A treat for aeslis
A treat for: aeslis
Cooked up by: A Friendly Chef
Title: Every Smuggler Needs a Good Hideout (on the Outer Rim)
Characters/Groups: Nino, Ohno, Becky
Genre: Humor, sci-fi
Rating: PG
Warnings: Nothing but some crazy ideas.
Author's Notes: For aeslis, using her prompt of "the restaurant is at the far side of the galaxy". I know you are Nino-centric, so I used him as the main character, and since I know you are particularly fond of Nino + Ohno interactions, it only made sense to use Ohno as well. Becky was a fun addition, so I do hope you enjoy this. :) Thanks to my lightning quick beta J, who shot first and did the job in less than 12 parceks, despite that being a unit of distance.
Ohno's Diner was on the far side of the universe, next to the far edge of the Outer Rim along a route that had once been heavily traveled during the wars and was now largely deserted. The food was all carbs and not much else, rarely delivered on time, and often cold since the owner fell asleep on the job a lot. It hadn't been renovated in years, the parking lot couldn't accommodate much by way of oversized fleet ships, and the clientele ranged from 'in need of a good shower' to 'probably thinking about hitting you with a blaster and using your bones to pick their teeth afterwards'.
There were few places in the universe that Nino liked better, and that was why he keyed in the coordinates whenever he got a few days off between runs. The galaxy was just too small not to frequent places as fantastically anonymous as Ohno's Diner was.
He was actually kind of annoyed when he came out of light speed to find that the parking lot was about half-full; for Ohno's, that kind of capacity was almost unheard of, and it meant he'd have to wait even longer to get his cold eggs and three different grained bread meal. His ship shuddered a bit beneath his hands when he engaged the lower brakes.
"Atta girl," he cooed, patting the console with affection. "You need some oil, don't you?"
Or new shock pads, but getting anywhere near the engines themselves was just asking to drop a couple thousand credits just to get somebody to look at what was wrong. The last time Nino had checked his account via holograph, he was hovering just around 152 credits to his name- enough to get him a meal at Ohno's and fuel back to the nearest port system, but not to get much else.
The Confederation was practically robbing him blind with tax fees and port tariffs.
For a long moment, Nino waited in the cockpit even after the engines had died down completely and stopped rumbling beneath his boots. It was hard to earn a living with the Confederation breathing down his neck to go through ship inspections and regulations and carbon-copy documentations- Nino was barely breaking even enough to get himself fed. And there was an alert out on the Smuggler's Net, which, while not a place Nino would have originally thought to frequent, was becoming a somewhat better looking option.
The red light on his console blinked slow and rhythmically, just like it had been doing for the past three days since Nino had flagged the information after he'd come across it. Nino drummed his fingertips against the console and just watched it light up and go dark, over and over again.
It was something to think about, and he was being unusually indecisive about the whole damn thing.
Thinking about it was only going to irk him further, so Nino tried to push the thoughts away when he opened the landing hatch and made solid contact with the gravel littering the landing strips outside of Ohno's. It felt good to get the soles of his boots on something solid again, and he breathed in deep lungfuls of regulation-controlled oxygen.
The bell on the door rang a cheerful trill of notes when Nino walked in, and the waitress gave him only a glance over her shoulder and a dismissive wave when she saw who he was. "Take a seat anywhere," Becky said, tray balanced precariously on one shoulder as she made her way through the clustered tables.
The place smelled like it usually did- of hot, steaming bread rising in old-fashioned coal-burning ovens and a hint of rosemary incense that the owner left burning by the tip jar (someone had apparently once told him that rosemary increased goodwill, and Ohno had taken this to heart). Nino bypassed all the booths in favor of his usual stool at the counter near the cash register; closer to the conversation, and the food, and gave him a better view of who all was in the rest of the joint.
For a hole-in-the-wall, there was an unusual amount of activity.
Most of that activity was in the form of noisy complaints coming from an agitated looking man in the far corner. He was wearing a suit- and insignia on his lapels; government, and Nino had every intention of staying far away from that problem.
"But we did stop to ask for directions," the man was saying, as Ohno popped out from behind the counter to give Nino a groggy wave.
"Busy today," Nino said.
Ohno looked pleased. "I think it's the new grain I'm using."
Nino wasn't really sure how much draw the bread grain would have in a place so far removed from most other civilization, but he kept his mouth shut. After all, he really was looking forward to a somewhat cold, carb-filled meal to fill his belly before taking off again.
"What's going on over there?" Nino asked, because the government official in question was still waving his hands over his head in some grand gesture to go along with his explanation.
"Think they got here by mistake," Ohno replied. He started wiping down the counter with an off-white dishtowel, humming a little song under his breath. "They like the baguettes, though."
Everyone liked the baguettes, Nino included. He gave Ohno his order and waited while the owner disappeared back into the hot kitchen, curls of steam puffing out the open door as it slid shut again. Behind Nino, there were two men engaged in an animated conversation about propeller parts, and behind them, an older couple sipping on coffee. The government officials in the corner were still perplexed about their whereabouts in the galaxy, though one of them had finally thought to pull a map out and the paper was crinkling across the tabletop as they moved their fingertips over it.
Becky gave Nino a little tap on the shoulder. "You want tea today?"
"You remember my order," Nino said and pantomimed swooning a bit.
"Well, you seem to have little else to do but come here a lot," she shot back. There was a cup of tea in front of Nino's hands before he really registered it, and Becky just gave him a cheeky salute.
It was just the right temperature, too, when Nino sipped at it. "You are really wasted here," he told the waitress as she moved away to take care of the elderly couple's bill, and she just waved absent-mindedly over one shoulder at him.
While Nino waited for his order to come up- or get cold, or for Ohno to wake from his doze and remember that Nino was expecting food- he pulled his deck of cards out of his pocket and shuffled them between his palms, letting his fingertips linger on the sides as the faces and symbols flashed by in a whirl.
There was a rumble to the ground that sounded like Ohno had closed the oven door a little hard. Nino looked up to find the man pushing a plate towards him.
"Already?" Nino asked. It was a pleasant surprise- the bread was even still hot.
"You look like you have a lot on your mind," Ohno reasoned. He propped his elbows on the counter and bent over.
Nino didn't like thinking that his face could be so easily read, especially not with government officials- lost government officials, but officials nonetheless- in the corner. But Ohno had always been good at reading people. Getting food out on time, no, but he was more perceptive than most in the galaxy.
"Just mulling some employment opportunities," he said, picking at the bread and putting a piece of it in his mouth- just like all of Ohno's creations, it melted as soon as it hit his tongue and spread a pleasant tingle through his whole form. It was enough to make him sigh in contentment.
"You know," Ohno began, eyes focusing on a point far beyond Nino's shoulder that only he could see, "sometimes you have to take a chance."
Nino pushed another bite of the bread in his mouth, eyeing the diner owner. "Are you telling me to do something stupid?" he asked.
"People told me that opening my diner here was stupid."
"That was stupid," Nino pointed out and grinned when Ohno laughed in response.
There was another rumble in the building around them, and Nino turned around to glare out the window at the parking lot. It wasn't visible much behind the reflection of the diner's interior that was mirrored back at him.
"Someone having engine trouble?" he mused.
But Ohno's face was bunched, eyebrows knit together. "That's not engine trouble," he said.
There was something about the way his voice trailed off that gave Nino pause. He swirled around in his seat and smacked his foot against the support in the process, and even as he winced and rubbed gingerly at the offending sting, he started to think that Ohno was right. The rumble was loud and low- not like the normal hum of a small freighter, but like the constant whirr and grind of something much larger in size.
Like the flagship from a fleet.
The Confederacy didn't have anything in the Outer Rim other than the lost officials in the far booth. If there was anything big enough to shake Ohno's entire diner, then Nino was willing to bet all of his remaining 152 credits- minus the cost of the meal in front of him- that it was definitely not Confederate in nature.
Which made it Alien, which didn't sit well with Nino at all.
"This could get ugly," Nino said.
The rest of the diner's customers seemed to sense that something was amiss as well- the old couple looked scared, the guys arguing over parts had quieted, and even the officials bent over the map had straightened to look at the front door.
When it finally shot open, chaos broke loose.
Nino got only a flash of what was moving in before there were simply too many bodies blocking his attempts to pick out anymore, but what he could see was telling- full body suit with a dark black mask. It meant that whoever was inside the suit had to take a human form before opening the front plastic, before they could process and live off of oxygen. A methane-breather, most likely, which made Nino's stomach drop even further.
But people were screaming and dishes were thrown and somebody knocked Nino down in their frenzy to get as far away from the alien life form as possible. Nino's shoulder made sharp contact with the side of the counter and he groaned, sliding down so he was partially hidden behind the stools, at least enough to keep him from immediately being targeted to be blasted into space dust.
He crawled around the backside of the counter as someone's coffee seeped into the fabric of his pants. Ohno was on the other side, peeking above the top in quick spurts.
"It's an attack!" one of the government officials in the corner booth started to scream, and when Nino looked up, he could see the man's hands waving back and forth in the air as he ran into the bathroom to hide. "Save yourselves, they have declared war!"
"Do you have insurance on this place?" Nino hissed.
"Just meteorite coverage," Ohno said. "I never looked into the terrorist activity sub-clauses."
The alien in the door hadn't moved much, and finally, the black plastic covering its face receded back into the helmet, revealing an assumed human form. But when the human mouth opened, all that came out was Bhanglor garble, and Nino couldn't make heads or tails of Bhanglor verb conjugations.
There was a tap on his shoulder, and he turned to find Becky crouched there behind them, hair half falling out of her ponytail. "We need to get the women and children out if this is really an attack," she said.
"Lousy government robots are just trying to freak everyone out," Nino replied, but still, his fingers inched towards the blaster holstered on his belt. The alien hadn't start shooting at anything, and it never hurt to get the jump on things before carnage happened.
Becky noticed his hand moving and smacked his arm roughly. "You can't just shoot it! You don't know what it wants! I think it's trying to communicate."
"Shooting first and asking questions later is a fine method of dealing with things," Nino hissed.
She had a point, though. The thing was waving its arms in the air and speaking in warbling Bhanglor. One of the guys who had been arguing over ship parts tried to throw half of a bean paste bun at the thing's head and thankfully missed by a few yards. Nino popped his head up again to find all the remaining government officials were huddled together under the table, shaking and mumbling and holding their heads in their hands.
Nino slumped back down, groaning. "What a bunch of pansies," he griped.
"Look," Ohno said, "maybe we can bribe it. I've got some buns that just came out of the oven."
"But what if it shoots us as soon as we stand up?" Nino asked.
Ohno shrugged. There were bits of food stuck in his hair and tea splashed down his shirt, and Nino almost wanted to tell him that the rosemary incense didn't seem to be working much on non-human life forms. "This is my diner. I'll protect it."
Becky sniffed into her hand. "Ohno. I'll help you." Nino looked at her in surprise, and she gave him a grim smile. "This is my job, too."
"Why does everybody suddenly feel the need to be heroic and suicidal?" he asked. "But whatever. I'm in. Let's just hope it doesn't have a black market disintegrator on it, because otherwise, this is going to be one damn short offensive strike."
The three of them crouched behind the counter, stepping over broken shards of plates. Nino put a finger to his lips- there was still lightning fast Bhanglor being shouted at increasing volumes- and then nodded once.
Ohno grabbed for the hot bread, and Nino grabbed for his blaster, and Becky's fingers were clutched tightly around an empty water pitcher that Nino could only assume she intended to throw at the thing's head.
Nino nodded once, and they stood up.
"Freeze!" Nino yelled. He clicked the safety off with his thumb.
The thing did exactly as instructed as soon as it noticed the weapon in Nino's hands. Its human eyes flicked back and forth between the three of them, taking stock of them each one by one like it was cataloguing it all and calculating odds.
"We're all going to die!" one of the officials moaned from under their table.
Then, with obvious deliberateness, the alien reached towards the front of its helmet and clicked the small red button there.
"-yes? Wait, is this right? Yes, hello?" it asked in accented but understandable Basic. Nino blinked, and then the alien's shoulders seemed to slump down in obvious relief. "Oh, thank the gods! My translator has been on the fritz since last week and the parts to fix it are back-ordered."
"So," Becky said, "you aren't here to attack us?"
The alien started waving its hands again. "Attack you? No! I just stopped because I heard there was really good melon pan here, and I was going to see if you made any curry!"
Nino lowered his blaster. "Oh, for the love of..."
"Curry?" Ohno bit his lip, face puckered in thought. "You know, I think maybe my mom had a really good curry recipe. I bet I could make some if you wanted."
"But just look at this place!" Becky cried. "It's a mess! You can't keep doing business with it like this!"
The situation- while anti-climactic and almost a little embarrassing if Nino was ever going to look back on it- had diffused enough to where the other customers were starting to crawl out from under their respective tables. The official in the bathroom even opened the door and peeked around the frame.
"Well, maybe he can help," Ohno said, reasonably, pointing at the alien.
"I'm very sorry for the mess," the thing said. It bowed a couple of times, and its helmet almost fell off when it went a little too low. "I'll help with anything I can."
Nino slipped his weapon back in the holster and regarded Becky with a critical eye. "You know, you're pretty calm in dangerous situations."
"I've been around a lot of crazy animals before," she said.
"Ever thought about smuggling?" Nino asked.
Ohno disappeared into the back room, presumably to find the fabled curry recipe. And around them, people started to pick up overturned plates of food and broken glasses.
"I don't have a ship," Becky replied, crossing her arms over her chest.
The alien had found its way over to the counter, and was resting its hands on the surface. Up close, its human form was a young guy who looked about Nino's age with bangs that were too long and kept getting in its eyes. "You know, there's been some activity near Bhangrin recently that's been attributed to smugglers. Lots of money to be made, if you can avoid the officials."
"I have a ship," Nino pointed out, "and a potential lead and about 139 credits in my bank account. I think it's about time that I buck the system. I'd like to be able to stay in a proper hotel once in awhile."
Becky looked over to where the government officials were trying to mop up the spilled liquid on their table and dry out the map that had gotten soaked in the panic. "They were pretty useless, weren't they?"
"And they just keep using all my taxes to do port renovations that take years and never seem to be any better anyway," Nino said.
"Found it!" Ohno said, emerging from the kitchen. There were smudges of burnt bread crumbs across his forehead. "It doesn't look too bad, and I think I have all the ingredients."
The alien looked very pleased. "And you would make it for me? I'll help out with the mess here and everything."
"So?" Nino asked Becky, who was still chewing on the inside of her mouth while looking sidelong at the corner booth.
"You'll be alright here?" Becky asked to Ohno.
He shrugged and smiled. "Sure. I bet this guy will help. I might even teach him how to make the curry, if he wants to learn."
"Do I ever!" the alien exclaimed. He went to clap his hands but misjudged the distance and size of his assumed human appendages, and missed completely. He had so much momentum that he fell over onto the stool next to him and managed to knock over the one tray of meals that had escaped through the fray untouched. He looked abashed. "Oops."
Becky turned to Nino and untied her apron. "I'm in. Let's do it. I've always wanted to travel more, anyway."
"What about Ohno's place?" Nino asked.
"Every good smuggler needs a good hideout, right?" Becky laughed.
Ohno gave them some bread in response. Nino figured it was a pretty good blessing.
--
A few hours later, back on Nino's ship, the two of them sat in the cockpit and readied themselves. Nino reached for the blinking red button, paused, and asked, "Ready?" before clicking it on.
The holovid screen sprang to life. It took a few seconds for the call to go through, and Nino sat back in his chair, lacing his fingers together in his lap while waiting for it to connect. When the image finally appeared on screen, it showed a guy with messy hair, a fedora, and oversized sunglasses. He was yawning widely.
"What's a turtle do when he's scared?" the guy asked.
Nino was glad he'd thought to check out the standard code most smugglers used before discussing under-the-table matters. "Hides in his shell," he said.
"Cool," the guy replied. "You're calling about the alert, right? Got a lead on this diamond out near Sector 12Y. Crazy expensive, and if you can get your hands on it without the Confederacy noticing, I've got a couple of really interested buyers."
"Alright," Nino said. "Coordinates of last known location?"
Fedora started punching in numbers onto his own console, and a second later, the digits flashed up on Nino's computer screen. "Go for it. Contact me again when you've got it on your ship, and I'll tell you where to take it."
Nino was about to sever the connection when the guy held a hand up to stop him. "Sort of goes without saying that you probably shouldn't get tangled up with any Confederate fleets."
"No shit," Nino said, and pressed 'end'.
"Diamond, huh?" Becky sighed. She looked a little dreamy. "I've always wanted to see a really nice diamond."
Nino glared at her a little out of the corner of his eyes and fired up the engines, feeling his ship whirl to life around him once more. "Well, you can see it, and then it's gone," he warned. "Let's get moving, it's quite a jaunt to 12Y from here."
Becky shifted her seat forward so she had better access to the console controls. "Aye, aye, captain."
Within minutes, Ohno's diner was just a speck in the dark universe behind them.