Cleanup In Aisle ??? [Jade]

Once again, closing duty at Grins' Hole In The Wall was left up to Selenus. Granted, this was because he was the only worker that actually left the establishment at closing time, but it didn't serve as any comfort to the robotic canine. Leaving the premises of the bar, Selenus would check his sorroundings to make sure nobody else was currently present in the alleyway that found itself right outside the bar before invoking his alternative mask and donning the form of a human once more. He was more than capable of moving around the Backlight in wolf form, but for the particular task he was going to carry out now, a disguise was in order.

A few minutes later, the illusory man stood inside a supermarket - one of the many available inside the gigantic mall that was the backlight district. As a way of apologizing to Trinity and Yuuko for what had gone down earlier in the day, Selenus had the intention of buying ingredients to prepare an apology cake; though he was confident in his culinary abilities and blessed with easy access to most of humanity's knowledge on how to prepare and concoct a cake, there was no amount of gifted information that could prepare him for the horror that was... finding the required ingredients.


"Well... shit." Selenus - or rather "Simon" as he was known in this form - muttered quietly under his breath. How the hell was he even supposed to find anything here? Never in his life had he gone shopping at a supermarket before, but he figured it couldn't be that much different from gratuitiously permanenlty borrowing select items from a regular market. As it stood, Selenus stood near the door of the supermarket, paralized out of sheer despair brought from the sight of how many items there were to sort through. How long would he even be here...?

>Jade, I need you to pick up a couple things for tonight's dinner
>We're making menudo again cuz Cesar is a picky mf smh
>We're only missing a couple ingredients, so could you plz get some beef, onion, black pepper and oregano.
>I'll pay you once ur home, tkm!

This is the message that Jade had recieved a couple minutes after the end of her shift at Killer Coffee. She was just gonna have a relaxing walk back home, something somewhat rare for her, before Carmen, her roomate, sent her this plea. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem for Jade, except for the time that it was. The nearest supermarket closed in about half an hour and the walk there was about the same.

"Dammit... I can make it if I run!" She said aloud to herself and, having no time to change, ran off still wearing her uniform. Having done this before, she knew that all she had to do was reach the place before closing time. She could stay up to an hour later to finish her shopping, but they wouldn't let her in past closing time. Keeping a steady pace, wary not to tire herself out unnecesarily, she skipped across the Backlight streets until finally reaching the supermarket. She stopped to catch her breath for a second, bending over and resting her hands on her knees, and then took out her phone from her backpack to check the time.

"Yes! I made it!" Jade exclaimed while raising both her fists up in the air. Her celebration was cut short as she saw one of the employees about to close up. "Wuh- WAIT!" she panicked, running through the doors as fast as she could. The employee would've stopped on his tracks as soon as he saw Jade approach, but in the exhausted state that she was, she just didn't process that.

Once inside, and her composure regained, she opened up the message that Carmen had sent her to buy the necessary ingredients... except something peculiar caught her attention. A man, that was just... standing there. Staring into the vegetable aisle with a face true horror. The sheer amount of ways to incorporate healthy foods into one's healthy diet must really be getting to him. At that very moment, she thought two things.

1) "Never have I seen a man be scared of celery before."

2) "Adulting is hard, buddy, I know."

She almost pitied him, so she decided to approach him. "Um... sir, are you alright? Do you need help?"

Seriously, there had to be a threshold on how many aisles a supermarket could have before it were officially considered overkill by anyone ever. What even was aisle 11 comprised of? He could see it and its contents perfectly from here, he was just having trouble processing what it was that he was seeing. This felt more like a lovecraftian novel location than a place to buy ingredients for cake. Not wishing to lose his head over a supermarket of all things, Selenus figured he’d just have to ask someone for help. somebody was bound to know where the products he was looking for were stocked, right?

His original intention was to approach a store employee and ask politely, but before he could do so a new face launched itself into the equation. “Hm?” He looked at the blonde lady in front of him with a tinge of curiosity. Crap, had he been spacing out? “Oh, uh… don’t worry, I’m fine. I just… got distracted.” With that out of the way, he would proceed to walk forward a few steps before he realized… it was past closing hours. Though customers would still be allowed to do their shopping, most of the supermarket staff would definitely be out the door right about now. That couldn’t bode well for his search for undone cake. “Actually…” Asking the girl couldn’t hurt, right? Maybe she would even turn out to be a frequent customer, if he was lucky enough. “Would you happen to know where I can find the flour?” He inquired as he turned around again to face the blonde.

"Oh, okay, you just- you looked a little troubled." After making sure the man was alright... Jade didn't exactly know what to say. It seems that she had gotten herself in another awkward situation, something she seemed to do with accidental ease. At the very least, she was glad the man wasn't having a stroke or something worse. Basking in her own awkwardness, she bit her lips, looked towards one side, then to the other and pronounced a very eloquent and very well thought out: "...Okay, see ya!" However, just as she was turning away, the man stopped her and asked for help.

"Oh, flour? Yeah I know where it is." She said with a warm smile. Poor Jade actually had to look up at the man as he was more than a foot taller than she was. "I shop here all the time, so it shouldn't be a problem" (I hope) She thought to herself. As she was about to run off with the man, she remembered that she ALSO had to buy a couple things, so she picked up one of the red baskets that were stacked quite neatly near the entrance of the supermarket.



"Follow me!" She reached for the man's wrist, somewhat overstepping boundaries a bit, but in her mind, she was just helping a lost soul. Before her hand made contact with the man's, she had already turned around to skip across the aisles, so she didn't see that her hand "fwooshed" through Selenus' illusion. Because she was expecting a shift in weight, the fact that she didn't grip on anything made her lose her balance a little, almost making her trip. She thought "Wah- did I miss? Must've been my imagination." The confused Jade turned around almost reflexively.

As the woman reached to grab his wrist, Selenus was simply not ready for physical contact initiated so suddenly. Hidden behind a veil of supernatural nature, the robotic wolf attempted to extend his tail in time so it would overlap with Simon’s wrist and create the illusion of material existence… but due his late reaction, he didn’t make it in time. Luckily for him, the woman had been looking elsewhere when she’d reached for his body, so he was able to quickly retract the illusion’s arm into a position where it would be apparent that she’d simply missed her mark. “No need for handholding, I’m a grown man.” The man/dog gave an awkward, yet not insincere chuckle. Once the woman had begun to lead the way and her sight of him had been cut off, Selenus’s illusory form would sigh in relief.


For now, Selenus would be content with following the women to wherever it was that she remembered the powdered products were. On his way there, he couldn’t help but notice that the woman was dressed… rather oddly, to say the least. Well, Simon wasn’t exactly one to talk, considering how much of a fashion statement his attire was, but that still didn’t make the woman’s get-up any less unusual. Had she come here straight from work and forgotten to change out of her uniform? Eh, whatever the case was, it was none of his business.

Eventually, the two would reach the promised land of flours: the 7th aisle. “Alright, thanks for the help. I appreciate it.” The only problem now was actually deciding which brand flour he should buy. For as good as he was at preparing dishes, this was only a direct result of being able to directly follow specified instructions; he had no earthly idea which ingredients were better than which others. Now that he thought about it, however… the girl was dressed in a waitress’s outfit. Maybe she knew something or other about cooking? “Sorry to bother you again, miss..." Selenus would leave an auditory gap for the woman to fill in with her name. "...but… would you happen to know which of these flour brands would be best for baking a cake?”

"Oh, sorry haha" Jade said slightly embarrased, realizing that she was being overly friendly again. She tended to do overstep her boundaries often, not with nefarious intentions mind you, she just did it because her trust in others was always a little bit more generous than theirs, at least at the beginning. Still, she was glad that the man didn't take her forwardness as threatening. Sometimes people percieved her as a little intimdating because of her overfriendliness, but she was relieved that it wasn't the case this time as well. "Well uh... follow me."

Jade took a moment to appreciate the man's appearance. Endymion was full of interesting looking people, but this guy had to be on the top 5% or something. Other than black or white, he didn't wear any other color at all. Hell, even his skin was ridiculously pale. Was that just genes being generous to his fashion sense? Was the fashion sense born of said pigmentation? DId he bleach his skin? Does that hurt? What brand did he use? Jade's train of thought started going farther and farther off topic the more she kept thinking. She wasn't stupid, she was just easily distracted. She lead the man around the different aisles almost in autopilot, as her body did the moving while her focus was on different bleach brands.



However, upon realizing that they had arrived at aisle 7, which was filled with different products for baking, only one of which was flour, she snapped back to reality. "Well, here we are. I hope I was of help. Take care now!" As the man thanked her, she started to walk away, needing to do her own shopping as well, but just as she was about to turn for aisle 8, she heard the man's voice call her once more. Prompted by the man, she told her that her name was Jade... of course, this was after about 5 seconds of not realizing what the silence was for. "And who might you be?" She asked, curious about the peculiar man's name as well. "Well, it depends on what you're gonna use the flour for. First you gotta take the brand into consideration as different brands have different specialties, then there's the kind of flour, like all purpose, bread flour, pastry flour, 00 flour, spelt, rye, buckwheat, cake..." Jade started rambling, getting too lost in all the kinds of flour and listing them so quickly that it almost appeared as if she were on sped up mode.

The woman’s prolonged, almost quizzical stare didn’t go unnoticed by Selenus. It was fine for people to be observant and all, but was she trying to analyze him or something? She hadn’t figured out that he wasn’t actually real, had she? She seemed pretty fooled by the end result of her own previous slip-up…. “S…” For a second, Selenus forgot he wasn’t supposed to give away his real name away like it was an event prize in a gacha game. “Simon.” He would reply simply, slightly unnerved by the idea of screwing up again; bad things tended to happen when he specifically and actively tried to avoid them, after all. Hopefully, Jade would mistake the initial S as simple hesitation brought on by shyness.

Everything seemed to be going well… that is, until Selenus asked about the flour. Never before had he regretted not being specific more in any given situation. “Uh… I’m just trying to look for ingredients for a cake.” It seemed his prediction about her occupation was at least partly right, as she definitely seemed to know her flour facts. Selenus could’ve pulled up this info from the internet himself in less than a second, but… truth be told, he just couldn’t be bothered. “I was thinking something spongey… probably chocolate or the sort.” Although... "Though, the less fat the better, I'm not very sure if she can handle too much of it..." He added absentmindedly.