#giggsmart

It's a little convenience place, down the road from the nearest NET outpost. The first time he passed by, it was quiet. The second time, he walked into get an energy drink because it was midnight and he was already wiped.

The glass sliding doors opened.

Penny stepped inside.

The customer at the single cashier's station dropped with a bullet lodged in a skull that was looking a little- woobly.

The young man behind the counter- sandy brown hair, a red sweater under his corporate apron- cleaned the pistol that had just eloquently dealt customer service, stuck it under the counter, and looked up at Penny.

He didn't speak.

Another man, in a black tee shirt and jeans under the same apron, already busily folding the disintegrating doppelganger into a thick black trash bag, grinned sunnily at him.

"Welcome to GiggsMart! How can we help you?"

-

There are four full time employees of GiggsMart, Penny learns once the little convenience store becomes a semi-permanent stop on his nightmare commute.

There is Grian, who works the cash register. He's short, speaks sharply, loves cats, and will drill down on any question to discover whether the customer he's serving is a doppleganger.

Impulse is the store's handyman and janitor. Penny's not sure he's ever seen Impulse without a mop, a sunny smile, and a genuine "Welcome to GiggsMart!" that is...at odds with how often the man is covered in blood and viscera.

Gem is the store's stocker, decorator, all rounder and- her fellow employees will readily admit- their manager without the title. Gem keeps the store stocked, keeps it looking lovely, monitors their socials (because even a gas station has socials, good god) and makes sure the flamethrower always has fuel.

Then there's Skizz, who spends his nights outside the GiggsMart, pumping gas for customers and keeping a wary eye on the darkness. Skizz is loud and excitable, and Penny thinks, he's like a dog- the big friendly kind that falls over itself to please you, right up until it has to bite, which is when it doesn't let go.

Like everyone else in the country, the employees of GiggsMart have adjusted to the world in which they need to interrogate their customers and keep firearms handy. Most of the weaponry, Gem explains to Penny as she moves around with a watering can tending to the plants that litter the store, is kept in the back on a rack for really bad nights.

The gun at the desk is ostensibly for anyone who needs it, but since checking the customers out is Grian's job, well.

He has the highest body count.

Skizz is probably second but their methods are very different. Grian, of course, has access to the NET database and scans all ID cards.

Skizz just- knows.

Penny's watched him do it, talking cheerfully with a customer for a couple minutes, asking seemingly inane questions as he searches their vehicles per doppelganger prevention protocol, before disappearing into the store, reappearing a moment later with the gun, and shooting the imposter point-blank with the same bright smile he'd been wearing when he asked about their travel plans moments before.

Neither of them are 100% accurate, Penny knows- the NET keeps tabs on things like that- but they're damn good.

Which is why this could be so much worse.

He thinks.

Maybe.

"Okay can we STOP laying the bear traps down before me an' luckduck get back here?!" Skizz demands as he huddles by the delivery door with a shotgun. Lucky Duck honks and settles in behind the stockboxes.

"Get back here when we call you and it won't be a problem," Gem says. "Mr. Pickles? You okay?"

Penny, who is swiftly loading his side arm, nods. "I'm good, Miss Tay."

"Oh call her Gem," Grian says as he grabs a flamethrower from the emergency stock, giving it a little hip-bump to listen to the slosh of its fuel tank. "You've bought enough energy drinks."

"I think you funded the new herb wall by the slushie machine, yeah," Gem admits. She too has a flamethrower, and has opened the vents near the back wall to create a makeshift gunner's nest for Impulse.

"All the boards are up," he says. "You sure you don't want to be over here, Penny?"

Penny shakes his head. "Won't do me any good." The NET's Entity Alarm going off is nothing new but this was a code red, which meant domicile breach imminent, and on this stretch of road the only domicile around is GiggsMart.

Which explains the screeching, monsterous creature currently battering its way through the front doors.

Penny watches it carefully, feeling his entire body go into an icy calm. Probably bad for him, that whole flowstate, but staying alive and keeping this place from burning to the ground have suddenly become a priority and Penny Pickles is good at two things.

Killing motherfuckers and surviving like a roach.

So when the doppleganger finally gets past Skizz's razor wire wrapped between the parking posts, through the explosive ordinance that Grian and Impulse had laced the front doors with, and batters its way into the back room smashing through the boards that Gem had placed all over the store with competence and care, well.

As they used to say in the marines.

Ooh-rah.

Penny opens fire without a second thought, his bullets clustered and precise. Gem and Grian turn their flamethrowers on the huge arachnid-like monster, burning its legs and forcing it back.

Skizz is a machine, unloading a shot, pumping, unloading again and loading to start the cycle anew with the kind of drumbeat time that would make a college marching band cry. Impulse is his mirror on the other side, shot after shot a rattatatat that makes Penny Pickles want to shake loose change out of his head.

This is fucked up, Penny thinks, as he's thought a thousand times before, but he doesn't stop shooting and neither do they until the prime doppleganger is mush on the floor.

The incredibly loud silence of a killing field falls.

"Are we done?" Gem pants. "Is that it?"

There is movement by the door to the main body of the shop, sinuous and red.

"HOLD YOUR FIRE!" Penny barks in his best attempt at CO Candy Power, may he rest in pieces. The Giggs crew, to their credit, do so.

The creature that slides its too-long neck around the doorframe to look at them isn't precisely a doppleganger. Its face is a white harlequin mask, and its head is shaped like a jester's hood.

It opens its mouth, showing long, needle teeth.

"Penny?" It asks in a very human male voice. "I'm sorry. Was I too late?"

"Yeah," Penny says as he stands. "Yeah, you were. It's okay. I'm fine, Clown, it's fine. These people protected me."

Clown's head twists around, lifts, then untwists and bobs. "Did they?"

"They did! They're really good at it. Did you, uh, see anyone else?"

"No. No one else is out tonight. No one else would dare."

Penny exhales hard. Small mercies.

Lucky Ducky honks in an offended manner regarding all this human foolishness from his protected nest of boxes. He gets up, shakes himself out, and waddles over to Skizz. his orange feet making delightful little slaps that are just a tad too loud in the smoke and blood stained stockroom.

Skizz- tallest of the crew- gives his faithful duck a scritch and then stands. He carefully, carefully, unloads the shotgun. He puts the rounds into his jumpsuit pocket and says casually, "This guy a friend of yours, Penny?"

Penny Pickles takes a moment to assess. He knows if he kills any of these people NET would cover it up.

They would also want to know why.

It's not that Penny dislikes being a part of NET.

It's just that some things in Penny's increasingly weird life make it...a little difficult.

"Everyone," he says as carefully as he can, "This is my boyfriend, Clownpierce. Clown, these nice folks run the gas station."

There is a moment.

Two.

Then Impulse says, grinning as he slings his machine gun over his shoulder, "Welcome to GiggsMart! How can we help you?" --

Context:

The GIGGS crew (minus Scar) recently streamed a game called Midnight Shift, which is about managing a gas station convenience store in a dystopic USA where people are being replaced by murderous monsters and each customer must be assessed for humanity.

Penny Pickles is the alias BranzyCraft chose to infiltrate a war games minecraft server for a recent video.