The Underground had always been a place of often quiet solitude after monsterkind had been forced to inhabit its rocky caverns. From the crumbling purple stone of the Ruins, to the winter landscape of Snowdin, to the magma basin of Hotland, to the gray city of the Capitol. Each corner had found monsters to settle down in over the generations.
Now that the Fallen Down epidemic had ended, the Underground felt just a bit more empty—but that void wasn't very large. It didn't take long for the overcrowding issue to start taking hold of the Capitol as it had before the epidemic. Housing became difficult to come by, and despite words of assurance from the king, not much change was seen. Plenty of Capitol residents were starting to move away, headed towards Hotland, Waterfall, and Snowdin.
It wasn't an ideal situation by any means, but it wasn't horrible either. Monsterkind was a tight-knit people, usually willing to help out their fellows where they could see the need. Those monsters without homes were given shelters to stay in, fed by those with more than them. It was a community effort to make sure nobody went cold or hungry.
A young monster found herself along one of the many back alleys of the Capitol, seated upon the brick ground. Her many eyes followed the underground denizens as they milled about their day. Muffet soon grew bored of the passive observation, casting her gaze down to her knees, which were drawn up against her chest.
She wouldn't consider herself a child, not anymore. But the monsters that knew her did. She'd always been 'Little Miss Muffet' to some of them, and despite the number of her age rising, she wasn't getting much bigger.
Muffet had no idea what was expected of an alachtid such as herself, if to expect anything at all. Were they predominantly small? Were they supposed to get big? How come she was the only one left? How come she could talk to spiders of any kind? Questions like these often made her head hurt, so she just... accepted things as they were.
There were stories, of course. The tales of how spider monsters had once been widespread and proud. If the stories were to be believed, the alachtids had been the primary military force of past royalty. How they fell from grace was a contested point, but apparently, they'd angered Asgard Dreemurr; the current king's father.
What came next was even murkier. Muffet was of course curious as to the truth of her origins, and she'd considered asking the king before, but who could ever be granted an audience with Asgore Dreemurr? Let alone a nobody like her?
Muffet's five eyes narrowed as she focused on something on the ground. A small black dot scuttling between the footfalls of various monsters going about their business. Her eyes widened, before she quickly stood up.
She only came up to about half the size of most of the monsters present.
"Psst!" Muffet called to the spider from between her fangs. "Get over here, quick!"
The spider heard her call and began to scuttle more frantically as it tried to weave around the monsters. Muffet wasn't sure how she could stop them and save the little guy.
And her hesitation was its downfall. One unfortunate move, and the spider disappeared beneath a boot, and when the boot was raised, a squashed arachnid stained the ground.
Muffet stared at the spot for a moment, before she turned her gaze away and slumped back to the ground. If only she was faster... or, maybe if she was stronger... perhaps if she were smarter? Or larger? What about herself had prevented her from saving that little spider?
Nobody would mourn the loss but her.
On the slight outskirts of the Capitol sat a semi-abandoned house. It was semi-abandoned because the homeless residents of the underground tended to occupy it, and over time, the various floors and walls had been stripped away, leaving what was essentially a large and empty building, reminiscent of a warehouse.
This was where Muffet spent a great deal of her time, gathering the spiders she met and offering them protection within the building. Over time, many of the homeless began to leave, as many were creeped out by the spiders—and some by Muffet herself.
So, as ever, she was virtually alone save for her spider friends. And from them she heard whispers of other spiders that were trapped in the Ruins, spiders that couldn't make the journey across the snowy landscape. There had to be some kind of solution... but Muffet couldn't think of one.
Yet one day, she was given an idea when she saw one of her spiders eating another. At first, she was appalled and tried to stop them, but the tiny voices of the other spiders called out to her. They told her it was natural, all a part of their cycle of life. It disturbed Muffet, but she backed off. Her spiders claimed it was just a part of the natural order of things... so she shouldn't intervene. But she couldn't stop thinking about it, night and day, seeing the act in her mind. Everything had to eat, she supposed. Even monsters. If a monster didn't have magical food for a long time, their body would begin to lose energy and power, and their SOUL would weaken. The food replenished them, recycling magic through their bodies and restoring them to their maximum potential.
What if she capitalized on this idea? What if she made food for others, and in exchange, they would give her money? Then, if she could save up enough money, she could find a way to transport the spiders through the Snowy Forest and to the Capitol, or at least to Hotland. This house wasn't the most stable place in the world.
And so Muffet set off for the local mall of the Capitol, accompanied by a troop of spiders that sat on her shoulders and acted as her advisors in making a decision. She would 1) find something she needed and determine its price and 2) gather intel on what monsterkind would be most partial to that she could make. In truth, Muffet had no idea if she could even make decent food, but everyone had to start somewhere.
Muffet eventually came to a stop at a store called 'Snowy Joey's.' A gargoyle-like monster grinned at her from large stony eyes and massive stone tusks as she browsed, waiting for her to make a selection. Nothing inside was labeled with a price, as the prices would all be held at the retail desk, so when Muffet's eyes landed on a large red sled, her excitement began to grow. A sled would be perfect! She could put a space heater on it, and it could carry the Ruins spiders through Snowdin and to somewhere safer for them. It was a foolproof plan!
"What'll you take for the sled?" Muffet asked, coming to a stop at the counter the gargoyle sat at.
The gargoyle's head turned to look at the sled, stone grinding from the movement, before he stiffly grabbed a book and flipped it open. "Ten thousand g."
Muffet's eyes blinked in unison, before she frowned and placed two of her hands on her hips. "What? That's outrageous!"
"I don't make the rules," the gargoyle rumbled. His nametag said 'Joey.'
"Uh, clearly you do," Muffet countered. "You run this place!"
"The unstoppable march of capitalism is... uh, unstoppable. Monster's gotta eat."
"You could afford to live in the king's castle for years with ten thousand! You can't possibly need that much food!" Muffet glared defiantly up at the gargoyle. "How much are your other products?"
"Hm..." Joey the Gargoyle flipped through the pages. "A snow shovel for nine hundred... an ice scraper for six hundred... an ice pick for two thousand..."
"This place is full of overpriced nonsense!" Muffet pointed one of her fingers at Joey in an accusatory manner.
"Well, I'm the only one selling them, so the prices are what I say they are," Joey shrugged stiffly. "You telling me you DON'T have ten thousand g lying around?"
"No!" Muffet glared. "Who in the world has ten thousand g lying around?"
"My customers," Joey grinned. "If you really want the Holiday Sled, you're gonna need to start making money."
Muffet angrily tapped her foot on the ground for a moment, before she pointed at Joey once more. "I'll be back, you- you sleazebag. And I'll be buying your dumb sled!"
"Thanks for shopping at Snowy Joey's!" The gargoyle waved at her as she stormed off.
"Baked goods!" Muffet called. "Hot and fresh! REASONABLE prices!"
Monsters walked by her booth, paying little mind to the spider girl as she called, trying to garner anyone's attention. Her baked goods weren't exactly hot nor fresh anymore, as she'd been here for hours, with no luck. Why wouldn't anyone try? She'd labelled each item at twenty g... that was a reasonable price. Far better than the absurd equipment at Snowy Joey's. Did people not like that they would be purchasing from an alachtid? She knew many weren't fond of her appearance... or perhaps they didn't want to eat her baked goods because they had spiders in them. It had been her spiders that came up with the idea. They claimed it would be more appealing, and even came up with the slogan "Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders!"
Muffet trusted her spiders, but maybe this wasn't the best idea... still, she was committed to it, and she didn't want to let her little friends down.
When the day came to an end, she hadn't had a single sale, and Muffet gathered her goods in disappointment. All those spiders baked into it had died for no reason... but the others didn't seem to mind all that much. They said they could eat what didn't sell, and Muffet somewhat agreed. It still unsettled her a bit, but this was the spider way of life. She'd need to get over it.
With her bag of goodies, Muffet made her way back to the abandoned building. It had cleared out of other monsters by now and nests of webs had begun to sprout up in every corner. Muffet tossed her bag of goodies into one of the nests, and a sea of spiders descended upon it. She then passed a stool where a coin jar sat, labeled as '10,000 -;;)' though it was empty. A sad little stray web had found its way inside.
Muffet flopped onto a hammock made of webbing and buried her face in the threads to let out an angry yell, muffled by the webbing, before she rolled over and stared up at the dark ceiling.
She'd been at this for weeks now, and she hadn't seen an ounce of success. Not a single g had been spent.
It was frustrating and humiliating.
"What am I doing wrong? Am I the problem?" Muffet asked aloud, continuing to stare blankly up.
Her spiders assured her that she was flawless. They said the monsters were the problem. The murky history made them fear her.
"I don't even know all that stuff," Muffet sighed. "Maybe if I did... I could figure something out."
They told her that the truth was in the dumps. Tablets had been tossed away containing pieces of monster history. They could find it if she wanted to.
"How do you know this?" Muffet asked, sitting up slightly.
They knew everything. Spiders were everywhere, countless eyes and ears in most corners of the underground. The king was embarrassed by his father's choices and wanted to forget it. He made a mistake in throwing away the tablet, rather than destroying it.
"...So it's in the dump?" Muffet asked. Her spiders confirmed that it was.
Well... maybe it would give her better insight.
The dump. It was far from an extravagant place in the underground. In fact, it was the opposite. Muffet found herself extremely uncomfortable as she wandered her way throughout, her spiders scouring through in search of the disposed tablet that told the tale of Muffet's people. The truth of the alachtids.
A fair deal of this garbage was waste from monsters, but there was a lot that came from the surface. Waterfalls cascaded from holes in the cavernous ceiling, a river feeding human waste down into the underground. A constant reminder of what lay above the monsters, the cause of their situation under the earth. Comics, magazines, clothing, plastic, and various other junk lay in great piles all around, the dirty water creating moats around them all.
Muffet stood upon a pallet made of wood, floating down one of the moats in the deeper section of the dump, using a large stick to push herself around. Every trash island she'd stop at, her spiders would scurry off the safety of the pallet to scramble around the garbage heap and search. So far they'd gone through four, finding nothing yet. Muffet was getting eager to leave.
They pulled up to a fifth island, this one the largest at the center of the dump, and Muffet watched as her spiders scurried off to continue their search. When they convinced her to come here, she thought they already knew where it was, but they only knew it was somewhere here.
So Muffet waited, standing upon her wooden pallet with waning patience. She needed to get to sleep soon, else she'd be deprived of it when she tried to sell baked goods tomorrow. After several minutes, one of her spiders approached her. It told her that it had found something she would want to see. The spider was being cryptic and hesitant. This greatly intrigued Muffet, enough so that she left the safety of her pallet and followed her spider over the trash heap. It eventually led her to a hole in the middle of the garbage, where it finally stopped.
"Is the tablet there?" Muffet asked, glancing down at the spider.
It told her it wasn't sure, but that there was something there she would want to see.
Muffet frowned, before she directed her attention into the hole. It descended into a swallowing darkness. It was admittedly foreboding. With a cautious mind, Muffet cast a series of webs around the interest, before she used one of her strings to slowly start lowering herself into the hole. If it turned out to be the tablet, she might actually be disappointed. The spiders seemed put-off enough that it had to be something far different.
Deeper and deeper Muffet lowered herself, her eyes struggling to pierce the blackness, before she came to an abrupt stop as she touched upon ground, what felt like dirt. Had something burrowed through the trash and created this lair of sorts?
There was a deep rumble coming from straight ahead. It sounded almost like snoring. Hopefully she wasn't confusing it with growling...
If only she had a little bit of light.
Suddenly, the snoring stopped, and Muffet froze, straining her five eyes ahead of her. She felt like she was being watched. The thing in here had likely just woken up. Muffet grit her fangs together. If this was a prank from her spiders, it wasn't very funny. They'd never willingly put her in harm's way, would they? They were always so compliant with her, and at times protective. If they were mad at her for baking any of them into pastries, they'd been the ones to make that happen!
Muffet let out an 'eek!' as something suddenly barreled into her, toppling the small-framed alachtis to the ground. Something was pressing roughly against her, and what seemed to be saliva was coating half of her body.
It took her a moment to realize she was getting slobbered on by a gigantic tongue.
"Ew, hey! Cut that out you weirdo!" Muffet yelled, and a whimper came from the beast as it suddenly backed away, leaving the spider girl standing in the middle of its lair, shaking saliva off of her.
A tiny voice called to her from behind, her spiders had brought to her an electric lantern. Once it was in Muffet's fifth hand, she activated it, a warm orange glow filling the cavern and finally revealing the creature that had slobbered all over the spider monster.
It was a gigantic... thing. Muffet wasn't entirely sure what it was. It had claw-like legs coming out from around the base of its mushroom-shaped body, almost like spider legs. Its body actually seemed reminiscent of a cupcake still in its wrapper, and it had two ovular eyes staring back at her, almost dopey like a puppy dog, while its mouth split around half of its head, with jagged rows of massive teeth. On one hand, it was monstrous, but on the other, it was... adorable.
Muffet suddenly felt a strong sense of kinship with this creature, as strange as it sounded. Its big sad eyes, its cupcake-like appearance, and its spider-like legs...
Slowly, the spider girl approached the creature, reaching out one hand at a snail's pace. The cupcake monster stared back at her, watching her grow nearer and nearer, before it leaned forward and pressed the top of its head against her palm.
"Aw, you're so cute!" Muffet giggled, her fondness for this creature exponentially increasing, before she leaned forward and put her arms around its face in an awkward hug. "I'm gonna keep you!"
And she named him Cupcake.
And she never found the tablet. Oh well.
He turned out to be the loyal sort, obeying the monster's every whim. A pet, of sorts, but also a bodyguard, and even an attack dog. Muffet didn't know where he came from, or what he belonged to, but none of that mattered now. He was Cupcake, and he belonged to her family.
When she returned to selling goods, things only remained the same. She thought that perhaps people would be more intrigued by the quality if she just... bumped up the price a little. She tacked on a zero at the end of each item's price. 200 g for a single baked good.
Nobody bought it.
Now, she wondered, what if Cupcake were around to... 'entice' her potential customers? She couldn't do such a thing in so public a space, no, the Royal Guard would crack down on her. She'd need to be just outside of their periphery.
Closer to Hotland she moved, sure to choose a path well-traveled for those going between the provinces. It worked, too. Nobody ignored her when a giant cupcake monster with spider legs blocked your way and forced you to acknowledge the girl selling baked goods.
She tacked on a few more zeroes to her items after that. Intimidation was a much better tool than honesty.
After over a year of perfecting her game, and her talents, Muffet returned home to peer into her coin jar. She couldn't possibly be sure there was actually 10,000 g in it, certainly less. It would be enough, because even if Snowy Joey refused... she had a threat to give him if he didn't comply.
And he WOULD comply, then.
Later that same day, Muffet strode into Snowy Joey's, two hands held behind her back to hold her jar of coins as she shuffled confidently about the store, her eyes turning to the gargoyle at the counter at every chance. He recognized her, but neither said a word as she pretended to browse around for several minutes, not actually paying attention to any of the products.
Finally, she made her way to the counter and set the heavy jar down in front of him.
"I'll be taking your Holiday Sled," she said. "Mmmm... actually, make that three of them. Oh, and three space heaters as well."
Her five eyes blinked slowly at him as her lips curled into a smirk, showing off her fangs more clearly.
Joey barely budged, his stone body stiffly turning a hair to look at his price book nearby.
"That's pricey, lady."
Muffet only blinked slowly again. "Bring them out, dearie."
Joey's stone eyebrow rolled upward as his eyes turned down to her jar. "That's not nearly enough. I think you'd need about... Five hundred thousand g to get what you want."
That was a LOT more than what the total should have been.
"Greedy greedy~" the alachtid giggled, two hands placing upon the counter and clacking her claws on its surface. "Bring. Them. Out."
"Sorry, out of stock, anyway," Joey said.
Muffet paused, her clacking and blinking coming to a halt, before she looked over her shoulder.
The Holiday Sled was gone.
"Wha- but... who the hell spent ten thousand g on that!?"
"Twenty thousand now."
"Who!?"
Joey shrugged. "A customer who had the money. Need anything else, sweetheart?"
Muffet closed her mouth, teeth gritting tightly. She was silent for several moments. Who did this guy think he was?
When she turned to face the gargoyle again, Muffet was all smiles, letting her fangs shine brightly in the light. "Just one thing..." her third hand raised, and she snapped her fingers. A sudden mass barreled through the front door, charging it down and breaking open the wall around it, leaving a remarkably cupcake-shaped hole.
Spider legs clicking against the ground, Cupcake approached as debris fell off his body, drool dripping from his wide mouth. Joey the gargoyle gasped as he stumbled back, falling to the ground with a heavy and dull thud, stone grinding against stone as he moved.
Cupcake came to a stop beside Muffet, who raised one of her hands to lovingly pat the side of his face, bringing him to a stop. "You're gonna buy a pastry from me~"
Joey couldn't take his eyes off of Cupcake. "W-What?"
"You're gonna buy a pastry!" Muffet grinned widely as she procured a doughnut. "It's only ten thousand g... think you can manage?"
"That... that'll break me!" Joey exclaimed.
"Aw, what's the matter? You don't have that just lying around?" Muffet cocked her head to the side before she reached around the counter to the cash drawer. "Don't tell me you were overpricing... hmhmhm~"
"You're... you're a thief!" the gargoyle cried.
Muffet frowned as she pressed the button to open the drawer. "Joey, don't be stupid, I'm not stealing. It's extortion. There's a difference."
She set the doughnut down, and started to pluck coins from the counter one after the other, placing them into the already full jar. "One... two... three..."
Cupcake growled at Joey as he tried to get up, discouraging him from following through. The gargoyle remained planted on the ground, still staring at Cupcake. "You can't do this...!"
"Well why not?" Muffet asked coyly. "You rip people off, seemingly based upon their appearance... can't take it yourself? Honestly, you're getting a great deal here. This drawer is so empty... 43 g? Really? That's a serious discount for one of my doughnuts... maybe I should start expecting weekly payments? Or..."
She closed the drawer and swiveled on her heel, placing all her hands behind her back as she swung her feet, sweeping through the store in exaggerated steps. "Maybe you could pay me back with some of these items. Oooh, what's this?"
Eyes sparkling, Muffet came to a stop at a set of china dishes. Teacups and kettles with intricate designs. "How cute! Tell you what, Joey dear~ I'll consider your debt all paid off if you let me take this whole set!"
Joey swallowed, not daring to risk looking away from Cupcake, the monstrous spider-like delight staring him down. "If... you take that, you'll go...?"
"Yep!"
"Then... okay, then take it!"
Muffet giggled as a group of spiders scuttled over to begin collecting the china set. She turned back to Joey and strutted up to the counter with a wide grin. "I'm not taking it. It's what's owed to me. Well, it's been a pleasure dearie~"
Waggling many of her fingers at him, Muffet gave Cupcake a soft pat as she walked by him, and he followed her to the hole in the wall where the door used to be, her spider troop carrying each of the dishes through. She came to a stop and looked back toward Joey, her five eyes squinting. "Fix this door, Joey. It's tacky to leave it like this. Oh, and I'll be back. Make sure you're more helpful and..."
She cast a quick gaze over the shape.
"Get better stock."
With that, she left the gargoyle to pick up the mess he'd been left in.