I restarted the car without a word. I didn’t really want to talk about having an emotional breakdown in a parking lot, especially with Victoria. Alice I’d be fine with, and Leah had just proven her kindness and compassion. I’d maybe be fine with Rose. On one hand she had Leah’s implicit seal of approval. On the other hand she had decided to force choke me within 15 seconds of meeting me for the first time so I had a strong reason to distrust her even if I did see a kindred spirit in her. Victoria was transphobic and if not homophobic then a generally bitter person and I didn’t trust her at all at this point.

  “What was that all about?” snapped Victoria. “I lost control of my emotions. I can’t drive like that and there’s a risk of losing control of my powers when I’m like that so I took a breather to calm down” I expined. “Okay, but what was the shadow demon beating me with a yardstick and calling me pathetic for crying in aid of?” she asked. “That’s not an answer I owe you. Please don’t bring it up again” I said levelly. “But it was terrifying! What if it… mpff!”. (“SHUT UP”). “mpff! MPFF!” she mumbled.

  “Why didn’t you do that instead of hitting us all with this-for-whatever and giving yourself a nervous breakdown” Alice asked slightly irately. “…Because making her dysphoric makes her shut up for good about something she was wrong about on a fundamental level. Whereas curiosity is a great virtue that would be utterly heinous to destroy” I replied after a few moment’s consideration. “I think it would be great if she never talked again” said Alice with an evil grin. “I don’t, I’m giving her voice back as soon as we get there” I said calmly.

  We drove in silence for a little while. “Was it worse up close?” asked Rose. “Yeah, you could feel the beatings. It hit me in the stomach and it was like I couldn’t even breathe” said Leah with a chuckle. “Did you see anything crazy?” she asked. I looked at Leah in the rear view mirror and she gave me a wink. “That’s Vanessa’s business. I’m sure she’ll tell us when she’s ready” she said with a smile.

  After another 25 minutes freeway gave way to roadway and roadway gave way to town. I pulled up outside a rge shopping complex. An endangered species: The American shopping mall. Once epicentres of commerce and socialization, most had fallen to ruin in favour of big box hypermarkets which could undercut the diverse range of stores on offer through copious amounts of tax evasion and employee exploitation. “We’re here. Victoria you can talk now. We’re in the orange carpark, row 11 space Q. If we get split up meet back up here.”

  Victoria took a deep breath. “Fuck. You!” she gritted out. I sighed. I got out of the car. Everyone else piled out and I made sure all the doors were closed, locked the car with the key because 1995 Toyota Corols don’t have unlock remotes and then inspected each door to ensure they were all actually locked. I looked around for a moment. “See that?” I said and pointed out a CCTV camera. “Sure?” said Rose. “That’s a Closed Circuit Television Camera. If you do anything magic in front of one of those it will be extremely difficult to hide it. We’ll have to sneak into a secure area to erase the tapes and that’s assuming they’re not using a newer system where the footage is being uploaded straight to the internet. And if that’s the case… well if I were a witch hunter I’d be scanning the internet constantly to see if anything magical happens. They’d be on our asses like pedos. So absolutely no teleporting, shapeshifting or making things float in front of cameras. Okay?” I warned.

  “Got it” they all replied. “Rose, you might get away with a little power usage if you’re careful, but I wouldn’t risk it unless its an emergency” I said. “So wait, we can’t teleport out” gasped Victoria. “We could. But I would strongly advise against teleporting back, and if you want to keep the town safe I wouldn’t do that outside of an emergency either” I said. Also I’d lose Sgt. Hale’s car, and I needed that for out of town stuff and requisitioning another would be a pain.

  We hadn’t gone a half football field when we were accosted by a sports car full of hooligans. “Heeeeey there” said a set of dark sungsses attached to a budwiser commercial. Blonde highlights on tight cropped hair arranged into spikes. “Ignore them and keep walking” I said calmly. “Oh don’t be that way! We were only saying hey, you don’t have to be such a bitch about it” whined someone from the backseat which I hadn’t bothered to gnce back to see. They were keeping pace with us as we walked. Weirdo behaviour.

  “Hey blondie, are those tits real?” called the other one in the back seat. Alice powerwalked up to me and started whispering in my ear. “How do we make them stop?” she asked in an uncomfortable whisper. “We don’t. That’s just how normie men act. If we were to say, slit their throats and leave them to bleed out in their little choo-choo train, we’d be the bad guys” I said, loud enough for them to hear me.

  “WHOA, what the fuck bitch, we’re just being friendly!” said the driver. “YEAH!” coursed his friends. I continued to ignore them. “I bet tiny tits is just jealous her friends are getting all the attention!” chuckled one of the ones in the back. In my mines eye, I cmped a hand over the mouth of the part of myself that wanted to command them to “DIE”. “Oi gingie, do the curtains match the drapes” called the one in the shotgun seat. “The fuck’s he on about Vanessa” snapped Victoria. “He’s asking you if the hair on your down there parts is the same colour as the stuff on your head” I replied.

  “Is that a normal thing to ask someone?” she asked incredulously. “Depressingly yes though the agreed upon answer is ‘none of your business shithead’” I said bnkly. “Nah!” called one from the back. “We’re with the cops, you gotta answer”. “If you meet real cops the only thing you tell them is I want to speak to my wyer and not one other word” I noted. “Hey! We are too real cops!” called the shotgun rider. “Then I believe we have a right to remain silent wazzbag” I called back. “Bitch!”

  I didn’t respond. We got a few seconds of silence. Why did I have to park so far from the door? Sure there’s always space that far back but it just gave assholes like this a wider window to be their charming selves. “Hey tall bitch! You one of them f*****s? Cause I wanna she/them tiddies” called the shotgun rider. The whole car ughed at that. “Vanessa” called Rose. “Are there any cameras around”

  I let out a sigh. “Leave it to me” I said resignedly. I walked over to the car. “Whoa! Its just a joke. No need to get your panties in a twist” said shotgun rider. “I think you should each give us 50 dolrs and then you should take the fastest road out of town and keep driving until you run out of gas” I said and said inside. “Why?” said shotgun rider. I closed my eyes, reached down into my soul and hit them with the sort of energy I usually saved for waking the dead. “YOU SHOULD EACH GIVE US 50 DOLLARS AND THEN DRIVE OUT OF TOWN AND KEEP DRIVING TILL YOU RUN OUT OF GAS” I repeated uncalmly. Their eyes sort of gzed over and each of them reached for their wallet. I held out my hand and 4 crisp 50 dolr bills were deposited. Then they drove off. I wandered back to the others. “Good news girls, our budget just went up!”

  So what is a f***** anyway? asked Rose. “Slur for gay people. They were actually technically correct” I responded. “So she… looks gay?” asked Rose. “Basically. Its the short hair mostly. The height is probably going to make people think the same thing and the fact she’s built like a brick shithouse will only compound the issue, but short hair is a choice. If you’re a woman with short hair you’re either gay or have cancer and no amount of logic or reason will convince certain fools otherwise.” I exposed. “Well that’s stupid” said Leah. “On the bright side you might get a girl’s number” I noted. “Huh?” she grunted. “Um, there’s this thing called a phone that lets you communicate with anybody across vast distances as long as you have their phone number. So if you see someone who’s… y’know, good looking, you give them your phone number and then they call you and you go on a date” I said.

  “Why not just go on a date?” asked Leah sensibly. “Well aside from some weird superstitions about deying the beginning of a retionship that make a decently telegraphed sapphic retionship look like a 5 minute haircut, it means that if you live hundreds of miles apart you can communicate and co-ordinate the date for the next time you’re both in the same pce” I said. “Do people date people who live that far apart?” asked Victoria. “You saw how far we had to come to get here. Some people travel that far every morning and then travel that far back again afterwards” I expined. “That’s nuts” said Victoria. “Oh, You should hear the one about the woman who fled Russia to be with her girlfriend in Canada” I ughed.

  The first store we hit was the chemist. I handed them a bnk sheet of paper. A few minutes ter they gave me a little bottle of clear liquid and I gave them 40 dolrs. “Hey” called Victoria. “What’s a piercing?”. “Its where someone pokes metal jewelry through your face” I responded. “Why would anyone want that” she asked skeptically. “Because it looks really cool” I responded. “Do you want a piercing?” she asked. “Not particurly, why?” I responded. “Because the sign says free piercings” she said. I sighed. “That only means the part where they jab it though your flesh is free. You still need to pay for the jewelry” I expined. “Oh! Okay” she responded.

  We passed a goth girl with a nose ring and lip piercing a minute or so ter and I asked her if she would mind showing Victoria her piercings. She seemed fttered to have them acknowledged and started excitingly talking about how she was hoping to have her eyebrow pierced one day but she was waiting for the school holidays when she could leave it in for a while so the wound wouldn’t close up. Victoria took a liking to them and asked if there was money in the budget to get a few herself. “We can either buy a lot of cheap clothes, not so many not cheap clothes or maybe two piercings. If that’s what you want then sure but you’ll be going home a lot more empty handed than the rest of us” I noted.

  “Ugh, why don’t we just find some assholes and make them give us money again” she compined. The goth girl giggled. “Because stealing is illegal and if we get caught we’ll get thrown in prison” I responded with an undertone of warning. “Is it really stealing if you OW FUCK!”. (I made her literally bite her tongue). The goth girl only ughed harder. “I’m down for committing rceny to buy the cute redhead a few piercings” she giggled. “She’s straight sadly” I noted. “That’s a shame” she said with a serene smile. “Tell me about it” grunted Victoria. “You know you’re allowed to be gay if you want” the goth girl said kindly. “I’m aware and I’m not” grunted Victoria. The goth girl gave a sad head shake and bid us farewell.

  I scoured the informational sign for a charity shop. There was one on the second floor for the charity ASAN. I pulled out my phone and quickly googled them. The fact it was an autism charity gave me pause, because I’ve heard there’s an epidemic of anti-autism hate groups masquerading as autism focused charities but the S and A standing for “Self Advocacy” put my mind at ease enough to assume further research wasn’t required. “Come on, found somewhere” I noted. I turned around. In the 60 seconds I’d turned my back on her, Alice had found a Disney store and was staring at an Elsa cospy dress through the window.

  “Can we buy that?” she asked. “That dress is 500 dolrs. We had 160 from my support payment plus the 200 we got from the douchebags. That’s 360 dolrs. That dress costs more money than we started with! Besides, I amn’t giving a cent to Disney until they do right by my girl Brooke!” I ranted. “But its pretty” she pouted. “Absolutely not. I wouldn’t give them the money if I could afford it” I snapped. “Why don’t you make them give it to you like you did with the jerks?” she asked.

  I let out an exhausted sigh. “If someone reviews the footage from the carpark they’ll see a girl walk up and say something to the driver then everyone hands over 50 dolrs and then the car leaves. If questioned I could easily say ‘Oh, that was my brother giving me money from my Mom’ or ‘Oh, he owed me money for an iPod I sold him st week’ or ‘he had a traumatic brain injury and I took advantage of the mentally ill’. There’s pusible reasons for him to do what he did that don’t involve magic or imply something illegal is going on. An employee could be fired for just giving me the dress. Ergo making him give it to me would automatically raise suspicion. So its too risky. Hell, even actually buying it would raise some eyebrows about where a bunch of kids dressed in mostly second-hand clothes and Amazon’s cheapest to make up the difference got 500 dolrs in the first pce” I expined.

  “Good points, good points. But on the other hand, its cute” said Alice philosophically. I let out a sigh. “Come on, I’ll show you where the stuff we can actually afford is.

  The model of a charity shop is simple enough. People donate things they no longer need or want, and the shop in turn sells them on and the profits are used to support a particur charity. Because the merchandise is free to them, they can mark it down insanely and still come out ahead. You won’t find a 500 dolr Elsa dress, but you might find a 200 dolr leather jacket marked down to 40. Now 40 is still a lot when your budget is 285 split 5 ways. That’s 57 dolrs each. That would be over half of Leah’s share on a single item. However, she could have been on the cover of a sapphic erotica novel right now. Probably one called “step on me werewolf biker butch”.

  “She looks amazing” Rose stated the obvious. “Agreed” I concurred. “I don’t even like her and I want her to ravage me” said Alice. “You people are weird” snarked Victoria. “Okay, but imagine this on a really hunky boy” I suggested. “I think I’d rather just imagine a hunky boy with no shirt” she said without any real inflection. “Okay, but hear me out: the jacket with the zip down over a bare chest” I suggested. Alice nodded sagely. Rose might have started to drool. “Okay I see it” said Victoria. “If you’re going to put it on with no underclothes underneath I must insist you buy it first” called the clerk. “Sure” I called back cheerily. “Buzzkill” I whispered.

  Alice managed to find herself a skirt with pockets for ten dolrs. I was surprised. I literally had to take up sewing to acquire such a thing. I gave it a once over. The pockets were aftermarket. They were a completely different material than the rest of the garment. A different colour even. The pockets were navy while the rest of it was orange. Now who’d go to all that trouble just to donate it to a charity shop? Most strange. Alice took it to the changing room to change into on account of it being weird to let strangers see your underwear. She looked great in it, but then again she’d look great in anything.

  Rose found a fake rose made of paper thin nylon attached to a hair clip for 2 dolrs. “Aren’t you going to go through the clothes rack with us?” I asked. “Its okay. You can put my share of the money towards more stuff for Leah” she said. “Well I wouldn’t dream to speak for her but I think she’d like to see you in new clothes more than she’d want new clothes herself” I said with a grin. “Do I accuse you wrong miss Raine?” I called. “I wanna see her in that” said Leah, pointing to a set of bck leggings patterned with little skulls pulling various goofy faces that a photorealistic skull very much could not. It looked like something Wednesday Adams might wear if she wanted to maliciously comply with her family’s dress code. Rose didn’t like it. Leah told me to buy it anyway. I couldn’t decide who’s budget to deduct it from.

  Alice found a pink Sabrina the teenage witch graphic tee which said “Life’s a witch”. Rose tried to tug it out of her hand and I had to hit them both with a compulsion to “DROP IT” before they tore it. There was some argument on who got the t-shirt. Alice argued finders keepers but Rose argued she already had a “Witch They Couldn’t Burn” Tee. Alice argued it was a loaner. I turned to Victoria to make the adult break up the fight. She must have still been mad about the car ride here because she just slipped behind the shelves of the book section. Jeez, all I did was lock her jaw for a while, its not like I murdered her or anything!

  I solved the problem by relegating the tee to a “cool pile”. When we finish up, everyone takes turns taking from the cool pile until the cool pile is empty. By the time we were finished the cool pile contained 3 more t-shirts. One hatsune miku, one of a fish on a bicycle with the caption “I Need a Man Like…” and one with the caption “Training to Fight the Horse” which neither of them got but both of them wanted after seeing my unhinged reaction to it.

  We left the charity shop with Alice down to 37, Rose down to 35, Leah down to 17 (or rose down to 45 and Leah down to 7 depending on who you want to charge those skull leggings to) and Victoria still at 52 having only bought 3 books for five dolrs. I brought everyone to a nearby bathroom. “What’s this” asked Victoria. “Its a bathroom. Its basically the modern version of an outhouse” I responded. “Isn’t it weird to all go in together?” she asked. “You’d think that but actually girls usually go to the restroom in groups. Its a private pce so its a good pce to gossip or hold a private (ish) conversation. And its great for our purposes because there’s no cameras by federal w, so you should be able to lock yourself in a stall, teleport back to town with our shopping, leave it at your house and then come back” I expined.

  “Oh… good idea. She walked into a stall, I expined how the lock worked and once she had herself locked in, she presumably teleported out. Presumably, because teleporting does not dispce what was there already, but swaps you with the same amount of air at your destination. I then wandered into an adjacent stall to prevent someone else seeing the ck of feet and to be fair because I hadn’t peed since leaving town. I also suggested the others take care of business. Nearly as one we exited (save Victoria, guess she got caught up talking to someone?) and proceeded to wash our hands in sync. But then I heard a dread voice. “Excuse me! This is the women’s bathroom!”