The guy at table seven. Yeah. That guy. The one in the clean, quietly fashionable but unpretentious clothes. The one leaning forward just the right amount to show concern, while leaving distance; the one with his elbows on the table, and his hands clasped as if begging for understanding. That guy. That guy was breaking up with his girlfriend.

The girlfriend, for her part, was checking Reddit on her phone under the table.

It's not you; it's me. Ash Ketchum calls into Local Christian TV show. I wish I could give you a better reason than this, you deserve so much more, but it's like there's this distance between us-- Which actor/actress duo would make Fifty Shades of Grey the most cringe worthy? Please say something. Anything. AC/DC's -- Thunderstruck [Country] A Finnish Hillbilly Cover.

"Ten points," Margaret said, through the window from the kitchen.

The redheaded waitress gave her a look; that look.

The cook upped the ante: "Twenty-five for the pair."

"Table fifteen wants a BLT, hold the L, sub the B with vegan cardboard. Think you can manage?" That look continued.

"Forty if you make it a trick shot. That's the highest I'll go. Come on, a pair that disgusting? You were already thinking of doing it for free."

That smile grew on the waitress' face. She reached into her pocket, and unclipped a pen. The action was hardly necessary. The tricky part, after all, had been making the pen hold still in the first place.

The cook slid a plate across the window's ledge. The waitress caught it, and turned on her heel. With a little shimmy of her hips, she strode back out into the isle. Table twelve: numerically, a girl wouldn't think it would end up that close to table seven. But on the manager's hand-drawn layout of the restaurant, with its cheap plastic cover, a big M was scrawled over the teens. And table twelve happened to line up on the self-same isle as the heart-rending couple. She dropped a pen going past; clumsy, clumsy her. Dropped off the plate. Went back for her next order. Carried a BLT (hold the L, sub the B), took orders, carried precarious trays full of coffee cups. All right past table seven.

"Come on," the cook hissed. "That coffee was a golden opportunity."

That was about when the crash came. It was, in a word, uproarious. There was smashing, there was crashing; there were at least twenty-three individual crashes if one had the finally trained ear to distinguish each dish and cup from another. There was, most importantly, the remains of potatoes au gratin and at least five different dredges of coffee splattered on shoes, pants, under-table phones.

There was a sweet smile on the redhead's face, and a look of awe on the cook's.

"What did Will ever do to you?" The cook asked, of the downed bus boy. The clumsy man had tripped on a pen; his foot had gone right out from under him, sending his whole stack crashing down on and about table seven.

"He stole the tip off table fourteen," the waitress said, checking her immaculately painted nails. "Thought I wouldn't notice."

"Those come out of his paycheck, you know," the cook said.

Oh, she knew. "Good thing he pocketed a little extra, then."

"You are a special piece of work, Ralls."

"Forty points," the waitress said.

"Forty points," the cook agreed. And with that, Maxine had taken the lead over every other disgruntled employee in the cafe. Spitting in a cup, baking hairs into pizza crusts: those little puerile pranks were five points, max. Unless someone else pulled a trick shot in the next hour, she was officially Bitch of the Day.

The redhead didn't take a bow; she just smiled. That smile. She was wearing lipstick, a designer tank top, a pleated shirt just modest enough to give imagination some room to play; black stockings, three inch heels, and a boxy band around her left ankle that would squeal to the NYPD if she took a single step outside of Manhattan. She'd put rhinestone stickers on its outside. A belt of paperclips wrapped around her waist; eight strands of paperclips, if anyone cared to count. It was a little hipster, but the silver metal set off the simple black scheme of the rest of the outfit neatly.

All in all, she gave exactly the impression she was going for: she was too good for this place, and she knew it.

Maxine Rawls, formerly of Wolf News, was on probation. Honestly. A girl incites one little riot, and suddenly the city's up in arms...

This is the way of things, the will of the Force.
Everything crumbles.
Intentions and Empires, Councils and Kinships.
Aspirations to ambition to atrophy,
Desire to domination to dust.
Only the will of the Force remains.

Such a simple passage yet it held more truth and relevance than almost anything that could be found in modern media. A fact which was made all the more satisfying given it had come from fiction of fiction.

Lowering the thin volume in his hands Simon glanced over the leather cover as he took in the chaotic crash of cutlery and plates with a look equal parts boredom and amusements, azure eyes noting the discarded pen amidst the debris before they swept across the floor and found an all too familiar red head, shock bracelet and all.

Having lost her liberty to the justice system for reporting nothing but the truth, the gamine still seemed in surprisingly good spirits, at least if her veiled vulpine grin were any indication; a mix of ‘I know something you don’t’ and ‘I’m better than you, deal with it’ as she all but strutted down a aisle of booths, offering the fallen bus boy a faux coo of sympathy as she made her way to a table.

Hey there, table for one?

Shifting his attention to the newly attentive greeter at the front podium Simon offered the girl a friendly grin and nodded. “Please, and if it wouldn’t be too much trouble could I have one of Maxine’s tables? I’m an old friend of hers.” Letting his British brogue play up as he spoke the elemental did nothing to downplay the slight insinuation in words.

“You can tell her Dio decided to drop by. “