"What is it?" I asked, kneeling beside her.

She held up a scrap of paper–not a receipt as I'd first thought, but part of an invoice. A bill with Katerina's name clearly visible on it.

"This thing," Nessy said gravely, "was made almost entirely from bills. All three of your names are on different fragments."

"Our names?" Kaledoniya asked, looking confused.

"See for yourself! It's literally made up from your bills. For all the stuff you've been taking from this place," Nessy explained. "You have been paying for the groceries and gear you've taken from here, right?"

The three raptor sisters exchanged confused glances.

"Why the fuck would we..." Katerina began defensively.

"Yeah, it's not like there are cashiers here," Kaledoniya added.

"There were self-checkout kiosks," Nessy pointed out.

"That's ridiculous," Katerina scoffed. "The world's ended and you're worried about retail ethics?"

"You don't get it! This is a dungeon – it has rules," Nessy insisted. "And one of those rules, I'm pretty sure, is that you're supposed to pay for what you take. You can't just... loot the place."

"Already did," Katerina replied dryly. "Kinda too late for that."

"No it isn't!" Nessy gathered more scraps, arranging them to show the sisters. "Look – these are invoices for everything you've taken. Food, supplies, weapons, even those dungeon-binding artifacts. The store's been keeping tabs." She tapped the bullet-hole riddled paper. "And according to this fine print... if these bills remain unpaid, the balance will be extracted in... alternative currency."

"What alternative currency?" Krysanthea asked, her voice taking on a wary edge.

"Souls," Nessy said simply. "That's why your sisters' souls are fragmented now—they've been making installment payments without realizing it."

The group fell silent, the implications of Nessy's discovery sinking in.

"So what are you suggesting?" Kirra finally asked. "That we pay for everything we've taken? With what? Our credit cards?"

"Maybe," Nessy said, standing up and brushing paper fragments from her fur. "Or maybe there's another way to settle the debt. I just… think we need to work within the rules of this place, not against them."

"Why?" Kaledoniya.

"Because you can't kill something infinite with a linear weapon," Nessy sighed. "The C4 and machine gun and whatever else you got in those boxes is pretty much useless against this place."

She shifted through the receipts. "Blargh, we got billed for destroying the door and cash register too."

"I'm not paying for shit," Katerina crossed her arms. "This is bullshit."

[Quest-state FYI: The Superstore looks SUPER serious about those unpaid bills! Refusing to pay a sentient retail establishment aligned to Infinity? Bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for them!]

The silver System message hung in the air for a moment before fading away.

"Is it… making fun of us?" Katerina growled.

"Yes," Nessy stated bluntly.

Suddenly, all of the nearby cash registers began to whir and hum ominously. The receipt printers began churning out receipts at an alarming rate—long strips of paper unfurling onto the floor, piling up in undulating heaps.

"Uh, that can't be good," I muttered, watching as the paper began to move with purpose, folding and reshaping itself.

The receipts twisted and folded like living origami, gradually taking humanoid form—paper arms, paper legs, paper torsos with name tags that read "COLLECTIONS DEPARTMENT."

Then, they slowly began advancing on us.

"Shoot them!" Katerina ordered, drawing her sidearm and firing at the nearest receipt-man.

The bullet tore through its chest, leaving a perfect hole, but the receipt-creature barely faltered. It looked down at the damage, then back up at Katerina with its scanner eyes flashing indignantly.

"DAMAGING COMPANY PROPERTY: $25 FEE ADDED TO YOUR ACCOUNT." It hissed out sounding like an old photocopier.

"Lavros!" Katerina snarled. "Light 'em up!"

The officer opened fire, the heavy machine gun deafeningly loud, tearing through the first wave of receipt-people. Shredded paper flew everywhere, momentarily halting their advance. For a second, it seemed effective—until the vast line of checkout printers simply produced more receipts that slid across the floor to reform into more store employees.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Bloody hell," Katerina snarled. "We have to destroy all of the registers!"

"No! Get in the RV!" Krysanthea shouted over the gunfire. "Now!"

I helped Nessy to her feet, half-dragging her toward the Airstream as papercraft men reconstructed themselves faster than the guns could destroy them. The fox officer kept firing, buying us time as we retreated.

"Move your scaly ass, Kat!" Kristi yelled at her sister, who was still emptying her clip into the advancing paper horde.

"This is effing bullshit," Katerina growled, backing up slowly. "It just keeps printing more of them!"

One of the receipt-people lunged suddenly, wrapping paper arms around Kaledoniya's wrist. She screamed, slashing and kicking at and shredding it.

"Owwwuhhh," Kaledoniya hissed, rubbing her wrist. "It gave me like ten papercuts."

"Kale, help get everyone into the RV!" Kristi barked.

More store employees tried to grab at Kaledoniya. She snarled, activating the eye-glass beads. The artifact glowed blue, propelling her away with supernatural speed. The paper construct held on, coming apart, stretching out and getting dragged along like a bizarre streamer.

Aided by the accelerated violet-ish blur that was Kaledoniya, we piled into the RV in a chaotic tangle of scales, fur, and panic. Krysanthea slammed the door just as the first wave of receipt-people reached us, their paper hands slapping against the windows with eerily loud thwacks.

"Drive!" Kirra yelped from where she'd landed, half-sprawled across the kitchenette counter.

"Where?!" Krysanthea demanded, sliding into the driver's seat and turning the key. The engine rumbled to life as paper creatures began climbing onto the hood, their scanner eyes peering in with menacing red light.

"Out! We need to get flamethrowers or make a bunch of molotovs against these bastards!" Kirra hissed.

"No! Get to the nearest functional checkout!" Nessy managed, pulling herself onto a chair. "We need to pay the bill asap!"

"Are you insane?" Katerina snarled. "We're not paying these parasites!"

"Those 'parasites' have pieces of your soul!" Nessy fired back. "Unless you want to become a permanent part of this place, we need to start to settle this debt!"

"Kale," Katerina turned to her younger sister. "Block the entrance with the cruiser, those doors look like they're gonna regrow back soon."

"On it," Kaledoniya saluted and vanished. The side door flickered open and closed.

She appeared inside of the police cruiser. Tires hissed and spun as the vehicle reversed directly into the store's gaping entrance, parking it sideways to create a makeshift barricade that would keep the reforming glass door from closing up permanently.

"There!" she called on the radio. "That'll prevent it from locking us in. Berb."

The RV lurched forward just far enough to reach the nearest undamaged checkout lane, as Krysanthea maneuvered between explosion-obliterated registers, crushing a few papercraft employees under the wheels.

Inside the RV, tension was thick enough to cut with a knife. Six people crammed into a space meant for four at most—three agitated raptor sisters, a fox, a tired-looking husky, and me—trying desperately to maintain some semblance of sanity.

"This is your fault," Katerina hissed at Nessy, who had slumped against Bulwichu's trunk. "Your stupid singing alerted everything in here!"

"My fault?!" Nessy shot back, her ears flattening. "Who's been shoplifting from here for weeks? Who brought cursed artifacts back to town? Who failed to pay for a single item they took?"

"We were surviving!" Katerina snarled. "What would you have us do? Let Ferguson starve?"

"Pay for your goods like decent people!" Nessy retorted.

"ENOUGH!" Krysanthea shouted from the driver's seat, her voice cutting through the argument like a whip crack. "Fighting each other solves nothing!"

The side door flashed open and closed and Kaledoniya appeared on the couch, panting. "Hi guys. What's the plan?"

"Nessy, can you smell what we need to do?" I asked.

"Can't," she said. "Outta Scrutiosmia."

"Are the fruits ready to eat?" I asked her, eyeing the glass fruits. "Have some. It'll help reload your stats."

"Ah!" Nessy's eyes lit up. "Right! Thanks Leader. My brain is a bit of a soup right now to think for myself." She turned and grabbed the nearest fruit.

"Is that… safe to eat?" Kaledoniya asked.

"Yes," Nessy muttered, bringing the spherical fruit to her lips. The glass cover melted upon contact with her breath like sugar, revealing a small spherical salmon sandwich inside.

She bit into it, her eyes immediately widening as silver light briefly illuminated her veins beneath her fur.

"Whoa," she breathed. "That's... Yummy."

"I see," Katerina said, eyeing the glass tree, noting its roots spreading across the interior of the Airstream. "This entire RV is your empowering artifact. That's how you got it to run after it's been sitting dead for decades on the Foster farm."

"Ye," Nessy grabbed another glass fruit, swallowing it in one bite, then another.

"Does this refuel all skills or just yours?" Kaledoniya asked.

Nessy sniffed the tree. "Bulwichu only works on our pack cus she's part of our pack. It won't do anything for you and will probably taste like eating glass and a normal sandwich, so don't try to eat it."

"Mkay," the younger raptor made an annoyed face, clearly wanting to eat the 'tasty' sandwich ball.

"Uhhh," Kaledoniya looked out the window at the double doors leading out of the store. "That doesn't look right."

We all turned to look. Where the raptor had parked her cruiser in the doorway, something was growing around it—red bricks slowly but steadily forming out of nowhere, building upward and outward like accelerated ivy. The bricks encircled the cruiser, gradually sealing the entrance completely.

"Shit," Nessy said. "It's sealing us in."

The police cruiser groaned and then became bisected by bricks. The light from the glass door vanished. The windows across the entire entrance turned black.

"WHAT?!" Katerina barked. "This never happened before. We've been in and out dozens of times, and the store never sealed us in. Not until Dog-girl here decided to put on a concert!"

"This isn't because of my singing!" Nessy protested, her ears flattening defensively. "It's because of your massive debt! You've been stealing from this place for weeks—the store was bound to take action eventually!"

"Bullshit!" Kaledoniya joined in, her feathers bristling. "We never had brick walls appearing out of nowhere before you showed up!"

"Oh, so it's my fault you've been shoplifting from a sentient extradimensional shop?" Nessy fired back. "Maybe if you'd paid your bills like decent citizens—"

"Don't lecture us about decency, you self-righteous mutt!" Katerina snarled. "Some of us have been actually working to keep Ferguson fed while you were out searching for your precious…"

"Kat," Kristi growled, interrupting the spiralling argument. "Shut it before I smack you. Nessy can probably smell another way out. Right?"

"Uhhhh…" Nessy let out. "Yeah, maybe?"

"Maybe?"

"It's really hard to smell specific stuff in an infinite location, sorry," Nessy sighed. "So far I'm smelling that the store wants us to start paying our bills or it will continue to escalate the harassment. It's kinda annoyed with us, I guess… because we damaged the door and the registers. Until we pay that bill, it's not gonna let us out back to our Ferguson."

"Are there doors to other places then?" I asked.

"Yes," Nessy nodded. "This place is big and ancient."

"Ancient?" I blinked. "Didn't it become infinite like a week ago?"

"Nope," the husky shook her head. "It's really, really effing old. Like more than a hundred million years old."

Everyone's eyes struck the husky girl either with expressions of disbelief or shock.

"What?" I sputtered. "How can it be THAT old? Is this a time thing? Does time run faster inside or something?"

"Yes and also no," Nessy replied. "It's just bloody old, okay? It's like… connected to a bazillion other dimensions, so maybe… one of those dimensions built a Superstore a hundred million years ago and then Systemfall happened to it and then it bloomed into this place. I can't even sniff out what level this place is. My point is that we're effed unless we start playing by its rules."

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