Gelatin's Steakhouse | A BFDI Fanfic

Chapter 1: The Worst Steaks In Goiky

The sunlight shone down through the windows and onto the counter that Gelatin was cleaning, which showed him every speck of dust ever known to man. It was still the evening, far from closing time yet, but there had hardly been any customers coming in. Since the restaurant was currently empty, Gelatin was tempted to close up early so that he could finally go home, but he decided to wait a bit longer just in case anybody came. Plus, Teardrop probably wouldn't have been happy with him if he had accidentally locked her in.

He heard the door open, and looked up to see Donut and Barf Bag entering the restaurant. "Hey, guys!" He exclaimed, happy to see his friends.

"Hey, Gelatin," Barf Bag responded, sitting down on one of the seats in front of the counter. "Are we the only ones here right now?" Donut asked, sitting down next to her.

"Yeah, but what else is new?" Gelatin shrugged. "Anyway, you guys want anything?"

"Fries, please," Barf Bag replied.

"Sorry, we're out," Gelatin responded.

"Could we get some ice cream then?"

"We're outta that too."

"What about steak?"

"We don't have any of that either."

"Gelatin, how can you not have any steak at a steakhouse?" Donut asked, almost sounding too amazed to be annoyed.

"Look, it's kinda hard to keep buying ingredients when this place hasn't been making that much money recently!" Gelatin said.

Donut sighed. "Well, whatever - how are things going?"

Gelatin shrugged. "Same as always, things have been pretty uneventful these past few years. Lollipop's still tryna get her fork repellent business going in case this place gets closed down."

"How's that working out for her?" Barf Bag asked.

"Still not great, she hasn't been able to make that many sales," Gelatin rested his head on the counter. "Doesn't help that most people in Yoyle City pretty much exclusively buy stuff from Yellowface's Warehouse."

"I can't believe people still support that company after the terrible things their CEO said about purple people," Donut commented.

Gelatin opened his mouth to respond, before the door behind him opened, and Teardrop walked out of the kitchen. "Hey, TD!" He greeted her. "You done cleaning up already?"

Teardrop nodded, walking over to Gelatin, Donut, and Barf Bag. They happily waved at the latter two people, before standing next to Gelatin and leaning over the counter.

After Donut and Barf Bag eventually left, Teardrop and Gelatin were left by themselves in the restaurant. No more customers had come in, and the two siblings had already finished cleaning up the place, leaving them with nothing to do. Gelatin looked over at the clock on the wall and sighed; it would still be a few hours until closing time.

"Hey Teardrop, you think Lolli and Fries would mind if we closed this place a bit early?" Gelatin asked.

"They'd be fine with it, it wouldn't be the first time we closed early," Teardrop signed. "I doubt anyone else is gonna come in when we're out of most of the menu items."

When the two of them closed up and got home, Gelatin went into his room and decided to continue working on his own personal project. Lately he had been keeping himself entertained by experimenting with creating deadly chemicals, like all teenage boys did. His latest experiment had involved him trying to make "freeze juice", which was pretty self-explanatory as to what it was. Gelatin had enjoyed experimenting with those types of things ever since he was young - one of the first times he remembered seeing Lollipop experience genuine horror was when he had to be hospitalized because he accidentally inhaled toxic fumes when he was mixing random cleaning products together in the bathroom. Fun times.

He had unfortunately hit a roadblock with his freeze juice - he had no way of testing to see if it worked. The container that it was in felt cold to the touch, but that didn't guarantee that it would actually freeze whatever it was injected into. There was no way he was gonna try it on himself or anyone he knew, and he would probably get in huge trouble if he injected it into any of Fries' precious grotato plants. He was also nervous about trying it out on any of the plants around his neighborhood, as he was scared about the possibility of the freeze juice turning out to be highly explosive or something like that. Gelatin fidgeted with his necklace, deep in thought.

He remembered that the biology classroom at school had quite a few different plants and fungi that were to be used for future lessons, and he recalled even seeing a few animal specimens that were to be used for dissection. He figured that he could probably use some of those to see how well his freeze juice had come out, the staff probably wouldn't notice if a few plants or something went missing. Plus, if it had turned out that he had accidentally created a chemical that causes things to spontaneously combust when it's injected, then school would probably have to be closed down for a few days, so it was a win-win.

The weekend had just begun, so he would have to wait a few days until he could put his invention to the test, but Gelatin was hopeful that it would work. He took the container of freeze juice and put it back under his bed, along with his other potentially dangerous experiments that he definitely was not storing properly. In the meantime, Gelatin decided that he would take a walk around Yoyle City to find another way to cure his endless boredom.

As he passed by the different shops that were around town, Gelatin noticed Leafy hanging some missing person posters outside the Balloon Store. "Hey, Leafster!" Gelatin ran over and greeted her, causing Leafy to look up from the stack of posters she was holding.

"Oh - hi, Gelatin!" Leafy exclaimed, a big smile on her face. "You're off of work early again!"

"Yeah, TD and I closed early today," Gelatin replied. "Sorry if you were planning on going to the Steakhouse, we were probably out of whatever you wanted anyways," he half-joked.

"Oh! Tell Teardrop and your parents I said hi!" Leafy responded, accidentally dropping a few of the posters she was holding. "Shoot- can you help me out with that?"

Gelatin picked up the posters that Leafy had dropped and helped her hang them up. "Still no sign of her, huh?" He commented, trying to sound sympathetic despite the fact that he wasn't surprised.

"No, but I'm hopeful," Leafy responded. "I'm sure we'd be able to find her faster if people stopped taking the posters down," she grumbled.

"I don't get why people are so mad about you putting these posters up - I feel like trying to find a missing person is enough reason to stick a bunch of posters to a car's windshield while it's driving," Gelatin said.

"I know, right?" Leafy sighed, putting the final poster over a different missing person poster that someone else had put up. "Well, thanks for the help, Gelatin! That'll put you up another Level of Niceness!"

"I haven't had much to do lately, so no problem," Gelatin smiled.

"Sorry that your family's restaurant hasn't had many customers lately, I'll try to visit more often," Leafy said.

"Hey no worries, I like it better when it's less crowded," Gelatin replied. He wasn't lying, he had never been a fan of crowded places. The lack of customers may have been bad for business, but it was great for his claustrophobia.

"Well, I gotta go, see you later!" Leafy waved as she began walking away. Gelatin waved back at her, watching as she disappeared into the distance.

God, now he was so bored again.