No Gun Allowed

[t0l]

Tal carelessly swung the convienience store's front glass door open, striding in with the wind at his back and a swagger that was unmatched by any other man in the entire Sirius Sector. He'd been on a search for the elusive spicy corn chips for weeks, resorting to scouring through nearly all of Downtown Manhattan on foot in order to secure some more of his precious lifeblood.

Indeed, these tubular, bright-red, probably-extremely-unhealthy chips came in second only after canned tea on a list of things that he regarded as essential to his long-term survival. Call it an addiction if you will, but now, with over six months clocked on the withdrawal timer, he was desperate to see the flamboyantly purple plastic packaging again.

And see those purple bags he did, by some grace of God, through a small mom-and-pop food mart's window. One red metal rack, stacked high with bags of corn chips, left nearly completely untouched. Unless his eyes were deceiving him, his quest had come to an end.

So he walked on, past the admittedly cute clerk at the cash register, and smashed the "Go-To" button in his mind to set his body on a straight course to Waypoint One.

"Uh, sir?"

Until everything went wrong, of course.

"Yeah?" he had replied, stopping dead in his tracks and turning around to face her.

"What is that in your pocket?" She was pointing towards his right pocket, where a small but noticeable bump was visible.

"Oh, it's nothing," Tal assured the young woman, pulling a holstered handgun out from his pocket, "It's just my carry gun."

The woman returned a blank stare, while Tal just kinda awkwardly stood there, casually holding a deadly weapon.

"Um, if it helps, I'm legally allowed to carry this here handgun." He drew his concealed carry license and showed her both sides of the blue card in an attempt to get her to understand better, but the woman wasn't having any of it.

"Sir, this is a gun-free zone," she declared, pointing at the sign by the register that depicted a crude drawing of a pistol with a big red X painted over it.

"...Oh."

He could've gone and hid it in his car while he shopped if he had come in one, but unfortunately, he hadn't. Not that he couldn't afford one—he could probably have bought one every week—but he instead viewed a motor vehicle as a liability and useless, especially due to the nature of his contracts.

Right now, he was severely regretting this standpoint.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to leave, sir."

"O-Okay."

And so, he turned tail and slumped out, a mighty warrior defeated by something as pitiful as a white metal sign with some paint streaks on it. To further rub salt in his wounds, when he returned some hours later, the display rack was emptied of all of it's contents. When he asked the cashier if they had any more in the back, she simply gave him a head shake and a firm "no".

Thus, his search continued.

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