Revealing Project Green

A litrpg with a greasy spoon, fairies, and wonky trees

By Nolan Locke

CHAPTER 1.7- Sticky Steve and the Shrimp Imp

Maya complains later of the feeling of being watched. We’re still reeling from the fairies, the door, the trees, all of it. There’s so much that it’s hard to worry about being watched, mostly because all the fairies were there. And even if they weren’t really interested in people past landing on our heads and making rude gestures at us, we know they’re not reporting out movements to some fairy spy network or a fairy king.

I almost breathe a sigh of relief when we discover the door’s locked. I do want to know what’s behind it, or under it, but it’ll be dangerous.

And then I remember how a simple sandwich recovers hit points, and how much faster I am than everything else, and how none of the monsters thus far have had any real hit points to speak of. What am I afraid of? Pfffft.

“Let’s look for the key.”

We hunt around here for a short while, and come up with nothing but Maya’s bad feeling. It’s not here. This is a video game and we’re supposed to travel to a place to get a McGuffin. There’s a progression to these things, and that means going to wherever the shrimp door key is.

“What do you think about going to Steve’s Shrimp Shack?”

“Not hungry,” Ritchie replies. It’s about three seconds before his eyes light up. “Oh! Oh, right! Why didn’t I think of that?”

Greensville has a marina absolutely rammed with shrimp boats, and there are several little warehouses with tanks for keeping them, so it’s possible I’m wildly guessing wrong. It’s the place with the massive shrimp on the sign, about thirty feet up.

The restaurant has a cute 50’s diner feel, with the shiny red stools arrayed around a large, outthrust bar. Booths ring the rest of the place, with the floor tiles in that iconic checkerboard black and white.

“It’s closed,” I say, quite unnecessarily. A huge WE’RE CLOSED sign hung in the door.

It isn’t locked, but it is closed. Maya pushes the door open and heads inside, with Ritchie and I following after. Unfortunately the bell at the door goes jingle jangle.

Sticky Steve is what we call him. He’s a huge man, and not in the bodybuilder sense, with hairy hands and very little neck. Bristly hair pokes out from where his stained t-shirt ends as well, and he has a permanent five o’clock shadow. I bet he could shave at noon and he’d still have a grubby, pokey beard thing by dinner time.

And he’s sticky, or so the legends go.

“Whozzat?” he calls.

I motion for Ritchie and Maya to… something. It’s a sort of down wave, so maybe ‘get down.’ It could also be ‘get out of sight’ which is what I mean.

“Donny,” I call back. “Rofleeder.”

It’s a small town. People know each other.

“I have no idea who you are,” he replies, “but we’re closed. Come back at twelve, and bring your parents. No free meals here.”

Ritchie and Maya are busy making their Moves rolls, and rolling higher than 12. I know, because Sticky Steve has a couple of dice rolling over his head, and the result comes out to be 12.

“Sorry to bother you, but have you seen a key anywhere? A weird-looking key?”

Panache cues up, which is great! Plus I have Charismatic, which… doesn’t trigger? What? Instead, I watch in horror as 4d6+1 turns into a result of 8. Sticky Steve must have some ability to resist, because his 3d6 Will rolls 9, then 15, then 19. Damn those re-rolling and stacking 6’s.

“Go on, kid. I got nothing for ya. I gotta prep for the lunch rush and you’re wastin’ my time. Now go on before I call the cops.”

He’s holding a spatula covered in grease, an aluminum thing that appears more like a meat cleaver to my ten year old self. He’s also decked out in a stained apron with bulging pockets, which is straining to wrap around his doughy frame.

“You not hear me, kid? Scram.”

Maya and Ritchie are climbing over the counter to get behind Sticky Steve, into the kitchen. I think they’ve seen something. I’ve got to stall.

“Listen, I’ve got money.” My Characteristic of Rich checks somewhere behind my head. I can feel it go, like it clicks, and an extra die falls into my Panache. I know that if this messes up, either he hits me or stomps back into the kitchen after my best friends, so I pray the dice have a bit more magic in them.

Finally. I end up with two 6’s, a 4, 3 and a 1. 22 with my +2.

Sticky Steve can’t possibly match that, even in his Domain of… grease maybe. The Fryer Domain, I don’t know. He rolls his Will (I’m starting to see and hear dice by now, instead of the numbers coming directly into my head) and scores a 6, 2 and 1. The 6 re-rolls a 2, and that ends up being only 11.

“Money?” he says, and I dutifully pull out my kids wallet with the rumpled fives and ones in it. All told it’s maybe fifty bucks, but in ‘88 that’s a fortune for a kid, and a decent amount of money for a diner operator. Heck, most of the stuff on the menu at Steve’s is 2.99 to 6.99. He approaches, but loses his nerve a bit and shakes his head. “I ain’t in the habit of stealin’ from kids. Whadda you want anyway? A key?”

A bit of movement catches my eye, and I see a teensy little goblin shaped creature with fire engine red skin and a devil tail leering at me, with an impossibly huge mouth. It’s holding a huge golden key over its far-too-big head, and waggles it at me before jumping off the counter, where Steve can put plates for a server to deliver to customers. Then Maya goes flying past after the little bugger.

“Uh, no, I was just wondering, um… my birthday’s coming up! Do you do catering? Like if I wanted to have a birthday party at my house, but I wanted, uh, shrimp burgers and shrimp chowder at my house, a shrimp themed birthday party, could you do that? My mom’s got a lot more than this.”

To be fair this is nearly enough on its own.

I’m amazed there hasn’t been any clattering and banging back in the kitchen, but Maya and Ritchie are running back and forth like complete idiots, and the tiny devil creature is jumping around like it has big old frog legs.

“Gee I dunno,” Steve says. “I never done any catering before. I don’t think it’d be that hard. I’d have to do some par-cookin’ and finish everything off closer to your house. You can’t exactly cook here and drive it the whole way across town. Hm, I guess it might work.”

Ritchie and Maya have pots and pans, and another scrambling session goes on while Steve thinks all this through. I’m glad he has a garbage Insight rating, because this is taking absolutely forever.

“Do you think you could finish up all the cooking in my house?”

“You ain’t got no flat top in your house, I guarantee that, kid. Though maybe we could do without it.”

A metallic thump later, and the key flashes into view in Maya’s hand.

“I think we’d have to talk to your mom about setting up a grill and a deep fryer in your house, or in the backyard. Run an extension cord out there from your garage. Rich kid like you bound to have a big old garage.”

The door to the kitchen eases open, and since Sticky Steve’s so wide I can’t see anything until Ritchie climbs up over the counter on the other side, and Maya follows along. She’s just about over when her foot knocks against one of the condiment racks, the one with the salt, pepper, and for some reason the huge glass container full of sugar.

“What–“

“Hey I’ll talk to my mom and give you a call!” I say, far more loudly and forcefully than I intend. Steve gets a suspicious look on his face, and marches over to the bit of countertop that folds up, and peers behind it to the server area, where there’s nothing but shelves and stacks of napkins and more salt shakers and stuff like that. Luckily Maya and Ritchie are already on the other side, and wedged into the space where you’d put your knees, so when Steve peers over the other side of the counter to the opposite side of the restaurant from where I’m standing, he doesn’t see anything.

He shoots me a dark look. “Go on, kid. I got a lot of prep to do.”

“Sure.”

He heads back into the kitchen, and I’m grateful, because that gives my friends enough time to dart out the door I’m holding, so the bell won’t chime.

Once free of the diner, I’m hopping around with excitement. I demand to see it, and demand to see it again, and we go through one of those keep-away fights of pure delight, with laughing and good-natured frustration which ends with me slugging Ritchie in the gut companionably. Maybe a little too hard, since he glares at me after having a bit of trouble breathing. Although he doesn’t want to give up the key, he does after a bit of roughhousing.

It’s huge, longer than my hand, with a big golden head, sort of shaped like a cross. It’s got a perfect replica of the shrimp at the other end, just like the one from the door in the forest floor. The only notable difference is how the long, curving whiskers (which look like whips) are supported by extra gold metal beneath. They still form a loop, and after Maya snatches it away she twirls it around her finger.

“All right, boys. You ready to get this party bus rolling?”

Ritchie’s back to normal, and nods enthusiastically.

It’s another short bike ride back to the forest, but it’s easy when you’re absolutely pumped to make the journey. Every tree’s shadow seems like an impressionist painting in the making. Every time the breeze flutters the leaves on the trees turns them into natural sparkly things. The crunch of our bike tires over the dirt on the highway’s shoulder is the freshest it’s ever sounded.

Before long, the trees once again grow strange, and the bobbing fairies appear all about us. I can now make out things shaped like furniture all over the place as well: growths out of the tree boughs are shaped like sofas and easy chairs. Whirls in the bark have table legs with accompanying chairs. Rocks and knobbly tree roots have distinct furniture shapes sticking out, or they’ve just transformed into tiny lamps and side tables.

“Weird.”

“It’s weirder.” Something in the tone of Maya’s voice tells me to look, and I follow her gaze to what’s definitely a hunched figure watching us from deeper in the forest, to the south.

“That’s the guy?” I ask, not knowing what I mean.

“I think so,” Maya doesn't need to know what I mean, apparently. She keeps her eye on the figure as she backs toward the shrimp door. “How’s it coming, Ritchie?”

He looks between me and Maya. “You really wanna do this?”

“Oh, I’m ready.”

Maya just nods, still staring at the man. “Let’s rock.”

The door comes open without a creak of the hinges. No idea what they’re connected to, and maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe ogres and zombies and ghosts and hinges that attach to nothing all basically originate at the same source. Will we find what that source is?

I’ll give you a hint: no. Not by a long shot. But what we end up doing is just as important, since we have a long journey ahead of us and it’s not going to get easier.

No, just like Legend of Zelda, the levels get harder as we go through them.

“Come on,” I tell Maya, who nods without taking her eyes off the man. Once again, I look for the figure, and once again, he’s there. You’d expect him to vanish whenever you blink, right? But it doesn’t even happen once Maya heads down the stairs, and I follow after. I throw another glance back to where he’s been standing, and I’ll be damned if he doesn’t look even closer.

But destiny’s calling.