Currently, Blake and Lillia were both sitting in the back seat of a taxi. Lillia was quite amazed at this new form of transportation as she gazed out the windows and looked at all the new and fantastical things. While the driver felt that the girl was nuts, Blake watched from the side with a small smile on his face. He wondered how he would have reacted if he had slept for a long time to wake up to a whole different world.
The trip to the mall was an hour and a half drive. When the two got out of the car, Blake paid the driver before taking Lillia's hand and pulling her to cross the street as he did not plan to go into the mall itself. He was planning to go to the Falmart across the street. He had to make the most of his money, so he decided to go there where he could buy in bulk, and if Lillia did anything weird, she would fit right in. After all, it was Falmart.
"Blake, what is this?" Lillia asked as Blake took a carriage.
"It's a shopping cart. It is used to put the items you wish to buy in. Sometimes parents will stick their young ones in them to keep them from running all over as well. You can take one too. We will be needing two anyway." Blake explained.
"Okay!" Lillia happily went to take out a shopping cart, but when she pulled on it, they all moved at the same time. She furrowed her brow and pushed the carts back in, and tried pulling on it once more. But this only resulted in the same thing happening a second time.
Seeing her struggle, Blake chuckled and walked over and held the handle of the cart in front of the one Lillia was trying to pull out. "Now try."
Lillia pursed her lips and pulled on the cart. As she did, the cart easily slid out, causing her to smile. "Hehe!" With a bit of a proud expression on her face, she waited for Blake to praise her. Sadly she only a: "Alright, let's get going." instead of any praise.
Seeing him take the cart in front of him and push it into the store, Lillia snorted and pushed the cart into the store, following after him. Whether she was mad at him or not, it didn't matter. As he was now her mate, she had to follow him no matter where he went or how she was feeling. This was just how her race was.
The two, one pouting and the other smiling, pushed their carts down the aisles of the store. Blake was heading to the camping section to get a tent, some sleeping bags, and other survival type gear. While he did not need to worry about fire since magic could handle that, he still needed to get things to use while stuck outside.
He also did not need to buy bottled water or anything like that for himself. All of it would be for bartering later on for other things. This meant he could splurge on a better tent that would be more comfortable to sleep in. He also wanted to get some batteries and a small hand crank generator he could use to keep his phone going. He knew he couldn't use it for the internet or anything like that when the apocalypse happened, but he could still use the GPS function on it to check where certain stores were so he could raid them before others did.
But besides these essentials, he wanted lots of socks and underwear and clothing. But thinking up to here, A question came to mind, "Lillia, your dress. You made it longer earlier, which is normal for humanoid dragons, but are you able to wear normal clothing as well?"
"Yes. My dress is only my scales taking shape as a dress. If I retract them, I can wear normal clothing, but if I am attacked, they might get torn or destroyed, which is why I have never really cared too much about actual clothing." Lillia explained.
"I see. So wait, does that mean you could have used scales to cover that spot as well?" Blake asked, his cheeks slightly red. It was not the sort of topic he was used to talking about.
Lillia looked at Blake and grinned without saying anything. She would not answer him as payback for not praising her! Not paying attention to the questioning look on Blake's face, she pointed at a thing at the side. "What is this?"
"That?" Blake looked at what she was pointing to and answered: "It's a kids pool. You fill it with water and swim in it on hot days."
"Hmm… Strange things." There were just so many different things that she had never seen before that she did not know what to make of them. But this made her feel relieved. It seemed that back then, her race made the right decision. The human race was truly able to rise back up and have created so many grand things. Even without magic, they were still able to flourish.
"We will need a geiger counter as well…" Blake mumbled as he looked at the shelf full of different kinds of geiger counters. When the Dragonic appeared, the government found that their weapons were useless against the dragons and decided to risk it all and try to nuke them, but even after trying several times, they only succeeded in sending radioactive materials up into the sky, which fell down as radioactive rain. This made many areas hard to move around in since some radiation levels were higher than others.
"What is that?" Lillia leaned over and looked at the object in Blake's hand.
"This will help detect if there is radiation around. Radiation is dangerous to humans. But it doesn't seem to bother dragons. At least the Dargonic were not bothered by it even after being hit with a large bomb." Blake replied as he looked at the one he picked up to see if it was rechargeable or not.
"Radiation? Bomb?" Hearing all these new words, Lillia wondered just what these things were.
"I will show you what they are when we return home since it is easier to see pictures of it than it is for me to explain it." Blake was not trying to avoid her question, but trying to explain to someone who has never seen nor heard of such things would be hard without pictures.
"Then I will wait until we get home." Lillia was not bothered by having to wait to get her answer. But she was even more curious now than before about this bomb and radiation thing. From the sounds of it, it seemed humans had used it against the dragonic as some sort of weapon. She wondered what kind of weapon humans were able to make without magic.
"This is the basics. Let's go to the clothing section and then pick up some food supplies and water. After that, we can head to someplace to eat before going home." Blake already got the main things they needed for themselves besides clothing and canned and dried foods.
The two shopped for another two hours before filling up both carts. To make things easier on them, they pushed the carts to the self checkout line. After spending two thousand eight hundred, mostly clothing for them, of the three thousand six hundred, Blake felt that the future was going to be much easier this time around. Now they just had to leave the store with the goods they bought and then find a spot with no one looking and have Lillia stick it all in her space.
They walked out of the store and towards the side of the building. As soon as they turned the corner, Blake stopped and looked around to see if there were any cameras. When he saw that the coast was clear, he asked Lillia: "Lillia, can you store them away, please?"
Lillia nodded and waved her hand, causing all the items in the shopping carts to disappear. With this all set, Blake let out a sigh of relief. Now he wanted to treat Lillia to something good to eat. But as the two walked around the corner of the building to walk towards the main road, a familiar person with a bandage on his nose suddenly stepped out in front of him. "Well, Well, if it isn't Trash Boy. Fancy meeting you here. You really surprised me last time. Did you think I would let you go that easily?"
It was none other than Darrel Palmer, the man Blake had beaten up when he first returned. Seeing him, Blake's expression turned dark. "Darrel, if I was you, I would leave now."
"Huh? Are you acting all tough guy now? You caught me off guard last time. But now, I am more than ready for you to attack me back. Or is it…." Darrel looked at Lillia and grinned. "I see. You finally got a girl, and now you want to impress her. Too bad you are about to get your ass kicked. But don't worry I will make sure to treat your girl very well. "