THE DANGERS OF SHOPPING

Gunshots, screams, and explosions rang out in an ear-piercing cacophony. Wearily, Daniel Fulton groaned as he tried to block out the noise by burying his head under a pillow. Still, the bloodcurdling screams and the sound of ensuing gunfire assaulted his mind.

“Fine…Fuck…Whatever” He mumbled as he blindly reached for his smartphone only to knock it off his nightstand. “FBI OPEN UP!” the phone blared at him followed by a loud banging noise. With great willpower, Dan got himself out of bed and turned off his morning alarm.

‘Stupid fucking alarm. Knew I shouldn’t of set it to the PANIC theme.’ Dan stretched as he looked around his small apartment and grabbed one of the many empty MONSTER ENERGY drinks around him. Sadly, the sweet promise of sugar masquerading as soda was as empty as the can he drank from.

Tossing the can into the pile of other cans he stretched and yawned. Not bothering to change out of his boxers he went out into his living room/kitchen and flopped onto his couch, turning on the tv. An attractive woman was covering the latest scheme of Mad Jack and how his “reign of terror” was stopped by Atlas. ‘Ughh, this crap again? It's been like 2 weeks people, move on to something else already…Besides, why does that jackass get so much publicity? All he does is just kill people with spooky powers. There’s no style there, no big plan, just destroying shit cause its cool. God forbid they ever cover my DANGEROUS DEEDS! Like how they fanboy over a pumpkin.’

Turning off the TV he walked over to the kitchen side of the room and opened the fridge. All that greeted him was a half-empty open carton of milk well passed its expiration date. Closing the fridge he sighed as he checked the time. ‘Only 10:20…Might be able to make it to HeroMart before traffic gets bad.’ Changing into a white t-shirt and jeans he left his apartment. He smiled as he got into his pride and joy, the DANMOBILE 7! It was a beat-up minivan in obnoxious yellow. It didn’t have anything that made it better than previous iterations, it was just the current in a long line of cars to meet their unfortunate end. With a few stalled startups the minivan hummed to life and Dan rode off on what might be his most DANGEROUS DEED!, grocery shopping.

Logistically, HeroMart was only a 10-minute drive from his apartment but there was one small issue, or rather one metropolis-sized issue, New York. For some reason beyond Dan, New York City was absolutely infested with super-powered people of all kinds. There are 10x more heroes and villains in this city than anywhere else in the world and for the life of him, he could not understand why. Why not go somewhere that doesn’t have horrible winters, like California or something? Regardless, it is rare to go a day without seeing people fly around and shoot lasers from their eyes at each other. Which is why he had been stuck in a traffic jam for the past 15 minutes.

Dan honked his horn multiple times. He wasn’t quite sure who he was supposed to honk at but he would happily rage against the machine just for the sake of it. After all, he did become a supervillain for reasons. “Are you fucking serious?! It’s been like 30 minutes!” He honked his horn a few more times to make his point. He stood up in the sunroof of the DANMOBLE trying to see what was causing issues this time. Shaking his head at what he saw he sat down mumbling.

“Stupid flying bricks fighting each other again.” Of all the super fights that could have happened, he had to get a flying brick one. For those of you who don’t know what that is, consider yourself lucky. A flying brick is someone who is both really durable and could fly, hence a flying brick. They usually have other things because hell, why stop there when you get flying and super toughness? Sometimes it was laser vision or even superspeed to become a living railgun basically. The downside is that whenever a flying brick villain did something, the heroes would send their own flying brick because “fight fire with fire” or whatever that saying is. You’d expect some climatic battle of gods but in reality, when 2 really durable people fight each other, nothing actually happens outside of mass collateral damage. Sure they can benchpress buses but it doesn’t matter when the other guy can just get hit with a million of them. It more or less becomes a superpowered slap fight that just wastes everyone’s time.

Seeing as his efforts to assert himself via honking weren’t working, Dan did the only thing he could do, browse r/Supes. Most of it was garbage since they didn’t talk about the most DANGEROUS VILLAIN OF OUR TIME, DANGER DAN!, but there were still some interesting conspiracy posts about whose identity is whose. His favorite theory was how some people just got super overpowered powers because reality is written by a bunch of nerds who like to wank off their own characters. Just such a ridiculous idea.
It took another hour for The Missile and Lord Destroyer The Third to finally stop fighting each other. He wasn’t sure who “won”, nor even which one of them was supposed to be the hero. Hell, he only knew their names because they kept shouting theirs at each other every 5 minutes, almost as if the other person forgot. For all he cared they were both criminals for robbing him of his time. At least he was somewhat productive, coming up with a few more DANGEROUS DEEDS! for later outings.

At long last, he had made it. Heromart, the one-stop shop for heroic service! Back in the 90s the criminal mastermind, Psyclos opened up a faux supermarket to launder money only to realize he was making far more money from it than any of his schemes. Through his supertech, ruthless cunning, and plain-old criminal connections, he managed to bankrupt the vast majority of other supermarkets. He’s arguably the most successful villain ever and he doesn’t even bother wearing a mask anymore.

While the world was full of chaos, mayhem, and flying people who shout their names every 5 minutes, HeroMart was the lighthouse in Dan’s darkness. With its constant special deals, clearance items, and possible still ongoing money laundering, it made being a near destitute villain possible. It was more or less Dan’s happy place from a world out to keep him down.

Maneuvering his shopping cart through the sea of customers Dan meandered through the store in an aimless state. Whereas most people would have a list or a rough idea of what they exactly wanted, Dan, preferred a more “let’s just look around” approach. HeroMart was simply massive and he’s always been surprised every time he went. One time, he managed to find an exotic new energy drink sponsored by Lightyear. It tasted like battery acid and made his head spin but when he finally came to, 3 days had passed and he managed to file his taxes, paint his apartment, and win a Tri-state area marathon. He decided to stick with MONSTER ENERGY after that.

That got him thinking of how often he saw hero-sponsored products. Lightningtron’s Endless Duracell Batteries, Kubi’s off-brand Sunchips, that one horrifying goatman’s perfume. Hell, Ai had an entire line of make-up named after her that was selling out constantly. Why can’t he, DANGER DAN!, get brand deals? Sure, he was a villain, but even The Host got some insanely spicy hot wings named after them. He would be stoked to be sponsored by MONSTER ENERGY. Shaking his head he stopped thinking about the what-ifs and finished his shopping.

‘This is taking forever.’ Dan frowned. He had been waiting in line for what felt like forever watching a middle-aged woman with a bleached inverted bob argue with the cashier. He wasn’t paying much attention to what she was yelling about since he just instinctively tunes out anything dumb but she kept going on and on about coupons.

“Miss, this coupon is expired by 2 days…It's not valid.” The cashier said with a forced smile. “But I use coupons here all the time and you’ve never cared about the date before!” She screeched. The poor cashier tried to respond but the animal in human form wouldn’t give him a chance. “How dare you! I’m a single struggling mother and I NEED these coupons to feed my children!

“Are you fucking kidding me? Bitch, your cart is full of toilet paper. Now can you shut the fuck up and pay already? I got shit to do.” Dan interjected. A moment of silence passed as the woman was simply too stunned at Dan’s obvious logic before she figuratively exploded.

“JUST WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM?! I’LL MAKE SURE YOU NEVER WORK IN THIS PLACE AGAIN!” She ree’d. She grabbed the cashier by the collar and pointed at Dan. “I demand that you fire him at once and call the police, he just sexually harassed me!” The “woman” wailed.

“Bu-but miss…He doesn’t work here…” The cashier stuttered while trying to break free of the monster of society’s grip.

“I’ll have your job too since you are helping him sexually harass me!” Despite her wearing sunglasses, Dan could swear he was seeing red glowing dots slowly growing brighter.

At this point, security had arrived to see what was happening. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to let him go and leave the store.” A buff-looking security guard said while resting his hand on his holstered nightstick.

“ME?! YOU WANT MEEEE TO LEAVE THE STORE!? THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS, HE!” She pointed at Dan who looked to just be done with it all. “SEXUALLY ASSAULTED ME AND YOU WANT ME TO LEAVE?!

The she-beast gave a feral roar before ripping off her sunglasses and unleashing bright red blasts of lasers from her eyes. She fired indiscriminately everywhere she looked. Mass panic erupted as various shoppers fled, toppling carts, shelves, and each other. Dan dove in front of his shopping cart like it was his own child, trying to save it from the death beams but it was in vain. As the rays hit him, he wasn’t vaporized like everything else it touched, but rather a loud explosion occurred sending him and his cart flying through the air and through several aisles. Trapped under hundreds of pounds of ruined product Dan could only lament his loss as he watched the security guard multiply dozens of times, closing in on Mega-Death-Beam Karen.

He had only wanted food but the harsh and unfair reality of superpowered life wouldn’t allow him to have happiness. Closing his eyes wanting to be done with it all his last thoughts were, 'I hate Mondays.'