Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Valley Quest ❯ Valley Quest: 6 ( Chapter 6 )

Yuzaki Tsubasa was a lovely young woman. She married her husband two years after meeting him very briefly and saved his life from Truk-kun. He walked on broken legs to tell her he loved her at first sight and she demanded he marry her if he wished to date. He said yes. Then passed out from his injuries.

Two years later she showed up at his door on his 18th birthday and presented him with a marriage certificate, asking him to keep his word. He did, and they were married. Their actual courting began then, with hand holding and sleeping in the same room. Even an apartment fire which destroyed all he owned did not get him down, and the couple found a new place to live and grew slowly closer and more comfortable. They were one of the oddest couples anyone had ever seen, if only because of how shy they both were. Eventually, after most of a year, they got far enough in their relationship to want a full wedding ceremony, which they had, and then moved to town. He was poor, so they bought a very small shop where he sold telescopes he made himself. His wife was very sweet, and quite strong. I personally witnessed her lift a tractor wheel out of a ditch without much effort. It was attached to a tractor at the time and probably weighed around 500 pounds. So the couple wasn’t entirely normal for Japan, but they fit in well here.

Unfortunately, there was a couple which was somewhat difficult. The guy was a former Chuunibyo who was the lawful husband of a girl with a bad case of the middle schoolers disease. She wore an eyepatch and dressed like a black Lolita maid, complete with frills and parasol. Her older sister had taken her savings and only gone off to cooking school down south after determining the young man was suited to care for the girl. And that’s where things went sideways. The elder sister had returned, both enraged and defeated, and was in my shop ranting.

“I can’t believe I fell for it,” she said for the fourth time. “They had such a good reputation for training the best chefs in the whole world. Of course they were a scam. Real schools cost a lot of money. The French ones are hideously beyond my price range, and the American schools are inferior. I turned up, they took my entrance fees and I got a couple days in the dorms and then… and THEN! A contest. No training. No classes. Just straight into elimination trials, like that means something in the real world. There was no training. Just showing off!” she shouted, louder this time. I rubbed my temples. I’d had to take Yuki upstairs to get away from this madwoman.

She was right to be angry, of course. That cooking “school” was not a school or any kind of education. It was a tournament stealing funds from the Japanese board of education, and paying bribes for the auditors to ignore all its victims and the hundreds of complaints each year. Only in Japan could this kind of thing happen. Well, Japan and probably Zimbabwe, and maybe Grenada. But nowhere with a first world justice system. So not Japan.

“So after that I hopped a ship on working passage to Thailand and took up cooking in series of resturants, learning all I could of the regional cuisine. Then I went to Indonesia and did the same thing. Then I travelled to India and learned cooking styles there, then crossed over to Oman and learned from their chefs, and then to Ethiopia (and she said this strangely) and learned their vegetarian spicy cuisine, and then to Cyprus, then Greece, then Albania and Croatia, and to Italy and after 10 years I have returned a master of the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern and Indian and Thai cuisines. I even made back my entrance fees. So I can prove I am the best chef in Japan!”

“Or you could take that money and open your own restaurant and look after your sister sometimes. Her husband is exhausted. And this town could really use more restaurants and take out places open in the evenings. We really lack in fine dining, much less food for refined palates from all the new residents in our growing community,” I hinted strongly. This paused her rant and she looked at the empty storefronts on the street.

I do love it when people think.

+++++++

Some days later a herd of high school students arrived from down South, probably Fukuoka though I didn’t ask. They said they had superpowers and were seeking the original Dark Flame Master. This was something my brother used to go on about during his Chuuni phase so I asked the older one since he was down the street at the time.

“Where did you get that Dark Flame Master idea from?” I asked him. He looked up from tying the shoelace on his youngest son and pursed his lips, thinking hard.

“Eh, there was an online board with some videos from a schoolkid. It probably seems really lame to modern standards, but he had prop swords and plastic armor he made himself and posted journals about his battles with evil and the darkness trapped in his right arm. Or maybe it was the left arm. Why?” he asked.

“There’s a group asking for the original creator visiting town and they asked me. I could swear I’d heard that somewhere before, from someone else.”

“Eh? What’s that you said?” asked Togashi Yuta, carrying his shopping in a cloth bag back towards his house. The local growers were creating something like a supermarket, only with central billing for goods provided by their farms, with most of the profits going back to them, less operating expenses and wages for the two clerks and the rent on the building. I think they planned to buy the building if this idea worked. It wasn’t like a co-op. It was very much for-profit.

“We’re seeking the Dark Flame Master,” said the young man in the high school uniform. He had four women and a little girl following him around.

“Eh? Really? What then?” asked Yuta.

“I want to challenge him!” said the teenager.

“What, a battle?” Yuta clarified. The teenager deflated. Hachiman looked amused. His chuuni years were decades in his past. He wasn’t ashamed of it anymore.

“Just a demonstration. Can you do this!” he said and started chanting. Then a dark flame erupted above his hand. And that was it. It just sat there. He moved his hand around and it moved with him.

“Huh. No, I can’t do that. Its exactly like I pictured it in my imagination though. That’s pretty cool. How do you do it? A hologram? Some low temperature fuel with non-toxic additives for the color?” Yuta asked.

“Ah, no. We have superpowers.” He said the last bit quickly and mostly under his voice.

“Really?” asked Hachiman. His kids looked at him, then at me, then at the Yuta, then back to the teenager and his harem. They had the signs, obviously. Except for the little one. She was Little Sister territory, like me.

“Yes. Really,” said one of the girls. Women I suppose.

“So are you visiting or moving in?” I asked them finally.

“Uh, well, we have a place we like where we live already, and so I guess we’re just visiting. It was nice to meet you though. What’s your name?” asked the white haired girl. She was friendly.

“Togashi Yuta. I’m on the way home to cook dinner for my wife, and my sister in law is in town so she might try and take over. I guess if I get more ingredients we can invite you for dinner?” he said, uncertainly. He thought more and made a phone call. The upgrade to the phone network by Lain really helped at times like these. The sun set and I saw Ami Rinn and Vincent Law step out of their house to enjoy the evening warmth. They said there was mostly snow and ice on their Earth, so being warm was a nice change. One of the girls recognized her and dug through her bag, emerging with an ancient CD. I face palmed but let our resident sign it if she wished. She generally did, creating a market for fake autographs on J-Bay.  

Much of what happens here, I mused, watching the crowd turn towards the market to get more supplies for dinner, dark flame still playing above the teenage boy's hand, otherwise useless. It was a hilarious result of a world with a sense of humor. Yuta lived to care for a girl, now a woman since they were 29 and thirty, and an older sister who was done with her journey and had returned wiser for it.


++++++++


The next morning was more of my happy routine. Nobody was shooting at me. I wasn't covered in Trench Mud or trying to stay clean or ducking shellfire. I wasn't exhausted. I didn't have to duck from loud noises. My brother was in town. He came to my shop for coffee.

"I like how you make your coffee. Did I ever tell you that when we were young? You were always so serious about it, and it tasted good. Better than that syrup I bought."

"Oh, did Afghanistan make you appreciate the finer things of life?" I asked him.

"Yeah. I caught Chain Smoking there. And I can field strip and reassemble an AK-47. And a 74. And a Makarov. I had to learn a lot of things. And I missed you all the time. You got a million Komachi points just from thinking about you, sis."

"So, Sofiya. What was that romance like?" I asked him.

"She was baffling at first. She wanted to talk to me, more than anyone else. I listened because monologuing was an easy way to get dead so I unlearned that habit. I'm not Kyon, after all."

"Kyon lives two blocks over," I said deadpan. He stopped and stared at me. I pointed the direction.

"Wow. That's.. wow. Is Haruhi there too? And Mikuru? And Nagato Yuki?" he said.

"Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Their home town is invaded by another space consciousness and its made things awkward and unpleasant for them, so they moved here."

"So does Kyon know or is he still?" asked my brother.

"Its like a blank spot, he can't be told and can't listen to the words. Its surreal to see in person. He really has no idea."

"Well, that's something. Anyway, Sofiya liked to talk to me, and I listened and she started to crush and I just let her. Then she got kidnapped and I had to rescue her and a bunch of stuff happened and before we know it the USSR is ending and I'm in a wedding chapel getting married."

"What did she say when she learned your real name, Yuri?" I teased him. He blushed.

"Some words I like to forget and won't repeat in front of my cute imoutou. After that we struggled with various things in Russia and ended up reforming the company and moving to Thailand because there was a place ideal for our special abilities and contacts. We did a lot of things, some of them very hard. Many of them illegal in most countries and certainly unethical. The world isn't very nice outside Japan, neesan. Most of the things we were told as kids aren't really true. Real life is… hard. Relentless. Brutal. You have to be brutal back to survive it."

"But you had Sofiya to keep warm in bed at night and so I now have nephews and nieces."

"And I got to be a house husband. And Sofiya is a good mother, and a strong commander of men. She is respected. And feared."

"I know how that is. Ever since Ginza I have struggled with the fans, and the snipers, and the kidnapping attempts, and the blame shifting, and the unpaid invoices, and the stolen valor. Did you know I killed a huge red dragon?" I told him, remembering.

"What, like Smaug?" he asked, clarifying.

"Fire breathing, agile, probably intelligent though it didn't speak. It was maybe half the size of the movie dragon, around 140 meters long. I've been selling its scales on J-Bay. There are lots of collectors."

"Seriously? What about the head?" he asked, looking around.

"Stolen by the JSDF. Along with the diamond I was paid to kill it. They took it from Hikigaya's safe. It was over 400 carats, worth around 50 million yen. And they just took it. And the head. So I stopped working for them and have a lawsuit against them for theft, grand larceny, breach of contract, and I managed to work the violation of the constitution for invading a foreign land, which is making quite a stink since it is true. My case is almost as bothersome as their insistence on capturing and trying Itami for treason."

"How is killing an emperor of an evil empire treason?" he asked me. I shrugged.

"I think they had plans to self destruct the JSDF force to then allow in troops from other countries while they'd force seppuku on the officers running Alnus Hill base. That would include my brother. I am not having it, obviously. It's a big international scandal with mostly enemy agents in the Diet taking bribes and sabotaging the entire effort. And its useless. There's even more portals than the one in Ginza. They were fooling themselves thinking they could control and exploit it all themselves. I got out. I'm here. I'm building a life here. I have more friends here than I did back in Chiba."

"Weren't you popular in Chiba?" my brother asked me.

"Well, yes, but I know so many people here and they actually need me. I'm not just a housewife who can fly and shoot artillery spells. What I do here matters," I explained.

"Komachi will always be in my heart," my brother said and hugged me. He still stinks like a Taxicab.