counters and stove cleaned, and I'll make omelets, all right?"
"Huh?" Pudding and Tart started, looking up in unison.
"You can clean up the rest after breakfast. I'm not feeling creative enough to punish you two," Pai informed them sternly. "Besides, this will be another one to remember, and to tell everyone when they get here—"
"What? Isn't the ramen incident enough?" Tart asked furiously.
"No," Pai answered. "Our people have suffered enough. We should have entertaining stories for when they get here, as well as the stories of sweat and dirt and battle that will make the history books."
"You think so?"
Pudding felt out of place in this conversation. 'Our people have suffered enough…' So here was hard proof that the aliens weren't destroying Earth out of spite. Here was hard proof that they were trying to save something they loved, and here she was, in the way of saving their loved ones. She would have felt guilty, except that they were going about saving their loved ones by attempting genocide.
"Well… enough. It's depressing," Pai said, his eyes flicking to Pudding. Was it possible that there was more heart to Pai than he showed, and that he actually realized how uncomfortable the talk was making the monkey mew? "I'm going to make the omelets. You two, sit, and keep out of my way while I'm cooking."
Pudding and Tart sat quickly, glancing at each other. Neither of them could believe that Pai didn't seem mad—or that he'd forgotten that they hadn't cleaned the stove and counters yet.
As the three of them finished their breakfasts, Tart's phone rang. "Hello?" the youngest alien answered, answering the device.
Tart's face paled. "Wha—okay!" He dashed out of the room quickly.
"Taruto!" Pai called after him. Tart didn't hear his older counterpart—he vanished from sight.
Pai glanced at Pudding. "And do you know what that was about?" he asked the girl.
"Uh-uhn," Pudding replied, shaking her head nervously. She wasn't sure what else to say. She was a little bit—okay, a lot afraid of Pai.
A few minutes later, a worried Tart teleported back onto the ship. "Okay, now… let's go, um, play solitaire, Pudding!"
"Solitaire's a one person game, Taru-taru," Pudding reminded the boy.
"Oh—right," Tart replied sheepishly. "Um… well…"
"How about, you two midget's clean the kitchen," Pai ordered, rising from his chair. "I'm going to do research."
"Hey! I'm not a midget!"
"You're four inches shorter than the average height for your age—midget," Pai replied, teleporting.
Tart glared at the air where Pai had been. "Pudding," he began. "Help me while we clean this up—we have to plot revenge. NO ONE may call me a midget and live!"
