I've been suffering from a bit of writer's block and also working on several other projects. But once I started writing this chapter the ideas started flowing.

I had more planned and I was on the fence about cutting down this chapter since it was growing out of control. In the end, I decided to keep most of it, but cut down the tail a little bit.

Out With a Yang

The quickest way to know a woman is to go shopping with her.
-Marcelene Cox

"You've got to be kidding me," I groan, eyes darting between an irritated Yang and her prized Bumblebee.

I've never been on a motorbike, nor have I ever particularly wanted to. I heard that something like 50% of bikers die on their machines, and though that sounds a bit exaggerated the things still scare the shit out of me. I mean, some people take these things up to highway speed. That sometimes makes me nervous in an enclosed car full of airbags. A motorcycle is open-air and not even naturally stable. And I knew that Yang drives like crazy, which would only make things worse.

Yang raised an eyebrow. "What, are you scared?"

I answer honestly. "Yes. Very."

She grabs a black helmet and tosses it my way. "Just put it on, space man."

"Space man?" I ask, inspecting the helmet. Right away I realize this thing probably wouldn't pass CSA testing... or any sort of decent standard. It's more like the kind of thing a skateboarder might wear than a biker. But hey, maybe it's made out of super-duper metamaterials.

I'm just going to tell myself that.

"You say you're from another planet. So... space man."

"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," I mutter grimly, strapping the helmet on what I hope was the correct way. I was sure there was a double meaning to Yang's nickname. Was she calling me crazy?

"What?"

"Nevermind." I take a deep breath. "Let's just get this over with."

Yang swung her leg over her bike and started it with a button between the handlebars. Nervously, I climb on behind her and wrap my arms loosely around her waist. Any reservations about not appearing too close to a hot underaged girl went straight out the window the moment she hit the throttle. No chances. I held on for dear life as the wind stung my eyeballs and flayed my exposed skin. It's hot as fuck and the sun is boiling, yet I'm somehow freezing my ass off on the back of that bike.

The road trip consisted of me shouting a mix of profanities and questioning the legality of Yang's actions, and her laughing her goddamn ass off. It was a pretty short trip, maybe five minutes. Provided she wasn't speeding too bad, we went maybe five to ten kilometres. I didn't get a good look at where we were actually going. Neptune always has goggles, that lucky motherfucker.

On a barely related note, has anyone ever reflected on how unusual it is to have a girl driving and a guy riding behind on a motorcycle on Earth?

Needless to say, I'm beyond relief when we finally come to a stop and I unbury my face from the back of Yang's jacket. She hops off and laughs. I hobble off and dry heave.

We're parked at the edge of a nearly empty parking lot. Ahead of us was a strip mall that was surprisingly modern and inviting considering it's on the ass end of nowhere. I spotted a small grocery store, a disproportionately large clothing store, what might have been a hardware store, a barber or hairdresser, a pizza place and a few stores I had no idea about. On the other side of the street sat an apartment block and what looked like an insurance building.

"Well, this is the closest thing Patch has to a mall," Yang tells me. She hands me a stack of thick plastic cards. "500 lien. I've got to pick up some groceries for dad." With that she turns and struts away to the grocery store.

I take a deep breath. "Shit."

My first stop is the clothing store. I figure that's what I came here for and that's what I really need the most. Spectral Apparel would be best described as incredible, or possibly incredibly disorganized. In general, it looked very much like a normal clothing store, with tills at the front, racks upon racks of clothing in the middle, accessories scattered around, shoes along one wall, and fitting rooms in the back. A teenaged girl was comparing two shirts and a middle-aged man stepped out of one of the fitting rooms, frowning at a mirror.

But it's just different enough to be really freaky, like that one time I went south of the border. The tills are strange affairs with fluorescent green holographic displays. The cashier wore a tie-dye shirt that might actually be the store uniform considering the name. There was an obvious kids section, but no apparent division between mens and womens sections. The racks were just kind of shoved together with no obvious aisles.

And, of course, everything is super fucking bright colours.

I do my usual routine and start wandering. There are no baskets as far as I can tell, so I just start weaving my way through the racks. I give the stereotypical teenager and the creepy old guy a wide berth. I'm trying to find the men's clothing. On Earth, that's pretty easy. Bigger sizes, portraits of professional-looking guys, subdued colours. On Remnant, or at least in this store, it all looks the same.

I almost give up and start looking for shoes. I mean, my shoes were pretty worn when I got here and I should probably pick up some new ones anyway. On my way to the shoe shelf, a stack of t-shirts catches my eye. Solid colours, a bit bright but very much like what I wear on Earth. Men's or women's sizes? I pick up a nice blue one that's definitely not my size and try to read the tag.

Large, Fitted F, 65 Duratex/35 Hypalon. I pick up another one that looks and feels more normal. Large, Loose, 100 Duratex. I pick up a third one, this one similar to the first but differently shaped. Medium, Fitted M, 65 Duratex/35 Hypalon.

"Son of a bitch."

I can't find the men's section because it doesn't exist. Same shirt, different fit. But I guess that makes sense, doesn't it? There are no mens and womens clothes, only clothes that fit guys and clothes that fit girls.

Of course, I could be talking completely out of my ass and I'm going to walk out of here looking like a crossdressing circus clown. But I'd expected that already.

I check the price tag. Twenty lien, which could be cheap or a complete ripoff. I grab the blue shirt that looks like it's going to fit, the same one in forest green, a navy blue one and an orange one I'll probably never wear.

Now is probably a good time to mention that I hate shopping for clothing on a good day. Let alone a fucking horrible forty degree caffeine withdrawl day on another planet where nothing makes any damn sense.

Ahem. Next up, pants.

Sometimes I had a lot of trouble finding those on Earth. I saw a lot of brightly coloured trousers on racks, but, I mean, damn. There was a shelf full of blue jeans, too. I thought about that since they're so stereotypically Terran, but I actually kind of hate those damn things. No, I was looking for beige cargo pants. Oddly specific for someone in my position, wasn't it? Those I found in a neglected rack near the back corner.

I sifted through the rack before pulling out something that looked my size and was labelled relaxed fit for men. Close enough. The shirts I was pretty sure would fit, but the pants I had to try on. That was something I knew from personal experience. So I grabbed two pairs that looked the right size, one pair bigger and one pair smaller. Then carried the messy bundle of garments to the fitting rooms, tossed it inside and empty one, and slammed the door shut behind me.

My first guess was right. Thank god for small miracles.

"So, socks and underwear next?" a familiar voice asks as I step out of the fitting room.

I drop everything. "Damn it Yang!"

She smirks, eyeing my pile of clothing. "Wow, Space Man, you have an odd sense of style."

"Um." I know I don't have the greatest sense of style on Earth, what with cargo pants and tee shirts. Sometimes button-up shirts if I'm feeling fancy. I probably looked like a psychopath or something on Remnant.

"I guess people don't dress the same on your planet, huh."

"Not really," I reply, picking up my clothing but more or less leaving my bruised pride on the ground.

"Well, if it's your style, it's your style."

"I didn't pick all girls clothes, did I?"

"No, it's just that I thought your colour was blue."

"Huh?"

"Well, Cyan, right?" she asked. "But you can only put together one or two outfits that has any blue at all with that."

"We don't really have colours," I told her, finally catching on. Of course. Ruby is red, Yang is yellow, forever and always. Or some shit like that. "Cyan isn't even my real name. We don't have that tradition. Our great war was less suppressing individuality and more wiping out ethnic groups."

She crossed her arms. "If you're really from another world, how do you know about the Great War?"

"What? I can read, you know," I lie. A simple lie that lets them draw their own conclusions is better. I think. I hope.

"Look, Ruby might believe you blindly, and I don't know what's up with dad, but I think you're hiding something." she accuses. "You're from somewhere else, fine. Maybe your airship really did crash, maybe this was your plan all along-"

"What's your problem with me, Yang?" I snap. I hadn't really meant to be that blunt, but it kind of slipped out.

"You don't make any sense!" Yang yelled. Great, she's going to draw a crowd. "Nothing about you! Somehow you're the only one who survived that airship crash, but you're reacting like a real survivor. You're so awkward and weird but I know there's a lot more going on in that head of yours. You tried to lie but you can't lie worth a damn. Your story is clearly made up yet I'm pretty sure you actually would have killed yourself if I hadn't showed up."

This, I'm totally shocked by. Mostly. "I'm- what? I tried to off myself?"

"Yeah. You were just sitting there in the bathroom with the door open," she told me, clearly and understandably perturbed. "Then you saw me, laughed like super harshly, and started listing off all the ways you could kill yourself. Things like hanging yourself with the shower hose, Cyan."

I have no answer for that. But I have to reply with something.

"Yang, listen to me. My world as I knew it is gone. I have no idea how I got here and no idea if there's a way back. My friends are gone. My family is gone. I am now alone in a strange land. I know enough about your world to know I don't want to be in it." I reply quietly, voice breaking. Big boys don't cry. "I don't know you understand depression on your world, or PTSD, or anything like that. I will be the first to admit I am fucked up. But there's no agenda here. I have no plan. Not for today, not for tomorrow, not for destroying the world or saving it."

Yang takes a step forward. She smells sweet. Wow. This entire situation and that's what I notice. Yang smells nice. Like whatever flowery shit is in Lady Speed Stick plus a hint of charcoal. That's borderline fucking perverted. "You're not alone, Space Man. Just stop lying."

I don't answer that either. "Everyone is staring at us."

"Ignore them," she tells me.

"They're staring," I repeat.

"Ignore them," she repeats. She turns to the teenage shopper, now staring at us with mouth agape. "Hey! Scram!"

I clear my throat. That was the most awkward fucking conversation I've ever had. Yeah, I know I've said that before I also know I'm going to be replaying that in my mind for the next week. For now, I just want to forget it. "Socks and underwear?"

Yang nods. "Socks and underwear."

Silently, I head over to the accessories section. The underwear was conveniently labelled in matching pant size, which probably saved my ass... maybe literally. I almost grab socks for size 8-10 shoes before realizing that they're a bit small and that shoe sizes are unlikely to match.

I sigh and take off one of my worn-out sneakers. I don't really want to talk to Yang, but she's standing right there. "What size you would say this shoe is?"

She wrinkles her nose at my filthy sneaker. "Maybe ten and a half or eleven?"

"Men's size or women's size?" I ask, putting the shoe back on. I'm one of those exceptionally lazy people who rarely actually ties his laces.

"Huh? Looks like an extra-wide if that's what you're asking."

"Right. Sure." I grab a package of size 10-12 socks, the long kind that apparently only old people and me wear. They look pretty much like socks. "I think I want some new shoes too... belt."

"What?"

There was a display of belts beside the socks. I grab one that doesn't look retarded. It turns out way too short. I grab a similar one that's longer. That one fits.

"Forty lien," I half-mutter, half-ask. "Is that reasonable for a belt here?"

Yang shrugs. "It's about average."

"Sure." I grab the belt and toss it onto the growing awkward pile of clothing in my arms.

"I can carry some of that," Yang offers.

"No, I'm fine." I wave my arm for emphasis and send half my clothes flying. "Okay, I'm not fine."

I hand over the remaining clothes and pick up the rest. Yang laughs at me as she expertly tucks the stack of apparel under her arm.

"I want to get some new shoes, too," I tell Yang. Without waiting for a reply, I head over to the shoe section.

I used to have a lot of trouble with shoe shopping. I could never find something I liked. Then I found one kind I liked and bought the same one for something like five years, which made things a lot easier. Obviously, that's not going to do me a lot of good here. I look for something similar and find a decent-looking white sneaker.

There's a price tag under it. At home I'd pay about twenty dollars for a shirt and ninety for a pair of shoes. These are only 45 lien? "At least shoes are cheaper. Relatively speaking."

"Those shoes are cheap because they're junk." Yang grabs the example shoe from my hand and bends it back and forth. "They wouldn't last even one hike."

"I don't plan on climbing mountains," I remind her. "They're probably still better than what you're wearing."

"Folded newspaper would be better than what you're wearing," she quips.

I don't really have a retort for that. I shrug and search for my size. At least in this store, buying shoes seems to be a find it yourself affair. A good-sized stack of boxes fits under the display shelves, spattered in bright colours and bold graphics. No bright Nike orange or subdued Reebok black, though. The shoes I'm looking for are S-Athletics 442s and they come in a grey box with an abstract white motif I don't understand at all

I pull out one, size 10.5 and extra wide. I open the box and pull out one of the shoes before stopping. "We're allowed to try them on here, right?"

Yang rolls her eyes. "Well, yeah. Is that not a thing where you come from?"

I let out another sigh before trying the shoes. They fit... not great, but tolerably. Hopefully they'll wear in. I take a few experimental steps before shoving the shoes back in their box.

"Okay, I think I'm done," I announce, probably too dramatically. "Let's pay and get out of here."

"Sure."

One trip through the till avoiding eye contact later, I'm 230 lien poorer and I finally have some fresh clothing that fits me.

I'm honestly kind of surprised that I went that long without.

We're headed back out toward Bumblebee (honestly, why couldn't it be the other Bumblebee?) when I think of something. "Hey, Yang, I know you were just there but could we check out the grocery store? "

"That's probably a good idea."

Like the clothing store, the grocery store is pleasantly air conditioned. Maybe a few degrees cooler, actually. It looks kind of an IGA or a country market. Near the entrance is a line of six tills and a customer service counter, sparsely staffed. Produce is on the right, dairy and meat along the back, bakery on the left, everything else in between. I don't recognize any of the brands, but it's clearly a grocery store.

My target is nestled between housewares and snack foods. I pick up a normal-looking toothbrush and some Shi-nee toothpaste (because why not) but I can't seem to find any floss. I do find a travel-sized mouthwash and some soap that doesn't smell completely horrible (but might cause me to break out in hives). I sniff some of the deodorant, can't stand any of it, and grab the least offensive anyway. There's probably something else I'm missing, but I have no idea what.

Someone laughs. That's right. I almost forget that Yang is standing right behind me. I'm slightly embarrassed when I remember that.

I dump everything into my shopping basket before heading over one aisle where I pick up a bag of barbecue chips, a Phoam chocolate bar, and a nice cold Schnee cola.

"Those will make you fat," Yang tells me.

"That's literally the least of my worries right now," I shoot back.

I take a longing look at the liquor section on my way to the till. I don't really drink- only when the occasion warrants it. This occasion certainly does, and a fuck of a lot of it too. I'm almost certainly old enough to drink here, but I doubt they'd accept my ID.

Close, but no cigar. Or booze, in this case.

Twenty-seven lien, poof. It's a nice number. I make sure to keep the receipt. I'm still trying to get a handle on prices. Most of it you can almost replace dollars with lien and have the same number, but some things are really expensive and some things are really cheap.

By the time we're through the grocery store, I'm feeling slightly more human again. There's something to be said for retail therapy, I guess. It almost feels normal to spend money on mundane shit again. It's more like the quiet shops of my little hometown than the hustle and bustle of Metrotown or Pacific Centre, but either way it's shockingly familiar for a crazy death world.

I'm even with a girl and nobody else! It's like a date, almost. A very awkward date that would be illegal in some jurisdictions with someone who could and probably would pound me into a fine paste and also hates me.

Maybe there's a reason I'm single.

"Ready for the ride back?" Yang asks me as we head back into the parking lot.

I'd forgotten about that. "Oh sweet Jesus..."