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After being revived into Earth C, your life has been unambiguously great. You have a wildly extended family that wasn’t there before your death - and you’re part of a thriving new society that simultaneously allows you your suburban white-picket-fence peace and your fellow immortals their wild adventures. You lived on the periphery for a while, watching your son and his sudden gaggle of friends and relatives flourish, and you were happy. You wanted nothing more, and you had forever to enjoy it.
And then you met her, and your new world flipped on its head. The Ancestor of one of your son’s close friends, an alien named Redglare. She came to visit thanks to Terezi, an age-old meeting-the-friend’s-parent - or Ancestor; in her world, she’s not quite a parent to Terezi - tale. You broke the ice with a joke, she laughed the kind of laugh you’d expect more from a hyena than a mythic figure of an alien woman with a full twelve inches on your six-foot figure, and the conversation took off from there.
She left you with a phone number and a grin like a shark’s, and your first date was at a restaurant right on the line between a human- and troll-majority area one week later. The two of you probably shouldn’t have clicked by whatever metrics could track compatibility. You’re a typical family man. She’s a rebel, alien, and hunter of lawbreakers. Your family, before your revival, was quite ordinary. Hers included multiple literal dragons. You shouldn’t have common ground, nor anything to talk about - but you brought flowers, she brought an overlarge bug, you both laughed over the mismatch and the next thing either of you knew, three hours of simple talking had gone by.
Every date since has been like that, with your respective younger relatives playing joke-happy matchmakers. There’s just one problem. Your girlfriend has one living parent-ish figure, her lusus…who just so happens to be a dragon the size of a jet plane. Her name is Pyralspite, and like Redglare, she’s beyond intimidating when she wants to be. And, for all the many differences between your home worlds and this new one, meeting the parents is a tradition that you’re both beholden to. Her meeting with your duplicated mother went well, both Janet and Quinn finding something to like in Redglare’s humor, wit, cleverness, and ability to take a prank…but your own introduction to her parental figure looms large and ominous in the near future, much like the dragon herself.
And thus, it’s been left to you to figure out how to make a suitable first impression on a fifty-foot dragon who, despite your unconditional immortality, is fully capable of eating you in one bite. Pranks don’t seem like the way to go. Usually, you’re perfectly fearless, and immortality has granted you a degree of freedom that even your previous bravado did not. But, aside from your bite-sized status, making a good impression is vital to you.
And thus, that led you to make and execute a plan with only hours to go before the big event. Your specialties are pranks, dad jokes, and baking. Pranks are out because you’d prefer your first meeting to be smooth. Dad jokes are out because cultural differences mean that many don’t land right. And thus, that leaves baking as your best shot of impressing a dragon known for burning entire fleets of ships. Of course, no ordinary cake will do. You’re not sure she’d even be able to notice eating something that tiny. And so, out come the big guns…and your phone.
John isn’t a fan of baking, and you’ve accepted that at last…but plenty of your family members don’t share that trait. Enrolling Jane, your alternate-Earth counterpart, your mother, your duplicate mother who is now a Sprite, and the fish alien segment of your family - or at least, Feferi and her adult counterpart - is comically easy, and perhaps expectedly, they bring reinforcements. Jade, her twin alternate selves, and her adult alternate self join the party with Jake, and with Jane comes Jase - her AI counterpart, also with serious baking skills - and Roxy and Calliope, her girlfriends, who apparently just wanted to get in on the fun. Even Terezi contributes by sending her lusus your way, a much smaller dragon and a descendant of Pyralspite’s, as a taste-tester.
And thus, with almost too many hands on deck in a rented industrial kitchen, three recipes for dragon-lusus-friendly baking, two trolls on hand to tell you when you’re just plain wrong about how lusii work, and one taste-testing dragon, you roll up your sleeves and get to it with a text to Redglare asking her to meet you there since you’ve got a pleasant surprise. It’ll take a long time and a lot of effort, but making that good impression is worth it.
As it turns out, hours spent baking and working in the kitchen fly by when you’re in good company. There are no fewer than three conversations going at any one time, especially when Tavros joins the fun to translate for Terezi’s lusus…who keeps trying to sneak more tastes than she’s given. Tavros enters the chatter from time to time, shy but in his element every time the topic shifts to lusii. Feferi and her Beforan counterpart are a source of constant commentary on lusii, Alternia, and Beforus - and you gladly harp on every word. Jane hums as she works. In contrast, her AI counterpart Jase remains mostly silent.
Roxy and Calliope are on the fringes, out of their depths in the hectic kitchen, but it’s not long before your mother’s Spritely counterpart has them both occupied, and Jake tails them, smiling. Jade and her counterparts share the same fire, independent of the Green Sun, and shine in the crowded room. John shows up, still uninterested in the baking, but present to watch the chaos and text Terezi, and he ends up helping anyway. The kitchen is warm, and it’s not just from the massive ovens working away to bake your masterpiece bit by bit, or the exertion you’re doing running back and forth. There’s something warm and fuzzy about scrambling through a task in a crowd, laughing and joking as you dart around, bouncing off members of your family at every turn. It’s the sort of thing you never dreamed of, but being in the relationship you are in has given you that chance - and many others.
When you’re done, and all the pieces of the massive masterpiece have been put together and frosted, you have a tiered sheet cake for the ages, suitable for lusus consumption and dragon-approved. And, as a bonus, a little cake for Redglare, courtesy of John surreptitiously texting Terezi about what she’d like…and then John laughing, because as it turns out, Terezi just asked Pyralsprite, an alternate of her own lusus, to ask Pyralspite. Everyone’s covered in ingredients, exhausted, and laughing. High-fives are thrown, flour is brushed out of hair and off of shirts, and you’re covered to the elbows in batter - but it’s too late to go change because a shadow falls over the yard, shortly followed by the earth-shaking landing of the colossal dragon - and the lighter landing of the familiar figure on her back springing to the ground.
You brush crumbs and flour off yourself and walk out to meet them as your family scrambles to get the cake out of the suitably large garage door, and there she is, a smile on her face. Pyralspite lowers her massive head when you extend your hand as if to shake the dragon’s paw and licks your hand - and Redglare laughs.
“I think you’ll get along great. James, you know this is-” she starts and then pauses.
“Wait, what happened to you?”
“This,” you answer, gesturing off toward the garage door as it opens - revealing the chaotic assemblage of helpers and the titanic cake.
Redglare’s jaw drops, and Pyralspite stares, both of them shocked. You stroll over to the massive cake and indicate it a second time.
“A welcome-to-the-family gift, Pyralspite, and…” you take a few steps over to show off the cake you baked for Redglare, “one for you too, Red.”
You promptly get nearly knocked over by Redglare’s enthusiastic hug…and then Pyralspite bowls you both over in an attempt to bonk you with her head like a cat.
Hours later, the two of you lounging in your home in the evening, Redglare finally asks,
“You know you didn’t have to do that, right? I know impressing a partner’s lusus is a tradition, but…that was a lot of effort for all of you. And I don’t want to obligate that from you.”
To which you answer,
“I know. But…”
You think back to your family, cake-covered and laughing. All the things you learned. The look on Redglare and Pyralspite’s faces when they saw what you’d done and the effort you’d put in.
“It wasn’t an obligation, Red. It was more than worth the effort.”