(OPB) BAKUDA’S BIG MISTAKE

Bakuda had a plan.

Not a normal villain plan—oh no.

This was art. This was madness. This was a doctoral thesis in terrain violation dressed up as a minefield.

She wasn’t kidding. The ground ahead of her was laced with every exotic explosive her deranged, hyper-intelligent brain could sketch into existence during an over-caffeinated fugue state:

• Quantum displacement mines. Step wrong and find your liver relocated to 1843 while your brain is in 1970.

• Localized time-loop mines. Perfect for trapping capes in a ten-second, ever-lasting loop of regret and suffering.

• One mine that just played Taylor Swift forever. She didn’t even remember installing that one. It might have been a cry for help.

She called it, Operation: Bald Stopper.

Because if there was one thing she hated more than having her intelligence questioned, it was the hoodie-wearing, chrome-domed cryptid who’d been punching her colleagues into medically concerning altitudes.

So Bakuda cackled, standing proud atop a stolen van, arms spread wide as she surveyed her work. 

Then, with dramatic flourish, she flipped the switch.

The mines pulsed online. Light shimmered across the field. 

She trembled with excitement, grinning now. “Let’s see you walk through this, Baldman.”

And then—Taylor took a step forward.

One foot down.

Then another.

And another.

She walked straight into the heart of the kill zone—unbothered, unhurried, like she was strolling through a park.

No trying to dodge. No tactical pauses to ascertain where a landmine was buried. Just unstoppable momentum wrapped in apathy.

At one point, a mine tried to drag her into a recursive Taylor Swift moment of terrible pop lyrics and psychological decay. She glanced at it.

And kicked it.

It exploded in shame.

Another created a bubble field that should have trapped her in an endlessly repeating Tuesday at 10:07 p.m. Taylor passed through it. Her hoodie fluttered. That was it.

From her rooftop perch, Bakuda froze. Her eyes were wide behind her mask. 

“Th-that’s not—how is she—why is she drinking a juice box right now?!”

And indeed, Taylor sipped from a juice box. Apple.

Sadly, it melted in her hand as she crossed the last mine, steam rising off the foil. She sighed.

“That was my last one.”

Bakuda was speechless.

Taylor glanced up.

Shrugged.

Then casually punched the air.

Not at a target, like normal people were wont to do. Just the air.

It was baffling. 

The effects moreso. 

The pulse of force that rippled out like reality itself got sucker-punched connected with the remnants of the minefields. There was a chime, distant and dignified, like someone drop-kicked a grandfather clock.

Bakuda vanished mid-scream.

. . . . .

Years Earlier.

Bakuda blinked awake in her dorm room. Freshman year. Pre-mask. Pre-madness. But newly triggered.

She stared at her laptop.

Onscreen: a half-finished schematic for a bomb. Her first large-scale bomb.

She paused.

“…I have a feeling I was about to do something really stupid.”

Then, very slowly, she reached over to it.

Clicked delete.

Opened a new document.

Bakery Business Plan Template.

Six months later, she dropped out of Cornell University and opened Bombs & Buns in upstate New York.

Slogan: Explosively Good Pastries.

They became locally famous for their signature line of bald-head-shaped cinnamon rolls. Reviews—in a fit of madness or sugar-induced stupor, no one knew—described them as “buns for fun” and “Buns That Has Turned Against God.”

Bakuda didn't care. She was making bank.  

. . . . .

Meanwhile, back in present-day Brockton Bay, Taylor dusted off her sleeves.

Behind her, a pigeon tried to land on a streetlamp, saw her, and changed direction mid-flight.

From a nearby alley, someone whispered: 

“Baldman walks among us.”

Taylor sighed. 

She just wanted to finish her patrol. Maybe get another juice box…

Ons second thought, she deserved two.