James takes the Spies to Sams' Club

“Gotta go bye!” Your eyebrow twitched as Ahsoka abruptly ended the call.

“Well, it sounds like they’ll catch up with us later.”

“Are you sure, that sounded a bit dicey,” Alex asked as she made a face at your phone.

“I have faith in them. Plus we are gonna have to hurry if we wanna be home with the supplies in time for dinner.” You would normally go help them with what sounded like an angry mob but just Diana and Erza working together would be more than enough for most threats someone encounters in a mall. Plus, you weren’t going to take the pregnant Clover into a potentially hazardous situation. “Plus, they didn’t sound too concerned.” Alex, Clover and Marinette shared looks with each other that you didn’t like the look up but they seemed to let it go.

“Hey James? Now that I think about it, where are we gonna pick up groceries in the mall?” Clover looked around at the nearby stores, cocking her head and scrunching her face. “And why are we getting groceries from the mall?”

“Well, I am not getting lost in a Costco again, I got adopted by a feral colony of batgirls the last two times and we didn’t have the time to deal with that,” you make a sideways chopping motion with your hand to punctuate your point. You pause and clarify, “Girls with bat features, not Batgirl from DC.”

—-

You sniffle as you walk down the dark aisles of the massive building your uncle Marley had taken you for groceries. You look around confused, not knowing where you were nor how to get back towards the entrance. You had gotten separated from your uncle and your siblings when a group of people had rudely pushed through the family carrying a bunch of flatscreen TVs. Your eight year old self got swept up and by the time you had recovered, you lost sight of everyone.

You had thought you heard Jamie at one point but following his voice only got you more lost and none of the Character employees had been helpful. One Character with a funny hat had called you General and sent you off deeper to help a settlement but you couldn’t find one.

You scream as a flickering light suddenly bursts and falls behind you. Plunged into darkness as multiple lights turn off, you run towards a box nearby and hug your knees and as you cry. You sat there for a few minutes, silently crying and shivering, when you picked up some kind of shuffling noise nearby. Wiping your eyes, you looked around to try to find the source. “Whose there?” Frowning as you tried to gaze through the dark, you gasped as red glowing eyes suddenly appeared, dozens of them. And they were rushing towards you. “Momma!”

“James! Where are ya?!” Marley Gardner called out as he walked through a section of Costco that has definitely seen better days. A short portly man, Marley Gardner was the older brother of Charles Gardner the father of James Gardner, and he was gonna be in big trouble if he didn’t make it back home with all of the children he and his harem were put in charge of. All of the kids except for James were all back in the main food court of Costco and now Marley, a few of his Character concubines (Sakura Shinguji from Sakura Wars, Honey the Cat from Sonic, and Teeda from Shining **** Feather), and a team of the employees were searching for James using a combination of scent tracking and the kid tracker all the Gardners kids were tagged. Unfortunately, some of Costco’s anomalous phenomena were messing with the tracker.

“I think he’s close,” Honey the Cat suddenly said as they found a broken light in the middle of the aisle. One of the employees pulled out a futuristic device and with a flash, the light along with the rest of the lights in the section were repaired and glowing on a low setting. “Why are the lights so low? Can’t shell out the money to keep the light on?”

“There’s a colony of bat people in this section,” a George Jetson from The Jetson explained. “We really don’t want to trigger a swarm; would be almost as bad as when someone breaks the siren tank.”

“Bat people like Batman or…” Marley paused as they turned a corner and stumbled upon what used to be an intersection that someone has cluttered with boxes, monkey bars, ropes, gem stones and more. It was a verifiable hodgepodge of seemingly random supplies and decorations that stretched towards the rafters; the shelving had blocked the sight of this structure from the group until now.

And hanging from various pegs and monkey bars and other stands, were clutters of girls with bat features with bat ears, bat tails, and bat wings (like Rogue the Bat from Sonic if she looked a lot more human). They had tribalistic markings on the visible parts of their skin and were wearing stitched together outfits to better accommodate their bat features.

“Hey Uncle Marley.” The group looked up and saw that from the highest part of the structure, a beautiful sleeping bat woman was hanging upside down and in her arms and wrapped in her wings was James slurping on an orange juice box.

—

“Anyways, we need to get bulk supplies from the only option left on this side of town,” you nod towards the opposite end of the mall from where Diana, Ahsoka and the others went.

“Welcome to Sams’ Club!” You say a few minutes later as the four of you walked into the store at the end of the mall. Above the entrance was a green sign saying ‘Sams’ Club’ with a smaller sign saying ‘Not affiliated with the former Sam’s Club’. Just inside of the entrance were a stack of tablets, baskets, and carts. And just beyond the carts were arches at the entrance and exit sides along with a couple sets of greeters and receipt checkers.