A/N: Slightly cracky friendship fic. Kanji teaches Chie, Rise and Yukiko how to cook - with a little help from the Hand-Puppet Investigation Team. T-rated for mild language from Kanji. Do not pace my updates well, I know; apologies to those who got alerts for other stories too.

The Kanji Tatsumi Cooking Hour

"Chie-chan, do pudding cups and chocolate bars go in omelettes?" Yukiko asked, entire body tilted at a forty-five degree angle to the floor.

"Why, Yuki-chan, of course! What an awesome idea!" squeaked Chie, bobbing along and waving both arms backwards. "I bet that will taste just great!"

"Ooh, senpai, let's put half a damn jar of chili powder in there too!" Rise added, clutching a spice sprinkler as tall as herself and hopping along the kitchen counter.

The scene was supposed to continue - moving onto Puppet-Chie's penchant for incinerating meat, presumably just to make sure it was dead, and ending with Puppet-Naoto's lengthy explanation of why strawberry cakes weren't supposed to contain oysters. Unfortunately, Chie smacked Kanji's hand so hard that Puppet-Rise flew clear across the room and into the sink.

Rise shrieked something about her poor puppet having done nothing to anyone, while Kanji rescued it from a pot of water (clean, luckily) and muttered about some people's lack of appreciation for the sewing arts. Weaving together the precise explosion of pigtails required for Puppet-Rise had taken him two straight nights.

"I never said chocolate would go great in omelettes!" Chie snapped, one hand balled into a fist and the other pointing at Kanji. "That was the curry!"

Kanji lifted his hand - and Puppet-Yukiko gave Chie a disapproving glare. Real Yukiko, arms folded, shot her one that could freeze the sun. "You told me to put caviar in that too. You told me you knew all about cooking."

"Oh, c'mon. We've known each other for years, Yukiko, like you believed me!" Chie paused, eyebrows raised. "...Wait, you did?"

Puppet-Naoto leapt onto the table, arms flailing, hat at an unusually jaunty angle. "Cease your babbling! It is time to cook!"

Rise had calmed down and was now investigating the contents of Kanji's Junes shopping bag. "Kanji, c'mon. That's Naoto's Shadow. Naoto doesn't flap around like that unless I'm trying to hug her."

Kanji had made a Puppet-Shadow-Naoto too, of course, complete with a set of carefully-crafted miniature felt scalpels. Problem was, it looked kind of creepy and he'd figured Puppet-Regular-Naoto would get all sad sitting next to it on the shelf, so he'd put it back in the sewing box (and definitely didn't take it out and give it a big hug each night).

He dropped Puppet-Naoto to his side. "Shut it, all of you! This is class, dammit!"

"And it's probably gonna go on for hours," Rise said, midway through unpacking the bag. "I swear, Kanji-kun, you bought up the grocery department."

"Nah, only bought extra ingredients. Just in case." Just in case was a polite way of saying in case you idiots screw up so badly we have to throw the cake in the Samegawa and start again. Kanji valued his life too much to tell the truth.

Chie frowned. "I still don't get it. Why are we making another cake? We did a great job at Christmas."

Dammit, they'd been over this twice already. Kanji grunted and reached under the kitchen counter.

Puppet-Souji bounced onto the counter, swaggering down to the bag. "Only when somebody helped, Chie, and you totally screwed it up the first time. Plus cakes are super easy, and not just for geniuses like me!"

"Souji's right," agreed Rise.

Chie gave her a peculiar look. Yukiko just nodded.

Kanji sighed. This was the second attempt at class; the first had been a disaster. Partly because Rise had kept giggling, partly because Chie had been in a fierce temper over Yosuke, partly because Yukiko had showed up in a silk blouse which you'd never, ever get cake mix out of - but mostly because they'd all totally ignored him.

Puppets, they listened to.

"Okay, girls!" Puppet-Souji chirped. "Make sure you pay attention, yeah? Because I swear I was dating all of you at once last year and none of you noticed! Which was kinda worrying!"

All three girls stared. Dead silence fell.

"Ah, just read the damn recipe," Kanji muttered, and shoved Puppet-Souji in the rice cooker.

Kanji had to admit the girls weren't doing badly. He'd hidden everything that any of them might decide would go just awesomely in a cake, the entire contents of the spice rack included, and they'd all been diligently checking the recipe at each step. Shame half the ingredients had wound up spread around the kitchen instead of in a mixing bowl.

"S'gonna take me hours to clean this up," he muttered, trying not to cringe at the thin coat of flour covering most of the kitchen.

"Oh, don't worry!" Yukiko said cheerfully. "You should have seen the inn kitchen after Chie and I tried to make yakisoba."

Kanji was grateful he hadn't. Mothers talked. Amagi-san hadn't mentioned to Ma exactly how the staff cleaned the mixture off the counters, ceiling and floor; only that it took six hours and a pressure hose and that the head cook hadn't let Yukiko through the door since.

"Still say there was something wrong with that oven. The burners, too." Scratch half the cake mix going on the floor; a good chunk of it was on Chie. "Nothing we've cooked there has come out right."

"Or at your house," Yukiko pointed out.

"Or in the Home Ec room," added Rise.

"Or in any oven in the world, ever," Puppet-Yosuke finished, hopping down the counter wielding a pipe-cleaner wrench.

Under the weight of a three-girl incendiary glare, Kanji shrunk back. "Th-that was Yosuke. Guy's an ass sometimes."

"Oh... yeah." Chie looked slightly confused - then shook her head. "No, wait a sec--"

"You know, maybe it isn't the oven," Yukiko said with a sigh, staring at the floor. "I just don't get it, Kanji-kun. Why are you so good at cooking? You're not even a girl."

Kanji tensed. Dammit. There was a reason he'd always claimed his mother did all the cooking. The taunts over his sewing were bad enough. "Wh-what's that s'posed to mean?"

"Well... girls are supposed to know how to do this, aren't they? Not boys? Is... isn't that what people say?" Yukiko shot a quick, nervous glance at Chie, who immediately stepped in.

"I dunno, Kanji. I mean… I hate to sound like Yosuke, but... you're a guy." Chie winced. "And this is baking."

"It's subversive baking," Kanji told her with a firm nod.

"What?"

"Subversive. I'm subverting the constraints placed on me by a heteronormative society and its... its..." He hesitated. Crap, what had Naoto said? "... its... cymbalist... and, and binary... contraptions of gender and sex." Yeah, that was about right. "'Sides, you beat up trees in the park."

"I, I'm just in training!" Chie blurted out, sounding way less confident than before. "Sub... subversive training!"

"So's Kanji." Rise smirked. "He's gonna be a housewife."

Kanji, who figured that putting on an apron each day and cooking nice dinners was actually a pretty sweet way to spend life, stayed quiet.

Puppet-Naoto didn't. "He's going to make an awesome housewife! And detectives need to eat right! So shut up!"

Rise shook her head. "That doesn't sound like Naoto either."

"Like you'd know," Puppet-Souji chimed in, fingerless hands on imaginary hips. "Uh, but I don't either! Because there's no way Naoto ever liked me. At all."

Chie rolled her eyes. "Kanji-kun, you seriously need to get out the store more."

Probably right, Kanji thought, glaring fiercely at Puppet-Souji.

Puppet-Teddie helped pour the cake mix into the pan; Rise was the one wearing him, but she had the voice down way better than Kanji ever would. While the cake was baking, Puppet-Yosuke, controlled by Chie, jumped around making smart-assed comments and getting his head smacked against the counter - while Puppet-Naoto and Puppet-Rise, both uncharacteristically polite, asked if Puppet-Kanji might be in the works. ("We can't have one missing," Yukiko added, moments before Puppet-Yosuke's latest trauma drove her into a fit of giggles.)

The mix looked fine. The oven was set correctly. Nothing caught on fire. Not even a faint smell of burning, which Kanji had pretty much resigned himself to. And the cake itself? Admittedly, it looked like they'd thrown the icing from across the kitchen instead of using a spatula, but it was still pretty damn good for beginners.

"It kinda sunk in the middle," said Chie, poking the cake with a fork and making it sink even more.

"That's not bear-y upbeat, Chie-chan!" Puppet-Teddie pointed out, before jumping onto Yukiko's head. "Seriously, Chie-senpai, I think we did good."

"Rise, stop it! And... and Kanji-kun, thank you. Your class was very helpful." Yukiko smiled. "We should hold another one."

Chie paused. "Hey, isn't the head cook at the inn on vacation this week?"

Yukiko nodded. "And we still don't really know how to make curry. There are so many variations, I'm sure Kanji-kun could teach us!"

"Cakes are perfectly sufficient," Puppet-Naoto firmly informed them - while Kanji cringed back from the counter and wished people would just stick to what they were good at.