The Taste of Friendship

by Bookish Delight

2: Main Dish

Three hours later, a frazzled Starlight Glimmer walked back into Ucchan's Okonomiyaki.

Ukyo walked in behind her, carrying a new screen door. The sight of it relieved Starlight—one less thing weighing on her conscience. She stood in the center of the shop, watching Ukyo install it.

"Sheesh," Ukyo said. "It sounds like you two covered every single base except the ones that could help you out."

"Seriously! And yet, I almost feel sorry for you guys. Ancient curses are a bit out of my wheelhouse, along with pretty much every other brand of magic Cologne's familiar with." Starlight sighed. "She wasn't a total loss, though. I have a slightly better idea of how magic works in your world, which... reportedly has its own magic mirrors in it? I'll have to draw up a plan to check those out. That all said, can I ask you something?"

"Of course." Ukyo picked up the old broken screen door and walked towards the back room. Starlight followed.

"Well, no less than three times while talking with Cologne, I kept seeing this one boy being chased by lots of people—and they all kept talking about either marrying him or killing him. Sometimes... both?"

She tilted her head, and looked up at Ukyo inquisitively. "Is there something I should know? Perhaps about this world's laws? I mean, in Equestria, when a pony likes another pony, they usually just... ask them out."

Ukyo put the screen door against a wall, then faced Starlight, a sheepish look on her face. "It's... a really long story. Can I tell you tomorrow? I had to deal with a magical pony crashing into my restaurant today, then got a workout from Shampoo—it'll take me a good night's sleep before I have the energy to tell you all about Nerima's most eligible bachelor. To say nothing of the chaos he's left in his wake." She hesitated, then asked, "I'm... guessing you also saw Ranma-honey get splashed with water at some point?"

Starlight blushed. "Pretty sure I did, yeah. Another cursed spring deal?"

Ukyo blushed back. "Yeah, it... goes that far."

Starlight snickered. "You know, if I never get back, I'll still have a field day figuring out how your world works."

Ukyo laughed. "I'm sure! Sorry you couldn't find the magic you were looking for, though." She went back to the dining room, to the sink behind the grill, and started washing plates.

"That makes two of us. I guess I'll just have to put my faith in my friends. If they can even do anything. Or..." Starlight hesitated. "...or if they even want to."

Ukyo scrunched her face in thought as she scrubbed a plate. "You know, I'd been meaning to ask you about that. When you originally explained to me how you got here, you said you were doing all this in the name of... friendship? As in, trying to learn friendship? How do you go from high-level magic to that?"

"Because on my world, friendship is magic." Starlight perched on one of the stools at the front counter, and gestured with her hooves. "Things like friendship, camaraderie, harmony, they're like... this invisible glue that holds our world—past, present and future—together. And they give, ponies especially, their reason for living.

"It's... actually a lot like how you told me everyone here has different martial arts styles, but they all have core principles and disciplines, allowing for people to do extraordinary things when they express themselves. The magic afforded by friendship, around Equestria, lets me do what I'm able to do, and be what I'm able to be... but in my own way. And the same goes for everypony else."

Ukyo's eyes went wide. "That sounds incredible! No wonder you want to learn friendship."

"Exactly! Though... yeah. That's the thing. For all my magical skill, I'm behind the curve." Starlight sighed. "Walking irony."

"I'm... not sure I'm following, Star." Ukyo dried her hands, then tended to the dining area. Meanwhile, Starlight rolled a stray grain of rice on the counter back and forth between her hooves. Her next words were melancholy.

"I used to be very much on the wrong side of things, Ukyo. I had a weird, warped sense of what friendship and harmony should be, and I led other ponies on that warped path with me. When I was called out on it, I almost destroyed my world out of petty revenge. Make no mistake, Ukyo: I was one of those ponies you and your frenemies would have banded together to stop."

Ukyo listened, fingers to her chin in thought.

"But Twilight stopped me. More than that, she saved me. And she didn't lock me in a cell for a thousand years. She should have, but she didn't. Ever since then, I've been trying to make it up to her and the rest of my world, but I keep screwing things up!"

Starlight threw up her forelegs. "Other ponies make friends all the time! How is it that I'm unable to get the hang of something so... mundane? So easy? Instead I just keep hurting the ones I want to be friends with! Those five ponies I told you about on the way back here? Twilight's friends? Just last week, I mind-controlled them all, because it was easier than humoring them for a few hours. I knew what I was doing the whole time, but I did it anyway!

"So after learning my lesson there, I decided to work on some magic that, if it went wrong, would only affect me, for once. And here I am. Constantly messing up friendship, and now screwing up the the one thing I'm supposedly actually good at."

Starlight slumped. "Maybe... maybe Equestria's just better off without me. Maybe I really should just stay here. After all, you..." Her lips quivered. "...y-you can't make rotten food fresh again. Right?"

Starlight lay her head down on the counter, despair filling her heart, tears welling up in her eyes. She didn't fight them, nor did she fight her decision, because it was clearly correct given stacked evidence.

Maybe she really could start fresh in a world like this. She'd have to find her own place to live, of course—she certainly couldn't impose on Ukyo forever. She idly wondered what the job market was like for magical ponies here.

As Starlight wallowed in sadness, she heard shaking and shuffling above her, but thought nothing of it.

Then she felt fingers nudge her face up. Starlight opened her eyes to see a blurry Ukyo right in front of her. Ukyo wiped the tears from Starlight's eyes and face with a handkerchief, wearing a concerned look.

"Look, Starlight? I know we haven't known each other for very long, but... I'd really like to say something here. If it's okay."

"No, it's all right," Starlight sniffled. Looking around, she saw lots of vegetables situated behind the grill in front of her, along with spices, oils, and a few bowls. "Go ahead."

"Okay. Well, I just want to say that I'm... actually pretty jealous of you."

Starlight blinked. "Why?"

"Because you totally hit the nail on the head with the 'frenemies' bit, that's why," Ukyo said with a chuckle. "Sometimes I have a really hard time figuring out what I see in the people I call friends. To say nothing of what they might see in me. Heck, it seems like anyone I would call a friend around here, I also call a rival. We're at odds so much. We fight so much.

"But we also have our good times. Sometimes we work together. Sometimes we also have fun. Shampoo and I don't even hate each other—we're just ga-ga over the same guy, and sometimes we get... passionate about it. But true-blues like the one you've got? Yeah... in my life, few and far between."

Starlight slowly nodded.

"I've had to learn something over the years—in training, in being a suitor, and in owning this place. And that is..." Ukyo walked behind the grill. "...well, that friendship really is a lot like cooking."

Starlight blinked. "You're... not just saying that because you run a restaurant, are you?"

Ukyo chuckled. "Hey, when all you have is a spatula..." She held up her cooking tools of choice. "But no, seriously. You said you have a big group of friends, right?"

"Close to ten of them," Starlight replied. "At least I'm... trying for their friendship? And I know they are too, even with my... shortcomings. They're... they're so nice to me, even when I make them angry. But they're wasting their time." Starlight sighed.

Ukyo shook her head. She cracked the eggs into one of the bowls and whipped, adding liberal amounts of the bottled oils, sauces and spices, then added flour.

"Yeah, no," she said, whisking the mixture as smooth as she could. "Here's the thing about friends, especially in groups." She added vegetable after vegetable, along with some... very familiar-looking noodles. The spatula joined her spoon in the mixing of each new ingredient, this time much more gently.

"Each of those friends is great on their own, and totally bring their own flavor to the table. But sometimes, to get something even better out of all these folks you just lumped together?"

Ukyo's eyes glinted, moments before she overturned the contents of the bowl onto the already-heated grill in front of her. A deafening sizzle accompanied an almost opaque cloud of smoke. Starlight gasped, jumping off the stool.

The smoke cleared, revealing Ukyo with a toothful, cocksure grin.

"You need heat!" Ukyo shouted over the din, sweeping her arm wide. "Fires lit under you! Sometimes you're going to make mistakes, or they are, and when they happen they're going to hurt!"

Ukyo let the mixture sizzle for a little while longer as Starlight stared, transfixed by both the sight of her and the increasingly good smell filling the restaurant. Ukyo then flipped the food, and the loud, intense sizzle returned. Starlight winced again.

Ukyo kept grinning, then beckoned with one hand. Slowly, Starlight walked back and retook her seat.

Ukyo removed the now disc-shaped food off of the grill and placed it onto a plate. She took a bottle, and squirted with several florid motions, switching the bottle between her hands repeatedly in the process.

As she did so, she spoke again—and her voice was tender once more.

"Funny thing, though: if you have real friends? If they really are right for you? All those bumps in the road never last longer than they need to. And they keep going, with the lessons learned from those mistakes in mind, until they transform you, and those around you..."

With one final flourish, she added garnish from a nearby cannister, slammed both the cannister and the sauce bottle on the table with a confident pound, then slid the plate in front of Starlight.

"Into something truly special," Ukyo finished.

Starlight peered at the steaming dish in front of her. It looked a little bit like a pancake, a little bit like a pizza. The more she looked, the more she could see layers and bits of ingredients everywhere.

It smelled absolutely fantastic. And atop it, Starlight saw a sauce-based illustration of her own cutie mark. She held back the urge to squeal.

"This is your specialty?" Starlight asked, wide-eyed. "Your 'okonomiyaki?'"

Ukyo beamed. "The very same."

"It's... it's beautiful," Starlight whispered.

"Thanks. But it's not meant to be stared at." Ukyo looked at Starlight expectantly. "Eat up, hon. You've had a long day."

Starlight used her magic to cut and levitate a piece of the patty to her muzzle, and took a tentative bite. That hesitation turned to gusto the second the dish hit her taste buds, and she chewed enthusiastically.

"It's... actually a little bit sweet," she said, then took another bite. Her eyes went wide again. "...Wait a minute. Is there hay in this?"

Ukyo giggled. "I may have gone on a special ingredient run while you were at Cologne's."

Starlight chowed down in earnest, making appreciative noises the whole time and doing her best not to faint from just how good it was. Ukyo simply watched Starlight clean her plate.

Eventually, Starlight did just that, and pushed said plate aside with a satisfied sigh. "You... are a master of your craft."

Ukyo's smile was big and warm. She walked around the table, pulled up a stool next to Starlight, and sat.

"I understand how you feel, Starlight," Ukyo said, "and, I think, how your teacher feels, too. As you've already seen, there's someone in this town I'd like to be friends with. Really, really close friends. " She winked... then sighed. "But to make that happen, it's going to take a lot of work on my part. On top of a lot of forgiveness I've already had to dish out.

"You, though? You have a teacher who hasn't given up on you, you have other ponies you haven't given up on, and vice versa on everything. Even though it's been hard, even though it's been painful, and even though it's been months, they've stuck with you, and I've heard you speak nothing but fondness for them.

"Friendships aren't flawless. They're also not 'easy', or as 'mundane'' as everyone thinks. But when they're real? They endure. And they get only stronger with time."

Ukyo placed her hand on Starlight's cheek, the both of them relaxing into the moment.

"Don't write yourself off, Starlight. Please. I've only known you for a few hours, but I'm absolutely ecstatic to call you a friend. And I hope you feel the same."

"U-Ukyo..." Overwhelmed and at a loss for words, Starlight simply levitated herself into Ukyo's outstretched arms. "Of course I do," she whispered. "Thank you so much."

Ukyo stayed silent, hugging back. Chief among the things Twilight had neglected to tell Starlight about travel between worlds was just what it was like to embrace a human. It was much different from hugging another pony—they were smoother. Less ticklish on her coat. And, of course, stronger.

Certainly just as warm, however.

"What... what do I owe you for the meal?" Starlight asked when the two separated. "And for... you know, everything else?"

Ukyo waved a hand dismissively. "Please. It's all on the house. Mainly because... oh, this is going to sound so silly." Ukyo's expression went sheepish. "But... do you believe in kindred spirits? I... just get this feeling that you and I..."

"...might be connected somehow?"

"You do get it." Ukyo's face scrunched. "It's just something I haven't been able to stop thinking about since we first started talking."

"Me neither."

The two stared at each other, studying each other, for a long time, before both simply shrugged.

"Well, stranger things have happened," Starlight said. "Often because of me. Anyway, I suppose I should get ready to make arrangements if I'm going to live—"

The whole restaurant lit up just then. A nearby mirror—the same mirror Starlight had tumbled through when arriving in Ukyo's world in the first place—shone brightly.

And a voice that Starlight instantly recognized called out.

"Starlight? Starlight, are you there?"

"Twilight?" Starlight gasped, rushing to the mirror. "It's Twilight!"

"Are you absolutely sure these are the right coordinates, Sparkle?" A haughtier voice then said.

"One percent margin of error," Twilight replied. "Why?"

"Well, I suppose that's the best we can hope for with you driving. Starlight! Starlight Glimmer, so help me, if you got yourself hurt over there, The Great and Powerful Trixie will make sure you get hurt over here!"

Starlight grinned from ear to ear. "Trixie? Trixie, Twilight, yes! Yes, I'm here!" she called. "Please say you can hear me!"

"That's her! I just heard her! One side, 'Princess!'" Trixie declared. "Trixie is going through!"

"But you can't!"

"Like Tartarus I can't! Don't treat me like some filly! If it weren't for me, you would never have decoded her dimensional magic notes! Now if there are no more objections, Trixie has a best fr—er, assistant to rescue!"

Starlight blushed. "It's okay, Trixie. I'll come through myself. How long can you keep this portal open?"

"Couple of minutes tops!" Twilight replied.

"Got it!" Starlight turned to Ukyo. She didn't expect to feel tears welling up behind her eyes again so soon, but there they were.

"Well, it sure doesn't sound like you're in too much trouble," Ukyo said with a smile.

Starlight chuckled and sniffled. "You haven't met Twilight or Trixie. With them, trouble comes in different flavors. It won't be so bad, though."

Ukyo nodded. "No kidding. It sounds like you've got some very good friends to me. And it doesn't sound like they think you should give up and stay here, either. Looks like they think you're worth the trouble."

"Yeah, looks like. It also looks like it's goodbye." Starlight sighed, and gave up holding her tears back. "Will... will I ever see you again? We only ever got to know each other for a few hours, but—"

"Hold that thought."

Ukyo ran out of the kitchen, and after a short time, came back with a miniature spatula with a ribbon tied around it. "Little rough, but I think you get the idea," she said, kneeling and down and tying it into Starlight's mane. "Want an okonomiyaki for the road?"

"I would love one, really," Starlight said, "but I have no idea what that would do to Equestria's ecosystem. I'll see if I can get one made over there."

"See?" Ukyo clicked her tongue and pointed at Starlight. "Looking out for others. No way you're a rotten egg."

Starlight did her best to not be distracted by the warm feeling in her chest. "I know this sounds like a cliché, but... I'll absolutely miss you."

"Yeah, well," Ukyo said with a sniffle, "looks like we're both full of clichés today. Funny, that." She opened her arms for a hug, which Starlight accepted. "Take care of yourself."

"You too," Starlight replied, squeezing as hard as she could before letting go and walking towards the mirror. "Especially since you get in a lot more fights than I do!"

Comments

[RTStephens]

Leave it to Ukyo to use cooking as a metaphor for friendship. The girl's got a lot of other talents but she can't help coming back to the classics.

Ah, yes. A connection. I wonder what it could be?

Still, it's a nice speech and speaks well of Ukyo's character.

I'm just hoping that season 7 will have Starlight drop the angst. It's getting tiresome.

One more!

[Void Runner]

Hmmm... so no heart to heart about their pasts (yet...?)... I'm a little disappointment, but there's still one chapter left. Forward Unto the Breach!

[Wanderer D]

Ah, Ukyo, there was always a reason as to why you're best pony fiancée. I should go back to writing you.

[John Tannius]

Yes, Ukyou. She was always the most sane and collected of Ranma's love interests. In Ranma 1/2 though, that's not really saying much. She was always my favorite except for when I tried to put Ranma with a Fanon based Nabiki.

[Sunny]

Ukyo waved a hand dismissively. "Please. It's all on the house. Mainly because... oh, this is going to sound so silly." Ukyo's expression went sheepish. "But... do you believe in kindred spirits? I... just get this feeling that you and I..."

"...might be connected somehow?"

"You do get it." Ukyo's face scrunched. "It's just something I haven't been able to stop thinking about since we first started talking."

I suspect that is going to fly over the heads of most. But that is a wonderful little callback. Hah!

[Conflicting views]

Not as a fun as chapter, but way more emotional and clever. It lived up!

[QueenMoriarty]

from a nearby cannister

canister

[Leonzilla]

"Well, no less than three times while talking with Cologne, I kept seeing this one boy being chased by lots of people—and they all kept talking about either marrying him or killing him. Sometimes... both?"

Ah, turning the concept of a love hate relationship in to the most ridiculous show you never seen before, welcome to the life of Ranma Saotome!

Just last week, I mind-controlled them all, because it was easier than humoring them for a few hours. I knew what I was doing the whole time, but I did it anyway

Personally, I don't think Starlight would word what happened that way, the issue was a little deeper than that the way I saw it.

Shampoo and I don't even hate each other—we're just ga-ga over the same guy, and sometimes we get... passionate about it. But true-blues like the one you've got? Yeah... in my life, few and far between."

Same thing here, I like this paragraph, but I don't know if this sounds like Ukyo.

A little off character, but certainly enjoyable.

~Leonzilla

[Emperor]

Well, there's that VA joke in the kindred spirits line from Ukyo.

Ukyo is a tremendously good support character here and you make excellent use of her in lifting Starlight's spirits back up, especially with her whole friendship - cooking metaphor.