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When they rebuilt the schools, Cam had decided to do it better. There was tradition, of course, and history that had to be maintained and preserved. But the destruction of the Ninja Academies had presented an opportunity for change and modernization, and Cam had been determined to find a medium between the old ways and the new. Even a society as ancient and long-lasting as theirs needed to be brought into the 21st century.
And besides, who knew when they’d have the opportunity to rebuild again.
Hopefully never, Tori had scolded him. After all, it was the first time in almost all of the school’s histories that they had been completely wiped out. Any more evil space ninja’s who wanted to come knocking would probably wait a couple hundred years.
Still, Cam does his best to rebuild the academies while respecting tradition and modernizing necessities. They build new dorms to house on campus students, actual functional buildings instead of the old tent “roughing it” system his father had been so proud of. Among the many things the students are noticeably relieved about (besides the plumbing, individual suite bathrooms and the fire prevention) is the fully stocked and upgraded kitchen in the mess hall.
No more catching or growing your own dinner or living on ramen and the local cities take out. After all, it was hard to get food delivered to the middle of the woods, especially when people who weren’t inclined to the ninja tended to be driven away from the portal by old mystical protections.
The kitchen might be Cam’s favorite part, too, because it’s almost always empty in the late evenings when the students have crashed out from their exhausting days, and he and some of the other teachers can unwind in the mess hall without interruption. And when the teachers finally go to bed too, Cam can indulge his insomnia by doing dishes or reorganizing the fridges and pantries.
He’s on his way to do just that one night, walking silently through the quiet halls, wondering again why sleep has become his enemy ever since they lost their powers, intending to organize the spices by type and then alphabetically, when he stops at the entrance because some of the lights are already on.
He hesitates, because it’s late, and he doesn’t need a lecture about needing his rest if it’s his father waiting for him. Then the scent of cookies hits his nose, and knowing his father would never attempt to make cookies in such a public place (even with the fire prevention), he continues cautiously into the kitchen.
Marah is holding a large bowl of cookie dough and trying to stir it with one hand, a look of such fierce concentration on her face that her tongue is sticking out the side of her mouth as she stirs. On the counter are several very full plates of cookies, and Cam can see trays baking in the oven.
“That,” Cam says gently, so as not to startle her, “Is a lot of cookies.”
Marah looks up from her stirring, surprised. “Cousin,” she says with a smile, and Cam nods in greeting.
“Either it’s Dustin’s birthday,” Cam says, nodding to the cookies as he comes over, “Or there’s a bake sale going on I don’t know about.”
“Oh, a bake sale!” Marah says, grinning, “That’s a good idea. Hadn’t thought of that.”
Cam shakes his head at her. “What are you doing?”
Marah shrugs, and goes back to stirring. “I couldn’t sleep. Cookies seemed like a fun idea.”
“Two hundred cookies seemed like a fun idea?” Cam chides, looking at the pile of dishes in the sink.
Marah laughs, but she pulls a warm cookie off one of the plates and holds it out to him. “Dare you try them?”
“If you were still evil,” he says, taking it from her, “I’d have to test them to see if they were poison first.”
Cam bites into the cookie anyway, and at first, the sensation of chocolate is a pleasant one, but as he chews, it quickly turns into a sour experience. He’s resisting the urge to spit out his bite when Marah makes a hissing noise and says, “Guess they’re still poison whether I’m evil or not, huh?”
Cam swallows with a lot of effort, and sets the rest of the cookie back down on the counter. “What kind of cookies are you making?”
Marah sighs and sets her bowl down. “Earth cookies are hard! We made cookies totally different in space, and they were fine. I just can’t get the hang of these ones! Humans are weird about what they eat, Cousin.”
Cam refrains from saying that ‘humans’ would think the same thing about what aliens eat, and instead rolls up his sleeves. “Alright, let’s clear these dishes and start over. Assuming we still have any flour or sugar left, we can at least make one batch that won’t kill anyone who eats them.”
Marah stares at him. “You’re going to help me?”
Cam stares back, and then, with a shrug, “I can’t sleep.”
They share a moment of commiseration before Marah dusts off her hands and they get to work.
They move all of Marah’s Anti-cookies to one of the mess hall counters so they have room to work, and Cam quickly does the dishes to remove any residue of Marah’s old dough. Once they have that done, Cam readjusts the oven temperature, and they set to work following Tori’s mother’s recipe.
“When did you get Tori’s moms recipe?” Marah asks, watching Cam crack eggs into a bowl.
Cam grins. “She invited us over for dinner one night. It came up that Japanese families tend to keep family recipes for curry instead of cookies, and she shoved it on me. Said no one should ever be without a proper cookie recipe.”
“Well,” Marah says, nodding, “She’s not wrong.”
Cam resists the urge to laugh at Marah’s self deprecation.
“So you never baked cookies with your mom?” Marah asks a few moments later, after they mix the soft dough with the flour.
“I don’t know,” Cam says quietly, “Maybe.” He does another round of mixing before he continues. “I was only eight when she passed away,” he adds, fighting down the lump in his throat that still rises every time he talks about her, “So I don’t have a lot of memories of her. We might have made cookies at some point, but I don’t remember it.”
Marah considers this. “Yeah,” she agrees, opening another bag of chocolate chips, “My mom really wasn’t a cookie maker, either.”
Cam frowns. “Marah, who is your mom?”
Marah looks up, like she’s surprised he would need to ask. “Terramerithia, All Mighty Ruler of the Planet Garulnka. Didn’t you know that?”
Cam blinks at her. “What?” is all he can manage.
“My mother is an empress of evil on our home world. She’s Uncle Lothor’s sister,” Marah explains, and if it’s possible, Cam’s frown gets even more pronounced.
“Marah, my father never said anything about having a sister,” Cam says, pausing in his stirring of the dough, “And after Lothor, I made him explain everything about our family history to me. He and Lothor were each other’s only siblings. They didn’t have a sister.”
Marah frowns now, too. “That can’t be right. Maybe Uncle Kanoi didn’t know he had a sister? I mean, no offence, but things get very confusing in this family.”
Cam shakes his head. “I don’t think so, Marah.”
Marah puts her hands on her hips. “Well Lothor and my mother had to be related! I mean, she wouldn’t just send us off to live with just anyone!”
Cam raises his eyebrows. “Why did she send you away?”
“Well,” Marah drops her hands from her hips, and hems and haws a few moments, “We were sort of getting in the way of her plans for galactic domination. She sent us to train with Uncle Lothor so we could become better minions of evil, and, well, you know how that went. Wow, she’s probably really mad about that…” Marah trails off, brining a hand to her chin as she considers a mother she’s never mentioned to anyone until this point.
Cam puts down the bowl of cookie dough, ready to be made into cookies. “Did you ever think that maybe ‘Uncle’ was… an honorary title instead of a literal one?”
Marah reaches into the dough to start shaping it into cookies, and Cam does the same. They make all of the dough into little balls in silence, both considering. This wasn’t shocking news- Cam had always had suspicions about the legitimacy of his “Cousins”. He had just assumed, perhaps wrongly, that they were actually Lothor’s daughters, but that he hadn’t been able to deal with that and so had distanced himself from them genetically. It seemed like the kind of thing he would do.
But then there was also the possibility that Lothor had lied to Marah’s mother, claimed to be a deceased relative’s long lost heir, in order to gain power. For all her mother had known, maybe they really had thought Lothor to be a distant relative. There was no telling; all that Cam knew now was that there was a very distinct possibility that Marah and Kapri were not his Cousins after all.
It makes him wonder why he’d never questioned it sooner, but then… there had been a lot going on until recently.
“There is a way to find out,” Cam says, wiping off his hands on a towel. “Come on, I can run a test in Ninja Ops.”
He turns to go, and as he’s about to head out the door he looks back to notice that Marah is hesitating over the cookies. “If we’re not really cousins,” she says, her voice small and sad, “Does that mean we’ll have to leave? Will Uncle Kanoi let us stay here if we’re… not family?”
Cam pauses. He wants a solution to the puzzle, an answer to the larger question, but he can’t just ignore the existentialism of the problem. He doesn’t suspect his father would just toss Marah and Kapri out because they don’t share their DNA after all, but he also can’t tell her that he’d be the smallest bit relieved that they weren’t related.
It would be mean, and he was trying to work on that.
“You’ll still be family,” Cam tells her, resolute. “Knowing whether we’re biologically related or not won’t change that. As long as we’re here, you have a home here.”
Marah looks up from the cookies at him, and her eyes are a little tearful. “Can I still call you ‘Cousin’?”
Cam sighs, knowing what he’s condemning himself to as he says, “Yes.”
Marah claps her hands together and comes over to him, and then wraps him in a great big hug. Cam pats her back as reassuringly as possible.
“Okay,” she says a moment later, “Let’s go see what our DNA says!”
The test takes a few minutes to run, but Cam can tell fairly quickly from glancing at the results that they can’t possibly be related. They share almost no common alleles, and Marah’s DNA is distinctly alien in nature. She and her sister really were alien space ninjas.
He tells Marah as much.
“So, Lothor lied?” Marah asks, but before he can answer she continues, “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. He lied about a lot of things. And he certainly wasn’t a very good uncle.”
“He lied,” Cam agrees, switching his computer back off, “But at least now we know.”
Marah smiles a small smile at him. “I don’t think we should tell Kapri. She isn’t the most stable of people.”
Cam wonders if his feelings on the subject are betrayed on his face. “It’s late,” he says, “We should both try and get some rest.”
Marah hugs him again as he stands, but this time it’s a quick, happy hug. “Whatever you say, Cousin!”
Cam sighs as dramatically as possible, and Marah squeezes him harder.
***
In the morning, he meets Tori and Shane for breakfast, and Marah and Dustin find them soon enough.
They’re all sitting down with their trays when Dustin says, “I just don’t get how you’re not related!”
The others look over at them, mouths full with breakfast.
“No,” Marah says, patting Dustin on the shoulder, “Cam ran a test! It has to be true, Cam’s never wrong.”
Cam enjoys the compliment, even though he now has to difficult task of explaining DNA comparison to Dustin.
“Oh, cookies!” Someone says in the kitchen, and suddenly it hits him. They never finished making the good cookies, and the ones Marah made before were still…
Marah looks at him with wide eyes at the same moment he looks at her.
“Oh, man!” Someone calls from the kitchen, “What are these things?”
“Those are not cookies!” Another voice says, and the sounds of several moans and groans can be heard.
“Well, we should really get to class,” Cam says, leaving his mostly full breakfast tray right where it is.
Marah jumps up after him, and the two of them try to contain their laughter as they leave the mess hall, to the vast confusion of their friends.
There were some things you could only share with family, after all.