Still don't know where this is going, but...
have some more Pretty Pretty Princess:
“PRETTY PRETTY PRINCESS STARLIGHT SMASH!”
Light flared from the head of the hammer, and the robot exploded in a plume of pink love hearts and oily black smoke. For a moment there was silence, before a brief shower of debris rained down, with a sound like hailstones on glass.
She swore as tiny pieces of robot shrapnel bounced off her.
“CUT! Jesus fucking Christ Gail, I said 'smash the robot', not 'blow it to fucking pieces'! Those things are expensive.”
With a heavy sigh, Gail let the Pretty Princess Starlight Hammer slip from her hand. The wooden floor of the set groaned uncomfortably under it's weight. Taking a few breaths to compose herself, she looked around at the frightened faces of the crew, peering out at her from behind the pieces of scenery or film equipment that they'd used as cover.
His face caught in a familiar look of fury, Mr Samson stormed across the set towards her.
“Sorry Sam.” She said, doing her best to give him the doe eyes. It never worked.
“That's 'Mr Samson', not 'Sam'. Dammit girl.”
“Do we need to retake?”
“How the hell are we supposed to retake?! You blew up our robot. Fuck, now I gotta clean up all this mess too. Go get cleaned up already. And stop trying to give me those fucking puppy-eyes, you're twenty-one, woman, not twelve. I get enough of that shit from my daughter.”
With a parting scowl, he turned and stormed off across the set.
“JIMMY! Stop hiding behind that fucking camera already. If it's broken I'm taking it out of your pay, d'ya hear?! Christ, get this set cleaned up people. I'm going for lunch. Suit Spirit classroom scenes in half an hour.”
Grateful to be dismissed, Gail nearly ran from the set to her dressing room. Without a moment wasted, she peeled off the ridiculously clingy Pretty Princess costume, and collapsed into her chair, in just her underwear. In the corner, her black cat, Jasper, farted in his sleep. The studio's air conditioning seemed to work maybe one day in ten, and today apparently wasn't the day. After hours under the film lights her costume had been in danger of becoming see-through with sweat.
After a minute or two she picked up her cell phone and dialled the first number in her address book.
“Hi honey. What's up?” Blake's voice was full of confusion and wariness. Just what she needed.
“Nothing sweetie, just wanted to talk to you.”
“Oh. Now's not the best time. Meeting with a big client. It's nothing urgent then?”
“Well, no. Not urgent. I just...”
“Sorry Gail, honey, these guys are kinda impatient, so...”
“OK, I'll let you go. Sorry sweetheart. Just... uh, do you want to do something tonight?”
“Let me get back to you, OK? Maybe this weekend.”
“OK. Sorry. Love you.”
“Ciao.”
The line clicked dead.
With a long sigh, she turned to look at herself in the mirror.
“What do you think Jasper? Do I look twenty-one to you?”
Experimentally, she lifted her tits, and pushed them together, as much as was possible. It wasn't long before she gave up trying. The results hadn't improved.
“Stupid Japanese ancestry.” She growled. After a moment's thought, she added “Fuck it” and pulled on a t-shirt. A pair of jeans were unearthed, and finally she bundled Jasper up in her arms, and went out the door, soothing the struggling creature, as she slipped out of the studio.
As they got out onto the street, she relaxed a little, and set Jasper down so he could walk. He gave her an angry glare, but fell into step beside her all the same.
“Come on,” she said, in a conciliatory tone, “we're going to get some ice-cream. Screw Sam and his stupid costume.”
She hated wearing the stupid thing. It itched, and it clung, and it was disgustingly revealing. It was nothing like her real Pretty Princess costume.
Of course, she hadn't worn that in a long time.
The tables outside the cafe were busy, and she was lucky to find one empty. The server barely even blinked when she ordered a large double serving for herself, and a single serving for Jasper. Thank God for living in LA. She sat down at the table, and Jasper hopped up to lap at his ice-cream. She hoped fervently that Sam might have forgotten her screw up by the time he was done with his “lunch”, which she knew consisted of at least four fingers of scotch.
“Mommy, look! Look! Mommy, mommy, it's Pretty Pretty Princess Starlight! Look!”
“Shh Clara, don't bother the girl.”
“But mommmmmy, it's Pretty Pretty Princess Starlight!”
“Now, Clara. If it really was Pretty Princess Starlight...”
“Pretty PRETTY Princess Starlight!”
“...do you really think she'd just be sitting there eating ice cream?”
The little girl pouted, but seemed to consider the logic in what her mother said. Gail tried to be discreet about watching, but really, she almost wanted to burst out laughing.
“Hmmmm.... She is kinda fat to be Pretty Pretty Princess Starlight.”
Flushing red, Gail hid her face as the embarressed woman hauled her protesting daughter away. Suddenly her half finished bowl of ice-cream didn't seem so appealing.
“God dammit Jasper, how did I end up like this?” She muttered, angrily flinging the spoon down.
Everything had been so simple, back in the Pretty Pretty Princess Wars. You didn't ask why or how. The Great Teacher appeared, like lightning in a blue sky, and your life changed. You had powers, a mission, a destiny. There was evil walking the Earth, and you didn't think to ask how it had got there. The Great Teacher said “Fight the darkness”, and you did.
And now, she was just a cartoon hero for kids. The studio had wanted a Pretty Pretty Princess, and she had wanted an acting career. It was just a temporary thing, of course. They figured they could cheap out on special effects by hiring an actual Pretty Pretty Princess, well good for them. She'd move on to a serious role soon enough, and Sam could screw himself. It was just a way to get her foot in the door.
How the hell did a Pretty Pretty Princess Starlight series manage to get picked up for a seventh season anyway?
She pushed away the bowl of liquified ice-cream, and stood up abruptly enough to make Jasper jump a little. He mewled pathetically, eyeing her leftovers, before dashing after her.
Jasper suddenly stopped to investigate something in an alley. Tutting at him, she gestured at the cat to keep up, but, surprisingly, he ignored her.
“Really, what is it now? Dead rats aren't that exciting, you know.”
He gave her a disapproving look, and dove behind a dumpster. For a moment, she considered going on without him.
“Argh. Fine. Come back here you stupid cat.” She growled, as she ducked into the alley.
Then she saw what Jasper had found, under the swollen black bin bags, and sodden carboard.
“Oh. You stupid cat.”
There wasn't really much of what you could call a body. The head was entirely gone. One leg seemed to end somewhere in the middle. There were things that she wasn't even sure belonged in a human being, and not nearly enough of the things that she was certain there should be. In a lot of places it was hard to make out a clear sense of the damage under all the blood. But really, it was the claw marks that stood out. Not the “animal control officers have reported that a wild grizzly bear has entered the downtown area, residents are advised to stay inside and lock their doors” kind of claw marks. These were from honest-to-god monster claws. And fighting monsters, well, that's what Pretty Pretty Princesses did.
Pretty Pretty Princesses certainly did not call the police.
Her hands were shaking, as she fumbled for her cellphone.
“Good thing I'm not really a Pretty Pretty Princess.” She said.
She could feel Jasper's glare.
“Not anymore.” She added, under her breath.
And then it was all sirens and lights and a slightly overweight police officer bringing her tea, whilst a well-muscled detective examined the scene. She repeated the words “My cat found him” so many times they became numb with the using.
“Well now miss McLennan. Please do take your time. I understand this must have been quite traumatic.”
In a sense, she supposed it was. The interview room at the station was cold, and clean. Someone liked to keep this space disconcertingly sterile. Probably one of the detectives.
“Now, if you don't mind my asking, did you recognise the victim?”
“Well, no.” It was kind of hard to, without a head. Somehow she felt like saying that might seem insensitive. Then she wondered if the well muscled detective even cared. God he must put the time in to look like that. Did he even have any other hobbies?
“No, I suppose not. I was just asking because we found the victim's identification.”
“O... kay?” She raised an eyebrow inquisitively.
“The name Matthew Lynch ring a bell?”
“Umm... not really.”
The detective nodded, as if expecting this. Asshole.
“Well, Matthew was actually a junior lighting gaff by trade.”
“Oh.” Well, so were half the young guys in Hollywood.
“Current employment was for a television studio. He worked on shows like... lemme see...” He made a show of reading from his notes. “Hard Endurance, The Cage, Investiture... hey, that's a good one, you watch that? Hm. Means Motive & Opportunity... True Justice... Oh yes, and Pretty Pretty Princess Starlight Stories. Sound familiar?”
Shit. Matthew. Now she remembered him. Just like the asshole figured she would.
“Miss McLennan?”
“Christ. Yes, I fucking remember him? Did you have a fucking point to make detective? Is trying to prove I'm just another red carpet bimbo somehow relevant to your fucking investigation?”
“Temper.”
“Is there any point to this? Or is it just how you get your rocks off?”
“Alright, you want a point? You could probably kill me, and everyone else in this building, before someone took you down. I don't get exactly how all your magic bullshit works, but I know it scares the hell out of me. And I know that you're working in a shitty dead end TV show instead of any of the other things you could be doing. I don't like that. I don't like that you can blow a hole through a skyscraper, I don't like that you think you're above the law, and I don't like that I find you next to a dead body in my precinct. No, I don't think you killed the guy, whatever minor connection you might have, but I want to be damn clear that this is a police investigation, and you will not be butting your pretty little nose in. We clear?”
“Didn't you hear detective? We fight monsters, and they're all long gone. We leave murderers to the rest of you schmucks.”
She shoved the chair back roughly, and stood.
“Now I am free to go?”
The detective didn't even look up.
“We have more than enough monsters round here, Miss McLennan.” A beat. “Yeah, go home. Have a bath. Forget about the whole thing.”
“Fuck you.”
She got the hell out as fast as she could.
“PRETTY PRETTY PRINCESS STARLIGHT SMASH!”
Light flared from the head of the hammer, and the robot exploded in a plume of pink love hearts and oily black smoke. For a moment there was silence, before a brief shower of debris rained down, with a sound like hailstones on glass.
She swore as tiny pieces of robot shrapnel bounced off her.
“CUT! Jesus fucking Christ Gail, I said 'smash the robot', not 'blow it to fucking pieces'! Those things are expensive.”
With a heavy sigh, Gail let the Pretty Princess Starlight Hammer slip from her hand. The wooden floor of the set groaned uncomfortably under it's weight. Taking a few breaths to compose herself, she looked around at the frightened faces of the crew, peering out at her from behind the pieces of scenery or film equipment that they'd used as cover.
His face caught in a familiar look of fury, Mr Samson stormed across the set towards her.
“Sorry Sam.” She said, doing her best to give him the doe eyes. It never worked.
“That's 'Mr Samson', not 'Sam'. Dammit girl.”
“Do we need to retake?”
“How the hell are we supposed to retake?! You blew up our robot. Fuck, now I gotta clean up all this mess too. Go get cleaned up already. And stop trying to give me those fucking puppy-eyes, you're twenty-one, woman, not twelve. I get enough of that shit from my daughter.”
With a parting scowl, he turned and stormed off across the set.
“JIMMY! Stop hiding behind that fucking camera already. If it's broken I'm taking it out of your pay, d'ya hear?! Christ, get this set cleaned up people. I'm going for lunch. Suit Spirit classroom scenes in half an hour.”
Grateful to be dismissed, Gail nearly ran from the set to her dressing room. Without a moment wasted, she peeled off the ridiculously clingy Pretty Princess costume, and collapsed into her chair, in just her underwear. In the corner, her black cat, Jasper, farted in his sleep. The studio's air conditioning seemed to work maybe one day in ten, and today apparently wasn't the day. After hours under the film lights her costume had been in danger of becoming see-through with sweat.
After a minute or two she picked up her cell phone and dialled the first number in her address book.
“Hi honey. What's up?” Blake's voice was full of confusion and wariness. Just what she needed.
“Nothing sweetie, just wanted to talk to you.”
“Oh. Now's not the best time. Meeting with a big client. It's nothing urgent then?”
“Well, no. Not urgent. I just...”
“Sorry Gail, honey, these guys are kinda impatient, so...”
“OK, I'll let you go. Sorry sweetheart. Just... uh, do you want to do something tonight?”
“Let me get back to you, OK? Maybe this weekend.”
“OK. Sorry. Love you.”
“Ciao.”
The line clicked dead.
With a long sigh, she turned to look at herself in the mirror.
“What do you think Jasper? Do I look twenty-one to you?”
Experimentally, she lifted her tits, and pushed them together, as much as was possible. It wasn't long before she gave up trying. The results hadn't improved.
“Stupid Japanese ancestry.” She growled. After a moment's thought, she added “Fuck it” and pulled on a t-shirt. A pair of jeans were unearthed, and finally she bundled Jasper up in her arms, and went out the door, soothing the struggling creature, as she slipped out of the studio.
As they got out onto the street, she relaxed a little, and set Jasper down so he could walk. He gave her an angry glare, but fell into step beside her all the same.
“Come on,” she said, in a conciliatory tone, “we're going to get some ice-cream. Screw Sam and his stupid costume.”
She hated wearing the stupid thing. It itched, and it clung, and it was disgustingly revealing. It was nothing like her real Pretty Princess costume.
Of course, she hadn't worn that in a long time.
The tables outside the cafe were busy, and she was lucky to find one empty. The server barely even blinked when she ordered a large double serving for herself, and a single serving for Jasper. Thank God for living in LA. She sat down at the table, and Jasper hopped up to lap at his ice-cream. She hoped fervently that Sam might have forgotten her screw up by the time he was done with his “lunch”, which she knew consisted of at least four fingers of scotch.
“Mommy, look! Look! Mommy, mommy, it's Pretty Pretty Princess Starlight! Look!”
“Shh Clara, don't bother the girl.”
“But mommmmmy, it's Pretty Pretty Princess Starlight!”
“Now, Clara. If it really was Pretty Princess Starlight...”
“Pretty PRETTY Princess Starlight!”
“...do you really think she'd just be sitting there eating ice cream?”
The little girl pouted, but seemed to consider the logic in what her mother said. Gail tried to be discreet about watching, but really, she almost wanted to burst out laughing.
“Hmmmm.... She is kinda fat to be Pretty Pretty Princess Starlight.”
Flushing red, Gail hid her face as the embarressed woman hauled her protesting daughter away. Suddenly her half finished bowl of ice-cream didn't seem so appealing.
“God dammit Jasper, how did I end up like this?” She muttered, angrily flinging the spoon down.
Everything had been so simple, back in the Pretty Pretty Princess Wars. You didn't ask why or how. The Great Teacher appeared, like lightning in a blue sky, and your life changed. You had powers, a mission, a destiny. There was evil walking the Earth, and you didn't think to ask how it had got there. The Great Teacher said “Fight the darkness”, and you did.
And now, she was just a cartoon hero for kids. The studio had wanted a Pretty Pretty Princess, and she had wanted an acting career. It was just a temporary thing, of course. They figured they could cheap out on special effects by hiring an actual Pretty Pretty Princess, well good for them. She'd move on to a serious role soon enough, and Sam could screw himself. It was just a way to get her foot in the door.
How the hell did a Pretty Pretty Princess Starlight series manage to get picked up for a seventh season anyway?
She pushed away the bowl of liquified ice-cream, and stood up abruptly enough to make Jasper jump a little. He mewled pathetically, eyeing her leftovers, before dashing after her.
Jasper suddenly stopped to investigate something in an alley. Tutting at him, she gestured at the cat to keep up, but, surprisingly, he ignored her.
“Really, what is it now? Dead rats aren't that exciting, you know.”
He gave her a disapproving look, and dove behind a dumpster. For a moment, she considered going on without him.
“Argh. Fine. Come back here you stupid cat.” She growled, as she ducked into the alley.
Then she saw what Jasper had found, under the swollen black bin bags, and sodden carboard.
“Oh. You stupid cat.”
There wasn't really much of what you could call a body. The head was entirely gone. One leg seemed to end somewhere in the middle. There were things that she wasn't even sure belonged in a human being, and not nearly enough of the things that she was certain there should be. In a lot of places it was hard to make out a clear sense of the damage under all the blood. But really, it was the claw marks that stood out. Not the “animal control officers have reported that a wild grizzly bear has entered the downtown area, residents are advised to stay inside and lock their doors” kind of claw marks. These were from honest-to-god monster claws. And fighting monsters, well, that's what Pretty Pretty Princesses did.
Pretty Pretty Princesses certainly did not call the police.
Her hands were shaking, as she fumbled for her cellphone.
“Good thing I'm not really a Pretty Pretty Princess.” She said.
She could feel Jasper's glare.
“Not anymore.” She added, under her breath.
And then it was all sirens and lights and a slightly overweight police officer bringing her tea, whilst a well-muscled detective examined the scene. She repeated the words “My cat found him” so many times they became numb with the using.
“Well now miss McLennan. Please do take your time. I understand this must have been quite traumatic.”
In a sense, she supposed it was. The interview room at the station was cold, and clean. Someone liked to keep this space disconcertingly sterile. Probably one of the detectives.
“Now, if you don't mind my asking, did you recognise the victim?”
“Well, no.” It was kind of hard to, without a head. Somehow she felt like saying that might seem insensitive. Then she wondered if the well muscled detective even cared. God he must put the time in to look like that. Did he even have any other hobbies?
“No, I suppose not. I was just asking because we found the victim's identification.”
“O... kay?” She raised an eyebrow inquisitively.
“The name Matthew Lynch ring a bell?”
“Umm... not really.”
The detective nodded, as if expecting this. Asshole.
“Well, Matthew was actually a junior lighting gaff by trade.”
“Oh.” Well, so were half the young guys in Hollywood.
“Current employment was for a television studio. He worked on shows like... lemme see...” He made a show of reading from his notes. “Hard Endurance, The Cage, Investiture... hey, that's a good one, you watch that? Hm. Means Motive & Opportunity... True Justice... Oh yes, and Pretty Pretty Princess Starlight Stories. Sound familiar?”
Shit. Matthew. Now she remembered him. Just like the asshole figured she would.
“Miss McLennan?”
“Christ. Yes, I fucking remember him? Did you have a fucking point to make detective? Is trying to prove I'm just another red carpet bimbo somehow relevant to your fucking investigation?”
“Temper.”
“Is there any point to this? Or is it just how you get your rocks off?”
“Alright, you want a point? You could probably kill me, and everyone else in this building, before someone took you down. I don't get exactly how all your magic bullshit works, but I know it scares the hell out of me. And I know that you're working in a shitty dead end TV show instead of any of the other things you could be doing. I don't like that. I don't like that you can blow a hole through a skyscraper, I don't like that you think you're above the law, and I don't like that I find you next to a dead body in my precinct. No, I don't think you killed the guy, whatever minor connection you might have, but I want to be damn clear that this is a police investigation, and you will not be butting your pretty little nose in. We clear?”
“Didn't you hear detective? We fight monsters, and they're all long gone. We leave murderers to the rest of you schmucks.”
She shoved the chair back roughly, and stood.
“Now I am free to go?”
The detective didn't even look up.
“We have more than enough monsters round here, Miss McLennan.” A beat. “Yeah, go home. Have a bath. Forget about the whole thing.”
“Fuck you.”
She got the hell out as fast as she could.