Zek had been waiting for this all night long. He had slept through the morning so he hadn't bothered waiting then, but it was about lunch time now so he was back to waiting for it.

Pie. He wanted pie.

So he made his way to his fifth favorite bakery, but his third favorite pie shop. He would've gone to his favorite but it has just closed for remodeling and his second favorite pie shop was in Canada and Zek didn't feeling crossing the border for a second time in 24 hours.

So it was Pie Shop #3, Luterrio's Bakery.

Zek already had a napkin tucked into his shirt collar (which looked amazing in contrast to his blue shirt, tastefully ripped jeans, black trench coat, fingerless gloves, and combat boots) and he pushed the doors open to the bakery and opened his mouth to shout his order...

When a wave of miniature pies with tiny little pie slices for legs bowled him over and trampled him as they escaped into the streets.

"What fresh Heaven is this?!" Zek screamed before the spieders covered him completely in their sudden swarm and rush to escape the bakery.

The address was someone she was already happened, which was convenient, and infuriating. She had been on her way to lunch. Then the call came. Pie-orities changed. Sorry. Priorities.

Pie shop. Loose pies. Crawling?! Concerned citizen report. Super.
She was nearest. It was her. So she went.

That was not a pie monster growling. Her stomach demanded she eat something. “Those?” It seemed to ask.

“No floor pie”, her mind insisted.

Her stomach was saddened by the loss. Something else inside of her laughed at the idiocy.

But what to do?!

She was at the entrance of the bakery, pie things rushing past, between her legs. A booted foot stomped one. There was a guy on the floor, covered in pies.

“Lucky,” she murmured.

Pie no clothes. Anything she did, she would needed to do with her own. Did she let the pie out , or keep what she could within the bakery? What were the pie outside doing? That would inform her decision. For the moment, she pulled a leather glove free of a pocket, and filled it with a hand construct. She started swiping at floor pots as they rushed her legs.

“Why can’t I hold all these pies?!”

One of the spieders stepped into Zek's mouth and he reflexively bit the leg off. It was delicious and warm. Almost too warm. Fresh-from-the-oven warm. It really needed some ice cream but zek didn't have time to go find any because the spieder immediately convulsed and the top crust opened up like a hinged lid and the escaping steam sounded a lot like a hiss of pain.

Then the spieder vomited scalding hot apple pie filling on Zek's face.

"Ahhhh!" he screamed as he smacked the spieder off his face, smashing it into the wall. This only seemed to make things worse as more and pies started targeting him, unleashing very-hot payloads at him. Cherry spieders began shooting cherries at him while a rhubarb spider stabbed him with a rhubarb sprout.

The spieders in the street were starting to go berserk too. There were already hundreds of them out there, spreading out into smaller groups that were swarming cars, objects, and pedestrians. A banana cream spieder flung itself at a woman's face in an attempt to suffocate her. A key lime spieder broke into a car and started it up. A trio of chocolate spieders formed a puddle on the ground that made another a car spin out of control.

It was rapidly becoming a disaster of epiec portions!

The question was, why was this happening?

The car was being driven by pie. Weird. Dangerous. Inexplicable. Why?

A banana cream pie hit a woman in the face, and was trying to choke her as she clawed at it desperately. Why?

A bunch of pies made an oil slick type effect, somehow. What was the goal here? To create a multi-car pie-le up?!

Pile-up. Jesus.

Why?

Mutant, mystic, or other? What was the cause? Amelia could try and be everywhere at once, try and stomp all these pies, save the cars from careening, sop up the puddle, and so on and so forth, but— what was the root of the mayhem? With that thought on her mind, the Super agent strode towards the back room of the bakery.

“Requesting backup,” she said into a communication device.

As she passed the guy on the floor getting hit by very messy— she stopped that line of thought. She was not going to reference what the pie splatter reminded her of. Let’s keep this rated G, for general audiences.

A near-invisible construct that looked like a see-through hand flew out with a thrust of her arm. It flew to their collar, and yoinked the person out and away from the pies, across the floor of the bakery.

She was uncertain why she was helping this one in familiar. Maybe they looked familiar. A brief meeting moment, in her memory. Fleeting. She did not outright remember him from the mansion fight. It had been a very busy fight. But she kicked a pie off his chest, all the same. And offered him her hand.

A pie flew out at the outstretched arm. She dusted it off with her gloved construct. Bop.

“Come with me if you want to leave.” She said. “I think maybe there’s someone in the back making this mess.”

Outside, the pie-driven car was doing donuts in the street. Because why not?

Salvation!

Zek's gloved hand met the woman's gloved hand and he pulled himself to his feet and barely avoided slipping and falling on pie guts. "I mean, I feel like maybe leaving isn't the best idea," he said with a smirk. He stomped on another spieder and then another, spewing pie innards everywhere.

For once Zek was torn. Normally he loved pie all the time, but normally pie didn't attack him.

Wait a second. "Wait a second," Zek said as something registered. "You think someone is back there doing this nonsense to perfect good pies?!" His eyes grew big for a moment before he started glaring. His eyes started glowing with red light and he held out a hand. A white orb appeared and Zek smashed the orb into open air, where it became a small portal. He stuck an arm through it and into a locker in Zekworld, where he snagged a baseball bat and pulled it out, just in time to knock another banana cream pie out of the air before it could try suffocating him too.

As screams and chaos filled the the streets, Zek gave this random woman a deranged smile. "Then let's go pay this Pied Piper a visit!"

At first, the guy did not get it. Did not think leaving was the best idea. He stomped on some pies, got a surprise. Filling didn’t fill the pies any more, it really only filled the floor. But then, it clicked. The idea in his head, it sticked.

He went ‘wait a tick! Someone’s ruining these pies?! What a dick!’

…. Not in those words. But you follow.

He did not wallow. The idea did not make him sad, it did not, it made him mad. Temper, hot. Then he did something very mutant, and made a hole in reality. To produce something for pie fatality?

A baseball bat, now how ‘bout that? Cream pie went splat, in no time, it was flat.

Amelia snagged a chair from the room and started swinging it at pies to clear a path to the back.

“I’ll have you know, the pied piper wasn’t a very sweet individual. He was the pied piper of HAMlin, you know?” She bantered. “We’re lucky we haven’t seen any—“

As they went through a doorway into the next room, a projectile zoom zoom zoomed to impact on the wall next to her. She narrowly ducked the—

“Meat pies!” She swore.

The new room was a meat pie war room. Which, as we all know, is the worst kind of pie. What kind unsavory person was this person?!

"Meat pies? MEAT PIES?!?!" Zek yelled as a new onslaught began occurring in the next room. "Why would you jinx us!" he complained loudly at the woman. He swung the bat several times and with a Wham, Bam, Splat, took out three meat pies just like that.

"Leave the bantering to the professionals!" Zek said as another meat pie bit the dust. Pitching was generally more Zek's thing, but he was pretty good as a hitter too.

These meat pies were much bigger pies. At least ten inches across. They were a lot thicker too, heavier. One could even say...meatier.

"These pies are a lot meatier than the ones outside!" Zek said as he fought off the advances of another half dozen meat pies. And was it just his imagine or did some of the meat seem...a a little more than rare?

Zek took a quick moment to glance around and he spied another door. "Hey!" he shouted at his comrade in harms, "Is that the kitchen?" he pointed to the door. "Check out the kitchen. Whoever is doing this is probably in there!"

Okay okay okay she had learned her lesson. Amelia sauntered into the room, sighing as she used her leather glove hand construct to punch pies from out of the air.

This would take some cleaning. Even with her imbued element, they might never stop smelling of pie. What cruel fate, this was.

Shepard’s pie, minced meat, bacon and onion tartlets, with tomato jam.

The man was battering the pies. She was feeling batteted as she bobbed, weaved, and let her leather duster tank the impacts of some pies with its enchantment.

“%#^! &)&&! ass fnk!” She swore.

One of the pies, Gordon Ramsay, would have said was dnking raw, you sandwich. They weren’t giving these pies enough time to cook. She would have to get the duster dry cleaned after this.

“Yeah, okay, doorway. I’m gonna give whoever is behind this the rough side of my—“

A tongue meat pie flew at her face. She dove to the side, and rolled out of the way of the thing. Then crawled through the doorway, into the kitchen.

—

Inside the kitchen, there was a man in an oversized chef’s hat, and he said—

"--mahurgandy burgandy lurgandy durgendy!"

The man, whose big bulbous noise and massive bushy mustache with equally massive bushy eyebrow that took up virtually all of his face screamed at the intruder. Zek popped his head in the doorway and decided was suddenly in the mood for a chef's cooking from maybe a Swedish place.

Then the tongue pie that Zek's partner had effortlessly dodged smashed into Zek's face and began licking him.

"Bleh, I've been licked by a pie! Get some iodine, get some hot water, get some....salt!" Zek began screaming before he smacked his head (and the pie) into the doorframe. THe pie burst and his nose only got a little bloodied.

But in side the kitchen things were getting worse. As the man in the chef's hat began waving his hands in fury and gibberish, the pies started moving almost as if they were being puppeted. A large group of pies began to form a pile, writhing all over each other and some of them separating into slices until...a beast emerged.

It's head was like a giant pie the size of a hula hoop with eight massive cherries like eyes dotting its surface. Two slices of pie like mandible jutted out from under the head.

More pies banded togethed to form a segmented body that stretched nearly half a dozen feet behind the head, even as tringular slices formed four seconds of spidery legs. Finally, a tail of crust and meat reared up in an arcing curve over the dessert demon's back, a massive meat cleaver embedded in the end like a stinger.

"It's a scor-pie-on!" Zek said before charging it straight on.

Of all the things Amelia Had expected the bed to say, that had not even been on the list. It was the most

Of all time.

She took a moment to recover from it as the word guy took a meat pot to the face. And went full Lucy from Charlie Brown. She got too her feet while He was complaining.

The pies were doing something. Something odd. She could not even. What was— were they coming together to form—?

?!

!!!!

>> “It’s a scor-pie-on!" Zek said before charging it straight on.

“You’re doing to hell,” Amelia found herself muttering. It was not really clear if she meant the monster, or the thing made of pies.

What? Clearly only monsters made puns that bad. Thus,

Well now what did she do to the pie?

She thrust a hand out, and a translucent blueberry colored hand appeared across the room, in front of chefs face. It latched onto the chef hat, and pulled it down over chefs eyes. She made a fist with her other hand, and—

Another construct, a jet black hand, started forcefully punching chef in the gut.

Amelia stopped, face locked in a look of shock. She stared at her clenched fist. She had not made that construct. She only had one active thing. She had been about to, but—

She got the sedation of laughter in the back of her mind. What the hell?!!

—

“Blork blork blurk!!” Chef screamed.

He was getting punched in the guts real good. Tenderized. It was not Swedish, but he suddenly had a hankering for tripe.

—

Amelia unclenched her fist. She hauled back her leg, and summoned a blueberry colored construct shaped like a boot.

“Sweep the leg,” She stated. The construct mirrored her motion to do just that.

—

“Boof,” chef fell on his side. He was not having a good day.

If Zek hadn't been covered in pie guts or hadn't been in a food rage, he might have considered more efficient ways of dealing with his problems. Like with Molotov cocktails or just balling the scor-pie-on until he could deal with it later. Like by releasing it in front of a train. But those actions, while immensely satisfying, weren't quite as viscerally fulfilling.

And speaking of filling.

"Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrr!" Zek cried as he swung the baseball bat and exploded a pincer-pie. Then he slipped on a tiny pie slice and his foot flew out from under him and he landed on his back again.

"Aaaaarrrrrr!" he cried, this time in pain.

Then the second pincer-pie from the scor-pie-on clamped down on the bat and Zek squeaked. "OH no you don't!" he said as he grabbed the top end as well.

A tug-o-war began and for a few seconds, Zek thought he was winning.

Then the cleaver-wielding tailed slashed down and nearly slice an ear off.

"Yipe!" Zek said, his eyes nearly bulging out of his head. He abruptly let go of the bat and the scor-pie-on stumbled back a couple of feet with the sudden release. Zek took advantage of the moment to roll away from the side, form a white ball of light in his hand, and then smash it onto the floor, forming a Zekworld portal just in time for him to roll through it and away from imminent danger. Tee portal vanished behind him.

Baseball bat guy went full pirate. Lots of grunts and roars with the letter R in prominence. He fought and fought and wrestled with the pie, and when she turned away for a second, when her focus snapped back, he was absent.

But what was going on with the extra construct? That was a bit more important. As her max was 2, and this was a 3rd, and she was not controlling it, this seemed like her power was going a bit haywire. She had a hand and a boot, there was a second hand. And—

The jet black hand grabbed the hat and wrapped it around the head more, then thumped the mad chef’s noggin into the floor. And whump, just like that, all the pies got a whole less animated.

She turned and snagged a kitchen knife from a black, to hack off the scor-pie-on’s tail, but by the time she had turned back to the thing, it was falling to pieces.

Pie-ces, Zek. Pie-ces.

Laughter sensation again, back of head. Black construct vanished. She dismissed the other two. Started cuffing the mad chef. Super business, yes.

Yes, she carried around handcuffs. Exes loved her.

Zek fell up into the air above the floor of the home team locker room of Zekworld, as the portal in Dullworld didn't have to match up with directions in Zek's Way Better World. He pulled himself to his feet, grabbed another baseball bat (this time a solid oak bat) and threw another white ball in front of him. He leaped through the corresponding portal and emerged in Dullworld falling from the ceiling onto the scor-pie-on's back.

Which mean Zek smashed bodily into a pile of pies and a meat cleaver.

THWACABLAT!

Fruit and meat filling exploded outward and Zek resigned himself to forever being covered in pie.

Which wasn't a bad life, honestly.

But the dessert demon was dead. Zek groaned and pulled himself to his knees. He saw the eye-covered pie that had served as the creature's head and reach over and took a handful of it. He crammed it into his mouth. Cherries. Delish.

So now red filling covered his face and cherries were starting to drip onto his shirt and trench coat, which were already all covered with every kind of pie imaginable. He blinked at the woman who now had handcuffs.

The chef looked beaten up, too. Huh. Darn. Zek had missed the show. But at least he now had non-murderous pie. Which reminded him.

He dropped a glowing yellow orb onto a pile of pies by him and they vanished. He'd need to put them in cold storage later.

"Hey," he said around the cherry pie to the woman who looked familiar in an entirely forgettable way. "You see any cakes around here?"

Because the sound effects bore repeating

THWACABLAT!

Beautiful sound, really. The way the various sounds blended to form pain… it was worth appreciating did a moment, as Amelia rushed to look at the fallen man.

The man mourned, messy, meandering, moving himself to his standing position. Grunting, gruesome in his red visage. She took stock. Blood, no. Cherries, yes. He stuffed a handful into his mouth. Not injured, then. Unless head trauma.

He mentioned cakes. Now. Of all times. Definitely head trauma….

“Over there,” a gesture, in a direction. Vague. An impressive, difficult-looking tiered cake of the wedding variety. Elaborate, with… turtles on top, doing martial arts on each level. A redhead woman in a white wedding jump suit was with a humanoid turtle, obviously a mutant of some kind. He wore an orange tux and mask. A humanoid rat was officiating, by the miniature wedding arch on the final tier. Probably what caused the murderous pie themed mental breakdown. She had seen him make pies vanish. Could he please….?

“You look dressed for pie-gh society. Enjoy.”

Amelia went and recited the chefs rights. Everything about what they had done lately seemed illegal.

She felt like she were losing her mind.

The woman pointed Zek to cake. It was a big cake. A big, beautiful cake. It was the cake of dreams, some nightmares, and everything in between. The frosting alone looked like it was capable of inducing diabetic comas and Zek hurriedly swallowed the cherry pie in his mouth.

"Thank you most kindly!" Zek said to the woman and then promptly forgot all about her or why he was even in the room to begin with. He had pies, now he had cake in sight. And it was so glorious!

Glowing golden light appearing in his hands as he reverently approached the cake and slowly smashed the ball into it, making it vanish.

Then, dripping pie guts with every step, Zek trotted back to the front room of the store and beelined to the cash register. He dropped a twenty dollar bill on the register as well as half an apple. Then he went back and hopped on a counter as he ate pie and listened to the woman chew the chef out.

All in all, it was a great time.