---Café---

---Lily's perspective---

I'm hanging out in the break room right now.

I take one hairy hand off my holo, reach down to the shelf where I left my mango juice and bring it up to my lips for a sip.

Putting my torso horizontal makes it possible for me to swallow without fighting gravity.

I replace the cup on the shelf and turn my eyes back to the screen I'm holding at the level of my stomach, idly reading a comic.

It's so engrossing that I don't notice the holo slipping from my fingers until it's too late.

It flies past my chest and smacks me in the bottom of the chin, prompting a "Dah!" from the surprise.

I hear the *clatter* of it hitting the floor below me and sigh.

I turn my head down (up from my inverted perspective) to see if I can spot where it landed.

I've just found it and am getting ready to jump down when the door opens.

I turn my head that way and see a thickset, blue eyed, bearded, 19 year old Norseman step in, shoulder length, honey blond hair on his head, wearing an apron and a nervous expression.

He hurriedly scans around at ground level for me a second before calling "Boss?"

"Up here, Sveinn!" I call down to him in his language, extending an arm past my head to swing it closer to the centre of his vision.

He starts in surprise and looks up to where I dangle from my feet on the ceiling.

"Is there something I can help you with?" I prompt him, gently, after a moment of him just staring blankly up at me.

Pulling back to himself, he sheepishly says "Err… yeah… I'm really sorry, Boss… I know you're on break but… well there's a…" a look of dismay passes onto his face "…a tricky customer out front and, well… his exact words were 'Fetch me your patrician here this instant, lowly minion'… I… think that means he wants to speak to you."

I let out a hefty, groaning sigh for a few seconds at being summoned by a disgruntled, Karen customer before asking "Did he say what his complaint was, Sveinn?"

"He wouldn't tell me. I think he only wants to say it to you… but I can't be sure…?" frowns the boy, apologetically.

"Do you have any ideas? Did you say anything he could've taken as an insult? Do anything that might've upset him while preparing his order?" I suggest.

"Nothing I can think of, Boss." he answers uncertainly.

I think for another moment before asking "What was it he actually ordered, Sveinn?"

"Err… a boba tea, Boss?" he asks more than tells.

"Ah… that'll be it then!" I state, calmly reaching up to grab the same bar my feet are gripping and swinging down to hang my entire body from my right arm.

Once I've stopped swaying, I reach my left out to grab my mango juice, place my thumb over the hole to stop it from spilling and release the bar to drop the 3-4m to the ground.

Once down, I transfer the cup to my right, lick my left thumb, pick up and pocket my holo and begin waddling over, on two legs, to where Sveinn stands in the doorway, continuing "The last batch of boba must've been undercooked or overcooked or left to sit for too long or something… I'll go have a word with Meiling in the kitchen once I've figured out which…" projecting all the confidence I should as the café's owner and manager.

"There's… one more thing." he says as I round him on his right.

"What's that?" I ask, not breaking stride.

"He's… well, he's a xeno, Boss…"

I freeze in horror, picturing the caffeine or some insignificant trace of cyanogenic glycosides from the tapioca (that would be absolutely no problem at all for a Terran liver to deal with) effecting the man's delicate offworld constitution so poisonously that the café I poured my heart and soul into buying gets shut down and taken away from me just six months into owning it!

Then I shake myself back to reality, understanding that no matter how much of a Karen he is, if he's been poisoned, he'd be calling emergency services rather than standing around demanding to see a manager!

Still…

"You… did check it was safe to give him boba, right Sveinn?" I ask.

"Yes, Boss… The computer said it should be fine… Better than fine, actually; 'highly compatible with typical species taste and nutritional requirements' is what it said."

"Good…" I exhale in relief "…Well done, Sveinn! I'll go and smooth whatever's wrong over now, then." walking out of the door.

Without knuckle walking (hygiene issue in a café), I turn down a short corridor, pass the kitchen entrance and come to the shopfront.

The xeno man standing at the counter is… shocking looking!

At twice my height, he's so tall that, without stooping, he never would've fit beneath the historically low ceilings of the café I used to work at, on Earth!

He's rail thin, green skinned and entirely bald.

His head is upsettingly bulbous looking, his cranium looking like it could hold a brain six or seven times the size of a Human's!

He has no ears, just naked holes on the sides of his head.

Though he has no hair there, his double arched brow shelf gives him what looks like a permanent case of angry eyebrows(!)

His gigantic eyes have vertically oblong, magenta irises aligned with vertical slitpupils and set against bright yellow whites.

His nostrils point forward (his nose looking more like a tiny pig nose than it looks like mine) on top of a short, rounded snout.

His eight long, spindly, green fingers each end in vicious looking, dark green, curved talons, those of his left hand curled imperiously around the apparently offending cup of boba, held aloft at head height, his right hand wrapped around that elbow.

He wears a black, floor length robe and has a dark blue cape enclosing his shoulders with a stiff, crimson lined standing collar that reaches more than halfway up his oversized head.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

As I appear and cross the service area to mount my 30cm high stepshelf that runs the length of the bar (and does almost nothing to close the height gap between me and the xeno), his uncanny, fist-sized eyes whip to me and his lips part, baring fourteen long, conical, needle teeth, tinted pale blue, eight in his top jaw, six in his bottom.

He whips a clawed forefinger at me in accusation and, in a cold, cruel, high pitched voice, snarls "You! Simian! Are you the mistress of this establishment!? Was that hirsute buffoon who served me this confection your peon!? Are you the one ultimately to be held responsible!?!?!?"

Hooooo booooy…!

I take a deep breath and put on my most saccharine customer service voice to say "Now, now, Sir. I can see you're upset. If you simply tell me the issue, I'm certain I can have it resolved for you promptly."

The man who looks like a papier-mâché costume from a cheesy, 1950s B-movie, come to life, bristles and swells up, growing even taller as he straightens his back and widens his eyes down at me, sneering as if I'd just cursed his ancestors.

"The issue!… The ISSUE?!?!?!" he screams, drawing every other customer's eye and making me want to sink into the ground.

"Sir, if I could ask you to lower your voice so as not to disturb the other patrons." I state, firmly, up at the unnerving man.

His snarl turns into a sneer as he narrows his eyes down at me.

Then, with concentrated menace, he folds himself at his narrow waist and bends down to bring his head to within arms reach, still pointed down at me from a roughly 45° angle.

He brings the fore, middle and little talons of his left hand to the bar, drumming them there, denting tiny but visible holes into my nice wooden countertop with their points and making me die inside!

Malice and scorn seeming to drip from his every syllable, he puts down the offending drink and, fixing me with unblinking and unwavering eyecontact, growls "I shall tell you *P*recisely 'the issue', my *P*altry. *P*rimate. *P*ro*P*rietrix. *P*eer…" (the spat Ps being my translator's best attempt to get across the hissing alien alliteration as the man chews the scenery like a Hammer Horror villain.)

He brings a left foretalon to the lid of his boba and lightly taps it.

Returning to normal speaking volume, he sneers "I consider myself to be quite the connoisseur of this charmingly quaint concoction… and I can say, with complete confidence, through all my travels and travails, of all those purveyors whom I have been served by before, THIS is, without question, the MOST…"

I wince, bracing for him to scream abuse, bracing for him to tear into me for the shoddy quality of the café I've spent my entire working life striving for!

"…delectable sampling of it I have ever obtained!!!"

I open my eyes and blink at him a few times, convinced the translator must have wigged out on the key word there.

Blankly, I finally manage "I'm… sorry, Sir? Could you repeat that?"

"Truly SUBLIME!!!" he shrieks, startling me by shooting back to full height and grinning maniacally down at me, baring all fourteen teeth "Superlative! Superb, superior and UNsurpassed!"

I'm dumbstruck as I watch him suck several boba balls up through the straw before chewing, swallowing and breaking out into a shrill screaming cackle (fully worthy of a villain who's just proclaimed that nothing can stop them now!) "*AAAAAAH**HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA*!!!!!!!" while he wildly waggles the four talons of his right hand completely independently of eachother…

Once I've come back to my senses a little, I manage to stammer "B-b-but… Whuh… What was wrong then?!"

"Nothing at all, my good Simian!" he grins, unconvincingly "Save only for but the lamentable condition that such a transcendent beverage should be found here in this rustic frontier of the deathworld domain! Would that I had only found such on a more cosmopolitan world! One I might celebrate future cause to visit! Unleeeeess…"

Before I know it, the man has slammed himself into the bar with unnerving speed and power for a gardenworlder and snatched my left hand in both of his, trapping it in a cage of his talons, his skin cold and slimy against mine.

I'm screaming internally as the crazed alien man pulls me closer than I've yet been to his face and asks "…you would agree to become my lackey!? Travel with me and prepare me this nectarous mixture from now to the end of-?!"

"Absolutely not! Let go of my arm, now!" I bark at the maniac, masking my genuine fear with anger.

He releases me and draws away looking disappointed.

"Ahhh… Alas…! More's the pity… 'twas not to be…" he bemoans.

Rubbing my left hand and resolving not to touch anything at all until I've thoroughly washed them of the… residue he left on me, I irritatedly point out "Sir, I'm not the one who made the boba! If it was good, it's because I have a good supplier, a good cook and a good barista!" a moment before realising, with horror, that he might be about to step over the bar and storm into the back to try and recruit Meiling and Sveinn the way he just did to me!

Thank the Lord Almighty, he instead answers "But of course! They are, however, your underlings, are they not? Their achievements are your achievements!" before stopping dead, looking straight at me, his hyperexpressive face entirely blank, and saying in a chilling monotone "As their failings would also be yours…"

As quickly as his creepy Victorian ghost child act comes on, it vanishes again and he starts doing a dramatic dance, flying from pose to pose with his boba tea in hand and saying "But there is no failing in this perfection! This triumph! This PINNACLE of the boba arts!!! No failing at all here!"

God… why me?!

This is a literal nightmare!!!

Is this some kind of fucked up social experiment?! A hidden camera show!? Why the Hell is this man acting this way!?!?!?

None of these customers are ever going to want to come back to the café where they watched a 2.4m bobble headed alien have a loud and disturbing mental breakdown!

The shitty word of mouth could sink my entire business just as I was getting it up and running!!!

Don't fuck with a girl's livelihood!!!

Extremely pissed off at this point, I plead "Sir! You're making a scene!"

"PRECISELY RIGHT!" he cackles, heedlessly, still doing his weird dance "A SCENE IS JUST WHAT SHOULD BE MADE OF SUCH BOBA BLISS!!! ALLOW ME TO CRY IT OUT TO THE HEAVENS!!!"

"Sir! If you don't stop, I'm calling spaceport security and they'll ejec-"

"Woahwoahwoahwoahwoooooah!" comes the voice of a large redheaded Human man who's just sprinted into my café and barged his way between the screaming alien and the counter, bewildering me with the new stimulus "Ain't noooo need for that. You just give me a mo-"

Still insane but at least not screaming, the xeno turns to the new arrival that I now recognise from having been in here with a group yesterday and, his yellow and mauve eyes sparkling, interrupts "Ah! Taylor… My avowed nemesi-!"

Looking irritated, the +2m Brit rounds on the unsettling alien, strikes a power pose, one arm straight up in the air, one horizontal from his shoulder, and, his voice firm, booming and elevated to a register that doesn't suit his accent at all, demands "Now is a moment for holdin' one's peace, Hsek! Take your libation, be seated, be silent, be still… while I work to unmake the damage you have wrought!" jabbing a finger past the looming xeno to an empty booth.

Internally horrified at the idea that this is only going to provoke the lunatic, I'm shocked by him closing his eyes, bowing his bulbous head, bringing his cape over his lower face (like a black-and-white actor, playing Dracula), shuffling away backwards on what I now see are webbed, clawed, frog feet and saying "As you say, Taylor…" respectfully.

Having just effortlessly pacified and banished the living nightmare of a customer, the man turns back around to me and smiles apologetically "Really sorry about him… I know he's… a lot… the gesticulation, tone, facial expressions, volume and complete disregard for personal space… but… I promise he's actually a decent, well meaning bloke under it all… Yooooou… just need a few Kreskar operating instructions(!)"

"Th…Thank you for calming him down…" I say, dazed.

He chuckles "Yeah… no problem…" turning to go before thinking of something and turning back, holding up his index finger "…one more thing… I heard enough to know that, whatever he was sayin' 'bout your café, he meant it! That's how he does gushing praise… He wasn't having you on(!)"

I chuckle "Good to know… I think?"

The man gives a nod before making to join his strange companion in the booth.

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