I've really wanted to write things for a long time, but with schoolwork and crap going on, time seemed to slip away from me. Also all my stories on here are crap, but anyway, I really wanted to write something new and fresh, so here it is, it probably wont be completed because im like that, I get bored with things halfway through, so expect to be disappointed.
Feel like flaming? Sure go for it, not like flames don't kill me enough anyway . Besides I'll ignore flames, don't have time for them, better things to be doing.
I've been working on my art stuff quite a lot lately, so if you would like a link to my deviantart site to go have a poke around you are welcome to ask me for it.
Hope you enjoy this story.
Disclaimer- All characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto, the plotline and events in this story belong to me, that's it.
Summary- Konohagakure super stores was the largest chain of super stores in the country, until it had been knocked out of business by competing store, Sunagakure deals and meals. Sasuke had settled into the quiet working life at Konohagakure super stores, until his co-worker naruto decides to liven things up a little.
Pairing undecided and unimportant, it is a collection of mini stories/episodes.
Aisle mania
'Uchiha Sasuke to Checkout number 5 please, Uchiha Sasuke to checkout number 5' crackled the booming voice over the loud speakers.
The voice echoed down the vast space of the large store causing some customers to cringe and cover their ears to protect them from the shrill squealing sound as the loud speaker got turned off. 'Konohagakure super stores' was one of the oldest running chains of stores across the country, started way back in the 1930s when it was but a small grocery shop in the centre of the town, run by a meek young man who had converted the business over from being a cake shop when he had inherited it. If one was to ask the same and now old man about what happened, you would gain a long lecture about the tale going something like this:
'eeeh, it was the summer of 1932 and I had just put the cat outside….or was it the dog…eh, but anyway, I was mopping an orange juice stain off the floor when a man in a black suit came in and brought some pineapples. He came over to the cashier desk and complemented the store, he looked around and nodded to himself then looked back at me and congratulated me on having so many customers. He then began asking me questions about how much stock I sell each year, and well, from simple questions like that, soon he had begun to ask me if I'd like to sell the store! Of course I sold it straight away and used the money to buy a house in Miami!!'
And so, after the store was sold and the owner had left for his summer house is Miami, building-workers came along and began sculpting the modestly sized Grocer's, into a large and vast store. The popularity of this store, one which sold almost everything under the earth including food items, home-wears and clothing, became very clear, and soon other towns began to demands having such a store closer to them as well. And so the Konohagakure super stores chain mania began.
After a few years almost every large town in the country had a Konoha store of its own and the business was soon announcing record profits, the new owners of the stores congratulating themselves on such huge successes. The super stores were almost blessings to smaller towns, not only were things easier and cheaper to get, it also solved the unemployment issues they were having. A wide range of workers, spreading from 16 year olds to 80 year olds, it was clear that no one would be suffering money problems from then on.
It was soon clear that the super stores were the biggest success to the country and its economy, and soon everyone had grown to recognise the bold green lettering and the swirled leaf motif of the store which was proudly worn by workers with little labels that said merrily 'hello I'm insert name here I'm happy to assist'.
However, 50 years after the grand opening of the super store, new competition broke out. In 1987, 'Sunagakure deals and meals', a new and larger store opened in the south of the country, just north of the town where the original Konohagakure super store was. This new store had even lower prices than Konohagakure and the amount of variety of items on the shelves almost put Konohagakure to shame.
Swirly leaf motifs and green uniforms soon got replaced by the more chic and stylish cream and red designs of Sunagakure.
By 1996, the Konohagakure stores craze had ended. Stores had closed down and had been sold on as extensions to the now booming Sunagakure stores which had taken over as the most celebrated business in the country. The only store remaining was the original Konohagakure store, ran by the granddaughter of the original owner, Tsunade.
A short skip ahead to current times in 2008 will show the image of the store with tiles falling off the roof, bricks in the walls chipped and a shabby interior; it was easy to see the poor store was on its last legs. But it didn't mean the store was never open, 8am till 11pm opening and closing hours, the store opened everyday except Sundays and continued on with its useless routine. Profits were low and customers were few, but you could be guaranteed to be greeted with a happy smiling face of the workers and you would be comforted with the fact that the aisles would never be over crowded.
But, asides from the anything but interesting history lesson of said super store, it is time to flick back to the story line.
Sasuke looked up from his seat behind the frozen aisle and sighed, standing up and straightening out his green Konohagakure store vest and hat, which were, not only unflattering towards his size, had also quite happily flattened the spikes in his hair which had taken him 3 attempts to get just right earlier that morning.
At 16 years and 7 months of age, standing a firm 5ft9", coming from a Japanese family, good-looking, good at sports, intelligent, easily annoyed and a lover of anything with tomatoes in it, we have just been introduced to Konohagakure's youngest and most useful worker. Mainly because he actually did the work he was told to do… rather than lazing around out the back of the building hiding from Tsunade.
He sighed and put his hands in his pockets and walked over towards the checkouts, ignoring the crunch of a broken tile under his feet, 'hn….we actually have a need to open another till?' he thought in amazement as he turned round the corner. He stumbled to a stop and stared forward in shock!
There were queues for the tills! Huge queues…with people holding loads of baskets of shopping!!
He ran to his till and switched it on, starting to scan the first person's items, mildly aware that his co-workers were actually at their tills too. He smirked slightly when he saw Naruto head banging slightly as he scanned bread and milk in the cashier desk next to him, the ipod headphones leading down from his ears kind of gave away the sign that Naruto had snuck his ipod into work again.
The 5ft7" sunshine blonde 17 year old Uzumaki Naruto could be described with one phrase, trouble-maker. After joining the store back when he was 16, dragged into the business by Tsunade, his great aunt, Naruto had done nothing but abuse the rules that had been set, ignored instructions, pulled pranks on the few customers the store ever gained and even ate a couple things off the shelves or watched movies in the TV section out of boredom. It was easy to see by almost anyone, that Uzumaki Naruto was a very disinterested worker at the store, the guy dreamt of being something important, but after failing to reach his expected grades and being kicked out of school for being a nuisance; he was stuck working for a living at the store.
Sasuke looked away from naruto and typed in the keys on the old fashioned cashier computer to bring up the total of the cost of shopping the old lady in front of him had picked up, "that'll be 45 pounds 80 please" he said politely, taking the credit card from her wrinkly hands and sliding it across the swiper. After tearing the receipt off and handing it back to her along with her card, he moved onto the next customer who was waiting impatiently for Sasuke to start scanning his items.
This same basic repetitive system of scanning the items, packing, paying and leaving went over about 37 times for Sasuke; he counted every one of them. Overall, with an average total of about 46 items per person, Sasuke figured out that he had scanned an overall total of 1702 items. Each item taking an average total of 1.2 seconds each to be scanned created the total of 2042.4 seconds to scan all of the items; this total, added along with the approximate one minute long gap between each customer created a total of 4262.4 seconds of work at the cashier desk. These 4262.4 seconds equalled roughly 71.04 minutes, which in turn calculated into an hour and 11 minutes. He could have quite easily gone into further detail by using his total and multiplying it by the amount of workers at the cashier desks around him to find out the overall total of people buying things from Konohagakure super stores right at this very moment; but he had decided that it was sort of unnecessary seen ad though the store was overcrowding and the queues were growing…and also it was hard concentrate on calculations when he had a sore ass from sitting at that desk for over an hour. And besides, he was only working with average totals, if he had counted all of the items, he was sure he would realise that he had been sat in that chair for ages. Even though Sasuke really, really did appreciate maths.
Finally after what seemed to be ages, the crowds had died down and Sasuke was able to find it safe enough to sneak away from the till long enough to stretch his legs and try and get the feeling back in his butt. He walked out towards the back of the store, going through the doors with torn and barely readable tape across it saying 'fire exit, this door is alarmed'. Well, the tape was lying, after a short rat problem; the wires that connected the door to the alarm had been gnawed through, leaving the door useless. Sasuke pulled the bright green baseball cap off which still happily beamed out the little slogan 'Konohagakure stores, we serve, you buy!' and he ran his hand through the back of his hair, trying to get it to stand up again. He dropped the hat down on the small coffee table and went over to the coffee machine, putting a cup underneath and inserting the money.
The machine growled and whirred making a loud clunking noise, Sasuke sighed and punched the front of the machine, making it go click and send out a random coffee. He tapped his foot impatiently as the cup got filled up, he picked it up and blew the top of it before taking a sip, "….hmm…. 'Café Breva' today huh?" he murmured to himself. It was a good thing Sasuke appreciated all types of coffee, seen as though the coffee machine seemed to have a mind of its own. He personally blamed his elder brother for getting him into the sweet bitter taste of coffee from such a young age, the same elder brother who was away on a business trip at the moment, thank the lords!
Sasuke's thoughts got interrupted when the door opened and someone walked in,
"Hey, what's the coffee machine giving out today?" Shikamaru asked lazily, sitting down in a chair and slouching.
Shikamaru, one of the laziest workers at Konoha, a modest 5ft6" in height and a proud wearer of baggy clothes, his almost constant slouched position and tired/grouchy face and attitude made the poneytailed lazy 19 year old one of the most unapproachable members of the Konoha staff team. But don't get me wrong, he wasn't useless, he was actually very, very smart, he was very good at solving problems and if the intercom messed up, like it usually did, Tsunade always asked Shikamaru first to go and mend it.
Sasuke sometimes wondered why Shikamaru was bothering to waste his time and efforts at a supermarket, but then again, up until today, the store had always been quite uneventful, so there was no need for Shikamaru to expend any of his precious energy.
He turned round and looked over at the pony-tailed guy, sitting himself on the table beside the coffee machine,
"It's giving out 'Café Breva' today, yesterday it was giving out 'Ristretto' coffee." Sasuke said with a shrug.
Shikamaru nodded and shrugged leaning his head back in the chair, he sighed in a long and deep way shutting his eyes and putting his fingers together as he considered getting up to get himself a coffee. Sasuke drank another gulp grimacing and trying his best not to yelp and get coffee everywhere as he burnt his tongue.
"Ha ha! Crab in your pants?" Naruto laughed seeing sasuke's wide eyed and pained looking face when he walked into the backroom to go sit down.
Sasuke glared, swallowing his coffee and taking another gulp to try and cover up his earlier pain, "Feh… you wish dobe." He muttered setting the now empty cup down, waiting for the usual caffeine rush that normally appeared after he had a cup of coffee.
Naruto chuckled to himself and jumped down into one of the spare chairs, ignoring the spring that burst out of the fabric from the strain, "Isn't it fun to actually have customers in the store? Huh?" he smirked, looking a little smug and proud of himself.
Sasuke frowned and cocked his head, "…why're you looking so proud of yourself…I thought you hated having to work on the tills"
Naruto chuckled and opened his eye looking over at Sasuke, "eh, just pleased with the result of my efforts" he laughed again. This made Sasuke even more curious; he stood up and raised an eyebrow,
"Your efforts? Why're you laughing?" he demanded to know, naruto was always doing things like this, sometimes Sasuke dreaded to ask what the blonde boy had done.
Naruto continued to laugh, "Aha! You'll be impressed when I tell you; ah store life was getting so boring lately"
Ok, this was the snapping point for Sasuke, it was sort of like when you bend your favourite pencil a little too far and it just goes crack! "Just tell me for crying out loud just tell me, the suspense is actually killing me" he snapped
Naruto snickered, "i…hehe….i….started a rumour….ehehhe"
Sasuke raised an eyebrow, "…started a rumour about what…."
"t-that…..hehe hehe…Sunagakure sold aids!!"
Sasuke stared blankly, "….. You told a rumour that the other store…sold…aids?" he said in disbelief, "…and people were dumb enough to believe that?"
Naruto nodded, still smirking proudly, "yep, I said it in a really believable way! Through a microphone and everything" he explained.
Sasuke sighed and put his head in his hands, sitting down carefully so as to not get stabbed by a spring, it had happened on his first day… it hurt, a lot. "you realise those people may be stupid, but they aren't gonna believe that for long" he reasoned.
Naruto sighed and nodded, "yea yea, I know that, that's why we're gonna deal with that issue tonight!" he said smugly putting his feet up on the table.
"Uh…..you mean we as in you and your imaginary friend right…" Sasuke grimaced.
Naruto laughed, "ha-ha! If you meant 'imaginary' as in 'real' and friend as in 'you' then you were totally correct " he beamed. Sasuke sweat-dropped and scowled,
"No, no no no no no! I am not helping you in your childish schemes! Remember what happened last time you tried to scheme something this big?"
A short skip back in time showing the image of a giant potato sculpture in the middle of sasuke's lounge with naruto standing next to it looking proud while sasuke just stood in his doorway looking horrified.
Naruto shook his head, "Nah, it's not like the potato incident, this one is really cool, I saw it in a spy movie once!" he said flapping his arms for emphasis.
Sasuke rolled his eyes and shook his head, "I swear, if I get in trouble for this , I may actually find myself killing you slowly with a giant spatula, and before you say anything to question that, yes, I have one, Itachi brought one back from Spain. Don't ask me why"
Naruto laughed, "yeah yeah, whatever, you'll be fine, you and your clean permanent record" he tusked. He then leant forward looking around the room, seeing no one else in there, and just Shikamaru asleep in the chair. "Ok look, you want this store to be successful right?"
Sasuke blinked, "yeah…but why are you so bothered?"
"Tch, duh! More customers means more wages, pay rises Sasuke pay rises! I want to buy myself a scuba suit!" he said as though it should've been obvious, and ignoring the confused expression on sasuke's face who was undoubtedly wondering why naruto wanted to buy himself a scuba diving suit, he continued on, "ok, meet me at the back of Sunagakure at midnight, wear black"
"why?" Sasuke blinked leaning forward to listen to naruto, who had dropped the volume of his voice considerably"
"Because, all the spies in spy movies wear black, have you not seen a spy movie? Geez you're useless. Ok, I need you to bring some glue, a hairdryer, a crow-bar and some screwdrivers"
"Whoa…hang on….why them?"
"You'll see later!" Naruto said getting up and grabbing his bag from his locker so he could sneak away from the store early.
Sasuke sighed and shook his head, 'what have I gotten myself into…' he thought.
