On the Loose

The time was 11:40 AM, and Nico was chugging down her third coffee in order to keep herself awake. Most people in the store were already fully awake, but she just scowled at their ability to wake up before noon and kept on drinking. Working as a cashier at the local grocery store, she had seen quite a lot, and she was decidedly sour on most of it. However, she was very good at being upbeat and friendly with the customers, giving her leeway to drink coffee at her register and needle her manager from time to time.

She was nearly finished with her life energy when the doors opened and one of their regular customers ran in screaming her head off. Nico nearly dropped her cup in surprise, hurrying away from her thankfully empty register to intercept the screaming girl and grab her by the shoulders. "Hanayo, Hanayo! Stop screaming! What happened?"

"No time! Run!" Hanayo screeched, trying to struggle out of Nico's grasp. "You don't understand! We gotta keep going!"

"Keep going? Why?" Nico titled her head in confusion, still refusing to lessen her hold. "What are you running from?" At about that time, the thing that Hanayo was trying to escape from made its entrance into the store.

The doors burst apart, glass shattering and being scattered onto the floor. Nico's grip finally slackened on Hanayo, her jaw dropping as she stared at a huge, hulking beast standing right inside the entrance. Large, intimidating antlers stood proud on its head, thick brown fur covering its body. The mere sight sent shivers down Nico's spine. "Is that... Is that a moose?"

"Y-Yes," Hanayo whimpered fearfully, watching as the beast turned its head to their direction. "R-Run?"

"Yeah, sounds good." And so they whipped around and started running down the nearest aisle, hoping it either hadn't noticed them or would be slowed down by all the glass. "We have to hide! I heard that meese are really fast!"

"I thought it was mooses!" Hanayo panted out, already seeming strangely winded despite having not even reached the end of the aisle. Maybe because she'd ran all the way there.

"Why don't you stop and ask it?!" They reached the end of the aisle, with Nico turning right and Hanayo making a left. She looked over her shoulder to see the girl running the other way. It was fine: Hanayo was a strong girl. She could make it. ... Nico sighed and shook her head. RIPana.

As she ran towards the frozen foods aisle, she saw a familiar face looking over the desserts inventory. She sighed, knowing that her stupid manager was probably looking to see if there was still stock left of her favorite ice cream. Who the hell could eat quintuple chocolate and not explode? "Oy, Bolshevik!"

"Huh? Nico?" Without waiting for a response, Nico grabbed her manager's hand and yanked her away from the ice cream. "H-Hey! Wait! Nico!"

"You wanna die, Stalin?" Jeez, Eli could be critically unaware of danger sometimes. "We got a code red here!" Eli merely rolled her eyes at the Russian name calling - at this point, it was something she was unfortunately used to - and tugged backwards, forcing the two of them to stop.

"Nico, you can't hide in the freezer every time your crush comes into the store."

"What? No! Not that code red!" She strongly considered just leaving Eli to whatever fate awaited her there.

"Wait, somebody's robbing the store?!"

"No! No! Uh, okay, it's a... code brown."

"Unruly children?"

"White?"

"An act of God?"

"Why is that a code?!" The sound of something slamming into a row of drinks startled them both, and they turned to find the moose having made his grand entrance into their conversation.

"Oh God!" Eli screamed, immediately turning tail and running, with Nico in hot pursuit. "Code periwinkle!"

"Periwinkle?! Who named these codes?!" Nico prayed that the moose had decided to stop and take a nice, refreshing drink, but the stamping that sounded behind them said otherwise. "We're gonna die!"

"Climb up the freezers!" Eli shouted, halting to yank open a freezer door and start climbing it, gracefully using the door next to it and the handle to get up to the top.

"I'm scared of heights!" Nico wailed, glancing back over her shoulder at the approaching beast. "But I might fear meese more!" Grabbing onto the door, she tried to jump her way up, but she wasn't as gifted in skill or in height as her manager, and she just hoped that death would be painless.

Suddenly she felt hands grabbing onto her collar, and she yelped as she was hoisted onto the top of the freezer. The moose slammed into the spot she had just been, making the whole enterprise shake as ice cream fell to the floor, a sticky mess already forming on the tiles below. "H-Holy... Th-Thanks, Eli."

"Of course." There wasn't much more to say though, and so the two of them held each other in fear, watching with bated breath as the moose shook off its hit and slowly walked out of the aisle. It was only then that they collapsed against each other in relief.

"That was close!" Nico gasped out, holding a hand over her rapidly-beating heart.

"Yeah... It's 'moose', by the way."

"What?"

"'Moose'. Its singular name is also its plural name, like fish."

"Are we on this again?!"

She had lost Nico. That was probably bad, but right then the best thing to do was to keep running, so Hanayo ran. She ran until she was forcibly stopped, slamming into another body and falling to the ground. Her eyes immediately snapped to what she had hit, terrified that the moose had come this way to intercept her. Instead, it was a person, a girl with flaming-orange hair who was staring up at the ceiling in horror. Hanayo quickly looked up to see what was happening: a loaf of bread, obviously knocked out of the girl's hands in the ensuing crash, was arcing up in the air. The ginger's mouth opened to let out a scream...

"Mmm, whatcha saaay- Ow!" The bread came back down and smacked her in the head, sending her sprawling to the linoleum below.

"A-Are you okay?" Hanayo leaned over the girl in concern, who sat up and rubbed her head.

"Y-Yeah, ahaha. I'm fine!" The girl jumped to her feet, and Hanayo followed her, watching as she grabbed the bread and clutched it to her chest. "My bread's safe, so it's no biggie!"

"Uh huh..." There had been a reason why she had run this way... Oh right. "W-We gotta run!"

"Eh?! Why?"

"Th-There's a moose on the loose!"

"That sounds like a children's book," the ginger laughed, glancing towards the other end of the aisle. "Where is it, then?" A loud crash a few aisles down caused them to both jump.

"D-Down there... W-Wait, don't go that way!" Clearly not listening, the girl ran towards the sound of the crash, and going against her better judgement, Hanayo sighed and followed her.

Luckily, the moose had apparently fled after its latest batch of carnage, leaving a destroyed aisle in its wake. Food lay everywhere, packets of tortillas and loaves of bread scattered across the floor. Hanayo could only watch as the girl fell to her knees and cried up to the sky. "Noooo! Not the bread!"

"H-Hey, it's okay..."

"God whyyy! I praise you twenty-four/seven and this is how you do me?!" She had never seen anyone so distraught over bread. Was it that big of a deal? It wasn't rice or anything, after all. The girl crawled miserably towards several loaves of bread, cradling them in her arms gently. "It's okay. It's going to be okay. You're... You're all going to that big toaster in the sky."

"Uh... We... We should take shelter..."

"Right, right, let's... Oh no! Umi-chan!" She jumped up in alarm, startling Hanayo as she started to run down the aisle and towards the front. Hanayo tried to catch up and haul her back.

"W-Wait, don't go back up there!"

"Umi-chan was up at the front looking at wine! She's in danger!" With no way to stop the determined ginger, Hanayo groaned and followed her to the front. They were all going to die, weren't they?

A pair of amber eyes scanned along the various bottles of wine, the girl tapping a finger to her chin in thought. Which one should she choose? She knew that it never mattered to Honoka, but Umi was a person of refined tastes. Admittedly, the local grocery store was not the place to find the best, most pristine wine, but it would have to do.

As she looked over the selection one last time, a commotion caught her attention, along with the shouting of her name. "Umi-chan!" Looking up, she saw Honoka and another girl staring wide-eyed at her from a nearby aisle, but it was something else that drew her attention away from them. A large moose stood some distance away, staring right at her.

"Honoka," Umi began calmly, not taking her eyes off the beast. "What did you do?"

"What?!" Honoka stamped her foot indignantly, her pout noticeable in Umi's peripheral vision. "Why do you think I had something to do with this?"

"I don't like to bet against the house."

"Well I didn't do anything!" She crossed her arms and sulked, earning a hesitant pat on the shoulder from the other girl. "That stupid moose destroyed all the bread!" How long had this creature been terrorizing the store without her noticing? She took note of a few hidden customers and the broken door. Apparently, when she was concentrating on what product to buy, she was really concentrating.

Narrowing her eyes, she stared down the moose, her hand twitching right next to the side of her pants. With lightning speed, she grabbed for her pistol and aimed it right at the creature, flicking off the safety.

"Holy shit, Umi-chan!" Honoka shrieked in alarm. "You brought a gun?!"

"I have a license!" Umi shouted back, refusing to break eye contact as the moose started to charge at her. "Prepare to meet your maker, you bastard." She held off until the beast was within her range, then she fired off one shot. It was perfect, hitting right between its eyes, but it still propelled itself forward. "Shit..."

She jumped out of the way just in time, the moose barreling past her and crashing into a magazine rack before falling to the ground. Eyes wide, Umi stared at the fallen creature, barely registering Honoka's presence at her side. "I-Is it dead?" She heard Honoka whisper.

"Yeah, it... it should be." Slowly Umi pulled the gun up into her line of sight, training the weapon on the unmoving carcass. "These are armor-piercing bullets."

"Wh... Why... Why do you have armor-piercing bullets?"

"You never know when they'll come in handy."

"Did you expect to get attacked by knights or something?!" Honoka slid down onto her knees next to Umi, sighing in exasperation. "I thought you were..."

"Thought I was what?" She glanced back to find Honoka running her hands over the ground, looking around wildly. "What are you doing?"

"D-Don't rush me! Just... hold on!" With that, Honoka leapt up and ran down the aisles, leaving Umi to watch her go in utter confusion.

"O... kay?" Slowly standing up, she flicked the safety of her gun back on and turned towards the other girl, who was staring between her and the moose with fear in her eyes. "Are you alright, miss?"

"Y-Yes!" She squeaked out, clasping her hands together. "Th-Thank you..."

"It was nothing," Umi replied modestly, putting her gun away. "It was- Ow!" Rubbing her cheek, she looked down to find a loaf of bread at her feet. "What the..."

"Toast!" Honoka gasped out, running back to the scene. "I thought you were toast!"

"... Really?"

"Really."

"Seriously?"

"Absolutely."

"..." Umi shook her head and headed for the exits. "You can walk home."

"Umi-chan, nooo! My pills are in your car!"

"All this destruction..." Eli muttered sadly, dipping her spoon back into a carton of quintuple chocolate ice cream. "I hope the insurance covers it."

"You're going to pay for that, right?" Nico side-eyed her manager eating the inventory in plain sight, sighing dramatically.

"Shut up, Nico. I'm distressed." The store was in utter ruin. Thankfully the moose had been taken down, but it didn't do much to repair all the damage that had been done. A busted door, broken shelves, wasted food, terrified customers: it was an absolute nightmare. She was going to get an earful from her boss over this.

"Well shape up, Lenin. We still have jobs to do." Nico glanced around at the carnage, taking stock of it all. "Let's figure out who we can blame for this."

"Nico, we can't do that..."

"How about Dia? I don't really like her. She can take the fall for this."

"You really think they're going to believe Dia was personally responsible for a moose getting in?"

"Hey, you never know." Shaking her head, Eli sighed and placed the ice cream down on the ground. The clean-up crew had already come to start trying to take care of the mess, and animal control was removing the moose from the premises. "You know, I think I deserve a raise."

"What? How do you figure that?"

"Well, if it wasn't for me, that moose could've actually hurt someone. My quick thinking kept everyone out of harm's way."

"I think you're over-inflating your role in this."

"Come on, Eli! I won't tell the boss you've been eating the inventory."

"... I'll consider it." Nico grinned and started walking for the door, or at least what used to be the door. "Hey, where are you going?"

"I need more coffee. I'm still not awake enough to handle this." Stepping outside, Nico took in a big gulp of fresh air, stretching out her arms and taking in the nice weather. It was a lot better than being inside a trashed store. Turning towards the parking lot, she did a double take and turned right back towards the sidewalk. She could make out something near the end of the building, standing passively in broad daylight. It was a familiar sight, and Nico's jaw dropped once more as she stared at another pair of large, terrifying antlers.

"Nope. Nope. Noooope, nope nope nope." Muttering to herself, Nico raced to her car, fumbling with her keys as she got the door open and locked herself inside. Pulling out her phone, she shot off a text to Eli. 'Consider moving the store somewhere else.' She then drove off, deciding it would be best to have her coffee as far away as possible.

Eli, meanwhile, didn't understand the text. "Moving the store... What's wrong with this one? ... Oh... Oh no." Picking up the ice cream, she hauled ass towards the back, prepared to hide in the employee lounge for a few hours. She was going to kill Nico for abandoning her here. "Why is there so much wildlife here?!"