StarFox Coffee. A name synonymous with quiet cafes, smiling workers, sugary drink bombs, and an ever-fresh aroma of bitter coffee and sweet lattes. It was a franchise widely known throughout Corneria and even started to reach the other worlds of the Lylat. A reputation built on warmth and community was just what the Lylat needed as the Great War came to a close.
Most of the shops were designed to look particularly the same, allowing customers to instantly recognize one even at a distance. As you got closer, you would recognize the particular green roofing and awnings, and the logo of a green and white fox holding up a cup of coffee to you plastered on the front glass wall. Some cafes even had outdoor seating, with a nice green umbrella to enjoy good weather and fresh vibes of relaxation away from home.
"AND IF AH CATCH YOU IN MY DAMN SHOP AGAIN AH'LL BREAK YOUR SPINE TOO!"
Of course, sometimes the vibes were violent too.
Tired and groggy from waking up early in the morning, Fox's mind churned on fumes as it processed his new boss, an old hare named Peppy that somehow still looked imposing even as a bunny rabbit, throwing out a scraggly-looking vagabond golden retriever that looked more at home in a cardboard box than in any building. His brain registered the retriever shouting various obscenities and even one slur or two, but luckily the morning grog gave him a natural censor to his ears to recognize what the dog said as he curiously limped away from the vulpine's new job.
Instead, he stood frozen in the cold wintry Corneria City air, staring at the door propped ajar by Peppy. The rabbit seethed and exhaled a few hot breaths in anger before his eyes made contact with Fox. "What the hell you standin' around for? You're late!"
"Oh, sorry sir. I just didn't, ah, want to get in your way?" Fox replied, stuttering over his words as his mind still kept churning on empty.
"Don't call me sir, Ah left the military for a reason. Git inside, we got work to do before the morning rush comes," the rabbit ordered. Not wanting to see any more of what the rabbit could do if he could make a whole dog limp, Fox quickly ran inside the StarFox Cafe.
He felt his fur suddenly fluff up for a moment, changing in response to the hot air-conditioned cafe from the outside's cold city weather. At the same time, the smell of the cafe hit him with the force of a thousand aromas, and his empty stomach rumbled in anticipation. Looking inside, tiled pearlescent floors with brown lights and wooden chairs and tables give the customer the sense of warmth and comfort they could expect from a shop. Verona, Sumatra, and various other coffee bean smells that Fox couldn't even recognize filled his snout with wonderful promises of caffeine, while a toasted egg sandwich mixed with synth-meat bacon and gouda cheese lay half-eaten behind the counter still held a strong enough smell for Fox's stomach to shiver in delight and want.
Then a third smell hit him, but this one hit with the force of a hard punch to the spleen. The smell of dog piss.
"Ohhhh please tell me that isn't what I think it is," moaned Fox as he saw an employee mop up a wet section in the middle of the floor.
The said employee in question, a young green toad wearing a white-sleeved shirt with denim overalls and the uniform green apron of the company, looked up at him and snidely giggled. "You new around here? You're lucky this wasn't on purpose," the frog said, his tone sounding way younger than his looks.
"Wait, what do you mean 'on purpose'?" Fox asked, slightly confused and horrified at the same time.
The toad picked up the mop staff, its head discolored from its original light green hue, and placed it into the mop bucket. "First rule of this StarFox, don't make Peppy angry."
"Hey, Ah ain't that bad!" Peppy yelled from behind Fox as he entered the store.
"You broke a homeless dog's leg."
"Well Ah ain't good neither," Peppy retorted. "You got that mutt's mess cleaned up?"
"As much as I can. Where do you want me to drop it though, that's a biohazard waiting to happen, Pep," the toad replied, carting the mop bucket to the side, and noticeably away from the employee access door.
"Put it to the side and back, Ah'll call the biohazard team. You got any notice from Krystal?" Peppy asked.
On cue, a low rumble sound emanated from the toad's apron pocket. He quickly reached down and picked it out, lighting it up for a brief moment before shutting it off and putting it back in his pocket again, "Yeah, she just texted she's a minute away, and that she's sorry for being late."
"Ugh. Well, at least she's making it for opening. By the way," Peppy walked up next to Fox, who had been listening intently the entire time without a peep, and placed a hand on his shoulder, "Slippy, meet Fox. He's the new hire that Ah told y'all about. He trained over at the Su Fondant store, but he'll need some catching up to speed on how our store 'operates'," the hare explained.
"Ohhhhh, shoot, you're a partner? I thought you were just a new customer!" Slippy exclaimed, smiling for the first time since Fox entered the store. The toad quickly walked over and held up his hand for a handshake, disregarding the fact he was carrying a dirty mop around. "Howdy! My name's Slippy Toad; welcome to the team! I thought you were new cuz most of the folk we get around here are regulars. The newer customers tend to stop coming here after one or two times."
Peppy went around the two as he walked out of the way towards the employee entrance. Fox weakly smiled back at Slippy and raised his hand before balling it into a fist, holding his arm out for a fistbump instead of a handshake. "One or two times? Is it that bad out here?"
Slippy took the cue and finished the fistbump instead of the handshake. "Nah, you get used to the area, most folk just don't wanna be bothered by anything if they can help it. But Su Fondant, whew, that's an uptight area and an uptight store, hope you realize you downgraded by coming here."
Fox shrugged. "Eh, it's fine, I live closer here anyways. Works out better for me, you know?"
Slippy raised an eyebrow, but since toads don't have eyebrows he just raised his eyelids. "Oh yeah? Where at?"
Fox raised a hand and pointed to the left of the door with his thumb, "Wollcraft apartments, literally down the street."
The toad's eyes opened wide. "Oh shoot! You know a guy named Bill that lives there?"
One of Fox's eyes lit up, only because the other was still trying to wake up from his bed back home. "Bill Grey? Beagle, bout yay height?" he asked, holding his hand up and folded just a bit over his height. "Yeah, I know him! He and I knew each other since elementary, I know he works at another store."
"What? No, he works here," Slippy said, confused for a moment. "Dude keeps getting kicked out around the area for his drug habit. Peppy keeps giving him a chance but I think he's on his last straw here."
Fox couldn't help but tsk. He hadn't caught up with his old friend in a while, their schedules seemingly never in sync, but it sounded like he was the same old Bill since high school. "Damn, didn't know it got that bad for him. Anyone else I should know from here?"
"Oi!" Peppy yelled from the back. "Quit your yapping out there and get back in here! Slippy, swing that mop bucket inside, biohazard says they'll come and take the whole thang."
"Got it!" Slippy yelled back, before turning to Fox, "Come on, I'll get you up to speed." He motioned Fox over to the employee door.
Shuffling through his bag, Fox quickly put his apron on as he entered the bar area of the café, a signature green StarFox apron with the logo proudly displayed in the middle. Freshly clean and ironed, it was a magnificent piece of clothing for the newly minted member of StarFox Coffee and Café.
"Why the heck did you actually hot press that thing?" Slippy asked behind Fox, who was very much so not admiring it on himself at that moment.
"I wanted to make a good first impression?" Fox innocently replied.
Slippy raised an eyelid. "That thing is gonna get coffee and what else splattered all over it. Did all that hard work for nothing," he muttered, turning away from Fox to walk over to the warming station.
"Uh..." Fox uttered, bewildered by the toad's statement. "So, uh, what do you want me to do then?"
"Stand there and look pretty, I already got all the opening tasks done," Slippy replied. At the warming station, a black ticket machine on top of one of the two ovens whirred to life and spit out a white strip of paper, catching Slippy's attention. He grabbed the strip and pulled out a white StarFox branded bag from the station next to the oven, before opening the fridge beneath it and taking out a circular pre-made sandwich. "Hey, you know bar?" the toad asked, unwrapping the sandwich and putting it on a white piece of cooking paper.
"Yeah, I got some practice during training," Fox replied, his mind now beginning to focus on work. He turned back to the hot bar station, where the main magic of Starfox coffee happened. Bottles of different flavored syrups sat in the middle of two espresso machines, the sides of which had their names emblazoned in bright chrome lettering: Arwing. He looked to see the same kind of ticket machine from the oven right next to one of the Arwings spitting out the first new order of the day. He went to pick it up, but standing closer to the Arwing made him notice something wrong. This Arwing looked different than the one he used at Su Fondant, and he hesitated for a moment.
"Whoa, wait, this Arwing's new. Where's the espresso screen?" he asked. The Arwing he was used to was state-of-the-art espresso technology, using an OLED screen to queue shots and choose different temperatures and water pressure levels in each shot.
"Oh gosh, you trained on the Arwing Twos, didn't you?" Slippy uttered, moaning in annoyance. "Look, just get on food, it's a seventeen-drink order, I'll handle it."
Wait what.
Fox took a look at the ticket that popped out from the espresso bar. Ordered by a Gaylyn, item 1 of 17, 18 items total, the first ticket asked for a venti strawberry cream frappuccino. And the second. And the third.
"Oh my stars, they ordered seventeen frappuccinos this early in the morning?" Fox muttered out loud.
"You're joking."
Fox's ears perked up, and he turned around to the front of the Cafe. A vixen stood in front of the bar, slouching but standing slightly taller than him, and looking absolutely ragged. Her fur was colored blue but looked dull as if no care had been given for it to shine its obvious dye. Her hair bangs flopped over her face but curled in extreme ways as if they had never seen a comb in their lives. The two-tone blue and black hair dyes on top matched both her fur and her clothes, sporting a black t-shirt with a green neck gaiter covering her neck. Her sleeves on the shirt were rolled up for some odd reason, but they showed off two matching white tattoos on her blue fur that looked like chains wrapped around the arms. He noticed a small makeup mark, a tiny red heart under her right eye, right on the cheek.
"Nope. Some customers really need their sugar to start their day. Anyways, welcome to StarFox Coffee, how can I help you?" Fox replied, putting on a smile to his first customer of the day.
What he wasn't expecting was the vixen giving him the biggest stink-eye in Cornerian history, before turning and walking towards the employee entrance. He heard giggling behind him as he watched her enter the employee area, and Fox turned to see Slippy barely containing his laugh. "Heya Krystal, check it out! New guy's here from Su Fondant!"
"I can see that," a low, raspy voice came from the blue vixen before him, adding another point to her disheveled look. "Oi, Slip, run me a quad nitro, I feel like my arms are dragging the ground lower than a venomian ape's."
"Coming up! Fox, just do the oven for now, we'll figure out what to do with you later after the rush," Slippy replied, walking up to the vulpine and unexpectedly shoving him to the oven station away from the espresso bar.
"Whoa, hey!" Fox exclaimed. "What do you mean rush? What rush?"
He turned back to face Slippy only to notice the entire store was now jammed pack with Cornerians of all different species. Most were in line, some split off to grab all remaining tables in the cafe.
"Oh, howdy Mister Splinter! Your usual jade today?" Slippy asked from the espresso bar, facing out to a tall lanky rat that looked like his twilight days were before Fox was even born. "Fox, get on the food!" Slippy commanded.
Fox willed himself to face the oven, only to see the ticket machine glitching out and keep tossing out tickets, running a line down to the tiled floors.
It was only 2 minutes he was there. 2 minutes. HOW DID ALL OF THEM GET INSIDE—