trans_9 | Shop smart: shop S-Mart! [open]

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Shop smart: shop S-Mart! [open]

Click click click click.

"There." Ash was rather proud of his menial little accomplishment as he stood with one metal hand on his hip and the other clutching a price labler gun, surveying his store.

"That's the whole aisle." His imaginary, sensorium created store, but his store none-the-less.

Last shore-leave he participated in did him a lot of good; he unarguably wore the whole cowboy get-up very well and if he had half a mind about it, he would have just stayed on that dirtball. Living inside Stacy was just... bizarre. He had explored on his on own time, deciding that spending a night in those claustrophobic sleeping pods was nothing like sleeping on a real bed in the crew quarters. He admittedly found a great attraction to the Media Library but could only handle so many hours of mindless TV (which is a lot of hours in Ash's case, mind you) before he felt like his eyeballs were going to fall out of his head. The Art Hall was just downright creepy. The City offered a lot but he felt like he had barely mapped any of it out. It was surprisingly expansive and daunting for being inside a space ship... though he had become rather intimately acquainted the Drunken Dragon through Nima. In fact, somewhere between the mishmash of ancient buildings and temples, alien construction, and random crumbling structures the idea of finding a place to call his own (for more intimate encounters) seemed pretty plausible with how damn huge the City was.

However, with talks of dragons roaming around there lately, Ash, frankly, wanted nothing to do with it and could deal with sleeping on bunk beds if it meant keeping his business out of the City until someone called the super-sized space exterminators. Deadites? Sure, he could take 'em out. Hell, he even battled the undead in a medieval setting where he would have expected to find some scaly winged beast (and just as well would have expected it to also be undead) trying to make a meal out of him. But Here? Now? Space Dragons? The Chosen One didn't want to deal with it. Not. His. Problem.

You know what The Chosen One wanted? He wanted normal. He wanted Earth, he wanted home, he wanted mundane, he wanted S-Mart. Ash could imagine the rows of aisles filled with shelves of food, toys, appliances, racks of clothes, the ever looming banners reminding you where you were, his own blue uniform complete with tie and name tag, the employee lounge (even the broken handle on men's bathroom door), blue light specials and senior citizen discount days now...

The deadite with the lazy eye standing in line for the register holding a pack of diapers...

NO. No. Ash squeezed his eyes shut and willed the persistent image away. He had boxes to put away and long stories to bore his artificial co-workers and customers with and NOTHING was going to ruin that. Nothing. Not even his own stupid mind.

His first tentative tests with the sensoriums when he discovered them were totally mind blowing. Once he got the hang of it, he could have happily stayed here forever. It was the next best thing to normalcy and all he had to do was think about it.

...He just had to try really hard to not think about any deadites coming along to ruin that, as that tended to happen...

HELLO,
MY NAME IS ASH.
HOUSEWARES

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There was something oddly soothing about walking through a store like this. Beastboy had been crashing people's Sensorium sessions for fun and found this peculiar little fantasy world finding it peaceful and relaxing. Somehow even more so then the sensorium he had just left full of fluffy clouds.

Stretching his arms out over his head he sighed and tucked his hands behind his head casually roaming the aisles. Yep, nothing to see here, just a point eared green goblin looking kid examining the imaginary comic books on the spinner rack in the magazine department.

The magazine department, while not Ash's department, was one he frequented and loitered around in when he wanted to look like he was busy being busy. Those habits died hard, though he found he was not alone here.

Wh...

A green kid. A green kid with pointy ears. A green kid with pointy ears checking out the comics he kind of wanted to look at. He admittedly looked kind of familiar but couldn't pinpoint it exactly.

"You need help with something, kid?"

Edited 2011-11-12 20:18 (UTC)

Beastboy jumped startled from his reading and fumbled the comic book barely managing to catch it and grinning sheepishly set it back on the rack carefully.

"Uh...sup dude? This your store?" A silly question but it was the first thing that came to mind.

Jumpy kid. Maybe he was thinking of swiping it.

"Yeah. You're in S-Mart. And, no offense pal, but you look like you belong more in one of these," Ash leaned over and adjusted the comic he so carefully put back--call it store clerk OCD. "...than in a store. What's your name?"

He wasn't a huge comic book nerd--He was more a college kid TV, beer and football guy, but he knew the basics.

Please don't say Green Goblin.

"Dude you think so?" He beamed, seeming to take the comment about belonging in a comic book as a compliment. "Thanks!" He grinned broadly.

"The name's Beastboy!" He proclaimed proudly

A grin, Ash noted, that seemed to contain a couple of pointy beast-like canines.

"Why'er you green?"

"Oh that's actually a great story!" Beastboy explained grabbing another comic off the rack and opening it up, inside the images were moving and portraying the story as he told it.

"See once upon a time I was a normal kid with these two really smart parents, they were studying genetics in Africa right? And I got bitten by a green monkey!"

"Turns out the monkey had this rare disease called Sakutia, it turns animals grin and is deadly to humans. The only way my parents could save me was to alter my genes, find that missing link between man and beast!"

And in the comics...a little green kid toddled out of their hut.

"Pretty cool huh? And a great color. Plus ladies love the ears." He wiggled them for effect.

Very quickly, Ash realized the limits of his creativity in the sensorium as Beastboy gave his story a little flair. Green monkey? Sakutia?... how weird. Ash might of dismissed such a crazy tale once upon a time, but he knew all too well what it was like to have crazy, unbelievable tales. Much less that seemed like a common theme up here in space.

"At least you're pretty positive about it. I guess being called a freak of nature ain't really much of a problem when half the crew here are aliens or dragons or mute girls with brain damage."

A pause, then he muttered in a lowered voice as an afterthought, "You aren't uh... contagious or anything still, are you?"

He'd be willing to argue the ears but then again Ash equated pointy ears to elves and he could see girls going nuts over those. Maybe Beastboy was on to something...

Beastboy laughed, "Dude, I don't think anyone's ever called me a freak of nature. But it might help that I can do this."

And he suddenly shifted forms turning into a T-rex grinning down at Ash with his razor sharp dagger teeth.

Unbelievable! What a freak of nature! Ash had seen a lot of strange things but never anything like this. Any lesser man might of crapped themselves at the sigh of a living, breathing dinosaur (green as it was) grinning at them, but no sir, not Ash.

Okay he might of flinched, but soon apprehension turned into curiosity. He took a step back so he could get a better look at the creature at whole.

"So you can turn into anything?"

Beastboy shifted back in a blur of green with a smug smirk on his face.

"Well any animal, and some aliens. And yes I do take requests if you're interested." He offered loving to show off his powers.

As if Kang hadn't been pissed off enough about a goddamn bronze dragon being on the ship, it had to get worse with Howard's exaggerations and assumptions, and other crewmembers not even bothering to listen when they were told there was absolutely nothing for them to worry about. Bronzes were creatures of Good.

If Crucible had any plans to kill anyone on Stacy, his only targets would be himself and his daughter. He was beginning to doubt that, too, after both the incident with Kali during Lirath and his own run-in, and as much as he liked not being killed, he didn't like the dragon's interest in his family, either.

Visits to the Sensoriums to blow off steam had become more frequent for the bozak in the past weeks. Every now and then he'd enter one to find it occupied, and leave immediately, but this one made him curious.

Who the hell would imagine up a supermarket?

Ash would, thank you very much, but he doubted he would imagine dragons in his supermarket, much less half-dragon half-man creatures that looked an awful lot like Drunken Dragon Tavern Owner/Councillor whatshisname (http://trans-9.livejournal.com/816924.html?thread=65705756#t65705756) ...

Oh crap.

He couldn't figure it out. Had he imagined him in here or was he really in here? Ash stared (and obviously so) at the behemoth seven-foot or so tall draconian until he could figure it out.

That had to be the owner. And judging from the staring, he was relatively new. Kang quirked an eyebrow ridge and glanced around at the shelves briefly, "I'm going to venture a guess that this was your job before you got brought here."

Not the owner, technically, but it was his job.

"That's right." That kind of implied lizard lips was no a figment of his imagination, but Ash proceeded with caution.

"Worked in Housewares, just living a simple life before all the stuff in the cabin happened... and then I guess all space alien stuff that brought me here, happened."

Kang wondered why the Daligig would pick up this human, then. Either he'd done something important in his universe he preferred not to mention, or he was a loved one. "It can be a bit jarring. Understatement, I know." It had been even more jarring for him, being from a world that didn't even have internal combustion engines, and was unaware of other worlds, let alone universes, existing.

Something both very stupid and important.

"No kidding it's an understatement." Opening up any opportunity to complain about the situation seemed like a great idea to Ash, even if it was to an intimidating looking dragon guy. "I mean, I don't know what kind of world you come from pal but I went from your average college kid camping out in a spooky cabin in the middle of the woods, to accidentally waking up Sumarrian demons and traveling through time to go beat them on the promise I'll get back home and everything'll be normal again when all's said and done."

Jaw set, the frown on his face might as well of been chiseled in. "Guess that didn't work out at all, did it."

"This is the most boring Sensoriums visit I've ever seen." And yet, Howard's a little bit fascinated. Not just that the guy with the nametag would create such a dull fantasy, although that's certainly intriguing in its own right, but also the sheer quantity of items for sale. It's been well over a year, maybe two, since Howard's seen a fully-stocked department store.

He sort of wants to steal something from under Ash's nose, just to see if he can. Not like anything from the Sensoriums will last once he leaves the room anyway.

"So what do they pay you here, like, two over minimum?"

Howard would very probably get away with it. Ash was a clerk, not security, after all. Though, he would unarguably fit the security bill much better now given all his zombie fighting experiences.

"Hey, hey." Ash barked with a frown and a pointed finger once he realized this was not an imaginary customer making a wisecrack over his imaginary paycheck. "No ruining my pretendy fun time, kid. How the hell did you get in here anyway?"

Or maybe it was. Ash really had no way of telling who was a figment of his imagination and who wasn't in here. While he was sure his mind was not very creative, it certainly had a life of its own.

"Through the door. Duh." Did this guy seriously use the phrase 'pretendy funtime'? Howard slides a pack of gum from near the cash register into his pocket. "How'd you get in here, bad life decisions?"

Howard's aware he's being a rude little pill. He just doesn't much care.

"Well great, you can find the door and get out of here if all you're gonna' do is remark about my bad life decisions."

A pause.

"And, FYI, not all of which were made by me."

"Oh, come on? A fully-stocked Wal-Mart or whatever this place is?" Howard's ignoring the banners. It takes effort, given that they're everywhere. "You know there's a whole story about this pregnant chick who lived in a Wal-Mart and they only found her months later when she went into labor?"

Howard raises a finger. "That means at least some were made by you."

"S-Mart." Ash corrected, and pleasantly followed up with the store's jingle; trained as if he were a Pavlovian dog. "Shop smart, shop S-Mart."

"Listen pal, the worst thing I ever did was read some demon passages some crazy old man left lying around in his spooky cabin in the middle of the woods and wake up the evil undead." Technically, the worst thing he ever did was fail to fix all that, but no one needed to know that.

On cue, the store's loudspeakers crackled to life.

Ash rolled his eye at the announcement, clearly making no effort to be the one to clean it up. Instead the surly man fixed Howard with a frown, assuming his influence was triggering his imagination. Or, it was just a horrible coincidence.

That happened to be the diaper aisle.

"If I was ever so lucky to knock up a broad before she turned all deadite on me, she sure as hell wouldn't be havin' my kid in a damn store."

Edited 2011-11-13 02:37 (UTC)

Howard whistles. "They got you trained, don't they?" He slips a notepad into his cargo shorts, making a game of it. How much can he get away with taking before Ash calls him on it...?

"You woke up the evil undead? I had an evil undead locked in my basement. Noisy pain in the ass." He looks over towards aisle 8, noting that it says 'baby supplies' and other such things under the S-Mart banner. "Hey, this is kind of appropriate for the topic at hand. Why not have a baby in a Wal-Mart? I mean, supplies are there like this big baby buffet."

He pauses. "Not like eating babies, though. I didn't mean it like that."

Edited 2011-11-13 06:22 (UTC)

"Oh yeah?" The mention of undead genuinely intrigued Ash (despite Howard's attitude), and so he followed the kid around. He also had a hunch he was up to no good but had no way to prove it yet. Maybe when his pants started bowing out and showing his underwear, Ash would notice his sticky fingers.

"I just said I wouldn't be havin' any kid in a store, especially not an undead one who'd be more likely to want to eat you. You ever wonder why they call them ankle-biters?"

"Yeah. Genderswapper. Half good little Christian girl, have undead serial killer with a whip for a hand. Oh, and shooting it in the head so didn't work."

Howard notices that Ash is giving him slightly tighter scrutiny, so he's very, very careful as he slips a calculator into his jacket. He's making a bit more of a game of it now, seeing if he can take progressively larger things. If he manages to kipe some skis unnoticed, he'll give himself the world's biggest pat on the back.

At the idea of children eating each other, a look of genuine nausea passes over Howard's face. It even surprises him how visceral a reaction that sentence gets. "Why, you carry the undead gene?"

If Ash stopped to check the magazine rack, he'd see every periodical was now the latest issue of Pony Party Monthly. If he looked up, he'd see colorful streamers dangling from the ceiling. The banners now read "HAPPY BIRTHDAY", "CONGRATULATIONS", "FELIZ NAVIDAD" and other excited greetings.

As for the deadite customers? They were all wearing colorful party hats.

Pinkie Pie had arrived.

Ash did indeed stop to check the magazine rack, as he so often did when he wanted to look like he was being busy. You know, reading those important articles and totally not just looking at the pictures of the scantily clad ponies of Swimsuit Illustrated.

Wait wait... ponies? Maybe it was MAD magazine in disguise and... no, upon closer inspection all the magazines were pony themed. You're loosing your marbles, Ash. He swiftly stalked out of that aisle in search of something to do and clear his head. Lo and behold, the next aisle was the party aisle. It seemed to stretch on infinitely long. That wasn't right.

He darted for the next aisle. That was... the party aisle too? His head had become a dark and twisted place, sure, but was extra kinds of bizarre.

It was around then he noticed the banners, streamers, and stray deadite customers that had infiltrated the paranoid recesses of his mind but they were just standing around minding their own business.

In colorful party hats.

"Somethin's not right here..."

"Ohmygosh, ohmygosh! A party store!!" Pinkie gasped with delight as she skipped from one aisle to the next. "All the supplies I'll ever need to throw the greatest parties EVER! It's like a dream come true!"

Her squealing grew louder and more high-pitched as she neared Ash, who, as far as she could tell, was the only worker in the store at the moment. "Excuse me! Can you tell me where I can find party poppers?"

Before giving him a chance to answer, she turned to a nearby deadite. "Ooh! I LOVE your hat!"

Oh no. It was that crazy talking pink pony he saw when he first woke up. Why of all places was she here?

He stared. "Down the..." He was about to point her to the party aisle, but seeing as how they were all the party aisle, he stopped himself. Especially now noticing the party-prepped deadite.

"Hey! Get away from that thing!" Ash less-than-gently shoved Pinkie away. The deadite looked sad and felt a deep sadness inside his dead little heart.

Then Ash punched it in the face. It hit the floor and the party hat went flying. "I don't care how crazy you are, you stay away from those deadites. You got that?!"

Pinkie stared in disbelief as Ash hauled off and punched the deadite. Did he just that poor customer in the face for no reason? But...that would mean... no! Surely there was a reasonable explanation for that! And Pinkie had a feeling she knew exactly what it was. She stomped up to Ash and looked him square in the eye. Or as close as she could considering he was very tall and she was a pony.

"Hey, mister! What do you think you're doing, boxing without boxing gloves on? That's against the rules! Don't you know somepony might get hurt?"

Meanwhile, the deadite sprawled out on the floor was wearing bright red boxing gloves all of a sudden.

"What."

...well that summed it up nicely.

"...What?"

A what that was more like what small furry animal crawled onto your head and died kind of what. Oh well, a customer in need is hopefully a paying customer in need.

"You need help with something sweetheart?"

"No seriously, you can recreate anything your imagination desires and you recreate a shopping m---did you call me sweetheart?"

"It's just a term of endearment, nothin' personal... Unless you wanted it to be personal." He shrugged and trailed off, glancing her up and down once. Lash didn't exactly have all the curves he tended to prefer in women. Looked kind of young, too. Possibly like a crotch-kicker.

"Besides, what's wrong with S-Mart? You never been in a store before?"

"No I'm good," she said a little too quickly. And her curves were more than fine, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. But he was right that she was a crotch-kicker.

"Yeah I've been to a few stores," the wunderkind added, looking at a store-brand of shampoo and gagging. "Got my own in fact. But I'd never go in the sensoriums and pretend to be working here, just saying."

"You got your own, huh?" He parroted. "Well I don't, and as far as I know I can imagine whatever the hell I want in here no matter how stupid. So: welcome to S-Mart."

"Okay then..." she looked down at his name tag. "Ash. She pretended to think about it.

"I'd like a few turbines, propellers, a water cell...do you have any Iodine-131 in proper packaging? Oh and a few water buckets."

It was... a supermarket. An old Earth supermarket. Not the kind he was used to, of course; it was significantly bigger, and was also not full of zombies. He wandered through the aisles, occasionally puzzling over a piece of merchandise. Wait, was that -- it was.

"...A milk carton holder," he said in disbelief.

Edited 2011-11-12 22:52 (UTC)

Not full of zombies. Yet.

"Best in Michigan state." Some days Ash just wanted to be left to himself to go stock shelves or slap discount stickers on the layaway items, and other days he'd rather hover around interesting looking (read: female) customers or co-workers and ask if they needed any help.

This guy was not an attractive looking female, but he did have in his hands an attractive looking ~~food item~~ food accessory.

"Kinda' gimmicky if you ask me but no one wants to cry over spilt milk, am I right?"

Edited 2011-11-12 23:00 (UTC)

~~Dun dun dunnn~~

"I... suppose so? But what's wrong with just holding the milk and pouring it? If it's that hard to hold the carton steady, you can always use both hands. Or buy it in a plastic container."

He blinked. "This store is from Michigan? The twentieth century, I'm guessing?"

He shrugged. It was a compelling argument. "Maybe not all of us got two hands." He held his metal one up as an example.

"Yeah, that's right." Did he even know what Michigan was? "You from there?"

"That's true," Zouichi said. "But you don't look like you'd have much trouble with a milk carton. What happened to your hand, if you don't mind me asking?" Was it a zombie. Because Zouichi knew a guy who lost a hand to a zombie.

"No, other side of the world. I was based in Japan's Kanto area. But Michigan is fairly famous... or was, I guess, before it was destroyed."

Sayaka just blinked, looking around the store as she walked into the sensorium. She definitely wasn't expecting a shop to be there, that was for sure. This was just, well, weird.

Still, since it was here she should at least look around, shouldn't she?

So that's what she was doing now, looking through some of the isles. From the looks of things and the packages, whoever had this store conjured up was American, or maybe British. It didn't really matter, she couldn't read what half the stuff said anyway. English classes were never her strong suit in school.

Weird, but totally normal for Ash, and that's all he really wanted right now... even if it was just playing pretendy fun time for a few hours, and even if half the customers that seemed to be wandering in were a little less than normal looking.

Ideally, he should just imagine a store full of busty redheaded girls who liked to bend over a lot. At the moment, he could spy there was someone of the female variety over there, and started to make an approach.

"You need any help there?" As he got closer, he quickly realized she was much too young--or at least looked that way.

He made a concentrated effort and refrained from tacking on any of the usual nicknames he reserved for the lady-types, not wanting to come of as come creepy pedo.

Sayaka shook her head, looking up at the guy who was coming over to her. "No, I'm alright. I mean, it's not like this stuff can actually be taken out of here anyway," she said.

Though maybe if she were over in a food section, it would be different, since she could actually eat the food here and not instantly be starving again later. "But where was this place? Before the ship, I mean."

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Shop smart: shop S-Mart! [open]

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hurkdurr I can read a tag.

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PANCAKES...

Re: PANCAKES...

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