Mai and the Name-Stealer

Any day that Miss Luna was not at Sabertooth was a sad day for the Tempest God Slayer. Miss Luna had her own jobs to go on that she could not do with Mai, so Mai always had to sit back at the guild hall and be sad for however long it would take Miss Luna to do her job. This day was one such day. The sun shone bright, with not a single cloud in the skies, and Mai sat in her room, looking at her most recent crayon drawing of Miss Luna. Her stomach rumbled, telling her that it was time to eat. As such, she sprung up to her feet, taking one of her many bags of candy and made her way towards the Inn proper to get some food. As she left her room, she quickly tugged on the door of Miss Luna's room, trying to see if she could enter. As always, it failed to open, and since Mai had been scolded the last time she destroyed Miss Luna's door, she gave up the attempt with a tearful sniffle and popping a cherry-flavored candy into her mouth. She skipped down the hall, a slight wistful tone in her voice as she sang "Miss Luna is the bestest Miss Luna in the world! She's the bestest and most wonderful Miss Luna that the world has eeeeeeeever seen! She's the bestest and better than all the other meanies and dumb-dumb humans that I meet! Miss Luna is the bestest!" Her song continued with other such rambling praises of Miss Luna as she burst open the door to the Red Dragon Inn, popping a large chocolate bar into her mouth.

"Oi! If it isn't the li'l pipsqueak!" one of the bartenders yelled, raising a hand.

Mai waved back in return, tossing a grape-flavored candy into her mouth this time. She skipped over to her and Miss Luna's favorite table and took a seat, placing her bag of candy on the table beside her as a waiter came up to ask for what Mai wanted. It was the same order as always: a ham-and-cheese sandwich grilled to perfection with fire magic. The meltiness of the cheese and the taste of the meat always made Mai go wild, and she had already begun swaying and humming to herself in her chair.

The door to the inn slowly creaked open, revealing an all-too-familiar face, the face of Mai's self-appointed life-long rival, Imai. He had stolen her name! He was a stupid human! He bullied her! He tried to steal Miss Luna away! All these were accusations that Mai had convinced herself were the end-all, be-all truth. He was not to be trusted. He was out to be mean to Mai for no reason, and so Mai had to bring a stop to him. No one else recognized his evil.

"IMAAAAAAIIIII!" Mai roared, leaping onto her table and chucking a chocolate-covered cherry at the Ace. "STOP BEING MEANIES TO PEOPLE!" she reached into her bag of candy for more ammunition, in particular the very chocolate-covered cherry she had just thrown. Seeing it near Imai, only one conclusion could be made. "AND NOW YOU'RE STEALING MY CAAAANNNDYYYYYYY!"

She leaped from her table, prepared to attack the Ace with the power of her teeth, having fully convinced herself that she would be able to finally, once-and-for-all, slay the evil person in front of her.

Mai was ready to beat up Imai, who was cowering behind a table, when he offered an interesting proposition. She glared at Imai, her eyes shooting daggers. "How do I know you're not gonna mess up the cake? Or try to hurt me with it?" She threw a chair at Imai, which missed, crashing against a nearby table. "But...I guess you can pay me back for stealing my candy." She wandered over towards her table once more, where the sandwich was already waiting. She took a seat and began eating. "I want my cake to have white frosting and have be a white cake and have two layers and...ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Maybe you should put some strawberries on it and-and..." She took another bite of her grilled cheese. "Mmmm cake, cake, cake! Cake is good and tasty!" She rocked in her chair slightly, realizing one caveat that Imai had put on her. "Wait...you say 'if I behave'. You keep not behaving and yet you get cool stuff and all that! Why should I behave if you don't behave? Because-because you stole my candy! My candy was thieved! By you! You meanie! Ooh but you're also making me a cake...and cake is tasty. Ahh! But what if you poison the cake? Then I'll be in a lot of pain and Miss Luna will get mad at you and-and..." Her ramblings intermingled with her eating, seemingly alternating bites of grilled cheese with pieces of candy.

Mai chomped more on her sandwich, skeptically taking in the words of the supposed name-stealer that was Imai. She mulled it over in her head slightly, the melty cheese an apt description for the meltiness she felt in her muddled brain about Imai acting suspiciously kind. He would not do something like this, that was utter nonsense! Imai was a villain, and Mai was the only one that knew that! No one else knew but her, but she would reveal the truth eventually. If she did that, Miss Luna would be proud and happy and give her lots of hugs. Mai had determined in her mind that this was the best method towards getting the approval of Sabertooth. If she could out Imai as the villain that he so clearly was...

But at the same time, he had offered to make her a cake. Cake was always good. But...Imai certainly must have been planning something dubious. It was up to Mai to determine what his dubious intents were. "Fine!" she said with a strange amount of anger in her voice for someone being there to watch someone make a cake for them. She wolfed down the last of her sandwich. However, just as she finished, she felt herself move away from her chair without herself moving. Imai had decided to pick her up from her chair. Mai, understandably in her own mind but certainly to an objective force in the wrong, screamed in retaliation. "NOOOO! YOU'RE GONNA DO SOMETHING MEAN! YOU'RE GONNA BAKE ME INTO THE CAKE!" She writhed around in his grasp, her stubby arms and legs unable to reach her aggressor. Her head wobbled back in forth in rage as she repeated the mantra of, "MEANIE!" repeatedly. Nonetheless, the duo headed into the kitchen of the Red Dragon Inn, the chefs not questioning the clearly dubious Ace of Sabertooth carrying the clearly innocent and pure small child into their premises as they prepped more food. Mai spotted another grilled ham-and-cheese being made and was immediately pacified, drool dribbling from her mouth as she absently waved her arms towards the sandwich in hunger. But she was now getting a cake! What could be better than a cake! Well, a cake made by Miss Luna, with all the love in the world baked into it, but a cake was amazing!

"Ooh! And maybe the cake could have little candies on it!" she mumbled to herself whimsically, her demeanor having completely changed in the small amount of time that it took to reach the kitchen. She pawed around herself for a moment before beginning to panic. "Wait! My candy! Where's my candy!" She frantically looked around before coming to the only obviously true solution. "I get it! You probably are using this as a plot to steal my candy! You meanie! You're a meanie mean face! I'm gonna tell on you!"

To say that Mai was not convinced Imai did not try to steal her candy would be an insult to conviction. He must have been trying to steal Mai's candy, just the same as he stole her name! Of course, the promise of the 'best cake ever' did intrigue the girl. Could anything surpass a cake made by Miss Luna? It was heresy, but Mai was willing to at least taste test to see how far away from Miss Luna's skills that stupid Imai was. In a blink of an eye, Mai now had an apron it. It was still slightly too big for her, likely because they did not expect an eleven-year-old to be present for cooking. Just like that, Imai began barking orders. Who was he to order Mai around?! This was just proving to Mai more and more that Imai was an evil menace to society. He was trying to command a small child to do stuff! It was absurd! Outrageous! Mean!

But for the sake of getting a delicious cake, Mai made her way to the cooler, playing with her apron along the way. There were some ingredients that Imai needed, but Mai had a combination of not caring about anything Imai said and also not knowing what she was looking for. Vanilla pods? Mai knew that vanilla had a unique and tasty taste, so perhaps she would just have to munch on everything until she found what she needed. As for the other ingredient? Well, clearly Imai was planning on killing Mai from the inside! I mean, the nerve of some people! Asking for eyeglasses to be put into a cake! Glass doesn't go into cake! Although, Mai did ponder whether or not the glass would taste better if put into a cake. Just so she could prove Imai was an evil person and a threat to Sabertooth that needed to be finished, Mai obliged.

Surprisingly, the vanilla pods were found very easily. After digging into the stores of ingredients, the second thing she tasted was rather vanilla-y and rather pod-like. They must have been the ingredients that dumb-dumb was looking for. Mai grabbed two of them and continued searching for the eyeglasses. Despite the absurdity of her misinterpretation, the eyeglasses, too, were found surprisingly easily. They were very different from any other glasses that she had ever seen. The Space Lady's glasses did not have the weird nose thing or the mustache. Nonetheless, they were, in fact, glasses, so Mai placed them on her head and wandered back to Imai, dressed in the strange garb of a dress, apron, and groucho glasses.

"Here's the cake fuel!" Mai cheered, tossing one of the vanilla pods at Imai while gently setting the other on the top of the counter before reluctantly removing the glasses and putting them next to the second pod. "I need to make sure that my candies are safe!" Mai announced, ready to leave. It was then that she realized a horrible truth. "But...if I leave, then Imai can put the poison in my cake!" Candy? Or death? The allure of candies was too great, but she could not risk dying. Dying without it being for the purpose of protecting Miss Luna was a disgrace! So, she sniffled and returned to the counter, sadly requiring to be content with her lack of candies.

Mai stared and sniffled at the creature messing with her candies. How dare something like that happen! Something was trying to take her candy! That was the meanest thing anyone could ever do! Mai charged a ball of lightning in her hands before Imai said it was some sort of rare creature. Mai ceased her charging for a moment to look over at the meanest person in existence. "R-really? Miss Luna wants one of those?" She gasped, coming to a realization. "I can get a really good present for Miss Luna, then! Then she'll love me even more and she'll let me beat you up!"

She pounced into the inn, charging after the pink alien thingy. It took off with her bag of candy, which was no good! But Mai could not just blow up the alien thingy that Imai called some dumb name. If Miss Luna wanted the alien thingy, then Mai had to catch it without hurting it! The flying thingy was fast though, zooming around at the speed of fast in circles around the inn, in a path that it seemed to know Mai would follow that would not result in her knocking over things unnecessarily. Mai chased after it, leaping at a few occasions to try to grab it by the tail, each time unsuccessful. Mai was going fast, but the alien thingy was only just a little bit faster than her. Mai wanted her candies back, and she wanted to give a nice present to Miss Luna! Catching the thingy would be good for both of those goals!

Soon enough, Mai's persistence paid off, with her managing to grab its tail and drag it towards herself. However, in her infinite wisdom, in order to grab her bag of candies from the pink cotton candy mouse cat thing, she let go of the tail, letting it escape once more and the pursuit to continue. They did a few more laps around the inn before the chase spilled outside for a moment and they sped up, running an entire lap around Ace of Spades before heading back into the inn where everything slowed down and she followed the cotton candy into the inn's kitchen, where Imai was waiting. Mai powered her feet with the winds, kicking herself forwards in a desperate lunge to catch the alien in the best way she knew how. She twirled through the air, spinning many times unnecessarily before completely engulfing the alien in her mouth. Her cheeks puffed akin to those of squirrels, swallowing to try to retrieve her bag of candy and to also get the delicious tasty cotton candy alien down into her throat. Somehow, whenever she tried chewing, the cotton candy would avoid it, and Mai would only get the lightest taste of leather and chocolate before she would swallow, still unsuccessful in her attempts to eat the cotton candy. In this moment, she had completely forgotten about both the fact she was trying to not hurt this thing for the purposes of giving it to Miss Luna and the fact that a cake was being baked near her, her one track mind only focused on the food in front of her as she tried to consume.