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One of my lead characters has to do community service at a grocery store. She has magical powers that will allow her to escape easily, but they are suppressed by a high-tech wrist brace. The plot requires that she come up with a clever way to smash the brace and deactivate it, allowing her to use her powers again. The thing is, I can't think of anything within a grocery store powerful enough to do any real smashing. I need help! Should I come up with another way to deactivate it, or is there just something I missed?

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    Hi, and welcome to Writers. This is "what to write," which is off-topic for us, since it's local to your story and unlikely to help anyone else in the future. Jun 21, 2015 at 20:49
  • Alright. I'm sorry. I'll change it.
    – J. A.
    Jun 21, 2015 at 21:02
  • you might try worldbuilding.se
    – hildred
    Jun 21, 2015 at 22:08
  • I it's electrical, you could always play with overloading it via severed telephone wire... Jun 21, 2015 at 23:11
  • Thank you, all! I'm glad to be welcomed here, and suspect I may return with more questions and answers. I've decided to allow her to use a box opener as a kind of pick in order to pry the brace off. She pretends to need to go to the bathroom, and snags one on the way.
    – J. A.
    Jun 22, 2015 at 3:39

2 Answers 2

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Use the device that deactivates the tags they put on clothing/bottles/etc to stop them being shoplifted. She has to struggle to get her device/tag to fit into the machine/it doesn't work at first/it is urgent that it works immediately/whatever.

Alternatively, have her make a chemical concoction that disrupts the mechanism. Think about the cleaning aisle.

Don't shelf-stackers open boxes quickly? They don't use their hands, at least when the boxes are sealed with tape.

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One of my favorite tools is a bucket tool, and it is found in the bakery where they use it for opening and closing 5-gallon buckets of frosting. It is a wicked cross between a hammer and a pry-bar. There are also cleavers, meet hooks and bone saws in the butcher section (in addition to the meat grinder that ate about 1/3 of a friend's hand) and of course the deli slicer offers all sorts of possibilities (set it to maximum cut and sparks start flying on the second or third pass).

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