At the Inn of the Prancing Pony

by McPoodle


Chapter 22: A Princess in the City of Angels

At the Inn of the Prancing Pony

Chapter 22: A Princess in the City of Angels


The flying behemoths left gentle paths of water vapor behind them as they made their way across the late October skies, tracing out shapes that only the gods could make out completely. Some danced their way down towards the safety of their nesting grounds, others danced upwards, towards the freedom of the stratosphere. It was only once they had landed that it was easily discernible that the beasts themselves were hollow, filled with queuing people.

It was an odd way to consider Los Angeles International Airport, but it’s how Ellen Powell thought that a pony might consider it.

Ellen stood out in a crowd. It was something she was rather proud of. Her height had nothing to do with it—Ellen considered it cheating to try to dominate a room merely with height. No, she dominated a room with the size of her personality, and this poor airport terminal didn’t stand a chance. Of course, the frilly pink princess dress certainly didn’t hurt.

The flight from O’Hare was late. Of course. That was like saying that traffic on the 101 was slow, or that the air quality index downtown would be a bit on the unhealthy side. But the plane had finally landed, and the passengers were disembarking, starting with First Class. So it wasn’t much longer before…

“Sis! Long time, no see. I hope I didn’t interrupt your plans too much.” The traveler was still bundled up for a Midwestern autumn.

Ellen picked up her travel-on bag and began to walk with her back to Baggage Claim. “It wasn’t that bad,” she said. “I was already dressed up for the con, as you can see.”

Mary Jo Powell nodded. “I just want to apologize once more, though.”

Ellen shrugged. “Gary’s a busy man.”

Mary Jo laughed. “Never thought I’d reach the day when somebody said that about him.”

# # #

The two eventually ended up in Ellen’s Lincoln Town Car, slowly making their way through traffic to the Hyatt. Nobody seemed to notice that a car was being driven through downtown L.A. by a pretty pink princess. In fact, as Mary Jo looked into a few windows, she saw individuals wearing far stranger clothing. Or even in one case, nothing at all.

Ellen absently tuned the radio through the early morning radio talkfests to find a little current pop music:

Some girls take a bashful boy
And hide him away from the rest of the world
I wanna be the one to walk in the sun
Oh boys, they want to have fun.

“So, how’s Uncle Bernie treating you these days at the firm?” Mary Jo asked from the passenger seat, her fingers tented together before her lips. Minus all the foul weather apparel, the elder of the two Powell sisters was just a bit taller than her sibling, her angular features accentuated by minimal makeup and lack of sleep.

“As well as upper management can treat an employee without it being illegal,” Ellen said with a wan grin. “But really, he does his best to keep the place running, a good place to work, all that jazz, but it’s still a corporate job. What’s keeping you up at night?”

“Luke and I have nearly gotten all the kinks worked out of Second Edition,” Mary Jo said, putting her hands behind her head of fuzzy red hair. “He’s here, you know. Took an awful lot of coaxing, but I finally talked him into coming down for the convention. He took the flight before mine. I figured he deserved some kind of public recognition for all of those late nights and last-minute revisions.”

Ellen nodded. “And how is Gary, anyway? I know he’s only a dozen miles or so from me, but we’ve never really gotten along, you know.”

Mary Jo smiled wryly. “I know. I think I’m finally beginning to see what you don’t see in him. He’s still at Marvel, putting out that cartoon of his.”

“I heard it isn’t doing that well,” Ellen said with a frown. “I hope it’s not too much of a drain for you.”

“Oh, it’s a drop in the bucket, I assure you,” Mary Jo said with a too-wide smile. “You see, I’ve learned that the secret of a successful marriage is to always keep the husband busy. You remember his last project, don’t you? That Polearm Guide that ran to 500 plus pages? I think we maybe sold 85 copies...tops.”

The flinch and hiss of drawn breath was followed by an incredulous stare, before Ellen looked back to the road. “Was he crushed? Eighty five...double digits, I can’t even...how many copies have we put out? Easily in the five digit range, right? I can’t even imagine how hurt I’d be by that.”

“Player’s Manual was eighty thousand last year. No, he doesn’t really care. I have to hand it to him—the man’s a true artist. He made that book because he always wanted to write a book about medieval and early modern weaponry, and this was the only way he was ever going to do it. I mean, have you ever watched an episode of that Ponies & Dragons cartoon? The action in the one I saw had almost nothing to do with any of the actual rules. The story seemed pretty good, and of course, the poor kids trapped in the bodies of ponies nearly made it home, just like I imagine they always nearly do. I’ve been told by marketing that the series has had a positive impact on sales. Not much of an impact, but still.”

“But, that last adventure...that last enemy...” Ellen smiled, nodding. “I still like to think that you run the best games. Even the ones we lose, we feel like we were heroes.”

“Well, the fans seem to think so. Our first day has already sold out the seats in the spectator section before the con even launched—first year that’s happened, I think.”

“Really... Good thing I don’t get stage fright then. Did you get the character sheet I mailed you?” Ellen made a starburst by popping open her hand—the traffic was slow enough that she could do it safely. “Sun Star. She’s a cleric of—”

“Nope didn’t get it,” Mary Jo said quickly. “Must have been eaten by the U.S. Postal Service. Too bad.”

“Or by a grue...a grue with pony-related authority issues,” Ellen grumbled.


They arrived at the Hyatt, and brought Mary Jo’s luggage up to the room that the hotel had perpetually reserved for her this time of year. From the tenth story window, she could look straight down on the convention center.

Mary Jo stood at the window for a few minutes, her arm extended downwards as she closed thumb and forefinger around one person after another walking about on the ground far below. “Squish! Squish! Squish!” she said with a squeal.

“Really? Squishy-squish goes the common folk? Come on, you’re more creative than that.” Ellen took out a handmade clay pony miniature, holding it at a distance to line it up with a balding man. “I have tasted human flesh, I now crave it eternally!

Mary Jo cackled. “We make good gods, we two.”

“Only the best.”

Ellen leaped and plopped heavily onto the bed, gleefully listening to the springs groan. “Now Mary Jo, I’ll be just down the hall, and these springs are pretty loud, so don’t—”

Mary Jo was in the midst of devising a suitable riposte, when a sudden knocking started upon the door. The standing woman sighed and consulted her watch. “Less than ten minutes. Gotta be a new record.” From her overnight bag, she took out a conical yellow hat with “Rules Wizard” written down the side. She walked up to the door and looked through the peephole. “I’ll give you one guess,” she said to Ellen with a gloomy look.

The pink-clothed girl rolled to her stomach on the bed, frowning. “Surely it’s not Brian? I thought we were stealthy, what with my ninja costume and such.”

Mary Jo laughed. “Oh, how I missed you!” She turned to the door, preparing to open it. “Now you, on the other hand…Ah, Brian! How nice to see our number one customer!”

The short hirsute man on the other side of the now open door waved a beefy hand absently. “Yah, yah, I’m awesome,” he said. “Now tell Edgar back here that I can still control my character after ingesting a slit-eye pearl.”

Mary Jo looked over Brian’s shoulder at the tall thin man behind him, who was trying desperately not to have anything to do with Brian while standing in front of his idol. “It’s nice to meet you, Edgar. How long have you been Pony Handling for Brian?”

“Oh, uh about two months,” Edgar said, shuffling his feet.

“I think that you makes you Brian’s thirty-ninth PH,” Mary Jo said.

“Forty-second,” Brian mumbled.

While this conversation had been going on, Mary Jo had held a hand back towards her sister, a prompt to hand over the appropriate rulebook. Ellen, however, had other plans.

“I’ll handle his pony, hai-o!” Ellen called from inside, doing her best Victoria Valentine impression. “But no, not really. It’s a joke. Slit-eye pearls turn ponies into dragons, and we can’t play dragons, Brian! Just like you can’t drive a tank down the freeway—it’s bad balance, bad handling, a bomb in a fistfight. Oh right, books...”

Ellen actually rolled off the bed with a fairly loud thud and squeal of bedsprings, before digging through a bag and standing up to pass her sister the newest, grandest, most written-in and errata'd Player’s Guide that there ever was.

“But…” the little man protested.

Mary Jo took the book and opened it to the right page without even looking down. “Brian, what’s Rule #1 of player creation? Read it for me, please.”

“‘You can’t play a dragon.’ But like, what if my character had a pony brain inside of a dragon body? Or like, if it had some limitation to even things out? Like, she totally becomes powerless from 2 to 3 pm on alternate Thursdays? That would totally balance things out, right?”

“Brian, please read Rule #2.”

“‘No half-dragons, part-dragons, or even a teensy-bit dragons, neither.’ But what about—”

“Brian! Read Rule #3.”

“‘No exceptions!’” He sighed. “Alright. But Skull Flame was going to be awesome! She was going to fix her wings, and we were going to hunt down that scary pony that was giving Edgar nightmares.”

Edgar rapidly shook his head. “We’ve covered the rule dispute, I think we can just go. We don’t need to bother the Great and Powerful M.J. with piddling details like that.”

“You should do your scary PH voice, tell him his character exploded or something,” Ellen piped up from where she was dangling, top half of her body first, off a chair, legs hooked over the back. “Heck, get rid of the scary—” Ellen fell (again) from the chair, and rushed to the door, wide eyed. “Scary pony? Edgar, you’re now a VP, get in here. Byeeee Briiiaaaaaaaan!”

“But what if—”

SLAM!

Mary Jo took off her wizard hat. “Welcome to my humble abode,” she said sarcastically. “Can I get you anything? Water? Something that comes in a teeny-tiny bottle?”

“Oh, um...water, I guess…”

“Sure thing! The finest bathroom tap water, coming right up!”

“Okay, Edgar...hold on, sit down.” Ellen pulled up a chair next to the one he took, and sighed deeply, eyes closed, before speaking. “First off, yes. We made the game. We aren’t better at it than anyone, well...” She smirked and winked to her sister. “Except maybe Brian, but I digress. The scary pony...if I’m right, and according to myself I usually am, I think we know who you are talking about. I would like you to describe it to me.”

Edgar looked around him, still very nervous. “Look, I just want to say first of all that Brian’s exaggerating. It was just an odd little thing brought up by stress. This is my first con, after all, and to be invited to play on the same floor as you two, well, it can do something to a guy, you know? Anyway, this was just some NPC I rolled up, because I didn’t feel like roleplaying an entire encounter in some little town just to gather information. She was an earth pony, bit on the scrawny side, standard issue brown.”

“Earth pony? Really? Are you sure she didn’t have, I don’t know, wings, a horn and a flowing mane?”

Edgar looked at her with a blank expression. “It wasn’t Princess Celestia.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. She, uh, was a Celestia worshipper. I think.”

“You...think. She was your character.”

Edgar sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “Ah, the details are kind of fuzzy. In fact, there are parts of that night I don’t really remember at all. We were kinda wasted.”

Ellen looked over at the bathroom. “Jojo...hold on, stress right? What were you admitted to the hospital under? It was stress, right? A short visit, in and out, nothing wrong? But it’s not stress.” She looked back at her guest. “What was her name, Edgar?”

Mary Jo came out with the glass of water. “Are you on that again? Edgar, I’m sorry, but any time my sister hears the word ‘Celestia’, she turns into the Spanish Inquisition.”

“It matters!” Ellen said, almost begging, before turning to Edgar again. “Did any of your friends get spooked about it? Say that you spoke with a different voice? Maybe they were scared of you a little, not sure if you were really you? What was her name?”

Edgar backed into his chair. “I’m not feeling very comfortable right now. In fact, I think I better go. It was nice meeting you.” He pointedly addressed this last remark to Mary Jo alone, as she escorted him out of the room.

“Great, that’s just great!” M.J. exclaimed after closing the door. “The convention hasn’t even started, and you’re already bugging out. You ever treat any of your clients this way on the witness stand?”

Ellen turned away, looking out the window. “No,” she answered with a frown. “The witness stand isn’t where you press them. You press them when you’re consulting, alone, and you know that they aren’t telling the whole truth. I’m a decent lawyer, Jojo. I can feel when things don’t add up, and this...I’m sorry, okay? I’ll go to my room... Dinner in a few hours?” She asked, as she stood.

Mary Jo sighed. “Alright,” she said. “Why don’t you go down to the convention floor and mingle? At least one of us can still do that without being mobbed.”

“I will. Want anything from the vendors? They’re still setting up, so they might have something nice.” She stopped at the door, putting on her best smile.

“Surprise me,” Mary Jo said, returning the smile.

There was a single knock on the door before Ellen yanked it open, revealing a young blond man with a checkered shirt and spectacles on. In the crook of one arm, he held a pile of books and paperwork. “Oh!” he said on seeing the woman before him. “Uh, hello. Ellen? You probably don’t remember me.”

“Don’t work her too hard, Luke,” she said, passing him on the way out.

“Oh, you...you do remember me. Mrs. Powell, I have the paperwork you requested.”

“Yes, yes,” M.J. said wearily, ushering him inside. “Tell me, Luke...do you think I’m normal?”

“Sounds like bedroom talk! Watch out, the bed squeaks!” Ellen shouted up the hall before the door swung shut.

She frowned, reflecting on her joke which was probably in poor taste, before shrugging and making her way to the convention center.

# # #

Ellen walked happily among the surging crowds of little girls, half of them in some sort of pony costume. She kept her eyes open for two particular types of costumes in particular.

“You!” she said, pointing at a costumed girl with a pastel striped wig. “Who are you supposed to be?”

“I’m Pricess Celessia!” the girl crowed, looking up at the mother holding her hand to make sure she wasn’t in trouble for talking with a stranger.

“It’s very good!” Ellen exclaimed, lowering herself down to the girl’s level. “Would you like Princess Celestia’s official seal of approval?”

The girl looked up to her mother, who nodded indulgently. She then shook her head so violently that she nearly lost her wig.

From the lanyard holding her convention pass, Ellen lifted up one of two little stamps, and applied it to the girl’s pass. The stamp consisted of Princess Celestia’s cutie mark, accompanied by the words “Approved by Princess Celestia”.

“Whas it say? Whas it say?” the girl demanded after a brief examination.

The mother read it to her.

“Yay!” the girl screamed. She started to run away, but was stopped by the hand of the mother.

“What do we say?” she prompted.

“...Thank ooo,” the girl said in a little voice. “Ooh! A mannycore!”

And the pair was off.

Ellen rose to her feet laughing. “Another convert to the cause,” she said to herself.

Her other stamp was Nightmare Moon giving the recipient permission to keep on living. She didn’t get to use that one nearly as often.


Mary Jo waited at her table at the Hyatt’s high-end restaurant for nearly ten minutes after the reservation time before her sister finally arrived, utterly exhausted.

“Surprise!” she cried, shoving an open box in her hands. “Totally, 100% bootleg.”

M.J. pulled out a little plastic figure and turned it this way and that. “What’s it suppose to—?”

“It’s you!” Ellen exclaimed. “See, it’s got your rules hat and everything! It also looks like it got plastic surgery to give it lips bigger than the entire rest of its face but hey! It’s the thought that counts! And speaking of that...” And in the blink of an eye, her expression suddenly flipped to earnest. “No apologies! You’re here. You okay?” Ellen asked worriedly.

Mary Jo blinked. “I’m fine,” she said, putting the mini-M.J. aside. “Luke’s latest emergency was nothing of importance, as they often tend to be—I think he was really nervous about his public appearance tomorrow. I had some time to rest my eyes. I look forward to getting a little sleep tonight.”

The still very pink sister relaxed, smiling. “You’d better. You’ve got a game to run, and I want you to be able to enjoy it just as much as the rest of us will.”

“Thanks,” said M.J. “You don’t know how much I look forward to these sessions each year. Reminds me of the old days...the good parts of the old days.” She smiled wanly.

“The parts that weren’t filled with rules arguments, huh?” Ellen tapped her fork against the table, before clearing her throat. “I’m sorry. Not for being obsessed, that’s just me, but...I’m sorry that I’ve let it seem more important than us...than the game. I’ll try to reign it in, and...sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Mary Jo said with a regal smile. She always reminded Ellen a bit of the artwork of Princess Celestia at times like this.

“I just...I need you to understand how frightened I was, when that all happened. I was so scared, and I just wanted you to be you again. That’s all I want.”

Mary Jo looked way. “The doctors all cleared me. Physical and mental. It was just...stress. All of those people, watching us play. You never seemed to have trouble with that sort of thing, but it was never easy for me. It was like...I could feel their eyes on my back, pressing me into the ground. I...I couldn’t be myself. I had to retreat into another identity, into somebody who could handle it... Well, that’s what the shrinks told me.” She laughed. “It’s behind me now. Behind us now. I’ve never had a relapse, after all.”

Ellan nodded firmly. “Behind but not forgotten... You’re my Celestia, anyway. My amazing Celestia.”

“Well, you better not be my Luna,” Mary Jo retorted. “I believe there is a quite hefty fine for defacing the Moon.”

“And I have been awfully disobedient,” she agreed.

“I’ll have to have Luke add a ‘Royal Pardon’ to that book of forms he keeps bugging me to authorize,” Mary Jo said with a Celestia-worthy smirk. She raised a hand into the air. “Waiter? I believe we are ready to make our orders now.”

Ellen waited until the two of them were alone again, before leaning over the table to whisper to her sister. “I don’t suppose you’re willing to give your favorite sister a hint as to what campaign you’ve written up this year?”

Mary Jo leaned over to whisper in her ear. “Not a chance.

“Well then...” Ellen rested her head on her hands, smiling. “Could I at least know what character I’ll be playing?”

“Just trust me: you’ll like her. I think I came up with something really good this time, for each of you.”

“Alright. Alright. I suppose I will just have to wait until the tournament.”

“As always. We play this game every year—it was the same thing with the Christmas presents.”

“And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”