SON OF IRON CHEF! Valentine's Day fanfic!

Posted by Roger E. Moore on Feb-13-2003 6:11pm from 152.163.195.199

For all those not yet fully toasted by the rigors of previous Iron Chef contests, here's one more:

Write a "Daria" fanfic within a single PPMB message that has a Valentine's Day theme! Pick your characters, pick your situation, pick your style of romance, and you're off*! Contest remains open all weekend long! Post away until Monday, fanfic writers!

Most of you are off anyway, but we'll overlook this for now.

A VALENTINE’S DAY TO REMEMBER

"I’m very proud of you, sweetie. Very proud of both of you."

Daria smiled at her mother at the head of the table. "Thanks, Mom. I owe you a lot." Taking a last sip of coffee, she said, "Well, we’d better go."

Daria and Jodie rose from the table and walked out. Jodie gave Daria a franlky admiring look. "Oh, Daria, I’m so excited! I could just grab you and kiss you right here!"

Daria looked deep into Jodie’s limpid brown eyes and smiled impishly. "At least wait till we get out of sight of my mother! Oops, hold it. Someone’s coming."

Mack MacKenzie rounded a corner and directed his steps to intercept the two young women. "Ah, Daria, my lovely!" he said, smiling his most charming smile and handing Daria a large, ornate envelope. "Please accept this poor inadequate token of my undying affection."

Blushing daintily, Daria accepted the envelope. Her eyelids fluttered as she gazed at Mack’s ruggedly handsome face and powerful physique. Pulling another envelope from inside her jacket, she replied, "I am honored, dear sir. And do you please accept this testament of my admiration for you."

"Hey what am I, chopped liver? Don’t you have anything for me?" Jodie demanded with mock indignation as the three boarded the elevator.

"Why, certainly, my dusky temptress," replied Mack, grinning and reaching for his zipper. "Please accept this poor..."

"Eek! Don’t you dare, you, you... jock!" Jodie hollered, thumping Mack in the chest with her fist. Daria modestly held up the envelope Mack had given her to shield her eyes, just in case.

Before the byplay in the elevator could get more interesting, it came to a halt and the door opened. There, in a tailored Saville Row suit, carrying a briefcase of some elegant exotic leather, two dozen red roses and a box of candy, stood Tom Sloane. His eyes instantly locked with Daria’s. In the timeless moment that followed, it seemed to Daria that her entire life, starting with the moment their eyes had first met across a crowded room, flashed before her eyes. Those bleak, lonely years at Raft seemed to vanish away like mist in the morning sun. Her lips quivered open. She tried to force words past her constricted throat.

"Well, get in, Tom. You’re holding up progress."

When the elevator opened again, the four friends stepped out into the elegant lobby, with its marble floors and walls of more exotic stone. They strode to the front doors with an eager spring in their steps.

Out on the sidewalk, they stood blinking in the morning light. Then Mack and Jodie’s limo pulled up to the curb. They got in amid mutual well-wishing and encouragement, and the limo pulled away.

Daria paused and stretched for a moment beneath the sign in large golden letters on the building’s green marble facade: Morgendorffer, Sloane, Sloane, MacKenzie, and MacKenzie. Tom watched appreciatively.

"I just love the smell of corporate blood in the morning!" she grinned.

"And I love you" He replied.

Daria sent him a lopsided smile in return. "I love you too, darling. Now shut up and get in the car."

He held her door open, then got in himself on the other side. After a kiss that would have gotten much more serious were it not for the presence of the chauffeur, he said, "Now that my hands are free, let me give you this before we get there," and handed her a large embossed envelope. "Happy Valentine’s Day, O mistress of our castle of love."

Daria removed Mack’s envelope from the jacket of her power suit and held them side-by-side. "Oh, look. Mack’s is bigger. Guess you’ll be fixing your own breakfast tomorrow morning." She gave him a mock-sympathetic look.

"Ha! Over Jodie’s dead body!"

Daria placed the two envelopes in the lid pocket of her briefcase, then pulled out another one and handed it to Tom.

"And happy Valentine’s Day to you too, my gallant knight. May your lance be always straight and sure."

Tom leaned over so that his forehead was almost touching Daria’s. "I shall ever vigilantly guard your castle gates."

little smile again. "Oh, sure, after you bashed them in with that huge battering ram of yours, and bloodily slew my poor little guard," she replied in a voice quieter than a whisper.

Tom’s eyes squinted shut and he made a funny little strangled noise as he fought not to burst out laughing. Succeeding, he reached out and took Daria’s hand. "Be careful today, Daria. Our intended victim loves the smell of corporate blood too, and he's got several dozen of the best lawyers in the country."

"But he doesn’t have us. And he doesn’t have a clue about that damning evidence you and your team dug up."

"Or that obscure precedent you dug up, not to mention the brilliant argument you came up with."

They both sat in silence for a moment, holding hands as the firm’s limo made its stately way through traffic.

Tom said, "You realize that today is probably going to be the pinnacle of our careers. It’ll be practically impossible to top this."

"Probably. If this is the pinnacle of my career, I’ll be satisfied. But you never know..."

"Yeah, you never know. Remind me to thank your mother again for nagging you into going to law school after Raft."

"We probably would have gotten together anyway. But I did turn out to be pretty good at it, didn’t I? At first, I didn’t even intend to practice. I was just going to write about the law. Oh, Mom said to tell you she’s very proud of you."

"Well, that’s very kind of her. Actually, the thing I’m most proud of, the smartest thing I’ve ever done, was marrying the most brilliant law student this country has ever seen."

Daria smiled. "You’d better be talking about me, because if you’re not, I *will* sue you for bigamy."

Tom’s reply was cut off by their arrival at the courthouse. As they emerged from the limo and looked up at the elegant old courthouse building, it really hit them.

Today was the day.

After today, when people talked about the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, it would be this day they meant. The day they drove the main nail into the coffin... nay, the day they drove the stake of holly through the heart of the greatest bloodsucker of all time.

Microsoft.

Hand in hand, Daria and Tom walked up the steps of the courthouse.

La la LA la la.

Galen Hardesty