“Do you know the phrase ‘nothing can go wrong now?

Then you should die on a fire. With your hands cut off. And shoved up your-

Ahem! Well, anyways. You might think that was an overreaction. Oh, poor soul cursed to walk on this land, you couldn’t be more wrong.

You’ll see, at some point of life, when I started meddling with less earthly business like rebels and countries and more divine matters like… Joe (I seriously dislike that guy), I learned some things about the way our little world works. One of them, as it happens to be, is that Luck, Fate, Destiny or whatever you want to call it, isn’t a God. Nor a demon. It’s a bona-fide beast, with just enough consciousness to take pleasure from watching you sink deeper and deeper in a swirlpool of stinking shit.

Luckily, Karma always manages to stop it from tipping the scales too far.

Sometimes, that is before you go too deep.

Sometimes, it’s after.

Life is just about that, really…”

* ••••

Lawrence had forgotten how good it felt to sleep on his bed without any concerns. And it wasn’t that he didn’t have any, he was just too tired to care by now.

Later, he would curse himself for it.

He had gotten up pretty late. The sun was about to die for today, and Mikaella wasn’t home yet. He wasn’t worried about it. She knew how to watch her back. And in any case, he had lend her a smartwatch. He could track her position if the worst came to be.

For now, though, the thing worrying him the most was exactly how much she was spending. He lent her his wallet as a reward for covering his screw-up, and for her generally good job. He had warned her not to spend it all, but Heavens alone knew just how the concept of money worked in her head. Or if it did at all.

I wonder how she’s doing with Emma…

He couldn’t imagine her immediately feeling comfortable with a stranger, but then again, cookies were a big incentive for her to do anything, as Lawrence had found. And a sweet smile always helped. And Emma had both.

Regrettably for him, he wasn’t getting any of that. Instead, he would now have to give some serious thought to the problem in front of him.

He couldn’t hide from it any longer: he had to deal with it before it dealt with him.

“So let’s get to business shall we-?”

A sudden, penetrating beep interrupted him. He knew the sound. Mikaella’s smartwatch was off.

“Oh, FUCK!!!”

It seemed that life wasn’t letting him rest anytime soon.

* ••••

“More! More! I want MORE!!!”

Emma shivered at the merciless monster’s demands. She was afraid to look back. But she had to.

And sure enough, the ‘kinda hungry’ girl had downed her seventh round. Including but not limited to: fifteen pancakes with their correspondent maple syrup sauce, a dozen of chocolate-sparked cookies, three portions of muscatel icecream (topped with cream and cherries), six bars of almond chocolate, two cheesecakes, an apple pie, and a cake.

And it was all gone in what, twenty minutes?

She was used to children. They would sometimes come with their parents, asking for more sweets than what their belly could handle. She was most certainly not used to an overgrown kid like this. And yet, she just kept throwing money around, with a familiar enough wallet.

Maybe the daughter of a rich corporate? Hard to know. But she was seeing more money in one morning than all the profit she had made yesterday, and humility aside, the Clowdsweet wasn’t exactly a small business.

Even so, their stock was running low. Her sister would be troubled a lot if she had to make so much sweets before the rest of the regulars came. Should she close for today…? But then, all the regulars wouldn’t be able to get their coffee doze here…!

Ngh, so hard…!

She looked at the girl. No manners, no worries, just… eating everything she could with a happy smile on her face. Emma sighed. She does look like a good girl though. A troublesome, good girl. Go figure.

I guess I’ll just have to trouble sis a little more…

“Hey, pretty lady!”

Emma turned around to find the girl calling at her. She was used to some regulars calling her pretty, yes. It came with the business. She was also used to some… Undesirable customers harassing her. Her sis would deal with them, crushing any hope they could have of coming back. She was certainly not used to being called ‘pretty lady’ by a girl, let alone the fact that same girl was eating like she had some kind of bottomless abyss inside.

“How do you make sweets taste so good?!’

Oh, there it was. Actually, one of the reasons the Clowdsweet was popular was thanks to the unique flavor of their sweets. No matter how much you tried, you simply wouldn’t be able to replicate them. Unless you were her sis, of course.

Emma smiled. She looked around: no other customers right now. She picked a seat in the girl’s table and offered her some cookies, which she gladly accepted.

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“I actually don’t make these. That’s my sis. I’m the waitress, and I watch over the register box. She’s the real star: I bet you can’t find better sweets than hers!” Talking about her sis always brought up a big smile on her face. Emma was only one year older, but her sis was the one in charge of the business.

“But these are so good! Even the Chief can’t bake like this, and he is pretty good at it! When he doesn’t feel too tired to…”

Uhm? Chief? Is she talking about her father? That’s a weird name to call him…

Oh, well. She is a strange girl after all. I shouldn’t be surprised, really.

“So so so! Can you show me?!” A miracle of life, the girl actually stopped eating (because yes, she was eating while talking to her. If she ever met her father, Emma would have a few words with him. Who was teaching manners to this girl?). Instead, she was looking pleadingly at her. Breathing heavily.

“Show you? What do you mean?”

“I wanna make cookies! For the Chief! He’s always nice to me. I wanna make it up to him! Also, these cookies are the best!”

Emma chuckled. She wants to make cookies for her father? Well, she’s sweet… and weird. She’s talking like a little kid, but it feels more like she actually doesn’t know any other words. I’m seriously concerned about her education…

Emma decided to look out for her, for the time being. And have some words with her father.

“Sorry, I can’t do that” she said with an apologetic smile.

The girl ‘aww’-ed. “Is it some kind of secret recipe or something like that?”

“Well, yes, but actually, no. It’s… complicated. Sorry, I couldn’t teach you even if sis allowed me to.”

“Well that sucks… Oh, wait! Can you teach me how to bake regular cookies then?”

Well, that wasn’t that crazy at all.

“As a matter of fact, I can do that! But my sis can, too, and she’s better than me at baking, so it would be better if we asked her to teach you.”

“I’m sure you can bake great cookies too!”

Emma smiled even more. She was starting to like this girl.

Maybe she could drop around more often.

“Alright, let’s go to the back. I’ll introduce you to my sister. We’ll start from there.”

* ••••

Mia rolled her sleeves back, focusing on the dough before her. It was made from some kind of artificially grown berries, sold to countries all around the world for army rations. The taste was beyond awful, but the thing was 100% edible.

That was all she needed.

She sunk her hands deep in the dough. Her fingers stroked the harder bits, slowly massaging them into the desired texture. As her hands masterfully stroked the clay-like thing, she closed her eyes and focused harder.

This was edible. It was food. Therefore, she could make it better.

The base is useless. Nothing can be worked up from here. Both the taste and the presentation are awful.

Fortunately, and being a master at what she did, she didn’t really care. More artistic freedom for her, if anything.

Slowly, a picture formed in her head. A pie…? Yes. A lime pie. Crunchy. Acid. And sweet. The simpler the image, the better she could work from it.

“[Eye Candy]”

She opened her eyes, the image still perfectly clear on her mind. She grasped the dough tightly and stared at it with all the might of her eyes.

Anyone who ran into her at this point would have probably called a psychiatrist. And the police.

Instead, her eyes glowed red and gold… The purest colors of a candy. And a shower of light bathed the previously average, grey, sad dough, and turned it into something more. Something beautiful. The light faded, and in her hands laid…

A beautiful lime pie.

“Whew.” Mia wiped the sweat out of her forehead. The whole process took less than a second, but she had to it manually, one on one, and each time the concentration had to be perfect, or else the whole thing would be ruined. Others might say hers was an easy job. Oh, if only they knew…

Hero: Miangela Lane

[ Status ]

Rank: C

(17) Quests before rank-up

Reputation: 75% (Local)

Feature Points: 205

[ Meta-Ability ]

Sweet Child O’ Mine: Create special effect sweets at the cost of energy

She had never asked to be a Meta, let alone a Hero. It was… simply not a life for her. Fortunately, sweets she could do. Homemade candies ran in the family’s blood. So, she went on, registered as a Meta, turned down any job offers and set on with her big sister to run a café.

It was going pretty good for her.

“Alright, this batch is done.” She looked at the counter besides her, crammed with the best delicacies sugar could dream with. All of this was grey mush before she thought. She liked her job.

Though, sometimes, just sometimes, it was more than what she could deal with.

“If it wasn’t Emma telling me, I would have thrown a frying pan at her face already. What kind of monster can eat seven, and I’m talking about seven tables’ worth on sweets?” She looked at the freshly made batch. She could almost swear it was staring back at her, with the desolated eyes of a lamb in a slaughterhouse.

“If this goes on, I’ll have to drop a sleep candy in her water…” She wasn’t a fan of using her powers for anything other than cooking. But she had done it before. Like that time a couple of punks tried to inappropriately approach her big sister. She had made sure they would never look at a cracker with the same eyes.

She was musing on such thoughst when someone knocked on the door.

“Sis?” It was Emma. Was that blasphemous hellspawn asking for an eight serving?

“Yeah?”

“Can I come in for a second?”

Gracious Lord, she isn’t asking more food. Thanks heaven.

“Sure. Be careful, there’s knife rack stuck next to the door.”

“Okay.”

The door creaked open… Well, it didn’t. She made a point on keeping her local perfectly clean and maintained. So, the door silently opened, and Emma came in.

Which would have been fine per se. But she brought company.

There was a very serious-looking girl behind her.

“Who is this?”

“This is…” Emma paused and turned. “Actually, I never asked your name.”

“It’s Mika. I’ve been told you can teach me the art of baking cookies?”

What?

It seemed like her day had gotten all the more complicated.

* ••••

“Ptfffaaahahahahaha…!!! Seriously? Baking lessons?! Now that’s what I call character development!! Who would’ve said that child was going to develop a hobby of all things!”

Joe was nearly choking on his own laughter, which by the way would have made the day for a worrying amount of divine entities. He was peering at the orbiting globe and, as always, mocking the laws of common sense by doing so with a spyglass, of all things. One that even had crossed calves and a skull printed on the lens. As for how it didn’t stop him from looking through it, not even Heavens knew.

“I just hope she doesn’t develop an addiction to chocolate spark cookies” he said while munching on a chocolate spark cookie. “Like me.” The crumbles fell on his tunic and turned into little fairies, which happily buzzed around his hat. A pirate hat, of all things. A futile attempt from Joe to divert the attention of anyone who might have been observing him from the fact that he did not, in fact, have a chocolate spark cookies addiction by the beginning of the story.

“Still…”

His focus shifted from the Cloudsweet Café. Through the spyglass, a group of men in black could now be seen, heading to the direction he was previously looking at. Their unfriendly intentions were not hard to perceive.

“It looks like my champion is about to get into trouble. Real trouble, this time.”

Joe shook his top hat (yes, it had turned into a top hat) and the buzzing lights of the fairies disappeared. The hat was thrown into the void, and a lounge chair appeared before him. Joe laid down and waited.

And waited.

And waited…

And waited even more.

Because, even for an impatient God like him, even for Divine standards, what was about to come was a sight that was worth waiting for.

“What will our hero… nay, our villain do when faced against this danger? The death of a friend, or his own… it’s not completely out of the board.”

Still, Joe was not afraid. For even if he perished, there would be others.

And also…

“A Bearer of the Spark will not go down so easily.”