Imposters

[Jeryd Redsun]

Jeryd gave a lazy shrug at Rayner’s question, and revisited his choice on the menu:

“Golden fries and a…” he gasped, eyes wide with false surprise, “And a sunset salad!”

It was commonly known that a sunset salad was just a mixed leaf salad arranged in a garish display of yellows, oranges, reds, and purples. At least this place attempted to make their food sound fancy. It was cute, which was more than can be said for Rayner’s description of a baked meat brick. The best thing you’ll ever eat, he said. Poor poor deluded Kyle Rayner; left to his own devices, he’d be sure to start waxing lyrical about the baked tuber and why it is the height of gourmet cuisine. As such, he neglected to return the question in kind.

“There’s a nice place on the Azure Promenade called The Nimbus Pools. Incredible food. They serve you with floating dishes of glass. In fact, everything is made out of this hazy kind of glass, and there are water features everywhere - pools, fountains, waterfalls. They even pump a fine vapour into the air which is good for your skin. If you go during the right time of day, it’s like you’re dining in the clouds. You’d lose your mind.”

While he spoke, he allowed his gaze to drift and inspect the rest of the patrons littered about the establishment. There was a feeble grey-skinned old man who nursed a steaming cup and muttered to himself while he stared intently through the window. He was no threat. At another table, a couple of young Rodians, sharing some kind of towering cold dessert with another young human, maybe a year younger than he was - they were probably students. If things got ugly, he could handle them: the Rodians were small and wiry, and the human looked scrawny under the layers of dull blues and washed-out browns he was wearing. In the far corner though, sat a Trandoshan. He’d been warned about that species. It wasn’t possible to make much out from where he was sitting, not without turning around and making it obvious he was staring. So he had to assume that, if there was trouble, he (or she) was the one who needed to be neutralised first. And, other than the Quarrens and the Aqualish - he could take them - there was just him and his furry companion, Kyle. No, Hal.

Rayner was right: they didn’t stand out, at all.

A sigh snapped him out of his tactical appraisal of the situation, to discover they had been ambushed by a short and stocky woman in a creased blue uniform and tiny white apron. From beneath heavy, violet-dusted lids, her hollow gaze found a well-worn spot on the wall, and there it remained.

“Welcome to Olga’s Hot and Snappy Diner,” she croaked, dead-to-the-world, “You won’t find a hotter and snappier dish this side of Level 83. Hoo-boy… that’s good eatin’. What’ll it be, boys?”

“Good evening, ma’am,” Jeryd said at once, infusing his military prep boy accent with extra lashings of jovial plumminess, “I will have the Olga’s Classic Nerfburger, please.”

“Regular buns or Olga’s Special Buns?”

“Well, I say- Who can say ‘No’ to Olga’s Special Buns?”

“Beautiful. Wet ya whistle?”

“...excuse me?” Owlish with surprise, Jeryd spotted Rayner miming a drink across the table, “Oh, I see. Uh. What’s popular with the regulars here at Olga’s Diner?”

“Stimcaf. Or chocolate milk, for the kids.”

“Then it will be the chocolate milk for me! We’re all children at heart, after all. Don’t you agree?”

From behind her ear, the waitress plucked a smoking stim, took a drag, then huffed, “Like a spring chicken, honey.”

She flicked some ash Rayner’s way, “What about you, handsome?”

[Halajiin Rabeak]

He is going to get us killed. He's just gonna get us killed. What is he doing?

Pretty sure he's ordering dinner.

No, I mean with this attitude. Whatever it is.

He has an attitude?

Yes! All peppy and cheerful! You didn't notice?

I dunno, once he started talking about eating in a pool, I thought about the last time we were in a Cizerack tea house, and the eating we did there.

Eating out.

Yeah, at a Cizerack tea house.

No, I mean, you were eating out, not eating. I just... nevermind, I better answer, here.

"Nuna and waffles, hot and spicy on the nuna. Greens, dirty rice. Unsweet tea," Hal replied, his voice mercifully flatter and to the point than whatever Jeryd was doing. Though he couldn't help but smirk and slip in, "After all, you're all the sweetness I need, tonight, darlin'."

"Flattery'll get you everywhere, honey," the waitress answered, her long, acrylic fingernails tak-tak'ing against an ancient datapad as she took their order. There was no more need for words as she turned and scuttled toward the window to the kitchen. Once there, her grating voice calling out, "I need you to burn one, drag it through the garden and pin a rose on it, frog sticks and dried leaves in the alley, hot yard birds on a checkerboard, squeal in the swamp, laundry grains, sweet brown Alice, and a cup of dishwater that ain't got no yum-yum."

It was all Hal could do to keep from chuckling. Diner lingo, it seemed, was universal, and had formed organically on each and every civilized world independent of each other, with exactly the same terms. If he had a glass of water to sip from, the Nehantite would have done so. As it was, he drummed his clawtips on the table, and quietly spoke. "Trandoshan in the corner, big gal. She doesn't have a plate, just a cup of stimcaff which hasn't been topped up since we've been in. Definitely not a customer. Could either be someone we need to get the attention of, or they're undercover security. Rodians and the human kid probably just celebrating a birthday or something. You don't eat that much sweet stuff outside of a celebration. And dining in a pool might be all well and good for humans, but now imagine doing so with fur. I'll stick with good, honest food over fancy experiences, any day."

Times like these, Hal would have expected a sudden rush of sound from an exceptionally heavy gut of rain upon the awning and windows outside, but with Coruscant - er, Imperial Center's - weather on a controlled grid, there were no such luxuries as being surprised by any form of weather. The rain mostly existed to wash things off, and regulate temperature, as there was precious little grow on what was effectively a massive city block. But still, Hal's eyes turned to the window, hoping for it. and in doing so he looked like he belonged in such a place even more than before. There was no hint of Imperial Knight about him. "Do you see a back door?" he asked, voice still low as he looked to the windows.

[Jeryd Redsun]

“Hm? Oh, no. I don’t.” Jeryd surfaced from the depths of a murky thought to consider Rayner’s question. There was nothing obvious in sight. “Maybe it’s in the kitchen.”

It was a smart move, to identify all available exits. If they were serious about this, they needed to know from which directions to anticipate any sudden threats, and to execute a swift getaway. Truth be told, Jeryd had been too distracted by the newness of his surroundings to spot a back door - a failing, on his part.

As it was, however, he was more interested in the toady waitress with the saggy jowls and an unnatural tower of ginger hair. With her kitchen staff, she spoke in riddles, which meant she was well-versed at communicating in code. And her demeanour was altogether off.

His eyes followed her as she shuffled to one of the tables with a fresh round of stimcaf, droning like a low-powered droid. Once she was out of earshot, he said, “It’s her. I know it.”

He leaned in, and proceeded in an undertone, “No eye contact. No customer service. She clearly has no interest in her job. She has to be involved.”

[Halajiin Rabeak]

"It's her job," Hal replied, doing his very best to hold in laughter. "Most people don't like their jobs, but they do them for the money. I bet she works ten hour shifts, six days a week, and rakes in better tips than those Twi'lek bikini baristas you see at stimcaff stands."

He leaned back a bit, smiling to their craggy, disinterested waitress as she returned, setting a pair of thick-walled drinking glasses on the table. "Tea and chocolate milk," she groused, then turned and trundled back toward the kitchen without allowing for any sort of word in edgewise. Hal slipped a plastic straw into his glass and took a sip, a sigh of contentment following.

"Places like this, it's not about service, it's about dependability. She does her job, no more, no less. We get what we ordered, things run smooth," he explained, then took another drink. "You're right, by the way. The only other door is through the kitchen. I looked up planning permission and building records back at the Citadel. This place is so old, it predates some modern safety code. So if people are booking off-world passage, here, this isn't the point of departure, and that does mean someone here is in on it. Maybe she's in on it, but I doubt she's alone, nor would she be primary contact with that attitude. And all that said, I've had worse waitresses."

Hal's eyes moved to scan the room as he took another drink. "When I was here last, one of the 'freshers was out of order. Wonder if they've fixed it by now. That'll be something to check out later; might be an exit in disguise. Either that or someone dropped a thermonuclear deuce and fragged the plumbing."

[Jeryd Redsun]

As Rayner spoke, Jeryd regarded their surroundings and, no matter how interesting and new they were for an upper level kid like him, he had to concede that no self-respecting person with the intellectual capacity to form whole sentences could actually find job satisfaction in a place like this. If the waitress seemed like a soulless husk in the workplace, it was in all likelihood not because she was a sinister rebel agent, but because she was, in fact, just a soulless husk. It was depressing to think about, honestly. As much as he loathed revisiting all the core lessons from basic training at the Citadel, it was never uninteresting. He always felt challenged. He always felt alive.

Not that it meant she was off the hook. Yet. If she really did work 10 hours a day, six days a week, then she had to have at least seen or heard something suspicious. She had to know something. He fueled this fresh line of thought with a sip of chocolate milk - his first in about 10 years - it was sweet, rich, and delicious. He was reminded of his school days, when he used to build model TIE fighters during recess with his first ever girlfriend, Opera Sveetlisse, who wore her blonde hair in braids and always had scuffs on her elbows and knees. They drank chocolate milk and when they got bored of holding hands, they wrestled in the park. And, for a fleeting instant, he felt strangely at ease in this scruffy watering hole.

“When we get out of here, you’re going to have to tell me more about those Twi’leks in bikinis,” he said, choosing to cast aside the memory. It brought him back to who he was.

“The sights in this place are rather lacking, after all,” he gave Rayner a knowing look, “Which is why I will leave the shitty toilet duty to you. Respectfully. Maybe you’ll uncover a secret meeting room where travel arrangements are made.”

It was said only half in jest for Rayner had captured his imagination with his talk of locked doors, clandestine meetings, and secret transports. How did it all connect, he wondered.

“If the diner is the precursor to off-world transportation, how do you suppose they first make contact? And in plain sight, no less. I mean, how would you do it?”

[Halajiin Rabeak]

"Code words, is my guess," Hal replied. Another pull from his iced tea, and he leaned back in his seat, the vinyl creaking and groaning in delight at accepting another into its worn-out cushioning. "Something blue collar folks would know, but wouldn't be common enough to be used accidentally. Honestly wish it wasn't raining, as there'd be more customers in and we could hear more."

His eyes scanned the room again. How the place ever got tipped as the meeting point, he was having a hard time understanding. No back door, no VIP lounge, no private booths, nothing that would make for a clandestine exit. And naturally no one had signed their name to the official preliminary scouting report, so he didn't have anyone within Imperial Intelligence to question. Yet there he was, dressed like a low-rent mechanic, with a handgun under one arm, and a suppressor under the other, and a few grand in cash in his pockets. A spicy recipe indeed, but one which could go south faster than a bad soufflé. Or even a good soufflé. To be honest, he'd never had success in baking them, and was certain they must be made using the Dark Side, as nothing that tasted so good could possibly be wholly from the Light. Good reminder to check the dessert menu later.

"Paper," he muttered. "It's gotta have something to do with paper. As much as I like this vintage touch, it's not normal. Holodisplays have memorybanks which can be searched. Flimsiplast can be recalled even after it's been wiped, if you know how. But paper? You can burn it, bleach it, or pulp it, and it's gone forever."

It was more thinking out loud for Jeryd's sake, as using telepathy would have given them both a serious headache. "I'll check out the 'fresher after the food arrives; ol' paw-washing excuse is always valid," he said while picking up one of the menus again and scanning over it. Pink eyes studied every word, every letter, every fleck in the paper, even going so far as to reach out through the Force to check its molecular makeup for signs of bleaching.

"Thinkin' of ordering more already?" The crackling voice of their waitress snapped Hal out of his study, and he looked up to see her there with their food.

"Oh," the word slipped out of Hal's mouth like a live mouse from the mouth of a startled lothcat. "No, I mean, not yet. Is this the whole dessert menu?" He tapped the section. "Might do something to go."

"To go? Different menu, hun," the waitress snorted. "That what you want? You too, sunshine?"

Hal saw her eyes go to Jeryd as well, and the Nehantite intercepted any possible response from him. "Yeah, both of us. If you wouldn't mind bringing us a copy before we're done, that'd be great."

The waitress looked between the two of them, beady eyes seeming to run on a rail along her half-lidded expression. "Sure thing," she croaked. There was nothing more to be said, it seemed, and she turned to scuttle off, leaving the pair with their dishes before them.

"Gotta go wash my paws," Hal said with a smile. A quick trip to the 'freshers verified that one was still out of order, and the door handle was locked. The other worked, but yielded no great clues about how one might exit from it. Still, it wasn't a bad idea to *actually* run his paws through the sonic cleanser, so Hal did so before returning to the table and dropping back into his well-worn seat. "All righty, let's dig in."

[Halajiin Rabeak]

To any average working man, Hal's nuna and waffles were nothing special. The fried nuna had only just barely enough seasoning, and Hal could taste that the fryer oil was well beyond when it should have been changed. Dirty rice was a bit dry, though the greens made up for it well enough, likely some old family reipe of the cook's. But Hal was no average working man, despite looking like one. Over a year of being cooped up in the Citadel, eating meal cubes, had made him appreciate real food of any sort. Well, almost any sort. At the very least he treasured diner food, even if it was mediocre.

That said, what it wasn't delivering in perfect flavor, it also wasn't delivering in intel. From the texture, Hal could tell the nuna had been brought in frozen. Waffle made on-site, from but generic bagged batter mixture. Rice was budget grade as well, though the greens seemed fresh. Freezing them would have hurt their texture, so at least those had to have a fresh source. Jeryd's burger could be broken down in similar fashion: frozen nerf patty, fresh veg, and possibly in-house buns, but likely bought-in as well. As he munched a mouthful of waffle, Hal kicked himself for not looking into the financials of the establishment beforehand. Laundering money was easy, but maintaining proper expenses for a legitimate business was vastly more difficult.

"This could be a dead end," Hal spoke quietly. He didn't look forward to heading back to the Citadel early. The expenses he'd outlaid hadn't been small, and returning now would likely get the assignment transferred to someone else. "No one's come or gone through the kitchen except the waitress, and I can only sense the cook back there."

(Will add more later, I have an idea to get things moving again, just too tired and exhausted to write more right now)