The NTWF Cafe

[Kiddo]

Upon recieving her tea Kiddo immediently sunk into bliss, falling onto the table with a lazy grin on her face, inhaling deeply. She took a few sips, closed her eyes, and then when a hand closed on her foot she reacted as any self-respecting ninja would.

She backflipped, kicked the table over, and had a knife out and ready to throw at the poor soul underneath within seconds.

"Oh," she said, "Ebil. why the fail. You shouldn't startle a ninja. Really."

Then she too noticed the writing on the table and absently crawled over, picking up the fallen teacup and inspecting it before reading the message. She looked very sad to find that the teacup had not only spilt when she kicked the table over but had cracked in two as well.

"So, does anyone know why a dead magpie would be so important that there'd be a message etched on the table? Is it some new club name? Or some mixed drink I haven't heard about yet?" she asked after reading the message.

[KitClairvoyance]

Kit nodded, "Right, a hot chocolate and marhsmellows to go, without all the extra jazz." he decided to give her a flower with the drink anyway. "I'll be back with your drink hopefully. If I dont return within the hour, the weasels would probably be-" his sentence was cut short as a table crashed nearby, accompanied by the sound af a vase shattering as it hit the ground.

Kiddo had apparently kicked a table and was reading something on it. He made a mental note to remove all notes when he got around to cleaning the place. He bowed to Kat and fought his way to the kitchen, where he found himself face to face with a tiny, squeaky creature.

"You the boss here? The lady in the boots told me to see you." He fought down the urge to smirk at his newfound employer, "either way, Ive got an order on my hands already. Where do you keep the chocolate?"

[Fraze]

Fraze's eyes widened with horror (or greed, perhaps) when he saw his 351 new furry customers. Stealing a large mixing bowl from the kitchen, he managed to put together a special-order smoothie for the weasels, and another one in a cup for Zylaa. Calculating the cost in his head, he came up with the total. "That'll be 55 shinies, please."

Hearing a crash, he looked up to see a very awake Kiddo wielding a knife in one hand and a cup of hot tea in the other. For a moment, he wasn't sure which would be more dangerous. Finally, he decided that Kiddo herself was more dangerous than either of her objects, and decided to busy himself with avoiding any involvement once again. At the same time, he considered the possiblity of adding a tea-flavored smoothie to his menu.

As hard as he tried to stay ou tof the confusion, his gaze was drawn to the table. Of course, it was a table rather than a Table, but it was nonetheless a distant relative of his favorite weapon. On it was...something written. "Jeez," he muttered to himself, "that handwriting is almost as bad as mine. And why would a dead magpie pwn my socks?"

[Kat]

"What is it? Is it remotely readable? Understandable? Needs interpretation?" asked Kat, standing up as well and facing Kiddo. Her staff was in her hand again. She glanced back to where Kit went into the kitchen and shrugged. Her hot chocolate can wait. This was too exciting for hot chocolate.

The mage walked over to Kiddo and glanced at the writing, but when she reached out to touch it, the engravings glowed an angry crimson that crawled up onto Kat's fingers like huge throbbing arteries. She screamed and withdrew her hand, resisting the urge to blast the table to pieces, lest they lost the message.

[Fraze]

Without giving much thought to what he was doing, Fraze stole some ice from the supply for making blended coffee drinks, put it in a bag, and brought it over to Kat.

"Sheesh, and I thought this place would be...well...normal," he remarked. "Can't even open a coffee shop without having a cursed table or two. What's next? Haunted coffee makers?" Realizing what he had just said, Fraze touched the wood of the table, making sure to avoid the writing. He then remembered that nothing in the NTWF had a chance of being normal.

Glancing back at his furry customers, he couldn't help but notice the widening circle of smoothie on the floor, walls, and table where the weasels were gorging themselves. Hyper weasels...perhaps he should have thought this over more thoroughly.

"NSQ!" he called. "We'll need you to clean up this mess when the weasels are done over here. And you may want to see if you can do something about the table while you're at it."
"We need a janitor for this cafe," he added to himself.

[Rider]

kitclairvoyance said:

"You the boss here? The lady in the boots told me to see you." He fought down the urge to smirk at his newfound employer, "either way, Ive got an order on my hands already. Where do you keep the chocolate?"

[glow=red,2,300]Ventratta squeaked in the affirmative and pointed to the upper cabinet.

"Also, he's remin' you not to hit on the ladies on the job, whether theyre married to you or not," Shiva translated.


Meanwhile, Rider was having a job and a half trying to prevent Kat from blowing herself or the restaurant up. The thoroughly non-magical girl didn't know that it wasn't Kat who was causing the letters to glow.

"Easy there, Kat... it's just some magpie graffitti... Cursit, this is the last time we let you have caffeine..."[/glow]

[bag]

Bag temporarily left his position and took a long lunch break.

[Omni]

Omni jumped and nearly hit the roof when she heard a table get knocked over. When she noticed that everyone was crowding around the aforementioned table she decided to try to squeeze in and take a look.

"What? What is it? Let me see!"

She managed to squeeze between a couple of legs and take a look at the writing. She got an odd feeling as she got closer to it. "Okay... That's wierd."

[Ebil]

Ebil sighed as she squinted at the upturned table, and everything going on around it. "All I wanted was some nice shoes," she said wistfully (although she was happy Kiddo had checked who'd grabbed her foot before slicing them apart.)

Meanwhile, the hungry weasels were making quite a mess. Ebil wondered what Ventratta would say if he could see it.

[Kat]

Putting the ersatz ice pack on her hand, Kat narrowed her eyes and glared at the writing.

"I haven't even had caffeine yet," she said to Rider. "Not since last week. I haven't even gotten my hot chocolate. That stupid writing won't let me touch it. And, when I've had too much caffeine, I have trouble performing spells." The mage laughed shortly and winced at the lingering pain in her right hand.

She rested her hand and the ice pack on another table and hefted her staff with her left hand. Kat was neither left-handed nor ambidextrous, so it was quite a bit of a challenge. Still, as long as she held it the right way, no matter what hand or appendage she used, she knew it would work.

One of the flaming ends of the staff touched the text. Everyone heard a scream that sounded like it came from another dimension. It was a haunting tone that made everyone's hair - or fur - stand on end. More red lightning shot up onto the staff, and Kat quickly withdrew.

The blood-red magic was gone in a flash, and all that was left was the faint violet glimmer of the staff.

"Okay, that purple magic's mine," she said before any of the non-magical folk panicked.

[Deleted]

((Sammich bar? I love you all. XD))

Here in an instance, here in a flash.

"Nice Teleporting spell," the blue-haired girl muttered to the brown-haired one. Both of them had appeared magically in comfy chairs next to a low coffee table.

"I dislike doors," the brown-haired girl said sharply. She placed down her flamingo-looking guitar next to the chair, making it lean into the chair fluff. "And I'm not in a mood to make a grand entrance."

"Oh, and we all know teleporting into a cafe isn't a grand entrance." the other girl added sarcastically.

The guitar-bearing girl rumaged in her orange jacket pockets. "Not if you come in silently and solemnly with no one noticing." She pulled out a picture.

"What's that?" the rude one asked...well...rudely. She leaned over to take a closer look at the mysterious photograph. From her perspective, it looked new.

"Something I shouldn't have shown anyone," the brown-haired girl muttered. She snapped her fingers and a little candle flame appeared above her index finger. She placed it carefully underneath the photograph. The photo started turning black at the bottom, crumpling brown underneath the heat. The photo finally burst into flame, and the girl threw it up into the air, where she zapped it with her black magic until it exploded.

"Hm, yes," Claire said to Sammy. "Solemly, silently, and unnoticed indeed."

[Ebil]

Ebil was quite surprised, to say the least, to see two girls appear out of nowhere in two of the armchairs, but she figured it was all for the better (this way she didn't need to get up and go all the way over to the front door.) She quickly walked over, no longer slipping, as the bunny slippers were long gone and she was a great deal more graceful in dress shoes.

"Er. So, how many will be dining with us today?" she asked in what she hoped was a pleasant voice.

[Fraze]

Fraze was not sure whether to look at the table, or at the two young women who had just recently begun to exist in two armchairs across the room. He solved the dilemma by going back to his smoothie behind his counter, which gave him a good vantage point of both scenes. He noted with some worry the state that the weasels' smoothie was in. They seemed to be attempting to absorb it through their skin and fur--several of them were swimming in the bowl, others were doing cannonballs and dives into it, and the majority were leaving weasel-sized smoothie trails wherever they decided to run. Hyper animals and sugar. Not a good combination, he realized too late. Oh, well, it wasn't his mess to clean up.

Getting restless, he decided to greet the newcomers. He walked over to them, still holding his smoothie. "Hello, ladies," he said with a bow. He decided to be slightly theatrical. Hey, anything for a laugh. "How are you both this fine day? Might I interest you in one of our selection of fine products?"

They gave him a look. Curiosity? Annoyance? Amusement, perhaps? He wouldn't know until one of them said something.

[Kat]

"Mages," remarked Kat. "They pop in and out of nowhere, but teleporting just isn't my specialty. Well, maybe you two can help us with this writing on the table." She pointed at the message with her staff, taking care not to touch it again.

"I think it hates me," she quipped.

[Strife]

Strife stared at the pavement as he walked across the sidewalk, his arms crossed and his mind deep in thought. He was still wearing his trademark metallic-green space armour with the Virtupets symbol pasted on the chest, so he must have returned from duty very recently.

"How is this happening!?" he thought to himself while gritting his teeth, trying to hold back his frustration once again. He then paused his walking suddenly, and took a deep breath to calm himself down. "Let's just try this again... It's not like i'm wasting time or anything..."

He was approaching the entrance of the NTWF Cafe, when he spotted a girl in the distance who was also making her way towards the new cafe. She had long, fluffy, pale green hair and was wearing a black trenchcoat with the words "I Love Sloth" on the back of her cape. She was Plushie, one of Strife's co-workers.

"Hey there, Strife." said Plushie as she approached him. "You heard about the new cafe too?"

"Yeah, yeah, let's just go inside." mumbled Strife. He drowsily pushed the cafe door open as if he had been there dozens of times. Of course, none of the cafe's employees or customers had ever seen him visit the place before. Plushie raised an eyebrow, but followed him inside.

The two of them scanned the cafe briefly, noticing some of the battered tables and hundreds of weasels that crowded the far end of the cafe. Strife wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, and Plushie began to notice his stress.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

"No no... Just tired is all."

At the moment, Strife looked around the cafe again for a few seconds. He wasn't going to get anything done unless he acted, so he might as well tell his co-worker what was going on. "Actually... I need help. I want to talk to you about something."

"Oh... Well, this is the perfect place." Plush looked over Strife's shoulder and saw NSQ gulping down a table cloth while shouting something about potatoes. "Well, -almost- perfect. Wanna sit down with me so we can talk about it?"

"Sure."

Strife picked a table in the corner of the cafe, and Plush cautiously followed him to it. Normally Strife seemed like a rather friendly guy, but something about his mood intimidated her a little. They promptly sat in the chairs and picked up a few napkins.