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Everyone in town had been trucking loads of children to the newest pizza place in town, Maurice's Magic Pizza Funtime Castle. It was like a little Las Vegas (sans the booze and cabaret dancers, thank goodness) but it other than that it had its share of money guzzling arcade games, electric rides, toy vending machines and cranes, and of course the pizza with all the soft drinks your kidneys could withstand.

It was a boring summer so far, even Taylor's imagination could only be stretched so far at home until the pillow fort was no longer fun and the chairs for watchtowers got old. That the moment Syrcaid though it'd be a nice diversion for everyone to go check the new pizza place out.

"That's appalling," S-D said, staring up at the currently inactive and dimly lit stage animatronics. "This sort of thing is nightmare inducing, it doesn't even look properly proportioned."

"If they were a multi-million dollar industry instead of a franchise maybe they could afford nicer props, S-D, but how likely is that? They probably got some poor schmoe to assemble and suit it and got some hired grease monkeys to get it going," Syrcaid said, letting Taylor go to play in the enormous plastic jungle gym. "Though that one looks suspiciously like... nah , couldn't be..."

The animatronics were kind of disturbing. Perhaps it was the overcompensation and the manic smiles of the anthroporphic moose, Maurice, and his Canuck Crew. There was a beaver that was misproportionally the same height as the moose and yet the fox was small.

"Are there foxes in Canada?" Syrcaid puzzled.

"Hell, I don't know..." S-D gave the faux fur on the armature a test prod.

Taylor looked at the cubby holes, the sign read "Please place shoes in slots before playing. Thank you." She saw the other little kids with "squishy feet" take off their shoes and place them into the round PVC plastic slots. Then she looked at her own feet, shod in hard plastic foal's shoes and thought. Would it be okay for a filly to play with shoes that had to stay stuck on? She looked around and saw that no one else was like her, this wasn't an unusual sight. Hardly anyone even looked remotely equine.

She sighed and hung her head. Taylor didn't want to get in trouble on the first time visiting, so she went instead with a pocket full of quarters to find a ride.

There was the roller coaster, the carousel, a rocket, and a cowboy's horse. She stopped again and stared at the cowboy horse, it was pinto like she was but four-legged and it looked painfully made. Its face looked manic to her, the teeth were garish white and exposed with the false snaffle drilled onto its side. She watched with a surreal stare as a human girl looked at Taylor, then stuck a quarter into the horse ride as she hopped on.

Taylor didn't like to dwell on bad things, and to her the ugly laquered cowboy ride looked like a bad thing. It wasn't even a -pretty- horse, she thought as her nose wrinkled. Then she felt a tap on her shoulder and looked around to see the kitten standing beside her.

She stared openly, trying to place the face. She seemed to remember it from somewhere but wasn't quite sure. Taylor laughed and figured it didn't matter so long as it was a distraction.

"Do you wanna play skeeball?" she invited.

"She makes friends so easily," S-D muttered over a very large tub of some sort of black soda. "Damaris seems to make them quite as easily, it must be something to do with being young."

"Or being social at all," Syrcaid looked at his soda. "What size -did- you order?"

"The sign said Bladder Buster," S-D watched as Taylor took the large wooden ball and showed it to Makana. "How much you wanna bet that little ball goes flying through the air and maiming some poor employee?"

"Like they don't prepare themselves for that after working here for a week or more," Syrcaid laughed as two very large pizzas were presented to them at their picnic table-like seating area. "Holy cow, lookit all this food!"

"You gotta roll it so's it goes upptha ramp, see?" Taylor instructed, hefting the ball, though the ball didn't reach a high scoring hole. "And ya get more offtha tickets when you get a big number. But I dunno which is tha big number..."

"Yeah!" Taylor said. "But you gotta throw it real good," Taylor took the next ball that rolled down the shoot and hefted it again. "See? You get a number an' tha ticket comes outta the hole."

She pointed and as the ball had scored a "20" the tickets slid out. She pulled them off and looked at them. They were bright red and each marked as one point and stamped with Maurice Moose's face.

"You gotta save 'em, Dama told me," she said, as though the girl could've known who Damaris was. "She says if you get a whooooole buncha 'em that you can get the good prizes."

Taylor looked wistfully at the counter where a harassed looking cashier stood waiting to exchange points for prizes. The smallest prizes were in little plastic baskets marked "20" and "30" in a glass display counter. The higher ones were on the bottom shelf of that with larger toys wrapped in plastic. The BIGGEST toys were hanging off the ceiling with their point tags ranging in the hundreds. And the grand poobah of them all was the massive Maurice Moose talking plush doll atop a very tall gold tower marked at five thousand.

"Nah, I only gots the ones in my pocket," Taylor said, pulling out a small handfull from the pocket of the black overalls she was wearing. "I wanna get tha watch."

She pointed to the clear plastic bubble watch, whose face had little plastic confetti pieces of horseshoes and pastel colored beads atop a background of a green and blue cowboy's hat. The clear band itself had pastel sheriff stars and horseshoes printed on it. The little sign read "Assorted Digital Watches, 600".