Location: Zzzareck Bakes | Time: 35 minutes since Jace and Adea left home.
…
Bleeehhh…Jace croaked for the umpteenth time as he attempted another bite of the Synth Apple pie.
"This is terrible," he cursed out loudly. "100 Credits for a pie made with artificial syrup and edible styrofoam."
"This is plain daylight robbery," he complained to Adea, who did not share his sentiments at all, considering how enthusiastically she wolfed down the pie.
[Current Body Energy Level Very Low…]
[Sustenance Urgently Needed]...Halo reminded him.
Uurrrgghh….Jace groaned as he took another bite of the 'Fake Pie.' Adea giggled at his disgust as she took another mouthful of the abomination.
Jace sat frozen as the thing made its way down his throat after he did his best to ensure that he kept its interaction with his mouth as brief as possible.
"This is no pie," He assured Adea.
"Dada..It's nice," Adea praised.
"Not in a million worlds it isn't."
KA-CHAK
Jace turned to the muzzle of a Shotgun variant side piece staring him down in the face.
"Sayy zat zagain," the all scaly and muscular lizardman being behind the muzzle ordered.
"Hey hey hey," Jace tried to de-escalate the tension with his hands up. "What could be the problem?"
"Zam the chef and I have had enough of your zisrespect," the lizardman chef raged. "Zay what exactly makes my zie so terrible, or I am zutting a zole in you."
"Seriously?" Rex screamed as he turned to look at the rest of the few customers in the bakery.
Everyone was going about their thing, like whatever was happening between him and the Chef couldn't be any more mundane.
Even Adea was still happily making quick work of the last of the pie.
Not only is the food terrible, but even the customer service is horrifying…Jace analyzed behind the muzzle before the thought hit him like a truck
A gun's been pointed at me!!!
As novel as the experience might be, it should be terrifying. Why wasn't he panicking?
Why wasn't he trembling in fear?
[Moderately Inhibiting Physiological Response to ensure Optimal Response]...Halo clarified.
"Dope," Jace praised.
"Zayy, What?" The Aligator chef asked while nudging his bullet spitter into Jace's personal space.
"I said, it's quite refreshing…now that I have really had time to reflect on the taste."
"Zou liee," The chef slithered, while letting his forked tongue dangle dangerously outward and nudging his shotgun deeper into Rex's space.
"I like it," a tiny melodious voice chimed in.
Both Jace and the displeased chef turned in sync to Adea.
"I really like it, Mr Chef," Adea emphasized behind the completely wiped pie bowl.
"Really," The chef asked.
"Yes, really," Adea emphasized.
"Zrate," the chef said while arching its mouth in a way Jace recognized as a smile.
"Zorder more zhen if you zlike it."
Throw away another 100 Credits!... Jace screamed inside, not in a thousand lifetimes.
But one look at Adea's longing eyes as she looked at him, and he began to consider doing just that..
Not gonna make it so easy for this Chef to intimidate me off my money though, He calculated as he turned back to the lizardman.
"Well, Chef Connors, we would really like to order another, you see, but it's just not possible with our current finances."
.
.
.
A silent standoff followed his declaration.
Jace tagged it a blinking contest because he didn't know better.
Lizards could go minutes without blinking.
He lost, but fortunately for him, the lizard man definitely did not catch on to the context of the contest.
The standoff went on for a minute or more before the lizard man conceded.
"Zinneee," it said in defeat as it lowered its gun. "Zzou get another zie on the zhouse."
"A-mazing!" Jace praised, turning to look at Adea with a pleased grin.
"Zut, you will zeat your share of zhe pie, under my zupervizion."
"Say what?"
The reptilian gave him no reply as it slipped its piece back behind his apron and gave a curt nod as it turned tail and headed back to the kitchen.
Huuuuu…Jace exhaled out loud as he let his back rest into the bench. Halo must have stopped inhibiting the physiological response, as he felt the weight of the engagement hit him.
Life in the outer city was as fickle as light on a candle; that exchange could very much have resulted in his death, and it wouldn't mean a thing.
Turning to Adea, who was grinning happily, with the brown syrup all over her mouth. He felt something hurt him real deep.
What will happen to Adea if he croaked? There were a lot of things and activities that ran on young blood like hers in Neo City.
If the Enforcers got to her first, she would most likely end up a Corpo slave, working for elites under conditions even a bot won't function in.
Mercs…She will go through hell, all in an attempt to forge her into an Apex beast of destruction.
The black market…"Urrrghh," Jace winced and shut off the thought process as the numerous possibilities hit his mind.
He shuffled Adea's soft hair.
"You saw that, right?"
She nodded while giving him a 'are you for real' side eye.
Jace took out a hanky and used it to wipe her syrup-drenched cheeks and lips.
"That was all part of my master plan to score a free pie," he gloated, while wiping her mouth clean.
"You are so brave and strong, Daddy," Adea praised. Jace grinned.
He definitely wasn't, but if he could hear those words more from his baby's mouth. He just might be.
"That was so brave of you," a voice as smooth as honey whispered into Jace's ear, while his back was turned outward as he wiped Adea's mouth.
He turned sharply to face a chocolate-milk-skinned lady with purple hair, a pinkish tongue that was exposed provocatively, a matching pink eye, and two dark-purplish horns sticking out the sides of her hair.
Don't engage…A primal warning came to life within him, but the moment her scent reached his nose, he was too far gone to listen.
Everything about the female was unapologetically suggestive of one single thing.
His hands instantly shot to cover Adea's eyes, as his dropped enough to sight that lethal cleavage.
[Abnormal Brain Activity Detected]...Halo warned, Jace ignored.
"Hey Beautiful," he called as the succubus sneaked into the bench with he and Adea, bringing her face so suggestively close to his. She opened her mouth, and more of that scent of hers reached Jace.
He was a gone man at this point.
"You are so brave and strong," the succubus praised while letting one of its hands climb upwards of Jace's thigh.
[Heart Beat Greatly Elevated]
[Attempt to Optimize Failed…Neuronal System unresponsive]
Jace swallowed. Adea's face slipped past his protection, but the cleavage was no longer lethally poised. She should be fine.
"Your spawn?" The succubus asked as Adea's face popped out from behind him.
"Yhh," Jace managed to croak out a reply with his thoughts that were all over the place.
"She's cute," the succubus praised.
"She's the cutest," Jace corrected.
"What do you say to us leaving this terrible cafe and going to somewhere more quiet and…Intimate," the feminine anomaly whispered into his ear.
"Damn!" Jace's mind could only curse in response.
[Foreign Interference Observed in Neural Activity]...Halo warned again to the bewitched user.
Not minding the warning, Jace was ready to end his cafe run in an Instant, but then Adea came to mind.
He was a dad now; he should be more responsible than this.
He felt a bit of sanity return to him.
"I have a daughter goddess," He answered the succubus. "I am no longer available for quick flings; what I want now is something more solid and won't confuse my baby."
The succubus's face glitched, the horrendous monster hidden behind the illusion exposed for an instant, but before Jace could break off the spell, with the fracture in flow, the succubus blew some of her aphrodisiac scents into his nostrils and moved her hands farther up his thighs.
"Are you really sure of that, my strong man?" she added in a voice that tickled his imagination.
KA-CHAK…A familiar weapons grunt got Jace's attention, just as he was getting threateningly close to committing.
"Zzstop messing with my cuzztomers," The lizardman raged as he slipped the Apple pie onto the table with one hand and kept his gun pointed at the succubus with another.
The succubus put her hands over Jace's shoulder and let her nails dig into his back, taking even more control of the human.
"Are you going to let him disrespect your date, so?" the succubus asked into his ear.
"Definitely not," Jace swore as he put his hands behind his jacket and brought a familiar gifted steel blade that had only recently been named by him.
'Purity,' he called it, a fitting and definitely creative name for the dagger he had obtained from his purrian benefactor.
"That's no way to talk to a lady," he barked at the Chef, while stabbing his blade in a menacing and threatening manner into the table.
The lizardman took one look at him and his blade, glanced at his own cool gun, and ignored the fool.
"Hey zzinister Chef," Jace called at the lizard man, pissed. "Steel maketh man."
"Drop that gun of yours and let us settle this in a manly way."
"Zzealy," The Lizardman swore at Jace while slipping his piece behind his apron and curling and pumping his thick biceps menacingly.
"Zz will beat zzher zzspell out of you ziny brain, zztupid human."
"Oh!... Really," Jace asked while bringing his knuckles up, expectant of a brawl.
This time, several of the early morning customers were interested enough in the unfolding series of events to abandon their breakfasts and pay audience to tiny Human Jace and the very bulky lizardman chef.
"Zere I come," Jace announced to the lizardman while unmoving.
"Zzome zhen."
"Zzou are going to regret this," Jace reminded the lizardman as threateningly as he could, doing his best to communicate in his dialect for better clarity.
"ZZupid human," The Chef rebutted, drawing closer.
Before the fight could escalate further, gunshots outside the cafe temporarily messed up the heightened tension.
No one panicked, though.
This was just a regular Tuesday thing in the outer city; this early in the morning…though, was rather uncommon, but quite ordinary for outer city nonetheless.
Ratatatatata…The gunshots kept drawing closer as the cafe occupants waited in silence for the commotion to pass by.
But it didn't.
A heavily modified truck with a turret gun mounted in the trunk came to a halt in front of the cafe.
Another truck with no mounted gun followed behind, both spilling about a dozen goblins, who rapidly surrounded the cafe, before a muscular female goblin, much taller, thicker, and much more noble than the rest, came out the front passenger seat of the first truck, kicking out the door, rather than opening it.
In an anticlimactic turn of events, after she had made such a badass entry. A goblin, the tiniest of the crew, but most smartly dressed, with a dress shirt, exquisitely ironed pants, and leather shoes, began to chastise her.
No one in the cafe could catch on to his admonishment, but the subdued face of the noble feminine goblin said it all.
A hobogoblin…Jace noted as the feminine goblin came into full view as she drew closer to the glass door of the cafe, and in one swift stump, kicked down the door.
The smartly dressed goblin face-palmed.
"Zzether Kind," the lizardman sneered angrily, as he pulled out his piece from behind his apron.
"Good morning, everyone," The smartly dressed goblin greeted while carrying a dark cubic device in his hands, with a space large enough for a hand to go through in the middle.
A Ghosted Ledger Qube…Jace's brain registered the go-to thing for transactions, one needed to keep hidden from the Nexus, the one centralized network monitored by OMEGA.
"This is a robbery, as you all can tell," the finance man goblin explained smartly while dangling the Qube forward. A pistol in the other hand.
"Coorperate like the civilized people, which you all breakfast-eating corpo slaves are, and we will be out of your hair in a moment."
No one moved as four other goblins entered the cafe, crowding it further.
In the outer city, robbery was a norm so common that you don't give your hard-earned credits to just any robber who jumped in front of you.
Getting robbed was a craft that involved a lot of logical analysis.. Is the robber threatening enough? How much credits are you ready to part with at the moment? Are you really the one at risk, or is it the robber?
The impasse stretched on as everyone observed each other in silence, waiting for that first move that would decide how this would all go down.
A gunfight, a good ole boring robbery, or a beatdown of the goblins….then something broke the still.
All lustful and suggestive, the succubus used its voice in an effort to put the muscular and noble-looking female hobgoblin under its spell.
"Oh my, such a damsel," it began. "You look so–."
Pop!... A sharp sound resounded as the succubus's head gained a new hole.
[Foreign Neural Interference Ceased]...Halo chimed.
Jace felt all his prior heightened emotions and guts return to normal as his mind became his again.
"Shit!" He cursed out loud as his mind finally registered the fact that he and Lizard Chef were the only two beings standing in the Cafe.
If a gunfight ensued, it would begin with the perforation of both of them, and following the shot that had ended the succubus, someone fired back at the robbing goblins…officially inaugurating the gunfight.
[Optimizing for Current… Halo began to notify via a visual tab, but before he could finish reading it, the Lizard man chef dived onto him and brought both of them to the floor.
"Zzake cover zupid human," Lizard Chef cursed at him as they both landed behind a table that had fallen with the spur of activity that followed the gunfight's inauguration.
"She is dead," Jace's mind registered. "She is **ucking dead." He swore louder.
"Zou know zshe was za zzucubus, zzight," the Chef asked. "Zou were under zer spell."
Jace couldn't really appreciate that fact, but something much more urgent hijacked his attention.
"Adea," he whispered. "Adea!" he screamed out louder as he tried to shake the lizard man that was lying above him.
He didn't budge, "Zou will zzet yourself zhot." The lizard man clarified to the panicking man.
"Zzhe okay, zzaw her ztake cover when zhe robbers entered," he continued. "Zzhe's quite safety couscious, much more zthan i can zzay for zou."
"Zzuperb," Jace sneered as he sighted Adea looking at him, from underneath the bench where she had taken cover.
If she was scared, she was hiding it well.
"All this, and it's only breakfast," Jace complained as he looked at his daughter.
He swore to himself at that moment that no matter what, he was going to get them a place in the inner city, not minding what it took.
"Man up," the lizard man spoke legibly for the first time ever as he stuffed a revolver into his hand.
"Help me push these Nether lowlifes out of my Cafe, and we will consider our scores even."
"Wait!" Jace stopped the Lizardman mid-talk. "Where all the zzz?"
"Branding," the lizard man educated. "Something unique to make my cafe stand out."
"Ohhh," Jace nodded as gunshots resounded all around them. "That's smart, but on another note, where did you get the impression that we have a score to settle?"
"Insulting my pies, needing me to beat some sense into you when you were under the spell of that damned succubus." The Lizardman listed away.
"Yhh, you owe me bigtime," The lizard man concluded as he got itself off Jace and began to return fire while using the tumbled table as cover.
"That's bullshit," Jace swore as he checked out the revolver the chef had given him.
A 7-Cartridge heavily modified piece, with a muzzle that went on a bit too long.
"Nice gun," Jace commented as the weight of the gun settled in his hand.
"It is," the Chef commented, pulling his being back behind the cover of the table.
"Say what, human?"
"What?" Jace said.
"You pull your weight in this exchange, you and your daughter can have a week-long supply of pie on the house."
"Seriously."
The Lizardman chef nodded in acknowledgement.
Adea's longing eyes as she asked for more pie, and her enthusiasm as she ate the pie, came back to him.
He promised his daughter pie, and if synth pie was what was available at the moment.
He was going to deliver in abundance.
He looked deeply into the green eyes of the lizard man and whispered confidently to him.
"You should have led with that."
[Optimizing Systems for Engagement]...Halo came alive.
[⚠️ Bio-Energy Critically Low]