Songs of the Spheres

by GMBlackjack

084 - Punch That Cookie

The last time Celestia City was in USM space, things had gone horribly, horribly downhill.

Border-closing cold-war kinds of bad.

Allure was more than well aware that the incident that had incited such tension had been the fault of the League of Sweetie Belles – she specifically had been more than slightly involved with the diplomatic fumble.

Which was to say it was almost entirely her fault.

She had told herself it would be easy to put the events behind her – after all, it had been several years and the USM wasn’t an enemy anymore. …Granted, they had not changed any of their practices and were still manipulating lesser governments for their own benefit, but Allure had chosen to look past that.

Allure was positive it would be easy to leave Celestia City and go down to the USM Earth and have a little vacation with her best friends and her daughter. She told herself it would be relaxing.

“Mom, are you okay?” Minna asked from her position atop Allure’s back. The ten-year-old quasi-albino human’s face was one of confused concern, not understanding why Allure was so tense.

“Everything is fine!” Allure said. “We’re just…. In a city!” Allure grinned. “There’s nothing wrong with that!”

“Allure, breathe,” Squeaky said, putting a hoof on the back of her friend’s neck. “We are not going to cause an international incident by crossing the street incorrectly.”

“But I don’t know what this crossing signal is!” She blurted, pointing at a bizarre blue symbol on the other side of the crosswalk that didn’t look like a human, unicorn, or anything. It was flashing, demanding her attention.

Earth-AZ2 was a world with a single continent covered almost completely in cities, each one of them known by a letter of the English alphabet. They were currently in City G, not that anyone would be able to tell from a quick glance since all the sprawling metropolises looked the same. Right down to the mysterious traffic lights.

“My local Internet connectivity is restricted,” Sweetie Bot reported. “Symbol identification failure.”

Allure bit her hoof. “Do we walk? I don’t see any cars… But what if one comes out of nowhere and hits us!?”

“By Azathoth’s seventeenth eye…” Thrackerzod grunted, shaking her head. She teleported them across. “There. We’re across the street. Good? Good. Now we can stop with the aneurism-inducing idiocy.”

Allure twitched. “Thrackerzod! Why d…” She blinked, thinking about what had happened for a moment. “…Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Anyone see a restaurant yet?” Bot asked.

“You don’t need to eat, why are you the impatient one?” Thrackerzod asked.

Bot blinked. “Because I don’t want to walk around a city lost for another hour?”

“We’re not lost,” Squeaky said. “We can go back to Celestia City at any time!”

“Do you even know what street we’re on?” Allure asked.

Squeaky blinked. “…Didn’t think I needed to. Every street looks the same anyway.”

“This could be why we’re not finding the restaurant,” Thrackerzod observed. “Because we have no idea. Perhaps we’re in a business sector. Perhaps the city moves and we’re in the middle of some elaborate jo-”

“COOKIES DETECTED!” Bot beeped, blasting across the street with rocket-powered hooves, forcing two cars to stop in the process.

“BOT!” Allure screamed. “WHAT DID WE JUST AVOID!?”

“I found you all cookies!” Bot shouted from across the divide, pointing at a convenience store display filled with single-packaged cookies from The Big Cookie company.

“A cookie isn’t a meal,” Allure muttered.

“Minna wants cookies!” Bot declared.

“…I want a large mountain of mashed potatoes covered in gravy,” Minna corrected. “Cookie… too sweet.”

Squeaky stared at Minna in disbelief. “…Allure, what kind of kid are you raising?”

“A smart one,” Allure declared, ruffling Minna’s hair with her telekinesis. “Thrackerzod, teleport Bot back here.”

Thrackerzod did so. Bot triggered several alarms in the store because she was holding seven of the cookies.

“AUGH! TELEPORT THE COOKIES BACK!” Allure panicked.

Thrackerzod rolled her eyes and teleported the cookies back. The store’s alarms kept blaring. They saw the teenage girl behind the register fix them with an annoyed glance.

Allure waved at her sheepishly. “…Let’s try the next block over for restaurants.”

Thrackerzod teleported them all away.

~~~

Earth-AZ2 was known throughout the USM to have a ‘curse’ of extremely bad luck. This bad luck usually came in the form of stupendously apocalyptic-level threats ranging from giant men who flattened cities to alien invasions from galactic conquerors.

Prior to the USM stepping in, Earth-AZ2 depended almost completely on superheroes to defend from the constant stream of unbelievably deadly threats from every possible angle. This had a mixed level of effectiveness. On one hand, Earth-AZ2 gained some hope that they weren’t going to die in their sleep one day from a meteor crashing into their city. On the other hand, the heroes who made it to the tops of the rankings tended to become self-entitled arrogant bundles of condescension that cared little for the actual people they were saving. Tornado, prior to her mental imprisonment by the Celestialsapiens, was a prime example of this.

And even with the superheroes, the number of deaths attributable to freak disasters and supervillains could be counted by the tens of millions. The only reason humanity’s population could keep up was due to the extremely dense populations within the twenty-six cities.

It was a heaven-sent miracle when the United States of the Multiverse found the world and started defending it using their interdimensional technology. Most of the higher ranking heroes moved on from Earth-AZ2 to working directly for USM exploration and military efforts, leaving the defending to the much more organized and dependable USM government.

However, a few heroes chose to remain behind to protect their world, should the need arise. The USM allowed them to keep their hero licenses and even paid them to keep doing their job, though usually the scale of what they did was smaller than before.

Two of these heroes were the master-student pair of Saitama and Genos. Genos was a terrifying looking man with eyes indicative of his deep internal determination. Most of his body consisted of artificial cyborg materials, only his face looking anything like a living thing, and even then the expression was far too serious and angled to be considered ‘normal’.

Saitama was a bald man in a yellow suit and red cape.

He was currently holding a cup of coffee. “Ah, City G. The city of… …I presume things that start with G. Hey, Genos, is this your city?”

“No, master, it is not.”

“Huh. Well that’s one G I bet it wishes it could call its own.” He sipped his coffee. “Y’know Genos, you ever wonder why all our cities are named after letters? I hear that’s not how it works in other worlds.”

“It is something that makes our world unique among all the countless others,” Genos reported.

“But there are other versions of us. We’re A-Z-two.”

“AZ1 is a world without heroes, villains, or powers.”

“Yeah, but I looked some stuff up yesterday out of curiosity. There’s a lot more Earth-AZs out there, Genos. Some a lot like this one used to be. I wonder if I could meet myself…”

“Perhaps we should take some time off to curb this curious itch you have developed, master.”

Saitama shrugged. “Eh, maybe. I’ll put it on the list of things to do on a slow day.”

“Is today not a slow day?”

“I dunno,” Saitama said, putting his hands behind his head. “That’s the thing about slow days. You don’t realize until they’re almost over.”

“…Then how would a list of things to do on slow days ever be used?”

“That’s not something to think about on a slow day.”

Genos opened his mouth to ask a question, and then shut it. He decided to change the topic. “Things appear to be peaceful today.”

Saitama shrugged. “Fine by me. Gives me more chance to count cookies.”

“…Count cookies?”

“Yeah, I’ve been seeing those ‘Big Cookie’ cookies everywhere,” Saitama said.

“…Master, those have been a major USM wide brand since shortly after our world joined.”

“But they’re everywhere Genos. On billboards, in every store, put up in giant displays! There may be some kind of nefarious conspiracy!”

“And there are McDonald’s’ spread everywhere in every city.”

“I don’t see a McDonald’s’ around, do you?”

Genos blinked. “…No. This may be an exception.”

Saitama held up the coffee cup, examining it to find it completely empty. He really didn’t want to carry it around anymore, but it would be rude to just throw it on the side of the street even though he didn’t see a public trash can around. He opted to flick it with his finger, the force from the impact reducing the cup to fine powder that dissipated quickly in the wind.

“The uses you find for your abilities never cease to amaze me, master.”

Saitama shrugged. “It was just a cup, Genos. I bet you could do the same thing with your cyborg beams.”

“Perhaps I could. But I-”

An office building wall exploded, revealing a fat man, his face the image of panic. He ran across the street, ignoring all the cars honking at him, using every muscle in his body to keep moving forward.

With every step he took, cookies appeared around his body and fell to the ground.

In pursuit was a tiny woman in a blue wizard outfit, waving her wand aggressively at the fleeing cookie man, blowing up a nearby car in an attempt to shoot him down.

A smile began to crawl up Saitama’s face. “I knew it! There’s a cookie conspiracy! Ha!”

“Let me,” Genos told Saitama, jumping into the air. He aimed his arms at the wizard, planning to ignite the air in front of her to protect the cookie man as well as burn her enough to keep her from effectively fighting him.

She took one look at him and cast an EMP spell. Genos didn’t even get to fire off a shot – he just fell to the ground like a bird hit with a slingshot.

Saitama winced. “Ouch… You got countered good there, Genos.”

“I… am sorry…”

Saitama shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.” He curled his hand into a fist and stared blankly at the blue wizard. “…Yeah, probably shouldn’t kill her.”

She fired another bolt at the cookie man, hitting his ankle. Blood sprayed on the pavement – and turned into red tinged cookies.

Saitama ran closer to the wizard, pulling his fist back. “Norma-”

A white unicorn came out of nowhere and bucked the blue wizard in the face, magical sparks flying off her back hooves. In a series of quick motions she disarmed the small woman, pinned her to the ground, and put pressure on the back of her skull to keep her from being able to think straight. “Thrackerzod! Anti magic please!”

An identical white unicorn walked up and encased the woman’s small head in a dark, magic band. “Done. She won’t be doing anything anytime soon.”

Two more of the unicorns walked up – one moving with mechanical precision, the other with an albino child on her back.

“Huh. You girls are pretty good,” Saitama said, pointing at them.

“Hm?” the primary unicorn said, looking up. “Oh, a local hero! I’m sorry if I did your job for you!”

“Hey, no problem, I’m just a hero for fun anyway,” Saitama said, waving his hand dismissively. “I’m Saitama. That barely functioning cyborg is Genos.”

“Your precision was formidable,” Genos said, shakily standing back up.

“Uh… thanks,” the unicorn said, clearly unnerved by Genos. “I’m Allure, that’s Thrackerzod, Squeaky, Bot, and my adoptive daughter Minna. We’re part of the League of Sweetie Belles.” When she didn’t see recognition in Saitama’s face, she elaborated. “Part of Merodi Universalis.”

“…Doesn’t ring a bell,” Saitama said.

“Merodi Universalis is one of our multiversal neighbors,” Genos reported. “They have been known as both allies and enemies in numerous cases. Currently we are on good terms.”

“Oh. That’s cool,” Saitama said without much emotion.

“I think we should ask the cookie guy what this was all about,” Squeaky said. “Get some answers.”

“Oh, he already left,” Minna said with an innocent smile.

Everyone looked to her. Then they looked to the place where the cookie man had been. There was a trail of cookies leading to another street – a trail that was already fading because of pedestrian traffic and hungry pigeons.

Thrackerzod sighed, picking up one of the red cookies that hadn’t already been scavenged. “I’ll track his soul, he won’t be able to hide for long…”

It was at this point a black USM hovercraft decloaked. It looked like a helicopter, except without the giant blades of spinning death. Hanging out from one of the doors was none other than the green-haired Tornado herself in a pair of sunglasses.

She cleared her throat. “So, you’re not going to like this.”

Allure started sweating.

“You just took out one of our agents.”

“Oh my gosh I’m sorry! I saw the chase and I acted! I-”

“You’ll have to come with us. All you unicorns. The girl too.” She turned to Saitama, grimacing. “…Did you actually do anything?”

“Nope, it was all them,” Saitama said. “We weren’t fast enough heroes.”

“Good,” Tornado said, sighing in relief. “You get to stay here then.”

Saitama blinked. “Wait… that means I don’t get to learn about the cookie conspiracy!”

Tornado levitated the League of Sweetie Belles and the unconscious wizard into the hovercraft, ignoring him.

“Tornado, I take it back! I made a long-distance punch back there! I’m involved!”

Tornado continued ignoring him, ordering the hovercraft to leave the area.

“Tornado!” Saitama called. The hovercraft was gone before he finished the word.

“She really doesn’t want you involved with anything she does,” Genos observed.

“…All I wanted was to get involved in a cookie conspiracy. Is that too much to ask?”

“There may not be a cookie conspiracy, master.”

“Hrm… That theory of yours seems outlandish.”

“…We could always go check out the Big Cookie’s factory in City G if you want to satisfy your curiosity.”

“We could take the tour… get free cookies…” Saitama rubbed his chin. “Sounds good to me. Do you know where it is?”

Genos pointed at the chocolate colored building that was taller than most the others in City G.

“How can you look at that and not think there’s some kind of cookie conspiracy?” Saitama asked.

“Because the McDonald’s tower is over there. It’s larger.”

Saitama examined the building. “Maybe there’s a burger conspiracy too…”

“Master, how bored are you?”

“Enough. C’mon Genos, I know you want free cookies.”

It was Genos’ turn to shrug impassively. “Sure.”

~~~

The planet of Earth-AZ2 fell below the invisible hovercraft.

Allure gulped, turning to Tornado. “…How much trouble are we in?”

Tornado’s expression told her nothing. It didn’t help that her eyes were hidden behind her large shades.

“Are we talking stern-talking-to trouble, political-incident trouble, or disappearing-without-a-trace trouble?”

Tornado made no response.

“Mom, calm down,” Minna said, playing a game on her handheld. “They’re not going to make you disappear.”

Allure blinked. “It never ceases to amaze me how calm you can be in the face of everything.”

“Fearlessness is awesome.”

Squeaky raised an eyebrow. “It has drawbacks.”

“But when it comes in handy it really comes in handy.” She looked up from her game. “Or do I need to tell everyone how I saved you all by threatening a rose?”

Squeaky sighed. “Allure, your kid is never going to let me live that down.”

Allure would have laughed if she wasn’t so stressed out. “...Yeah.”

Bot narrowed her eyes. “Worry levels reaching dangerous highs.”

Allure nodded. “Next time, let’s just tell Blumiere not to put Celestia City in USM space.”

“Blumiere’s not the mayor right now,” Squeaky pointed out.

“We all know he’ll be the mayor again in one or two election cycles,” Thrackerzod countered. “It doesn’t matter how well the ‘in-between’ mayors do, everyone always wants him back.”

“…Regardless, we can’t just keep Celestia City out of USM space. They’re one of our closest neighbors.”

“Can’t bring yourself to say ally, can you?” Thrackerzod said.

Squeaky glanced at Tornado’s impassive face. “…No, sorry. With the University out of the picture now, they are the least friendly…”

“Really? The presence of an eldritch superpower that could eat a universe for breakfast isn’t ‘unfriendly’?”

“I’d describe your people as truly neutral.”

“Bot, sanity check me. Should I be feeling proud or embarrassed?”

“Affirmative.”

“Ask the robot about emotions,” Minna piped up. “Great idea.”

“Minna!” Allure chided. “Bot has emotions just like the rest of us!”

Minna looked up from her game. “Yeah. But does she have as good of a handle on them as the rest of you?”

There was silence in the hovercraft.

“I’m starting to fear she might be smarter than all of us,” Squeaky observed.

“This is why you need me,” Minna said, smirking.

Allure sighed. “Minna, you’re ten. You can’t come on League adventures yet.”

“Nanoha has kids younger than me.”

“We aren’t the TSAB.”

Minna nodded. “You’ll realize your mistake eventually.” She turned back to her game.

“…Creepy,” Tornado observed, speaking for the first time since the ride had begun.

Allure smiled awkwardly. “Huh, yeah. I guess I’m just used to it at this point.”

Tornado stood up. “Regardless, we’re here.” The star-speckled blackness was replaced with the metallic interior of a space station. They did not get a good look at it, for the moment the hovercraft landed, everyone inside save the pilot was teleported to a simple waiting room with no windows or doors – but furnished with plush couches, a table covered in magazines, and numerous USM logos.

“…Oh hey, comfortable prison,” Bot said. “It’s been a while since I’ve been in one of these!”

“Valentine will see you when he’s ready,” Tornado said, checking her phone.

“VALENTINE!?” Allure shouted. “Oh Celestia, we’re doomed, doomed, dooooooomed… Valentine is gonna kill us, then Eve is gonna kill us…”

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is why we are not a diplomatic team,” Thrackerzod said, gesturing at Allure with her hoof.

Minna turned her game off and put her face in her hands. “I’ve never met Valentine… I wonder if anyone’s told him his suit looks ridiculous yet.”

“Probably!” Allure blurted. “Listen to me, Minna. Do not tell him his suit looks ridiculous.”

“I won’t,” Minna said. “Pinkie promise.”

Allure let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Minna. You’re a good kid.”

Minna smiled innocently.

“He’s ready,” Tornado said, putting her phone away. The instant she did so, Valentine appeared in a flash of teleportation energy.

He examined the League of Sweetie Belles, arms crossed. He seemed to be thinking about something to say.

“Your suit looks awesome,” Minna said.

Allure almost had a heart attack.

Valentine’s usually serious face perked up at the edges. “Finally, someone with good taste.” He sat down in one of the chairs, crossing his legs and leaning forward. “So, I hear you want to know how much trouble you are in.”

Allure gulped. “Yeah…”

“None,” Valentine said, lowering his hands.

“…What?”

“Beth – the wizard you took down – was supposed to be targeted,” Valentine said. “I had the entire thing staged. Beth was supposed to chase the target with much more brutality and aggression than expected to come from an agent of the USM, and she would make no effort to make her true identity known. The intention was to run through Earth-AZ2 and draw the attention of one of the local heroes so they would ‘save’ the subject in a public spectacle. As expected, the target fled in the commotion, and the heroes who saved him from Beth were captured for questioning.” Valentine sat back. “…Except you jumped in instead of some generic heroes.”

“…We’ve walked in on an elaborate ruse?” Squeaky asked.

Valentine nodded. “That’s right. And it actually makes the ruse more credible – there is no way I can have any control over you, an entity from outside the United States of the Multiverse. Which provides us with an interesting opportunity.” He paused for a moment. “What I am about to tell you is classified. If you choose not to assist us in any way, you are not allowed to speak of it even to your Overheads. That would get you ‘in trouble’, as it were.”

“We get the message,” Thrackerzod responded.

“Good,” Valentine rolled his shoulders back. “Shortly after we made direct contact with your nation, a man moved from an unknown universe to Earth-AZ2. He is known today as Big Cookie, CEO of ‘The Big Cookie’ corporation. His real name is Andrew Maddison, human, aged somewhere in his early fifties. Happily married with three kids. He came to Earth-AZ2 with numerous PhDs – Drama, Biology, Law, Music, and Philosophy – and a substantial fortune. An impressive resume all its own, but he also proudly displays trophies he won in his younger days as an athlete.

“And yet, when he came to Earth-AZ2, he didn’t use any of those skills to bring himself to the top. He opened a bakery that specializes in cookies. It took only a couple years for his simple bakery to spread throughout the USM like wildfire, with his goods selling better than all other pastries easily. We have prevented him from obtaining a true monopoly on the market, but even so he is decimating all competition in quality, quantity, and variety.” Valentine leaned in. “He has become the richest man in the USM that isn’t invested in multiversal technology or the government. And he’s done it with cookies.”

“This is why you don’t allow business to run rampant across your universes,” Allure pointed out. Then she covered her mouth, realizing what she’d just criticized.

Valentine chose to ignore the slight directed at his precious capitalism. “Naturally, this conquering of the market made us suspicious. We’ve launched numerous investigations directed at him and his factories – looking for anything we can tear apart for illegal activity. We’ve never been able to find anything concrete enough for a warrant. We know that he’s producing far more cookies than he should be able to with just the factories he has, and we suspect he’s using resources illegally from an outside universe, but there is no proof. All we have is circumstantial evidence from Topeka that can’t be validated. Every time we try to take him to court, he throws money at the system until it lets him and his company walk. We were beginning to consider sending in sleeper agents to work as his employees, but we decided to try a complex game of lies first.”

“Which is where we come in,” Allure said.

“Precisely. That ‘cookie man’ you saved? His name is Marcus Uliar, one of the Big Cookie’s biggest supporters. He has the close ear of Big Cookie himself.”

“So the cookies that were dropping off of him were evidence of foul play?” Squeaky asked.

“Oh, no. He had himself magically altered to produce cookies like that. He’s not all there in the head.”

“Oh.”

“Sweet,” Minna added.

“We just managed to find enough evidence to bring him in. And unlike Big Cookie, Marcus didn’t think he had enough say to survive within USM custody. So he ran, as predicted. You saw the result. He will now report what happened to Big Cookie himself, and Big Cookie will look further into it. He will see that you were taken away to a secret government location, presumably to be given a ‘stern talking to’ about interfering in USM operations. When we return you to Earth-AZ2, we expect he will invite you to meet with him, to gauge you.”

“You want us to go meet him, gain his trust, and find out what’s going on?” Allure asked.

“Correct,” Valentine confirmed. “Find out how the cookies are made, how he treats his workers behind closed doors… Anything that we can use to take him down. You’ll have to put on a convincing façade, and likely lie to his face.”

Allure bit her lip. “Ponies aren’t that great at lying…”

“I can do it,” Squeaky said. “So can Zod. Allure, you don’t have to talk.”

“…Okay. Are we actually agreeing to do this though?”

“He seems like yet another corrupt businessman trying to amass more and more wealth,” Squeaky commented. “It seems like he needs to be taken down.”

“We can always meet with him and decide if he really needs to be taken down,” Minna pointed out.

Allure blinked. “I like that idea.”

Valentine sighed. “…So long as you don’t reveal to him what we discussed here.”

“I promise we won’t tell him anything,” Allure pledged. “I can’t promise that we’ll do anything to help you – I can say we’ll probably try, though.”

“Woohoo!” Minna said. “We’re going to take down a corporate weasel!”

“Oh no, you’re going home,” Allure said, putting a hoof on Minna. “I’m sending you back to Celestia City the moment we get out of here.”

“That would look suspicious,” Tornado said. “Why would you send her away unless you thought you were going into something dangerous? Big Cookie isn’t an idiot, he might be tipped off that you’re expecting him if you do that.”

“…Are you saying we bring Minna along!?”

“Corrupt though he may be, I do not believe Big Cookie is a murderous man,” Valentine said. “Merely extremely greedy. While this may not exactly be safe, I do not believe your lives are in danger.”

Allure shuffled her hooves. “But… Minna can’t go on adventures!”

Thrackerzod put a hoof on Allure. “Look, we’ve either got to take her along to keep up the illusion, or drop this entirely. You’re her mother, it’s your choice.”

Allure looked at Minna’s pleading eyes and Valentine’s own, stern expression. She facehooved. “I am going to regret this more than anything… Fine, she can come. But only if she behaves, doesn’t talk to anybody, and doesn’t run off.”

“I’ll be on your back the whole time!” Minna said, beaming.

“…Right,” Allure said, biting her lip. “It looks like you have five agents, Valentine. Ready to go infiltrate a corrupt cookie conglomerate and crush its concrete to crumbs.”

“Are you proud of yourself?” Thrackerzod asked.

“Yeah.”

Valentine clapped his hands. “Good! You’ll be dropped off right where you were grabbed. Remember, you need to look like I’ve shaken you up and given you a scare.”

“Not going to be a problem for me…” Allure said, already breathing heavily.

“It would be best if you pretended like you had no idea who he was – so he can try to get you with a sob story about being crushed by the government.”

Squeaky raised an eyebrow. “What if we believe him?”

“Look at any store in Earth-AZ2 and tell me he’s being crushed.”

“Good point.” Squeaky tossed her mane. “I’ll be taking point on this one. Everyone, follow my lead. Bot, dull your emotional expressiveness so he won’t be able to read you as well. Allure, focus entirely on Minna, she’ll serve as a good distraction for you. Zod… be creepy and menacing.”

“You’re just telling me to be myself.”

“Exactly.” Squeaky grinned confidently. “Let’s go meet a Big Cookie.”

~~~

Big Cookie never went by his real name. He was always Big Cookie – his children just called him dad, his wife called him ‘her cookie’, and everyone else called him ‘Mr. Cookie’ or just ‘Big Cookie’. In some cases, when they were scared of him, they called him ‘the Boss.’

He vastly preferred Big Cookie outside his family bonds.

Whenever he was in public – and most times when he wasn’t – he wore a light brown suit with dark brown dots all over it, resembling the chocolate chip cookies he was known for. One would have expected the CEO of a cookie company to be large, but he was a fit – if not muscular – man. His hair was a deep, chocolate brown, matching the color of his eyes. He had a short beard that covered his entire lower jaw, connected all as one mass of hair. On one wrist, he wore a golden clockwork watch that told him the time in several different universes, while on the other he had a smartwatch that could tell him anything that wasn’t the time.

Why? Because it amused him that he had a watch that couldn’t tell time. It was just one of those finer details of life he could afford to be frivolous about without any consequences.

His office continued his chocolate brown color scheme – the wooden floor and walls looked delectable, even though the structures certainly weren’t edible. He had several jars of cookies ranging from chocolate chip to snickerdoodle to a variety he had recently created called ‘lionfish’. The only things in the office that weren’t cookie or chocolate themed were his PhDs, proudly displayed on the wall alongside his athletics trophies. A cookie picture frame sat on his desk, an image of his wife and three children smiling ready for him to gaze upon any time he wished.

Though at the moment, his middle daughter was physically present, slightly older than in the photograph – but still undoubtedly a teenager.

“So let me get this straight, Sarah,” Big Cookie said, folding his arms. “You want the hovercraft?”

Sarah nodded vigorously. She stood in stark contrast to the theme of the office – bright green dress and pitch-black hair with purple tips. “Yeah!”

“And your regular car just won’t do?”

“Dad, they’re like, counting on me to bring it.”

Big Cookie shook his head. “This is why you shouldn’t promise things ahead of time.”

“I didn’t though! They just told me to get it and didn’t give me a chance to say anything about it!”

Big Cookie chuckled. “Do they know you or do they know you?”

Sarah scratched the back of her head. “Yeeeeah… So I’m going to have to tell them I couldn’t get it again?”

“I didn’t say that,” Big Cookie said, reaching into his desk and pulling out a set of keys. “That’s what you had to do last time, after all.”

Sarah reached out for the keys, but Big Cookie pulled them back. “Ah ah ah, good things come to those who wait.”

“Daaaaad!” Sarah whined, smiling.

The door to the office opened, interrupting the conversation between father and daughter. The League of Sweetie Belles were ushered in, the whole group nervously glancing around.

“O-oh!” the Sweetie that Big Cookie knew was named Allure stammered. “We can come back later…”

“Don’t worry, we were just about done anyway,” Big Cookie said, displaying his toothy grin. He tossed the keys to Sarah. She fumbled with them a few seconds before gripping them tightly, the smile of victory on her face. “If you crash it you’re paying for it with your inheritance.”

“I know!” Sarah called, dashing out the door. “Thanks Dad!”

“You’ll have to deal with that soon enough,” Big Cookie told Allure, gazing warmly at Minna upon her back. “Come, sit, we have… well I wouldn’t say much to discuss, but a fair amount, and I’m a busy man, so we best get to it.”

As they sat down, he examined them all closely. Allure was clearly a bundle of nerves, but given how she kept checking on Minna, that was clearly because of the child’s presence in a situation the unicorn wasn’t certain about. Big Cookie recognized the ‘mothering’ look easily, having seen it on his wife many times over the years. He was mildly surprised that he couldn’t read the child at all… she stared right at him, unfaltering.

He felt as though that innocent smile was hiding a sinister mind.

Lucky for him, she was just a child. Nothing to be overly concerned about, though perhaps something to look into later.

Squeaky was clearly acting as the leader for now – and she was guarding her expressions well. Big Cookie was able to tell the face she was projecting was not her true one. He could see strain in the calm smile and mild worry in her eyes. However, there was also a confidence about her. An arrogance. She thought she was better than him. Curious.

Thrackerzod wasn’t hiding anything. Her gaze of contempt was as honest as anything in the room. She did not like being here and she wanted Big Cookie to know he was on her ‘do not like’ list. Big Cookie didn’t mind.

Sweetie Bot… was looking around the office in wonder, slowly taking all the details in she could manage. The mind of a child indeed, less interesting than Minna even. But he couldn’t afford to dismiss her – she may have been stunted emotionally, but her intellect was sharper and more discerning than any of the others. She would notice tiny details the others would not be able to pick up.

“I hear you had a run-in with the USM government,” Big Cookie began. “You have quite the luck, from what I hear.”

“Mhm,” Squeaky said. “We were called by the USM. Sat in front of an important-looking man while he told us what was what. Currently I’m getting a sense of déjà vu.”

Big Cookie smiled. “You are not in any danger or trouble here, ladies. You have not insulted me by interfering with one of my ‘agents’, because I do not have such things.”

“What was the cookie guy’s deal then?” Thrackerzod asked.

“He was simply a close friend of mine – an investor at times, but that’s hardly important. They were going to use him to get to me. Extort me for company secrets.”

“Why would they want to do that?” Squeaky asked.

“You see, the government is suspicious of my success,” Big Cookie said. “They think there’s no way a man can just show up, open a cookie factory, and conquer the market in a handful of years. It doesn’t match any of their projections or their way of thinking about the world. So, naturally, they think I’m doing something illegal – but I’m not! I’m just creating cookies with my secret family recipe; cookies that are better than all others. Cookies that blow the minds of everyone who tastes them.” He sighed. “But now that I’ve found success, I’m being assaulted on all sides by regulation, suspicion, and jealousy.”

“You do know where we come from, right?” Thrackerzod asked. “Merodi Universalis. There’s a reason we don’t let companies expand beyond one universe.”

“We don’t trust them!” Bot declared, grinning. “Breeds corruption and dishonesty!”

Big Cookie nodded. “At least you’re blunt about it. You are right; corruption and underhanded business are symptoms of reaching the top… in most cases. However, I assure you I am not one of those evil corporate masterminds. I’m the Big Cookie!” He let out a big laugh. “I live to feed people delectable pastries. I could raise my prices to gather more funds, but I don’t, because I don’t need to. I’m not a cheat.”

“Why are you telling us all this?” Squeaky asked.

“Because I want you to help me in my predicament,” Big Cookie said. “You’re the perfect team to help me survive when surrounded by political pressure trying to squeeze me for daring to succeed with honesty. Simply having you on my side will deter the government from looking further into my company for fear of an international incident, and you will be able to protect those the government wishes to extort to get to me. It would be a temporary arrangement as well – just enough to get the government to lay off a little. In return I will pay you a truly exorbitant amount of money, will lobby the USM democratic process in Merodi Universalis’ favor, and make you major shareholders of The Big Cookie.”

Bot blinked. “Woah…”

“Yes, that is a big reward,” the Big Cookie agreed. “It is there because I’m tired of fighting the government at every turn.”

“Two problems,” Squeaky said. “One, we don’t trust you or believe that you are as honest as you say you are. Two, we really shouldn’t go against the USM. We did it once before, it ended disastrously.”

“I have enough funds to lobby the government for just about anything. Valentine won’t be able to spitefully cut you off just because you helped me.”

“That only solves one,” Thrackerzod pointed out. “You’re a businessman. We don’t trust you. We’d only consider helping you if we thought you were actually honest.”

Big Cookie stood up, smiling. “Then allow me to prove myself. Let me take you into the background of this cookie factory.”

The Sweetie Belles stared at him, shock evident on their faces. “…Isn’t there company secrets back there?”

“Of course there are,” Big Cookie said. “Things I really don’t want the government knowing about, or getting out to my competitors. But I’ve read your files – you’re all good, honest, kind mares. I’m sure you’ll understand once I show you. And even if you don’t, you aren’t the type to give Valentine something he can use.” He stepped to the exit, gesturing for them to follow. “Come along.”

The League exchanged glanced with each other, shrugged, and followed him. He led them through an employees only door, entering the balcony above the first level of the factory – the one where he let tours go through. There was currently a somewhat large group watching chocolate being poured into a cauldron and stirred by giant machines.

“Oh, hey!” a bald superhero said, waving up at the League. “How’d you girls get in here? Tours only happen every two hours!”

“Not really our choice, Saitama!” Squeaky called down.

“Hear that Genos? More evidence there’s a cookie conspiracy!”

Big Cookie looked down at the hero – Saitama – with suspicion. “Who is he?”

“Some hero,” Thrackerzod said. “He was there when we took out the government agent. Seemed fixated on the cookies. Have no idea otherwise.”

Big Cookie led them out of earshot, through another door.

“There is a cookie conspiracy, isn’t there?” Squeaky asked.

“Of sorts. Nothing so nefarious like I’m sure he thinks,” Big Cookie said. “You’ll see soon enough.” They came to a large, metal door locked by a keypad. Big Cookie slid his personal card through, letting them into a large, expansive room that was clearly bigger than the entire skyscraper it was contained within.

“Woah…” Bot said, leaning on the edge of the railing they were standing on, looking down at the true production floor of The Big Cookie. They saw a production floor split up into multiple sections. In one, there were numerous older women moving slowly from oven to oven, baking cookies at an impressive rate with smiles on their faces. They put personal touches on every cookie – some made patterns with the chocolate chips, some frosted their cookies, while others made inventive shapes. Clearly, this was where the specialty cookies were made.

The army of baking ‘grandmas’ was the least bizarre method of cookie production. Next to them were fields lit by giant UV lights where cookies were popping out of the ground, grown as if they were fruit from plants. Next to these farm-grown cookies were large conveyor belts where cookies were somehow assembled before their eyes, not from baking ingredients, but from rocks and minerals. There were a few stone towers with magic lights atop them, glowing with power that produced even more cookies.

In the center of all this was a giant apparatus of bottles, pipes, and burners that mixed liquids, metals, and pure materials in a complex procedure that somehow produced a waterfall of every kind of cookie imaginable, pouring into a truck.

Cookies by the million. Perhaps billion.

“This is not the company secret,” Big Cookie said, grinning. “This is just an extension of it. Do you want to see the real center of cookie production?”

The Sweeties and Minna all nodded, dumbfounded by the impossibilities they were looking at.

Big Cookie ordered the platform they were standing on to disconnect from the wall and hover over to the back of the expansive room. They passed the section filled with grandmas – and all of them turned to Big Cookie and waved with big smiles, shouting him words of encouragement.

His smile faltered as he heard those words, old memories dredging up in his mind. ...Or memories more recent than he would have liked…

He shook his head, clearing it. Now was not the time to dwell on that – he had to convince these fillies he was good. They should have been able to buy him just enough time.

They arrived at the back wall, where another security door blocked their passage. He slid his card in, allowing them to pass right through. On the other side was a much smaller, cylindrical room with a staircase leading to the middle of it. Floating right in front of the staircase was a giant, glowing chocolate chip cookie – or chocolate chip sphere, seeing as it wasn’t disc-shaped. Numerous drones flew around, tapping the cookie sphere, every touch producing a single cookie that dropped to the floor.

Big Cookie walked up to The Big Cookie and touched it with his finger, summoning a single chocolate chip cookie into his hand. He took a bite and grinned. “This is the source of everything. A unique magic artifact that eternally produces more and more cookies. As I keep using it, it keeps revealing new esoteric and magical ways of producing cookies for everyone to enjoy. It is the greatest secret of my company – because if anyone knew about it, they would try to steal it, or destroy it.” He turned to look at them. “It’s not illegal to use magic artifacts in business construction, Sweetie Belles. Iom Corporation uses them extensively, and publicly. But I’m a newcomer, and they don’t like how I’ve managed to stake my claim – both the government and my competitors. If they knew about this, it would be the end of me.”

“I… see,” Squeaky said, clearly not actually seeing.

Big Cookie shrugged. “I’ve shown you the depths of my company. All I ask now is that you consider my offer. I just want to protect this so I may continue to provide delicious pastries to the masses.” He stepped down the stairs, raising his hand as a signal. His eldest daughter – a woman in a blue dress with violet eyes – walked out from behind a cookie storage box. “This is Aria. She will give you a tour of the real factory while I return to my work. Take your time in making a decision – I won’t even demand one today.” He made his way to the exit. “Enjoy your stay.”

He looked at them all one last time – good, they weren’t sure what to think anymore. Exactly what he wanted. Aria would be able to turn them to his side completely. She was his strongest weapon.

If not…

Well, he didn’t really want to think about what would happen in that case.

It would be unfortunate.

~~~

Aria took the League of Sweetie Belles to a secret observation station of the ‘public’ factory. “We take all the cookies from the true factory and put them on those conveyor belts there,” she said, pointing. “Everything else you see here is just for show. The workers think they’re making the chocolate, the dough, etcetera, but in reality they’re just using resources from the cookies to make cookies again.”

“Wow. Quite a convoluted deception,” Allure said.

Aria nodded. “It keeps everything safe. Nobody will ever figure out what we do in here, so The Big Cookie company will always provide cookies to the masses.”

Squeaky looked at Aria closely, narrowing her eyes. “…What do you really think?”

“…I think that it’d be nicer if he could do it without the lying. But I think that, in the end, what he’s doing is good,” she lied.

“Ah,” Squeaky said. She’s lying, she sent telepathically to Thrackerzod.

Of course she is, Thrackerzod responded. We’re only being shown ‘just enough’ to gain our trust. There’s more going on here, it’s plain to see. He wouldn’t dare show us these things unless he thought it was an acceptable risk. He’s not stupid enough to do this with some unicorns he’s never met – he thinks that the secrets he’s shown us can afford to be given up. There are other secrets he wants to keep hidden even from us.

I take it the soul scan worked then?

No. He was protected. Which, by itself, is concerning. Not even Valentine’s soul is that well protected from my gaze. It is possible he was just naturally born with the resistant trait, but I doubt it.

Regardless, we don’t have anything we can really give Valentine. He’s right, none of this is illegal. Odd, but perfectly fine. So much for his little ruse.

We need to find a way deeper in…

“Girl’s, we’re busted,” Allure said.

Squeaky shot Allure with a what the heck!? look. “W-what are you talking about?”

“Aria hasn’t been giving the tour ever since you started that psychic discussion. She’s been listening.”

Aria looked at the unicorns and Minna with her alien eyes. Yes, it is true, I am a psychic.

Thrackerzod entered a fighting stance.

“Woah woah woah!” Aria said, holding up her hands. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to bust you!”

“Talk quickly,” Thrackerzod said.

“You were right, I was lying earlier! I don’t think what he’s doing is good!”

Thrackerzod blinked. She stood down. “She’s telling the truth. I can see into her soul. Pretty easily, actually. Helps when the psychic is actually opening herself up for you to see.”

“So… You’re not our enemy?” Allure asked.

Aria shook her head. “Not at all. I believe I’m your ally. My father, genius though he is, is blinded by his love – he thinks he can trust me unconditionally with everything. He placed me here to watch you, and condition you over time with my psychic powers if I could.”

“Knew he was evil,” Thrackerzod muttered.

“I… wouldn’t go that far,” Aria said. “But he’s doing something wrong. Something I’m not sure about.”

“How so?”

“…I’m old enough to remember our homeworld,” Aria said, her gaze becoming distant. “My earliest memories are of the first cookies Dad made with the magic cookie you saw. I got to watch him grow – watch him learn about the farms, the factories, the magic towers, the alchemy centers, the spaceships… But then he uncovered a portal. The next memory I have after that is us moving here. The only problem is I was five when he found the portal. I was eight when we came here.”

“Years of your life?” Allure said with a gasp. “Just… gone?”

“Wiped, I believe,” Aria said. “And I didn’t quite realize it until I was a teenager – and I never told Dad about it. I was in the rebellious stage, and by the time I grew out of it, I was suspicious of how well the company was doing.” She paused. “There is a portal to our home in this factory.”

“…There is!?” Bot blurted.

“Yes. Heavily protected and hidden, but it is here. He showed it to me when I turned eighteen.” A conflicted expression crossed her face. “…He trusted me completely. And I always planned to betray him.”

“…What’s through the portal?” Allure asked.

“A lost world,” Minna said absent-mindedly.

Everyone turned to stare at Minna.

“…I don’t know about that,” Aria said. “All I know is what he told me and what I’ve seen. He told me what lies through the portal is dangerous. 99% of our cookies come pouring out of that portal. Maybe more.”

“I think we’ll need to see this portal,” Thrackerzod said. “Quickly. …I have an inkling it may be something we need to destroy.”

“He can probably just make another one with the power of the Cookie,” Aria said. “…But I agree, you need to see it.” She glanced around nervously. “That portal is evil. I don’t know how he doesn’t see it.”

“Consumed by the success it’s bringing him,” Thrackerzod suggested. “…Just take us to it.”

Aria nodded. “Do you have a stealth spell?”

Thrackerzod encased the League in an invisibility aura, while Aria remained as she was. “Lead the way. We’ll follow. You don’t have to worry about anything seeing us.”

Aria nodded. She put on a serious face and wordlessly walked down a hallway – right past the door that led to the farms, wizard towers, and other bizarre implements of cookie production. She pressed her hand to a wall that had no door, whispering a nineteen-digit passcode to the white surface. Nothing seemed to happen – but now she could just walk through the wall like it wasn’t even there.

The League followed her through into a dark elevator lit only by a single red bulb, barely large enough to fit them all. It began to descend deep into the earth, far below where any basement should have been. The doors slid open, revealing a dark laboratory that smelled of burnt cookies.

They saw the portal first – nested between two pillars of neon red light was a vaguely circular depression in the wall, ringed by cookies that seemed to pulsate with life. The center of the portal was a swirling red vortex, filling the room with unholy energy.

Cookies didn’t just pour out of the portal – they were ejected at high velocity by the millions, vanishing as they passed between the two pillars of light. Presumably they were teleported up a few levels and to the regular factory floor.

“Aria, what are you doing here?” Big Cookie asked, revealing his presence on one of the observation chairs. He was no longer smiling like he had been every other time the Sweeties had seen him. On his face was a deep, troubled scowl.

Aria recovered quickly. “The Sweeties are gone, Dad. They really really didn’t trust you and suspected I was a trap. I figured I’d tell you since they could be a huge breach of security.”

“…Did I really misread them that badly?”

“I caught a few snippets of mental conversation. They were working for Valentine – it’s possible the entire chase was a ruse meant to get your attention.”

Big Cookie curled his hand into a fist. “…I’ll take care of them, Aria. You can get back to work.”

“Okay, Dad,” Aria said, tripping over Allure as she went back to the elevator.

“Are you okay?” Big Cookie asked, standing up.

“Fine! Fine!” Aria said, stumbling to the elevator door. “Just tripped!”

“…On what?”

“…My feet.”

A small smile came to Big Cookie’s lips. “You always were a little absent-minded about those feet of yours… …Aria?”

“Yes, Dad?”

“You know I cherish you, right?”

Aria paused for a moment. “…Yeah, I do. What’s this about? What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Big Cookie said with a wave of his hand. “I’ve got to deal with the Sweeties first.”

Aria nodded. “Alright.” She stepped into the elevator and returned to the factory proper.

The moment she was gone, Big Cookie grabbed a lever and pulled it. The Portal stopped blasting cookies out, bringing the lab to an eerie calm. Big Cookie sighed. “I guess I have to go back then…” He stepped to the portal and took in a deep breath. “This isn’t going to be pretty…” He jumped through the red swirling mist.

Thrackerzod dropped the invisibility spell. “All right, we have to follow him.”

“I’m not taking Minna in there!” Allure shouted.

“Then stay behind,” Thrackerzod said. “We have to go now. That was the voice of a man about to do something drastic.”

Squeaky nodded. “Whatever it is, it isn’t good. This portal feels wrong.”

“It’s eldritch,” Thrackerzod said. “It’s derived from a partially Demonic source.”

“Th… That’s more reasons not to take Minna in!” Allure said.

“Allure, you can stay behind, we understand,” Squeaky said. “Don’t worry.” She gestured to Bot and Thrackerzod. “Let’s go.”

The three of them marched to the portal, allowing Thrackerzod to analyze it up close first.

Minna whispered into her mother’s ear. “They might need us.”

“But-”

“Five is better than four.”

“Minna, you can-”

“I’m fearless. I won’t run screaming from anything. All you have to do is keep yourself safe to keep me safe.”

Allure gulped. She wanted to keep Minna away from all possible danger… But Minna was growing up in a world where adventure and danger was around every corner, and a world where her mother would constantly face dangerous situations and come home telling her of them. Minna not only knew about the dangers of the world, she wanted to experience them.

There was a point where Allure would only be sheltering her unnecessarily – insulting the unique child she had on her back.

Another part of Allure also knew that what was through that portal was definitely not a good place to start introducing Minna to real danger.

But in real life, nobody was going to ever expect the form the danger came in. The horrors of real life would come when you least expected it, without warning, and in any form.

Maybe Minna was too young to learn that.

But that didn’t change the fact Minna wanted to try to learn it.

“Wait up!” Allure shouted, galloping after the rest of the League. “We’re coming too.”

“Bu-” Squeaky began.

“No buts! You said we don’t have time!” Allure pushed magic into her back hooves. “Let’s go!” She pushed off the ground and bounced through the portal, Minna laughing on her back.

The Earth on the other side wasn’t an earth anymore. It was an eldritch location.

Allure could see cookies. She could also see a deep, powerful red shifting around her impossibly, clawing at her mind and tearing it away from any rational thoughts. Soon, she would become one with the dough…

Thrackerzod gave everyone’s mind a perception shield, blocking all the damaging influence. “This is why we don’t just charge through random portals without scanning first,” she said, smacking Allure.

Allure was barely able to focus on anything in front of her. “Wh… He… So… Wha?”

“Aw, why’d you get rid of the cool stuff?” Minna asked, pouting. “I liked how it looked!”

Thrackerzod stared at Minna. “…You just stared into the depths of an eldritch location for a solid second and felt no adverse effects? What are you?”

“Alive,” Squeaky said, taking a defensive posture. “Which we won’t be if we don’t do something quick.”

Now that Thrackerzod’s perception filter was around all of them, they could see clearly – and accurately. Luckily for them, the multi-dimensional nature of the eldritch location had not changed the structure of the planet all that much. With the bizarre insanity-inducing folds in space cleared away, the planet still existed as a large sphere for them to walk on. Granted, it was made out of a mixture of mutated screaming flesh and cookies, but at least it was three-dimensional enough to understand. Cookies flowed through the air in complex spiral patterns, drifting closer and closer to the portal at a lazy speed – presumably nothing near the speed they had been going before Big Cookie pulled the lever.

Dotting the landscape were hundreds of mutated creatures that vaguely looked like they may have been grandmothers, once. All of them were lurching toward the unicorn invaders, ready to dice them to shreds.

“Nope,” Thrackerzod said. In this realm, she didn’t even need to light her horn – she just was one with the eldritch, forming a direct contract with the lesser beings before her. She spoke in the broodfester tongues to the impossible beings. “I am Thrackerzod, once of Azathoth. I demand to know from which above you come.”

“GRANDMATRIARCH!” They all spoke at once, despite not having mouths.

“Are you not of the Embodiment?”

“WE ARE OF OUR OWN.”

“Not anymore. You serve me.” Thrackerzod’s essence flashed, and all the ‘grandmothers’ became her slaves. “Take us to wherever the human who passed through here just before us has gone.”

“THE BIG COOKIE HAS GONE TO THE FINAL FACTORY.”

“Lead the way,” Thrackerzod boomed. She turned to her friends. “Apologies for the headaches, there wasn't really another way to get the point across.”

Allure rubbed her ears. “I’m getting used to it at this point.”

“I don’t think we’ve ever been in an eldritch location on a mission before,” Squeaky realized. “You’ve always taken us on pre-planned excursions to show us what we could ‘see’ with your restriction spells.”

“We’re lucky this place isn’t heavily deviated from standard dimensionality,” Thrackerzod reminded them as they walked across the ever-shifting flesh-cookie ground. “As you’ll recall from Za’za’inr’atta, if it’s deviated enough I may be able to protect your mind, but you won’t be able to walk because pushing off something in one dimension triggers a sucking force in another without the proper mindframe.”

“I think the world where speaking made things explode was weirder,” Bot chimed in.

“…I need to see these places,” Minna said.

“One day,” Thrackerzod said. “Until now, appreciate the impossibility of a… giraffe made entirely out of cookies eating a mutated grandma creature.”

“…Cooooool.”

Allure’s stomach did flip-flops. “Egh… Minna, stop looking.”

“...Mom, c’mon, I need to be on watch just like everyone else.”

“Right… Right…” Allure put a hoof to her horn. “I’m going to have to get used to this…”

They crested what could best be described as a ‘hill’ – and they could see the Final Factory on the next ‘hill’. It, unlike the rest of the world, was not made of flesh and cookies, but was a regular building with smokestacks, brick walls, and doors fit for humans to walk through. Gigantic rings resembling stargates lined the walls, creating cookies out of midair. A single tetrahedral prism floated a few feet above the Final Factory, drawing light of all colors into itself, spitting a few colors out as laser beams, but presumably converting the rest to cookies somehow.

Thrackerzod narrowed her eyes. “That’s not a machine up there. That Prism is a sapient being. And it’s purely physical. I won’t be able to condition it easily.”

Bot produced a rocket launcher. She fired the rocket, unable to compensate for the impossible eddys of space in front of her – but Thrackerzod used her magic to guide the missile to the Prism. The crystal flashed, engulfing the missile in a laser to defend itself.

This prompted the missile to explode. The shockwave knocked the Prism over, onto the other side of the factory.

“It’ll be back!” Bot predicted.

“I know,” Thrackerzod said, calculating an eldritch location teleport. She shifted all of them to the front doors of the Final Factory. When they placed their hooves on the doors, they didn’t feel like it was an approximation of what was really there – it felt real.

They cracked the doors open slightly, poking all five of their heads in.

Big Cookie stood, in a grand hall devoid of decoration. In front of him was a truly disgusting being. It had the face of an elderly human woman, but the rest was unrecognizable. All her body parts were shifting, her eyes burned with bloody fire, and her every movement was accompanied by a lagged motion blur that made her hard to focus on. One moment, her breathing was slow and she was like an ancient tortoise – the next she seemed to teleport to another part of the room.

She didn’t seem to be made out of cookies at all. This was somehow the most concerning thing about her.

“COOKIE, WHAT NEWS DO YOU BRING?”

“Grandmatriarch, forgive me, for my attempts to buy us extra time have played right into enemy hands. There has been a security breach. The USM government knows about the Cookie at the very least, and I do not think for a second they will not try to take it.”

“THAT IS NO ISSUE, THE COOKIE CAN BE RECLAIMED WHEN WE ARE THROUGH.”

“That is true. I was careful not to let the existence of the portal even be hinted at.” He shuddered before them. “However, I would not put it past Valentine to push the authority he has been given to find it.”

“HOW MANY COOKIES SHORT ARE WE?”

“For the instant dominion of the entire USM, three weeks’ production.”

“IT IS CLEAR WE DO NOT HAVE THAT TIME ANY LONGER. WE SHALL MOVE NOW.”

“I expected as much… Remember our understanding.”

“YOUR FAMILY WILL BE MOVED TO ANOTHER WORLD WHILE WE TRANSFORM THE WORLDS OF THE USM, AS PROMISED. YOU WILL BEGIN YOUR ENTERPRISE AGAIN FROM THAT NEW WORLD.”

“If I may ask, where are we going next?”

“THE VOID. IT IS TIME TO MOVE UP IN THE MULTIVERSE, COOKIE. FAR ABOVE WHAT YOU ORIGINALLY THOUGHT YOU COULD RISE TO.”

Big Cookie nodded. “Yes… I am honored to have been selected.”

“AS YOU SHOULD BE. NOW, HOW ABOUT YOU INTRODUCE ME TO THE SPIES WHO FOLLOWED YOU HERE?”

“The what?”

The League of Sweetie Belles was suddenly standing right next to Big Cookie, having spent no time transitioning.

“How did…”

“We’re smart,” Allure said, not letting him ask the question. She tried to take a step forward to defy the Grandmatriarch, but the wrongness of the being forced her to drop to her knees. “We… We…”

“We defy you,” Minna said, walking off her mother’s back, unfazed. Thrackerzod took her place beside her while Squeaky held her head and Bot lowered the sensitivity of her processors even further.

Minna pointed at the Grandmatriarch. “We will not let you destroy the USM!”

“…WHAT IS THIS CHILD?”

“Not important,” Thrackerzod growled. “You may not be aware of this, ‘Grandmatriarch’, but the Eldritch Embodiment currently exists in a state of parallel with the United States of the Multiverse. Should you continue with your course of action, there will be a reaction from those invested in the mortal plane there.”

“SUCH AS?”

“The court of the King in Yellow, Hastur, servant of Azathoth and Nyarlathotep’s High Machinators.”

“AND YOU?”

“I am a free being who once served under Hastur, with my mortal shell belonging to Overhead of Relations Charter-Princess Evening Sparkle of Merodi Universalis.”

“THANK YOU, THRACKERZOD, ONCE OF AZATHOTH. YOU HAVE GIVEN ME A NAME AND FACE FOR MY FUTURE ENEMIES, SO I MAY TREAT THEM AS THEY DESERVE. WITH THEIR NAMES THROWN IN THE DIRT.”

“You cannot possibly expect to engage us in combat and emerge victorious, outsider.”

“AND YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE POWER OF THE COOKIES, OR WHAT DRIVES US GRANDMATRIARCHS.”

“…Ah, there’s more than one of you. That would have been helpful to know prior to now.”

“Who cares? We can still beat them up, one or many,” Minna said.

“YOUR INNOCENCE IS ADORABLE. BUT KNOW THIS, THRACKERZOD. WE WILL LAY SIEGE TO THE WORLDS OF THE USM, USING OUR COOKIES TO INFUSE OUR ESSENCE INTO THEM. THEY WILL BECOME LIKE THIS WORLD, AND WE WILL USE THE NEW COOKIES TO CONQUER MORE AND MORE AND MORE! WE WILL SURPASS THE EMBODIMENT’S STAGNATION! WE ARE NOT A FORCE OF NATURE – WE ARE CONQUERORS!”

“Then your essence will be met by ours.”

“NOT YOUR FULL FORCE. THE EMBODIMENT IS NEVER UNIFIED IN ANYTHING.” She roared. “MY SISTERS! IT IS TIME TO GO! LET US LEAVE THESE FOOLISH MORTALS IN THIS FACTORY – WE HAVE WORLDS TO CRUSH IN OUR GRASP!”

She was gone with a pop.

Thrackerzod gulped. “That’s not good.”

Minna put her hands on her hips. “What are we waiting for? Let’s chase them down!”

“They’ve closed the portal already and the universe already doesn’t support our standard method of multiversal travel.”

Bot stood up, shaking. “Wh… What are we going to do?”

Allure put a hoof to her head. “I… I don’t know, let me think… Let me think…”

~~~

Valentine and Tornado stood across the street from The Big Cookie’s factory.

“I’m thinking something went wrong,” Tornado said, lowering her binoculars.

“Clearly,” Valentine said, furrowing his brow. “Perhaps they discovered their trackers…”

“Doubt it. Bet Big Cookie’s just paranoid enough to have anti-beacon walls installed.”

“Where would he even get that…?”

“Money is power.”

Valentine put a hand to his chin. “…Unrestricted money brings too much power.”

Tornado blinked. “Valentine, did you just say something vaguely anti-capitalist?”

The very words she spoke made Valentine twitch. “The market always needs government control to keep it from blowing out of proportion. Clearly more adjustments need to be made. One person holding all power restricts the free market.”

Tornado’s watch started beeping. “Huh. Haven’t had a hero call in a while.”

“My ships are in orbit, they’ll take care of whatever it is.”

The Earth began to rumble. The sky began to shift into an unnatural red color and cookies rained down from the sky, splintering into mutated horrors when they hit the ground.

“…I think something went wrong,” Valentine observed.

“Quite,” Tornado commented, squishing all the wriggling masses of flesh in an instant with her powers. “Not too bad… Even if this is a worldwide effect, we should be able t-”

A Grandmatriarch appeared behind The Big Cookie company’s factory, an impossible hand resting on a nearby skyscraper, crumbling three floors in the process.

“YOU HAVE CONSUMED OUR FLESH FOR LONG ENOUGH – NOW YOU WILL LIVE FOR US TO CONSUME.”

Valentine grunted. “Tornado, you haven’t by chance eaten any of those cookies recently?”

“Not since the operation started.”

“Good. The chances of virtually anyone else on this planet having avoided the cookies is about zero.” He summoned D4C, narrowing his eyes, “Get us up there.”

Tornado launched them to the roof of a nearby flat-topped skyscraper. They were not the only people who arrived – several government agents and other heroes had decided the same place was the best way to get close to the Grandmatriarch.

“Eldritch being!” Valentine shouted. “Leave this world at once, or suffer the might of the USM!”

“YOUR MIGHT IS NOTHING.” The Grandmatriarch attacked. A government agent set up a transdimensional shield around them that kept the eldritch ‘limb’ from moving any closer to them, appearing as a bursting yellow-green fractal pattern.

“I need a supercharge,” Valentine said. One of the agents had one, tossing him a shot filled with glowing purple fluid. He injected it into his arm without question. He took a breath. “When the shield is lowered, everyone hit her with everything you’ve got. It may not do anything, but it’ll look flashy.”

Valentine wrapped himself up in his flag, translating to another universe using D4C’s power. In Earth-AZ1, there was another Grandmatriarch attacking, this one suffering only resistance from standard military weapons. She had not been slowed – and already the ground beneath her was turning into fleshy, crumbly masses that tugged at Valentine’s mind.

He didn’t give it any mind – the supercharge was already in his body, flooding his Stand. He wouldn’t be able to think as clearly for quite some time and his body would suffer from tremors, but he only needed to do this once.

…Well, that’s what he’d thought before he shifted universes. HE had thought only Earth-AZ2 was being attacked, but if Earth-AZ1 was also, the entire USM may be in danger…

Deal with one set right now, worry about possible others later. He leaped into the air, touching the edge of the Grandmatriarch with D4C’s hand. The rippling impossibility translated to his own wrist, damaging it in several places. But he didn’t need it to be functional. He just needed to be touching the Grandmatriarch.

With a twist, the supercharge allowed D4C to move the entire Grandmatriarch through the folds between universes – right through the flag Valentine wrapped around himself. He forced her back into Earth-AZ2, her body so large she couldn’t help but come in contact with her alternate self.

The eldritch death throes were agonizing to hear as two bodies of impossible flesh collided and disintegrated into millions of tiny cubes. Tornado used her power to grab those cubes and force them back to the place they were exploding from, just so they would suffer more damage.

The Grandmatriarch vanished from the world.

For about two seconds.

Cookies from all over Earth-AZ2 rose into the air, flying to a location in the middle of the sky. They turned into fleshy masses as they combined, twisting and retching until they had formed an entirely new Grandmatriarch from the billions upon billions of cookies in the world.

“THE MORTAL IS INCONVENIENT…” the Grandmatriarch said, deciding Valentine made a good target.

Tornado grabbed him in her telekinesis and got him out of there, letting the other heroes and agents try in vain to do something to the eldritch elder.

It wasn’t long before the ‘heroes’ who had recently eaten Big Cookie cookies showed up and started defending the Grandmatriarch.

Meanwhile, inside The Big Cookie factory, Saitama and Genos got an urgent alert on their hero watches.

“Master, it’s a god-level threat,” Genos said. “We have to drop our frivolous investigations and save the world.”

“Genos, did you even read the description?” Saitama said, holding up his alert watch. “Says right here it’s a being taking control of people because of the cookies.”

Genos looked at his watch, eyes widening. “That is true…”

“I’m going to keep poking around – there’s got to be something in here that’ll help with that. It’d be better than just punching it to death.”

“How so?”

Saitama shrugged. “You should go help. I’m going to keep looking now that I have a good reason for breaking and entering.” He punched through several walls with one motion, finding the room filled with cookie farms, wizard towers, and the alchemy plant. “Ah, now we’re talking.”

“I hope you find something, master,” Genos said, taking off. He flew through a window, aiming both his hands at the Grandmatriarch. “ELDER BEING! TAKE THIS!”

The resulting onslaught of energy from within his arms was both impressive, terrifying, and would have taken out an entire city block if it had been aimed differently. As it was, the orange beam just cut a hole in the Grandmatriarch.

A hole that was quickly filled by cookies. The Grandmatriarch didn’t even turn to register his presence.

A few of the heroes under her control, however, did. A baseball bat hit him in the face, driving him to the ground.

The Grandmatriarchs marched across many USM worlds, transforming each one into their realm…

~~~

Allure paced. “We can’t leave the world to help… We don’t know how to fight the Grandmatriarchs…”

“I was bluffing about the eldritch assistance at the end there,” Thrackerzod said. “Nyarlathotep will probably find a way to screw with the Grandmatriarchs without direct combat, and Hastur doesn’t have that much power on his side. If it were just one, they’d definitely do something. But it’s not. So it’s just not worth it to them.”

“Think… Think… Think…” Allure said, smacking herself on the head. “What do w-” She stopped herself. She turned to Big Cookie, remembering that he existed. “You.”

“What about me?” he asked, stepping back from them out of fear.

Allure looked at him with sad, rather than angry eyes like the rest of the Sweeties. “Why?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to spies.”

“We’re probably about to die. The least you can do is explain why.”

He looked at her with uncertainty – but he knew she was right. The Grandmatriarchs would not allow the League to live. “…Because I didn’t realize what was happening.”

“…Care to explain?”

He put his arms behind his back and sighed. “The Big Cookie was the best thing to ever happen to me. I had found success through it – making endless cookies for eternity. So whenever it revealed to me another way to bring forth the cookies, I didn’t hesitate. The first hint something might have been wrong was the temples… Where cookies could be created through simple reverent thoughts. But there appeared to be no adverse effects, so I went on. I ignored the strange things that happened in the mines, the visitors from beyond the stars from the shipments… And when the portal was revealed to me, I didn’t even hesitate. I opened it up and got more cookies. I ignored all the news about the portals being the end of us all as people trying to defame me.” He paused.

Then he sighed. “No, that’s not true. I knew the portal to the cookieverse was basically a direct gateway to some kind of hell. I met the creatures from there that wanted to work for me, that wanted to make more cookies, that wanted to spread more cookies. They offered me deals that I kept taking, over and over, again and again, just to produce more cookies and more profit. I kept myself secluded while the world started to burn around me. I created the objects revealed beyond the portal – the antimatter facilities that would bring about atomic level disasters, the Prisms that watched everyone closely for a purpose I still don’t understand, and the chancemakers that… made million-to-one things happen every second. There may have been more – but the Grandmatriarchs were done letting the world ‘live’.” He threw his arms wide. “They turned it into this glorious thing, and sent me to another world to bring cookies to the multiverse. So I took my family and did exactly that.”

Allure looked into his eyes. “I know you aren’t really on their side.”

“Yes I am,” he spat, suddenly clamming up. “I am one with the cookies! I am Big Cookie!”

“You’re also Andrew Maddison,” Allure said, walking closer. “…Do you know how we got here? Aria took us. She found out we were spies, and decided that we could be the ones to stop what you were doing. She knew it was evil and had to end.”

“Aria wouldn’t…”

“She did,” Allure assured him. “I know she still loves you, I could see it in her eyes. But she couldn’t just go along with you. She saw what you had become, and hated it.” She looked deeply into his eyes. “Andrew. Do it for your daughter. Show her that her father is in there, willing to do anything for his girl.”

Andrew’s eyes softened considerably. “…There’s nothing I can do. The Grandmatriarchs always protect the ascension button.”

“Aren’t all the Grandmatriarchs attacking other universes right now?” Minna pointed out.

Andrew’s eyes widened. “That’s right…” He turned to the back of the room, where an elevator stood. “Come with me.”

They piled into the elevator and went up to the top of the Final Factory. They entered an almost exact replica of Andrew’s other office, except without the PhDs and awards, for they had been moved from here.

At the back wall was a large, red counter, displaying the number of cookies. The number had forty digits.

“That’s a lot of cookies,” Bot said.

“Yes,” Andrew said, staring at a large red button on his desk. “…This button was given to me by the Big Cookie long before the portal. It… It was a way to destroy all cookie and cookie secrets in an instant, reducing the cookie count and production to absolute zero. Every cookie the Grandmatriarchs draw power from – including the cookies in this world – will vanish in a process called ascension.”

“…Convenient,” Thrackerzod observed.

Andrew pointed to a large, golden horseshoe outside that was generating cookies from nothing. “That’s a Chancemaker. It manipulates probabilities so that cookies appear from quantum effects. As a result… Truly improbable things happen. Like the Grandmatriarchs forgetting to guard this button.” He hovered his hand over it. “…Only I can press it…”

“What are you waiting for!?” Squeaky blurted. “Press it?”

“Reduced to absolutely nothing…” Andrew said, his expression faltering. “No cookies, no factories, no workers, no kittens… Nothing will exist…”

Allure grabbed Andrew by the face. “You. Are. Not. The. Big. Cookie. You are Andrew Maddison. There’s more to you than just sitting around collecting cookies. You can do much, much more.”

Andrew held his hand over the button, shivering. “I can’t imagine myself with nothing…”

“Can you imagine what Aria will do to you if you don’t press it!?”

Andrew’s expression strained even further. He took a breath and lifted his hand into the air – and slammed it on the button.

Every cookie he had made that still existed in some fashion vanished in an instant.

The very factory they were standing in vanished – as well as all the cookie-flesh masses in the world. Earth was returned to existence. It was dead – a lifeless rock devoid of anything of purpose.

But the eldritch was gone. There were no cookies to draw power from.

In many other worlds, every Big Cookie cookie, factory, and secret vanished. The buildings that were only partially constructed out of cookie secrets collapsed in on themselves, reduced to rubble. The slaves to the Grandmatriarchs regained control of their minds and their bodies in one fell swoop – and the Grandmatriarchs themselves could no longer exist in the world without power to draw from. They were forced to retreat back to their home universe, one made entirely of cookies.

Genos managed to shoot one’s head off before it left. It felt good, even if he most likely didn’t kill it.

Back in the ruined Earth, Andrew stared at the wasteland. “…All because I couldn’t stop making cookies,” he said, taken aback by the desolation that had once been his home.

“But you stopped now,” Allure said, standing on her hind hooves so she could put a comforting hoof on his shoulder. “That’s all that matters.”

“Yeah… You’re right. You…” He held a hand to his eyes, trying to keep his tears in.

“Huh. I guess even ‘soulless’ company masterminds are people,” Bot said. “Who knew?”

“Mom did,” Minna said, smiling. “That’s why she needed to be here.”

“Let’s get you home,” Allure told Andrew. “Your family will want to see you.”

“…How am I going to support them?”

“You have five PhDs. You’ll think of something.”

Andrew blinked. “You know, I did go through an existential phase where I thought I was wasting my life mindlessly making more and more cookies… I had such potential.”

“Yeah. Time to make good use of that.”

~~~

Valentine extended a hand to Allure. “I must thank you for saving the USM.”

“Hey, it was the least we could do,” Allure said, shaking his hand.

“Naturally, you will be paid and rewarded far beyond what we had originally planned. I will personally see to it that you are seen as heroes in the eyes of the USM, despite your origin from within Merodi Universalis.”

“Thanks!” Allure said. “But I think we’re going to go home first.” She glanced on her back to look at the sleeping form of Minna. “It’s been a long day.”

“I will not stop you. I shall contact the mayor to arrange payment and honor.”

“Question. Why are you shaking?” Bot asked.

“The price of supercharge,” Tornado responded.

“Oh,” Bot said, not really understanding.

“C’mon Bot, let’s go,” Allure said. “I need a bed. And something to eat that isn’t a cookie.”

“Cookies will never be the same…” Squeaky said ominously.

They vanished, teleported back to Celestia City.

Tornado let out a sigh of relief.

Valentine turned to her. “What is it?”

“It didn’t end in one punch. Good.”

Valentine blinked. “…What?”

“Nothing you need to worry about. Just some… personal vindication. Of sorts.” She floated into the air. “…I think I’m going to lie down too. Have fun dealing with the collateral damage!”

Valentine turned to the wreckage of the local city block.

Less collateral damage than usual for this universe, considering. But there were other universes he needed to help…

It was going to be a long, long day.

~~~

Andrew Maddison had gone for a walk. He had met up with his family for a brief moment and they’d accepted him back with open arms. Aria had been so proud of him. She’d told him that she didn’t care about him having nothing – she had her own resources she could use. She had told him to stay put while she got him some things.

He didn’t stay put – he had told his wife he was going for a walk, and she’d seen that he needed to.

So here he was, at the wreckage of the Big Cookie factory in City G, the resting location of the Big Cookie. The Cookie that started it all. The source of his power.

With an expressionless face, he walked into the wreckage, careful not to step on something unstable. He walked to the back of the back, as if called to that point.

When he arrived, the ground in front of him flashed with color. The Big Cookie appeared in front of his face, glowing with an energy it had not had before. Andrew gaped – he knew that the Big Cookie was more powerful now. He could make even more cookies than before.

Yes, he could do it. He could just never build one of those portals; never chance the corruption of the Grandmatriarchs again. He would rebuild his cookie enterprise… He would have it all once again!

He reached out a finger to tap the cookie.

The ground slightly to his left exploded, revealing Saitama. “Right, so done with walking around in the basement.” He blinked, seeing Andrew and the Big Cookie. “That’s a big magic cookie.”

“Yes… It is.” Andrew said. “It’s the source of all my riches…”

“Oh, so it’s the center of the cookie conspiracy?”

“…I guess you could say that.”

“Good to know.” Saitama flexed his wrist. “Normal punch.”

He hit the Big Cookie – and shattered it to dust.

Andrew’s extended hand shook as his features twisted into disbelief. “But… But… But… I was about to get it all back… I made a mistake… I could never live without it…”

Saitama shrugged. “Hey, cookies aren’t everything.”

Andrew fell to his knees and shuddered. “All gone… I’ll never have it again… I need it…”

Saitama shook his head. “You’ll live.” He stretched and walked away. “I wonder if hot dogs are on sale today…”

He left a man tormented by the riches he used to have.

Comments

[prism heart]

And Saitama prevents a re-occurrence with..... 1 punch. *rimshots*

[Mattgenesis]

In the whole chapter you took me by surprise.

[FanOfMostEverything]

“…I want a large mountain of mashed potatoes covered in gravy,” Minna corrected.

This is important. It means something.
Of course, the MU probably wouldn't need to communicate with any species through a musical sequence, but the League is one of their better bets for pulling off such a feat.

“Bot, sanity check me. Should I be feeling proud or embarrassed?”

“Affirmative.”

You'd think after all these years, they'd learn to use exclusive ors with the robot.

“Your suit looks awesome,” Minna said.

Minna is best mystery human.

But I’ve read your files – you’re all good, honest, kind mares.

Thrackerzod raised a hoof. "I am the literal spawn of cosmic entities who look at you the same way you look at fleas."
"Which makes your file all the more impressive. And explains why it writhes on occasion."
"They do that, yes."

“Mom did,” Minna said, smiling. “That’s why she needed to be here.”

Hmm... Young lady, have you been reading the script?

When the Caped Baldy's involved, it always ends in one punch. The only question is when, where, and who/what.

Brilliant work with this one. Next time, we come to the other chapter of this arc that I've been dreading. Looking forward to it!

[Efadd]

Damn... Saitama is cruel... in the best possible way!

[Undeadking243]

Meanwhile somewhere else in the multiverse a budding capatalist opens his first lemonade stand.

[Blaze rod]

Currently 160 sexdecillion cookies baked and counting. I need to do the queenbeet strat again.

[Twilight Connor]

At least it wasn't Betty Crocker. That darned Batterwitch.

[Mini-Joe]

9469671
did you just make a friggin UHF reference? epic.

[FanOfMostEverything]

9472503
More like UHF made a Close Encounters of the Third Kind reference, but I can't fault your taste in movies. (And, to be fair, I reversed the order. )

[GMBlackjack]

9479372
Nos across the board, with the exception of Kingdom Hearts, which is sadly just a reference as I recall. Then again I may not be recalling correctly.

-GM, master of refs.

[GMBlackjack]

9479390
DIO does not make an appearance, but we do see Star Platinum Over Heaven later.

-GM, master of Jove.

[AppleTank]

9479372
Making requests for the Spheres is a crapshoot since most of the story is already planned out.

---

Cookie clicker, you absolute madman.

[Lab 39]

I waned to say this 2 chapters ago I thought the essence of eternity was too good to be true and not work but Corona does not do anything half baked.

[Icy Creation]

Big Cookie nodded. “At least you’re blunt about it. You are right; corruption and underhanded business are symptoms of reaching the top… in most cases. However, I assure you I am not one of those evil corporate masterminds. I’m the Big Cookie!” He let out a big laugh. “I live to feed people delectable pastries. I could raise my prices to gather more funds, but I don’t, because I don’t need to. I’m not a cheat.”

Everything he does is to make guards drop. Haven't seen one of those antagonists in a bit. Though I have no doubt he /is/ an antagonist.

[Icy Creation]

“...Mom, c’mon, I need to be on watch just like everyone else.”

Minna... She can't be human, can she?

[My name is R]

11089432
She is human. Probably. She's introduced at the end of Chapter 69: Love is in Bloom.

[Mixed Rhythm]

Currently at 130 Novemdecillion cookies, 94% achievements.

[RoboRed]

Minna is a precious bean and must absolutely be protected at all costs.