Chapter 23: Just shopping…

Wait. “We’re meeting Silvia?”

Melody nodded, pulling away with my pink leather collar and locking it into its box. “I invited her to shop with us since she might join our team.”

“Okay…” I guess that makes sense. We do need to get closer so we can observe each other's strategies… gah! Stupid horny mind… stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.

Melody began walking toward the door and I followed after pocketing my phone. We both slipped on some tennis shoes, Melody’s black and mine black with pink highlights. As we left the dorm, Melody waved bye to a different boy and a girl, the last two S tiers I haven’t met, in the shared lounge area and we walked to the food court.

Arriving at the food court, Melody and I went to the buffet area, both picking out a few breakfast items. I ended up with a plate of eggs, sausage meat things, and fluffy pancakes. Melody’s plate had some fruit on it… I probably should’ve grabbed some fruit too. Oh, well.

After we found a seat, we both began eating. I started up our conversation, asking, “What do we need to buy?”

“Normal school things, for one,” Melody began, then sipped some coffee. “Notebooks and pencils and the like.”

For the normal classes, I assume. But, “Do the system classes need anything?”

“Not really, damage dealers usually buy a weapon instead of borrowing the academy’s.” Melody smirked. “Luckily, I have plenty of whips and chains already.”

Stop… why do you keep making me horny?! Tied up in chains… hanging from the ceiling in some sex dungeon while Melody whips my tits, until they’re purple… then sends me to heaven by smashing down on my pussy… god… I need to cum… “Does support need anything?”

“Probably not,” Melody said, returning to her eating.

Okay. Well... “Then… what are we shopping for?”

“Computers and tablets,” Melody started, then a few seconds later asked, “Do you want a new car?”

That… is actually a good idea. I can afford literally any car now. Also phone, and a laptop of course, and… I guess that’s it. Having money is a little weird. I have so much now, and can easily acquire more fully legal tender by threatening governments or something but I can’t think of things I’d want to buy. “Yeah.”

Melody and I finished up our breakfast, discussing different things to buy. We ended up making a list, then texted Silvia to add whatever she needed to it. Our final list had notebooks, pencils, markers, highlighters, laptops, tablets, a printer, and a car, then the things Silvia added, telescope, binoculars, various shoes, and some special goggle types like night vision and some heat display thing. Silvia’s abilities can cover most of them, but those require active mana use, so something passive is always preferable.

Lastly, Melody added a “cosplay” set. Seriously? Did you really have to put that on the document we shared with Silvia?

We cleaned up our area, put away our plates, and headed back to our dorm. Silvia agreed to meet us at our first stop, which was an office supply store. Melody drove us there and we waited near the front of the store, looking through a small mechanical pencil section.

Once we saw Silvia enter the store, we walked over. Silvia still had her reddish hime cut framing her face and regal golden irises, but this time she had a different animal on her chest. She was wearing a catgirl sweater. Is the world trying to make me horny?

Catgirl… cosplay… pet… kitty… I swear… I’m going to go insane. From horniness.

Pushing my thoughts aside, I replied to Silvia’s wave. “Hello.”

“Hi, Scarlet.” She nodded toward me. Then Melody. “Mel.”

Melody nodded back, then suggested, “Should we start with pencils?”

With Silvia’s nod of assent, our far too brief greetings ended and we returned to the mechanical pencils, each buying a set from some random brand that had 0.3 mm, 0.5 mm, 0.7 mm, and 0.9 mm sizes. Then we bought a handful of HB lead replacements. I also grabbed a 0.2 mm auto advancing pencil. It was the same price as the other three sets combined, but 0.2! So tiny… and I have money now, well credits, but they can be exchanged for normal currency. I might as well spend a little, right?

After placing all our pencils into a cart, we moved deeper into the store, finding aisles of notebooks where we all went our separate ways. I selected two three-subject notebooks, blue and pink plastic covers with flimsy see-through gray dividers.

Returning to our cart, Melody was carrying four single-subject black notebooks, while Silvia chose a bunch of notebooks with random designs, although I didn’t get a great look at any other than the top one, which was a stylized geometric globe.

“Markers and highlighters next?” Melody asked, and we agreed, moving toward the section.

It went quick; we grabbed three sets of markers, highlighters, and added some colored pencils too when Silvia saw them. We probably wouldn’t need them, but it wasn’t a big deal. However, I did see a problem. “We need like… pencil pouches… or something.”

“Good point,” Melody replied, swinging the cart around to head back to where we came from. “I think I saw them right past the notebooks.”

Why didn’t you say anything? Melody… you… no no no, stop. Bad brain. Stop thinking of Melody dripping wax onto my naked breasts while I’m shaking, completely overstimulated by a giant vibrator shoved up deep in me as punishment for talking back. I can’t focus at all.

Melody grabbed three random black plastic pencil containers, which Silvia immediately exchanged for cuter ones. She managed to find one covered in chibi cats and assigned it to me for some reason… then a panda one for her and a snake one for Melody. Also, snakes? Who the hell is designing these things? Why would anyone want a snake on their pencil pouch? Blegh.

It wasn’t even cute! It was literally like a realistic snake spiraling around the container. A long thin snake… spiraling… through me… a long vibrating dildo… I can’t stop! Help! Someone! Save me! I want to fuck way too fucking much, fuck!

With those taken care of, we moved onto the next objective for this store, a printer. We walked over and…

“Do either of you know what makes a printer good?” Melody asked, staring down the aisle of printer boxes.

“Nope,” I replied.

“No,” Silvia replied.

“Okay… default strategy it is,” Melody decided, then moved down the aisle scanning each label while Silvia and I watched. After slithering down the aisle like a toy slithering into me, Melody returned and grabbed the cart, dragging it down about two-thirds of the way, then she pointed toward a box. “This one’s the most expensive.”

That surely can’t go wrong. Melody lifted the box and placed it into our cart, just barely managing to fit after we squished all the items to one side. That box is way too big.

“Do we need ink?” Silvia asked, looking over the box. “Never mind, comes with ink.”

“We… probably still need some?” How long does the ink last? We won’t be printing much I’m sure, but extra can’t hurt.

“Well, let’s find some then,” Melody decided, and we dragged the cart over to the next aisle, which was filled with printer ink.

We searched along the walls until we found the matching brand, then double-checked with a quick internet search, and… it’s the right type. Melody grabbed two sets of ink, which had colored and black.

“Anything else we need here?” Melody asked as we pushed the cart out of the aisle and back toward the front of the store.

“Nope,” I replied.

“No,” Silvia replied.

We could probably get tablets and computers here, but tech stores will have better stuff. And I kinda wanna build my own computer… I’ll need a laptop too, but building computers is fun. I’ve only done it once sadly. Probably a mission for another day…

As we scanned all the items, I once more offered to pay, only to be denied by Melody. She didn’t even let Silvia pay for anything… so sad… not really. Free stuff is great, but I feel kind of indebted, you know? Although the only really expensive item is for our whole dorm, the printer, so I guess it’s okay to let Melody pay…

But that 0.2 mm pencil. I should totally be paying for that.

Melody and I rode in her car, while Silvia drove her own with the printer in its trunk. She had a minivan, substantially more spacious than a sports car.

The next destination was a technology store, the same store I went to when I chose out parts to build my first computer. My computer was fairly high-end at the time… now it’s sitting comfortably in the middle of the road despite only being like four years old?

Somehow, this store manages to have prices better than online shopping, well, better than online shopping somewhere that isn’t their website. I have no idea how. Entering as a group of three, we went straight toward the back where they had a small section of laptops, tablets, phones, and whatnot. Basically the stuff that wasn’t PC parts. That small section was still much larger than any other store’s in the region.

Unleashed in an area I was familiar with… unleashed… leashed… tied up… bad. Bad Scarlet.

I immediately zoned in on the best CPU graphics card combo I could find. Turns out, Melody’s approach worked just as well, since it was indeed the most expensive laptop. We bought three. It totaled about ten credits.

Then we each bought a tablet, this one was not the same for all of us, since Silvia and I both preferred smaller screen sizes, choosing an eleven- and ten-inch model respectively while Melody went with a giant fifteen-inch one. It did have slightly better specs, but still, who needs a screen that big unless you’re drawing or something?

Last but not least, we grabbed a new phone for me, the latest model which was only one credit. “Only” I say. Way too expensive for any reasonable person, but oh well. We spent another half an hour or so there linking it up to a cellular plan under my name instead of leeching off my parents. Yay, independence!

With our normal shopping out of the way, mostly, our next stop was a store that I predict will be quite expensive, for Silvia that is. A system-focused store.