Alex Lin had been walking for exactly seven minutes when he realized two things: first, he had no idea where he was going, and second, someone was following him.
The someone turned out to be Mina, who was keeping pace about ten feet behind him, her red scarf fluttering in a breeze that seemed to exist only around her. Every time Alex turned around, she'd be examining something fascinating—a street sign, a flower box, a particularly interesting piece of graffiti that read "BEWARE THE TUESDAY FISH."
"Are you going to keep following me?" Alex asked, stopping in front of a shop that sold "Mystical Cleaning Supplies and Existential Doubt."
"I'm not following you," Mina said, catching up. "I'm just going in the same direction."
"Which direction is that?"
"The direction you're going."
Alex stared at her through his mask. "That's literally the definition of following."
"Is it?" Mina smiled. "I thought it was the definition of coincidence."
In his head, Gramps snorted. "Kid, she's been following you since before you were born. Just roll with it."
"Before I was born?" Alex thought back.
"Long story. Ask me later when you're not standing in the middle of a street having a telepathic conversation."
Alex looked around and realized Gramps was right. People were staring at him again. A woman walking her dog had stopped to watch him. The dog was also staring, its head tilted like it was trying to solve a puzzle.
"Okay," Alex said to Mina. "If you're going to follow me, at least tell me where we're supposed to find this fruit cake."
"The Fabled Fruit Cake of Prophecy," Mina corrected. "And it's not somewhere we find. It's somewhere it finds us."
"That doesn't make sense."
"Very little does, once you become the Fool."
Alex was about to respond when his floating screen popped up again:
QUEST UPDATE: The Fruit Cake Hunt
Status: Wandering aimlessly
Helpful Hint: Try the bakery district
Warning: Prophecies may contain nuts
Side Quest Unlocked: "Avoid the Tuesday Fish" (????)
"The bakery district?" Alex said. "Where's that?"
"Follow the smell of yeast and broken dreams," Mina said helpfully.
"I don't know what that smells like."
"You will."
The Detective's Dilemma
Back at Café Luna, Detective Sam Wu was having the worst morning of his career. And that was saying something, because just last month he'd had to arrest a man who'd claimed his garden gnome was giving him stock tips.
"So let me get this straight," Sam said to Officer Chen, who was still grinning like someone had told her the world's best joke. "A man in a mask made a hot dog cart float, turned traffic lights into a disco, and somehow made an entire street full of people happy. And then he just... walked away?"
"Pretty much," Chen said. "Oh, and the cart's still floating. Jimmy's actually enjoying it. Says it's the best business he's had in years."
Sam looked down the street to where, sure enough, Jimmy's hot dog cart was hovering about four feet off the ground. Jimmy was serving customers from a stepladder, whistling a tune that Sam had never heard before but somehow knew all the words to.
"This is not normal," Sam muttered.
"Define normal," Chen said.
"Normal is when hot dog carts stay on the ground. Normal is when people don't glow. Normal is when—"
"When what, Sam?"
Sam looked at his notebook. Half the pages were filled with perfectly sensible observations about the masked man. The other half looked like they'd been written by someone who'd never seen reality before.
Subject exhibits impossible aura manipulation, he'd written. Caused spontaneous happiness in crowd. Possibly dangerous. Definitely interesting. Why do I want to buy him lunch?
"I need to follow him," Sam said.
"The masked guy?"
"Alex Lin. The Fool."
Chen raised an eyebrow. "You sure that's a good idea?"
"No," Sam said, closing his notebook. "But I've got a feeling that good ideas aren't going to help much anymore."
The Bakery District (Population: Flour and Chaos)
The bakery district smelled exactly like Mina had said it would—yeast and broken dreams, with a hint of cinnamon and existential crisis. It was a maze of narrow streets lined with shops that sold everything from "Bread That Tells the Future" to "Pastries for the Romantically Confused."
Alex and Mina wandered through the crowds, past bakers who were shouting about their daily specials in languages that probably didn't exist yesterday.
"Try the Reality Rolls!" one baker called out. "They taste like whatever you think they should taste like!"
"Nightmare Napoleons!" shouted another. "Guaranteed to give you interesting dreams!"
"Probability Pies! Results may vary!"
"This place is insane," Alex said.
"This place is Tuesday," Mina corrected. "It's always like this on Tuesday."
"It's Thursday."
"Is it?" Mina looked genuinely surprised. "Time moves differently in the bakery district. Something about all the yeast affecting the space-time continuum."
"That's not how yeast works."
"It's not how normal yeast works," Mina said. "But most of the bakers here use enchanted yeast. It's more reliable than regular yeast, but it has side effects."
"What kind of side effects?"
"Well, last week Mrs. Chen's sourdough starter achieved sentience and started writing poetry. Not bad poetry, either. It got published in the Literary Review."
Alex was about to respond when something caught his eye. Across the street, wedged between a shop selling "Philosophical Pretzels" and another advertising "Karma Cookies," was a small bakery with a hand-painted sign that read:
TEMPORAL TREATS
Baked Yesterday, Delivered Tomorrow
Fruit Cakes That See the Future
Satisfaction Guaranteed or Your Destiny Refunded
"Found it," Alex said.
"Found what?" Mina asked, then followed his gaze. "Oh. That's not going to be easy."
"Why not?"
"Because that's Mrs. Park's shop. And Mrs. Park doesn't like customers."
"She's a baker who doesn't like customers?"
"She's a baker who doesn't like people. There's a difference."
Alex looked at the shop more carefully. The windows were covered with newspapers from at least three different decades. The door had more locks than a bank vault. And there was a sign hanging in the window that read: "CLOSED. FOREVER. GO AWAY."
"Maybe she's just having a bad day," Alex said.
"She's been having a bad day for forty years," Mina said. "Ever since her husband left her for a woman who could make better croissants."
"That's... sad."
"It's tragic. But it's also why she makes the best fruit cakes in the city. Bitterness is a key ingredient."
Alex approached the shop door and knocked. Nothing happened. He knocked again. Still nothing.
"Mrs. Park?" he called out. "I'm looking for a fruit cake!"
"GO AWAY!" came a voice from inside. "I DON'T SELL TO PEOPLE!"
"I'm not people!" Alex called back. "I'm the Fool!"
There was a long pause. Then the sound of multiple locks being undone. The door opened just enough for a single eye to peer out.
"Prove it," said a voice that sounded like it had been arguing with the world for decades.
"How do I prove I'm the Fool?"
"Do something foolish."
Alex thought about this. Then he reached up and removed his mask.
The effect was immediate and dramatic. His face was... well, it was hard to describe. It looked like a normal face, but somehow more so. Like someone had taken the concept of "face" and made it into its own perfect version. His eyes were the same gold and brown, but without the mask, they seemed to glow with their own light.
But the really strange part was that everyone who looked at him immediately felt like they were looking at their oldest friend. The kind of friend who knew all your secrets and loved you anyway.
"Oh," said Mrs. Park, opening the door wider. "You're him. The one who makes people remember what it's like to be happy."
"I do that?"
"You just did." Mrs. Park smiled for the first time in forty years. "Come in. Both of you. I'll make tea."
Inside the Temporal Bakery
The inside of Mrs. Park's bakery was exactly what Alex had expected and nothing like what he'd imagined. It was bigger than it looked from outside, with shelves that seemed to go on forever and clocks that all showed different times. Some of the clocks were running backwards. One appeared to be running sideways.
"Don't mind the clocks," Mrs. Park said, bustling around behind the counter. "Time gets confused around prophetic baked goods. It's perfectly normal."
"Normal," Alex repeated, putting his mask back on. "Right."
Mrs. Park was a small woman with gray hair and flour-covered hands. She moved with the efficiency of someone who'd been baking for decades, but there was something different about her now. She kept humming under her breath and smiling at random moments.
"You want the Fabled Fruit Cake of Prophecy," she said, not asking. "I've been saving it for you."
"Saving it?"
"I baked it three years ago. It's been sitting in my special preservation box, waiting for the right moment." She gestured to a glass case in the corner. Inside was a single fruit cake that seemed to glow with its own inner light.
"It's beautiful," Mina said.
"It's also dangerous," Mrs. Park said. "This isn't just any fruit cake. This is the kind that shows you the future. And not the good parts of the future. The complicated parts."
"How complicated?" Alex asked.
"Well, the last person who ate one of my prophetic fruit cakes saw that he was going to become a successful businessman. So he quit his job and started a company. The company failed, he lost all his money, and he ended up living in a cardboard box under a bridge."
"That doesn't sound like a successful businessman."
"Ah, but that's where the prophecy got clever. Three years later, he invented a new type of cardboard that revolutionized the packaging industry. He became the most successful businessman in the city. He just had to live under a bridge for a while first."
Alex and Mina exchanged looks.
"So the prophecy came true," Alex said, "but not in the way he expected."
"Exactly. That's the thing about prophecies. They're technically accurate, but they have a terrible sense of timing."
"What do you think it'll show me?"
Mrs. Park shrugged. "Could be anything. Your destiny, your doom, your next grocery list. Prophecies are like cats—they do what they want, when they want, and they don't care if you understand."
The Arrival of Problems
That's when the front door exploded.
Not opened forcefully. Not kicked in. Actually exploded, in a shower of splinters and paperwork.
Six figures in gray suits marched through the smoking doorway. The Order of the Stern Bureaucrats had found them.
"Alex Lin," the lead figure said, his voice completely emotionless. "You are in violation of Reality Code 347: Unauthorized Use of Impossible Things. You are also in violation of Reality Code 156: Making People Happy Without a Permit. Please surrender your mask and report for processing."
"What if I don't want to be processed?" Alex asked.
"Choice is inefficient. Compliance is mandatory."
"You know," Alex said, his aura beginning to glow, "I'm getting really tired of people telling me what I have to do."
"Resistance is futile," the lead figure said.
"No," Alex said, "resistance is fun."
He reached into the display case and grabbed the Fabled Fruit Cake of Prophecy. "Mrs. Park, how long does it take for this to work?"
"About thirty seconds after you eat it," she said. "But I wouldn't recommend—"
Alex took a big bite.
The taste was... indescribable. Like Christmas morning and birthday cake and the last day of school all mixed together. But underneath that, there was something else. Something that tasted like tomorrow.
"Kid," Gramps said in his head, "this is either the best idea you've ever had or the worst."
"Probably both," Alex said.
That's when the visions started.
The Prophecy Unfolds
The world around Alex shifted and swirled like paint in water. He saw flashes of possible futures, all jumbled together:
Himself standing on a stage, addressing a crowd of thousands
A great battle between forces of order and chaos
Detective Sam Wu wearing a wizard's hat and looking confused
Mina dancing in a ballroom made of stars
A giant rubber duck floating down the main street
Mrs. Park's bakery becoming the most popular restaurant in the city
Himself, older and wiser, teaching a class full of students who all wore grinning masks
A world where magic and mundane lived side by side
And through it all, laughter. So much laughter.
But the vision that stood out most clearly was this: Alex, standing in a place that looked like a courtroom, but bigger and more important. Across from him stood a figure in robes that seemed to be made of pure order—perfectly straight lines and right angles. And between them, floating in the air, was a single question:
"What is the point of existence?"
And Alex, still wearing his grinning mask, answering: "To laugh at the absurdity of it all."
The vision faded, leaving Alex standing in the bakery, the fruit cake still in his hand. The six bureaucrats were frozen in place, their gray suits flickering like bad television reception.
"What did you see?" Mina asked.
"The future," Alex said. "Or at least, a future."
"And?"
Alex grinned behind his mask. "It's going to be interesting."
That's when Detective Sam Wu came crashing through the hole where the door used to be, his notebook in one hand and his gun in the other.
"Nobody move!" he shouted, then stopped and looked around. "What happened to the door?"
"Bureaucrats," Mrs. Park said, as if that explained everything.
"Oh," Sam said, putting his gun away. "That makes sense."
"It does?" Alex asked.
"Not really," Sam admitted. "But at this point, I'm just going with it."
The frozen bureaucrats suddenly started moving again, their gray suits solid once more.
"Processing interrupted," the lead figure said. "Recalibrating. Please stand by."
"I don't think so," Alex said. He raised his hand, and his aura exploded outward, filling the bakery with rainbow light. "I think it's time for you to go."
The bureaucrats looked at each other, then at Alex, then at the glowing fruit cake in his hand.
"This is highly irregular," the lead figure said, but he was already backing toward the door.
"Good," Alex said. "I like irregular."
The bureaucrats filed out through the hole in the wall, their gray suits looking somehow less gray than before.
"This matter is not closed," the lead figure called back. "We will return."
"I'll be waiting," Alex said.
New Alliances
After the bureaucrats left, the four of them stood in the destroyed bakery, looking at each other.
"So," Sam said, putting his notebook away, "what now?"
"Now," Alex said, "we figure out what that vision meant."
"What vision?" Sam asked.
"The one where I save the world by making jokes."
"You're going to save the world by making jokes?"
"Apparently."
Sam looked at his notebook, then at Alex, then at the floating clocks on the walls. "You know what? I believe you."
"Really?"
"No. But I'm going to help you anyway."
Mina smiled. "I told you he'd be useful."
"Hey," Sam said, "I'm standing right here."
"Sorry," Mina said. "I told you he'd be useful."
Mrs. Park clapped her hands. "Wonderful! I haven't had this much excitement since the Great Sourdough Rebellion of '89."
"The what now?" Alex asked.
"Long story. I'll tell you while I make more tea."
Alex looked around at his new companions—the mysterious woman who claimed to have been waiting for him, the detective who was willing to help even though he didn't understand what was happening, and the baker who made prophetic fruit cakes.
"Gramps," he thought, "is this what having friends feels like?"
"Kid," Gramps said, "I think you're about to find out."
Outside, the City of Shadows went about its business, unaware that in a small bakery in the district that smelled like yeast and broken dreams, a group of misfits had just formed an alliance that would change everything.
Or at least make everything more interesting.
Which, in the end, might be the same thing.