Just as the teens pranced down the same aisle to wipe out Publix's cereal inventory, Lloyd wandered through the bakery at least twelve times, confused to not find his precious pudding among the freshly made desserts. He pushed around his depressingly empty green cart in defeat until a uniformed Publix baker asked him, "Need any help today, sir?"
Lloyd whirled around to see a young man with a hairnet smile before him, and at this smile, he hesitantly responded with, "Um…where's your pudding?"
"That'll be on Aisle 27, with the addicting snacks that have taken over the past few generations!" the associate responded, holding before Lloyd a tray of key lime pie samples, "Care for a sample of pie?"
"Erm…" Lloyd looked down the corner, only seeing Aisle 7 on the far side of the store. "Where is that?"
"Simple!" the associate, with a grin too big for the average human being, replied with, "Just go down to Aisle 7, then go down it, spin your cart around three times, clap your hands for five seconds, then sacrifice your first-born and pray that God will be merciful enough to lead you down the right path, and you should be there! See? Simple! Pie?"
"Uh…" Lloyd looked down the far side of the store again, stating, "T-Thank you. I just thought that the cupped pudding was…you know…"
"Freshly baked?" the associate laughed, "Oh no! I can easily see how you would make such an assumption, though! Haha!" he began to head back to the bakery counter with his lone tray of samples, waving to the scientist with, "Now you have a nice day, sir!"
At this, Lloyd walked with his cart down the aisle, as the associate glared down at his sample tray and grumbled, sputtering with defeat at the idea that a grown man had no idea that cold, lifeless, processed pudding in a cup wasn't freshly baked. Quietly, he ate his samples alone, amazed that seven years of acting school brought him to answering simple questions such as, "Do these chocolate chip cookies have chocolate in them?" and, "Is this bread gluten-free?"
Perhaps those seven years of acting school went to SOMETHING; those smiles towards those questions didn't seem as mentally straining as they once did.
Also, have any of you ever had Publix's key lime pie?
Bruh.
As the man ate the samples, he saw the poor, confused puppy off, who grabbed a fistful of sanitization wipes from a stand nearby and wiped his cart down. Six times.
(*)
Lelouch, tossing in every tasteless rehash of Kashi cereal atop poor Rivalz, looked down the aisles between the cereal aisle the crew practically lived in at this point. To his left was the aisle adorning every single organic thing a normal member of society would barely afford, all GMO, cage, calorie, sodium, carbohydrate, vitamin, disease, and taste-free. The kombucha that was made before Woodstock and the counterpart Kashi bars that tasted like soil older than Christ.
And on the aisle on the right, on the International Aisle…
"Ohhhhh, I see how it is," a young man huffed, wearing a pair of Groucho glasses and sliding a hand through his slick, red hair. In his other hand was a packaged container of Pocky, and he continued his rant with, "These Britanians are toooootally okay with eating our damn food, but God FORBID them being okay with us in our own country!"
"Keep your voice down!" another man, who appeared to be the leader of the group, shushed the red-haired man and he himself wore a pair of Groucho glasses. Everyone in his group seemed to. "If anyone here notices us, we could be arrested! We just came here to stock up for the next month and get key lime pie samples, so now's not the time to go on a political tangent, Tamiki!"
"But Oh-" the young man gasped for air as he was elbowed in the gut by a younger, red-headed woman. She huffed at him with a scornful look on her face.
"He said be quiet, idiot!" she rasped, adding, as she swiped the box of Pocky from Tamiki's hands, "Be sure to grab five more boxes. Ooh, and they have Cookies and Cream? Dude!"
Lelouch's eyes widened to see her, as Shirley, behind him, remarked, "Man, I wish Kallen was here!"
And, the thing is, she was.
Yes, Lelouch was no fool. He could see any member of The Black Knights from anywhere, and there were Ohgi, Tamiki, Kallen, General Todoh, the other female person, and a few other people that were Japanese and really, really salty. They were there to stock up for their troops, and with their Groucho glasses, frantic whispering, and carts gradually filling to the brim with survival materials and Kallen's Pocky, they weren't conspicuous at all.
With a bit of an awkward tinge in his voice, Lelouch chuckled with, "Haha…yeah…me too. Ha."
Immediately, he pushed Shirley away from his end of the aisle and towards the opposite direction.
"Haha yeah we should get going guys ha yeah ha," Lelouch stuttered, hands on Shirley's back. She blushed even more, but it's not like she was into Lelouch or anything…baka.
"Wait, but we still-" Milly remarked, with Rivalz slowly dying in his endless pile of colorful grain and Caprisun. He reached out a hand, a quivering hand that begged to be spared and to once more see the sun. The beautiful sun.
"They have a sale on pizza and you know of our endorsement with pizza haha yeah let's go to the frozen food aisle on the complete opposite side of the store to go get the pizza haha yeah pizza."
"But we only have an endorsement deal with Pizza Hu-WAH!"
Lelouch yanked the cart, skidding it away to the refrigerators at the end of the store that housed what was really important: pizza, the popsicles perpetually on sale, and Hot Pockets. As the wheels screeched along the tile, Rivalz's hand limped over the edge of the box of Wheaties. The three other members followed hesitantly.
"Lelouch," Milly grabbed five boxes of Raisin Bran on her way out, adding, "What are you doing?!"
"We still need to get more cereal, Lou-Lou!" Shirley noted, "The pres says so!"
"We are going fast." Sonic the Kookaburra made that obvious notion, his brown hair flowing as he hastily followed the swerving cart. I really don't have anything interesting for him to say at the moment, tbh.
Fourth wall? I love that band!