"Uh..."

  "Come in, come in!" the plant said, waving a vine. There was a long mouth under there, hidden in the petals. "Welcome to the room where it happens! I don't bite, I promise."

  As we stepped inside, I tried to think of the least rude-sounding way to ask "Holy shit, are you an alien?". Chaz spoke before I did.

  "I knew it! This isn't Earth! We have been isekai'd!"

  "That's your reaction, huh?" the alien said cheerfully. "I usually hear 'holy shit, you're an alien!'."

  "I was thinking it," Lex admitted.

  "Knew it." The plant alien lifted itself off the statue slightly to do a little bow. "The name's Merchant-4114426-Upsilon, but you can call me Dandy."

  He gestured with a vine to his apron, where he'd pinned a "Hello! My name is..." badge with "DANDY" written on it. Beneath it was a He/Him pin and another badge reading "SORRY, I HAVE REHEARSAL".

  "Hey, Dandy," Chaz said, offering a cautious fistbump. Dandy curled a vine to bump it.

  I had a lot of questions, but I tried to start with the most important one. "So... not Earth?"

  Dandy shifted his petals in an approximation of a smile. "Nope. Welcome to the Zettamall, son. If you'd like to know more, I've got some videos right here."

  The back wall to the left of the counter was lined with old-school video tapes. The others were browsing nearby and listening in on our conversation, so I checked them out myself. They took up a lot of shelf space, but really Dandy just had a bunch of copies of the same few titles.

  "Welcome To The ZETTAMALL?... Meet The OddBotz... Stats And You... ZETTAMALL? For Kids... are these educational tapes?"

  "They sure are, son," Dandy said. "And if you want my advice, this is the best time to watch them! Plus you get a nice bonus if you keep the tape afterward."

  I grabbed one and checked it out.

  [ Welcome To The ZETTAMALL? by Zetta Home Video! You've wondered where you are. You've seen the sky outside. You know this isn't Earth. Now you can know more.

  The first watch of a Zetta Home Video tape grants +1 EXP. Keep this tape on you to give your party +3 Mental Fortitude. (Cost: 25 Funbucks) ]

  I checked the back. Runtime: fifteen minutes.

  I read the other titles. Dandy had sixteen tapes total, and a lot of them were part of a series called Beast Bazaar. Each one seemed to be about a different type of creature. Shoplins, Expired, Shopping Worgs, Radz, Lanari... I didn't recognise most of them, but I had the feeling I would soon.

  "How long would it take to watch all of these?"

  "Over five hours," Dandy said. "Buy you don't have to do it all at once. You have thirty-three hours left and you only need to sleep for eight of them!"

  I was tempted, but... "Do we even have a VHS player? I've only ever seen one at my granddad's."

  Lex looked up from the shelf she was perusing. "I've only got DVD players."

  Dandy pointed. "Left and down, son."

  I followed his vine. At the bottom of one of the middle shelves sat a row of video players.

  [ A Contrasht Nostalgic VHS Player! The only way to play Zettamall tapes, unless you went to the mall carrying an obsolete piece of tech whose successors are old enough to drive. That's right, dip shit. We've got your arse. (Cost: 1000 Funbucks) ]

  "...Oh."

  "Welcome to the Zettamall," Dandy said. "You can buy almost anything, but you can't get much for free. Sorry."

  "Well, I have coupons..." I decided not to purchase the first thing I saw though. "I'm gonna look around first."

  "Go ahead," Dandy said. "I've got all sorts of cool stuff. Here all tutorial!"

  I grabbed a hand basket from a stack by the counter and browsed, politely stepping around the people pouring in as I tried to do the math in my head.

  Between us, we had 2,800 Funbucks. The tape collection and the player together were 1,400. We had coupons to soak some of the cost, but that was still going to hurt.

  There was a lot of stuff to choose from. Besides tapes, the walls held weapons, protective pads, and clothing racks heavy on active- and techwear. Rows of pigeon holes held a variety of branded t-shirts:

  [ A Brand Tee: Moist Oni! Wear this shirt to slightly increase the chances of getting Moist Oni-branded gear from loot crates! One size fits all. (Cost: 100 Funbucks) ]

  The diagonal shelves were the Miscellaneous section. There were books...

  [ A Quest Quaffers Sword Masters RPG 27th Edition Game Book! Unlocks the [Dungeon Master] skill, allowing use of further Sword Masters books. +6 Sword Expertise when you keep this book with you. (Cost: 400 Funbucks) ]

  ...tools...

  [ A .CYBERCULT Skeleton Key! Opens any one locked door: analog, digital, or psychological. (Cost: 200 Funbucks) ]

  ...bad ideas...

  [ A pack of FleshMart Lungvandals! Smoking your first Lungvandal grants +2 INT, +5 Moxie, +20 Addiction. Special Offer: 100 Funbucks for your first pack! Lungvandals: You'll Never Go Back To Air! ]

  ...and a few limited items near Dandy.

  [ A ZETTAMALL? Keyring! Holds 3 Crate Keys. (Cost: 150 Funbucks)

  (LIMITED SUPPLY: 3) ]

  I looked down at Khan. "Anything catch your eye?"

  "Yes, I was taken aback by how tacky the shirts are," Khan said sadly. "Do you see any silk?"

  The right wall was stuffed with loot crates. A third of it was lined with ZETTAMALL? and WARCRIMES crates, and then a whole rainbow of bands cascaded down the rest. The lower shelves held bronze-tier crates for 100 Funbucks; the rank and prices rose the higher you went.

  The Wizard's Treats crates looked like big blue lunch boxes with faintly glowing star patterns. I reached up for the most expensive one, with gold trims and sides that were practically bulging.

  [ A Wizard's Treats Super-Size Tutorial Crate! A simply decadent box for the fancy human with singular tastes. Open it while using a Wizard's Treats OddBot for a delectable bonus. (Cost: 1,000 Funbucks)

  (LIMITED SUPPLY: 1) ]

  I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out the coupon I got from absorbing Xorka's essence. It shone.

  [ A Wizard's Treats Gold Coupon! 50% off your next Item Shop purchase! Wizard's Treats only. Expires in 2 weeks. ]

  Khan's hand-mouth grinned. "Now we're cooking with oil."

  I decided to stick to the crate. The others kept it simple too: Kara helped herself to a Cybercult tee and the Skeleton Key, Lex took a keyring, and Chaz had found a figurine on a shelf of Contrasht junk.

  "Bro, check this out!"

  [ Rare! A Contrasht Popdroid: Yuzumaki! Improves your Contrasht OddBot's second Power. Collect all five Ninja Fruits, if you're a real figurine pervert. (Cost: 400 Funbucks) ]

  "Are you sure?" I asked. "It's most of your Funbucks."

  "It's worth it," Chaz said. "Apparently Contrasht set bonuses are amazing."

  "I've also been informed that this statue of me looks 'absolutely sick'," Yuzumaki said behind him.

  I looked at the figure. It stared back with dead, beady eyes.

  "...Sure. I can line up and pay, if you give me your stuff. What do you think about the tapes?"

  "Do we have time?" Lex asked worriedly.

  "We could watch a couple for now and do the rest later," Chaz said, tossing his figure in my basket. "Maybe have a late night watch party instead of a lair raid."

  "We get the bonuses either way," Kara agreed. "What the heck is with the player though? That price kinda sucks..."

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around, looked down slightly.

  "Hey," Harmony said. She held up a golden coupon.

  [ A ZETTAMALL? Gold Coupon! 50% off any Item Shop purchase! Expires in 2 weeks. ]

  "Where did you..."

  "Altar crate." She grinned. "Wanna make a deal?"

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "What have you got in mind?"

  "You can get the tape player with this, if you share the tapes. We've got some big TVs in Huge W you can play them on."

  "If I get the tapes back later, deal," I said. I'd probably need their TVs anyway.

  Harmony slapped the coupon into my hand. "I'll go set it up. Don't take too long!"

  The party passed me their items. I rearranged everything to fit in a couple of baskets and lined up, VHS player awkwardly tucked under an arm. The place was getting crowded—everyone was either arming themselves or trying to grab a limited item beforen they ran out. A small line was forming at the counter.

  Unfortunately for Dandy, it had mostly formed out of Gateway regulars.

  "You better get this straight, son," he was saying, "even if we did refunds, Which We Don't, I would not refund this."

  "Why not?" the customer demanded. "I bought it here! The law says—"

  "We've only been open for fifteen minutes. You took it off the shelf in front of me thirty seconds ago! How was this scam supposed to work? You got a lotta gall!"

  "They would have refunded me in Gateway."

  "Fuck off back there, then. Next!"

  "Where's your flour?"

  "...We don't sell any. You've got bigger problems to worry about than flour, son."

  "You don't understand!"

  "Sure I do. Next!"

  I smiled. It was a bit of a wait, but it was very cathartic.

  I noticed a nearby customer looking suspicious. As I watched, he glanced at Dandy, stuffed a pack of cigarettes in his jacket, and began shuffling towards the exit. I vaguely recognised him as the guy who'd knocked me over at the start of the tutorial.

  Our policy on shoplifters in Gateway was simple: If we saw someone shoplifting, no we didn't. It only became a problem when it was frequent and obvious. This wasn't Gateway though.

  I cleared my throat. "Hey, man. That sign over there says "Shoplifters Will Be Executed". Normally I wouldn't believe it, but—"

  "Fuck off, shelf-stacker," the man said calmly.

  I paused in shock. In that moment the man looked at my cart, snatched Lex's keyring, and power-walked away.

  "Hey!"

  Kara gave chase. "Get back here—"

  He put one foot outside, very slightly. It was barely more than the toes.

  The store went fucking ballistic.

  Alarms blared. Red lights bathed the store. The man bolted. Dandy's head snapped up and unfolded.

  My dad had a huge movie collection. When I was a kid, he showed me the original Jurassic Park. That scene where a Dilophosaurus spreads its (yes, inaccurate, I know) frill neck and screams at a guy before eating him scared the shit out of me when I was six. Dandy's flower worked a lot like that, but the toothy maw inside was much wider and more jagged. Above it, six yellow orbs that might have been eyes blazed.

  "THIEF!"

  Massive vines suddenly erupted from the hanging baskets over the entrance. Some spilled to the ground, but others snapped outward, grabbed the man around the ankles, and yanked him back into the store.

  The man bounced, shouted, grabbed at the floor. The vines snatched away his stolen packet and wrapped around him further to ensure he couldn't grab onto anything. As we watched, Dandy's own vines whirled across the store, took over dragging the screaming shoplifter, and lifted him over the counter towards the flower's leering maw...

  Just as we expected Dandy to eat him, he pressed the shoplifter against the back wall, pulled a shotgun out from under the counter, and blew his fucking head off.

  BLAM!

  [ Customer 104/J0 has been released from our membership program. Thank you for visiting the ZETTAMALL?. ]

  The alarms snapped off. Behind me, Lex leapt back into a defensive stance. "Whoa, whoa, whoa!"

  Chaz gaped. The whole thing had happened in seconds. "Bro..."

  "What?" Dandy said, as he ejected the shell. "It's the Zettamall! Read the damn signs!"

  The entry vines restocked the cigarettes, returned the keys to my basket, gave me a pat on the head, and retracted. Dandy closed his flower again, stashed the shotgun somewhere behind the statue, and beamed at us like he hadn't just splattered someone's brains against the wall.

  "Now," he said cheerfully, "who's ready to buy something?"

  Other would-be thieves and scammers around the store looked at Dandy, looked at each other, carefully put down what they were holding, and ran.

  We got to the counter pretty quickly after that.

  "Hi," I said, laying out each item with its coupon one by one. "Sorry about those guys."

  "Not your fault, son," Dandy said as he verified them. "There's people like that in every tutorial."

  I was a little worried that shoplifting got you executed on the spot here, but like with Zeddie, I figured getting on this guy's good side was a bigger concern.

  "Every" tutorial, huh?

  Out loud I said, "They're regulars from our store. The boss always takes their side, so they keep coming back and pulling that crap."

  Dandy looked up at me. His face was a flower, but I could read it well enough to suspect the pitying look of a fellow retail worker. "Oh."

  "Yeah."

  "You guys have to deal with those fools all the time?"

  "Yeah," Chaz said.

  "I'm sorry to hear that." Dandy started scanning everything with something that looked like a cross between a price gun and a raygun from an old comic. "Hey, when you get out of here, maybe you can pick the Merchant job. You could be your own boss. Like me!"

  I perked up. Jobs had been mentioned in our character windows, but Zeddie hadn't said anything about them.

  "Told you, bro. Isekai," Chaz whispered.

  "The window outside said you were a Lord of War," I said carefully, hoping to tease more out of him.

  "That's a weapons merchant. I specialised in it once my level was high enough. They don't let us sell guns any more though, so I diversified my stock. Being a Merchant is great, believe me! I get to meet all kinds of new people, and I get to set the rules. We do things my way, or we don't do things at all."

  Something rattled in my memory.

  Chaz looked over the counter at the dead guy. "I can see that. Hey, can we have his wallet? Will here is collecting IDs."

  "For normal reasons," I added quickly.

  "Knock yourself out," Dandy said. "It's not like I feed on blood or anything."

  "I got it," Kara said, crouching by the corpse and checking for loot.

  I froze. I recalled another movie in my dad's collection, and suddenly everything clicked into place.

  The little comments he made. The badges. The name of the store. Fuck me.

  I decided to take a risk and searched my memory. What was the verse...

  "Are you sure?" I asked, giving him my best this-is-a-joke smile. "The guy sure looks like plant food to me."

  Dandy froze. He slowly turned his head to stare at me. A huge grin split his mouth. Yep, those were teeth all right.

  "Oh, shit! You've seen Little Shop Of Horrors, huh?"

  "Sorry, what's happening?" Lex asked.

  "Yeah, man!" I turned to her. "It's an old musical about an evil flower. My dad showed it to me. And I think we watched it in high school."

  Dandy nodded enthusiastically. "A long time ago a human told me I looked like the bad guy, Audrey II? I got curious and bartered for a copy. Loved it! What a guy! I even changed my appearance to lean into it a little."

  "You look pretty sick, bro," Chaz said. "In a good way. Like Audrey's cool uncle."

  "Are you... not normally a plant?" Lex asked.

  "Oh, I am. Let's just say my people are great at gardening." Dandy's petals vibrated happily. "But boy, you would not believe how many people don't even pick up on it. Are any of you into musicals? I hear your people did one of Beetlejuice..."

  We had met an alien, and he was a theater kid.

  I hadn't seen as many musicals as Dandy hoped—a few of my dad's old DVDs, some modern ones on YouTube, and my little bro had been in drama club—but he didn't mind. He just loved talking about them. Apparently the ones by "his people" weren't as catchy.

  "I don't know how you do it, but human musicals are superb," he said happily. He was even more animated now. "Something about the structure of your ears, I think. Anyway, how will you be paying today?"

  I wanted to check something first. "So I have the Funbucks, but you said you barter?"

  Dandy nodded. "Sometimes customers find items I'd just love to get my vines on! If you do, I'll trade for a reasonable price. I prefer rare crates and items, maybe cool things from Earth..."

  My "Earth" stuff basically amounted to my sweaty old work uniform, yesterday's underwear, and dibs on one of the gaming stuff Lex stole. I was fairly confident those didn't count.

  "Wait, I think I've got something," Lex said.

  Dandy's petals raised. "Ohhh?"

  Lex opened Snakpak. "I'm still getting used to the search function, but I've been looting stuff when I can..."

  A few seconds later, items started dropping onto the counter. Lex's shoplifting spree had now claimed a bookstore upstairs, much of Huge W's entertainment selection, and even a few private stashes in the break rooms. Now Snakpak was spitting out anything related to musicals, drama, or theater.

  She produced sheet music, books about theater, a guide to learning to play the trumpet, a DVD of The Producers, a memoir by the guy who produced Hamilton, a DVD recording of a public broadcast of a musical about the political career of former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, some children's books that happened to have the keywords in the title, an actual trumpet...

  "Oh, shit," Dandy said. "Let me take a look."

  A cluster of vines with a tiny version of Dandy's head rose at the checkout and took over serving other customers. Dandy inspected each item with deep interest as we stood there awkwardly, wondering how this was gonna go.

  Dandy made a decision.

  "Okay, I'll make you and your lady friend a deal." He held up the DVDs, the trumpet, and the guide. "You're sharing the tapes, right? Give me these and I'll throw in a second player. And if you throw in this," he held up the memoir, "I'll make it worth your while. One free crate, whichever you want."

  "You want a crate?" I asked Lex.

  She smiled. "Yeah!"

  "Then it's a deal," I told Dandy.

  Dandy's vines waved happily. "Yeeaah! Okay, pick yourself a crate, miss."

  As Lex left Snakpak to re-devour the other stuff and hustled to the crate wall, I paid Dandy. The whole checkout ran through the system windows, so all I had to do was press a confirmation button.

  [ Don't Ask, Just Shop

  Shop at one of the ZETTAMALL?'s conveniently deadly-enemy-adjacent item shops.

  Reward: +1 ZETTAMALL? Coupon Crate ]

  [ Loyalty Rewards, Part One

  Spend $1,000 at the same merchant.

  Reward: +1 ZETTAMALL? Coupon Crate ]

  "You watching those videos now, son?" Dandy asked. His vines produced a pair of Zettamall-branded tote bags and bagged everything within seconds. There were like twenty tapes. It was impressive.

  "Whatever we have time for," I said.

  "Want some good advice?" Dandy leaned in, mostly for effect. "Watch Welcome To The ZETTAMALL? with your party as soon as you can. Do it before you share it, so you can decide who else watches it. You'll want to think very carefully about that. You'll see what I mean."

  I nodded cautiously. "I can do that."

  Lex came back with Mister Sportsball's super-size crate, the Champion's Locker. It looked like a crate-sized gym locker with a golden padlock. "Is this too much?"

  "That's perfect!" Dandy pushed two tape players towards us. "Here you go. If you got any questions after watching those videos, I'll be here all tutorial. Now get out there and break their leg!"

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