Princesses Are Never Lost Read online

  Princesses of the Pizza Parlor

  Episode 2

  "Princesses Are Never Lost"

  (Everything else is simply misplaced)

  It was just another sleepy summer afternoon at Max's Pizza. The last of the after-church lunch crowd had finally rolled their way out, and a much put-upon bus boy was clearing the tables. All except one, that was. Back in the far corner, a man in jeans and a comic-book t-shirt had secured a booth for himself some time before, and he obviously had no plans on moving out for the foreseeable future. There were no dishes on that red-checked cloth; the bus boy had moved them all to a neighboring table. Instead, there were half a dozen dog-eared rule-books, a laptop, several large piles of paper, and countless dice arranged in six neat groups according to color. The bus boy rolled his eyes, but left the guy alone to organize his maps and figurines. It took all kinds, and at least that was one table the teenager didn't need to worry about.

  "Uncle!" a blonde girl shouted as she bounced into the restaurant. Her hair was pulled back in pigtails, and she was slightly sunburned from running around in the sun all the day before.

  "Hey, Helen." Uncle sorted his papers and placed the stack on the seat beside him. "Ready for another afternoon of adventure?"

  "You bet! Oh!" she cried, looking out the window. "There's Shelby!"

  So there was. For a wonder, the dark-haired girl was the second to arrive that day. After all the fuss made the week before about coming at all, Uncle had wondered if she'd even show, but now she was entering the restaurant of her own volition instead of slung over her dad's shoulder. Her tightly curled hair was held back by a bright yellow band that went across her forehead and behind her ears.

  "Hi, Shelby! Let's go!" His niece seemed perfectly fine with ending every sentence on a bang so far, though he wondered how long her voice would hold out. She grabbed her friend by the hand and dragged her over to the table. "It's adventure time!"

  "Yeah, yeah..." The girl had her best Doubting Thomasina face on, as if the previous weekend were only a fluke, and she hadn't actually enjoyed thrashing a horde of oversized bugs.

  "Well, since you're here, you can choose what you're getting as a bonus," Uncle said. "After last time, everyone definitely went up a level, which means your princess gets an extra point in the physical attribute of your choice --"

  "Strength," Shelby said before he could finish.

  "-- and your choice of barbarian skill from this list." Uncle put the paper at her seat. "Also, as a reward for helping out with those giant ant warriors, Stu the Armadillo Man is willing to teach Selvi another skill for free."

  "Stu?"

  "Please, please don't ask me to try and say the name I have for him. It looks like a cat walked over my keyboard." The girls giggled at that. The previous week's adventure had included a band of bug-eating beast-men, patterned off of anteaters and other critters with more tongue than tooth in their mouth. Uncle had made all of their names intentionally impossible to say straight, and then given them stupidly ordinary nicknames like Louis, Phil, and apparently Stu as well.

  "Um, what are you getting?" Shelby asked Helen.

  The blonde girl plopped down on one of the booth's sofa seats and laid out her own character page. "I'm supposed to get an animal companion at level four, but I asked Uncle, and we agreed to swap it out for the level five bonus instead." She pointed out a spot that said 「Favored Enemy #2: Bugs.」

  Shelby snorted, tapping the line right above it: 「Favored Enemy: Orcs.」 "So, we're gonna make 'em argue some more this time?" she asked.

  "Why not? It keeps things interesting," Helen said with a wink.

  The door chimes jingled again as two more girls bounced into the restaurant. Some people could be forgiven for thinking Katelyn and Cynthia were sisters, or at least cousins. They were about the same build, the same age, and had similar galaxies of freckles spread across their faces. Those people would still be completely mistaken, but it was understandable. Cynthia's red-brown hair was in its usual ponytail, while Katelyn's brown bangs kept her eyes largely hidden. A pair of doggy-ears bounced behind her.

  "Hello, ladies," said Uncle. "Everyone still think last week was fun?" That got him a chorus of happy cheers plus one grudging harrumph from Shelby. "Well, today we're talking about new skills and powers. Everyone's going up a level, so you need to assign your new skill points. I wrote the numbers on post-it notes stuck to your character page."

  "Awright!" Cynthia hit her seat running, sliding halfway down the sofa cushion on pure momentum alone. "Can I get the Animal Apocalypse spell yet?"

  "No."

  "Awww...."

  "But you do get some neat things at level four," Uncle assured her. "Magical resistance to evil fairy-type magic --"

  "Boring!"

  "--and the ability to change into a wild animal once a day, for up to a couple of hours."

  That got the girl's attention. He was pretty sure that Cynthia had never met an animal she didn't like. Case in point: "Oh! So I could turn into a squirrel or a raccoon or a skunk?"

  "Sorry, kiddo. Too small. It's got to be something in your general size range for now."

  "Giant saber-toothed squirrels?

  "Nope. It also needs to be something that she's actually got some knowledge of. And since Princess Flora's fairly active but not really muscular like Selvi, she's limited to animals that average between one hundred and a hundred-fifty pounds." Cynthia was deflating like an unhappy zeppelin, so he quickly added, "I did some checking, and that would include white-tail deer, timber wolves, black bears, and mountain lions."

  And there was that big, slightly buck-toothed smile, only a little feral.

  "Excuse me..." Katelyn wasn't the loudest of kids, but Uncle's ears were getting used to it. "Um, I sent an email..."

  "Yes, Katelyn. I got it. Okay everyone!" he said. "Claire's still not here, but we should get started. Now, Katelyn asked me if there was any way to learn the special potions and bombs that Mim used in the big bug fight last week. She can, but it requires something called multi-classing. Basically, you can choose to make your next level-up count towards a different job than the one you've got. So Princess Bianca is level four, but only the first three of those are as a Witch. The last one is also her first level as an Alchemist, which is the one that makes bombs. She meets all the requirements and has a teacher available. Everyone with me so far?"

  "So we don't have to stick with just one?" Shelby asked.

  "I can be a Bard, too!?" Cynthia squealed.

  "Not at all, and not yet," Uncle said. "I'm gonna say here that there needs to be some logical reason for wanting to add another on, and it has to work into the game's plot. Also, you'll have to find someone willing to teach you the basics. In a town, that's easy, but out in the wilderness like you are now?" He shrugged. "Depends on who you can find and if they're skilled enough to teach. The other bug-eaters are all fighters or rangers, so if you want to try those, feel free."

  "I think I'll stick with what I've got," Shelby said. Helen and Cynthia nodded.

  "Okay then. Again, since you ladies are in the middle of nowhere, I have some limitations to set." Uncle counted out five red tiddlywinks disks into Katelyn's hand. "These are all the bombs you get until the next town. Use them wisely."

  He dropped a green plastic disk into her hand as well. "Plus one secret potion, which Mim taught you how to make. Again, it's all you've got for now, so make it count."

  -charin, charin!- The door chimes rang through the otherwise quiet restaurant. Everyone turned to look as the final member of their little group waddled in. Claire was dressed in her usual eclectic style, which today meant a jean skirt long enough to trip her, matched to a bright pink t-shirt bearing
the logo of some Japanese cartoon show. No one could read it to tell just which one it might be.

  "Hey, everybody! Hey, Uncle Gamer-Dude!" Claire adjusted her thick-framed glasses over her ears, and then did the same with her other pair of ears -- the ones sticking out from her hairband. The hair was a dark brown. The ears were pink and fuzzy.

  "Digging the kitty look," Cynthia said with a grin.

  "I know, right?" Claire hopped onto the sofa next to Katelyn. "Got 'em at the mall this week... OOF!" she finished with a cry, slipping off the edge suddenly and hitting the linoleum.

  "Sorry..."

  "If it's a little cramped over there, you can sit by me, okay?" said Uncle. "Just no peeking behind the game master's screen."

  "Why! You would impugn the dignity and honor of Her Holiness Princess Cassandrella, She who fights for Truth and Justice and the loving light of the Moon?"

  "Not at all," said Uncle, rolling his eyes at the melodrama, "but I shall continue to impugn Claire the hyperactive fan girl all I want."

  "Fair enough. I promise to be good, though."

  "Moving on!" Uncle said loudly over all the giggles. "Claire, like everyone else, your princess gets a bonus attribute point at level four, plus a bunch of skill points. Everybody working on those?" he asked around the table, to be answered by the frantic skritching of pencils on paper. "Good. Beyond that, she gets a few extra spells available from the Moon, and..." He handed her an index card. "A new trick."

  Claire read it quickly, lips moving as she puzzled through the longer words. "Spontaneous spellcasting?" she asked.

  "Yup. Remember how everyone has to choose their spells before we even start with the adventure? Well, at any time you can trade one of those spell tokens back to do one of a few things. For example, you could heal a friend, or blast a zombie with holy light."

  "Smashing Moon Surprise!"

  "... sure. But beyond that, you can just channel the holy energy and blast the entire area around you with either healing or evil-smiting power. And since the Moon is your patron, once you get to fifth level you can use it to dispel illusions or transformations, but that may take more power than normal to pull off." That last part wasn't actually in the rules, but Uncle felt bad about forgetting to mention this stuff the week before. And anything that distracted her from how spare the cleric level-up bonuses were was a good thing.

  "Cool, thanks."

  The table was quiet for a few more minutes as the girls put down skill points and chose new tricks. Uncle made the rounds, offering advice and checking numbers as they went. It didn't take too long before everything was in order. There was just one more detail that needed to be covered.

  He laid a large paper on the table. On it was a three-by-three grid, with each box labeled like so:

  LAWFUL GOOD

  NEUTRAL GOOD

  CHAOTIC GOOD

  LAWFUL NEUTRAL

  NEUTRAL

  CHAOTIC NEUTRAL

  LAWFUL EVIL

  NEUTRAL EVIL

  CHAOTIC EVIL

  "Anyone know what alignment is?" he asked.

  "Ain't that what you need when your car's wheels don't all point the right way?" Cynthia answered with another question.

  Uncle rolled his eyes. "No, actually. Alignment is the game's shorthand for a character's moral compass. Is she more good or more evil? A rule-breaker or a rule-maker? That's what this grid's about. Everyone falls somewhere on here, though not always to the same degree. For example... one time I played this forest bandit, sort of a Robin Hood type who cared a lot for his people but wouldn't ever obey the king. He was definitely a chaotic good character." He tapped the upper-right square for emphasis. "His nemesis was also a very good man, but one who strongly believed in the royal right to command. That guy was on the far end of lawful good. The real villain of the story wanted to twist the laws to let himself take the throne, and so was probably lawful or neutral evil."

  He took some chess pieces and positioned them on the squares. "Your character can be more on one side of a square than the other. A lawful neutral character would care about the rules above all, but could still tend a little more towards good than evil -- or vice-versa. Two lawful good characters may have vastly different ideas of what that means, and even have arguments over which action is the right one."

  "So why didn't we talk 'bout this last week?" Shelby demanded.

  "Because I wanted you all to get a good feeling on your princesses first," he replied. "I've seen too many players who start with alignment on a character, and then not go anywhere with it. Like, making a hero who's absolutely good for the sake of good and then ignoring the reasons why, which gets boring real fast. So instead," he summed up, slipping the paper back into its folder. "I want you to keep this in mind as you play today. Is your princess more this, or that? Good, evil, lawful, chaotic, or somewhere neutral. Let me know by the end, okay?"

  "Okay!" the girls chimed in chorus.

  "Well then, it's time to start!" Uncle rubbed his hands together eagerly. "Anyone care to sum up last week?"

  "We kicked buggy butt!"

  "We decided to go on an adventure instead of staying in school all summer," Helen added.

  "We fought for Love and Honor and to get our stuff back!"

  "I got to do a cool magical music solo and lead an army of rabbits and squirrels!"

  Katelyn just smiled. On the table in front of her was a little black stuffed cat with a red ribbon tied around its neck.

  "Sounds like a good summary, ladies. Most of your rewards for this first adventure are either skills or money, because the ants had a fair store of gemstones hidden away. The biggest prize is a map of the area, which you are following now..."

  Princess Gwenevrael stared at the parchment in her hands -- glared at it, really, as if that would shame it into behaving properly. In her homeland, maps and charts were considered works of art, and great effort was put into making them both accurate and beautiful. So far, this one hadn't proven itself in error, but it was still the ugliest thing she'd ever seen. The cartographer should be ashamed.

  "Well," she announced to the other young ladies as they finished their breakfast of fruit and dried meat. "I'd say we're either three days from the next town, or a week."

  "Which is it?" Princess Selvi demanded with her usual snort of derision. "Thought you pointy-ears were supposed to know everything!"

  She let the insult pass her ears without a rustle. The half-elf princess expected no less from the tusk-faced savage. "That depends on which route we take," she explained. "The road we're on now will get us there in a week, with no problems, but there's a side route that cuts right through here." She stabbed the spot with a finger.

  Princess Cassandrella craned her head closer to see. The moon priestess was still chewing on a piece of the exotic, oblong, orange-colored fruit that Princess Flora's Staff of Plenty had provided that morning. "Lost Woods," she read aloud. "That doesn't sound good."

  "Pffft." Obviously the barbarian princess disagreed. "It's just a name," Selvi continued. "I mean, look at the rest of it. Gloaming Canyon, Eldritch Falls, Pond of No Return... It even has a big 'Here Be Dragons' sign where our school should be!"

  For a rarity, the half-elf shared the same opinion. As far as Gwenevrael was concerned, the map's sole saving grace was that it was more recent and complete than the one they'd had before. "What do you two think?" she asked the others.

  Princess Flora shrugged. "It's not like we don't know our way around forests," she pointed out.

  "And if anyone messes with us, then KA-BOOM!" shouted Princess Bianca. The little witch placed her cat, Jinkies, on her hovering broomstick. The diminutive black feline mewed in agreement.

  "Be careful with those things," the half-elf advised. As much as the witch promised that the bundles of explosive force were perfectly safe unless activated, she still worried about putting anything that destructive in the hands of someone so... enthusiastic about things.

  They made it to the woods without
blowing anything up, which eased her worries a bit. The main road came fairly close to the edge of the green before forking off, but the side route was obviously the less traveled. The paving stones were broken and cracked, with weeds springing up like a green carpet leading into a palace of branches and leaves.

  For the life of her, Gwenevrael couldn't see why the road was in such disrepair. Its path went clear through the woods, extending into the distance, and scores of wildflowers painted a rainbow along the ground. She figured they could get through by the end of the day, easily.

  A handful of dice rattled behind Uncle's screen. It must have been a simple check, because he spoke up almost immediately: "And... you're completely lost."

  "What!?" cried Shelby.

  "It's not like there wasn't a clear warning on the map," he said. "Truth in advertising, ladies. As you were walking along, you paid more attention to the flowers than to the background scenery, and the path behind you sort of faded away while you were smelling the daisies."

  "But Gwen and Selvi have skill points in survival," said Helen. "And tracking. And Flora's a druid; doesn't she have any tricks she can use?"

  "Well?" Uncle turned to Cynthia. "Does Flora have any spells prepared that might possibly help?"

  The pony-tailed girl shuffled through her cantrip cards, those simple little bits of magic for everyday use. "Yup. I figured a trick like finding north could come in handy," she said, showing him the card. "We should be settled out soon enough."

  Princes Flora Fidella Del'Monica was an old hand at forests. The only thing they had more of than rocks in Silvalachia was trees, after all. Getting her bearings should've been as easy as flapjacks, but there was something funny about this place. The leaves blocked out the sun so well that it was impossible to tell where the light came from, and all attempts to climb a tree and look over the canopy got fouled by slippery bark, inconveniently spaced branches, and in one case thorns. Moss grew either on all sides of a trunk, or none of them.