Jeryd gave a lazy shrug at Rayner’s question, and revisited his choice on the menu:

“Golden fries and a…” he gasped, eyes wide with false surprise, “And a sunset salad!”

It was commonly known that a sunset salad was just a mixed leaf salad arranged in a garish display of yellows, oranges, reds, and purples. At least this place attempted to make their food sound fancy. It was cute, which was more than can be said for Rayner’s description of a baked meat brick. The best thing you’ll ever eat, he said. Poor poor deluded Kyle Rayner; left to his own devices, he’d be sure to start waxing lyrical about the baked tuber and why it is the height of gourmet cuisine. As such, he neglected to return the question in kind.

“There’s a nice place on the Azure Promenade called The Nimbus Pools. Incredible food. They serve you with floating dishes of glass. In fact, everything is made out of this hazy kind of glass, and there are water features everywhere - pools, fountains, waterfalls. They even pump a fine vapour into the air which is good for your skin. If you go during the right time of day, it’s like you’re dining in the clouds. You’d lose your mind.”

While he spoke, he allowed his gaze to drift and inspect the rest of the patrons littered about the establishment. There was a feeble grey-skinned old man who nursed a steaming cup and muttered to himself while he stared intently through the window. He was no threat. At another table, a couple of young Rodians, sharing some kind of towering cold dessert with another young human, maybe a year younger than he was - they were probably students. If things got ugly, he could handle them: the Rodians were small and wiry, and the human looked scrawny under the layers of dull blues and washed-out browns he was wearing. In the far corner though, sat a Trandoshan. He’d been warned about that species. It wasn’t possible to make much out from where he was sitting, not without turning around and making it obvious he was staring. So he had to assume that, if there was trouble, he (or she) was the one who needed to be neutralised first. And, other than the Quarrens and the Aqualish - he could take them - there was just him and his furry companion, Kyle. No, Hal.

Rayner was right: they didn’t stand out, at all.

A sigh snapped him out of his tactical appraisal of the situation, to discover they had been ambushed by a short and stocky woman in a creased blue uniform and tiny white apron. From beneath heavy, violet-dusted lids, her hollow gaze found a well-worn spot on the wall, and there it remained.

“Welcome to Olga’s Hot and Snappy Diner,” she croaked, dead-to-the-world, “You won’t find a hotter and snappier dish this side of Level 83. Hoo-boy… that’s good eatin’. What’ll it be, boys?”

“Good evening, ma’am,” Jeryd said at once, infusing his military prep boy accent with extra lashings of jovial plumminess, “I will have the Olga’s Classic Nerfburger, please.”

“Regular buns or Olga’s Special Buns?”

“Well, I say- Who can say ‘No’ to Olga’s Special Buns?”

“Beautiful. Wet ya whistle?”

“...excuse me?” Owlish with surprise, Jeryd spotted Rayner miming a drink across the table, “Oh, I see. Uh. What’s popular with the regulars here at Olga’s Diner?”

“Stimcaf. Or chocolate milk, for the kids.”

“Then it will be the chocolate milk for me! We’re all children at heart, after all. Don’t you agree?”

From behind her ear, the waitress plucked a smoking stim, took a drag, then huffed, “Like a spring chicken, honey.”

She flicked some ash Rayner’s way, “What about you, handsome?”