Got Muffin To Lose
By Microshazm
ALL THE MUFFINS WERE HARMED UNINTENTIONALLY
One fateful day of destiny in a Conversion Bureau not far from here...
There I was in a room with no roof but a ceiling so low I couldn’t lift my brows. My t-shirt was sweaty enough to be used as a solvent on stainless vanadium-steel. The picture of my favourite metal band, Allied Invincible Death Squad, dripped down to the floor along my excrement. My ass ached from all the pastries I’d sat on, even consumed. Consumed, eaten. The mere thought evaporated a litre of crotch sweat into to the thickness once called air. Breathe, Jaybee, breathe!
I had suffered in that storage room for hours now. I couldn’t turn on the light, I couldn’t relieve the silence or she would find me. I imagined her yellow eyes peering in through an imaginary keyhole. First the left eye, then the right one, and then it would be over. But that was just the nightmare. I was in the very place her grey feathers would never guess to visit. Muffins... I’d have to add that to the HLF handbook: When in a bureau, don’t touch the muffins.
- Wait a minute, Jaybee, said a mysterious voice in my head, the boss warned you about the muffins.
He did?
The voice repeated the words of my superior: “Whatever you do, Jeff, keep clear of those muffins. If there’s anything in the world those ponies take seriously it’s the muffins. The muffins, Jeff. They don’t care about the potion, just muffins. MFFFFIIINS! MUFMUFMUF...”
Shut up.
- Dude, we haven’t talked once in ten years. Gimme a break.
Not now, mysterious voice, not now. I have to think. Thinking was all and everything Jaybee could do. They wouldn’t search the muffin storage scouring every other corner and cabin. But they would come eventually, MFI left no stone unturned, no oven unheated.
“Jaybee! Yes, we know you. This is Derpy Hooves of the MFI!”
Derpy Hooves... of the MFI... Her voice was like a lullaby sung by a factory line. She was a siren like a haunted steel mill. She spoke like a harpy with a month’s worth of hard liquor in her veins. If Jaybee could smell her he would smell the dread of a million tons of flour, ten million eggs, and three hundred thousand tons of white sugar harvested from African fields by African children who would only taste sweetbread once a year. If anything, Derpy made Jaybee sad.
“I’m broadcasting throughout the Bureau so I know you can hear me Jaybee. Come out now and I promise we won’t use the usual MFI tactics to find you.”
MFI tactics...
- You should now, Jaybee, you’ve seen some of those people.
Jaybee had. Ponies never killed, they never hurt on purpose, but they had their... methods. And MFI’s were some of the nastiest. The main motif was always muffins. The victims survived with muffins in their ears, in their pants, under their nails, between their toes, in their hair, in their trousers, in their very souls, and worst of all... in their mouths. Those people would never be the same. Once you taste the muffin you can never go back.
But she would still find him. With muffins or with extra muffins, they still would. What would she do? What does the MFI do besides finding people who with muffin-violations in their records?
“You must be wondering what we’ll do with you when we find you, Jaybee.”
- She’s a freakin’ psychic!
Shut up...
“We will reward you with a ribbon. Really do ask yourself, why are you even hiding? I don’t know what went wrong, but me and the MFI are needed for greater things. not to take anything away from you, Jaybee, but our time is worth more muffins that you can handle! You’re scared, you’re in a pickle that’s for certain. But do you know what we are, Jeff Burns Bridges, I don’t think you do.”
- Do we?
Derpy’s MFI, The Muffin Force International, there is terror in this world and I never got around recruiting any of them even though I well tried. I don’t know how well you’ve paid attention in these years but I’ve got to my position mainly by ass-kissing. Sure I’m often surrounded by idiots, but that’s how far ass-kissing gets you - around idiots. What if I just gave up and swapped to the ponies’ side?
- Don’t ask me, I’m still mentally in my mid-twenties.
The idea was revolutionary: what if Jaybee joined the Muffin Force? There could be honour in the battles they fought, honour in... muffins. Can’t be them, anything else but muffins!
- Oh, c’mon, they’re just pastries. Pastries you liked when you were a kid.
I did?
- Totally! Remember those hot summer days in the muffin factory? Working twelve-hour shifts with little pay? Even though the only muffins we ever tasted were expired, dry, and dusty, damn, they were so good. And oh, the batch that “accidentally” got a cartload of sand mixed in? Crunchy as heck, but we ate them all!
He remembered. Those were unforgiving, merciless times. One day you could’ve fighting for your life against the rival muffin lords, the next you were enjoying the spoils of a successful muffin raid. What if the Muffin Force wanted to put an end to all that? Jaybee couldn’t accept that his traumatic childhood wouldn’t ever happen to today’s children. Kids were getting soft, the lands would be ruled by the soft, the Earth would be filled with softness. But not the softness of humans. The softness of ponies was something he’d sworn to fight against. True that he rarely even tried, probably never succeeded, but rarely was more than muffin! What the hell, Narrator!?
Shut the fuck up, Jaybee, I do what I want!
Screw you! I’m the one in this dark closet with an itchy back and no room to even pull my boxers out from my ass. Hell, I’m not even sure you exist!
- I agree with Jaybee.
Thank you, mysterious voice.
- No prob, buddy.
That’s it.
Suddenly, without any reason or consideration, Jaybee farted. What!? And when a guy his size farts, well, you don’t want to be hanging around within a mile’s radius.
“I heard that! It came from... The Muffin Shrine! How could you, Jaybee, in the holiest of places!”
I’m gonna kill you...
You have to find me first. Jaybee couldn’t count to five when Derpy Hooves’ yellow orbs already met his blurry gaze. “Let’s get you out of there, HLF.”
“You’re nothing more than a memory I thought I’d lost forever,” spat Jaybee, “and I’ll stand for the HLF for as long as I breathe.”
To his dismay, Derpy laughed out loud. The sound could only be compared to the ones caused by galaxies crossing, stars exploding, and Easy-Bake ovens overheating. “I’ve met worse than your little HLF. Have you ever been sued, Jeff? Hah, you can do us no harm, amateurs.”
Jaybee crawled out from his confinement. Derpy and the rest of the Muffin Force were wearing small protective masks over their mouths. Now that’s overdoing it. “It isn’t my bad you can barely stand as it is!” said the grey pegasus, herself standing roughly two heads shorter than Jaybee. “You should join us. The Muffin Force International has needs... for an expert like you.” Jaybee wondered why Derpy paused in the middle of her last sentence. That made no grammatical sense. Among other things...
Jaybee pondered the suggestion like a monkey ponders a typewriter. He knew what he had in his life, it wasn’t much but he could use it well if he wanted. But what would he get from joining the Force? Muffins? Jaybee wasn’t sure what to think of muffins anymore. He looked over his shoulder at the Muffin Shrine he’d just defiled with his fat ass. You’re not making this easier.
- Next time I’ll be narrating this shit. Yo.
He couldn’t take advice from his retarded inner voice.
- :(
How did he do that? Jaybee turned back to Derpy. “What do you guys even do for a living?” The mare was confused for a fraction of a second before breaking to a pleasant smile that could’ve melted a mountain of powdered sugar.
“We protect what’s important to us and the universe we live in,” said Derpy and removed the protective mask. The rest of the Force followed her example.
“Okay, I’m doing exactly the same as a matter of fact,” said the smelly man.
“But you’re not doing it the right way. We save the world one muffin at a time. Before the MFI there was only chaos and peril in the world of muffins. We saw our chance to make it right, and we took that chance by the artificial sweetener! Besides, if you join I might even give you a muffin from my personal stash...” Derpy wiggled her brows, moved her tongue from one cheek to another, and let her eyelids close halfway. Jaybee couldn’t help getting intrigued by the proposal. “You would see if you can handle a real muffin. No kidding, they are illegal in nine countries.” I don’t like where this is going.
- I do, actually. You like muffins, Jaybee, you just don’t know it yet.
Can’t you see she’s seducing me? Wait a minute... why’s she seducing me?
Jaybee couldn’t see the muffin queen was seducing him. For all the muffins in the world he couldn’t. And the rest was history.
And history is written by the muffins.