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Downtime

The street sweeper was inexplicably stalled outside the door. Probably this was some understandable, banal delay. But she had lived in Destiny City long enough to decide to hunker down for a minute, just in case it was being held up by something more sinister or at least more bullshit.

She leaned on the counter, nursing a frankincense slurpee - the ice having had time to set up - and making a face. She had only been here a handful of times - and mostly it was to use the bathroom - but she had adapted to the atmosphere remarkably well, and she nodded at the mascots approaching the beer fridge. "Gentlemen," she said. At a protesting answer muffled by a lot of faux fur, she added: "And ladies."

She watched them, idly chewing on her straw with very white teeth. "What's the turnover like?" she asked suddenly. "You must be like some kinda cockroach if you've been here longer than a couple weeks. I mean, that's the graveyard at any convenience store. But this one's gotta need more in the way of cockroach than most of them."

Insta

Reasonably certain that someone like Todd would not think her too insane, and reasoning that it might be funny to torment him if he did, Elaine applied herself to the always-enjoyable task of Internet Stalking.

His feed was more fun than she had anticipated. It occurred to her that she might actually just enjoy seeing the documentation of zany midnight Destiny City antics through the safe medium of a screen, as documented by someone else who, crucially, was not her.

The friend request comes under hugetractsofland, and appropriately enough for the reference, the profile picture is a recognizable image showcasing blonde hair, red lips, and exactly that - in a manner of speaking, anyway.

Downtime

"I'll have you know, I hold this location's record for longest running streak of not needing to visit an ER or urgent care while on shift." He sounded proud of that fact because he was proud. Sure, it mostly came down to a certain paranoia that anybody could be part of some kind of magical, costumed gang war. But he'd take it.

"Turnover can be pretty high, but weirdly, not as high as most other stores? It's gotten weirdly better the past couple years, too." He squinted off into the distance, wondering for the nth time if his boss had started paying off one of the gangs. Some of the costume people had gotten pretty friendly, sometimes even helpful. Most of them had even started paying for what they took.

Insta

Todd accepted the request before recognizing exactly who those huge tracts of land belonged to. After a moment of consideration, he decided to never tell her that he had looked disrespectfully.

Downtime

Thoughtlessly, she took another slug of the slurpee, her face twisting into an expression of immediate regret.

"The hazard pay must be nice," she said, with the distressingly quaint ignorance of someone who has never had to work in the retail trenches. She watched the idling street sweeper, waiting for some sort of miniskirted hooligan to float by, although none did. "Making bank, I imagine?"

Insta

Not that she would have minded.

Downtime

"The hazard pay is amazing," Todd nodded with a smug sort of peace and opened a new signage box. Flipping through the contents, he went on, "But we deserve it. Not only is it dangerous, but the learning curve for dealing with everything gets real steep, really fast. And the there's the psychological damage from retail in general..."

He trailed off an gave her a sympathetic look. Pulling up one of the signs he slowly turned it toward her with the advice, "You better enjoy that while it lasts."

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