Outlandish Paine's Peculiar Pizzas
catr - hpe
oe - n
SQUID
Roxas carefully treaded over the many soft plushies littering the ground, and squirmed when he stepped on the one he had been wanting to avoid. Damn that Barney.
His eyes wandered the room, searching for her. She was probably at her little desk, writing about how trivial it was being the younger sister of two who were so imbecile-ish. Or something like that. Quistis had always been too clever for her own good – it worried Roxas and Naminé. Well, Roxas liked to think it worried Naminé, but at the moment Naminé was stuck in 'I-R-EVIL' mode, so she couldn't really think about anything.
Roxas sighed, and carried on his way through the cramped room and eventually found Quistis, sitting at her desk, writing a letter to the President. And for a little side dish, writing about how trivial it was being the younger sister of two who were so imbecile-ish. Roxas tutted.
"Lunch time."
And then he tried to get out.
By the time he had, his lunch was cold and his mother shouted at him. However, the fact that his lunch was cold didn't bother him much, as it was salad, and many a-person knows that salad, in fact, is a dish meant to be served cold, perhaps with a sandwich placed neatly on the edge of the plate, tucked between a tomato and a new potato.
"Roxas! Get down here, now!" cried Fuu for the fifty-fourth time that day. Roxas grumbled as he paced the landing and ran down the stairs, only to be met by the fearsome face of his mother. Fuu was thirty-nine and had three children: Naminé, Roxas and Quistis. All blondes. This lead Roxas to ponder who his father was, considering that Rai, who all three children had previously assumed to be their father, was a brunet and had a tendency to shout, "Y'KNOW!" at awkward moments.
Because, who does that at a funeral when the priest starts telling the funeral-goers that the person who died was a treasure to the community and grew roses?
Well, Roxas wasn't one to judge he supposed. Everyone in his family had some sort of problem – he for one, passed out at the most unpredictable times, and the most inefficient. Imagine how Fuu would have explained to Roxas' preschool teacher of his 'secret' problem. Even though, by that time, Roxas had already passed out and many other children had started to weep over his unconscious body.
"Roxas, buy pizzas, now!"
And Fuu had a problem with shouting.
Naminé was bipolar. Quistis was too clever for her own good.
Problems, problems, problems.
But everyone has at least one problem, right? Like, Roxas could remember that kid he used to know who couldn't drink anything except for champagne, and when he drank that, it had to be up his nose through a very odd looking straw. And that other kid who liked to jump on furniture until it broke.
Man, Fuu had shouted loud that day...
But, this was besides the point as Roxas skipped merrily along the little path leading to the Pizza Store. Signs proclaiming that 'Outlandish Paine's Peculiar Pizzas be that-a-way' told Roxas that 'Outlandish Paine's Peculiar Pizzas' was 'that-a-way'.
So, Roxas travelled onwards to the ne'er regions of 'that-a-way'.
As soon as he got there, he thought that he must have made a mistake. There were rugs in the window on 'HALF-PRICE OFFER GET 'EM NOW!' It reminded him slightly of Fuu...
He shrugged and walked in. Just because they sold rugs didn't mean that they didn't sell pizzas, too, right? The sign did say 'Outlandish Paine's Peculiar Pizzas' along with a few other phrases such as 'So boot-scooterly!' and 'We have hostages!' and 'Wait in a big long queue!'.
To Roxas it seemed a little bit... Outlandish? Peculiar? Both words would have done for him.
The little bell rang above him as he walked in, and immediately people with silly hats and no hats looked up, alike. They watched him as he pressed his lips together and wondered what the hell was going on.
"Stop staring at me, dammit..." he hissed under his breath, as a strange looking woman walked up to him. She looked like she was trying very hard to be emo, but failing, so instead she wore a swimming costume, an orange cone on her head, walking a bollard and a lawn along with her (using leashes) and a placard round her neck saying 'I am outlandish.'.
She looked at him critically, before throwing her hands up in the air and proclaiming to the customers and the staff, "HE IS ONE OF US!"
Cheers and applause followed, and Roxas shrank into the corner muttering something sounding a lot like: "But I only wanted a pizza..."
Finally, the cheers died down and no one seemed to care that Roxas was 'one of them'. He breathed a sigh of relief and gingerly walked up to the counter. The room was split into two halves. With a wall separating where the customers sat to where they paid. In the middle of that wall was a big arch so the customers could go and order food.
The place inside there was empty, and Roxas decided that it would be an excellent time to go inside and order a pizza for Fuu. Which also made him decide that Fuu probably didn't even want a pizza; she was just telling him to get one so all this would happen to Roxas.
Roxas walked up to the counter where a blonde, with her back to Roxas, holding a sketchbook high above her head as though she were about to hit someone with it was standing.
"Ahem..." Roxas coughed. The girl spun round and Roxas gaped, "Naminé?" Naminé looked at him as critically as the outlandish woman Roxas now guessed to be 'Paine' did.
"Hello, Roxas." Naminé replied with her candy-like voice. She had left home six months ago as soon as she had turned nineteen, and Roxas hadn't seen her since. He wondered whether Naminé was still in 'I-R-EVIL' mode. Her 'modes' seemed to change from time to time, and the doctor said there was nothing he could do about it.
"Um... this is... odd..."
"Yes, Roxas."
"So..."
"You want a pizza, Roxas?"
"Er... I guess."
"Good. AXEL! LARXENE! GET THE FRIGGIN' PIZZA INGREDIANTS OUT BEFORE MY BOOK MEETS YOUR HEAD!" Roxas blinked. She was still evil. So, how come she even found herself a job? Wait... he was even asking himself that, when he was in a pizza shop named 'Outlandish Paine's Peculiar Pizzas' where a woman took a bollard and a lawn for a walk, and claimed he was one of them. Of course Naminé got a job there! "It's alright, Roxas. Now, you just have to go through to the back."
Roxas shrugged, and decided that if this was the outlandish way to go, then he must go the outlandish way to go.
As they say: When in Outlandish-land, do as Outlandish-landers do.
He walked round to the back and immediately wished he hadn't. Two skinny, older teenagers eyed him suspiciously. One of them, a blonde, poked him suspiciously, "Nami! Who's this?" she cried out. Roxas pressed his lips tightly, and tried to stay as quiet as he could.
"It's my brother, Larxene. And he wants a pizza, will you kindly make one for him?"
Larxene muttered darkly under her breath, and Roxas was sure he could hear snippets of sentences sounding like: "Kill" and "Stab".
But, this was besides the point. The other teenager, a red-head had said nothing so far, and Roxas' hopes rested in him. That was until the older boy actually spoke. "So, blondie."
'Damn.'
"What do you want in your pizza?" Suddenly a little tiny Roxas inside of the big Roxas' brain shouted out in its high-pitched voice, 'Stop the presses!' and there was a great hurry as little Roxas's and tiny Roxas's, alike, drove together to stop Roxas' whirring buzzer and just ponder for a moment on whether Fuu actually told him what sort of pizza she wanted.
"Damn."
"Damn? I'm afraid we don't have this 'damn' flavour you speak of. We have squid. And squid. Oh, and squid. But, not 'damn'," sniggered the boy. The girl laughed as well, and Roxas felt an uncontrollable urge to punch one of them. Or both – he wasn't picky. But one would be good enough for him – he wasn't greedy, either.
"Well... Er... What flavours do you have? Apart from squid..." asked the boy, looking up at the tubs of ingredients on the shelves. There were billions of them, and surely not all of them contained squid.
Right...?
"Well, we've got seaweed."
Oh, so the boxes on the shelves contained squid and seaweed. Woo-hoo. What variety.
"And we've got these weird little fishy things," said the girl, making swimming movements with her hands. "Swimmy little fishy things with their eyes and heads and stuff still on!"
"And we've also got cheese and spicy sauce," said the red-head brightly, noticing that Roxas looked displeased with the pizza toppings he'd been told about so far.
"That sounds okay..." said the blond.
"It comes with an extra helping of squid!" said the girl.
"What?!"
"Well, if it didn't have squid with it wouldn't make sense to call it 'hot sauce, cheese AND squid pizza!'"
"But you didn't tell me it was hot sauce, cheese AND squid!"
"Oh... It must have slipped my mind," said the red-headed boy who'd recommended the squid-and-hot-sauce pizza.
"Look, do you have anything normal?" asked Roxas, sounding desperate.
"Well, we have squid pizza! With absolutely nothing else that might ruin its wholesome, fishy flavour!" said the girl, sounding like a really emo person quoting a really hyper, happy advert. It was weird.
"Er... That's not what I had in mind..."
"Well, how about cheese?" the boy asked this time, he and the girl seeming to take it in turns to talk.
"What's in it?"
"Well, why don't we put it this way... Do you like cheese?"
"Yes."
"Do you like tomato sauce?"
"Yes."
"Do you like squid?"
"Er..."
"No pizza goes without a taste of squid!" declared the boy proudly, taking off his hat (that proclaimed he was a follower of 'outlandish Paine') and holding it to his chest.
"Well, I guess I'll have a cheese pizza... It sounds the most normal..." said Roxas, hoping then when he got the pizza back to Fuu she wouldn't notice that tasted a tiny bit different than the other cheese pizzas they were used to eating...
"Alright," said the girl. "One cheese pizza, Outlandish Paine squidy-style comin' up!" She rolled up her sleeves and adjusted her hat, and then shouted: "Axel! MAKE A CHEESE PIZZA FOR THE KID!" So really, the grand display of sleeve-rolling-up-ness had been completely pointless, as the girl with antenna for hair had never planned to go and get the ingredients from the shelf herself.
Axel, the kid with the red porcupine on his head, nodded, and walked over towards a conveyor belt, pressing a few buttons. And, lo and behold, a flat pizza base came trundling along on the now moving piece of machinery, appearing out of a hole in the wall covered with black plastic material.
The red-head got a bottle of tomato sauce and squirted it onto the pizza base and sprinkled some cheese on top.
Roxas sighed in relief – maybe they'd only been joking about the squid thing in an attempt to 'wind him up' and now their little joke had been played out he could collect his squid-free pizza, go home, eat the squid-free pizza and be happy.
"And now, for the finishing touch," declared Axel, taking a dead squid (complete with Xs on it's eyes) out from behind his back or ... somewhere ... with a flourish. He splatted it down on the pizza, sending cheese and tomato sauce flying everywhere, as the dead squid settled down comfortably on its bed of pizza sauce.
Oh, no, Fuu won't notice a huge dead squid on her cheese pizza. Fuu won't notice at ALL! Roxas thought, making a mental notation to peel the squid off the pizza the first chance he got. He couldn't do that in the store, no way – it might hurt the outlandish people's feelings and then, in a fit of craziness, they'd chop him up and put a placard up outside the store saying: 'yes, we also sell Roxas pizzas! COMPLETE WITH SQUID!'.
"Time to speed the conveyor belt up so the kid can obtain his pizza at the other end!" said Larxene, standing in a corner. It was her corner and she would defend it viciously. Last time Xigbar tried to invade her personal space and her corner he had run off, crying, with a scar across his face.
Axel nodded, and pressed a button on the wall. Rather disturbingly, it was a big red button, and you all know what they say about big red buttons.
They all cause trouble.
The pizza went zooming along on the conveyor belt like a rocket getting to be blasted into hyperspace, whirling through the air and hitting Roxas in the face. Roxas fell over with a face full of pizza toppings and a dead squid on his head, as the pizza continued its merry way across the room, hitting the wall.
"SCORE!" cried Larxene, punching a fist in the air. "That's the sixth time this week! So how many points does that put you at?"
"One-hundred-and-four. You're still winning because the last pizza you chucked at a customer knocked their eye out," said Axel glumly. "I was hoping at least that this one would break his leg... Then I'd be ahead of you..."
Larxene cackled. "Heh. Are you alright kid?"
Roxas glared at her through his squid-gut smeared bangs, innards and brains and lungs and stuff scattered around him like confetti. Roxas might take to throwing squids at people on New Year's Day, it was just so cool. What with their pungent aroma and weird cross-eyes.
"I was good. Until I got hit by a squid. Now I am bad," muttered Roxas. He got shakily to his feet, looking like a boy that someone had thrown a squid at. Which was odd, because he was a boy who had just been assaulted by a squid.
"You're going to have to pay for that, you know," said Axel lazily.
pgbek – aera
summary: Roxas meets Axel for the first time at 'Outlandish Paine's Peculiar Pizzas' and gets hit in the face by a squid pizza when the conveyor belt speeds up.
a/n: So, here it is. Outlandish Paine's Peculiar Pizzas. We like this story. Alot. Because it makes us laugh. And the inspiration? Thank ClubPenguin and their strange pizza toppings – such as seaweed, prawns, fish (with eyes and stuff) and of course, squid. I hope you enjoyed it. Please review or the next outlandish chapter with peculiar events will never come up.
So, push that little purple button and make the world explode. You know you want to try it.