Over the last couple months, I collected and read the Scott Pilgrim books. All in all, I liked vol. 3 best, and as a long-time contributor to this site, I knew I had to do something with this...

"Say," Scott said to Stephen and Julie, "didn't you guys break up?"

Stephen shrugged. "Say," Ramona said, "where are we going?" Scott shrugged.

"I told Scott, we're going to Honest Ed's," Julie said. "I need... you know... party stuff."

"Right, cause there's nothing you need more than throwing another party," Stephen snarked.

"Say," Scott said, "didn't Todd Ingram implode the entire store two months ago? Y'know, when I totally beat him, but he cheated? I distinctly remember there being a lot of rubble..."

"Yeah, we saw that from the parking lot," Ramona said to Julie. "How did it reopen this soon?"

"It reopened three days after Todd leveled it," Julie said, rather indifferently (more so than usual).

"It always comes back. The same thing happened one of those times Todd punched a hole in the moon, and meteorites destroyed half of Toronto."

"Oh, yeah!" Scott said. "I think I kinda remember hearing about something like that."

"Scott," said Kim, walking beside Wallace, "are there ever any times when your head isn't shoved up your crack?"

"I think when he's playing Super Mario 3," Wallace said.

"That's po-tay-to, po-tah-to, Wallace."

"Oh."

"I still don't get what the big deal is," Stephen said.

"Well, it's like I was explaining before," Julie said. "Y'know how, when a baby's born, it just cries, and cries, at the sheer horror of being alive?"

"Um. Yeah... What's that have to do with Honest Ed's?"

"It's because, in the bottom of their little minds... they remember Honest Ed's."

"Uh... How's a newborn baby going to remember anything?"

"Reincarnation. Precognition. Something like that. It's like, the store warps space-time"

"Right! Like, Comeau was telling me about it," Wallace said. "'Cuz, you know, he's the guy who knows everything about everybody. Before Honest Ed built the place, he learned the secrets of time and space from, like, the Kabalah or something. So, during construction, he did all kinds of mystic rituals and tesseract engineering an' stuff to give the store infinite floor space. They say it was all to get around the high cost of real estate."

"But how could he afford the merchandise to fill an infinite volume?" Kim asked.

"Well, since the store warps space-time, he could go to any time and any place to find the best deals. Ever heard how Honest Ed's is always the first place in town to have something available? That's 'cuz they get inventory from the future. Probably parallel universes, too."

"Wow. So, like, if you buy a copy of The Matrix Reloaded at Honest Ed's, it could be the cut from an alternate reality where it didn't suck?"

"Right!"

"Cool."

"So how does warping space and time get a store rebuilt in three days?" Ramona asked.

"Oh, there's different theories," Wallace said. "Maybe they transplant a whole, identical building from another dimension. Or, they might accelerate time on the premises to get work done faster. Or, they may just use the time warp to access the places and times with the cheapest labor."

"Um," Scott stammered as they approached the massive slab of the store, "I, uh, I think I'll j-just wait out here. 'Cuz, one time I almost died in there. Not the time I fought Todd, though, 'cuz I was totally kicking his butt. I mean, I had hockey gloves, a good bicycle helmet, and the coolest pair of wraparound sunglasses, and all he'd done was assemble... a gun, or something. Totally lame."

"C'mon, Scott," Ramona said, "what would I do without you. To. Um... Hold my bag?"

"This suuucks!" Scott whined as he was led by the arm into the store.

"I'm sure there's something you will like," she cajoled a few aisles in.

"But this aisle is nothing but cheap, tacky gag gifts... okay, maybe. But this is just creepy." He eyed a Billy Bass look-alike that looked even more silly and grotesque than the original.

"Whoa! Batman and Robin merchandise! Kitsch motherlode... hold my bag."

Scott clutched the bag and looked at his shoes. If he only looked at what was right in front of him, the store wasn't so overwhelming. He bit his lip to stop his teeth from chattering, but he didn't feel in danger of losing bladder control. Then he heard the voice, soft and slightly sibilant. "Scott." He squeezed his eyes shut as it continued: "Scott. Scott. Scott. Scott..."

Finally, his will broke, and he looked, in the direction of the ghoulish fake fish. It turned his head to look directly at him with two glazed eyes as it said again, "Scott!"

"What do you want from me, you abomination from the depths of subspace?" he cried.

"Scott... Select anime, 20% off for a limited time, on level 3."

Ramona returned at the sound of the scream, to find her bag dropped on the floor, and no sign of her boyfriend except a still-receding cry