The Mochi Quandary: When Life Gives You Tomatoes

by MomotsukiNezumi

The Italies are as different, at least to others, as night and day. But one hot summers day, they both unknowingly make the same wish, at the same time: Find a friend that treats them equally, not as cowards or jerks, but themselves. Luckily, they have a Tomato Fairy Godmother...er, Godfather to help out! The bad news...they never thought their new friends would be snack food!

8. Chapter 8: Training and Jealousy

Three days.

Three days since that picnic that Feliciano had with his brother somehow led the Roman Empire to leave Feliciano a block of talking tofu (at least, that's what Germany thought that it was) that had taken over all of his ditzy best friend's attention. The strange block of animated food had ended up being toted around everywhere the airheaded Italian went, from the kitchen to taste new Italian dishes, to the backyard to take siestas in the sun, and to Italy's bed, where it ended up being cuddled liked a stuffed animal. Germany drew the line when Italy tried to take the thing into the bathroom with him to watch out for toilet monsters (he had his idiot brother Prussia to thank for that particular problem).

However, there was one good thing about his friend's bizarre new "pet"": that tofu worked better than any alarm clock he'd ever seen, and that was saying something, considering all the alarm clocks he'd employed to try and get Feliciano's lazy self out of bed any time earlier than noon for training. Every day since the stupid thing showed up somehow as part of Japan's bento box, the "tofu" had not once failed to wake Feliciano up at the crack of dawn for a training run, hopping onto the bedside table and shouting, "ACHTUNG!" like a drill instructor.

However, he couldn't help but feel a bit put out at the lack of attention he'd been getting recently. After all, he was being left out somewhat due to Feliciano lavishing love and attention on the "tofu" block. But he wasn't jealous! No, not jealous by any means whatsoever, not even a little bit.

Somewhere to his right, he heard an annoyingly familiar shriek of laughter from Feliciano as the excitable Northern Italian chased the "tofu" creature around the backyard in a game of tag. He felt his patience level drop to zero, and his annoyance level skyrocket.

Time to get his attention back to m-...I mean, training. That's it, training.

He blew the whistle around his neck loudly, and commanded his friend to go run several laps around the yard. "And leave the tofu thing alone for a while, verdammte, it's too distracting for you!"

"But Luddyyyyyyyyyyyyyy...!"

"NO! NOW RUN!"

Huffing, Feliciano gave a pout of sadness in response, before sighing and beginning to run around, the "tofu" creature set on the patio to hide from the hot summer sun under a lawn chair.

As he kept pace behind Feliciano, the German nation tried very hard to ignore the feeling of satisfaction that the returned attention gave him. His thoughts betrayed him anyway.

Aah, much better.