It had been four days since the three young heroes had returned from Stardew Valley. Nobody was exactly happy about that failed journey turned trap. Since they had gotten back, a few things had changed in the mood of the bodega's atmosphere. Thankfully K.O. did not get caught by his mother, she remained as oblivious as ever, or at least that is what she wanted him to think.

"Enid!" Mr. Gar's voice shook most of the store shelves. Rad and K.O. were desperately trying to make sure nothing explosive on the shelves went off again. Otherwise they would destroy more blasting equipment than they actually sold. They could tell that their boss sounded mad, but it seemed to be out of nowhere. Enid was unsure whether to come out from behind the counter, mentally debating which would make their boss less mad, standing still in front of him or behind the counter.

"Yes, Mr. Gar?" the Level 3 ninja decided she would stay stationary behind the front counter, standing straight like a disciplined soldier in front of a general.

"We've gotten seven complaints from customers today, and they are all related to you!" The Level 11 hero held up a bin full of shredded paper. The box for filing 'complaints' had a paper shredder hidden inside of it. Most complaints that customers filed were not worth the bodega workers time to look at them even, any real issues they noticed far before a complaint needed to be filed.

"Isn't that a low amount?" Enid was more curious about how he was able to deduce how those complaints were about her at all. The most she saw on the shredded paper was mentions of her hair color and her position in the workplace. Mr. Gar threw the small bin aside, K.O. caught it before any of the garbage within it could fall out.

"I'd say yes… But we've only been open for an hour and a half!" Mr. Gar shouted loud enough to undo her hair from its usual done up style. Rad and K.O. only could watch from behind some of the aisle shelves.

"That many complaints this early into the day already…?" K.O. never had seen Enid cause so much trouble for customers like that. He had seen her kick a few particularly irritating customers with her flaming boot, but that was nothing unusual. It made the young boy feel bad. After all, he had led them into that trap that took them a long time to get to and essentially made the weekend a waste for her, the prismatic shard they had been given for a reward K.O. had taken home for safe keeping when his friends said that they did not want it.

"I can't have you scaring off all the customers… so go home for the day and try to handle whatever's bugging you," Mr. Gar ordered Enid, his harsh tone dying down into a more understanding voice. He had been letting her work at the bodega for a long time now. He knew she only got this bad when she was upset. This time around though, Enid seemed unaware of what was even causing her current problems. "K.O.!" the mustached muscular hero called out for the youngest employee.

K.O immediately darted in front of the counter to stand before their boss. "Yes sir, Mr. Gar, sir!"

"This isn't the army K.O., calm down… I'm going to give you a chance to help customers, more so than usual," Mr. Gar began while Enid was fixing her hair back up, she raised an eyebrow upon hearing what he said

"Really?!" K.O. gasped, his eyes glimmering with excitement.

"You're to stand down from your cleaning duties and take over the cash register. Is that clear?"

"Yes! I'll do better than my best, Mr. Gar!" K.O. jumped proudly onto the front counter in front of his Level 3 friend. However, he felt his heart sink when he realized what this meant. "Wait… you aren't thinking about having me replace Enid… are you?" he may not be completely recovered from his injuries, but he hoped the pain that still was quite prominent was not making him misunderstand the situation.

"K.O…" Enid was cut off by their boss.

"Only for today. Think of it as a temporary promotion. You get two breaks not counting lunch now as well," Mr. Gar answered. The Level 3 ninja needed quite a few breaks throughout the day, or else her bad side would make itself prominent and she would start stealing souls again.

"Don't worry about it, K.O… Hope you enjoy the job," Enid told her youngest friend while rubbing his head, slightly messing up his hair, she was just hoping that their clientele didn't drive him to insanity in the same way busy days tended to do for her.

"I'll do it for you, Enid," K.O. gave a smile and a nod. Enid smiled and nodded back before she left to head on home, instead of spending any more time at Lakewood Plaza Turbo for today.

"Wow… she should've been a lot more eager to get a day off," Rad was rather surprised. It meant Mr. Gar was right about sending their friend home to recover from her stress instead of taking it out on customers.

"Don't let me down, K.O.," Mr. Gar told the temporary cashier. K.O. gave a thumbs up before jumping behind the counter. But then he realized he was too short. The Level 1 hero had to stand on the chair that Enid normally leaned back in to be seen above the counter, let alone to reach the register.

"Hey, hey. Congrats, little buddy. You're up at the front, almost like you're the face of the store now," Rad congratulated him. The kid had a bright smile. He didn't think about that, but he guessed he was going to be the first person most customers would see, as well as anyone else entering. The Level 1 boy guessed that might be why Enid was in this position.

"I feel like it's a little unfair for me to take over. It might be my fault she's mad…" K.O. rubbed his head. He only agreed to this so he could give give Enid a much-needed break. The alien stock boy understood his friend's concern, having already guessed the young boy would blame himself for this.

"Don't worry. Enid's probably still getting over having to fight that Elodie clone… or blaming herself for you getting hurt," Rad reassured. He expected Enid to blame herself for this. She really did care for K.O., the alien had made fun of it time and time again after all.

"It's not her fault I'm weak… I really need to find a way to make her feel better," the red headband wearing boy tapped his chin, trying to think of something that Enid would love so much that it would break her out of her foul mood.

"Before you say something about trying to get Elodie to visit her, that's not gonna happen. She's a quarter across the world in Scuttle Town," Rad shot down the idea before it even came up in his young friend's head.

"Huh? How do you know that?" K.O. chirped. The Level 2 alien showed his cellphone.

"I follow her Facesmack page. She goes there every couple of months for a vacation… she's nowhere near our turf. Goin' to Stardew Valley was one thing, but travelling that far is out of the question," Rad put his phone back in his pocket. K.O. did not respond, feeling bad about that idea being destroyed before he even could suggest it. Though thinking of a present for Enid was providing a nice distraction to his mind about what Leistung had told him when they last encountered each other.

"Oh!" K.O. noticed a person enter the store, "A customer's coming!"

"Good luck, little buddy. I gotta go clean up the stuff that fell from Mr. Gar's shouting," Rad bid his young friend before he went to do his task.

K.O. did his best throughout the day to work the cash register. Though at first he had no idea how to operate the cash register or open it. Thankfully there was a little piece of paper taped on part of the counter, giving a small list of instructions on how to use it. He was then able to do the job decently, guessing that minor instruction list had been there since Enid first started working here, now things were going smoothly.

Or at least at first. With each passing hour, things became a lot more taxing with customers beginning to come and go constantly. Half of them were becoming impatient as well.

"Man! Why does everyone want potions today?" K.O. asked himself. He did not enjoy the taste of healing potions himself, but since they kept the health potions behind the counter, he had to keep going to the back to restock after every third customer. It seemed like everyone was buying them by the dozen today.

"Hey! I've been in front of you for barely two seconds. Where's the potions?" one impatient customer demanded. The level 1 hero exhaled tiredly, guessing that this man was the type to honk his horn the second a stoplight turns green. K.O. had watched his mom fight those types of people a lot.

"S-sorry sir. Here, they're six technos each. We have a buy three get one free special going on today, too," K.O. pulled out the tray of potions, resting it on the counter for the man to take as many as he wanted.

"Don't you mean, buy two, get one free?" the man raised an eyebrow.

"Mr. Gar says this gives extra incentive to spend more money," K.O. immediately recited the exact words his boss gave him when he asked the same question.

"Hey, hurry up, bub! You're taking forever!"

"Oh, shut your trap, you broad! You can wait there for a few minutes!"

"Hey, you talkin' bad about my girl?!"

"Oh, geez…" K.O. gulped nervously. What would Enid do in this situation, he asked himself. Sadly. All solutions that came to mind involved violence, which was not the answer to the current problem. "Everyone, calm down! There's plenty of potions to get!" he tried to calm them all down. He was worried though. Health potions if consumed at a high enough rate could induce a similar effect like one would get from alcohol consumption, just without the dangerous symptoms. Because of this, Mr. Gar set a limit for all customers to be unable to buy more than twenty potions a day.

"Quiet, shorty! This is between adults!" the man in front of him just shoved him back.

"Whoa, whoa!" K.O. fell behind the counter, landing with a loud thud with teh sound of something crunching beneath his body. It broke the chair he had been standing on into small pieces. "Oh no…! That was Enid's chair!" the brush haired boy gulped at the splintered remains of the once comfortable seat. He gritted his teeth upon hearing the customers fighting, he felt a flame of rage beginning to flow through his blood. K.O.s hands began sparking with purple electricity. His wristbands turned from red to purple with spikes coming out of them. He hopped onto the counter.

"What, brat?! I told you to leave this to the-…" the man froze when he saw the angry young boy standing on the counter, with sharp teeth now being prominent. K.O. looked ready to explode, "Adults?"

"What is a customer if they attack a HERO supply store?" K.O. asked as his eye twitched, his anger clearly bursting to fight them all right now.

"A… A villain?" another customer stammered, fearfully.

"That's right! Power fist!" K.O. jumped up, his knuckle glowing bright purple. He fired the giant aura fist downward which crashed into the floor, causing it to fling up the other half of the floor, launching the customers up into the air and blasting them through the ceiling. K.O. began maniacally laughing as the screams of the once fighting customers began to fade away fast.

"K.O.?" a familiar voice made him snap out of his anger induced trance. Everything about him returned to normal.

"Dendy! It's great to see you," K.O. hopped off the counter and brightly greeted one of his best friends, Dendy, a genius kappa girl in the same grade and hero level as him. Her high-tech backpack was on her back like always, she rarely was seen without it.

"My, you seem far more eager to have my acquaintanceship than usual… did Boxmore attack?" Dendy queried, glancing up to the ceiling with her glasses-covered eyes. Usually holes in the bodega were nothing unusual, but these looked a lot more explosive in nature.

"No, they've already done their morning attack. Enid dealt with them before the box even opened," K.O. responded eagerly, having no clue where those customers went. He tended to lose his memory when his anger got the best of him, just another reason why he hated giving into his anger.

"I suppose that significantly startled them into backing off for the rest of the day," Dendy adjusted her glasses, glad to know they had some peace here for the time being, though she was curious why Enid was not around.

"But back to the reason I'm here… you said you had some news related to POW cards that you wished to discuss with me?" Dendy asked.

"Yeah. It's new news, I guess… Come on, let's talk outside," K.O. wanted this conversation to be more private, in case it did turn out true that Leistung had been messing with him. Dendy nodded beginning to head out of the convenience store ahead of him. "Mr. Gar! I'm going on my break!" he called out to him.

"Alright! There doesn't seem to be any customers here right now anyway," Mr. Gar responded while he brought over a ladder and some materials to begin repairing the newest hole in the roof, having returned from his office far too late to know what happened to the clientele.

"Do you know why people are so desperately buying health potions lately?" K.O. asked Dendy while they left Gar's bodega and began to walk to another part of the plaza.

"That's most likely due to a rumor of a new poisonous monster roaming free apparently just touching its skin is enough to hospitalize you… Health potions help with producing medical kits faster than from scratch," the spectacled kappa explained while they got to a more open part of the plaza people considered a small park.

"A poison monster? Weird… Usually they just spit poison or have poison body parts, but I've never heard about a monster fully made of poison," K.O. was curious to see what this supposed monster looked like, but his close friend shook her head, not wanting him to get any ideas about hunting a most likely nonexistent monster.

"These rumors are unfounded… but the saying, I believe, is hope for the best, but prepare for Armageddon."

"Haha! I think you mean hope for the best prepare for the worst Dendy," K.O. smiled. She was not the best at sayings, but it did not stop her from trying. She seemed slightly embarrassed to be corrected, but tried to not let it show through her usual straight faced demeanor.

"However, I am grateful that you'd tell me first about the POW card news… even if I have hacked into their network to know every new cards' release," Dendy expressed her gratitude, though was as aware as anyone else about K.O.'s rather big issue when prioritizing helping others over his own wellbeing.

"Well the thing is, I wanted to ask if you knew about this here…" K.O. rummaged around in his pocket before pulling out the binder where he kept all the POW cards he collected. He pulled out Leistung's card after a short moment of searching for it.

"Do you know what a hazard level stat might be?"