-----------------------------------------------From the Notebook of an Angel-------------------------------------------------

Hello!

I just read books 1-4 of Skulduggery Pleasant for like, the MILLIONTH TIME (I really should have been studying; I have exams in 3 weeks...Or is it 2 weeks? Oh dear...)

This story is inspired by a line from book 3 which suggested Tanith Lowe couldn't comprehend the use of a micro-wave, and my mother's real-life 2 am shopping trip to Tesco's (if you don't know what Tesco's is, you sad, sad person, it's a chain super-market that sells things dirt-cheap).

Enjoy, if you can ^_^

The sound of Tanith Lowe's own growling stomach awoke her at 2' o clock in the morning.

She sniffed angrily at her tummy, which seemed to have receded into her rib cage. She couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten, but it was HOURS ago. Blinking blearily, she tentatively put a bare foot onto the cold floor of her temporary Irish residence. It was very cold outside her warm and cosy bed, very cold indeed. What was it about Ireland that made it so freezing? Day and night, it was always unpleasantly cold. Or raining. Or both at once. Even in May, a month that was far too close to summer for rain to get comfortable in. Walking towards the kitchen, she caught sight of a hideous monster in her hallway out of the corner of her eye. She turned back; fumbling out the dagger she kept in her nightgown-sleeve, before dropping with surprise and nearly removing two of her toes. Swearing, she picked up the knife again and stared at her reflection. With her blond hair tousled around her face in an involuntary extreme bed-head style, she looked like something that had crawled out of a Japanese horror film. A really bad J-Horror film.

She stooped to her refrigerator, opened the door, and glared at the vacant space where the food should have been, right before it entered her stomach. Mumbling a curse tiredly, she thought out her options.

Option 1): Starve to death.

Option 2): Go get something to eat.

Option 3): Lie down on the floor and pass out, and pray that someone found her before she wasted away.

Option 1 and 3 didn't sound too attractive, so she made ready to go out. She hoped nobody would notice the fact that she was wearing her pyjamas with a tracksuit fleece over them and her big black boots. Looking back at her mirror, she took an elastic band at combed unruly strands back into a pony tail with her fingers. She didn't really see a need to bother with her appearance that much. She doubted any hot guys would be shopping at the discount super-market at 2 am...

She drove around the village for a few minutes; looking for somewhere she could get food. Finally she spotted the huge white building. Finally she had found something familiar. It was a Tesco's, like what she had back home in London. She sighed nostalgically and turned into the entrance.

Parking her bike, she studied her surroundings. There weren't too many people around, just a few random stragglers, drunks and random weirdo's. And people in pyjamas. She suddenly didn't feel ashamed of her pink Hello Kitty attire. They had been some sort of sick gift from Ghastly. He'd had a good laugh when she had unwrapped them on Christmas Day, and would probably laugh if he could see her trying to shove a 2 euro coin into a trolley and separate it from the rest of the trolley bay. And failing. She forced the coin in, and pulled with no avail. Getting angry, she threw her back into it, and pulled the trolley out of the trolley bay with the metal chain still attached to it. Hoping to God that no-one had seen that, she sped away from the scene of the crime...

Tanith was never one for making lists, so hers was a scrap of paper with some incoherent words scrawled hastily on it. She had written this in the dark, so she couldn't really understand what she had scrawled. She needed milk, cereal, eggs, bread, cheese, chocolate...

She walked up and down the aisles, taking things off the shelves. She wasn't a good shopper, as she was just taking random things off shelves. She grabbed cereal (Cookie Crisps), cookies (double chocolate chip = double yummy-ness), butter (the real Irish kind was just the best), milk (full fat. She was such a rebel she surprised herself sometimes) and other random junk. She stopped as she reached for coffee. A little know fact about Adepts was that they had an extremely addictive personality. They got addicted to random things. An Adept Tanith had known once was addicted to sugar sticks (plastic tubes full of coloured-sugar), and still to this day downed at least 10 a day. Tanith was not good around caffeine. She learned this happy little fact on a trip to Starbucks with Val, and although she didn't remember the name of the particular caffeinated beverage, it had been something like a "triple-sized-double-frappachino-chocolate-vanilla-shot-thing", and it had made her run up the walls. Literally. Not wishing to go there again, she ran through the aisle and into the next one.

Her stomach rumbled again, making her world spin for a second as she reached for pasta (the one's shaped like little giraffes), and she took a step back. "This what you're looking for?" asked a tall/dark/handsome man in a Tesco's uniform. He reached up and handed her the pasta. Tanith took it from him and smiled. She didn't feel too well. "Hey, miss? Are you okay? Miss?" Tanith tried to focus her vision as the ground rushed to meet her...

Tanith opened her eyes again and blinked. "Miss? Are you alright?" It was tall/dark/handsome/valiant-rescuer man. "Oh..." she said, and turned on the charm. "I am now..." she said, batting her long eyelashes at him. She could almost hear the impact of China Sorrow's palm connecting with her forehead in frustration with Tanith's pathetic attempt at seduction. He smiled at her, and handed her a bar of chocolate. "Here, eat this. Free of charge." He laughed. Tanith laughed too, a little too long and a little too loudly. He stared at her oddly, and with her cheeks burning, she consumed the treat. "So...Thank-you for saving me, Mr...Err..."

He extended his hand. "Dave. Dave Johnson. Nice to meet you."

"I'm Tanith." She probably could have used one of Fletcher Renn's extremely bad pick-up lines, but decided that she wasn't THAT desperate. She shook his hand. "Would you like to..." he began. Yes, yes YES! Tanith thought eagerly, Yes, yes I would like to go out with you/marry you/have your babies!

"...Pay for your stuff?" he asked. Tanith felt a little put out, but did not doubt that she would make Dave-the-tall/dark/handsome/valiant-rescuer/playing-hard-to-get-man love her. He would.

She followed him to the check out, laughing at his jokes and slipping him a compliment every now and then. It was a dumb-blond act to outshine Marilyn Monroe, and if Valkyrie, Ghastly or Skulduggery they would have never let her forget it.

She put her stuff into a plastic bag and handed Dave-the-tall/dark/handsome/valiant-rescuer/playing-hard-to-get/bad-sense-of-humour-man her money.

Just as she was about to ask him for his phone number, a large man wearing a pair of tights over his head came barging into the store with a gun. "OPEN THE REGISTER AND GIVE ME THE MONEY!" he roared at Dave-the-tall/dark/handsome/valiant-rescuer/playing-hard-to-get/bad-sense-of-humour/scared-witless-of-big-men-with-tights-over-their-heads-man, and he lost it altogether. "Okay, okay!" he said, nearly in tears. This was just sad, Tanith thought, really, really sad. This guy probably didn't even have ammo in his gun. Tanith aimed a kick at his wrist. She grabbed his hand and pinned it behind his back. She kneed him in the back and forced him onto the ground, holding the knife that had been carefully concealed in her sleeve to the back of his neck. "You picked the wrong night to rob a Tesco's, mate" she breathed. "Dave," she said sweetly to the panicked Tesco's employee. Suddenly, he didn't look so tall, dark, handsome, valiant or hard to get. "Can you please call the Gardaí? Like, now, perhaps?" Dave nodded his head slowly and obliged.

When the Gardaí arrived, she gave them a statement saying she had been innocently doing her shopping when the big scary man with the tights over his head and the un-loaded gun came in and threatened her. Pleading self-defense, the Gardaí overlooked her sleeve-knife. They even offered to drive her home, in case she was "too shaken-up by her ordeal to drive". She politely declined; deciding that there was a time and place for the dumb blond act, took her groceries and drove home.

On her way out, Dave-the-cowardly/shivering/vomit-stained-chicken gave her a call-me sign. She would also politely decline that too. She didn't know what she had seen in him…

When she arrived home, it was nearly 6 am.

She had spent almost 4 hours shopping, and she was really tired.

Just as Tanith was getting comfortable, her phone rang.

"Hey Tanith!" came Valkyrie Cain's overly bright voice through the phone. "Do ya wanna get some breakfast? There's a restaurant on the second floor of Tesco's. It's really good there."

"Valkyrie," Tanith murmured, turning over in bed. "What kind of normal person goes to Tesco's at such an unholy hour of the morning?"

~The End~

-------------------------------------------------From the Notebook of an Angel-----------------------------------------------

WOA!

That was REALLY REALLY LONG. I'm sorry. But I have a principal of not calling something a one-shot until it is at least 1,000 words. This is 1,480 words. Yay.

The intentions of this fanfic were skewed so very much. It became about seducing men at 2 am in Tesco's, instead of being about…Whatever I wanted it to be about in the beginning. No-one ever writes about poor ol' Tanith. It's all "Valduggery" this and "Valduggery" that *mutter mutter* *is jealous that Valduggery gets more reviews*

There's method to my madness.

Thanks for reading, and if you're in the mood, give us a review.

Regards,

Ceres, the Unknown Angel

xXx