Pizzazz

Two Robots, a Witch, a Toaster, and a Rabbit at 7/11

By Doroken

Status: Completed     Rating: E     Posted: 08/09/23     Finished: 08/08/23     Word count: 2,849
Characters: Quote, Curly Brace, Balrog, Misery, Sue Sakamoto

Also available to read here on Ao3.

"Will you stop being dead weight?!"

Quote, as usual, said nothing, and only stared rather blankly at his female counterpart as she continued to drag him by the leg. Even with him not saying a word about it this entire time, it was glaringly obvious that he was an unwilling participant of this expedition.

"You are such a pain, sometimes, you know!" Curly Brace complained, tugging him harsher by the leg as she spoke. How much trouble could someone who was borderline mute practically be? Not much at all, one would reasonably assume. But in this case, Curly seemed to be fed up with having to quite literally drag Quote everywhere, due to his unwillingness to ever go anywhere.

It was kind of her own fault for being put in this position, though, really. It wasn't like Quote WANTED her to be constantly dragging him to new places, after all. And yet here he was, being dragged down the sidewalk to a convenience store of all places. At least it wasn't Walmart.

"This would be a lot more fun if you weren't being so difficult!!" She remarked pointedly.

Quote had given up fighting her a while ago, so he wasn't quite sure what Curly still had to complain about.

"We're heeere!" She announced cheerily.

Great, now they could get home sooner.

Quote was almost completely limp by the time Curly was dragging him to the front door. Sliding doors, it appeared, since they whooshed open as she approached them.

"Ah! Oh — um, hi, Balrog."

For some reason, Balrog was standing on the other side of the door with a blank and somewhat ominous stare, obviously startling Curly for a moment. Whether he realized it or not, he was blocking the entire entrance.

"...Balrog, would you mind—" Curly politely began to ask.

"YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" Balrog shouted, narrowing his eyes as he quickly interrupted her.

"Huh...ah..?" Curly seemed more confused than anything. It was a bit hard to tell though, since she was still smiling as usual.

"Let them in, you bumbling moron," an annoyed, tired voice from inside the store spoke. Balrog turned to glance over towards who had spoken, before finally stepping back and relenting with an eye roll and a "Fiiine."

Quote too had given an eye roll of his own when he heard the voice. This experience was about to get a lot more miserable.

Literally, that is.

As Curly smiled at Balrog and finally entered the store, with her hostage in tow, she locked eyes with the one behind the counter and instantly dropped her smile. "Oh. You."

Who the heck named their kid Misery, anyway? Idly recalling hearing Jenka ask Balrog "how her failure of a daughter was doing", Quote reckoned that her mother must have really hated her. Perhaps she named Misery after her own feelings towards her.

Or maybe her name described how she herself probably felt, being behind the counter at a convenience store despite supposedly being a powerful witch.

"Just as pleased to see you," Misery quipped back, looking quite annoyed as she leaned against the counter. Her gaze diverted from Curly for a moment, and she nodded towards Quote. "What's the robot kid's deal? What are you dragging him around for?"

"Wouldn't you like to know!" Curly retorted, smirking smugly as she turned away. As she did, Quote looked over at Misery with his best "Please help me" expression.

Misery only scoffed and turned her head away. Clearly, she wouldn't be rescuing him.

"Welcome to Misery Mart!" Balrog finally properly greeted them, smiling happily and showing no previous signs of...whatever that had been at the door.

"I thought the sign out there said Seven-Eleven," Curly replied, tipping her head in confusion.

"Well...it does," Balrog admitted, lowering his voice. "But Misery doesn't like it when we say that. She wants us to pretend it's her store."

Even Quote thought that was sad.

"Anyway, we have some great deals in aisle seven!" He went on excitedly, pointing down towards said aisle. "We're having a sale on packaged ramen, sparkling water, and Sue!"

"...And what?"

"Oops, did I say Sue? I meant goo! As in World of Goo, the hit 2008 PC game for Windows and Mac!"

"...Right." Curly was understandably still quite confused by this. So was Quote, who was still laying limply on the floor and wondering what kind of place sold ramen, sparkling water, and 2008 PC games in the same aisle.

Apparently only the first two were correct. As soon as they entered the aisle, with Balrog smiling creepily after them the entire time they were walking over there, they found Sue asleep on the bottom shelf with no PC games in sight.

...Or, Quote assumed she was only sleeping, at least.

"Ah..?" Curly lightly kicked at the unconscious Mimiga, and got no response. "Hm...Quote, you know her, don't you?" She asked, turning around to look at the one she was still dragging around.

He really wished he didn't know her.

"Come on, you go wake her up!" Curly was back to smiling as she shoved Quote forward, obviously unaware of the wrath of Sue they would be invoking.

He hadn't been planning on waking her up at all, but with Curly practically shoving him into her, he didn't really have a choice.

"Huh — hey, what are you doing!" Sue snapped upon opening her eyes and finding Quote leaning over her. "I don't need you rescuing me again! I know EXACTLY where I am, and I can get out of this Seven-Eleven shelf without your help!"

For as big and brave as her words were, they all came tumbling down quite quickly, just like the shelves that she knocked over trying to get out. All Quote heard under all the crashing and clanging was a faint squeak as the entire shelf came down and crushed Sue.

A very steady and awkward silence settled after the commotion. During it, half of Balrog's face emerged at the end of the aisle and stared creepily at them.

Both of the robots only stared back at him for a few moments, until Curly decided to point to her male counterpart. "Quote did it."

Quote angrily threw his hands up at her.

"Always the quiet ones causing trouble, huh?" Balrog narrowed an eye at him. "Don't do it again. I'm watching you." With one last suspicious stare, he slowly stepped away from the end of the aisle and disappeared from their sight again.

Quote was still quite irritated that he was being blamed for this. Not being one for much besides a neutral stare, however, it was only a slight shift downward of his eyebrows that indicated how, internally, he was pissed off.

Curly probably knew this, but whether or not she cared was another question.

Instead, her attention seemed to be on the small bit of white fluff that was poking out from underneath the toppled over shelf. "Do you think she's okay?"

Quote was too busy glaring at Curly to answer, or what counted as a glare from him, at least. And not that he would have answered anyway, since he tended to only speak when it was absolutely necessary.

"She's probably okay," Curly decided, used to talking to the brick wall that was Quote.

Silence.

"...Well then! How about the sparkling water?" She asked excitedly, turning to once again smile at her friend.

Quote slowly blinked at her. She did realize they were both robots, did she not?

Without waiting for any sort of response — which she almost always never got from Quote anyway — Curly had gone to retrieve a bottle of the supposed sparkling water from the fridge at the end of the aisle.

Apparently she didn't. By the time Curly was taking the cap off, Quote decided he should probably intervene before she fried her circuits, since she had clearly failed to have that realization.

As he was walking over to grab the bottle away from her, she already took a sip. Thankfully, any effect it would have had on her was nullified when she almost immediately coughed and spit it out.

"What IS this?!" Curly asked in disbelief, holding up the drink and glaring at it.

Quote shrugged in reply, even though it had most likely been a rhetorical question.

"Do people actually DRINK this stuff?" She went on incredulously, continuing to study the glass bottle as she spoke. "Even that mushroom you jammed in my mouth tasted better than THIS!"

Curly was never going to let the Ma Pignon thing go, was she? Sure, he may have quite literally stuffed it into her mouth, but what was Quote supposed to do? Give it to her on a spoon and say "here comes the airplane"? It wasn't like she had really been in a coherent enough state to just eat it herself. Plus, Quote had been kind of busy running around doing a bunch of other crap in preparation of stopping The Doctor, so it wasn't like he had time to stand around with her all day.

Had he explained all this to Curly several times already? Yes. 

Had she forgiven him yet? Only a bit.

While Quote had been internally grumbling to himself about the mushroom thing, Curly had apparently decided she wanted nothing more to do with the fancy sparkling water. Without a word, she turned and flung it off down into the aisle.

Unfortunately, that was about the same time that Sue had managed to squeeze herself out from under the shelf and began to emerge. And as luck would have it, the glass bottle collided with her head, causing for a yelp of pain to accompany the loud shatter of glass that rang through the store.

The two of them could only stare in shock as the Mimiga slumped over and fell unconscious once more. Or what they could hope was only unconsciousness, that is.

Sure enough, the commotion had drawn Balrog right towards them again. As he narrowed his eyes at them in a glare from the end of the aisle, Curly wordlessly pointed at Quote again.

"I said to cut it out!" Balrog scolded, seeming quite annoyed by all the destruction that the two robots — or Curly, more accurately — had caused ever since entering the store.

Tired of being blamed for it, Quote angrily pointed at Curly this time. Not that he appeared to be very angry, though, given his practically permanent neutral face, so he only really had the sharp hand gesture working in his favor in that regard.

"Nice try, little guy," Balrog scoffed, still glaring at him. "I've seen all the destruction you do with that peashooter."

He didn't even have his gun out!

"So quit trying to blame your friend there. This better all be picked up before you leave!" With one final stern glance, Balrog slowly stepped to the side until he disappeared into another aisle.

Seriously?! With no words to express his frustration, let alone words for anything in general, Quote could only pull at his hat in utmost irritation. Why, exactly, was Curly blaming him for all this?

"Hm...well, there might still be that PC game," Curly mused aloud, turning to walk back into the aisle where they had first found Sue, who she stepped over now in order to get down the aisle. Quote had nothing better to do, so he followed her into it, though he was much more careful stepping over Sue than the other robot had been.

Apparently, Balrog's claim of the aisle containing World of Goo, the hit 2008 PC game for Windows and Mac hadn't been a lie. There were a couple of copies of it littered about the floor next to the toppled over shelf that had once contained a Sue, so Quote could safely assume that the PC games must have been behind her.

By the time he reached her, Curly had already opened up one of the boxes and was studying the CD. So much for paying for something before you used it, as she had already demonstrated with the sparkling water, and now World of Goo, the hit 2008 PC game for Windows and Mac.

"Hm...oh, right, we're robots!" She finally seemed to remember. Eagerly she turned to Quote, smiling as she almost always was. "Can you run a CD?"

Respectfully, had Curly lost it? He only blinked at her and folded his arms across his chest.

"Ooh, Quote, hold still," she said, beginning to step closer to him and looking quite excited. "I bet I can find a way to put this disc in you!"

For once, his expression actually changed as she approached him. Even if it was only the slightest widening of his eyes, he still didn't like the sound of this...

Meanwhile, at the front of the store, Misery was living up to her name.

"I cannot BELIEVE this is the only job that would hire me!" She was complaining, looking rather furious as she glared at nothing. "I am more than qualified to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or any of those other rich, high-paying jobs!"

"You sure are, Misery!" Balrog dumbly agreed, as he often did with his cousin.

"Shut up, Balrog," she grunted, shooting an unamused look towards him. "I don't need your praise."

Balrog only frowned and blinked at her. She claimed to not need his praise, yet if he had said nothing, she would have glared at him and accused him of not supporting her. No one could ever really win with Misery.

A sudden blast and flash of light across the store quickly caught both of their attention.

"Those damn robots," Misery hissed, slamming a fist down on the counter. "This is why I hate them!"

"I already told Mr. Peashooter to cut it out," Balrog huffed, annoyed by what was now the third commotion in the store.

"I still believe it's his girlfriend who's been causing all the ruckus," the witch behind the counter remarked a bit offhandedly, during which she reached to carefully brush a streak of hair behind her ear.

Balrog turned to look at Misery in confusion. "I thought she was his sister—" He had started to say, though he was abruptly cut off when the two aforementioned robots tumbled out of an aisle, looking like they were in a deathmatch.

Or...Quote seemed to be the only one that was really fighting, that is, while Curly seemed more like she was just trying to get away.

Well, whatever was going on, Quote had a pretty tight grip on her to prevent her from getting up, and the machine gun bullets he received seemed to do little to deter him from firing back as they were tumbling around on the floor.

Eventually, Curly managed to get herself up from where Quote had been practically pinning her down, though he still held onto her leg as she continued to try and get away from him. "Alright, Quote, I get it!"

Clearly, Quote didn't think she did, since he was still shooting at her.

"You are such a drama queen!" She loudly complained, kicking at him and again firing her machine gun.

Her point was proved when he decided to start switching to his missile launcher. Overkill, much?

"Fine, Quote! We're going home, alright?" How ironic it was, to watch Curly stumbling out the door with Quote hanging on to her. She had come in here dragging him by force, and now she couldn't get him off! Even Misery had to point and laugh at this turn of events.

"I don't know why you're laughing," Balrog remarked, turning to stare at her. "We're still the ones who have to clean up the mess they made."

"You mean you are," Misery replied pointedly, giving her cousin a side glare.

Balrog held her stare for a moment, but then he sighed and relented. "Yes, Misery." Grabbing a nearby broom, the soap bar lunchbox toaster sulked and headed off towards all the shelves and aisles that had been more or less destroyed in that gunfight. He was far too used to getting stuck on cleanup duty.

"Don't forget to put that price tag back on Sue," she called, showing more interest in her bracelets than her coworker at that moment. "I'm pretty sure it fell off of her earlier."

"Do you think $3.50 is too much to charge for her?" Balrog wondered, turning back to stare at her.

"Well, we can't give her away for free," Misery quipped, looking up at him from behind her arm. "Or else we'd never turn a profit."

"Right." He smiled dumbly.

"Hurry up and start picking up that mess," she huffed, waving Balrog off as she straightened up and turned towards the front doors, which gave no hint of the chaos that had transpired inside the store within the past 10 minutes. 

Sighing, Misery shook her head as she continued to stare out into the parking lot. "I need to sit here and think of what to tell the manager."