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11:53 AM, sales counter

With the roar of its large V8, Thurgood drives his custom Boss Hoss to the detatched garage, opens the door, and parks it inside before closing the door again. When he gets inside, he sees that Aveline is pissed.

"So where the [********] have you been all day?"

"Doin' recon in Durem."

"What about after that?"

"Thinkin;."

"All the way out at Gambino Isle?"

"Bullshit."

"Yer phone was there and moving," Aveline rebuts as she shows him a map on her phone of his phone's location.

"Okay, so I was there. The beach is a great place to think."

"Oh, yeah. I bet you were doin' a looooooot of thinkin while I was shoving these heavy a** cases outta the vault and out here to the sales floor. Like, 'how can I get into her bikini, how can I get that chick to show me her boobs, damn I wanna hit that!'"

Other than having to shove the cases, racks, and displays out of the vault, into then out of the elevator, than out here, he doesn't know why she's so damn pissed. "Uh, you're my little sister, not my wife. Why do you care who I wanna ********, or where the ******** I go?"

"Cuz ya left me here alone to open the ********' store!"

"I've done dozens of dry runs before I codified the procedure, including moving all the cases, racks, and displays every time, completely alone. It's no big deal."

Those last four words echoed inside Aveline's consiousness. "It's no big deal." Then she pulls out her Mossberg 500. Unlike Thurgood's, it's an eight shot model, with an adjustable stock and a vertical foregrip on the pump slide.

At this point, Thurgood is standing right across the counter from Aveline when she pulls the trigger and blasts him with a genuine TASER XREP round (which is NOT a "shotgun" round, according to their VP of communications), which causes severe injury to his midsection due to the extremely short range, but otherwise works as designed as Thurgood drops to the ground, unable to control his skeletal muscles. Aveline then pumps and shoots six wooden baton rounds at Thurgood, three aimed directly at his balls, before spraying him with capsaicin spray combined with liquefied pain gas on his face and in his mouth.

Aveline then vaults the counter right as the 20 second cycle of the XREP shell ends, and blasts him with another one at point blank, then picks him up, carries him to the stairs down to the range, and tosses Thurgood's already injured body down before going back to the register.

5:35 PM, just outside

As Aveline returns from Gambino Isle, she finds the store's security shutters all closed with a note on the front door:
Closed due to medical emergency

Thurgood, after passing out for a couple seconds, decided to close the store and seek medical treatment anyways. Instead of going to the clinic, Aveline goes to the back door beside the loading dock doors,and opens the panel with a key that houses the same high-security code/key/biometric lock combo found on the vault doors, inserts her key, puts in her code, puts her aplms on the scanners, and both eyes into the optical scanners. The door opens, at which time Aveline closes the panel again and steps inside where the shutters close again.

This feature can be disabled physically from the inside during a siege or attack, eliminating this necessary, well-hardened, tiny vulnerability.

If Aveline decided to visit Thurgood at the clinic, she wouldn't find him there: his injuries and blood loss are so severe he had to be airlifted to the closest proper hospital in southern Copper Valley.

The nxt day...

10:35 AM, sales counter

With Thurgood in the hospital, Aveline again had to bring all of the racks and display cases up from the vault alone. Last night must have been a bad time to call in to their supplier though, maybe this morning will be better.

"What the ******** is he still at the clinic for? I didn't hurt him that badly."

Right now though, she starts to drift off to sleep in the chair in front of the sales counter.

11:16AM, parking lot to sales floor
Well, Aveline is anyways. As Yuni makes her way to the front doors, they slide open, showing just how thick the clear pollycarbonate is. Vivian and Nadia get a little anxious, since the concrete fortress kinda resembles the holding facility they'd escaped from. Despite that, they trot behind Yuni, and as they see the inside, the anxiety starts to lift.

"Well hey Yuni," Aveline says from behind the low-profile register, "wonderin' when you'd wanna come see the place."

"Boring, mainly," Aveline tells Yuni, "really, only the locals bother to come around here much, and until we get our large special order for a certain customer, there really ain't much to do. Of course the cafe's still closed, but only because me and Thurgood are the only workers here. So did you come by to chat, or are ya interested in a firearm?"

Vivian stands up and looks into the pistol cases in the counter, while Nadia prefers to look at the knife case about four feet away from the counter cases.

["I wonder if I could use one of these..."]

["I dunno, I think a knife would be better."]

Aveline looks down at the foxes. "Holy s**t, they're so ********' skinny! What the hell happened to 'em?"

"Oh, like that one time Thurgood said that Kira apparently sucked you out of the angelic realm?" Aveline asks, "Well, if that's the case, it's not like I can exactly blame you for their malnutrition, nor hold them accountable for not using skills they've probably had trained out or never even had in the first place.

I'd love to come, but I don't have any shine to bring right now, and I'd have to get my brother from the clinic to see if he's as good with meat and smoke as he says. We could bring some pieces to demonstrate though, lotta these things I've been itchin' to fire."

In fact, Aveline has some choice pieces to bring, and is sure of a few others Thurgood wants to bring as well: a Gau-17, the Bushmaster II autocannon, a Mark 17 grenade launcher, a couple M32 grenade launchers, the combination Stinger/Javelin launcher and missiles, and a few other small arms, ammo, and safety equipment. Aveline's thinking is that if the party guests enjoy firing those, they might buy them, or at least buy something here. No publicity/advertising is bad publicity/advertising.

"So I'll get some fruit, some meat, a certain meathead, get a batch of shine brandy run, and some weapons, then bring it all to the Cat Scratch in what would seem to you to be probably between a few minutes and a few hours in your realm. Just leave us a way to pop open a portal there."

"I punished him for leavin' me alone to shove all these heavy a** counter cases, racks, and rolling displays back down to the vault, that p***y," Aveline says before she takes the zipper pull, "well, as far as you can perceive, we'll be seein' ya reeeal soon, even though it'll be more like five days on this end."

Of course, Aveline doesn't mention that she shot him point-blank with two XREP rounds, and six wooden baton shells from her Mossberg 500, then threw him down the stairs to the range. Fortunately sight of his ribs, sternum, right fibula, and left ulna aren't badly broken at all. Unfortunately he has to be treated for internal hemorrhaging and a ruptured testicle.