We decided to leave shortly after Shai finished performing a certain famous Christmas ballet.
Nutcracker, I mean.
Initially, I thought we would just be kicked out as a result of Shai's onslaught, but that wasn't the case. Apparently the guy who I thought was the boss was actually just a regular, random adult.
He had been staying with the group of boy scouts for a while. The real leader was a kid named Ricky. I spoke to him while I was looking at the popcorn, and apparently he and Shai had talked before our conversation. And apparently she was very cordial. So maybe she brainwashed him somehow. Drugged the popcorn? Bribed him? Whatever the case, "bossman" wasn't actually anybody. They really only tied Shai up because they didn't want unsavory people roaming around their home. Makes sense to me. After I talked with the aforementioned Ricky, Shai got the rest of her stuff, and we decided to leave.
"Hey Mama," Shai speaks up as we're walking along the road. Mama turns her head to Shai, "Do you want to try this?"
Mama licks her lips, "What is it? Smells good."
"Popcorn," Shai grabs a handful and holds it out.
Mama gets in a defensive stance, startling us all, "You're not trying to kill me, are you?"
"Woah, woah," I put my hands out and try to defuse the situation, "Is popcorn poisonous to bears?"
"No, but bullets tend to be," Mama growls at Shai.
"There's no bullets in the popcorn. Or anywhere else around here."
Shai starts laughing. We're all shocked again, "Oh I'm so stupid."
"I know that, yeah," she rolls her eyes, "What is it this time?"
"Popcorn is a bait a lot of people use for hunting bears," she tosses the popcorn into her mouth, "I guess I just wouldn't have expected her to recognize it as that. Sorry."
"Huh..." is all I can mutter. Mama is still pretty tense, but she stopped growling, "People hunt bears?"
"Yes," Mama replies. Shai nods.
"You can only really do it up north around here though."
"How do you know that?" Mama asks suspiciously.
"I've never hunted bear," she puts her hands up, "But my dad liked to hunt. Didn't like much else besides that. I know a lot about that kind of stuff. How do you know about popcorn bait?" Shai flips it back to Mama.
Expertly executed, the flipping of the question. Chef's kiss.
"My mentor taught me about it."
"Mentor?" I interject, "Bears have mentors?"
"Well not most," Mama finally eases up, "I did though. It wasn't another Bear."
"What was it?"
"An especially kind wolverine."
"Bullshit," Shai starts laughing, "No way a wolverine would be friendly to anything."
"Do wolverines even exist?" I ask earnestly. Shai just laughs again, "Well I've never seen one. I've never met anyone who's seen one either."
"Of course they exist. Are you sure it was a wolverine?"
"That's what he called himself," Mama replies, "I'm not sure exactly why, but he took care of me starting from when I was young. Maybe he thought I was a wolverine cub."
'Although I've never heard of it happening, it's certainly possible,' Gary adds, 'Wolverine and bear cubs look remarkably similar.'
"That's right," Shai says as well.
Mama and I speak at the same time, "Huh, didn't know."
'I suppose I should have told you all that I figured out a way to communicate with all of you at once.'
"Very cool!" I say.
"Shoulda said so." Shai says at the same time.
"Huh??" Mama asks, also at the same time.
'Sorry. This might take some time to get used to.'
"You don't say," I reply, "It'll kinda be hard to know who should respond."
'I'm sure we can think of something. A code maybe?'
I gasp, "Ooh coooool, a code."
"Sure that works," Shai says at the same time.
"What's a code?" Mama blurts out, also at the same time.
'We'll work it out. In the meantime, I'll just say the name of whoever I'm talking to. All of you got that?'
"Copy."
"Yup."
"I'll try my best!"
"Anyway," I segue, "Can I ask you more about your mentor, Mama?"
"Sure thing! Shoot."
"What'd he teach you?"
"He taught me how to hunt like a wolverine."
"Which means...?" Shai steps into the conversation.
"Let other animals do the work when you can, and just scare them off."
"Huh... that's not considered cowardly?" I ask.
"Animals don't care about that. We don't really think about that, just about eating and stuff."
"So then wouldn't the animals probably be pretty pissed that you took their food?" Shai argues.
"Maybe. Who knows? But animals don't live the same lives as humans. We don't live as long, so it's not that we just don't want to care, it's that we can't care. Life's so short for us that we just have to move on to the next meal."
Shai taps her foot, "So food is that much more important then. To extend the already short lives."
"Look, you're the one who knows about hunting," Shai is caught a little off guard, "something where you kill animals for fun."
"Yeah... but it's really heavily regulated..."
'It is, enough to make it a safe and fair practice, but that's not the point,' Gary intervenes, 'the point is, neither of you are in any position to criticize each other.'
"I-" Shai tries to think of an argument. She concedes, "Yeah. That makes sense. Even though she stole, it was justified. More justified than killing animals for sport."
"I don't know if I would call it stealing," Mama continues, "Maybe more like scavenging."
"More like you profited off of their hard work, maybe," I add. Shai nods along.
"Yeah! Wait. No," she stops and scratches her head, "That one doesn't sound right."
"Pilfered?" Shai suggests. Mama shakes her head, "Robbed? Jacked? Mugged? Ganked?"
Mama shakes her head at all of those.
"We'll just go with borrowed from," Mama shakes her head again, "That's too harsh for you?"
"No, it's just not honest. Stolen from works the best after all."
Shai and I stare in speechless confusion. Mama starts moving again. We follow along.
'Was that all your mentor taught you, Mama?'
"Taught me some other stuff too. Taught me about some kinds of traps. Like what kinds of foods to be cautious around."
"Like popcorn?" Shai throws some in her mouth.
"Yeah and lots of other stuff too. Learned to avoid barrels that smelled good cus that was just bait," Mama continues, "Not all bait was from people trying to kill me, but some of it was. Didn't really want to risk anything. I don't really know the names, just the smells and the looks."
"But you didn't recognise popcorn by the smell," I point out.
"Good point," she stops again, "That smells different than other popcorn."
Shai pops some in her mouth, "It's kettle corn- premium shit too. I doubt people'd use this as bait. Are you sure you don't want any?"
Mama lowers her head a bit, "I try to take it easy on the added sugars."
"Makes sense," I say, "So what do you eat?"
"Red stuff, yellowish stuff," her head perks up, "Ooh, sometimes there's things that jump out of the water. I like those."
"Salmon maybe?" Shai suggests as she tosses more popcorn in her mouth.
"Iunno," Mama does something reminiscent of a shrug. It's hard to tell with her walking on all fours, "They just jumped out of the water. Flopped all around and had weird skin."
"Probably salmon then," I reiterate. She does the shrug thing again, "We could try to look for some. That could be our mission now."
"Wasn't that kind of our mission in the first place?" Shai asks.
"We were looking for food," I rub my chin, "but now we're looking for salmon specifically."
"Right," Shai throws some popcorn in her mouth. I reach out for some, but she shoves her hand in first.
Reflexively, I pull mine back. It's snack food etiquette to only have one hand in the bag at a time.
She continues, "Well I'm not sure if we're going to be able to find salmon that isn't expired."
"Would you be able to eat that? If it was expired?" I ask Mama. She shakes her head, "What if we try to find some in the wild?"
"We'd have to go up north probably," Shai rubs her chin. I reach out for popcorn, but, once again, I'm too slow, "It's right around peak salmon season."
'That is true,' Gary adds, 'The closest river we could feasibly get salmon from is around 200 miles from here. A good three to four hours travelling by car.'
"We don't have a car," I point out.
"So then it'd probably take longer than that," Shai also points out.
Gary nods, 'I might be able to do something about transportation.'
My eyes light up, "We can ride on your back and you can fly there?"
Shai has a similar reaction. She turns to Gary, "Can we? Is that true?"
'Sort of,' Shai fist pumps with joy, 'But I need your permission to leave for a little bit.'
"Of course!" Shai exclaims as she twirls around.
'I meant you, Bright. I should have just said it to you in the first place.'
'Yeah, sure that's fine,' I respond, 'Where are you going?'
'Somewhere very far. Although that's not the biggest problem,' he pauses for a second, 'Anyway, I need you to say that I can leave for a while.'
'Yeah, it's cool. I already said you could.'
'No, I need you to say the whole thing.'
I'm a bit weirded out... but I'm not going to mess with whatever monster rules Gary has going on, 'It's okay with me if you leave me for a while.'
'I think that'll work.'
'Wha-' he disperses into gas, and his magnetic orb floats up. I'm left just scratching my head, trying to parse together what that meant.
"What was that about?" Shai asks. I shrug. She throws some more popcorn in her mouth, "We should look for more food."
"What about the popcorn?" She turns the bag upside down, "Seriously?" She nods, "There's no secret compartments in there?"
"In the popcorn bag?" She checks in the bag, just to be sure.
"Shquit talkin bout popcorn," Mama rubs her nose and sniffles, "So seepy," she yawns.
We try to keep moving, but Mama keeps loudly yawning and exclaiming how tired she is.
So we usher her to a building across the street. It's called King Charles Entertainment's Fun Castle. I think it's the same as Chuck E. Cheese, but when I said that, Shai just laughed at me.
Mama wouldn't wake up after we moved her into the building.
"Do you think she's hungry?" I ask as we look at the sleeping bear.
"You ask a lot of questions," Shai says. She turns and starts walking out.
"I'm just generally a confused person," I follow her, "and I think you're forgetting that I'm not from here."
"Yeah, yeah whatever," She waves me off, "We shouldn't be focusing on that right now."
"Well you were the one that brought it up," she keeps waving her hand around, "Where should we look for food?"
"I guess we should check some grocery stores around the area. There's an Aldi nearby."
"I've never been inside an Aldi. Do you think Aldi has salmon?"
"I don't know. I've never been in one either. I'm worried that there won't be any food at all."
We keep moving in silence for a bit, "I'm assuming that we're heading towards the Aldi."
"Yeah, why wouldn't we be?"
"Just wanted to make sure I wasn't blindly following you into a trap."
"I've been carrying a sword this whole time," she holds the sword up for a second, "I have you as trapped as I would need to kill you right now."
"I forgot about the sword. That's a good point I guess."
She scoffs, "I guess," she says in a mocking tone.
"Do you think we need a membership card to get in to Aldi?"
"What?" She's caught off guard, "uh, well- I doubt the greeter's really gonna care."
"Oh, Aldi has greeters? Maybe I should apply."
"I doubt you'd get the job. It's a very competitive market."
We cross a street to the plaza with the Aldi. It's quite odd, the Aldi is in great condition. Not even great, it's pristine, spotless. All of the other buildings in the plaza are destroyed.
"I guess it might actually be a pretty competitive market."
"Yeah, that's what I said. And with your resume? No shot," she laughs, but her face grows serious after a second or two, "But seriously, It's too clean."
"I'm with you on that. I'm something of a detective myself."
"Right," she mutters as she walks forward cautiously.
"I'm trusting that you're trained with that. I don't really want to die again."
"You think I can't use it because I'm a girl?"
"No, I've seen plenty of women who can use swords."
"So why can't I?"
"I wasn't saying you couldn't, I was asking if you could."
"Whatever. We shouldn't be focusing on this."
Well what should we be focusing on?
"You say that a lot, you know?"
"Yeah? So what?"
"So nothing. Did you know that katanas are very easily broken?"
"No, I didn't."
"There's a certain way you have to swing it so it doesn't break."
She does a mock swing, "Something like that, right?"
I shrug, "I don't know."
She gives me a dirty look, "You said that like you'd be able to tell me what to do."
Sounds like someone hasn't watched Demon Slayer, "Just make sure to put all your weight into it. I think."
Sounds like someone doesn't remember all the valuable lessons taught by Demon Slayer.
"What does that mean?"
"I don't remember exactly what to do."
"Well, thanks. Five stars. A +, coach."
I scratch my cheek, "The student is supposed to be nice to the teacher."
And so we march on towards the suspiciously well kept Aldi.
I really hope we don't need that membership card.