Battle Royale w. Cheese! Turn 1.5 - Tifa, Tohru, and Albedo (A Mostly Mundane Mall) (Patreon)

Soaking wet, Tifa stepped out of the fountain, swept aside her sodden hair, and looked around, scowling.

“What is this place?” said the woman called Albedo, voice dripping with disdain. “Why are there so many humans here?”

Tifa wished she had an answer.

The three of them stood on the edge of an indoor fountain. Their escape pod had stuck in the ceiling above, forcing them to drop into the water. That wouldn’t have been too bad, but the second they’d struck it, their clothes had melted into the flimsiest swimsuits Tifa had ever seen. She’d thought she was used to skimpy clothing, but this…

Surprisingly, none of the hundreds of people milling around them seemed the slightest bit interested in the curvaceous, near-naked women who’d dropped through their ceiling. There must be hundreds of them, all wearing strange clothing, all carrying bulging bags, and all pointedly ignoring them.

“It’s a mall!” said the one the cat-things had called Tohru, putting her hands on her hips and grinning at them smugly. “Don’t either of you know anything about the human world?”

Albedo raised a hand as if to strike her, but before she had a chance, a light on her Collar flashed. She dropped it with a hiss.

“A mall?” asked Tifa.

“Yeah! It’s like a bazaar!” Tohru didn’t seem as bothered by her change of clothing as the rest of them.

“Oh, it’s like Wall Market,” said Tifa, looking around. That explained the bags, if not why the shoppers had failed to see them. “So, what should we do?”

“Do as you like,” said Albedo. “I have no intention of working with either of you.” She turned and strolled away. She was almost out of sight when her Collar started beeping.

With a zzzap!, all three of their Collars flashed with pink electricity. Arcs zipped between the trio, tying them together. Before Tifa could react, she found herself snatched forward. Tohru and Albedo cried out as they sailed through the air too.

The three of them crashed together at a point exactly equidistant to where the three of them had been standing and dropped to their knees with a single collective groan. None of the shoppers took any notice of them.

Albedo was the first to her feet. “How dare they?!” she demanded. “First they force me to wear this slave collar, then they compel me to expose a body reserved for one individual only! And now…” She turned on Tifa and Tohru with an expression like a demon. “Now they insist that I work with two pitiful specimens of inferior species…?”

Tohru’s nostrils flared. “Inferior species?!”

Tifa tightened her eyes, refusing to avoid Albedo’s glare. “I don’t think you have much of a choice.”

Albedo grit her teeth and said nothing.

Striding past her, Tifa looked around. With the context Tohru had given her, it was easy to recognize this strange building as a marketplace. She still had little clue how to proceed, but her first instinct was to arm herself.

“Tohru?” she said. “Can you buy weapons at this kind of bazaar?”

Tohru stopped scowling to blink in surprise. “Ah, uh, weapons?” She scratched her hair. “Ah, um, sure! Malls sell everything if you look hard enough!”

Her tone made Tifa frown, but she didn’t know what to make out of it. “Then we should look for a weapons store… if that’s okay with you?” She glanced at Albedo, who scowled.

“That seems like a reasonable course of action,” she said, voice tight.

“I’m glad you agree,” said Tifa. “It’s decided then. We’ll look for a–”

Her Collar beeped.