Derpy and the Quest for the Golden Muffin
Author's Note
Sorry in advance.
I Have No Regrets
It was another quiet and mundane day in Ponyville, and all was as it should have been. How can you tell? Because Derpy wanted muffins. Nothing about her routine changed. It was the island of certainty in the chaotic ocean of life. Derpy woke up, ate a muffin for breakfast, baked muffins, ate a muffin for lunch, went grocery shopping for more muffins, had some free time to snack on muffins, and then went to bed and started the whole process over again.
When her routine changed, the world was plunged into darkness and chaos. The day she forgot to add flour to her muffins was the time Nightmare Moon attacked. Didn’t preheat the oven? Discord attacked! Forgot to buy baking powder at the store? Tirek ravaged Ponyville! Yes indeed, differences in Derpy’s schedule were omens of death and destruction. This day would be one of those variations, but today was different. Derpy wanted to change up her schedule. What changed? How did Derpy break the terrifyingly necessary status-quo? She flipped to the wrong page in her muffin cookbook.
The mix-up of a lifetime started when Derpy opened her cookbook to start her day, when she opened up the page after her usual basic muffin recipe. Its title immediately grabbed her attention. Super Fluffy Golden Muffins! Derpy was immediately intrigued. A golden muffin? Super fluffy? Surely these were muffins fit for gods, not a lowly mortal such as Derpy! “The things you find in these cookbooks…” Derpy mused to herself. She had no idea that such fantastical recipes lay beyond her usual basic muffin one! Excited at prospect of dining upon a muffin made of gold, a muffin whose gold coating made it so delicious, that Derpy would never see muffins the same way again. A muffin so… Derpy snapped out of her daze when she caught herself drooling at the thought of such a heavenly muffin. Well, waste makes haste! Time to bake a muffin!
Ready to get started, Derpy looked at the ingredient list, and everything seemed pretty normal. Flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, an egg, milk, butter, and, wait…. Huh? Derpy was very confused. One of the ingredients was missing! It just said, “Finally, add a large helping of d̶i̶i̶u̶l̶g̶q̶l̶d̶o̶ on top of the muffin, and you’re done!” The ingredient was faded out and scribbled over. It had the word NEVER written over it in bright red pen. Derpy was angry and frustrated. She had never had to guess an ingredient before! What could it be?
Then it hit her. Duh! It’s a gold muffin, it’s missing gold! That must be it! But then something sad hit Derpy. I don’t have any gold. I won’t be able make the muffin! Derpy began to formulate a plan to obtain enough gold to create the great Golden Muffin. Surely the townsfolk will understand! After all, who would turn down the chance to aid in the creation of the Golden Muffin?
“You want all my what? No! I’m not giving you all of my gold possessions for some dumb muffin!” Filthy Rich yelled in Derpy’s face. He then slammed the door closed, leaving behind a very sad Derpy. I thought the rich gave to the less fortunate! I guess i’ll have to keep looking for someone who can envision the greatness of the Golden Muffin as I do! And yet, home after home, block after block, Derpy was refused. She was told that a muffin covered in gold was absurd. That it was inedible, a waste of time, a waste of money, and so on. Everyone dismissed the great Golden Muffin as an insane dream, but never Derpy. Derpy never gave up, and she finally came to the biggest and shiniest house of all. Twilight’s house. Oh boy did Twilight’s house get bigger! I wonder how much all that shiny stuff costs… Lost in her thoughts of the economics of crystal as a building material, she managed to lazily fly past the guards and up to Twilight’s door. Gosh, has her door always been this big? I hope she still has a doorbell. Puzzled, Derpy looked up and down the massive door, finally seeing a golden knocker towards the middle of the massive door. Cool! Twilight got one of those bangy-knocky thingies! I wanna try it out! Flying up to reach the massive golden knocker, Derpy latched onto it with her mouth, and pulled. The knocker didn’t even budge. She pulled again.
Now, you might think that at this point, all of Derpy’s teeth fell out, and she went home, but not so! Years of eating stale and burned muffins had made Derpy’s teeth stronger than steel, and she just kept pulling! Something had to give, and the golden knocker did. It clattered to the floor with a mighty crash, causing Twilight to rush outside.
“D-Derpy! What is all this? Why is one of my fake knockers broken, and why are my…? You know what? Forget it! What do you want?” Twilight stammered in disbelief and frustration at the unbelievably stupid mare.
“I need some gold! For a muffin!” Derpy said as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
“I swear, what is it with you and muffins? I just don’t care anymore…. Look, I have a lot of work to do today, and I can’t have you destroying my castle for a gold bar! Just take a piece of the fake knocker and go! It’s pure gold anyway!” Twilight said angrily. She then slammed the door shut on a now very happy Derpy.
I have my gold! Hooray! Now I need to melt it so I can cover my muffin! Derpy scratched her chin thoughtfully, trying to figure out how she could met a hunk of pure gold. “I know!” Derpy exclaimed. I’ll just use my oven! It always gets super hot! If it can burn muffins, then it can melt this gold hunk! Off Derpy went, heading back to her house to melt a piece of gold with her oven. Now, if Derpy had spent her life becoming an accomplished metalsmith, or just going the library and reading books on something other than muffins, Derpy would have realised that the melting point of gold was 1948F (1064C) and that her oven was sorely inadequate for the job. Alas, Derpy did not know this, and as soon as she made it home, she began heating up her oven to the highest temperature possible.
After a few minutes of waiting, Derpy dropped her hunk of gold into a casserole dish and shoved it into the oven. Then she waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. And yet, the gold stayed the exact same. Frustrated, Derpy put on her oven mitts, and tried to grab her casserole dish out of the oven. The temperature change from her room temperature oven mitts shattered the dish. Shards of glass clattered to the bottom of the oven, and Derpy jumped back for a moment. Grabbing a second pair of oven mitts, Derpy put them on on top of her other ones, and grabbed the gold hunk. As it began to burn through her oven mitts, Derpy panicked and dropped it into the sink.
Come on Derpy, think! What stops hot stuff from being hot? Water! Derpy was impressed by her stroke of brilliance, and turned on her sink to drench her burning hunk of gold in water. It was that that moment that Derpy realized that the gold piece had burned through the bottom of her sink, and was now setting her cabinet below on fire. It took Derpy a moment to realize what had just happened. “FIRE!!!!!!” Derpy screamed as she ran out of the house as fast as possible. She then proceeded to create as much panic as possible by running in circles and screaming “FIRE FIRE FIRE!!!!!” as much as possible. Everyone thought the crazy mailmare had gone off on one of her tangents again when her house exploded.
You see, when that casserole dish broke, the glass shards broke the gas lines that supplied the heating elements in her oven, but the cracks in the lines were very tiny, and not enough to create a fire hazard on their own. But when a fire was lit, oh boy was it an EXPLOSIVE reaction! However, Derpy broke out of her panic, realizing that her shot at the golden muffin was at stake. Racing into the ashes of her house, Derpy found her massive gold nugget. Melted gold nugget. Hoof-pumping in victory, Derpy rushed to find her secret emergency muffin stash safe under her bed. Clearing the rubble with super-pony speed, Derpy opened the safe, grabbed a muffin and brought it over to the pool of gold. Carefully positioning the muffin, Derpy rolled it through the gold puddle, thoroughly covering it with a fine sheen of gold. She then waited for it to roll out onto the other side, where she cooled it via a blast of air from her wings.
It was done. The godly golden muffin had finally been brought into physical form. Derpy picked it up, salivating at the thought of finally dining upon her labor of love. In one fell swoop, Derpy at the muffin whole, and collapsed to the ground. It was so good, she could barely think of anything but it's crunchy but soft texture, it’s perfect mix of sweet and starchy. The perfect everything that made it the one true muffin. She rubbed her belly and let out the most satisfying “Mmmmmm…” ever heard. That’s when her vision turned pure white, and she was lifted into the sky by a blinding light of the same color.
When her vision returned, Derpy was in a large orchard of beautiful trees, all with bright green leaves, and muffins growing on their branches. However, Derpy felt drawn towards the center of the orchard where the trees blocked her vision. When she pushed past the muffin trees and bushes, she came to a clearing of ponies, all made of muffin bowing before a golden muffin-pony who bore a crown and robes, along with a scepter that had a muffin on top of it.
It called out in a booming voice, “Ah, Derpy, you’re finally here. Come forth so I may do the honors.”
“What honors? I just ate a really good muffin, and now i’m confused.” Derpy gave the golden muffin-pony a strange look.
“For your service to muffin-kind, I now pronounce you: Muffin Queen of Equestria!” The golden muffin-pony took off his crown, and put it on upon Derpy’s head. He then handed Derpy his scepter and robes. Once Derpy donned the royal robes, she was encircled by yellow light, which brought her back to Equestria, where she awoke with royal jewelry and robes tailored to complement her appearance, and the muffin staff in hoof. But something was off. Her head felt like it had a bump on it. Feeling her head, she poked her hoof on something sharp, and recoiled backwards in pain. Yelping in shock, Derpy’s new horn let out a violent blast of yellow magic into the air, where it hit a bird and turned it into dozens of mini-muffins.
“Well that’s new.” Derpy said while biting her lip in embarrassment. However, she began to become aware of her surroundings. Burning surroundings. Yes, in her negligence, Derpy had left Ponyville in flames. Slowly burning to the ground, Derpy saw Twilight trying her best to put out fires as she surveyed the damage. Then she saw Derpy.
“YOU.” Twilight spat with venom as soon as she saw Derpy. “You’re the one who started this fire! How could you let this happen? This whole place is going to BURN TO THE GROUND because of your idiocy!” Then Twilight saw her horn. “Whaaa? How, wha- why..? AUUUUUGGHHH!” Twilight bellowed in rage, refusing to believe the crazy meltdown of her home that was occurring around her was real.
Scared and startled at Twilight’s outburst, Derpy fired another shot of magic on accident, and turned Twilight into muffins. “Oops. I just don’t know what went wrong!” Derpy said as she at one of the muffins and smiled at how remarkably good it tasted.
