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 Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2023 8:00 pm
It was twenty minutes after 2am and a silence fell over the store. Glancing at the clock, Todd nodded to himself. A legend proven true once again. Of course, in the near empty convenience store, a hush falling over the crowd is a little less impressive. In this case, it meant that the show playing on the TV behind him was changing to a new segment and a moment later the screen was exploding into swords. "Oh man, Katana Overload." The kid by the magazines (too young to be out this late if he's too young to buy the skin mags he's been trying to peep through their "modesty sleeves") even paused his browsing to look over at the screen with interest. After a moment, he looked away and was startled to meet Todd's all-too-knowing eyes. With a cough, the kid put down the magazine, and moved toward the snacks. An awkward, blushing minute followed and soon he was leaving with some jerky along with several cans of energy drinks that promised to "brutalize you from the inside-out." Watching the skinny figure shuffle out the door, Todd called out helpfully, "Hey man, it's free on the internet." At the kid's glance back, he offered a thumb's up.
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Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2023 5:11 am
Keep your strength up, they said. Like Faustite knew how to do that. Like they knew what to tell him about it.
Faustite understood the point of it. Tests meant blood and stress. Tissue. Saliva. Scans. Other things put into him. Other things taken out of him. They wanted him to ensure he was getting enough calories, enough protein, enough sleep, enough electrolytes, enough water. They were telling him how thin he was. How he needed to eat more. How he was underweight, despite missing several organs.
Last he checked, fire weighed less than a liver. Less than a pair of kidneys, too. But that didn't change their answer. Even if it was just for these examinations, you need to increase your caloric intake.
As if ten thousand calories a day wasn't enough.
Whatever, he told himself. Didn't matter. He was off duty for now, so what else would he be doing with his time? Might as well eat like Albite did whenever he was watching movies. And after his husband asked him to drop by the store for some butter and poprocks, Faustite decided he might as well. Didn't have anything better to do. Didn't matter that the boy was asleep when he asked; he'd ask for something equally asinine while awake.
The problem, he realized once he teleported into the city, was that so few places were open as late as 2am. So he wandered, felt the night breeze, looked for anywhere that he might have been or didn't have cameras. Problem was, he hadn't been much of anywhere since becoming part-youma. Problem was, everywhere had cameras. After twenty minutes of wandering and and window-shopping the places that seemed less inclined to keep security footage, he'd run across a convenience store that didn't close its doors once it had grown dark enough for costumed, high-heeled violence.
Conserve your energy, they said. He took that as advisement against unnecessarily using his glamour. Faustite quickly decided that a short Seven-Eleven shopping trip was too frivolous to waste his energy on becoming Eion.
Not long after the minor left, the bell over the door chimed again, annnouncing Faustite's entry. The coolers hummed, a fan buzzed, and a man with a strange accent drawled on and on about a bunch of swords about which he very clearly understood nothing. To this soft cacophony, Faustite added the crackle of a blazing fire.
He stooped, picked up a basket with its plastic handle and metal hinge, and spared the cashier a cursory look.
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Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2023 2:31 pm
There was a guy who was on fire. Todd processed this. There was a guy who was on fire who didn't seem to mind.Todd felt relieved he wouldn't have to make a 9-1-1 call tonight, Probably.There was a guy who was on fire and he was shopping.Todd, through the power of Customer Service, summoned a temporary lobotomy from the aether and stopped thinking about the unimportant questions and instead focused on what mattered: "Do you need any help?" He did not make eye contact because he did not see anything.His brain, in a miserable attempt at rebellion, decided to have a thought and his eyes flickered toward the nearest fire extinguisher. The tag on it looked pretty clean, so it was probably a new and usable one.
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2023 6:09 am
Do you need any help, the clerk asked. Faustite opened his mouth to respond with the appropriate level of invective when he felt something slough off onto his hand. Looking down, he saw that he melted the handle from the wire frame, and with a huff, set the basket down so he could flick the amorphous, plasticized mess at the nearest trash can.
Maybe he did need help, then. "Two packs of butter sticks. Don't care what kind." The implication here being, if he picked them up, they'd likely turn into butter soup before he got them to the counter. He'd likely have set the store on fire looking for them. Which, no one would've suffered the loss of that merchandise, but there was something undeniably useful about a store clerk that wouldn't immediately call the cops. Or worse, the fire department.
Over a thin blanket of static, he heard at one-hundred twenty dollars??? Like the man was speaking in slow motion.
Like the whole store was stuck in another dimension where being on fire was more like a disability that other people were socially compelled to let go unacknowledged. Faustite was a little unsettled for it, but he let it go. He could become fire, summon youma, teleport, rip out people's souls. What did he have to fear from a store that subverted his expectations?lizbot 'summoned a temporary lobotomy' had me rolling
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2023 1:14 pm
Todd gave the smoke alarm a quick glance and felt fairly certain it hadn't actually been fixed since New Years. "Sure thing, man." The guy that was on fire wanted butter. The multitude of possibilities approached Todd's brain, wriggling like eager little tadpoles, but were frantically shooed away. None of that now. A customer needed butter.Walking efficiently, careful to avoid moving too suddenly, Todd walked around the counter and too the coolers. Pulling out two boxes of butter, he was nearly back when he paused to stare down at his hands. The customer who was on fire couldn't even safely handle the shopping basket. The clerk's pause was overlong, like his off switch had been flipped. Swords cascaded across the silence, they came with a special display. the deal was so good. Once in a lifetime.And then he abruptly came back to life, freshly rebooted, and walked back to the office for a brief second before coming out again with a small igloo cooler. Opening it he dumped the contents into the trash (Jiff shouldn't leave his leftovers here anyway). There was a series of quick boops as the butter was first scanned, then deposited into the cooler, which was then placed on an extra wire rack for the hotcase. Looking up with a relieved smile and not acknowledging the strange process at all, Todd asked, "Is there anything else I can get you?" Strickenized The power of Retail compels devil thoughts to come back later, during the vulnerability of near-sleep...
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Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2023 4:41 pm
Faustite was watching in silence the entire time the clerk departed to fulfill his request. He couldn't decide what the hell was going on. Was the ventilation system drugged? Did 7-11 pay really ******** well? Was this guy in a competition for employee of the year and Faustite was going to be the proof that his customer service was better than the rest? Had Faustite actually walked into an alternate dimension when he strode through those doors and the world he knew ceased to be the world around him?
It was fascinating. Unnerving, but fascinating. Faustite's attention followed him to the tune of sixty dollars now, plus shipping as the boy entered the office.
Faustite figured that was the end of this strange feverdream. The boy was calling the cops with a few sticks of butter in his hands, having finally come to his senses. He was pressing the panic button in the office. He was exchanging sticks of butter for a fire extinguisher or a sawed-off shotgun that the owner kept from their bear-hunting days. As much as Faustite wanted to think about hunting bears
Then the boy was back with a cooler. He had to say it. It was coming out of his mouth whether he wanted it to or not.
"What the ********," Faustite muttered. Nevertheless, he approached the counter. He looked from the igloo to the boy, who, perplexingly and undeniably charmingly, treated him like a normal ******** customer. Were he a little less aware of his not-quite-human condition, he would've slipped that boy a smile and asked for his phone number when he asked if there was anything else. Fortunately for Faustite's dignity, he was aware he looked something like demonspawn. So he shook his head, summoned a twenty-dollar bill from nowhere, and dropped it onto the counter as quick as he could before it caught fire between his fingers.
As it was, the rumpled bill sported a couple blackened marks on one corner. Unfortunate, but still legal tender as far as he was concerned.
Faustite reached for the cooler, then paused before he took up the handle. Looking the clerk in the eyes, he asked, "Want a different job?"
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Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2023 5:05 pm
The eye contact and question were like successive pulls of a lawn mower's cord, suddenly insisting his thoughts start happening again. Oh no. As his hands dutifully made change and placed it politely on the counter, Todd gave the question a moment of consideration, ignoring for once, the instinct to run."Only if it's low on commitment and high in hazard pay," he answered, finally looking directly at the guy whose job possibly consisted of being on fire. It was the first time Todd revealed a bit more beyond what he considered life-saving customer service since the guy had come in and passively filled the store with literal fire and brimstone.
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Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2023 5:27 pm
Well. It wasn't quite a no, but more of an I'll consider it if it's on my terms. And his terms were out of the question — the Negaverse wasn't 7-11. This boy couldn't 'stock shelves' for four hours while scrolling TikTok at the rate of however-many-dollars an hour. He wouldn't be getting paid in money anyway.
Faustite considered, briefly, starseeding him. Or draining his energy. Or he could summon in a youma to do it instead. Or his husband — any of his husbands. But, there was something undeniably useful about having a convenience store clerk who would actually sell to someone who was clearly on fire and not dying from it (not imminently, anyway). Maybe that kept him alive.
Or maybe it was the way he so cutely went to the aid of his poor burning customer who couldn't handle the shopping basket.
"Suit yourself," he said after a beat, then picked up the cooler with a blackened hand. "Keep the change." He started to cough, then vanished altogether. As if he was never there, but for the smoke left behind.
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Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2023 6:14 pm
There was a very brief, very frozen, moment where Todd knew very clearly that he should not have answered. Should not have looked. Should not have thought. The rules are there for a reason. And then it was fine. Everything was fine. Fire guy decided to be as chill as a fire guy, presumably, could be. Todd's eyes driftied from the change, to the smoke where there was no longer any fire, back to the change again. The coins got dumped into the leave a penny, the bills went to the send whatever kid to whatever camp fundraiser was going on this month, and a remainder went toward an I Survived slurpie. Tonight's was a thematic mix of tabasco and cherry flavors. Sipping on it as the man on TV repeatedly slammed a bamboo practice sword into a table, Todd decided that it was time to negotiate yet another raise. And maybe see about some alternatives to plastic bags.
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