Family Bonds

Little Chef

Zarc noticed that Yuto and Yugo were being awfully quiet. In a house with four toddlers, quiet was a bad sign. The father quickly got up from where he was sitting on the sofa with Yuya and went to go look for his quiet toddlers.

Yugo was quickly found, assembling another toddler robot that Zarc had bought him. Clear Wing was helping the tiny blunana, much to Zarc's relief. Yugo really did seem to have a knack for engineering, and Zarc had no doubt he would be able to build custom robots and machines from scratch when he got older.

Yuto was a bit harder to find. Zarc was starting to get a little worried about his little eggplant. But finally he found him. And oh boy, that quiet was a problem! Yuto had somehow managed to get into the fridge and pulled out some food, which he was now mixing together in a mixing bowl on the floor. There were a dozen whole eggs including the shells, a gallon of milk, five entire sticks of butter, two heads of lettuce, a bottle of mustard, a bottle of chocolate syrup, and an entire jug of orange juice in the bowl.

"Yuto!" Zarc gasped, rushing over to his toddler. Said toddler was a mess, but seemed to be having fun. He looked up at his daddy and smiled adorably. "Daddy! I make cake!"

"Oh, Yuto," Zarc sighed, picking the tiny eggplant up. "You're a mess. C'mon, I'll get you cleaned up."

"No! No!" Yuto squeaked angrily, trying to climb out of his daddy's arms. "My cake! Want cake!"

"I'll help you make a real cake after your bath, okay?" Zarc promised. "We're going to need to go to the store to pick up more ingredients though. You appear to have used up all the eggs and butter."

"Cake?" Yuto asked hopefully, ceasing his attempts to escape. "Hewp make cake?"

"Yes, I'll help you make cake, I promise," Zarc reassured him. At that, Yuto calmed down and nuzzled Zarc, getting chocolate syrup, mustard, and egg all over his father. Zarc just chuckled and carried Yuto to the bathroom. Along the way they ran into Dark Rebellion, who was frantically looking for Yuto. When the dragon saw the messy toddler, he stared in disbelief.

"I was only gone for two minutes!" Dark Rebellion said weakly. "I just went to grab some crayons! How did you get so messy in two minutes?"

"He figured out how to open the fridge and tried to make a cake," Zarc explained. Dark Rebellion sighed and ruffled Yuto's hair. "I'll go clean up the kitchen."

"Thank you," Zarc said, smiling at his dragon. Dark Rebellion kissed Yuto's forehead and went to clean up the mess in the kitchen while Zarc gave Yuto a bath.

* * *

Yuto was a very happy little eggplant as he and Zarc made a proper cake later that evening. It was going to be a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream and strawberries. Zarc could already tell that cooking and baking were going to be things that Yuto really enjoyed. Each of his toddlers seemed to already have at least one hobby: Yuto's art and cooking, Yuri's gardening and reading, Yugo's robot building, and Yuya's athletics.

Yuto appeared to be paying very close attention to Zarc's instructions while they made the cake, and it was clear that he was actually retaining the information. Zarc had a sneaking suspicion that he would need to keep an eye on the kitchen from now on. Yuto would no doubt keep attempting to cook things, and Zarc didn't want him to get hurt or waste ingredients.