You are Michelle St. Claire.

Last time you went out to buy something you left in tears. But now Wendy isn’t here, so maybe you have a chance this time.

You’ll have to look at the scars again, though.

Liquid: 30,544.9
Income: ~2200/wk + bonuses
Expenses: 5500/mo lease
Captive money: 10k security deposit
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WetworkIdols @WetworkIdols
Archive http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Wetwork%20Idols%20Quest

>>40766372
>Occupy yourself with something
Window shopping!
I got a vote in before sleep, hurrah.

>>40766707
I wanted to get it dun about a hour earlier but, you know, I'm not that fast.

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>>40766372

You like how you can tint the front window. It makes it impossible to try to scan the road for IEDs, and that relieves some stress.

Money makes a lot of behaviors that were unacceptable when you were deployed tolerable. If you saw a poor or a brown loitering at your checkpoint or breaking curfew, generally you shot first and there wasn’t a second thing to do.

Here, though, rich women wearing clothing and jewelry that would cost you entire months of your already insane pay sit, stand, and take up valuable space without harassment. Not that there aren’t men, you’re suspicious of all.

As you walk around, looking into stores through their large, augmented reality windows you only draw first looks from, rarely seconds. You seem to appease their taste and blend in.

Nobody bothers you, except for glimpses of your reflection. You try to ignore yourself as you pull your scarf higher up your neck and look past you and into the stores. Those jewelry stores look so inviting, you wonder why Wendy told you to stay away.

Almost everyone else has bags full of things they’ve bought. Except for you. You feel your cozy blanket of camouflage leaving you and the bubbling of anxiety in your stomach.

You should probably buy something.

>Act
>Try to shove those feelings down
>Spaghetti harder
>Other

>>40768391
Try to shove the feelings down, maybe find a shop that caters more to your interest and pick up a little something neat. No reason to go hog wild for anxiety.

>>40769864
Shazbot. I got involved airbrushing and I forgot I was trying to run a quest here. My bad.

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>>40768391

You try to shove it down. You’ll just buy something small. As long as you’ve got a bag you’re unassuming, nondescript, and ignorable. If you’re unassuming you’re safe. The ones who talked the most did the most, you did only what you had to do and were done.

Maybe a scarf. You wore a lot of headscarves on deployment, usually in whatever pattern and color the local tribe or state wore. None of them then were as expensive as the one you’re wearing now, or even silk, but a few of them came close or equaled it in terms of actual quality. An eighty year old woman who’s been making scarves since she was ten can’t really make bad scarves. That particular patrol it was split almost fifty-fifty on the gender lines, but that was still only, like, six. You wonder where that one went. It probably got lost in the shuffle after your discharge.

You walk out of the store holding a small paper bag that says it’s one hundred percent sustainably recycled soy. Inside of it is a medium box filled with delicate wrapping tissue paper, folded around a loosely woven cotton scarf that sort of reminds you of one you might have had back then.

Now you feel better. And for that price, you don’t mind wearing it on the job. Anything to protect your privacy. You don’t want to get got like the man Karan wants you to do.

You sit down on a bench under a large, green plant somewhere in between a bush and tree and watch the people out around you. You don’t feel hungry but you feel like you should eat anyways. That’s what people do, right? You still haven’t even looked at swimsuits either.

>Act
>Sit and watch
>Spaghetti harder
>Other

>>40771442
>Other
go window shopping for swimsuits, we can eat afterwards

>>40771442

Eating out of boredom was a bad habit. It made sense then, maybe, since there was hardly any regular meal time. Food had to be consumed when acquired, as quickly as possible. It didn’t take long for that habit to make it back to a FOB and now they’re eating out of boredom.

A lot of fatties and a lot of disgusting latrines.

You’ve been daydreaming a lot lately. Is it because you have more time and money?

You idly reach out and feel the various fabrics swimsuits are made of while screens display how they’d look on your body using video from the cameras all around you.

It can’t even see the scars and damage and you already know you don’t want to see more.

You just buy the least revealing swimsuit-looking-shirt/top you can find and a pair of boyshorts. But maybe one two piece, just in case. Surgery is cheap these days, and you make a lot.

You clutch your second bag, the one with the swimwear in it, close to your chest as you leave the store. You wonder if you’ll ever be brave enough to actually try it on.

Mission accomplished. More or less. You’re already here, though… you could look at any and everything without Wendy.

>Keep shopping
>Return home
>Spaghetti harder
>Other

that was the last post of the night for me. I'm so tired. I might need to move threads back to Tuesday if I feel this exhausted Mondays.

As always, thanks to everyone(all 2 of you) who played and everyone who reads and votes in the archive. Follow me on twitter @WetworkIdols for information on threads.

If the thread survives until tomorrow I'll keep writing, otherwise I'll see you all again soon.

>>40774571
>Other
check out the food court for a quick bite to eat that doesn't bankrupt us

>>40774591
thanks for running OPFOR, I'll give the thread a bump or two before getting some sleep myself

bedtime bump