The Inaugural Meeting of the SMP Bake Sale Corporation

The shack wasn’t a shack. It was a promise of a shack—four crooked walls, a roof of mismatched planks, and a gap in the side where the door was supposed to go. Rain drizzled through the ceiling in a pattern that looked like it was deliberately trying to hit people. Tommy stood at the front on an upturned barrel, arms spread wide like a prophet of chaos. “Gentlemen,” he announced, “we are broke. The server debt is thirty-seven diamonds. The last attempt at funding—what was it, Tubbo? A lemonade stand?—ended with a wither skeleton riot and a lawsuit from Quackity.” Tubbo, sitting cross-legged on a crate of suspiciously ancient flour, held up a single piece of paper. “I found a recipe notebook in the library. It was in a chest labeled ‘DO NOT OPEN UNLESS HUNGRY.’ I opened it. The first page says ‘Step 1: Pre-heat sun.’” “See?” Tommy slapped the barrel. “That’s the energy we need. But we can’t fund anything because our budget is three diamonds and a feather.” He fished the items out of his pocket: three small blue gems that looked slightly chewed, and one brown-and-white feather that might have been from a chicken or a ghost. “Ranboo, you’re tall. What do we do?” Ranboo, who had been standing in the corner trying to make himself less conspicuous, blinked. He was holding a piping bag that he’d found somewhere—empty, but he held it like a sacred relic. “I… don’t know. I’m not good at planning? I’m good at frosting, though. The swirls, they come out really even. And I can do rosettes. That’s a thing, right?” “Yes!” Tommy pointed at him. “The rosette man has spoken. We do a bake sale. Everyone makes something. We sell it to each other, because we’re the only ones on the server with money, and we’ll just pump the diamonds around until the debt is paid. It’s genius.” Tubbo frowned. “That’s not how economics works, Tommy. That’s just theft with extra steps.” “It’s an inside-market!” Tommy insisted. “The Prime Path will smell like burnt sugar for a week. We’ll become legends. Or we’ll get banned. One of those.” Ranboo raised a hand tentatively. “Who’s bringing what? Because I can do a cake. Probably. I’ll just… stay in the back and do frosting.” “I’ll do cookies,” Tubbo said, scribbling on his recipe paper. “But only if someone tells me what ‘pre-heat sun’ means. Is that a new enchantment?” “I’ll do bread!” Tommy declared. “The biggest, fluffiest bread. I’ve seen Techno do it. How hard can it be? You just… throw wheat at the oven until it gives up.” Ranboo looked at the feather in Tommy’s hand. “Is that going to be the mascot? Or… an ingredient?” Tommy held it up. “It’s our marketing budget. We’ll tie it to a stick and wave it around to attract customers. It’s called advertising.” The rain picked up, dripping directly onto the flour crate. Tubbo sighed, then folded his recipe notebook. “We need a name. For the bake sale. Something that makes people forget about the wither skeleton lemonade fiasco.” “The Great SMP Bake Sale,” Tommy said, already drawing a logo in the dust on the floor. “With an exclamation mark. And a picture of a diamond-covered cookie.” “That sounds like a diplomatic crisis waiting to happen,” Ranboo said quietly. “It’s the Dream SMP,” Tommy replied. “Everything is a diplomatic crisis. At least this one will smell like brown sugar.” And that was the first meeting of the Great SMP Bake Sale Corporation—founded on three diamonds, a feather, and a desperate hope that no one would actually taste the products.