“Okay, what is so bad about shopping duty again?” Sage asked as they left the back doors of the kitchen area to a small parking lot behind the clans building. The heat on this day was severe and transformed the city into a dusty, smoggy desert, which made wearing this robe that the Elves had given him rather uncomfortable. In the lots, there were several, pretty old and sometimes even rusty cars that clearly had seen better days before. Sage only noticed one exception from the rule, as he saw a 90s sports car, that looked like it had only recently been overhauled and its yellow-black varnishing was glittering in the bright sunlight.

Apparently, some Elves did indeed care about fancy vehicles, even if it was just a minority. But as much as Sage liked the idea of riding on this baby, their target was a different one, specifically the three vans, parked in special spots, pretty close to the street, so parking in and out was easier.

“Have you ever tried shopping for an entire week for 300 people?” Kyu asked him, as they walked side by side to their destination. “There is a reason we have three vans and one why this is a punishment. Here, hold our shopping list.”

Kyu pushed a normal sized page of paper into his hands and unlocked the first of the vans. Sage’s eyebrows rose worriedly, as he realized that the numbers on the numbers on the shopping list where not in pounds or bags, but in tens or sometimes even hundreds of kilos. And given the amount on different ingredients listed, he heavily doubted, one trip would suffice to actually bring home enough food for a week.

Kyu hopped onto the driver’s seat of her car and started the motor, gesturing Sage to join her on the passenger seat.

“Come here, Sage.” she said with a bright smile, as Inu and Titania manned the second van. Sage had tried to act upon Hlaya’s request to take care of her granddaughter in the recent days and... He felt like he was successful. Kyu sought his presence and more often than not, she just dragged him out of his room to where she wanted to have him. Sometimes the other girls of the group were with them but often, they just killed time with each other. In the absence of them, Kyu complained a lot about how she disliked the life at the clan and how she wanted to see more of the world, yet when her clan was criticised or questioned she reacted with an aggressive defence of her clan’s point. She was a dreamer and that broke its way into this incredibly confident, almost bossy behaviour, which marked a key aspect of her character. Sage... liked this behaviour on her, as her dominance on what to do and who to be allowed him to detach himself a bit from the person that he was, but whose history he did not know. He too sought her presence.

“You can drive?” he asked her, as he dropped himself onto the passenger’s seat of the overheated van.

“Yep...” Kyu said with a grin.

“But you are a teenager.” Sage said with raised eyebrows.

Kyu rolled her eyes: “You know it actually has it good parts that the Human justice system refuses to take our slower ageing into account.”

“Explain.” Sage responded curiously. He knew Kyu liked explaining political stuff to people and this way he had something he could listen to as she led the caravan off the parking lot. When they entered the city’s traffic, Kyu started: “The life cycle of us Woodelves is a bit slower than with you Humans. We usually only reach puberty around 17-19 and are considered fully grown adults by our own kind at age 26. Yet, the Human definition of an “adult” is someone who is older than 18 years. And the Humans do this, so they can punish childhood-sins like playing with fire as arson and schoolyard fights like 1st degree battery in courts. Luckily this means us Elves can already get a driver’s license in our teenage years. I am 22 and have 3 years of driving experience. So trust me.”

Indeed she wasn't a bad driver, as she skilfully navigated the convoy through the early noon traffic of the huge city, towards the outskirts.

After a few moments of silence Kyu reached forwards and turned on the radio of the van. After a few mediocre Human pop-songs and a Michael Jackson classic, the news came and Kyu made the radio louder, apparently hoping the heroic deeds of her and her friends would be mentioned once again.

Unfortunately, or maybe luckily the channel had other news to focus on.

“Breaking News: In the case of the abducted son of the Secretary of State, Reso Croix, the government has officially went on to accuse rebellious Elfish clans of the misdemeanour. According to the police, the case has been passed on to the ACEI, which has declared a lockdown on traffic for the Elfish clans in the Jamestown-, John Bell-, Mynesmesoya-, La Rogue- and Freedom Square District, starting this evening at 6:00 pm. In our studio we have Prof. Misa Trinka, expert for Elvish legislation and adviser of the President, who is going to share his opinions of the current situation with us.”

Sage leaned over to Kyu and asked: “What the fuck is the ACEI?”

“A bunch of racists in uniforms.” Kyu responded. “Officially the Agency for Cases with Elfish Involvement. It's a militarized police force with the task of trampling all over our civil rights to frame Elves for crimes they did not commit.”

“Hmmm...” Sage responded and pulled his head back; listening to what this Professor Trinka had to say.

“Professor Trinka.” the moderator started again. “Terror attacks of the Elves are something we are used to on this channel by now, as they happen everywhere in this country and on a daily basis. Yet, few people actually expected these terrorists to actually start targeting the highest government officials of this country. Did you expect something like this to happen?”

“Of course!” an elderly Human voice said from the speakers. “Elves do not care about the Human laws and they have been militarising and organising themselves to the point, where it surprises me, something like this has not happened sooner. I have always warned the President and the politicians about these possibilities, but unfortunately, there was little we could do with the current legal frame.”

“The whereabouts of the young Mr. Croix are yet unknown.” the moderator said again. “Yet, as an expert, is there any guess you can make about where the Elves would bring him?”

“There are exactly two possibilities.” the Professor responded. “Either this is a radical splinter faction from some local clan. In that case, the ACEI should be able to find him by systematically besieging every Clans building in this entire city. Or this is a group of professional terrorists and rebels, who will likely be driving him out of the city and to the nests of their sympathizers in the south and the west. In this case, this is an act of war and the government should react appropriately by systematically destroying the unlawful communes that the Elves have erected in these parts of the country.”

“The ACEI has declared a lockdown for the clans’ buildings starting this evening.” the moderator passed the word back again. “From your previous statements it seems obvious you do not see these measures as sufficient?”

“Not at all.” the Professor raged on. “But unfortunately these hippies are from the left and the hippies are not allowing the actual statesmen in our country to equip the police and ACEI with the necessary rights to combat the Elfish tendencies of opposing law and justice and defending terrorism. We...”

Kyu turned the radio off, obviously done with the bullshit coming from the news channel. Sage gave her a questioning look: “You... didn't hide the secretary's son under your bed, did you?”

Kyu laughed quietly and shook her head: “While I wish I did, I cheer for anyone who actually did this. Hit the Humans where it hurts them, I say.”

Sage gave Kyu a worrisome look from the side, saying: “Kyu, I know you oppose the Humans for good reason, but is abducting children a means that can be justified by the cause?”

Kyu just made an annoyed sound: “Sage... during the 1920s, an entire generation of young Elves was abducted from the villages and remote cities, where the traditional ways still existed, for the purpose of ‘re-education’. Everyone who lives in one of these concrete monsters called Clan- Building is literally an abducted slave or the child of one. Like my grandmother for example. Or the leader of our clans. None of them even knew their parents properly, why should Humans have the privilege to do so...”

Sage sighed again. It was pretty hard to argue with Kyu, when she was technically right. All he could say now where things like “but aren't Elves supposed to be better than that?” or “That is too long ago”. Less arguments and more motivational posters which he could give her as a response.

Maybe this was how Kyu had successfully radicalised everyone which Hlaya had put in charge of “watching over her” so far. The longer one talked to Kyu and listened to her radical, violent and incredibly consistent ideas, the more it seemed like there was no other way but to actively take part in the fight against the Humans or indirectly support their cruel behaviour towards the Elves.

“Anyway...” Kyu continued to talk again. “The lock down could be problematic to us. We need to hurry with shopping now.”

“Hurry?” Sage asked confusedly. “It's 11 am and the lockdown starts at 6 pm. That's 7 hours.”

Kyu giggled quietly as Sage said this. She responded: “Sage, we are six people and tasked with shopping several tons of different fruits, vegetables, meats and sweets. This task is an entire days’ worth of work for us, if we're unlucky, even more.”

“Oh dear...” Sage responded and sat back in his seat.

“Yeah.”, Kyu grinned. “Ever wondered why my Grandma used this as a punishment? Now you know.”

As she said this, their journey came to an end, as they arrived at the parking lot of a supermarket... or rather, something that seemed to be a mix of a supermarket and a large warehouse. It had less advertising on the outside then one would expect from a shop of this size, just a huge sign saying: “WALMART SUPPLY AND LOGISTICS CENTER”.

Kyu stopped the car close to the entrance and jumped out, waiting for Titania and Laniel to stop their respective vans next to hers.

“Hey, Kyu!” Titania called as she left the driver’s seat. “Have you heard about the...”

“...Lockdown?” Kyu completed her half-sister’s sentence. “Yeah, unfortunately, yes. We need to hurry now with our shopping business, if we want to get it done in time.”

“Alright...” Laniel said, jumping out of the last van. “Let's go.”

Kyu walked ahead, as the group approached this monstrous shopping mall.

“Each one of you get two shopping carts.” Kyu said and led by example, skilfully pulling the carts out of their queue. “And then let's go... Remember, only one product per cart, or else we can't pay by Libra.”

Sage quickly noticed that this was exactly as much of a normal shopping mall as it's weird outside look suggested, that means not at all. It seemed like this shop was specifically specialised on dealing with costumers like they were, with aisles broad enough for 4 shopping carts and shelves that reached up to five meters towards the ceiling, while often containing just 2-5 products.

“We need... 150 Kilograms of Strawberries...”, Kyu started out as they stopped in front of a cooling shelf, filled with massive amounts of 5-Kilogramm packages of strawberry's in plastic bags. Kyu leaned over and pulled one bag out, gesturing her company to help her. Sage stood still for a moment in disbelief about what Kyu had just said, but as everyone else started to help packing the strawberries into the shopping carts, he felt pressured to do his part and pulled two bags from the freezer, until there where 30 bags in the trolleys and two of them full.

“Alright, next up are Flynnberries...” Kyu said, meaning a black fruit native the Balmor that was often eaten as a topping. “100 Kilograms.”

A quiet sigh went through the group as they walked on for a few meters, just to stop again and pack up more carts full of fruits. When half of them where filled Kyu had new commands: “Sage, Curel, Titania, you can already start to load these into the vans. We’ll follow when the others are full.”

Titania grabbed two of the trolleys without further words and gestured Sage to do the same. He took two carts, but walked a bit slower, so he could help Curel with hers, as she was clearly a bit overburdened with pushing almost 200 Kilogramms of food around.

“Thanks, Sage.” she said, as she noticed her front trolley suddenly being considerably easier to push. “But I can help myself.”

“Are you sure?” Sage asked. “There is no shame in getting some help sometimes.”

“It's not like I'm physically disabled because of my race.” Curel said, as sweat was running down her forehead. She put some extra effort in getting ahead of Sage with her trolley. He gave Curel a slightly worried look, but didn't dig deeper, as Curel was obviously taking offence in these questions.

Titania, who had noticed their falling behind by now, slowed down as well to accommodate for Curel. When she was close enough for Sage to have a comfortable conversation with her, he asked: “So... how does shopping with such amounts of food work? Do we really have to put it all on a conveyor-belt and wait?”

Titania shook her head and walked ahead: “Watch and learn. It's quite simple.”

When they arrived at the checkout, Sage could spot one line with typical, supermarket-style conveyor-belt check outs, and one that just looked like a massive scale in the ground. Titania placed the strawberry-shopping carts on it, and pointed to a display, so Sage could see what was happening.

After a few seconds, the display stopped changing up its numbers and settled on 150.9 kilograms and 573.47 American dollars. Then she pushed the shopping carts off the scale, resetting the weight counter, while the price counter remained at 573.47 Dollars.

Curel was next to push the Flynberry-trolleys forwards, adding 312 dollars to the bill, for 100 kilograms of berries. Sage had Coconuts in his carts and was the last one, adding 140 Dollars to the bill. When everyone was done, Titania pulled out a bank card, pushed it into a terminal and entered a number. No one stopped them from leaving the place and loading the 6 shopping carts into the first van. 

“This mall...” Sage said slowly. “It exists to supply the Clans, doesn't it?”

Curel nodded, while she was skilfully juggling coconut after coconut into the vans storage room. ”Yes... Kyu may hate capitalism, but it's thanks to these companies we can properly supply ourselves.”
“Believe it or not...” Titania added with a grin. “But the government tried to ban supply centres like this, hoping to make our lives harder, but this time the capitalists where on our side and so it didn't happen. They want to sell us stuff after all.”