Bonds of the Soul

Home Alone

As the car was pulling into the driveway of the Sakaki house, the four counterparts noticed a white D-Wheel in the open garage. Yugo gasped, "Is that my D-Wheel? You found my D-Wheel?" Yoko smiled. "Shuzo found it and brought it to the house while you four were at the gymnastics center."

Yugo whooped and scrambled out of the car, forgetting all about all the stuff that needed to be brought into the house for a moment as he ran to his beloved D-Wheel. Then Yuri called out to him, "Oi! I'm not bringing in all the stuff you got from the mall!"

"Oh yeah!" Yugo ran back to the car and helped bring in the mall purchases. There were so many bags, at least 20 per boy! Honestly, Yoko was very impressed that they managed to bring all the bags into the house in one trip. It may have had something to do with the fact that all four boys were a lot stronger than they looked. Yoko smiled and shook her head as she followed the boys to Yuya's room, ready to help them redecorate.

* * *

Yugo hummed happily as he worked on his D-Wheel later that evening. His bike was in great condition even after being unintentionally abandoned after Yuri had absorbed Yugo. That was probably because the blunana took excellent care of his beloved bike. It was his most prized possession, apart from his Clear Wing card. Yugo had built his D-Wheel from scratch, and honestly he would consider that to be his greatest achievement.

Yugo was so focused on his D-Wheel that he didn't notice the door connecting the garage to the house open, nor the sound of footsteps approaching him. Then—

"Hey, Yugo."

The blunana yelped and jumped at the sound of Yuto's voice, looking up at the edgy eggplant. Said eggplant just stared at him in silence for a few moments. Yugo frowned. "What? Why are you staring? Do I have something on my face?" He reached up and touched his face, only to realize that he did indeed have something on his face. A bit of motorcycle grease was smeared under his left eye, and the Synchro duelist blushed. "O-oh..."

Yuto coughed a little and looked away. When Yugo glanced back up at him, he could swear that there was a faint blush on Yuto's cheeks. The XYZ duelist didn't look back at him as he said, "Yuya's parents are going on a date, so they're leaving us home alone. Said we're all old enough and mature enough to be left for a few hours, but Yuya's in charge. They'll be back around 11 tonight."

"Oh, ok!" Yugo said happily. "Wait... why is Yuya in charge?"

"Cuz they know him better than they know us, so they know he'll be responsible enough to be in charge," Yuto explained. "At least, that's my guess."

"Ah, makes sense," Yugo agreed.

* * *

Meanwhile, Yuya was in the living room watching a duel on TV when he heard the sound of pots and pans being rummaged through in the kitchen. The tomato got up from the couch and went to the kitchen to find Yuri holding a cupcake tin.

"Uh, what are you doing?" Yuya asked. Yuri studied the cupcake tin silently for a moment before replying, "I wanted to make some cupcakes. But... I've never baked before..."

"Oh, I can help with that!" Yuya said. "I've baked with Mom plenty of times! What kind of cupcakes did you want to make?"

"Chocolate, with vanilla icing," Yuri said. Yuya smiled and rummaged through the pantry and fridge to get out the ingredients. "Let's see... flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt for the dry ingredients... milk, butter, vanilla, and eggs for the wet ingredients. And for the icing, we could make vanilla buttercream? Which needs butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk."

Yuri tilted his head curiously, watching Yuya getting the ingredients. Yuya set the ingredients out, and then realized that Yuri would probably need access to the recipe. After all, the cabbage-head hadn't baked before. Yuya had made both chocolate cupcakes and vanilla buttercream with his mother so many times that he had the recipes memorized. But Yuri didn't know the recipe, so Yuya grabbed his mother's baking cookbook and opened it to the right page. "Here, follow these instructions, while I get the oven preheated and the baking tin set up!"

Yuri got to work mixing the ingredients as Yuya preheated the oven and set paper cups into the baking tin. Yuya hummed softly as they worked, and Yuri listened with a smile.

Of course, being that this was Yuri's very first time baking, Yuya wasn't too surprised when he looked up at the Fusion duelist and saw that Yuri was making a bit of a mess. There was batter all over the place, including on Yuri's face. The cabbage appeared to be sneaking tastes of the batter as he mixed it. Yuya couldn't help scooping up a bit of batter on his finger and smearing it on the tip of Yuri's nose, giggling at the surprised look on Yuri's face.

"Yuya!" Yuri pouted a little, before doing the same to the tomato-head. Before they knew it, the two of them were having a batter fight, flinging batter at each other and laughing. They were having so much fun with their batter fight that before long there was no batter remaining in the bowl. By the time they realized it, it was too late.

"Aw," Yuri pouted at the empty bowl. "Well, it was worth a try. Maybe next time."

"You don't want to try a second batch?" Yuya tilted his head. Yuri chuckled, "No, not right now. If we try again, we'll probably end up throwing it at each other again."

Suddenly they heard Yuto's voice, "What in the heck happened to you two?!" Yuri and Yuya looked up and saw Yuto standing at the kitchen entrance, staring at them with wide eyes. Yuya blushed, realizing that he and Yuri were absolutely covered in chocolate cupcake batter. "Uh... well, we were trying to make chocolate cupcakes, but uh, we kinda got a little... distracted?"

"We had a food fight with the batter," Yuri deadpanned. Yuto shook his head, half amused and half exasperated, "I can see that... Why don't you guys go have a shower? I'll clean up the kitchen."

"Are you sure?" Yuya asked. Yuri grabbed his arm. "Good idea! C'mon, Yuya! Let's go get cleaned up!~