Dungeons & Deliveries - A Post Apocalypse Comedy Adventure [Book 1 Complete]

Book 1 - Chapter 40 - Clean Up in Aisle One


Two dozen weebs funneled around Alex and down the street as Snu shouted at the gashapon attendant. A small crowd was already gathering, like plump little drama flies to a rotting melon. Alex pushed through into the shop before the whole situation exploded into a Boss encounter inside the little store. He didn't blame her. The Familiar market did suck.

Yes, he'd grown up in a time where the only effective rule was taxes and power, but he did think that the Familiar market was gross. The pitch for the gashapon stores were simple: what's more collectible than something cute and relatively cheap? Something cute, collectible, and alive. Sprinkle on some gambling, fudge with the rarities, and hide them in stuffy plastic eggs you could never quite complete the set of, and cha-ching. Corporations hired people with specific Skills that fused tiny little monster Cores into plastic doodas. Do you like bread? Collect all thirteen! Each one is baked with a different Core, and sprouted wheat is the hardest to get. What about Godzilla? Breed Dungeon snakes, rip out their Cores, and jam them into cute vinyl. Enjoy a Dungeon monster without the bite! Bonded, and complacent forever, or until you got bored of it.

He ran into the store where rows of red and white vending machines stood stacked on top of each other. Inside each, categorized toy Familiars watched through cloudy capsules. Snu was, of course, in full fury. She was transforming, and not into a monster.

She was morphing into the form that Alex had only seen once, briefly, when she answered the door in a black dress. It had nearly broken his brain then. She now stood in the middle of the cramped toy store with a figure stretching upwards. Towered in heels that definitely weren't there a moment ago, with long, muscular legs and curves as far as the eye could see. Her silver hair framed her face and she had plush lips, heavy lashes, and smelled amazing. She looked terrifyingly beautiful, angry, and if you stared too long, like you'd ask politely to be stepped on. There was a flicker in the air around her, like the edge of a dungeon wall glitching into the real world.

Alex nearly tripped over himself, but shook out the thoughts. "Oh no," he said to himself. "She's going full Glamor. Not the Glamor, anything but the Glamour." He gulped and caught up as she berated the teenage clerk in a pink polo crying behind the counter.

"WHERE IS THE OWNER?" She yelled again like a whip. The clerk stammered something about them going for dinner. Alex moved as fast as he could and laid a hand on her shoulder, which was now above him.

She snapped and spun to face him.

"WHAT?" she said.

"Snu, you need to calm down…," Alex stopped himself before he continued. Even he knew one of the most important rules when trying to date. Never tell a girl to calm down. Thankfully, Snu didn't latch onto his blunder.

"I can hear them," Snu growled and pressed one hand to her temple while grabbing Alex's arm with the other. Her nails that were now extremely sharp bit into his wrist. "I can feel things, Alex," she said through gritted teeth. "My Skills? They let me feel desire. And them?" She swung her head toward the rows of toys. "They're screaming, and they hate it."

The clerk was blubbering into a headset. All of Alex's focus was on Snu. Her skin radiated heat from her transformation, and it felt wild.

He stepped in and grabbed her shoulder, which was now above his head, with both hands. Did it bother him that she was ginormous? Heck no! He just tried to calm her down. "Snu? Look at me. Let's get out of here–you don't need to–" Alex stopped as a flash interrupted him. Outside, the crowd thickened while people lifted their phones and snapped their photos. No one stepped in, or helped. It was just a wall of hungry attention. Strange thing about crowds, when people stop being people and start being spectators. Alex ground his teeth and kept trying to calm her down.

He was unsettled, though. Wasn't this kind of what happened in her dungeon? People turned into Monsters and kept in a Dungeon? Maybe she was mad that they had no choice in the matter?

"UGH–" Snu's hands shot up to her temples like she was trying to hold herself together. The vice grip on Alex's arm vanished, but he bled from where her nails had big into his skin. She grew taller again, and her heels cracked the tile. Her silhouette stretched another foot and she looked like a true goddess. Just a goddess in a toy store. The air buckled around her.

"They want out!" she shouted and the words felt like an actual slap on Alex's face. There was a bubbling pressure building in the air and it smelt like that quintessential sugary sweetness that reminded him of Snu.

"Snu! SNU!" He grabbed her arm again and pulled. It was useless. She couldn't be budged, not in her Boss form. "I don't know what you're doing, but stop–STOP!" The clerk was now hiding into her phone, and the crowd outside had tripled. Their phones were up with mouth-breathing open mouths, just watching. Some young teen dude was even licking the class and joking with his friends while they made fun of and checked Snu out.

"CAN YOU GO AWAY?!" Alex shouted through the glass pane at them. No one listened of course. This would be excellent content online. Alex scowled at them and that was the exact moment he noticed the glass. It was weird. It looked like it was warping and bending and drooping like plastic under a hair dryer.

"Snu?" He turned back to her. "What are you–"

Alex didn't have time to finish his sentence. A glowing wave of warmth and colour, red and blush pink, ripped out of Snu and shook everything around her. His knees buckled, but he didn't go down.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Suddenly, he forgot everything about the situation. He wanted nothing more than to make Her happy. Capital H. It felt like he would do anything for her. Some part of his brain heard everyone one of the on looking crowd's phones clattering to the ground like dead flies. What followed was everyone that was watching dropping to their knees. Some people even bowed in the prone position. Snu turned, and a heavy drop of drool spilled out of Alex's mouth.

[Dominion of Desire], one of her Boss Skills, ripped out of her.

She was glowing, and looked like a full on covergirl avatar of desire, beauty, and wrath, all wrapped up in a skin tight dress in the world's pointiest heels. To everyone in the circle of the Skill that she was activating, she looked like their innermost fantasy.

To one guy, that meant the wart-covered lunch lady at work who slabbed him the corner piece of the meatloaf and gave him a little wink. Hot, sinful gravy. To a woman in the back, Snu was an alpha wolf in jeans and a tight v-neck, growling in heat and ready to claim her. She had already dropped to her knees and was whispering, "Breed me or I die!". To another, Snu was just a warm pie on a kitchen table, looking all naughty and warm.

Her eyes flared and Alex swore that all of this was just for him.

It wasn't. Snu was snarling, caught in a war of emotion and screaming Familiar voices only she could hear. But to everyone else, she was weaponized perfection. Everything within twenty meters of Snu bent to her.

Screeches sounded, and it wasn't from Snu. Every single device that had clattered to the floor crumpled like a piece of paper in a fist. One by one, they collapsed into themselves and formed tight little metal battery glass balls. Someone screamed and someone else moaned. Then the gashapon machines began to melt.

Like wax under a blowtorch, the plastic warped, metal sparked, and the glass fogged pink.

BOOM

All of them exploded outward at once. Little fun bombs. The shrapnel should've torn the whole place apart, but instead the pieces puffed into bursts of pink nothingness. Not a single piece touched Alex or anyone under her Domain. Snu wasn't touched either. In her sphere of Desire, the universe had already made it so she was all that mattered.

She was yelling something raw and probably meaningful, an incantation or casting, but Alex did not register it. Snu stood in the middle and he could do nothing but stare. The toys came next.

A tidal wave of plastic capsules flew across the floor, hundreds, maybe thousands, all sealed in cute little tapped shut plastic eggs. Inside, the tiny Familiar Toys shrieked and beat at the shells with their plastic hands, teeth, or with whatever limb-like thing they had been forced upon. The capsules swirled around her like a storm and began to pop.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop…

The capsules cracked open with little cute fizzing sounds and out poured a toy legion. Little Familiars in every shape and size spilled out. There was a thumb-sized dragon in pink, a very sentient loaf of spelt bread, a miniature smiley face ball, a tennis racket with a permanent smile, even a little metal knight on a horse that was fixed to a stand. Littel tiny crafted Familiars that had died, had their cores shoved into molded plastic, and made temporarily sentient.

The toys did not flee. They assembled around Snu. By the time the last capsule opened, a horde of the most adorable toys that corporations could muster filled around her. They awaited her orders. The toys were not bonded Familiars, as Dungeon Bosses didn't have Familiars, but they still waited. Everyone else still knelt and Alex was pretty sure he was still breathing.

The pink haze peeled itself from the back of his mind and his knees cracked as he stood. Reality came flooding back in. Not all at once, but in weird chunks. He looked around and saw everyone was still kneeling. The shop was destroyed. An army of toys was silently staring at him.

Hundreds of keychains, figurines, mystery pulls lay in perfect little ranks like a vinyl military parade. A cute turnip held an actual butter knife. There was a ramen bowl growling at him the size of his thumbnail. He rubbed his eyes, shook his head, and saw Snu.

Not Mistress Snu, Dungeon Boss of the Leather Spires, the eight foot tall goddess in stilettos that had a crowd of subservient reality around her. Just snu.

She was crouched in the middle of the devastation, red-faced, tear streaked, and…kind of OK? Maybe a little tired. Her blonde hair was once again the loose curls that hung, with the small cute horns poking through. She wore the tank top and jeans with sneakers. To him at least, her Glamour was gone.

"Alex…" she croaked. He sprinted over and the toys parted like he was Moses and they were a keychain sea. She slumped into his arms the second he got close enough and hugged him tight.

The teen clerk slowly poked her head up from behind the counter. Her eyes were darting between the vending machines, which were destroyed, the kneeling crowd, and the swirling toy horde. The poor girl whimpered and looked for her phone, which was just a metal ball on the table she hadn't noticed yet.

"Are you ok?" Alex started while holding her. "Are they…still under your Skill? He tilted his head at the window, where he saw the crowd. There was even some guy licking the concrete floor. About twenty mentees down the road seemed to be the range. A new crowd had started to form behind them. Just the curious crowd hoping that they too would see something crazy happening. Not to help of course.

"Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," She heaved into his chest. "They're going to be like that for a little bit…" Alex's eyes looked around. There was destruction everywhere, the crowd kneeling, the army of toys…A group of capsule dog toy Familiars barked at each other.

Sheeeeeeeeeeiiiit. We need to leave. Like right now.

"You!" he barked at the clerk, who flinched. "Back entrance. Now!"

She didn't argue and thankfully pointed with a trembling finger to a little door in the back corner. It was sandwiched in between two stacks of melted vending machines.

Alex nodded. "Come on," he whispered. "We're leaving. You, me, and…" he looked at the capsule army. "Them too." He went to guide Snu as quickly as possible to the door when they were interrupted.

"Uh..I…," the clerk stumbled her words. "Are you…umm…going to..going to-p-puh–pay for those?" Alex spun around to see the red faced clerk. Then she pointed wide eyed at the Familiars on the ground.

Alex hissed under his breath and continued to try and pull Snu away "We need to go," he said to her. "Now!" Snu however, didn't budge.

Snu was standing, staring at the clerk like she was trying to make a decision. She looked at Alex, then spoke. . .

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