While it is important to be prepared for everything, no one really expects to run into their arch nemesis at the supermarket.

Hmm. Awkward.

Recognition is instantaneous, and in that instant both ninja and pirate are frozen. It is not fear or surprise that traps them, but an acknowledgement of consequences. Their honour and reputation is at stake, they cannot walk from this encounter without triumph, and yet to engage in battle would be to earn themselves an inescapable and unchangeable fate; to be forever known as that dude who got into a fight at the supermarket over a carton of milk.

Hmm. Awkward.

Such is life.

Pirate reaches for pistol. Ninja flings handful of shuriken, and at point blank range hits the pirate right in the vulnerables – the cocoa pop box. Cocoa pops go everywhere. Pirate yelps, having been pricked by the shuriken tips, and reacts the only way a pirate can, and punches the ninja in the face. Ninja rolls with the punch and does some insane twisty thing that results in the pirate going face first into a fridge door, at which point further stormtrooper security guards, having received complaints of someone riding the trolleys down the aisles at high speed and of someone else prowling in the produce, pile on and drag them apart.

In the all the kerfuffle and crushed cocoa pops, no one notices a little old lady shuffle up and make off with the one carton of ElvisCow milk.