A/N: I just had to add another chapter. Second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit worse: Nero trying to return the Jell-O. I'm not sure who I feel sorrier for, him or all the other people in the store. XD This is even dumber and more random than the first chapter, so consider yourselves warned.
As it turned out, Sharley was on-shift when the gang of pointy-eared Maori (for such had she and the voices dubbed them) tried to return the Jell-O.
To her surprise, they'd kept it a whole three days before deciding it wasn't what they wanted - and only Kurt was willing to speculate as to what they actually had wanted, what in the name of hell they'd thought it actually was.
"Oh jeeze, don't come over here," Jimmy muttered, but of course they did - all nine of them, each carrying two or three crates. Man, they had to be strong - even one crate weighed close to fifty pounds. It was probably a good thing she hadn't pissed them all off the other night, or she'd have had to run and hope they didn't leave her a smear on the sidewalk.
It was a busy afternoon, but the beep of all the resisters slowed and then died as every single person, cashier and customer alike, turned to stare. This was not a sight you saw every day, that was for damn sure; even one of these bastards would have been intimidating as all get out, and in a herd they were really scary - even with the Jell-O, which they unceremoniously dumped on her counter, ignoring the customer she'd been in the middle of ringing up. The thud of the crates echoed in the suddenly-silent store, and Sharley rolled her eyes.
"I told you you couldn't bring it back," she said, glaring at the one she thought of as Head Honcho. Up close it was quite obvious how much taller than her he was, and that only pissed her off-Sharley had an automatic and deep-seated distaste for anyone noticeably taller than her, and this guy's attitude didn't help.
"You said we couldn't if we opened it," he returned, glaring back. "Most of it isn't opened."
"Ask him what he did with the ones he did open," Layla whispered, and Sharley had to fight an unholy urge to burst out laughing on the grounds that it would probably get her neck broken.
"Okay, fine," she said, trying desperately to ignore Jimmy, who demanded she ask how their pool party had gone. "Give me your receipt."
That caused a round of blank stares to make its way through the group. "Receipt?" Head Honcho asked, looking rather less intimidating when confused. She sighed.
"The piece of paper I gave him before you left." She nodded at the guy just behind him, who looked suddenly frozen. Head Honcho turned and said something to him in that gibberish language that wasn't German, which only increased his expression of panic.
"Why do I think this is going to get really entertaining?" Jimmy asked of the world at large.
"Probably because it is," Sinsemilla retorted.
Nero was already in a very, very bad mood. They'd tried to follow the directions on the little cardboard boxes, and largely failed - it took almost an entire crate before they actually managed to make it into something like the description said it should be. Once accomplished, they'd spent nearly four hours staring at it, waiting for it to do - something. Anything. Anything but sit there without casting a shadow, as Ayel had pointed out - which, while odd, was no help whatsoever.
"He lied to us," Nero finally concluded. "I don't think it does anything. It just…sits there."
"Tastes pretty good." That was Idan, hovering in a corner with a bowl of the red goo. Ayel sighed.
"I can't believe you're actually eating it. We can't take it back if you eat it."
"There are still boxes and boxes to take back. We can eat some of it," he countered. Nero could only grind his teeth.
Which he was also doing now, glaring at this irritating woman who still seemed to be listening in on some private joke, radiating amusement with no discernable source. He hadn't known anything about a receipt, or why she'd handed Ayel that little piece of paper with numbers on it.
"Why do you need a receipt?" he asked at last, once he was fairly certain he'd keep his temper and not just stab her in front of the entire store.
Now she was smirking, he'd swear it. "So I know you bought it," she said, and now she was radiating innocence like a child, though that damned smirk still hovered just behind her expression.
"You sold it to us, you damned woman!" he exploded, and now he really had to fight an urge to just run her through with the T'eraln-which he had, of course, been incautious enough to bring out in public with him. Without the blades it just looked like a massive walking stick, but it was still a little…noticeable. Then again, they were odd enough even without it.
"Yes, but management doesn't know that," she explained patiently, crossing her arms and tapping one long forefinger on her sleeve. "If they look at my till and see I took back over two hundred dollars' worth of Jell-O without a receipt, they'd eat me alive."
That made him pause. Did she mean that literally, or figuratively? With Terrans it was so difficult to tell. If it was literal, he really couldn't blame her, though he also didn't really care. The Terrans could cannibalize each other all they wanted, as long as they also took back the Jell-O.
Someone a few registers down snorted, and he turned, trying to find them so he could take out his frustration on something. No sooner had he done so than the woman shoved one of the crates out of the way, peering at him curiously.
"You know you're missing half an ear, right?" she said, those crazy mismatched eyes lingering on the ragged, obviously-chewed on edge. "You go up against Mike Tyson lately or something?"
Her words meant nothing to him, but apparently it was some Terran in-joke, for now more than one person was trying to strangle back a laugh. He gave them all a glower before turning back to Sharley, whose expression now gave absolutely nothing away. "You know we have a whole aisle of first aid stuff," she said levelly, and almost kept the incipient laughter out of her voice.
"I. Don't. Need. It." His glare was something even his crew didn't want bent on them for long, but it didn't have much effect on this damned woman, who half seemed to be listening to something else while he spoke.
"It has Mederma," she intoned solemnly. "It fades scars."
"Dude, are those ears really real?" This from a teenaged boy, all in black, his face shot through with more piercings than Nero would have thought possible. "Holy shit, they're like, mutant ears."
"Elf ears," another child - presumably his little sister - put in. She was a small blond creature of about seven, hugging a stuffed unicorn. "Like Lord of the Rings."
"Uh, no kid." That was Sharley again. "Not…quite."
"What do the tattoos mean?" the boy asked. "Are you in a gang?"
"And who does your eyebrows?" This from a clerk two lanes down, a young woman of maybe eighteen with bleached hair and too much makeup. "I like it."
What was this? Was every human in this store insane? Had they wandered, all unknowing, into a mental asylum made up to look like a store?
"Just - take the Jell-O," he ground out, barely resisting an urge to lean over the counter and throttle Sharley. "Give us our money, and take the Jell-O." His tone implied that nobody would like the consequences if they didn't listen.
"…I have to ask my manager." She still had that Fates-damned glee in her eyes - the glee of someone who knows they're making someone else's day miserable and is quite happy about the fact. "Hold on." She pressed a button on some sort of primitive communicator, and her voice floated from speakers all over the store, "I need a manager at register two, please: manager at register two." When she turned back to him, she eyed him closely. "No seriously, what did happen to your ear?"
God, this was more entertaining than TV. Sooner or later she was probably going to get punched, but she didn't care - this was the kind of fucked-up scenario that came along maybe once in an entire retail career. There was just something about these guys that made her want to see how far she could push them before they snapped, even if it probably meant she'd wind up with a few broken bones. She was pretty sure she could put it in as an L&I claim.
"It really looks like something just gnawed it off." That was Layla, who was circling the guy's head, unseen and unheard by anyone but Sharley. "A person, too, not an animal."
"Maybe these dudes get way kinkier than Jell-O," Jimmy muttered just behind her, and she almost swallowed her tongue in an effort not to crack up entirely. "I wonder whatever happened to the other half of his ear."
"I bet somebody ate it." Kurt that time, just behind her head, laughing a little himself. "I wonder if it was crunchy."
"GOD, Kurt, ew."
"What? It's cartilage, it ought to be."
Now he was really scowling, a scowl that didn't ease even when Andrew, the manager, finally arrived. Certainly Andrew wasn't an imposing figure - about five-eight, two-twenty, balding, with a red complexion that looked like he was perpetually about to have a heart attack - but the bastard could have had the grace to look a little grateful.
She jerked her thumb at the guy. "He wants to return this," she said, gesturing at the crates. "Hasn't got a receipt."
Andrew eyed her, and the Jell-O, and finally Head Honcho. "…I don't think so," he said, with the pompous imperiousness all the cashiers ordinarily hated. Just now, though, it was only making it harder for Sharley not to laugh.
"Why. Not?" Ohhh, he was pissed now, wasn't he? She wondered if he'd hit someone with that staff thing of his - hell, scratch if; she wondered when.
"It's against company policy, sir. I'm sure Sharley must have told you." Andrew gave her the especially aggravated Look he always delivered when she did something he knew was done specifically to annoy him. "I'm sorry, we can't give you your money back."
"Then just take it." There was a legitimate snarl to the words, one that made several bystanders back away.
"Can't do that, either," Sharley said, before the startled Andrew could say a word. "It'd mess up inventory, and then we'd have the company inventory people in here breathing down our necks and it'd just be a royal pain in the ass. You've got to take it back out with you."
He stared at her a moment, eyes even blacker than his tattoos, and then, quite without warning, hauled back to hit her with that staff.
"Wow," Kurt observed, as she ducked. "That was even quicker than I'd thought. It's on like Red Dawn, y'all!"
"God, you're an idiot."
She was doing this deliberately, Nero realized - provoking him in every small way she could likely think of, and wasn't even bothering to hide the fact. In theory they were supposed to be behaving themselves, but when she said, oh-so-innocently, that they had to take the stuff with them, something in him snapped. No, he probably shouldn't shatter her skull in public, but by now he was so far beyond caring he couldn't remember why he should.
The manager let out an embarrassingly high shriek, throwing himself behind the divider that separated that register from its neighbor, but the woman - Sharley, she had a name, Sharley, one he'd have to remember once he'd quite justly murdered her - somehow managed, with almost inhuman speed, to duck. The handle of the T'eraln impacted with the register's view screen so hard it shattered, plastic shards flying everywhere, accompanied by the sudden screams of half the store's occupants.
Nero shoved some of the crates out of the way like they were cardboard, the wood crashing on the tile and spilling boxes and powder everywhere. He leaned over the counter and tried to grab Sharley by the hair, intent only on yanking her out of her hiding place, only to get hit full in the face with some pungent, stinging, ammonia-scented liquid - some terrible weapon out of a bottle labeled Windex. The shock of it made him let go of her hair, and before he'd completely recovered she'd actually picked up one of the crates and hurled it at him. She might not be half so strong as a Romulan, but the range was close enough that she didn't have to be - it caught him square in the chest, sending him staggering backward into the next register, where cashier and occupant scrambled away and fled amid a rain of lettuce and apples.
It took no more than that for the rest of his men to weigh in, converging on the now-destroyed register in a small but vengeful mob. Sharley beat them to the punch, though, leaping over the back of the ruined divider with surprising speed for a woman her height. She wasn't bothering to hold back her laughter now, even if she had to be completely insane for even wanting to laugh with nine angry Romulans out for her blood. They swarmed around and over the register, only to get pelted with a hail of kiwis launched from somewhere to the right - courtesy of the black-clad boy and his little sister, still clutching her unicorn.
"Somebody call the police!" That had to be the manager, that weak, sniveling little man who really ought to be killed as an act of mercy. Ayel's eyes darted to him, hand on his knife, but before Nero could so much as open his mouth to issue warning, a can of tomato soup came flying out of the ether and cracked hard on his second-in-command's head. Green spilled from his scalp in a wave, which sent someone at the far end of the registers screaming out the door sliding.
"OH GOD, ALIENS! ALIENS! RUUUN!"
"Holy shit, we really are gonna die!" He didn't even know where that came from, or from whom; all he knew was that somewhere there was a blue-haired psychopath who had a date with the business end of the T'eraln. Furious, still dripping that horrible stinging liquid, Nero hauled himself to his feet and searched the crowd with blurred eyes. Well over half the store had waded in with gusto - clerks, mothers with small children, little old ladies hurtling prunes, and a whole knot of teenagers who'd climbed up on top of the shelves and who were gleefully pitching cans at any bald, tattooed head they could find.
Ah - there she was, that Fates-be-damned woman. A cacophony of screams went up from those near him who actually saw the blades tzing out of the T'eraln, which were mostly lost in the rest of the general din. Nero had no idea what she was doing, but he didn't care - all he did was launch himself over the heads of the crowd, ignoring the rain of fruit and lettuce, his thoughts only of dragging her guts over the floor like so much…well, gutted animal.
"Dude, he is pissed," Jimmy said. "Careful, Sharley, that thing he's got has freaking blades."
"Oh, I want one," Kurt breathed, a savage smile in his voice.
"Yeah, I bet you do," Sinsemilla muttered. "Sharley, I'd hurry. This guy looks like he could really mess up our day."
Sharley did indeed realize this. She also realized this whole thing was positively suicidal, but every now and again she had to do stupid shit like this to remind herself that there could, in fact, be more to life than wandering and working crappy jobs like this in between stints in the Other. These Maori were hardly the first people she'd antagonized, for whatever reason, nor were they the worst - ordinarily the people she pissed off this badly, intentionally or otherwise, were in the Other Place; having it happen here was something of a novelty. She just had to make sure he didn't actually get his hands on her, or she'd be seven different kinds of dead. Which was why, when he came careening around the freezer aisle, she hit him full in the face with a ten-pound bag of ice cubes.
"God damn he's got good reaction time," Kurt muttered, impressed; the guy didn't even go all the way down before he'd somehow regained his balance, nose pouring green blood, a large contusion over one pointed eyebrow. "Fuck, Sharley, you'd better kill this guy."
"I hate to say it, but I think Kurt's right." Jimmy was circling the guy's head, searching for any additional wounds.
"I'm not sure I can," she said aloud, earning herself a confused blink from her opponent. "C'mon, buddy, catch me if you can." And then she was off, skating and sliding over the ice, sneakers squeaking wetly on the tile as she led him away from the customers, back into the bewildering labyrinth that was the back room.
This particular store's back room was legend all through the district. The biggest on-site warehouse in the state, it held row upon row of shelves nearly twenty feet high, stacked with plastic-wrapped cases of everything from Top Ramen to Listerine. New employees were always regaled with tales of people who had gotten lost in there for days, forced to live on dry Macaroni until they found the Cheetos, and looking at the place the idea wasn't so far-fetched as it sounded. After three months she knew it quite well, though, and to her it was an ideal battleground.
This, as Kurt would say, was going to be fun.
Ice. She'd hit him with ice. Sharley had a death wish if every any sentient being did, of that Nero was sure, as he stalked the empty, wet aisles with blood dripping unheeded from his nose. From the sound of it, a pitched battle was still going on at the front of the store, which was joined by the wail of sirens and, he assumed, members of Terran law enforcement. They didn't concern him, though his crew might have a tough time of it if there were enough of them.
Wet footprints led through a swinging door, into a massive room devoid of people but filled with…things. On the bare concrete they were even more evident, spaced as though their owner had run full-tilt through the aisles, until they abruptly disappeared - she must have climbed. There was absolutely zero cover down here - he'd be at the mercy of anything she threw if he stayed-so with an irritated snarl he started up the shelving himself, climbing directly rather than using a ladder.
Halfway up, a can of peaches hit him in the shoulder, and he wished with all his heart that he'd brought a gun with him. The T'eraln was a good weapon, but only if your opponent was actually close enough to stab; anyone hurtling ballistic tinned fruit was pretty safe from it. He could hear her voice, though he couldn't triangulate it yet, nor could he understand what she was doing.
"No way, if I knock him off here it'll make a huge mess and Andy'll fire me." It was a whisper, quiet enough that a human might not have heard it, but Romulan ears picked it up easily. Who was she talking to? Did she have reinforcements back here?
"Well, yeah, okay. Just - shut the fuck up, where is he?" He couldn't hear any answering voices, but something was clearly feeding her information or she wouldn't have managed to hit him again, this time with a massive fruit called a watermelon that bounced off his back and fell to the floor with a splattering thud. There was some scrabbling on the opposite shelving, high above him, and a head of brilliant blue hair stuck out over the edge.
"Kurt wants one of those," she said, pointing at the T'eraln. "Where did you get it?" There was something distinctly…unbalanced…in her voice now; this was still some kind of game to her, but a game of a very different sort, whose rules were likely much more brutal than they'd been even out in the store. He was right, Nero thought; she was insane, or close enough as to make no difference - he recognized that timbre, that somewhat ominous hysteria, from a few of the less-than-stable members of his own crew. Sometimes even from himself.
"I took it when I killed my planet's Senate," he returned, when he reached the top of his row of shelving and stood to face her. She was streaked with dust, her hair full of cobwebs, those mismatched eyes afire with unholy delight, and Nero wondered to himself how in all hells he'd gotten himself into a game of chase with an inarguable madwoman.
"Why did we know murder and theft would figure in there somewhere?" She'd darted back, somewhere in the shadows where he couldn't see her, digging through something with a rustling plastic wrapper. "I just have a little present for you and then I'm gonna run, okay?"
A large plastic bottle - no, make that two large plastic bottles - came flying out of the shadows, spinning, and at the very top of their arc both exploded in a fountain of spray and fizz. At the other side of the shelving cans crashed to the ground in an uneven staccato, filling the air with the scent of what he thought was Terran pumpkin, followed by a great deal of cursing and an even more uneven pounding of footsteps - she must have hurt herself somehow, he thought, as he made his own scrambling descent. He was so angry he couldn't see straight, his vision misted with green, but he was still alert, still aware - was, until he felt something sting hard at the back of his neck, and his vision smeared and shifted while he staggered.
"I still don't think that's going to work." Layla was in front of Sharley, peering down and around the shelving.
"It's slowed him down, hasn't it?" Jimmy murmured. "Come on, let's just run for it."
"I don't think it's done working yet," Sinsemilla said doubtfully. "If it will even knock him out at all."
Her scramble up the shelves had given Sharley several useful instruments - a thin bamboo yard stake, a small insulin syringe from Pharmacy, and four adult doses of Thorazine. What she wound up with was some bastard cousin of a small, primitive spear, tipped with a needle full of enough knockout drugs to drop a sumo wrestler, or so she devoutly hoped; given the fact that the dude bled green, for all she knew this wouldn't work at all. Oops.
By some miracle, he actually roamed within her line of sight, alert, wary - but not wary enough, since, when she sighted carefully along the stick and hurled it, she caught him square in the neck.
Amazingly, it didn't drop him, though it did make him stagger enough for her to descent the shelves like a monkey and run like hell - he made a fleeting grab for her, but she wasn't doped the eyeballs.
"CRAZY GUY WITH A SPEAR IN BACK OH MY GOD!" It couldn't hurt to establish something like credible terror even before she'd reached the front, and by the time she ran into the first of the policemen she had a suitably frightened expression. "He's got a spear but I think he's a junkie because now he's all stoned and he's got a spear." Because, you know, reiterating that fact was important.
"Okay - okay, ma'am, just sit down and we'll take care of it." The officer, a young man around her age and height, looked harassed, and when she asked if she could go get a pack of cigarettes from the Customer Services counter, he distractedly told her to go take anything she needed. That she did, stuffing her pockets, and was sitting on the curb in the hot evening sunset when all nine of the Maori, only a little more bruised and bloody than the cops that escorted them, came marching out the front door. None of them were handcuffed - given that strength, there was probably no point - but now all of them looked a little woozy, and Sharley wondered if the cops hadn't taken an unofficial hint and repeated her trick on the rest of them. The last one, Head Honcho with the bitten ear, turned to give as sharp a glare as he could through his haze of drugs, and she gave him a cheerful wave with scraped, bloody fingers.
"Be sure you come back now!"
His mutter was so low she could barely hear it. "Oh, trust me, I will."
"That," Layla said decidedly, "is a sign it's time to find a new job."
"Move on entirely, I think," Sinsemilla added. "Maybe another continent."
"I've heard Iceland is nice this time of year."
Yeah, I don't even know either at this point. I wish I could disclaim this by saying I was drunk, but I'm not. Though now that I've written this, maybe I should be.