No time. No time for horror or guilt. The countdown on my wrist-manacle burned: [00:45...]. I skidded to a halt, my claws scraping deep, white grooves into the linoleum. There it was. The baking aisle. A cathedral of sugar and flour. Rows of little glass bottles with cheerful yellow caps. Vanilla Extract. Imitation. Pure. Mexican. Bourbon. And on the lower shelf, neat boxes of vanilla sugar, tubes containing whole vanilla beans like fragile, aromatic brown sticks of culinary gold.
I lunged, my claws scrabbling at the shelf. My fingers, clumsy in their chitin sheaths, closed over a tube of beans and a packet of sugar. They didn't pass through. They met resistance—the rough, papery texture of a vanilla bean pod inside its plastic tube, the crinkly, granular feel of a sugar packet. They had weight! They had substance! For a single, glorious, heart-stopping second, the mundane, sweet, profoundly complex scent of true vanilla—untainted by abyssal orchids, cosmic siphons, or trauma trades—filled my senses. It was the smell of home, of baking shows, of normalcy, of a flavor so simple it was a miracle. Why was it so fragile and hard to grasp? I look at my hands they were heavier the world felt like paper. Tears, real and hot, pricked at my eyes, absurdly.
My claws sank into the disintegrating vanilla pods. Each touch released puffs of golden pollen that crystallized mid-air into pearly STAUST text:
[NOSTALGIC ESSENCE EXTRACTED: 87% PURITY].
I scrambled, grabbing not five, but ten units—tubes, bottles, packets—stuffing them into the makeshift pouch my shrimp-pajama carapace formed at my belly. The countdown in my vision flickered emergency red:
The pseudopod on my wrist spasmed violently, a sickening, nauseating lurch that traveled up my arm into my shoulder socket. The countdown pulsed frantic, blood-red, the numbers blurring:
[00:32... 00:31...].
The borrowed BP were a fraying rope, a bridge of spun sugar over an infinite gorge, and NightSnack's investment was a hungry, event-horizon vortex pulling it all apart to claim its due. The vanilla scent in my nostrils began to warp, gaining a metallic, coppery undertone—the smell of blood in the air, of a deal turning sour.
The supermarket lights began to stutter, a frantic, epileptic strobe. White flash. Black flash. White flash. With each black flash, the illusion peeled back like a cheap vinyl sticker. For a nanosecond, I saw the barren, glowing sand of the bubble floor beneath the linoleum. I felt the cool, dense water instead of air. I saw Mr. Fin's massive, dark form instead of a ceiling.
Crystallized runes—
[DEBT COLLECTION IMMINENT]
shattered off from the cosmic clash between my borrowed reality and the waiting abyss. They fell like icy shrapnel, cascading down over me, clattering like frozen hail against my shrimp-plates before melting into trails of freezing steam that smelled of absolute zero, of cosmic bankruptcy, and of a deep-space regret so vast it had its own gravitational pull.
I stumbled backward, the tube of vanilla beans and the sugar packet clutched to my chest like holy relics ripped from a dying world. My claws left deep, frantic scratches in the linoleum as I scrambled down the aisle, away from the dissolving terror of the screaming woman, away from the glitching PA announcements, toward the front of the store. The world was tearing at the seams, reality screaming in two different keys, but the vanilla in my grasp was real. It had weight. It had scent. It was my ticket to something that wasn't failure.
"Just need to get back," I gasped, the words swallowed by the shuddering, glitching air that tasted of ozone and dying pixels. "Just need to—"
I rounded another corner, past a pyramid of canned beans that wobbled and morphed into a stack of giggling, tinny faces, and the world shifted.
The sterile grocery aisle didn't dissolve into abyss.
It transmuted.
The linoleum under my feet cracked and bubbled, its dull grey turning a warm, inviting golden brown, the texture becoming soft, spongy, and slightly springy. The fluorescent lights overhead melted and dripped like warm butter, solidifying mid-fall into crusty, gleaming loaves of bread—baguettes, brioche, sourdough boules—that hung from the ceiling like delicious stalactites. The air, once smelling of cleaner and fear, became overwhelmingly, wonderfully rich with the aroma of fresh-baked, buttery crust—a scent so delicious, so fundamentally good, it was dizzying, replacing the metallic panic in my mouth with the taste of warm carbohydrates.
And from every nook, from every transformed shelf, they emerged.
Crab Bread Troopers.
They were the size of my hand, each one a perfect, crusty dinner roll shaped like a hermit crab. Their bodies were golden-brown, flaky baguettes, their claws were buttery croissant-horns that glistened, and their many legs were crunchy breadsticks that tapped a rapid, marching tap-tap-tappa-tap rhythm on the now-spongy bread-floor. Their eyes were two shiny, black olive slices, glistening with militant zeal and a disturbing hint of cheerful devotion. They poured out in ranks of hundreds, then thousands, a marching army of delicious infantry from the oven of reality itself, scrambling from under bread-counters, emerging from open sacks of flour that now smelled like their nesting grounds.
As I stared, frozen in my sprint, the front line halted with a unified, crisp rustle-crunch. In perfect, crispy unison, two hundred thousand crab bread troopers snapped a breadstick-leg to their crusty foreheads in a salute. The sound was a soft, collective exhalation of baked perfection.
My heart hammered against my chitin, a frantic drum solo. I didn't know the protocol. I was a girl in shrimp pajamas holding stolen vanilla, facing a carb-based legion in a bread-transformed supermarket.
Slowly, I raised my free hand, the one not clutching my precious cargo, and gave a weak, shaky wave. "H-hello, troops," I stammered.
It was as if I'd thrown a switch.
A ripple went through the army, a wave of excited rustling. They didn't just acknowledge me; they venerated. The ones directly in my path scrambled aside with surprising agility, forming a perfect, respectful corridor through their ranks, leading deeper into the transmuted supermarket toward the distant, glowing exit signs. Their olive eyes tracked me with unwavering, savory devotion, their little breadstick legs quivering with what looked like excitement.
I gulped, the sound loud in my own ears. I didn't have time for this. The countdown on my wrist-glowing manacle pulsed:
[00:25... 00:24...].
But the corridor was there, and it led toward the back of the store—toward the exits, toward a way to solidify this memory, maybe toward a way to cement the vanilla into something I could take back.
I ran. My claws clicked and scraped on the soft bread-floor, leaving little dents that immediately puffed back up. As I passed, each rank of crab bread troopers saluted, their crusty forms snapping to attention. The rustle-crunch of their salute became the rhythm of my flight. Rustle-crunch-CLICK-scrape. Rustle-crunch-CLICK-scrape.
Then, from the ceiling, from the bread-loaf stalactites, a new image flickered to life. It was a giant, floating screen, like a supermarket promo TV advertising the week's specials, but its feed was from somewhere else entirely, bleeding through from a world being deliciously, absurdly conquered.
It showed a sun-drenched coastline, the sky a brilliant, terrifying blue. And swarming up the beaches, over the concrete seawalls, through beachside cafes where umbrellas were knocked over, was an endless tide of Crab Bread Troopers. Millions. Billions. A crustaceous, buttery tsunami of devotion. They weren't destroying. They were… presenting themselves.
The view cut to a frantic news desk. A human anchor, her makeup perfect but her eyes wide with apocalyptic disbelief, shouted into a microphone, the sound tinny and strained through the memory-scape's failing speakers.
[EARTH DEFENSE FORCE ALERT: MOBILIZING ALL RESERVES! 200,000 MILLION ANTI-ELDRITCH TROOPERS DEPLOYED! 5,000 SHRINE MAIDENS AND 2,400 SHAMANIC MASTERS ARE CONVERGING ON THE COASTAL BREACH! THE INVASION IS… IS BAKED GOODS! I REPEAT, THE PRIMARY INVASION VECTOR IS ARTISANAL CARBOHYDRATES!]
On the screen, the EDF opened fire. Lasers and plasma bolts sliced through the salt air, striking the advancing bread-crab hordes. The effect was not explosive. It was culinary. Struck troopers simply toasted to a perfect, darker golden brown, emitting a heavenly, irresistible scent of grilled bread and butter before crumbling into delicious, harmless croutons that littered the sand. Shrine maidens in white robes waved purification papers (ofuda) that, upon fluttering onto a trooper, simply buttered it lavishly with an invisible, celestial spread. Shamanic masters chanted and danced, causing a few troopers to rise into the air as levitating, expertly seasoned croutons that then rained down on the defenders, who instinctively caught and, in their shock, sometimes ate them.
The crab bread tide was unstoppable. Not through violence, but through sheer, overwhelming delectability. They weren't attacking. They were presenting themselves for consumption. The screen showed a squad of human soldiers, their weapons lowered, staring in confused, ravenous hunger as a battalion of troopers marched up and piled themselves neatly at the soldiers' feet, their olive eyes pleading to be tasted.
A new banner scrolled across the bottom of the screen in cheerful, market-friendly font:
[THREE BILLION CRAB BREAD TROOPERS THEY DEMAND TO BE EATEN.]
A grizzled EDF general, his face etched with the strain of defending reality from the absurd, appeared in a split-screen. He roared, spittle flying, "
[NO! WE CAN'T EAT MORE! THEY ARE TOO DELICIOUS! THEY'RE CLOGGING OUR LOGISTICAL CHAIN WITH SATIETY! FALL BACK! FALL BACK AND RESIST THE TEMPTATION!]
The scene shifted again. The crab bread tide had reached a major city. The towering UN building was surrounded. But the troopers weren't scaling it. They were building. Using their own bodies as bricks, they were constructing a massive, spiraling ramp of golden, flaky pastry around the glass-and-steel tower, a delicious siege staircase leading to the top, a gesture of edible diplomacy.
And at the shores, a new front opened. The screen showed a flock of ordinary seagulls, drawn by the incredible scent. They swooped down, shrieking, and began to feast on the crab bread troopers. The troopers didn't fight back. They celebrated. They marched in orderly lines directly into the seagulls' beaks, their little breadstick legs waving a happy, final farewell. The seagulls, growing fat and sleepy, became living, avian transports, flying off with bellyfuls of loyal soldiers to distribute them inland.
I skidded to a halt, panting, at the end of the bread-trooper corridor. It opened into the store's lobby. The automatic doors were there, but beyond them wasn't a parking lot. It was a swirling, chaotic portal of conflicting light and sound—the frayed edge of the memory-scape, the way back to the bubble. The linoleum was reasserting itself here, the bread-floor crumbling back into tile at the threshold.
[EARTH DEFENSE FORCE ALERT: THE ORACLE GOT THE READING. NEW THREAT LEVEL EXA ENTITY CLASSIFIED! OPEN LINE – BEEP!]
But blocking the doors was a single, small figure.
[ORACLE PRIME: THE EVER RICE IS COMING! THE ENDER OF HUNGER THE ORPHAN OF THE DEEP!
A boy. Maybe eight years old. He wore shorts and a t-shirt that was too big, and his eyes were wide, not with terror like the woman's, but with a stunned, overwhelming wonder. He was holding something. One of the crab bread troopers. It sat calmly in his palm, its olive eyes looking up at him, its croissant-claws held politely still.
He saw me. He looked from the bread-crab in his hand, to my shrimp-armor, to the tube of vanilla beans I held like a lifeline against my chest.
He didn't scream. He pointed a small, slightly dirty finger at the trooper.
"Did you make these?" he whispered, his voice full of awe, cutting through the distant sounds of chaos and the buzzing of the dying scape.
The countdown on my wrist blared, the numbers burning:
[00:08... 00:07...].
The world was vibrating, the bread-floor turning back to linoleum, the ceiling loaves reverting to flickering, stuttering lights. The corridor of troopers behind me began to crumble into piles of fresh, warm breadcrumbs that lost their shape and scent. The vanilla in my hand felt heavier, more real, as everything else became less so.
I had no time. No BP to extend this. No way to explain to a child about cosmic debts and emotional art.
I looked at the boy's hopeful, hungry face, lit by the dying glow of a miraculous, edible invasion. I looked at the vanilla in my claw. The vanilla I needed. The vanilla that was my only reason for being here, my ransom note to a hungry god.
I made a choice.
I took one stumbling step forward on the reverting floor, reached out with my free claw, and gently plucked the crab bread trooper from his hand. It was still warm, faintly buttery. The boy's face fell for an instant, a flicker of loss in his wonder-filled eyes.
Then, I did something else. I couldn't give him the vanilla. That was my mission. My debt. My impossible ingredient. It was tied to my soul's anchor.
But I was an Emotional Artist. However briefly. However dangerously.
I focused on the trooper in my claw. Not on hunger, but on the memory of a treat. The simple, uncomplicated joy of a sweet, unexpected gift, given just because. I poured the feeling into the bread—the ghost of a birthday cupcake handed to you by a friend, the shared, secret happiness of a surprise dessert found in your lunchbox. I pushed the warmth of the memory-kitchen, the safety of those guiding hands, through my claw and into the carb-based soldier.
The crab bread trooper in my hand changed. Its golden crust shimmered, taking on a faint, sugary glaze that sparkled under the flickering lights. The savory-buttery aroma coming from it shifted, sweetened, becoming vanilla-kissed and celebratory. It was still bread, but now it was special. A communion roll for a moment of kindness.
I shoved it back into the boy's waiting hand.
"Here," I breathed, the word almost lost in the rending sound of the memory-scape collapsing, in the final, screaming buzz of the countdown. "A better one."
I didn't wait to see his reaction. I turned and threw myself through the dissolving automatic doors, into the blinding, soundless maelstrom of light that was the gateway back, the tube of vanilla beans held tight against my pounding, terrified, hopeful heart.
The last thing I saw from the crumbling supermarket, the last fragment of borrowed reality, was the boy, standing amid the fading crumbs and returning fluorescent glare, staring at the glazed, sweet-smelling bread-crab in his hand. A small, miraculous, utterly human smile broke across his face, a tiny point of light in the unraveling gloom.
Then, the world ripped apart.
I landed on my back in the warm, glowing sand of the bubble. The impact knocked the air from my lungs in a pained oof. The silence was immediate, profound, and heavy—a deafening absence after the supermarket's chaotic hum of lights, PA systems, and marching breadsticks. The dense, briny water was a shock, a thick blanket after the thin, processed air.
The gelatinous blob's pseudopod unwrapped from my wrist with a final, exhausted schlup, the countdown vanishing from my skin, leaving only a faint, circular imprint that tingled. The pseudopod itself looked frayed, thin, and translucent, drained of vitality.
Above me, STAUST's pane was whole again, the crack sealed, but it was dim, its light feeble, as if recovering from a massive drain. The pearly white text scrolled slowly, wearily, each line appearing with a tired lag:
[DEMO MODE TERMINATED.]
[DURATION: 00:59. BUBBLEPOINTS CONSUMED: 1,000.]
[DEBT LIEN CONFIRMED AND ACTIVATED. COLLATERAL (ARTIST-CLASS CONCEPTUAL ANCHOR) NOW PLEDGED TO USER NIGHTSNACK.]
[ITEM RETRIEVAL: SUCCESSFUL.]
I pushed myself up on trembling arms, sand sticking to my chitin plates. Clutched in my claw, cool and solid and undeniably real, was the plastic tube. Inside, I could see the dark, slender, precious shape of a single vanilla bean. Next to it, the sugar packet, its paper now slightly damp from the abyssal moisture, but intact.
I had done it. I had my vanilla.
The cost of it—the lien on my very creativity, the terrifying glimpse of a world invaded by my own desperate nostalgia—settled onto my shoulders like Mr. Fin's shadow-veil, but cold and sharp.
I looked at the vanilla, then at the weary system text, then at the vast, silent shark whose fin was still rigid with warning.
I had my ingredient. Now I had to cook something worthy of the debt.