A/N:
The last chapter was pretty non sequitur. Dank memes all over the place. Either you got them or you didn't.
-Akyuu no Joshu
It's Friday. The fleet knows what this means - it's curry day.
"Of course Friday's gotta be a curry day! Everyone knows that!" Shiratsuyu squeals with excitement, being a huge fan of curry herself.
"Well, I'm just thankful the Admiral put us in charge of curry duty this week," Suzukaze adds, rolling her eyes. "Imagine if Hiei-san and her sisters were on curry duty. I'd have Samidare go ram her or somethin' just ta get her outta here."
"Waaaahh...Suzukaze, don't say things like that..." Samidare whines, a bit embarrassed.
The Shiratsuyu-Class destroyers are assembled in the kitchen on curry duty this week. Shigure and Murasame, being the best cooks among their class, are managing too great cooking pots filled almost to the brim with warmly bubbling curry. Samidare and Shiratsuyu are cutting the vegetables and preparing other curry ingredients, while Harusame is helping Murasame with her curry pot. All the while, amidst a kitchen full of the warm and delicious wafts of curry scent, Suzukaze and Yuudachi are making -
"Doughnuts...?" Shigure asks in a bit of an incredulous tone. "What...why doughnuts...? Is that supposed to be our dessert tonight after curry?"
"Yep!" Yuudachi cries happily. She and Suzukaze, the base's greatest proponents of doughnuts, are molding doughnuts with their latex-glove-equipped hands and setting them on the baking tray to have them bake while the curry is finishing so that everyone can have doughnuts after dinner tonight is consumed.
"What, Shigure, we haven't had doughnuts in forever, so what's the harm in makin' some?" Suzukaze scowls a bit at her older ship sister. "You'd like some too, right? I'm makin' your favorite vanilla-top chocolate cream doughnut, so I'll make ya a lot, okay?"
Shigure blushes in embarrassment at the mention of her favorite doughnut of all time, so she quickly turns away without saying another word of disapproval.
"Hehe, Shigure's so cute whenever we give her doughnuts. She loooooooooooooooooves them, poi!" Yuudachi giggles, her hair flaps of her second remodel dancing up and down.
"Urgh...b-be quiet, Yuudachi," Shigure blushes even more and turns away. "You're bullying me. I don't want doughnuts if you're going to tease me about them."
"Eeeehhh...o-okay, I'll - I'll, uh, I won't tease you anymore, so eat our doughnuts with everyone, okay?" Yuudachi, putting another doughnut down on the baking tray, flails her arms towards Shigure.
Murasame, meanwhile, fishes out a small tasting cup's worth of curry and laps up a bit of curry to test the food's potency.
"Hmm..." Murasame murmurs, frowning indecisively and unable to come to a firm conclusion. "Harusame, can you try some of this? I don't know whether I need to add in some more salt..."
Harusame, sidestepping over next to her ship sister, sips up the rest of the curry in the tasting up as Murasame feeds it to her.
"Um...I think it does need a bit more salt. Not a lot, but...but just a little," Harusame determines.
"You think so too, right? Then let's add a bit more..." Murasame takes the saltshaker and taps just a fingertip's worth of salt into the pot and stirs, and Harusame takes a palmful of sliced carrots and onions and pork to place into the pot. "Oh, you're such a big help, Harusame...what would I ever do without you..."
"Uuu...you're making me blush, Onee-san..." Harusame, indeed feeling her face flush, giggles awkwardly. "I...I'm just doing what I can to help, since...since I can't cook that well..."
"Oh, there you go being all cute again," Murasame sets down the curry ladle and rubs her hands against Harusame's cheeks as Harusame giggles some more at the sensation. "Before you dropped, Murasame-onee-san had to manage this pot all by herself, you know? Shigure would always have Yuudachi helping her whenever Yuudachi wasn't making doughnuts, even though Shigure's the better cook than me. And plus, you have such a good sense of taste, too. You always know when something's too spicy or too salty or too sweet, and everyone loves our cooking. They always ask us what kind of secret ingredients we put into our food, but little do they know that it's actually the love from our cute little Harusame~!"
Murasame suddenly glomps Harusame, rubbing her cheek this time against Harusame's cheek, and Harusame blushes very hard, thoroughly enjoying this display of affection from a fellow ship sister.
Samidare, placing another handful of vegetables into Shigure's cooking pot of curry, wipes her hands on her apron when she sees the Failure Penguin that popped out of equipment development the other day toddling over to the carton of dozen eggs above the cutting board. It picks up an egg in its flippers and carefully lifts it up to its head and places it there, balancing it carefully and not letting it fall. Thinking that this is pretty funny and cute, Samidare feels the impulse to attempt the same stunt and picks up an egg from the carton too and starts balancing it on her own head, but she finds it rather tough, so she starts concentrating on it, trying her hardest to get the egg properly balanced on her head.
"Samidare? What're you doin', help me cut these potatoes - " Shiratsuyu, seeing Samidare's back first and not seeing the egg on the latter's head, puts her hand on Samidare's shoulder, causing Samidare to get spooked quite badly and jerking her head forward. This causes her hand, which is in the way, to palm-smash the egg into her head, breaking it and spilling egg yolk and albumen all over her head.
"Eeeek - !" Samidare squeals in fright, shivering at the cold, slimy feeling of egg now dripping down her hair and forehead and face. "Ooohh...I broke it..."
At Samidare's squeal, everyone in the kitchen sharply turns to her to see what's happened.
"S-Samidare?! What the, did somethin' happen? What's wrong?" Suzukaze asks urgently, putting down the doughnut she's been molding to check and make sure her ship sister is okay.
"U-Uh...y-yeah, I'm...I'm okay, I just...I just kind of broke an egg over my head, ehehe..." Samidare, blushing a bit at her own clumsy mistake, puts the tip of her tongue out in self-effacing humor.
"You smashed an egg over your head? How the heck did you manage that...?" Shiratsuyu asks with a bit of a snort of disbelief that she can't help but to let out as she tears off rolls of paper towels from the paper towel roll nearby and carefully scoops up the yolk sitting on Samidare's head while Suzukaze uses her hand towel to remove the goopy albumen.
"Well..I tried to imitate Penguin-chan over here..." Samidare points out the Failure Penguin, who is still somehow managing to keep the egg balanced on its head. "I tried doing the same thing, but...but I didn't do it so well..."
"Oh...geez, don't scare us like that, Samidare," Suzukaze sighs a breath of relief as she goes back to working on making doughnuts again. "Thought you cut yourself or somethin' dangerous..."
"Awww...sorry..."
"I'll make you feel better, Samidare, poi~!" Yuudachi announces, lifting up her doughnut. "Your favorite, blueberry jam!"
At this, Samidare's ears perk up, and her face, despite the icky remains of the broken egg over her head, begins to sparkle.
"B-Blueberry jam doughnuts!? Ohhh, thank you, Yuudachi-onee-san!"
"I'll make you one more each time you call me 'onee-san', poi!" Yuudachi promises as she dances over to Samidare's side, holding a freshly molded blueberry jam doughnut. Because Shigure always treats Yuudachi as a bit of a younger sister, Yuudachi loves it when her younger ship sisters like Samidare and Harusame address her as an older sister to them.
"Yuudachi-onee-san, Yuudachi-onee-san, Yuudachi-onee-san, Yuudachi-onee-san~!" Samidare sings happily, blushing at the thought of all the blueberry jam doughnuts she can eat.
"Awwwwright, I'm gonna make five doughnuts just for Samidare-chan~! They're gonna be so round and squiggly and tender and deeeeeelish, poi~" Yuudachi also sing alongside Samidare, and together, the two of them break out into impromptu song:
"Doughnut, doughnut, oh how sweet and round you are, yummy and funny and making everyone smile~"
"Well, aren't you two quite the idols," Shiratsuyu laughs, beginning to cut the potatoes on her own instead of waiting for Samidare to join her. "Don't let Naka-chan hear you, otherwise she's going to suspect that you're about to steal her top idol spot from the fleet."
"It's okay, we don't need to be idols, poi," Yuudachi looks over at her eldest ship sister past Samidare's shoulders. "Our singing's reserved exclusively for our own class. It's nice if we have a few special things all to ourselves, right, poi?"
"That's right, that's right," Murasame agrees, nodding her head seriously. "For example, only I get to make Harusame's cheeks go rub-a-dub-dub like this~" With that, Murasame, stirring the ladle in the curry pot with her left hand, pinches Harusame's cheek lightly and flubbers it around.
"Waaaahhh...Murasame-onee-saaaaaan..." Harusame giggles more loudly at Murasame's antics.
"Hey, no fair! Then if that's going to be the case, then I'm the only other person who gets to wear Harusame-chan's hat!" Yuudachi declares, and hopping over behind Harusame, Yuudachi snatches her younger ship sister's beret off her head and sticks it on top of her own. "With this and my scarf, I'm so ready for winter! Yeeeeehawwwww, poi~!"
The remodeled destroyer runs a fun lap around the kitchen while sporting Harusame's beret. Harusame, feeling a bit insecure without her hat, cries out in alarm and follows after Yuudachi, flailing her arms about weakly, crying, "Heeeyyyy, Yuudachi-onee-saaaaaan, give it baaaaack, give me my hat baaaaaaaaack~"
The door to the kitchen opens, and the Admiral, a tall young cadet fresh from naval school who's been in charge of this naval base for about five months now, enters to check on the status of dinner.
"How's the curry coming along, girls?" he asks, and hearing his voice, the Shiratsuyu-Class destroyers wave at him in welcome.
"We're almost done, Admiral," Shigure smiles at him. The Admiral nods, grinning back, before he spots the materials that the destroyers have taken out of the pantry to make doughnuts. "Doughnuts again tonight, huh? I don't mind, we kind of needed an excuse to use up the eggs and sugar, I think they're close to expiring if I'm not mistaken..."
"Oh, they're 'bout to expire? We may as well just use up the rest 'a 'em 'n make 'em into more doughnuts if that's the case," Suzukaze suggests.
"If you want, that's fine by me," the Admiral shrugs.
"Admiral, come here, come here," Shigure beckons him over to her, and he obeys. Shigure offers him a tasting cup of curry. "Here, please tell me what you think of this."
The Admiral sips up the curry and hands the cup back to Shigure. "It's nice as always. I can tell this one's different from the last one you made - you must've spread out the salt a bit more and decreased the amount. I think it's perfect now," he nods with approval, putting a satisfied smile on Shigure's face.
"Oh...but Admiral, I know a kind of curry that's even more perfect than this," Shigure suddenly mentions, smiling coyly.
"Oh yeah? Let's see it."
Shigure stands up on her tippy toes and steals a smooth kiss from the Admiral's curry-laden lips, right in front of the watchful eyes of all the rest of her ship sisters.
"Thank you for the meal," Shigure giggles quite seductively. "That was...quite delicious."
"Heeeeeey, Shigureeeeeeee! ! ! Th-Th-That was supposed to be m-m-m-MY first k-kiss with the Admiral! ! !" Shiratsuyu screams, wagging an accusing finger at Shigure.