A Piece of Cake [poppu]

With a bag full of bananas hanging from his arm, Wei HuSun ran down the hall towards the college dorms. He didn't have to bring the bananas--in fact, Hari seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn't want to impose anything on the monkey boy since the whole 'almost dying' incident--but he figured that he might as well bring the most important ingredient to any recipe, bananas. Honestly, Wei couldn't think of anything that wasn't somehow improved by bananas. Cereal? Add bananas. Pasta? Bananas. Soup? Make it banana soup.

And lets not forget banana bread.

Not too long after he helped Hari to the infirmary did he get a loaf of bread, still fairly warm and with a scent wafting nicely of his favorite yellow fruit. At first he'd been skeptical of it--it looked enough like bread but aside from the smell he didn't see any hint of banana.

Until he tasted it.

The sweet flavor of banana with the satisfying crunch of nuts (not as good as a well-placed cricket, but any crunch was better than nothing) exploded into his mouth, making his cheeks tingle with the combination of flavors and his tummy glow with a satisfying warmth. He'd eaten half the loaf in one sitting before the idea to ration it entered his mind. Then he very deliberately only ate a small slice every other day, to make it last as long as possible.

<font color = ffcb05>'But now I'm learning how to make it! I can be a glutton as much as I want!'</font> The monkey boy thought with a big, gleeful smile.

He set the bag on the ground and hooked his tail into the handle before scaling the wall, his skilled fingers finding easy purchase on the brick, and rapping on the window to Hari's dorm room. After a moment he peeked in to see if he could see the college student. <font color = ffcb05>"Hariiii~"</font> he called from just outside the window. <font color = ffcb05>"I'm here for baking! Guess who brought the 'nanas~?"</font>

Wei saw Hari sitting at his desk with his computer open, and laughed when he jumped at the sound of his call. The laugh was more like a screech than a laugh, but that was just the was he was. Once the window was open wide enough, he adjusted his feet and pulled himself into the college student's dorm.

College dorms were much nicer than the High School ones. They were bigger, for one, and they also tended to have dorm kitchens, for another. That meant that he didn't have to take any trips to the cafeteria if he had the ingredients. That sounded great, especially for the days when he just wanted to lay in his bed like a lump on a log.

Then again Wei wasn't an especially good cook, so maybe that wasn't so much of a benefit for him.

<font color = ffcd05>"I broke my phone again,"</font> he said with a shrug and a smile, as though it was a fact of life. <font color = ffcd05>"I was eating lunch in that tall Ash tree and it fell out of my pocket and crumbled like a cookie!"</font>

<font color = ffcd05>"Plus,"</font>he continued, following close behind Hari, shifting his bag of bananas into his hands. <font color = ffcd05>"I've climbed taller buildings! I climbed that on ruined building on Main Street, and this one time I climbed a ruined palace back home! I fell off that one, though. Broke my arm. And my leg!"</font>

Once on the landing, he followed Hari to the stairs. He wanted very badly to slide down the railing as a faster way to get to the floor below, but Hari liked to go on about safety, and not hurting himself by not climbing on tall things or eating strange plants or sleeping on the floor. So he decided to not do that this time, instead opting to skip steps with enthusiastic hops, descending two, four, six steps at a time.

At the mention of banana peels, Wei held his bag close to his chest. <font color = ffcd05>"Well, I haven't been around here yet, so I can vouch that there are no errant banana peels about!"</font> He looked around, all around the steps and landing before saluting to Hari, signaling the safety of the steps and the lack of discarded banana skins.

Wei kept ahead of Hari, checking the next landing and set of steps for anything that he might step on by accident and that would send him careening down the steps to a very painful not-quite-death. Maybe he was being over-bearing, he wondered. But then he thought of that big cup full of pills that Hari had to take at the infirmary and he shook his head, determined to help keep his friend out of the infirmary with every bit of simian-based ability in his small body.

When they finally made it to the ground floor (without any accidents, to Wei's glee) he followed him to the kitchen and looked around, taking in the pantries, the refrigerator, the stove-top, and the table that made up the kitchen. It didn't really remind him of home--his kitchen back home was quite a bit smaller and quite a bit older than what was here.

The monkey boy let out a huff as he placed his bananas on the counter, perfectly aged and yellow for maximum flavor. <font color = ffcd05> "Yeah, but trying to climb with knee pads and phone straps his distracting. I mean, you can always just grow new bones.

"And the palace was pretty, even though it was old."</font> Wei watched Hari as he set about putting everything they would need on the counter, as well as the ingredients that were necessary to make the banana bread. He bounced in excitement, but was mindful of not touching Hari. He had taken some precautions, like wearing a old, patchy sweatshirt that belonged to his brother. It was over sized on his body, with sleeves long enough to cover his hands if he left them down. <font color = ffcd05>"There was a lot of broken things there, and I didn't really find any treasure, but there was this tall sentinel thing holding a necklace and a jade ring and I put em on and I could see space and time! The necklace turned into dust though, and I think the ring was cursed."</font>

At Hari's insistence that that wasn't how bones worked, Wei simply scoffed. If that wasn't how bones worked, then how come his arm and leg weren't broken now, and had instead healed with the rest of him? That was pretty much proof that you could regrow bones!

<font color = ffcd05>"Oh no, it wasn't too bad. Me and the Monkey King became pen pals! Er, thought pals. He taught me some of his powers... my brother took the ring though, because it started to encase me in jade."</font>

He looked at the bowl in front of him and gave Hari a quizzical look before he explained that this would be the bowl they were using for baking, setting the ingredients they didn't currently need to one side of the counter. The first step was mashing up the bananas. Alright, he could do that. The recipe called for two bananas to be mashed up, but Wei thought that that was too few bananas.

Reaching for the bananas, he peeled two and dropped them into the bowl. But he could tell that was definitely not enough banana for a full loaf. He peeled two more bananas, then another two, until the bowl was filled with banana. It was only then that Wei started to smash them.

It was clear that this bowl wasn't made to contain *quite* so many bananas, as he smashed them it dribbled out of the bowl, leaving tasty splatters on the counter and on his face.

"Hmm?" He asked, his tongue between his lips as he focused on smashing the bananas in such a way that they didn't splatter all over the counter like he was very ineptly fulfilling a hit on someone who happened to be banana through and through. "Oh, yeah, he's fine. He sold on the black market and bought a motorcycle." Wei remembered HouLin coming back from the market with a fat stack of cash and a motorcycle thrumming between his legs. Their mom was so mad at him, she screamed for hours about how he would kill himself riding that monstrosity.

Finally the bowl was filled with smashed banana to the brim, and most of the counter around the bowl banana puddles and gloops going cold. Even his face and the sleeves of his mended-many-times sweatshirt had bits of smashed potassium. Wei broke out in a big smile. "Yeah, isn't it great?" he said, setting about licking the counter to make sure none of the banana went to waste.

"I had to ration out the banana bread you gave ne last time. Now we can make loaves that are filled to bursting with banana flavoring."

After a moment, a light seemed to go off in his head.

"Oh! I brought something else too!"

Reaching into the bag of bananas, he pulled out small back sealed like you would seal a bag of grapes. It bore a label in Chinese that didn't quite translate, with several cartoon-y depictions of grasshoppers bouncing about with oddly human smiles.

"Grasshoppers! The best addition to any recipe!"