A Pizza Place so Good, People Keep Fighting to the Death Over It.

Once upon a time, a friend and I were out wandering a city that we didn’t know very well. We had just come from a mini-golf course, where I had been competing to see who got to pick what we ate for supper. I lost, and my friend wanted pizza. That wasn’t a problem, as I like pizza as much as the next person. The problem was that he wanted to go to a specific pizza place that he had heard of. It was supposed to be a little hole in the wall spot with a weird name, but the pizzas they made were perfectly flavored. It was so good that now and then, it would even show up in his dreams at night.<br><br>In order to get there, we had to walk through a part of the city that I’d never been in before. It looked to be mostly tall office buildings. However, they were covered in ivy and moss, and the green tints helped them blend into the background of all the trees surrounding them. I’ve read a lot of fantasy books and the sight made me think of the elven spires from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. So our pizza place must have been the Prancing Pony, where one goes to eat, drink, and die when the orcs attack. We lost the trail a time or two, but once my friend used some landmarks to get us back on track. He’d clearly been this way one or two times before.<br><br>As we walked, I thought nothing of it when we passed one or two dead bodies covered in bloodstains. This was a big city after all, and a certain amount of violence was bound to happen in the shadows. Then again, our pizza place was some ways out, and I was starting to get a little peckish. It was probably a good thing that they served such good pizza. I was going to be very hungry by the time we got there.<br><br>I decided to ask my friend how much farther it was.<br><br>“About another mile,” he said.<br><br>A mile wasn’t too bad at all, and my friend said that we should get there in plenty of time to get a good seat. I was a little confused, as I’d never been to a pizza place that was so packed, they needed reservations. Then I figured that the city must have grown a lot, and I’d just have to roll with it.<br><br>We continued on the trail. The office buildings continued to pass by us. We lost the trail again for a time, and my friend found a sign to get us turned around in the right direction. We kept walking, and walked, and walked some more. I was getting a bit hungry, but I figured that we must be getting close.<br><br>“How much farther?” I asked again.<br><br>“About another mile,” my friend said.<br><br>I stopped in my tracks. We’d clearly been walking in a circle. I was going to have to go scouting ahead to make sure we didn’t get lost. I walked forward, scanning the ground for any sign of the pizza place. We clearly weren’t in any part of town that I knew.<br><br>The trail went on for what felt like a quarter of a mile. Then I was out of the trees, in a small parking lot, and looking down at a small white building. There was a sign, reading “Frank’s Pizza”. This must have been what we were looking for.<br><br>I walked inside and looked around. It looked like a normal pizza place, right down to the decor. Lots of old photographs and advertisements on the walls, and skinny soda bottles in the display case. An old man with a white beard was sitting at one of the tables, eating a thick slice of pepperoni pizza pie. He clearly didn’t think much of me, as he didn’t look up at all.<br><br>I realized that I wasn’t the first one here. There were a bunch of other people inside, all of them armed to the teeth. They were all dressed in business casual, and looked like they were straight out of the office. There was a man who looked just like a boss, a bunch of secretaries, and even a woman who looked like she worked at a call center. I didn’t see my friend at first, but then I noticed him taking a drink behind the counter.<br><br>“Hey man,” he said. “Can I get you anything?”<br><br>“Your beer selection looks like it could use a little work,” I said.<br><br>“You’re telling me,” he said. “But what did you expect from a pizza place?”<br><br>It was then that I noticed a small refrigerator in the corner of the room. There were several different beers inside, all IPA’s and none of them were recognizable.<br><br>“They’re all craft brews,” one of the patrons said. “He brews them himself.”<br><br>“Oh,” I said. “Well good luck keeping them cold.”<br><br>The lights flickered as we talked. I noticed that the old man was taking a second slice of pizza. I didn’t blame him, as the smell wafting out of the kitchen was amazing. I wished that I had thought of it, I would have ordered a pie before coming in here.<br><br>I had been so caught up in the beer talk that I almost forgot that everyone in here was heavily armed. One of the secretaries had a shotgun covered in glitter leaning against her table. Two men behind her were dressed in full samurai armor, holding spears and sitting with their legs crossed. A woman was taking the clip out of her handgun and reloading the bullets. Everyone looked like they were ready to fight at a moment’s notice.<br><br>“What is this?” I asked. “Some kind of shooting range?”<br><br>The patrons looked at me as if I had just asked if water was wet. The boss was the one who finally spoke up. “This is Frank’s Pizza!” he said. “Each month, we all come and eat here. And each month, one of us doesn’t make it out alive!”<br><br>I must have looked puzzled, as the boss elaborated. “You see, the pizza at Frank’s is so good that people will do anything for it. They’ll commit murders, thefts, anything that they have too. So our pizza place exists extra-dimensionally, outside the bounds of law enforcement. The only way to keep the peace is for all potentially warring parties to agree to settle any disputes here.”<br><br>“It’s not a problem,” one of the secretaries said. “We’re all good now. We’ve agreed to a truce, and we’ve made a pact to keep it.”<br><br>There was a rumble of assent from the rest of the crowd. They all seemed in agreement, so I shrugged and took a seat next to the samurai.<br><br>“Can I help you?” the bartender asked.<br><br>“Yeah,” I said. “What will I get if I order a Long Island Iced Tea?”<br><br>“Nothing,” he said. “We don’t serve cocktails. But a good IPA pairs well with the pizza.”<br><br>“Okay,” I said. “Then I’d like one of them.”<br><br>“One what?”<br><br>“Beer. You just said you brew them yourself.”<br><br>“Oh,” he said. “Well I’ll just grab you one then.”<br><br>The bartender walked into the refrigerator and opened up one of the beers. I was starting to get impatient, as I hadn’t had a real drink in about three hours. I looked up to see what was keeping him, and that’s when it happened.<br><br>I don’t know what happened first. The patron at the large wooden table in the center of the room shouted “For Honor!” and charged the samurai with his spear. A shot went off behind him, and he fell to the ground with a large bullet wound in his chest. Then the secretaries opened fire on the call center woman with their handguns. The boss pulled out a small machine gun from his coat, and began firing it wildly into the room. The old man didn’t even pause while he ate his pizza. I noticed what was happening, just in time for him to pull out a long, curved katana and charge forward.<br><br>I was angry. I hadn’t even gotten my beer yet. There were so many people in the room that the bullets were flying in every direction. I actually had to duck to avoid one of them. I looked over to my friend, who was cowering behind the bar. I looked over to the samurai, who were defending themselves against the secretaries and a man wielding a pair of nunchucks.<br><br>And then I saw it. The beer that my friend had brought me. It was sitting on the table next to me, still unopened. I wasn’t going to drink it anymore, though. I had a better idea.<br><br>I picked up the beer bottle and threw it at one of the secretaries. It shattered across her forehead, and she fell to the ground, clutching at her face. I stood up, and that was all it took for the room to erupt in violence.<br><br>Dozens of people were charging towards me. Bullets, arrows, and shuriken were all flying through the air towards me. The call center woman had been crushed under a table by a large golem made out of pizza boxes. One of the samurai was on fire, and another was wrestling the boss to the ground. To my right, the old man was dueling the man with nunchucks.<br><br>I wanted to join the fight, but the dozens of projectiles flying towards me was kind of a deterrant. So I did the only thing that I could. I charged straight at the walls and crashed through them.<br><br>I fell through the air for a second or two before I met a soft, padded landing. I sat up, rubing the pain out of my head. I looked around, trying to figure out where I had ended up. The room I was in was small, probably about the size of a bedroom. It was almost entirely padded, and there was only one door leading out