Maka hoisted a 5-pound bag of flour to Black Star's feet. He took one look at it before he rolled up his sleeves and said, "Ok, so we doin' regular rules or house rules?"

She stomped her teeny foot— the power rangers twinkled on the side of her shoe. "No! We are not throwing it. We already did it three days ago. It's boring now."

Insulted, Black Star wrinkled his nose. "Well, what are we doing then?" His nine year old mind couldn't comprehend what could be more fun than making a mess and winning a flour fight.

"We're making bread!" Maka grinned.

She enlisted his help to carry the bag into the kitchen, but that was as far as he wanted to go with it. Eventually, she enticed him with allowing him to have the first taste once they succeeded.

"Are we allowed?" Star asked nervously. He looked around the room as though his mom—or worse, her dad—would come out of the cupboards and yell "you got pranked!"

Scoffing, Maka assured him, "We will be once we give them a loaf! Plus, I know exactly how to make it. I saw it on PBS while I was waiting for cartoons to come on." She puffed out her chest. "I watched the adult part."

He rested his chin on a fist and tilted his head to the side. "Maks, that's even more boring than what you said."

"Don't you wanna be a big boy?" she taunted. "Or are you a baby?"

A brief memory surfaced of his dad from the night before. Black Star had been scolded for mixing milk and Coca Cola together and chugging it. Papa Sid said, "Only babies do that. Are you a baby now?"

Black Star shook his head. "What do we do first?" His resolve was strong as Optimus Prime.

After some few minutes of fumbling with the bag, they both had finally mixed together the ingredients into a bowl on the ground. Maka said that the adults said that the recipe said that the main ingredients were water and flour. Then they needed a pack of yeast—which Star found in a cupboard— and finally some salt.

Just after Maka sprinkled in a literal pinch, Star handed her the pepper shaker.

"The recipe didn't say to use it, dummy."

He frowned. "No, you're the dummy. Mira said that we always salt and pepper our eggs. You can't have one and not the other."

Maka hesitated, "I knew that. Give it to me." She shook the bottle once, then looked to Star expectedly.

"More."

She shook it again, this time allowing some spice to fall from the top.

"Don't you know how to make bread?" he said, reaching for the pepper.

Maka swatted his hands away. "Of course I do!" Do not question her eight year old smarts! She finally vigorously emptied the bottle into the bowl. There wasn't a lot, but it was a larger pinch than the salt she put in before. The black specks dotted the surface of their concoction.

"Ok, now we have to mix it all together, and then knee it." Maka explained to Star. "The dough is supposed to not be sticky anymore, so we have to be careful."

"What happens if it's sticky?"

"Then we can't eat it, duh."

"No! I mean, how do we fix it?"

Maka thought back to the Martha Bakes show. "You put flour on everything. Like on your hands and stuff. And the table and stuff."

He grumbled, "We should've had a flour fight before we made bread."

Once the dough was mixed together—Maka knew exactly when that was because she had baked cupcakes before—she took it out from the bowl and onto their pre-floured kitchen table. She used her hands to roll the bread around, but she was unsure what to do next because she ran into her room to get her neopets stuffy during that part in the show.

Sensing her slowing down, Black Star peered over. "Is this the part where you knee it?"

"Yes," she said with faux confidence, secretly thankful for the reminder. "I trained for this with Papa. I know how to knee it."

She summoned the announcer's voice from WCW Saturday Night and remembered how her Papa cried when his wrestling show was canceled. If she could just do it right, her bread would be perfect. Maka brought up the ball of dough to her face and looked its lumpy, speckled surface squared on. Then, she yelled, slamming the dough down and nailing it in the center with her knee.

It bent like a boomerang. It did not recover from the impact.

Maka let it drop onto the floor and panted heavily. That was the secret move that she would practice with pillows and stuffies all of the time after all. She nailed it.

"Oh snap! You go, girl!" Black Star cheered.

With his encouragement, Maka picked up the lump from the floor and knee'd it again. This time, she dug into it even deeper, holding it against her leg with both hands and rubbing it in for good measure.

"No wonder Papa Sid bakes all of the time," Black Star nodded, understanding at last. "Can I try?"

"Yeah," Maka allowed, rolling the bread back into a ball before handing it to Star.

He taunted, "I only have to do it once. I'm stronger and older than you."

"Nuh uh. My legs are longer and I'm taller."

As proof, Star screamed out, "Hi ya!" and brought the dough down to its doom. The ball flattened against him, but did not wrap itself around him like he imagined it would. It wasn't like when the cartoons did it.

"I was better," Maka confirmed.

"That's because you did it two times!"

"Wrong! It's because I was so good at it that I could do it twice!"

Grumbling, he returned the knee'd dough to her. "What next? Can we bake it now?"

"We let it rise, doofus."

Confused, he said, "But it's not a zombie."

Maka shook her head. "Why else do we have zombie bread. Every bread is a zombie bread. We have to let it rise. The show said so."

"Ok, how do we do it?"

"I think the show couldn't tell us because it was a ritual. My Mama said that evil magic makes for bad TV. She made me watch Scooby-Doo Zombie Island instead of a PBS grown up show."

"That sucks. I bet to make bread, we have to chant to it, huh? That's what they do for zombies."

She nodded. "Yeah."

Placing the ball on the table, Black Star clapped his hands together to create a poof of flour. "Let us begin the ritual." He chanted, "Rise. Rise. Rise. Rise. Rise."

Maka joined in, "Rise. Rise. Rise. Rise. Rise."

A chorus of two children's voices eventually summoned someone. It wasn't the zombie, but it was Maka's Papa.

"Maka, baby? What on earth are you doing?"

"Making bread, Papa." She allowed him to pick her up and brush flour from her dress. "We're making it rise."

"Ah," Spirit said, as though it was perfectly reasonable for his daughter and her friend to be doing that on a Saturday afternoon. "Is it ready yet?"

"Yeah," Black Star responded proudly. "All we have to do is bake it now."

As a good parent does, Spirit pre-heated Mira's oven and placed the dough onto a pan with wax paper. He told the kids to wash their hands and then help him clean the kitchen. Only then would he bake their amazing bread.

Once they had their dirty clothes changed, they ran back into the kitchen just in time to hear the ding of the timer. Spirit called Sid into the kitchen who then took the hot and ready bread out of the oven. Maka and Black Star held their thumbs up; Spirit took their picture with their first baked treat. Though both dads didn't ask to taste it, they made their kids promise to not bake without permission again.

"Are you mad, Papa?" Maka asked with her wide eyes, knowing that trick always got her out of trouble.

"Of course not, baby." Spirit assured her. He knew full well that his little girl could smile her way out of jail.

She asked again, "Are you going to punish us?"

Spirit shook the camera slowly in his hand. "All I want is to take pictures of my cutie pie and Staru eating their bread."

Laughing, Sid agreed. "Yes, I do wonder what it will be like." He cut it in half, sawing the baked loaf with a bit of effort.

Black Star squinted, but Maka was too blinded by her success to realize how flat… and hard their creation was. She turned to him. "We will eat it together at the same time right?"

"You know what, Maks? I don't think I'm hungry anymore."

"Nuh uh! You said that you were starving when you were changing your shorts."

She tugged him to the table and planted herself in her usual seat. Star took his spot nervously, and his worries were well founded when his dad placed a plastic Hercules plate in front of him.

"Maka," he whispered. "This is a rock cookie."

"Smile, Staru!"

Spirit's camera flashed and he said, "Ok, now both of you bite at the same time. One—"

"Ma—"

"Shh, the picture!"

"Two—"

"I'm not—"

"Eat the bread—"

"Three!"

Their moment was preserved forever in Spirit's photo album. Maka's tongue stuck out; her face contoured in disgust. Her hands were reaching up to brush away the lingering taste. Black Star's mouth was open with a piece of bread sat at the front; his tongue pushed far back and away from it. His misery and defeat showed in his slumped shoulders.

The aftermath was well documented, too.