Fate's Slave - Shadow Slave X Honkai Star Rail

The pancakes were hot. Like, weirdly hot. Sunny poked one with the edge of his fork and felt the steam rise up and slap him in the face like it had an attitude. Three of them, stacked up like squat little bread pancakes — wait, that didn’t make sense. Whatever. They were round, soft, and smelled like breakfast had punched him in the nose.

He sniffed again. Butter. Syrup. And something else. Warmth? Childhood? No, probably just burnt edge. Yeah. One of them was a little too brown on the side. He liked that.

He stabbed a piece off the top pancake, the fork sinking in with a slow, spongy resistance, like the cake didn’t want to die.

Sunny muttered to himself:

”Yeah, well, we all got problems.”

He shoved it into his mouth.

Immediately, his eyes went wide like he’d just remembered something important. He hadn’t. It was just... that good. The pancake was soft. Not wet. Not dry. It was like chewing on a cloud that had made bad decisions. It tasted like sugar and warmth and... whatever the opposite of regret was. Hope? The Daemon of Desire? Probably not.

Maybe just more pancake.

”...I would like to eat you, and your entire delectable family.”

He kept talking with his mouth full.

He poured more syrup. Too much. The kind of too much where the pancake got soggy fast, and the plate turned into a syrup pond with islands of disintegrating cake. He didn’t care. He liked it. It was chaos. Sticky, sweet chaos.

The second bite was even better. Maybe because he knew what was coming. Or maybe because it was bigger. He has a lot of theories, but he wasn’t a scientist. He was just a guy with a fork and nothing to lose.

His leg bounced under the table, uncontrollably.

”If this pancake asked me to join a cult, I’d do it.”

The old lady in the booth next to him gave a glance. He gave one back, full of syrup-induced defiance.

Another bite.

Another moan. Not on purpose. It just came out. He sounded like a sad animal seeing sunlight for the first time.

Which didn’t make much sense. Sunny liked shadows, not light!

”You soggy, bundle of goodness. You look so gross. So disgusting. But you taste so... illegally delicious. I love you.”

He kept eating.

Bits of butter clung to the edges, melting slow like they were too lazy to be solid anymore. The syrup soaked through every layer, like the whole stack was drinking it in, like it had never known love and now it was drowning in it. He couldn’t say he knew the feeling — it was the opposite, really.

But that was neither here nor there.

He didn’t talk for a while. Just ate. Chewed. Swallowed. His face a war zone of bliss and syrup.

When he finished, he sat back. Looked down at the sticky mess on the plate. Took a deep breath. Then leaned forward again. He whispered:

”Round two.”

He flagged down the waitress with a look that said: ”I need seconds, and I need them now!”

The plate was taken from him like it had never mattered. Like there hadn’t been something sacred on it just moments ago. The waitress — a woman with eyes so tired they looked legally dead — gave him a half-nod and asked:

”Anything else?”

Sunny didn’t even blink.

”Waffles.”

His voice low and immediate, like he’d been waiting his whole life to say that word. He continued, his shadow — all three of them — darkening as they waited in anticipation.

”Bring me the waffles. The big ones. The ones with the squares. I want them huge. I want them arrogant.”

The waitress gave him a very particular look, like she thought he was some psycho but couldn’t be bothered to say anything, and scribbled something onto her pad that may or may not have been a waffle order. He didn’t care. He trusted her now. They’d shared a moment. A syrup-soaked battlefield. She was his war buddy.

’What was her name again?’

He didn’t read the name tag.

Minutes passed. Maybe years. Time was syrup now.

And then — they arrived.

The waffles.

Square. Golden. Offensively crispy. Like someone had ironed a grid onto a chunk of heaven and deep-fried the result. Four perfect quarters. A symmetrical fever dream.

Sunny stared at them, eyes dilated like he’d just seen a bazillion credits — if that was even a number.

They smelled different than pancakes. More... toasted. Like bread that had gone to hell and came back. Like breakfast with a plan.

He picked up the fork again. His hand trembled.

”Alright, you think you’re better than pancakes? Let’s see what your mouth game’s like.”

He cut into the waffle. It resisted. Not like the pancakes — those had been soft, submissive, needy. The waffle fought back. Crunchy. Tough. Textured. The fork sank down with a crunch that made his spine tingle. He liked it.

He poured syrup again, deliberately, slow as betrayal. Watched it pool into the tiny square cells, each one drinking it up like it had never been loved before. A perfect honeycomb of doom.

And he hated honey, so that was saying something.

He took the first bite.

His brain flatlined.

”Oh... oh, you’re different.”

Where the pancake had been tender and warm and forgiving, the waffle was structured. Controlled. A crisp outer shell, with a soft inner fluff that made his teeth sink in like a warm punch to the face. Every bite was geometry. Every crunch was truth. This wasn’t a cuddle. This was a slap with flavor.

A dark chuckle escaped Sunny’s throat.

”You want to fight back, huh? I’ll have you know, I am a master at the art of war.”

Syrup oozed out the sides with each fork press, running down like blood from a fresh kill. Butter had melted into the grid, cornered into the little waffle chambers like scared delicious animals.

He took another bite, bigger this time. Half a square. Too much. He choked. He didn’t care.

Another bite.

The crispness echoed in his skull.

Waffles and pancakes, two sides of the same coin. One, motherly and comforting, the other, defiant and sharp. One couldn’t be held above the other. Where there is a villain, there must be a hero — and vice versa. So, naturally, Sunny found himself in love with both the hero and the villain, like one of those lame dramas his late mother used to watch on the cracked screen of the phone their family had shared.

Sunny stopped. Looked around. The world was blurry. Or maybe he was crying. He wasn’t sure. Syrup was on his chin. Butter on his shirt somehow. He didn’t care. He was somewhere else now. A place where waffles were the only thing that made sense.

He leaned forward.

He wasn’t done.

***

The door chimed as it swung open.

”Uh... hey, Lil’ Geppie. Don’t you think that there is a thing called ’Too much pancakes?’”

The blonde captain of the Silvermane Guards shook his head, and almost disappointed look on his face.

”You don’t understand. How could I perform my duties without at least five pancakes in the morning? One day without pancakes is one less day until the entire menu is filled with those blasphemous waffles...”

”Do you care to repeat that?”

A sudden, almost authoritarian voice cut into Gepard and Serval’s conversation once they were only a few steps from the door. Despite the fact that the voice could have been directed towards anyone in the restaurant, there was an overwhelming presence that assaulted the senses of the two siblings.

”Oh? So, it is you who decided to speak such unenlightened falsehoods, beanpole.”

The two pairs of deep blue eyes were graced with an unusual sight.

Sunny sat within one of the booths like an ascended monarch of syrup. He leaned back, his arms spread as they encapsulated the full length of the seat, his legs crossed and propped up against the table as he sent them haughty glance.

Then, he closed his eyes with a smirk, snapping his fingers. A couple moments later, the waitress arrived with an exhausted look that spoke of borderline insanity.

”...What is it now?”

Sunny wagged his fingers in reprimand.

”Now, now, I understand that the words of that blonde hooligan must have upset you, my fellow enlightened one. However, you must not allow that anger to influence your duties. The delivery of syrup vessels is just as important as the production of them.”

He began to stroke his chin, an enigmatic chuckle escaping him as he looked out towards the snow-kissed streets of Belobog.

”Ah, I haven’t tried crêpes yet, have I? Decorate it however you like.”

Serval watched in bafflement as the waitress practically grimaced at the sudden lecture, before walking away at a pace that was far from normal. Sharing a look with Gepard, she figured that she wasn’t the only one witnessing this scene.

’He looks... like he just went to war. With pancakes.’

There wasn’t a single plate before him, but based on a couple context clues, she could tell that a fierce battle was fought in that booth. Firstly, there was dried up syrup all over the lower half of his face, which he hadn’t cleaned up for whatever reason. There were stains on his shirt and jacket as well, which revealed that the conflict was too intense to worry about outward appearance.

At the same time, the lady sitting in the booth next to his stood up and moved away, and, when she included the waitress’s reaction, seemed to prove that he wasn’t very discrete in his endeavors.

Gepard stared at Sunny with squinted eyes, before suddenly widening them as he pointed at the shorter boy.

”You!”

Sunny sneered.

”Me!”

Both siblings stared at him for a moment, not sure how to continue off of that. Quickly escaping from the binds of social confusion, they briskly walked over to where Sunny was seated — a corner of the room that was strangely warm — Serval’s voice a whisper:

”What are you doing here?! The general populace still sees you and your friends as criminals!”

Sunny sent them an look of arrogance.

”So? This bounty on my head is enough of a deterrent. And if any dares to challenge me, in front of the sacred gates of syrup vessel heaven, no less...”

He chuckled.

”Then they will lose the courage to look at their shadow.”

’...Is he high? On sugar? A sugar rush?’

Serval wasn’t sure if there was any other way to explain it.

Gepard blinked.

”What’s a syrup vessel?”

Sunny raised a brow, looking at Gepard as if he was an accumulation of humanity’s idiocy.

”How ignorant. You dare to speak of pretty pancakes and wifey waffles without even being aware of the umbrella term? Shame! Shame on you...”

He scoffed.

”I suppose one as great as I must be the one to educate you, beanpole. You see, this universe operates on balance. Nothing can exist without something else to counter it. For example, the prehistoric game of rock, papers, and scissors. Scissors beat paper, paper beats rock, and rock beats scissors. So, a balance is formed.”

He let out a wistful sigh.

”Of course, that is not the same kind of balance syrup vessels have. Soft, submissive pancakes, bending to your wil with only a little tongue play. Feisty, defiant waffles, crumbling within a bite. They are truly equal, having no advantage over the other. In the end, it all comes down to personal preference.”

He looked towards the waitress, who was passing by. Suddenly, he made a few odd sounds with his mouth, before winking, as if he was sending a secret message. The waitress didn’t seem to be paid enough to bother with his antics, so she simply ignored it. Sunny, on the other hand, seemed unbothered.

”That... was code. She didn’t even need to look in my direction to understand my message. Now, where was I...”

He nodded.

”That, however, is a sentiment shared by mortals such as yourself. Once you become enlightened, you will understand that both pancakes and waffles have their strong suits, and should be treated equally. While some men prefer kind and caring ladies, and other prefer the roguish, boyish type, I lack the ability to discriminate against both pancakes and waffles. They both hold a special place in my heart.”

’What an analogy...’

”Excuse me.”

The waitress shuffled past, and practically glared at Sunny as she placed a crêpe in front of him.

Undisturbed, he continued:

”Then there are crêpes, the true darkness to light and shadows. In all honesty, I have no experience with this special delicacy, but I understand that it is the antithesis of all that came before. The mother of all omelettes... whatever an omelette is.”

The crêpe lied on the plate like a folded silk handkerchief, it’s golden surface dappled with faint toasty freckles. Steam still rose gently from within, hinting at the warmth of it’s hidden filling. It’s edges were whisper-thin and crisp, while the center remained tender, pliant, and rich with the scent of butter. Whether cradling sweet berries and cream or a savory blend of cheese and herbs, the crêpe felt less like a dish and more like a small, edible gesture of elegance.

Sunny’s eyes glimmered with a blend of greed, gluttony, and insatiable lust as he prepared to stab his fork into the crêpe.

Then, the door slammed open, with a loud female voice shouting:

***

”There you are!”

Seele stomped over to Sunny, causing him to look up in annoyance as his delightful feast was interrupted.

”This is a dignified establishment! Please exit the— huh? Oh, hey, Seele! Listen, we can talk after I have my fill of this sugary delight, and I could repeat my holy sermon at a later time... wait, where are you grabbing?!”

He was practically being dragged out of his seat by the purple-haired girl.

”People were talking about a pale kid being creepy, so I knew you were nearby!”

Sunny’s eyes widened.

”Wait, why are you here in the first place?! Don’t you have some Wildfire stuff to get up to—”

He was cut off when two more youths stepped through the door.

”There he is!”

Sunny watched in horror as March and Dan Heng approached him, holding out their arms as if they were going to assist Seele. As their grubby hands grabbed him, Dan Heng added:

”People were talking about a pale kid being creepy, so...”

”I get it! Shut up and let me go!”

With all their strength combined, he couldn’t resist. So, knowing that he couldn’t escape, he cried out to his last resort.

”Saint!”

The Shadow suddenly appeared in the middle of the restaurant, drawing looks of awe and fright. Sunny weakly pointed to his plate as he was being dragged away.

”My crêpe! Get it!”

Dutiful as always, the taciturn demon gently held the plate in her stone hands, before bringing them to her master. With his hands barely free, Sunny held on to his dear food like it was his own daughter, almost crying tears of relief as he was dragged by his jacket.

He turned to the Landau siblings.

”Lil’ Geppie, I put my trust in you. Foot the bill, and compensate them for the silverware that I will not be returning. Don’t worry, I believe in you, and this won’t be the end of me!”

Turning towards the rest of the civilians in the restaurant, he shouted:

”There are two truths in this world! The Gods are dead, and I will be back! Mark my wo—”

His words were muffled as the door slammed shut.