At the Inn of the Prancing Pony
Chapter 25: Panic Control
A sizeable contingent of the crowd at the Ponies & Dragons showcase were there to cheer on the members of the Young Women’s League Championships. Nearly a hundred different groups of elementary to high school age girls had gone through the agony of having strangers with clipboards watch them play three gaming sessions over the span of nine months, resulting in this group from San Fernando Junior High School advancing to the PonyGameCon Showcase. A similar process had landed Brian’s hand-picked team at the neighboring table. This session was supposed to be a “victory lap” for the winning teams. But for the winning Young Women’s Team, it didn’t look that much like a victory lap anymore.
It was hard for anybody not in the Young Women’s Team to know precisely what happened. The post-lunch session had started out quite animated, with the girls talking excitedly over one another for several minutes. Then, for no apparent reason, the Pony Handler for the group started screaming, and the others joined in.
Mary Jo Powell leapt out of her chair and slid across the polished floor to bump into the leg of the Young Women’s group table. The girls gave out a shriek of surprise, and then quieted down.
M.J. got up, panting a little, with an open smile on her face. “Is everything alright here?” she asked. “I could...no, wait, I will...Break everybody! Fifteen minutes!”
The bewildered young women looked around at each other. It appeared to Mary Jo that not even they were sure what had spooked their PH.
Some of the spectators had walked out. Most of them, however, stayed to see what was going on. The players at the other two tables were standing, looking at Mary Jo and the other PH.
“Would you like to talk about it, Alexia?” Mary Jo asked gently, referring to a paper nameplate beside the girl who was shaking with fear. “If you don’t...that’s alright too.”
Ellen hung back, observing out of concern for what seemed to be a spreading disaster.
“I didn’t...I wasn’t going...to say...I just...A voice, it just came from somewhere in my head...” The last words of the girl’s stuttered declaration were the firmest, and the most terrified.
Mary Jo’s fingers dug into the wood of the table. “I...a voice?” she whispered. She coughed a bit and regained her volume. “That’s uh...very unusual.”
“Alexia, are you alright?” came the voice of someone bounding up onto the stage. M.J. turned to see Dorothy Reichart, the screenwriter who had offered to write up her life story.
The additional stress served to galvanize Mary Jo. “Yes,” she said, loud enough for anyone around to hear. “It gets a little stressful, here on the stage. I’m willing to do whatever you suggest to help you out.” She cast a desperate eye over to Ellen, in hopes that she had a better idea of how to handle this.
Ellen strode forward, taking a knee in front of the little girl, and entirely ignoring the screenwriter hovering over them. “It’s different, on the stage, isn’t it?” she said gently. “All the excitement, sometimes it’s hard not to let it get to you. Would you like me to give you some tips, on how to ignore the crowd?”
“Alexia, are you alright?” asked Mrs. Reichart from behind the two sisters. “Do you need me to take you away from here?” She turned slightly to address Mary Jo’s back. “This is the granddaughter I told you about. This game—”
Mary Jo whirled, and looked at the screenwriter. Her look was less accusation, and more expectation, like she had played this game so many times that she was making a bet with herself as to which outrageous accusation was about to pour out of the elderly woman’s mouth: “...is an obsession”? “...encourages smoking and the wearing of loose clothing”? “...forced me to shell out $1100 a month on pony stabling”? M.J. had heard them all before.
Mrs. Reichart, seeing her expression, shut up and considered exactly what she was going to say.
Alexia looked up to her idols, both of them, offering her help and sympathy, and she scrubbed her tears away to nod resolutely to Ellen. “I want to stay. Can you show me some, Princess?”
Ellen smiled, and calmly took the PH aside to teach her some very useful but ultimately completely unrelated techniques. She already had an inkling that she knew what had happened, and she was determined not to let it happen again.
Mary Jo stood there, watching Ellen the whole time, her hands clasped together, and squeezing, tighter and tighter.
Mrs. Reichart watched Ellen’s speech with a wary eye. When it became clear that her granddaughter was going to go through with the rest of the game, she pulled M.J. aside. “I may not be interested in your life story anymore, Mrs. Powell, but know this: I am now very invested in this story. Understand?”
Mary Jo mutely nodded, then waited for Ellen to finish.
It didn’t take long. Breathing techniques, repeating the names of those you are focusing on, and other such things would help but weren’t complex. Certainly nothing near being able to stop what had just happened. She gave the girl a pat on her back, and she settled back in to review her materials and get her head back into the game, while Ellen moved to form a triangle with her sister and the screenwriter.
“I think we should talk about some ways to make this session a little less stressful,” Mary Jo said curtly, gesturing towards the top of the bleachers. She gave a look to Mrs. Reichart, signaling that her presence was no longer needed.
The woman briefly considered challenging this, before shrugging meekly and returning to her seat.
# # #
The sisters mutely climbed up the stairs to the little room at the top. Marcus got up and raced after them.
Mary Jo walked right in. Marcus came up to the door, which Ellen was holding. With a contemptuous look, she slammed it in his face and then locked it.
Once inside, Mary Jo let her mask drop. “This is really happening, isn’t it? It’s really happening! The layout of the room...it was Midnight’s retainer, right? But I wrote your sheet! She doesn’t even have a backstory!”
“Hope Springs,” said Ellen. “Generic earth pony brown. Able to speak out of turn. The exact sort of NPC that no one pays any attention to.” She sat down, looking absolutely lost. “I didn’t want to be right...but when I asked for a hug, the first time I met Hope as Midnight...that wasn’t you flinching in response, that was her.”
Mary Jo blinked, looking into the distance. “This whole thing is falling apart,” she said distantly. “First Celestia, then Hope Springs. What next? Will the monsters start actually being able to hurt you?”
They were interrupted by a pounding on the door. “Open up,” demanded Marcus.
They ignored him.
“Of course not!” Ellen said, responding to her sister’s question. “They are connected. Hope and Celestia, the only two who can do this sort of thing. Listen, rush us out the doors of the Inn fast as you can, get the ball rolling. As long as it’s just our party interacting with her, it doesn’t matter.” Ellen grimaced and shook her head. “I mean, it matters because your brain is being invaded by ponies from another dimension who don’t like hugs, but it doesn’t matter game-wise.”
Mary Jo sighed. “I wish I knew some better way of handling this—a spell that works on brainworms.” She laughed. “Look, we are going to try to minimize this. Don’t call Celestia unless you absolutely have to. And you most certainly have my permission to start ignoring Hope. After all, she’s probably going to take care of herself, regardless, am I right?”
“No, no, I... I can’t ignore this, Jojo...Celestia could be the answer to all sorts of questions...she...” Ellen’s voice took on a whisper of fear as she looked to the door. “She came from the time forgotten. All of Equestria did...what if they are the answer to what he did? What if we can find a way to speak with her without an audience of a thousand players? We just have to bide our time. I’ll keep her entertained.”
Mary Jo whimpered. “And what if I don’t want to know?”
Ellen frowned. “You can’t say that. Sooner or later, we have to find out what went down at that commune. Jojo, somebody died over there, right around Halloween of 1970. Died or disappeared without a trace. I haven’t ever been able to track down the details. He might have been some derelict that Marcus picked up off the street, to...to do the sort of things to that we think he might have been doing to us. There’s a lot of things that could be hiding in a memory hole, Sister.”
M.J. caved to her younger sister, and pulled her into an embrace. “I’m so scared,” she whispered.
“Then I’ll do my best to keep the interactions to a minimum. I’ll not dig. I swear this to you, Jojo. I won’t dig until we are in a safe place, okay?”
“Okay,” Mary Jo said softly. Then she looked around her a bit. “Did you bring your mirror?” she asked. “I need to put my eyes back on.”
The compact was quickly flipped out of Ellen’s blue and star studded handbag, and held up for her.
The elder sister put herself back into a presentable state, and they turned to face the door.
“As if you needed another reason not to like the guy,” Ellen remarked.
Mary Jo laughed darkly to herself.
# # #
Once back at her place at the gaming table—Marcus having returned to his seat—Mary Jo paged through her chosen scenario, “Assassin’s Waltz”, with a growing sense of dread. This was supposed to be a dark comedy, a way for the group to unwind, by killing off a whole lot of ponies who resembled individuals, both in the wider world and in M.J.’s own life, that deserved to be taken down a peg. It went without saying that the mad cult leader was Marcus.
There was no possible way that she was putting Celestia and Hope Springs in that.
Mary Jo stood up. “Handler’s Conference!” she announced.
Most of the crowd groaned, beginning to wonder when the adventures would actually begin.
She turned to the PH of the Men’s table first. “Edgar, I have a confession to make: I deliberately gave the ‘Against the Slavers’ module to you because I knew that it would piss Brian off. I’m going to give you the one your group was meant to have.” She passed over the “Assassin’s Waltz” module to him. “Alexia,” she said next, “I’m well aware that ‘Lost Caverns’ is one of the toughest modules we’ve ever written. Now it’s your choice, but I think that ‘Against the Slavers’ would be more suited to your group. What do you think?”
The young woman looked up silently at Mary Jo for a few seconds, and then turned and walked back to her table to surrender the module.
And I end up with the one that puts us out in the middle of nowhere, perfect for me to contain the situation if it all goes belly up, Mary Jo thought to herself with a smile.
# # #
As could be easily predicted, the Young Women’s and Men’s tables were now stalled, as two Pony Handlers had to quickly read modules they had never even seen before.
Mary Jo, on the other hand, was much more comfortable. She had written this scenario herself, had actually travelled to a number of places that inspired the locations in this adventure. She could practically see them in her head.
# # #
Alexia paged through the sermonizing and overly-simplistic module that she was now stuck with. The adventure seemed to spend every other page teaching the lesson that slavery was wrong. She had spent a week putting together a complete binder full of notes on how she was going to make “Lost Caverns” one of the best adventures ever, adding plenty of the whimsical fantasy elements that were a major part of why her team was up here on this stage.
The girl to her right, Sally, reached out to take Alexia’s hand. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“This...it’s too simple,” Alexia sighed, letting the pages fall shut as she covered her face with her hands and sighed. “It’s nothing compared to that adventure we were about to run, and I was so ready for that one...but Mary Jo said...”
Sally shrugged. “Yeah. But I don’t really see what the problem is.” She reached into her backpack and removed a duplicate copy of “The Lost Caverns of Soap Candy”, still wrapped in plastic. “I bought it this morning,” she said with a shrewd little smile.
“Um, can we like, do that, Lex?” asked Erica, the girl on Alexia’s left, a blonde haired and green eyed girl who wore a loose green cape. “Can two groups play the same game at the same time?”
Alexia took up the booklet, looking it over with contemplation.
“There’s no rules against it...” said Sally.
“We should totally do this,” said Erica. “That’d be rad.”
Alexia looked to the other table at the far side of the stage, biting her bottom lip. “Yes, I can do it. I’ll just make it mine in my own way,” she explained, smiling to her group as they were invigorated by her enthusiasm. “My own style. Let’s do this.”
Almost immediately upon rejoining Sparkle, Celestia suddenly found herself back in the place with the fluffy clouds. She waited patiently for Sparkle to show up, but nothing happened.
“Hello?” she called out. “Was anypony calling me?”
No response.
Somewhere in the distance, she thought she heard the sounds of a distant conversation. She waited for the speakers to become close enough for her to make them out clearly, and then she set out to find them herself, but with no luck.
She wondered for a moment if she had finally been found out, and thrown into this place to get rid of her. She started pacing nervously in a tight circle, bracing herself for a loud voice of accusation, a compulsion to sleep...anything.
After a few moments of nothing worse happening to her, she decided that panic would be unproductive. As the perceived minutes stretched on, she used her mind to pluck off a bit of the cloud-like material around her, and sculpted it into a bust of Luna.
“Hmm…” she said, staring into the bust’s empty eye sockets.
M.J. flipped idly through the pages of her chosen scenario. “This one’s harder than what I was originally planning,” she said, looking right at Ellen, “but I think under the circumstances that it is the best choice. However, we’ll need to promote Hope Springs to a full member of the party. I’ll be playing her. Is that alright?”
The others didn’t appear to have any objections.
“So, just so we can stay immersed…” said Mary Jo, trying to sound uninterested, “...why don’t you give Hope the good news, Midnight Sparkle?”
“Ah, of course! Midnight Sparkle waits until Hope has finished her breakfast before turning to her. ‘Hope, dear! We have decided to journey out with this group of ours. My newly made friends and we shall be heading out in search of...things. And we want you to be a full equal in our party.’ Sparkle then passes Hope a spare set of adventurer’s gear. Standard list, rope and torches and rations, right Jojo?”
Ellen did this all the time, helping to introduce characters, and develop plot hooks in cooperation with her sister. She glanced up to see what Jojo was doing.
Mary Jo’s pencil raced across the blank character sheet, filling in detail after detail. Her other hand picked up the dice to determine attributes and shook them out, again and again. Her hand jerked in odd ways to make particular numbers come up at particular times. Once she had finished, she dropped the pencil and rubbed her hand as she looked over what she had just finished. Suddenly she laughed out loud.
“Oh, um, nothing,” she said sheepishly to the others. “Sometimes I just knock myself out.”
Printed in Hope Springs’ Personal Deity square was “Herself.”