#i want tortoise jelly too but if i manage to get one i want her more

[shimikonde]

Romeo and Juliet and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Return of the King pt. 3 (4th light novel, pg 96-107)

thank you so much to all the people who very gently cyber bullied me into writing this. i am very busy and very very scatter-brained so if i’m not reminded of things i forget them easily.

sorry again for the wait!! and thank you to @rachiebird for proof reading this!! you were a lot of helpppp

part 1 | part 2

For a moment, the audience gaped at the person who had just shouted at such a loud volume after making his first appearance on stage. Even the people in the wings gaped. Honenuki held a hand to his face in exasperation.

Although according to the staging he was supposed to have made a quiet, eerie first appearance, Tetsutetsu seemed to be letting loose all his frustration at being forced to speak quietly at once.

“Well, well, well! If it isn’t Gondor’s prince, Romeo!!”

“…You’re Count Paris?! Why in heaven’s… Give Juliet back!”

Monoma turned his back to the audience, looking furious as he whispered, “What’s with that performance?! You sound like an over-enthusiastic merchant! Control yourself!!”

Tetsutetsu made a face like, “ah, crap!” at his words, and then did his best to make a scary face.

“…I’ll be seeing you…”

This time, he was too self-conscious, and he ended up speaking in the same quiet voice as he used in the wings. The venue buzzed a bit with mutters of, “Huh? What did he say?” Everybody watching from the wings held their hands to their faces in exasperation. As Honenuki calmly signaled “now” to Juurouta, on standby in the catwalk over the stage, Tetsutetsu grabbed on a rope so that the audience wouldn’t be able to see. Still holding onto Kodai, he flew off.

In response to Tetsutetsu’s line, Monoma exclaimed, “You’ll be seeing me?! What do you mean…? Juliet!!”

Tetsutetsu returned with a dejected, “Sorry, guys…” and everyone responded with encouraging comments like, “Don’t worry about it!” and “Next! Next!” On stage, a scene was playing of Romeo, wanting to chase after Juliet, opposing Sam and Frodo, who said they must search for the king immediately.

“Is this what Master Obi-Wan was warning me about? But to think that Count Paris would kidnap Juliet… There’s no time for this, we must go save Juliet at once!”

“I understand how you feel, my prince! However, it is your duty as the prince to search for the king?!”

“I know that! But, before I’m a prince, I’m a man! There’s no way I could abandon the girl that I love!! Once I get Juliet back, I’ll definitely search for the king… I won’t ask you to understand. …Farewell! From here on, I go alone!”

Monoma exited stage right, Nirengeki and Awase crying out as he ran off.

“My prince!”

Immediately afterward, Nirengeki became aware of a sound coming from the wing on stage left. He thought it was strange, but he was still on stage and focused back on the performance.

“And so it was that Romeo followed after his love, Juliet, alone…”

While listening to Monoma’s narration, Nirengeki and Awase exited into the stage left wing. From here on, they wouldn’t make another appearance until the climax.

“They’re pretty much useless like this…”

The two had just finished letting out relieved sighs when they heard Honenuki’s flustered voice and their faces went wooden. “Did something happen?” Nirengeki asked as he approached them, where he saw Kuroiro with a wad of something in his hand. Silver fragments were scattered here and there in the middle of a shapeless, white mass.

“What’s that?”

In response to Awase’s inquiry, Kaibara explained, “The remains of what were once broken prop swords…”

An upcoming scene would feature Tokage-as-Rey and Rin the soldier. Apparently, the swords they were planning to use had been broken, so they’d attempted to reinforce them using Bondo’s quirk “Cementine,” whereupon he’d unfortunately sneezed and let out a huge amount of cementine along with it. Trying to help, Tetsutetsu had accidentally tripped over some of the cementine on the floor and, while activating his quirk, “Steel,” had crashed into the cementine-covered swords. The avant-garde art they’d produced was a result of everyone trying to kneed them back into something usable. If Bakugou, Kirishima, or Kaminari from Class A had been there, it would have probably reminded them of Meat-senpai’s, in other words Shiketsu High School’s Shishikura Seiji’s, quirk “Meatball.” No matter how you looked at it, there was no saving swords that had become this messed up. To make matters worse, they didn’t have any spares.

“What do we do? Maybe we can do it without swords…” Tokage said hurriedly.

Calmly, Honenuki responded, “No, there’s going to be a sword fight, too. All we can do is substitute them for something that can pass as a sword.”

“Got it, I’ll go look for something,” said Kaibara, and he and Kuroiro rushed outside.

Incidentally, there was a substitute for the swords strapped to Nirengeki’s hip, but in all the chaos not a single person realized it. There was no helping that they’d be a little freaked out at their first performance.

“Juliet… Where are you, Juliet…?!”

Tokage would be appearing in the scene before long. But she wasn’t coming out. Feeling something was wrong, Monoma looked over to the wings to see Honenuki gesturing to him, “Buy us some time!”

Something must have happened… Well, it’s not as if I can’t easily buy time.

Thinking this, Monoma began to adlib.

“Juliet… Just by saying this name, I feel my power overflowing. I haven’t eaten anything in three days, but with one word even my stomach can be filled… Love is a food—is life itself, it would seem. I don’t need anything else in life. Not even Gondor’s world-famous taro with yolk jelly, or a banana-wrapped river banana, or divine beef with goblin sauce, or boiled kamaitachi, or naked giant tortoise with naked turtle oyakodon, or captive jaguar katsudon, or mirin-dried long-eared giraffe, or deep-fried shaggy lion tail, or proud-kneed baby elephant shadow cookies, or black-stomached bat ink pasta, or short-reigned sluggish giant hare soup. As I am now, as long as I have love…”

Is it just about time?

However, Honenuki gave him an apologetic look as he gestured, “a little bit more.” Without so much as a hint to the fact that he was stalling for time, Monoma continued his adlibbing.

“That’s right, Juliet’s hometown, the country of Rohan, was famous for their seafood, wasn’t it? Certainly, they’re able to get all kinds of seafood thanks to their vast subterranean lakes, or such… Lockbox crab innards, for instance… I’ve heard that one taste and you’re unable to stop laughing. Fufu, just thinking about it is making me laugh. I suppose Juliet must have eaten it before, too? I would love to eat it and laugh together with her one day…  Oh, yes, and you can’t talk about the country of Rohan without mentioning realtuna. If you make a sandwich with white rice between two fillets of the tuna, then spend three days quietly eating it where no one can see you, apparently your lifespan increases by three years. If that’s true, I would like if I could give some to my father…”

…Hm? Finally… Really, what happened back there?

Monoma, noticing Honenuki’s “we’re good now” gesture, went over the setup in his head.

After this, Tokage and Rin will make their appearance as survivors of the Galactic Liberation Allied Forces…

Monoma looked up, shocked, and he shouted, “Wha-what’s that?!”

With a metallic sliding noise, a UFO crash landed. As Monoma timidly approached it, the set doors to the UFO blew open, and Tokage and Rin came flying out.

“Are you okay, Rey?!” asked Rin, dressed as a soldier.

Tokage-as-Rey answered, “Yeah…” Then, noticing Monoma, she startled. “You… A minion of the Imperial Army! For how long do you intend to get in our way…!”

“You dog of the Empire!”

“Wait a second, what is this all about…?”

As he gave his panicked response, Monoma prepared himself for his next moves. They would engage in a battle with their swords. It was an important fight that was meant to show the growth of the prince, who had before fought and lost over the dried meat. They’d practiced the fierce exchange of swords over and over again countless times, and thanks to that they’d managed to make it look really good.

“Silence! Glory to Democracy!”

First, Tokage comes at me, and then Rin immediately after, and then after I narrowly avoid that… Huh?

Setsuna and Rin made ghastly, frightening figures as they approached, and Monoma’s eyes turned to dots as they drew what they had strapped to their backs.

Forgetting for a second that he was still on stage, Monoma shot out, “Why bats?!”

Tokage and Rin held them as if they were swords, but there was no changing the fact that they were a pair of metal bats. The audience in the front began to take notice, too, and the sound of them muttering, “Hey, is that a bat?” snapped Monoma back into himself.

From the wings, Honenuki made an apologetic face as he gestured, “Continue!” The thing that Kuroiro and the rest brought back after their search was pair of bats, which had been borrowed from a different class that was putting on a batting center.

“The sword broke and this is all we had!”

“We just have to fool them.”

In response to Tokage and Rin’s frantic whispers, Monoma accepted his fate with a, “I guess there’s no choice…!” and drew his own sword. As they crossed sword and bat, the metal clanged together, and Monoma occasionally made a show of falling to the ground.

“That sword is massive, unlike any I’ve ever seen…! So these are the swords they use in space!”

By the brute force of Monoma’s acting ability, what would have looked like a delinquent couple attacking with bats was transformed into a scene in which members of the Galactic Liberation Allied Forces fought with space-swords that happened to look like bats. In response to the crisis on the stage, Fukidashi on sound increased the volume, and Kamakiri on lighting changed to a narrower light to help draw the audience’s eyes.

“It looks like we’ve managed to fool them…”

At Honenuki’s words, all of the people watching nervously from the wings seemed to grow listless with relief.

“Leave it to Monoma…”

“Monoma… I offer a banquet of blessings for your sheer guts…”

While he was still onstage, Kaibara and Kuroiro sent Monoma words of gratitude that they would surely never say to his face. It seemed that the fight was going to reach its climax as the battle bean to exude desperation.

“Kuroiro, do you happen to know where the ring I put here might be?”

“Huh? I left that ring over there.”

As he answered Shiozaki’s question, Kuroiro hurried over to the table where the props were set out. Apparently unable to find it, Kuroiro muttered, “It should be right here…” as he searched the area.

“What happened?” Honenuki and some others asked as they approached.

“I put the ring we’re going to be using next down on this prop table, but…”

By that, he meant the ring that they would be using after this, when Shiozaki made her appearance as the spirit of the ring. They’d upgraded it a bit, making it so that it was a bit bigger and stood out better compared to the one that Monoma had.

Shiozaki and company’s turn was coming up. Everyone searched the area, but there was no hint of it.

Incidentally, the ring in question had fallen in the commotion over the swords before, and had managed to roll its way into the space below the stage, in the underground closet usually used to store the chairs. Unfortunately, they would only discover the ring there later, when they were cleaning up the stage after the performance ended.

“Ah… Why must god give us such trials…” Shiozaki clasped her hands together, looking to be at her wit’s end. Pony and Juurouta also made worried expressions.

“Again?! What do we do?”

In the chaos, Kaibara looked to Honenuki. Honenuki thought for a moment, and then opened his mouth.

“If we can’t find it, we’ll have to find a replacement again. That, or make one…”

However, it seemed there wouldn’t be time to go out and search this time.

“Does anyone here have something round with a hole in the middle that looks like a ring?!”

Kaibara circled the area as he looked around. As the others also searched around, too, Tetsutetsu suddenly held out something in his hand.

“Can we use this as a replacement…?!”

What he held was a long, tube-like thing with a soft, uneven exterior. It appeared to be a fish cake made by turning fish into paste, wrapping it around a cane, and then cooking it. Chikuwa. Tetsutetsu had brought it along as a snack for when he started to feel hungry.

“…we can work with this.” Saying this, Kuroiro used the box cutter he’d been holding to cut off a slice. He showed it to everyone. “See?”

“It looks like a ring!” they agreed.

“I’ve got some gold eye shadow.” Komori offered him some eye shadow, which Kuroiro took from her.

“Th… Thanks,” he said, then quickly painted it on, turning it into what looked to be a peculiar ring.

“Alright, this should be good!”

Kaibara beamed and gave Shiozaki a thumbs-up. As Kuroiro handed her the ring, Shiozaki made an anguished face as if she’d been crucified. “…with this I’m going to be the spirit of the chikuwa…”

As she began to pale, trying to figure out how on earth fish paste might feel, Pony and Juurouda tried to help.

“Since you’re getting made into paste it’s gonna be really ouchy?”

“No, from the moment it became chikuwa, surely it would have already been called up to heaven.”

To the flabbergasted Shiozaki, Honenuki calmly said, “It’s not chikuwa. Because this is a ring. This is a ring that looks like chikuwa.”

On the stage, the sword fight had ended, and Monoma-as-Romeo had completely resolved the misunderstanding with Rey and the soldier of the Galactic Liberation Allied Forces, played by Tokage and Rin.

“If it’s you two, you’ll definitely be able to liberate the galaxy! I’m sure that my own country of Gondor will eventually advance into space, too. Rey, when that day comes, I’d like if you could help us out with things.”

“Sure, Romeo. Let’s build a peaceful galaxy together!”

“Rey, we must be on our way.”

“…don’t die. Live so that we may meet again someday.”

“I promise. When that time comes, I’ll be sure to treat you to Gondor’s specialty, northern tanuki treasure pouch hotpot!”

Rin called her from within the UFO, and Tokage stopped and turned back to him right as she was about to return to it.

“Hahaha, I look forward to it. Also to meeting your Juliet, too… Speaking of which, when we were falling, we happened to see something mysterious.”

“What?”

“A ways north of here, there was an eerie castle. It looked as if an eerie man and a girl were having a dispute over something…”

“Could it be? Perhaps that suspicious man and the girl were Count Paris and Juliet…”

“Rey! Quickly!”

“Well then, Romeo. May the force be with you.”

Having said that, the UFO raised up to the ceiling, where it disappeared. Monoma slowly walked to the middle of the stage as he began to talk.

“North… Juliet might be over there. But who on earth is this Count Paris, anyway? He said that Juliet was his possession… Could it be that Juliet had been trying to escape from that man? If so, it’s possible that he’s Juliet’s fiancé… No, Juliet promised to marry me! Her heart is with me. However, it would not be strange for a country to marry their princess off to another country in order to strengthen the bonds with them. Which would mean that that man would be the king of some country, and Juliet’s fiancé? …Ahh, if that’s truly the case, then what am I to do…!”

Anguishing over his love, Monoma-as-Romeo’s suffering soon became more than his body could take. As he fell to the ground, a ray of light shined straight down from the ceiling.

“Romeo… Romeo…”

Monoma looked around in shock at the sound of Shiozaki’s echoing voice.

“Who’s there?!”

“Romeo… I am inside your pocket…”

Part 4

[fimawari]

Aight Imma do this shit all at once so I don't spam post

1. Coffee

2. Probably have to be Sakuramochi, persevering through all the hate to try and heal people's woes. She keeps going regardless.

3. Spaghetti, Peking Duck, and Chocolate are near the top for me

4. Coffee again, I loved Ice coffee, but for an actual dish, Steak. I'm a basic bitch.

5. Tiramisu, love the food soul but the actual stuff is way to sweet and rich for me

6. Tortoise Jelly, would whip my ass into shape

7. Guess what it's coffee again!

8. Some weird abomination of Cheese, Tiramisu, Hotdog, and Cookie

9. Braised Noodles and Matsutake Dobinmushi, felt like they just barely glided over her with one summon event

10. Huangshan Maofeng Tea, bastard has always out manuevered me. Orange Juice and Nasi Lemak also somehow managed to avoid me for almost a year.

11. Idek think it was Spicy Gluten

12. Cold Rice Shrimp my baby

13. Idk I kept milk for a long time, might've been spicy.

14. Toso Queen

15. B-52, summoned him first week and I was so happy.

16. Canele

17. Milk

18. Eggette

19. All of them, even you too Whisky, you bitch

20. Mooncake

21. Raindrop baby

22. Tequila

23. Black Pudding

24. Steak

25. Spaghetti

26. Durga

27. Spectra, I think he's Milk's past attendent.

28. Queen Conch

29. Mithra

30. Calamari, Sponge Candy, French Fries, Hot Chocolate, Lemonade, Fettuccini Alfredo, Lasagna, Gumball, Chicken Wings (cool if they looked like Turkey a bit), Taco, Burrito, Butterscotch, White Wine, Funnel Cake, Deep Fried Butter (Just to make everyone cringe horribly), Strawberry Cheesecake, Strawberry Shortcake, Strawberry Lemonade, Creme du leche, french onion soup, alphabet soup (for the lols), Gold Cake, Baked Potato, Mac and Cheese, Grilled Cheese, Pb and I, Peanut Butter by itself, Sub Sandwich, Honey literal Honey and the better have a pet badger and a giant chubby bee, Pineapple Pizza cus I wanna make people mad, Green Apple, Bacon, Grape Juice and I want them to be a kid drinking grape juice out of a wine glass, Horse Radish, Caesar Salad and they better be impaled with a knife, Sponge Cake, SPAM, Haggis, Tripe, Hakarl, Stinkheads, Shiokara (to really get some people throwing up here), Fugu, Balut and I want them to be a sociopath, Dragon in the flame of desire (sounds cool but look it up), Shirako, Casu Marzu and they should be a mummy, Civet Coffee, Iced Coffee, Cream, Rhubarb Pie, Miracle Berry, Poutine, Salo, Lamprey, Ackee.

[ninawritesastory]

Your creek farmer au? Love it, im gay for it, its the best and i am w e a k

Oh, thank you! Here, have a little farmboy Tweek snippet!

“He’s baaaaack,” Nina teased, singsonging the words into his ear.

The he in question was one of Tweek’s classmates. Craig, he thought his name was. The boy always wore blue and kept that blue and yellow hat on at all times, even in gym class. He was silent, for the most part, and if he said anything it was said in a dry, sarcastic sort of tone. And he always had this sort of intense look in his eyes, like he was thinking about snapping Tweek’s neck or something equally as sinister.

He had also been stalking their booth at the farmers’ market every Saturday for going on two months now. He never said anything, he never came within more than five feet of Tweek, and he only bought a few small things—usually rock candy or one of the small sample-sized jars of jelly or jam. Today, he seemed pretty invested in the basket of mewling kittens. Nina’s tortoise shell cat had recently had a litter, and they were finally old enough to find new homes for. Snickers, the proud mama, stood guard by the basket, making sure none of the kittens were successful in their attempts to go out and explore the crowded marketplace.

“You should go talk to him,” she whispered, bagging up a few jars of jam for an elderly lady.

“No way,” Tweek hissed back. “He always looks like he wants to kill me!”

“Maybe he just wants to get to know you, and he’s too shy to do it himself,” she replied, offering a bright smile and a cheerful thank-you to her customer as she handed her the bag and the change. “Snickers seems to like him well enough.”

The cat seemed to really like Craig, purring loudly and weaving in and out of his hands as he pet her. The kittens seemed to like him, too; one of the more rambunctious ones had decided Craig would make an excellent jungle gym, crawling up his jacket sleeve and exploring a bit more of the world.

“Snickers likes everyone.”

“Just go talk to him,” Nina insisted. “David and Henry will be here in ten minutes. Vivienne and I can manage without you for that long.”

Tweek groaned. Nina wasn’t gonna let him worm his way out of this one; she was annoyingly persistent in getting him to go out and make friends. Not everyone was as naturally charismatic as her; Tweek had had enough trouble back in Wisconsin, when his tics and spasms were still frequent and strong. He’d gotten more control over them, but sometimes a muscle spasm still caught him off guard and sometimes he couldn’t swallow the overwhelmed shrieks. And they tended to make a comeback when he was nervous.

“Fine,” he relented, making it clear he wasn’t in love with the idea. “I’ll talk to him for ten minutes. But once David and Henry get here, I’m getting back to work. Okay?”

“That works for me,” she replied, that infuriating knowing smile on her face. “Just make an effort, okay, little brother?”

With a hard swallow, Tweek made his way out from behind the table.

“Do you like cats?”

He bit back a wince; that was a stupid way to start a conversation. Obviously Craig didn’t mind cats; he didn’t seem to have a problem with the kittens climbing all over him. Craig looked like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, eyes wide and mouth slack as though he never thought in a million years that Tweek would talk to him. After a moment, though, he seemed to recover, features schooled back into that familiar neutral expression. 

“They’re okay,” he replied. “I like guinea pigs better, though.”

“Guinea pigs are cool,” Tweek offered, and it still sounded so lame to him. “I, uh, I’ve never had one.”

“I’ve got one. Her name’s Stripe.”

“Aren’t they social animals, though? Isn’t it bad for them to be alone?”

Craig shrugged. “I had a second one, but she died a few weeks ago. I’m saving up for a new one, though. They’re kind of expensive.”

Tweek nodded. “Yeah. Um, mind if I sit with you?”

“Isn’t this your booth?”

“Uh, my family’s, yeah, but it’s still good to ask.”

Again, Craig just shrugged. “It’s fine. I don’t mind.”

Tweek dropped onto the ground, folding his legs and scooping up a couple of the kittens who had decided to climb up Craig’s back and onto his hat. His favorite was the one long-haired kitten in the bunch. She looked pudgier than the others, but that was all fur and she had a very sweet face. She must’ve gotten her coloring from her father, though, because she was mostly white with a large dappled brown patch from her ears all the way down to her tail.

“Do they have names,” Craig asked, pulling Tweek back into the real world.

“Uh, not really. Mama says not to name the kittens because then we’ll get attached. Nina’s already smuggled three in, and between her and our grandma, we’ve got four running around the house.”

“Your sister?”

Tweek nodded. “Yeah. Do you have any siblings?”

“A little sister. Her name’s Tricia. She’s annoying as hell.”

He snickered a little at that, and Craig smiled a bit. It was a nice look on him. It made his eyes a little brighter, and made him look less like he was plotting murder. Maybe…maybe Craig wasn’t as scary as he thought. Maybe Nina was right.