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Professor Venomous was hunched over his desk, trying very hard to focus on the computer screen and not just give up on productive work and play solitaire. He did not hear the click of the door of his office opening or Lord Boxman stepping inside.
“Hey there.” Boxman’s voice called.
Venomous tensed and hissed before he could turn away and realize who had surprised him. His posture relaxed, but he could see that Boxman looked worried about something.
"Is there something wrong, Boxy?"
"Well, it's been a while since Fink hid in her room."
"So? She's probably too distracted playing with her new toys, as usual." Venomous raised an eyebrow; he could not understand what the problem was.
"I thought she might, but the kids said she was upset." Boxman began to explain. "So I went to her room to check on her and she threw a mace at me."
"Really? I thought she was that violent mostly with Darrell, huh."
"You should go check on her." Boxman insisted. "I was no good at it."
Venomous sighed, gave the computer another glance and decided to finally get up from his chair.
"I'll see what I can do."
He stopped in front of Boxman before leaving his office to give him a quick kiss on the lips.
"Thank you for helping me take care of her, you are a good step-father." He said, giving him a few pats on the shoulder just before he headed out.
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He had to push hard to open the door of Fink's bedroom enough to slip through.
Contrary to what Venomous expected, he found a room filled with fully wrapped presents. All of the toys he frequently bought for her were scattered all over the floor. Only a few of them had been opened.
Weren't they good enough? Perhaps he should buy better ones.
Venomous carefully avoided stepping on any of the dangerous weapons as he made his way to where Fink was hiding. He found her all curled up in her little nest-like bed, muttering something intelligible.
“Fink?” He called softly.
Fink jolted awake, unfortunately it seemed he had surprised her when she was about to fall asleep.
“B-Boss!” She screamed, wiping her eyes as quick as possible in a failed attempt for Venomous to not notice. “Do I have to attack the plaza again?” Fink asked, not as excited for possible destruction as she usually was.
“Not right now Fink, I’ve been told you’re not feeling well lately, did something happen?” Venomous asked.
Fink crossed her arms and frowned.
“Who told you that? Those dumb robots?”
“It was Boxman, he worries about you too.”
Fink raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah right.” She said, not very convinced.
“He really does.” Venomous said. He crouched down just enough to be at the same level as Fink. “And so do I.” He added.
The girl dropped the angry expression. “So you’re feeling normal again?” She asked, studying his face closely.
“Of course I am, I was just feeling tired.” He answered.
Fink opened her mouth to say something, but she stopped herself before any words could come out of her mouth.
“Okay.” She said instead.
“If you’re feeling sick you should let me know, are you feeling any side effects from the glorbs?”
“I’m fine!” She squeaked. “I just want to be alone.”
Venomous tried to remember anything that could give him a clue about why Fink was acting this way, but his memory of that day was blurry for some reason he could not comprehend.
“Oh, is it the cupcakes you asked me for? I can buy you cupcakes.”
“Idon’twannabuycupcakesIwannamakethemwithyou…” She mumbled.
“Fink, talk slower.”
“I WANT TO MAKE CUPCAKES WITH YOU.” Fink yelled, and then quickly hid under her sheets and pillows.
Oh, so that was it. She wanted family bonding time. From how adamant she was on calling him boss all the time he guessed she didn’t have the need for those things. Then again, he was not exactly the world’s best father figure.
“Well, I have free time now.” He said. “We can go to the lab and bake those cupcakes, would you like that?”
“Aren’t cupcakes supposed to be made in the kitchen?” Fink asked, peeking from under the covers. Venomous noticed a tiny smile on her face.
“I’m more confident in my laboratory than in the kitchen.” He answered. “Besides, how different can it be?”
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It was quite the difference.
Venomous never cooked, why cook when you could just order fancy takeout? More than once he made do with what he had around the lab to make a quick meal, enough to keep him science-ing. If he could make living beings, why not some simple cupcakes?
He still liked sweets a lot, so that must be useful, at least he thought so. It wasn’t useful at all.
“Boss do cupcakes have glowy liquids in them?” Fink asked with curious eyes, pointing at the vial Venomous was holding with the aforementioned liquid.
She was standing on a stool just so she could reach the counter where they were trying to make the cupcake mix.
“The recipe says yeast.” Venomous explained as he pointed at his phone, he had the recipe opened on one of those recipes for moms blogs. “And this does the same as that component, so we can use it as a substitute”
Fink nodded, trusting his knowledge. Venomous let Fink hold the vial and he instructed her to put a few drops of the liquid into the mix, which made a strange screech-like sound once it was in the bowl.
“That looks good.” He said. Venomous looked very satisfied with his clever solutions to the missing ingredients, Fink was just thrilled to be doing something with her boss.
Venomous held up the one spoon he had found lying around that could be used for mixing and spoke to Fink. “Do you want to mix th—”
Before he could finish the sentence, Fink screamed “YES!” excitedly and snatched the spoon right away. She mixed the ingredients so fiercely and at such a speed that inevitably some of it ended on Fink’s dress and Venomous’ lab coat.
“Ah, interesting.” He muttered as he inspectioned a spot where the mix fell; it was turning an odd color. “Must be the food coloring.”
“It’s done, boss!” Fink announced, and she pushed the bowl into his hands. She had the brightest smile on her face.
“Hm, yes that’s probably it.” He said, looking at the bubbling mix inside the bowl. “I don’t think I have any cupcake tray in the lab.”
Fink jumped off the stool and skittered around the laboratory until she found a nice sheet of metal, left there after one of Venomous and Boxman’s collaborative evil creations. She hopped back onto her stool and punched the metal with enough strength to make several little dents that could hold the cupcake mix.
“Ta-da!” Fink said, holding up her own creation.
Venomous clapped, amazed.
“That’s very smart, Fink.”
She bounced on her feet, clearly happy for the validation.
Together they carefully put all of their strange cupcake mix on the DIY tray. Then Venomous put it inside an oven that was definitely not made for baking, but he guessed it would be fine.
“I want green frosting!” She demanded the second Venomous tried to sit down to wait with his phone on one hand.
This kid didn’t want to let him go now that she had his attention. The addicting match-three mobile games would have to wait for a bit longer.
They were almost out of natural ingredients, so the frosting turned out… kind of more scientific than the cupcakes themselves.
Fink didn’t even let him set the cupcakes to cool off when he finally took them out of the oven. She wanted to decorate them right now.
“I want to finish them now, so I can eat them!”
Venomous couldn’t understand what was so exciting about eating cupcakes. He’d bought her cupcakes before and she’d never been this excited to eat them. Could it be sentimental value? No, impossible. He shook those thoughts off and looked down at their creation.
“We had to use a lot of substitutes, but they look very similar to the pictures of the recipe.” He admitted.
Venomous tried to be as precise as possible with the frosting. Fink just tried to put as much as possible on each cupcake she worked on, as is she was wishing for the sugar rush of her life. Even then, their final product was looking fine.
Right after they finished putting the frosting on top of each cupcake, it started moving on its own and each little cupcake’s frosting opened like a tiny mouth and screeched.
Venomous jumped back, taken by surprise, he was certain cupcakes were not supposed to scream at all. He looked at Fink, who didn’t even blink. In fact, he could practically see the sparkle in her eyes as she looked at them.
“That’s so cool! I bet that dumb mommy’s boy doesn’t get cupcakes this cool! HA.” She said triumphantly.
“Fink I don’t think you should ea— and they’re gone.”
Even if he’d wanted to stop her from taking a bite, Fink already had shoved like two cupcakes in her mouth and was happily chewing.
“They tafte vewy goof.” She mumbled with her mouth full.
“Are they? I mean of course they are, you can have all of them.” He said, pushing the cupcake tray towards Fink.
“Thanks boss!” Fink said once she had finished the first two cupcakes.
And then she did something Venomous didn’t expect, she hugged him. He stood very still for a couple of seconds, not knowing what was really happening or how to react. Finally he slowly lowered his hand to give Fink a few gentle pats on her head.
“Oh, you’re welcome. It was fun.”
As he said those words, the expression on his face softened. Fink might be just his minion, but during times like this even someone as horrible as him could feel fatherly affection for her, deep in his cold dark soul.
He thought perhaps they could repeat this some other time, maybe even make some very evil baked goods on purpose to fool those idiots from Lakewood Plaza. Evil baking sounded like a promising fun activity for future family bonding.
Maybe he would start caring more. Hopefully, after all these years, this was a first step towards being better around those he cared about.
