Chapter Text
"I do think it's kind of cool." Elliot thumbed through the rack of black cassettes, squinting to read the faded labels.
"Cool in the hipster, inefficient-for-inefficiency's-sake way, or cool in the crazy-uncle-who-refuses-to-throw-anything-out way?" Susan mumbled, doing much the same as she wheeled out one of the racks from the wall - another, identical to it, was right behind it.
"Come on! There have to be some great movies in here that haven't gotten a DVD release." He picked one up that wasn't labeled, trying to see if it was a home movie of some sort. Probably not. Why would his home movies be in the back of the shop?
"Elliot, think about it. Tensaided's shop has survived because he keeps up with trends. He liquidated his VHS stock when VHS was still, technically, a viable format."
"...meaning...?"
"This is the bottom of the barrel. Everything that could never be sold is under this storage room's roof... such as eight dozen copies of Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone."
"That's gotta be an exaggeration." Elliot leaned closer, over her shoulder, as she plucked through the rack. One by one.
"Spacehunter. Spacehunter. Spacehunter. Spacehunter en espanol..." It was hard to keep her voice perfectly deadpan like that. On the other hand, Susan had been doing that for years. If anyone was a mistress of Deadpan-Fu, she was.
"Or not?"
"I think they breed in these back rooms. It's also where you get the inexplicable horror films like "I Was a Teenage Cannibal V" from."
"And now we're at the part where you're putting me on, right?"
"Third shelf down on that rack. Next to the back, second column." Susan's smile widened the most imperceptible trace as Elliot squinted, unable to decipher her deadpan. "I'm starting to think that you were right, just in the wrong way. Some of these titles are hysterical."
"I know, right? Canadian-American Ninja?"
"Hamster Vice? Pre-teen Dirty Gene Kung Fu Kangaroos?"
"Kelvin Mace? Space Beaver: Adventures in the Nature Zone?"
"Ga..." She trailed off. "Gamma Infused Wrestlers from Beyond The Moon! Found it!"
"He was right? It wasn't just a dream he had after too much cheap pizza?"
"Never underestimate a geek's connection to his inventory, I suppose. Let's go."
"Should I bring Space Beaver with me? We could tear it apart for the show."
"...do you really want to worry about how to connect a VHS player to the computer?" Elliot considered it for another tenth of a second before setting the tape back where it had come from.