Part 39: Something About Pies

The tour itself nearly took up a quarter of that day. Interacting with each floor was enjoyable by itself. With Peppie around though? It wasn’t all that bad to be honest. I started to warm up to her. Maybe it was just me, but the both of us were really passionate about how the cafe was structured. She started to take back a lot of what she said after noticing my keen interest in everything this place had to offer. I drew those connections a lot faster than she could because of my perspective when playing the games.

Peppie did not know what that was really like. Although The Traveller did have something to deal with their vague knowledge of a game about their world existing, they never knew what it was really like. Sharing that experience helped the both of us understand each other better.

The highlight of the cafe for me was the seventh floor. While I was there, I got to see The Lollipopsicles again. These three animatronics actually have a set of the same band per each floor. A stage curtain hides the robots whenever their concerts are not playing. I suspected that The Traveller built every single one of them. It seemed like something he would use as a part of his devious schemes.

I knew the names of each Lollipopsicle member from memory and which roles they played:

Bopberry

Known for playing percussion instruments. That along with a full drum kit set usually made him the background filler for their onstage performances.

Tangerina

Triples as a dancer, vocalist, and acoustic guitarist. She can be seen wearing an orange headset microphone which can help to adjust the volume, pitch, tempo, and frequency of the lyrics she sings.

Jitterjam

Uses his electric keyboard which can play a variety of different modes to adjust to the combination of synthesizers he wants to play just by pressing his piano’s keys.

They can pull off a really convincing performance. An interesting thing to note about the floors is they are much greater in length than in width. There are even different floors to fit customers of high to low community status within the cafe.

While I recognized almost everything by the time we reached the ninth floor, Peppie was generous enough to show me what was in each of the locked doors using her magical powers (except for the Cafe Catalog of course). Inside the 16th door, there was a pink staircase. Holding my breath the further we went down, Peppie suddenly stopped in front of me. I looked past her and saw a jade-colored carpet decorated with images of apple pies scattered below where we were about to head in.

“Peppie, why did we stop?” I asked.

I noticed her ears went up. Was she hearing something I couldn’t hear?

That was when I noticed excessive blinking from the lights downstairs. Peppie immediately teleported us right back upstairs and locked the door shut.

“Please don’t tell me what I think just happened…” I said while trying to catch my breath..

She nodded quietly, which made me realize what I had said earlier about The Traveller finding out was already true since the day I arrived and said that word.

That’s when we started to hear screaming and banging come from the very same door we just left out of.

It sounded like someone I knew.