She was beauty. She was grace. She was Miss "I Try Incredibly Hard Not to Fall on my Face". Azurina was the new waitress at the Café Triste, an old, run down shop conveniently located right across from the famed Lumiouse Gallete stand. Never heard of it? Neither has anyone else in Lumiose. Though placed by main attractions like the mentioned Gallette Stand and the Gogoat Shuttle stop, no one bothers paying attention to the rinky-dink café suffering in bitter silence nearby.
It wasn't Azurina's first choice, nor second, nor third, nor tenth but she had finally landed a job and a nice apartment out in the big city and she was going to make the absolute best of it.
"Have a nice day, sir!" She smiled and handed a bagged croissant to the paying customer and he smiled and waved in return.
"Tch."
Azurina turned to see her tongue clicking supervisor, Diane glaring at her from the kitchen doorway. "I-Is there something wrong, ma'am?" She asked.
"We've been open for 5 hours already and that bald guy was the only customer today!" Diane bit into an eclair in anger and worry. Technically there had been two other customers that came in but they were chased away by Diane's bad, delinquent-like attitude. Though Azurina, not wishing to have all of her bones broken at the tender age of 19, refrained from reminding her.
"It's that damn Galette Stand, I know it! I'm gonna burn it down one of these days!" Diane ranted about her future arson concerning the stand across the street that sold the city's most famous snack: The Lumiose Galette. The stand only opened at set times and only for a limited time on a first come first serve basis. In the daily stampede to get baked treats the café sat alone and forgotten.
"There's also something else," Azurina started, snapping Diane out of her hate trance, "We also have no theme whatsoever like all the other cafés around here." Diane tilted her head in confusion prompting her to continue, "Like, Café Ultimo is THE place for those meatheads that love to Super Train their pokemon, Café Rouleau is Skater heaven, and Café Woof is all about those Furfrou Pokemon. We have nothing special." she finished, proud that she retained all that information from the Lumiose guidebook that she read on her way up here.
"Yeah yeah, but who CARES about all that freako stuff though?" Diane dismissed everything with a wave of her hand. "If I haven't had my morning coffee yet and some weird guy comes up to me to talk about how ripped his Pokemon are I'd deck him point blank!" she flexed and slapped her bicep. "What the hell's wrong with a NORMAL café, huh?"
'As normal as a café could get with a brutish worker like you' Azurina once again kept her thoughts to herself, lest she find her face slapped off.
A Fletchling flew inside and landed on the bar next to Azurina. Fletchling and other alley Pokemon seemed to find their way into the abandoned shop quite often, most likely looking for a place away from humans. She reached under the counter and pulled out a croissant that she then offered to the bird Pokemon. Since she had begun working 2 months ago, most of the food went to stray Pokemon since it would all go bad otherwise.
"How does this place stay in business anyway?" Azurina asked, "There's no possible way this place makes enough to even power the lights sometimes. Do we have a secret Electivire generator?"
"The owner is an old fart with too much money to spend. This place is just another failed investment, I'm sure." Diane replied.
"It ain't failed just yet!" The bell attached to the front entry rang signifying an arrival, in this case the arrival being the owner of Café Tristé.
" !" Azurina threw up an awkward salute and clutched a serving platter to her chest.
"Oh, it's you." Diane nonchalantly muttered.
The differences between the two waitresses was astounding.
"What are you rambling about over there?"
"I said it ain't failed yet." The dyed black-haired elderly pushed up his glasses and strolled further inside. "I have a plan that'll blow the lid offa this joint." He laughed as heartily as a small, old man could. "Get it? Because this place'll be so fulla money that it makes the roof come off, right?" He laughed again, not realizing that the punchline comes before the laughter. Again.
"What's your plan, sir?" Azurina asked, curious. If it would help bring some life to this graveyard she wouldn't mind doing whatever.
"Okay, so get this," he began. "What is the one thing that this place is great at?"
"Attracting Fletchling!" Azurina and Diane exclaimed in unison.
"Uh...No. Think harder." Mr. Banks sighed.
"Being low maintenance?" asked Azurina.
"Being close to famous tourist spots." Diane tried.
"Collecting dust!"
"Driving customers away!"
"Collecting Ratatta!"
"Having the most leftover food!"
"Collecting cobwebs!"
"You won't be collecting a PAYCHECK if you both don't shut yer mouths." Mr. Banks cut them off. He cleared his throat and uttered a single word. "Dough."
"Dough, sir?"
"Dough."
"Dough...huh?"
"Bread. French bread. Croissants. Sweet rolls," he strolled around the café listing off dough products and pastries. "Donuts, eclairs, strudels!" He turned to face the two waitresses. "I spent a lotta money on this dough, and it shows, no?"
It was true. Their pastries were on another level compared to the other cafés. It was just that no one cared enough about the bland shop to taste their non-bland goodies. Azurina and Diane nodded in agreement. She would always have a croissant or a donut every day on her breaks without fail and Diane would have whatever whenever she wanted it.
"The point is, we gotta show the city that our dough is worth THEIR dough, geddit? And so," Mr Banks walked back outside, motioning for the others to follow. "I had this statue made!" He gestured to a large, wooden sculpture in the shape of a trainer mannequin holding a pokéball with the texture of french bread that was now standing menacingly near the doorway.
Azurina grimaced immediately. "Uh, why does it smell like sourdough bread?"
"He's bread scented!" Mr. Banks beamed, obviously proud and not worried that this new investment was another failure.
"AMAZING!" Diane ran up to the Bread Man, delighted with this decision. "It looks so mean and tough!" she outstretched her arms to her sides and flexed, just like the statue seemed to be doing.
A small Fletching landed on the statue's head. Followed by another, and then another, until Bread Man looked more like a failure of a Scarekrow.
"I just... don't feel like this was thought through enough, sir." Azurina said, watching the birds attempt to devour the café's new mascot.
"It's a good thing I held off on those bread-scented bunnygirl outfits then. They woulda pecked yer eyes out." Mr. Banks rubbed his chin.
Azurina fully planned to start job searching again on her next off day.
Behind them, a large crowd of people were lining up across the street.
"Ugh, it's that damn stand again!" Diane heaved, still posing with Bread Man.
The Galette Stand across the street had opened 2 minutes ago and had gotten more customers than Café Tristé had ever brought in since it opened years ago.
"They all seem to be kinda... angry?" Azurina squinted, trying to make out what was going on at the stand.
"I WAS HERE FIRST, SO THEY'RE MINE!" a businessman at the front of the line was yelling. It appeared he was buying every single Galette that was made for their 3 PM opening. General outrage was the response from the rest of the customers behind him. General apathy was the man's response as he collected his ton of pastries, shoved them into his car, and drove off quickly before the mass of flung shoes and rocks could dent his fancy, black car. A woman riding a Gogoat charged after him relentlessly.
Diane and Mr. Banks let loose uproarious laughter at the crowd's plight. "That's what you jerkos get for not visiting a REAL café!"Diane pointed and laughed, which caught the attention of a few people across the street.
"Is... Is that a Bread statue?" one woman asked.
"Oh my god, I have to get a picture with it!" a teenaged girl pulled her two friends over and they all began posing along with Bread Man. "Take our picture, please!" one of the girls asked Azurina.
"Why."
Mr. Banks nudged her in the side and gave her a look.
"I mean, why not? H-Heh..." Azurina stepped forward. She received the camera phone from the girl and snapped a few pictures of the three.
"This café looks pretty comfy, actually. I can't believe I've never heard of it!" Another one of the girls said.
"I know right! Let's go in!"and with that the three girls disappeared through the Café door followed by Diane and Mr. Banks. Azurina turned to follow but stopped and glanced back. Behind her, a line was forming next to the bread statue. The crowd from the Galette line broke off and some followed the three teenage girls, which caused more people to follow where everyone else was going and so on and so forth. This only led Azurina to believe that people were indeed Mareep.
"You guys want your picture taken too, huh?"
~
In the next few days that followed, Café Triste saw an exponential increase in customers. People traveled from all over the city just to see the legendary "Breaddequin" and to taste the shop's specialty, the Triste Croque-Monsieur. Not quite as popular as the Lumiose Galette but it was a start. This of course meant Diane and Azurina's workload went from 0 to 100 in an instant, leaving little room for breaks. Mr. Banks said there would be new hires coming soon but Azurina thought they couldn't come soon enough as she bobbed and weaved through the packed café in order to deliver food to the correct tables.
Diane was pretty pissed that she can't eat all the time anymore though. She seems to have attracted a cult following that won't or can't be chased away by her ever prominent bad attitude. If she knew any better it would almost seem like they enjoyed being her punching bags, but what self respecting human would enjoy that, right?
...Right?