Grandmothers and Other Fearsome Encounters, page 1
part #4 of Princesses of the Pizza Parlor Series
Princesses of the Pizza Parlor
Ep. 4, "Grandmothers and Other Fearsome Encounters"
There was a thick, drizzly rain going on outside Max's Pizza that day: tiny beads of water falling like a curtain over everything. The dominant colors outside were a rainbow drawn in smudged charcoal and mud. As a great poet once put it, "The sun did not shine / It was too wet to play..."
That was outside, though. Inside, Max's Pizza was the definition of lively. The lunch rush had been more of a crush, as the dreary weather seemed to evoke a need for hot and greasy food, which Max herself provided handily. The vivid red and yellow of the pies was matched by the checkered patterns of the tablecloths, with their gleaming white plates and silverware.
One table among the crowd was more colorful than all the rest combined. On its red-checked surface was a broad dry-erase sheet with part of a building drawn upon it in black and blue ink. A more complete map could be seen on the nearby laptop, behind a stack of strange and esoteric tomes. Sometimes other customers glanced over to see what the books were about, only to shake their heads in puzzlement at the melange of images gracing their covers. A large jar of dice completed the display. Everything was almost ready to go.
At the moment, however, Uncle was busy wiping down the windows. All the heat and moisture outside, combined with the air conditioning inside, was leaving a mess of water droplets that would lead to mildewed fittings and drapes as soon as the sun decided to show its face once more.
"You don't need to do that, yanno," Max said, watching him wipe. She didn't actually say to stop.
"Just paying it forward," he replied. "Feel bad for hogging a whole table to myself on a busy day like today."
"As if you didn't have it reserved, same as every Sunday," she countered with a grin. "Speaking of which... Is that Haunted House #3 which I spy there on your computer?"
"That it is." Uncle finished his squeegee work and dumped the sponge in its handy bucket. "Feeling nostalgic?"
"A bit. We had some good times with that map. You, me, Bill, Charlie, Vicky, hunting ghosts and rubber-masked bad guys."
"You forgot the bit with the dog." Uncle chuckled at the memory.
"Oh, hell no. Of course I remember that oversized plush monstrosity. What Bill thought he was doing with that thing, I will never understand...."
"Rye ron't row, romedy relief?" That got him a whack over the head with a cleaning rag, but he'd definitely deserved it. "You're free to join in whenever," he added. "The girls wouldn't mind, I think."
"Nah, not my adventure. Their story, their fun. Speaking of which," Max said, pointing out the window, "I think you've got company."
That he had. A blue minivan had pulled up close to the entrance and disgorged a pair of freckled faces he knew as Cynthia and Katelyn. He couldn't see the driver, but he figured it had to be one of Katelyn's parents. The girl's cheeks were red with embarrassment -- at least, as far as he could tell behind those brown bangs of hers. Cynthia had her hair down out of her usual ponytail for once, probably because her head was soaked from rain. The weather hadn't slowed her down any.
"Hey, Mr. Man!" she shouted.
"Hey girls. You're the first ones here." He was setting out the dice now: golden orange for Cynthia's druid and various shades of purple for Katelyn's witch.
"...thanks..." said Katelyn in her usual muted tones. Her little black kitten stuffie had taken its place in front of her, and now stood guard over its mistress's plastic polyhedrons.
"Where's Helen?" Cynthia asked.
"She'll be here soon enough." He tapped his phone where it lay on the tabletop. "Got a text a few minutes ago. She's picking up Shelby. Today's good weather for carpooling, it seems."
Outside, the rain continued its pitter-pat. Occasionally a brief gust of wind would send a heavier spatter against the windows, but for the most part it was just white noise: omnipresent but easily ignored. The two girls arranged their dice quickly and then chatted. Uncle took the time to properly place his game master's screen and hide his digital notes behind a flurry of open windows on his laptop. Not that all that careful planning had helped much last week. He reassured himself that at least he wouldn't have to deal with crazy were-rabbits until the following game session.
When next he looked up, a new car was pulling into the nearest parking space. It was a tidy little coupe, of some lighter color that was immediately reduced to grey by the weather's murk. Out the passenger side, a bright green umbrella with pop-up froggy eyes unfurled. He had to grin at that; it was such a Claire thing to have. Then from the driver's side appeared a large black umbrella, plain almost unto austerity. Whether it was the girl's mother or father, he couldn't say. Uncle had yet to meet either of Claire's parents because of her usual habit of walking in every week.
The diminutive anime fan didn't make her regular grand entrance, quietly slipping inside and shuffling towards the table. Even her outfit was not as loud as usual, being a dark skirt with a light blue blouse. No kitty ears adorned her head today; instead, she sported dark brown braids that coiled up behind her ears. About the only thing that was the same was her height, still knee-high to a grasshopper, and the oversized coke-bottle lenses over her eyes. Without those, Uncle may not have recognized her, or even noticed her. This version of Claire just didn't attract attention.
The woman who followed her through the door, on the other hand.... Uncle repressed the urge to duck down behind the back of his chair when his eyes met that lady's. They were two chips of jet in a marble face that had been chiseled out by some neo-classical sculptor with a penchant for austere severity. A hawk-like beak of a nose loomed over a broad mouth that looked like it had never once considered smiling. A pair of eyebrows had been carefully painted on, and the hair above them was pulled and tied so tightly that it too might have been added on with a brush. The woman's high-necked blouse and long skirt gave the image of a librarian going to church, and a pair of gilded reading glasses hung by a chain around her neck.
Uncle tried to make as many mental notes as he could, for when he next needed an intimidating non-player character. This lady was the type to scare the woolly underwear off a barbarian, and then shame him into wearing something more practical.
"Hey, Claire," he said finally, focusing on the girl to avoid the woman's glare. "Is this your, ah...?"
"Her grandmother," the lady said in clipped tones. "And you are the person in charge of this..." Sniff. "... game?"
"Er, that I am, ma'am. It's, ah, nice to meet you?"
"Is it?" The woman started walking, and Uncle and Claire were dragged along after. "I confess that I am not so sanguine as that, to discover that my granddaughter has been frivolously wasting her time on so many things. Cartoons, games, greasy foods... is that any way to raise a child?"
"Well..." Uncle was about to say that he'd done well enough on just such a regimen, but luckily his butt was saved at the last minute by Max.
"Señora Hernandez!" the pizza proprietress greeted loudly. "Um, Bienvenidos a mi restaurante de pizza! Er, quiere una bebida?"
The woman cocked her head and stared at the blonde in her white shirt and red vest. "Ah, yes," she said. "Maxine Tolliver. Two years of my class in high school, and that is all you can remember? Hmph. At least it is mostly correct. Now, Claire. Show me this game you are so enamored with."
"You know this harpy?" Uncle whispered to Max as Claire led her grandmother around the restaurant.
"She only taught Spanish at our high school for, like, forever!" Max hissed back. "How'd you ever avoid meeting her?"
"Took French, remember?"
"Of course you did..." Max shivered. "Now I wish I'd tidied up more thoroughly. Simply spotless does not cut it with this woman. Good luck." And with that, she retreated to the safety of the kitchen.
"Thanks... Oh, hi girls," he said to Helen and Shelby as they walked in and deposited their umbrellas at the front.
"Hey, Uncle!" his little blonde niece ran up and gave him a hug. "Why the long face?"
"Just met Claire's grandma."
"What, she's here!?" moaned Shelby. The curly-haired girl peeked around him. "Oh man..."
"How do you..."
Helen explained. "She still does the substitute teacher thing sometimes. When she comes to our school, everyone is on their best behavior. No running, no screaming, no goofing off...."
"Yeah, and the students are good, too," added Shelby.
It took a little while longer to get everyone settled around the table. There was the usual scooting and bumping, compounded by a nervous silence cast over their corner of the restaurant. Señora Hernandez had pulled up a chair behind her granddaughter and now loomed over the place like Poe's raven on the bust of Athena.
"Well?" the lady demanded. "What is the point here?"
"We're, um, telling a story, tata," said Claire. "Having fun? Living the adventure?" The girl's blue dice rattled nervously in her hands.
"Hmph. Looks like that devil-worshipping nonsense."
Uncle's ears pricked at that. "Ah, so you taught in the 80s, then?"
"Of course I did. How young do you think I am?"
Fortunately he made both his Will save and his diplomacy roll on that one: "A gentleman never guesses a lady's age, ma'am. But to answer your original question, this is an interactive storytelling system with random factors determined by dice roll. It's also an ongoing tale, so we're continuing on from last week's session direct
Silence.
"Seriously, ladies. Anyone?"
Cynthia raised her hand slowly. "Um, we were s'posed to be travelin' to the next city, only, um, Natalie's character had a disagreement with everybody else, so she decided to kidnap Claire's character for her own protection, and the rest of us had to chase her down."
Shelby continued, a bit more boldly. "And then we had to thrash a bunch of skeletons and sorta-zombies and this weird ghost-princess before it was all done."
"And Natalie's character got in big trouble!" Helen added.
"That she did," Uncle nodded. "Now, it looks like Natalie's not going to be here tonight..." Small wonder, he thought. "... so I'll manage her paladin. Won't be too hard, considering how shell-shocked she must be right now. As you all may recall, we ended the session right as you arrived at a creepy old manor house, where you were able to get a room to rest in for the morning." He pushed forward the partial map of the house, the one with the hallway, the room, and not much else on it. "Now, everyone roll their d20. Their big dice with twenty sides," he added for the grandmother's benefit.
Five dice clattered across the table. Katelyn's purple die turned up 19, but that was the only double-digit result of the bunch. Any three of the others, added together, would still total less. Even with every possible bonus accounted for, they couldn't meet the minimum requirement for the saving throw.
"Well," Uncle said, "it looks like Princess Bianca was the only one to not have a really awful nightmare as she slept. Now, Isabel of course dreamed about last night's events and her failures as a paladin, in great detail. What did your princesses dream about? Helen?" he asked without waiting for them to argue about who wouldn't be going first.
His niece blinked big blue eyes in surprise. "Um, well... Princess Gwenevrael..."
Princess Gwenevrael, daughter of King Artundus of the Fifth Court and Duchess of the Lonely Grove, was standing before a grand assembly in front of the main palace of Laelvai, her father's capital. Before her were all the full citizens of the realm, the half-elves and the well-to-do humans who'd borne them. Along the edges were the second-class citizenry, the poorer humans who served the Imperium so well. In the far back, she could even see the bushy-topped heads of some green-thralls, though she couldn't see what caste they were.
In her hands was a vellum scroll, beautifully decorated with fine elven script. It was a speech, a declaration, but as she read it, the words danced and writhed, swimming off into the air like snakes of inky smoke. Gwen tried to catch them, to pull them back down onto the page, but they turned on her, wrapping around her wrists and ankles.
When she tried to shout, the words crammed themselves down her throat, while their tail ends looped back around her neck and squeezed. Frantically she waved for help, but no one came. The massive crowd watched on, with all its various castes united for once in cheering on her execution.
"Thus to all traitors of the Grand Design," came the booming voice of judgment. Gwen was afraid to look towards its source, but the words wrenched her around until she could see her father, dressed in his most formal robes of green and violet, his face the perfect pallor of the sky above. The sword of state was in his hands, its edge so fine that it could cut the wind. Entwined in those treacherous words as she was, Gwen could not avoid its fall--
"A word, please." Señora Hernandez's tone left no doubt that the singular article was a mere politeness on her part. "In private."
Uncle didn't quite gulp from nervousness as he got up out of his chair and joined her at the blue-checked table across the way. Behind him, the girls were already whispering excitedly. He was unpleasantly reminded of days long past when he might be called up to the principal's office for some childish infraction. It didn't help when he realized that the lady probably had been a principal or vice-principal at some point in her long career.
"So..." he said as he slipped into the chair across from Señora Hernandez. "What's up? We're holding up the game, here."
"The 'game', yes..." You could probably murder someone with those quote marks, as sharp as they were. "Tell me, does this amuse you, to make some poor girl tell you all her fears and deepest secrets? Does it make you feel powerful?"
"Ma'am, I'm a game organizer, not a cult leader." Before she could respond, he pressed on, praying that his luck would hold out. "This is just a game, a story. The girls and I've been working out lots of little details about their characters and kingdoms, and this is just one more way to expand on that. And before you ask, I did send them all an email earlier this week, saying they might have to describe a really bad dream in-character. This isn't indoctrination, just a creative writing exercise."
"So you say." Señora Hernandez stood up with an economy of motion, simply unfolding upward, like she always had a stick up her...
Uncle wouldn't let himself finish the thought. There was an incredibly, infinitely small but non-zero chance that she could hear it.
"I am taking my granddaughter home now." That, however, he could hear, loud and clear.
"Wait, what?" he cried. "We've only gotten started! There hasn't even been time for pizza yet."
"And she will be the healthier for it. Too much greasy food stunts one's growth."
He was pretty sure that wasn't true, but he was not about to contradict her. Instead: "Look, ma'am, please. This is an important thing for all the girls. Socializing and enjoying a common hobby. I have a reasonable idea of why you'd be concerned, but I'm asking you to give us the benefit of the doubt here. At least until pizza time, please? Watch how it goes, see it for yourself, and if by then you still want to pull Claire out, well..." He shrugged. "I don't think I could really stop you."
"You're not going to make me change my mind, young man."
"Not trying to. Just wanna see if we can compromise a little. I'll even chip in for whatever sort of personal pizza you want. Do you have a favorite topping combo?"
Señora Hernandez pursed her lips, then nodded slightly. "Anchovy, goat cheese, and olives."
"Got it." Somehow he managed not to grimace at the thought. A few minutes later, he'd relayed the order to Max, along with a quiet request to put off the usual pizza time by at least half an hour, maybe more. He was going to need all the time he could get.
Six princesses slept like the dead in their borrowed room. As colloquial expressions went, it wasn't very accurate. The dead did not sleep, because that implied that they would wake up eventually. Nobody really wanted that to happen, and in fact there were knightly and religious orders stretched across three continents solely to ensure that it wouldn't. Still, the young ladies slept with unusual soundness.
That is, until the peal of a bell forced them out of it. The booming, hollow noise seemed to come from nowhere but the insides of their own skulls, loud enough to shake their teeth and bounce them out of bed. Five of them ended on the floor, screaming out the final emotions of a night's worth of really awful dreams.
"Are you ladies okay?" Bianca asked from the pillows of the huge pile of mattresses and sheets they'd been sharing.
It took a while to get everyone settled down and talking. Gwen went first, telling them of a great speech which somehow turned into a trial and execution. Flora had apparently dreamed of being eaten alive by demonic varmints, much to the consternation of her companion, Mr. Chitters. The pointy-eared, bushy-tailed red squirrel spent a long moment cuddling his mistress as she sobbed into his fur.
Selvi grudgingly admitted to having a nightmare, but would not say anything more of it. Cassie, on the other hand, was more than happy to talk about how she'd been about to make a presentation for her final exam at the Moon Temple's seminary, only to realize halfway through that she was completely naked. When she'd turned to run and hide, everyone had seen the bunny-tail right over her royal bottom, and had laughed even harder.
Isabel didn't seem to feel like talking, though no one could blame her for that. The former paladin looked deathly pale. The dimming light glinted off the stone in her headband.
"Um, what time is it?" asked Bianca.
"It should still be daylight outside," said Gwen, looking out the window. "We can't have slept for more than a few... huh?"
Everyone crowded up against the casement to see what she saw: the orange-red sun, most obviously setting in the distance. Within a few minutes, Bianca had to summon up a half-dozen little magic lanterns so they could see each other.
