Chapter Twelve - Bunch’a Brats
Crossover: Fluff by RavensDagger

***

“I need to pee.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Look Boss, trash!”

Emily wasn’t at her wit’s end. No, her wit’s end was about three blocks back, crying while rocking back and forth. She was well and truly past that. “I know, I know,” she said, vainly hoping that would be enough to placate her little sisters.

Teddy nodded, but she was walking the walk of someone who really did need to use the washroom, despite Emily asking twice before they left the house. Athena kept staring at any ad with food they passed--which was seemingly all of them--and Trinity and all three of her bodies, kept pausing next to the big trash cans dotting the roadside.

“We’ll find something,” Emily said. All she needed was a place where she could grab a bite and use the washrooms, that was it. And maybe a nice cup of coffee. She deserved it.

“What about there?” Teddy asked. She was pointing to something across the street.

She was pointing to a quaint little cafe, it was... it was... there was a fog around it, and it seemed to float in the air, at once there and not.

Emily shook her head and blinked her eyes.

“We’ll find something,” Emily said, again... or was it the first time? All she needed was a place where she could grab a bite and use the washrooms, that was it. And maybe grab a nice cup of coffee. A cafe, she needed a cafe.

“What about there?” Teddy asked. She was pointing to something out ahead and near the entrance to an alley on their side of the street.

Emily felt a strange sense of deja-vu for a moment. There was a cute little cafe, a big sign above a brick and mortar front. Dreamer’s Ten’Tea’cle Cafe. Lots of cat-themed decor, but all very clean and new looking.

“Yeah, okay,” Emily said.

Her sisters cheered, and with a very stiff-legged Teddy at the lead, they charged into the store to the protest of the front door’s jingling bell. Emily rolled her eyes, prayed that they didn’t break anything, and followed them in.

Emily took a moment to inspect the interior. It was a pretty standard cafe. A few tables to the sides, with chairs around them that had cat head shaped backs, and a section at the rear--with a couple of steps leading up to it--had the cashier and a display full of cakes and other pastries.

“Oh! Sorry,” a young woman said from off to one side. She had an apron on, with the cafe’s logo on it. It was obvious at a glance that Emily and her sisters had caught her and her friends mid-break. “Hi, welcome.”

“Are you open?” Emily asked. It would be supremely awkward if they weren’t.

“We are, we are,” the girl said. She put on the happy grin of someone working in retail, then gestured towards the back. “I’ll get behind the till. Feel free to browse around? Take a seat?”

“Where can I poop?” Teddy asked with great tact.

“Um. There's a washroom just over there. The doors with the boy cat and the girl cat on them.”

Teddy scampered off, and Emily kept an eye on her other pests. “No touching anything,” she warned. One of Trinity’s hands snapped back and away from a rack of mugs.

“So, what can I get for you?” the cashier asked as she took her place behind the counter.

“Uh,” Emily said. She looked for a menu, found one, then stared. She didn’t recognize the numbers next to the items on the menu, and those ideas seemed a little blurry to her until she focused. “Can I have... what do you have that’s small? For my sisters.”

“Oh, they’re your sisters?” the cashier asked. She and Emily stared at each other, processed what she said and the implications, then they both blushed and looked away in the same moment.

There was, in that instant, an understanding between them. Like the awkward handshake of two companions meeting, only these two companions were strangers, and also terrible introverts. They both nodded, without meeting the other’s eye, and agreed to look past the awkwardness.

“We have these little mini-cakes,” the girl said. “They’re not too big, and they’re filled with strawberry jam. Although, that might be messy.”

“Right, that’s a lot of faces and hands to clean. Not to mention your nice tables.”

“”We have chocolate pastries too. They’re nice when dipped in coffee. And we have hot chocolate too.”

“I want that!” Trinity said in stereo.

“We’ll take, uh, five of both,” Emily said. “And I need a coffee. Strong.”

“No problem,” the girl said. She busied herself with the order while Emily wrangled her sisters. In the end, she aimed them towards a table in a corner where she figured they couldn’t do any harm. Teddy exited the washroom, looking relieved until Emily asked her if she washed her hands, then she was sent back to the washroom with a pout.

“I’m sorry for... all of that,” Emily said to the girl across from the counter. She swallowed, grasping onto her limited bravery. “I’m Emily, by the way.”

“Hi Emily, I’m Abigail, and don’t worry. I know... pretty much exactly what it’s like to take care of someone younger and a bit... bratty.”

“How many do you need to watch over?” Emily asked. Abigail had a sister or two of her own, then?

“Just the one, but I think she could out-brat all five of yours.”

“I don’t know about that,” Emily said with a chuckle.

Abigail laughed too as she set a tray on the counter. It had everything in neat little plates. “It’s hardly a competition. Ah, I need to ring you up. I’m not sure how this machine works though.”

“Oh,” Emily said. She fumbled her card out, and gestured to the keypad next to the machine. “I think it’s a tap. Just enter the order and I tap it with my card.”

“Uh,” Abigail said. She frowned in consternation, but after poking at the screen a few times, she figured it out. Emily figured she had no place to complain about the slowness, not when she could hear her sisters making a disaster for poor Abigail to pick up later in the back.

“There you go,” Emily said as she paid up. Abigail still looked a little confused by it all.

The cashier shrugged. “Well, alright then. Did you want to join my friends and I? It’ll give you a small break from all the... yeah.”

“I... you know what, sure.”

***