Tough Customers (for Deezcastforms) (Cancelled)

[CaptainL]

It was a busy afternoon at the House of Lai, a modest Chinese restaurant located in the heart of Tokyo. While just about everyone regarded the food as average and unremarkable, it still provided reliable enough service and consistent quality - not to mention the charms of the owning family's three daughters, the Lai sisters, who could often be found in various positions both behind and in front of the counter. And tonight, Meiyun Lai was working the floor. Several parties had come in at once, and she found herself needing to flit back and forth between tables, jotting down orders in between bringing people their food. In the back of her mind, she wished Sarabeth could've been available tonight to help - but Meiyun wasn't the type to back down if she had to face adversity. Like any hot-blooded hero, she would power through it and stand tall, ready to take on any challenges in her way!

"Alright, there's your order, sir!" she said, placing a bowl of ramen down on one table. As she turned aside, she paused, noticing that one girl who had recently entered and seated herself looked oddly familiar. Had she seen her somewhere? Nah, it had to be a coincidence. Dutiful as ever, she produced a notepad and stepped up to the table.

"Welcome to House of Lai! Can I help you, miss?"

Spoiler

[deezcastforms]

Spoiler

Hortensia Aster was out and about exploring Tokyo, and she was hungry. She knew the restaurant scene decently well in a few of the prefectures closer to where her sister Ivy lived that she spent more time in, but today she had gone out a ways to see someplace she hadn't been before. She had originally thought that she would just pop into the first place that caught her eye and see what happened, but Hortensia's tummy was rumbling in a way that made her not want to risk experimenting with someplace that she might not like.

That set Hortensia on the search for a familiar restaurant chain that would be the same here as anywhere else in Japan. At least until she saw a sign that said "House of Lai." Hortensia had heard of this place, and knew it's reputation; unremarkable, but reliably decent. "Hey, I'll take that," she said to herself before walking in.

The restaurant was a bit busier than one might expect for a place that was known as not being anything special, but it wasn't so packed that Hortensia couldn't find a seat. Service was quick too, but when Hortensia saw her waitress, she had the biggest smile come across her face. She knew exactly who had come to her table: Meiyun Lai.

The reason Hortensia knew about this restaurant was that it came up when Meiyun had fought, and gotten absolutely crushed, by Ivy in a LAW ring only a few short days ago. Heck, a good chunk of Meiyun's highlight reel had been some pretty brutal losses. Apparently a minor feud had even started over how one of her opponent's had finished her awhile ago.

Hortensia was cackling inside, wanting so desperately to make quite possibly the greatest 'put the fries in the bag' joke of all time. But she restrained herself, letting basic etiquette and courtesy have the day as she let her smile come off as gratitude for quick service and made her order, "One order of meat dango and water, please." However, in her mirth, Hortensia had failed to notice something about the menu. The House of Lai's specialty dishes were clearly based around pork. Hortensia loathed pork. It wasn't a diet or moral thing, she genuinely hated the taste. When she had ordered a meat dango, she had chicken meat dango in mind, something that she did like. It's one little oversight, though. What's the worst that could possibly happen?

[CaptainL]

Meiyun still couldn't quite shake the feeling that there was something off about this girl - like she should've recognized her from somewhere. But then again, it was probably nothing. Given she was white with a British accent, she was probably a tourist, so maybe Mei was just paying too close attention to how she stuck out from the usual crowd of modest-income families and salarymen looking for something unremarkable but reliable. In any case, once she made her order, Meiyun's apprehensions disappeared. That was simple enough. Hard to mess up. With a smile on her face, she took a short bow in Hortensia's direction. "I'll get right on that for you."

Weaving her way through the tables, Mei brought her order to the kitchen, and before too long, she had a plate of their signature recipe dango and a glass of water on a platter. That signature recipe, of course, used their house specialty pork. Even if Meiyun's family had lived in Japan for years, their recipes were still grounded in the Hakka cuisine they were used to. Meiyun never really questioned it. As long as people reasonably liked their food, she saw no reason to think twice about it.

"Here you go!" she said, returning to Hortensia's table and setting the plate down. "I hope everything's to your liking."

[deezcastforms]

Hortensia had the feeling that something was off with her food when it came. The look and smell of it wasn't what she was used to for meat dango. But the pinkette would regretfully ignore her senses as her mind reasoned that it made sense that this was different because this was a restaurant she had never eaten at before. This dango was probably perfectly fine, and this was just how the House of Lai dango looked when served.

But then, Hortensia bit into one of the little meatballs off of her plate. Just that one bite was all it took. Her eyes went wide as her face and neck muscles tensed up. Hortensia hadn't even started to chew before the piece of dango was spat back out onto her plate and she was trying to wash out the taste from her mouth with her water.

This happened quickly enough that Meiyun would still be at her table to witness this, and subsequently be right in the path of a Hortensia who no longer cared about being polite or respectful to her waitress. "Blegh! That's the worst dango I've ever tasted in my life!" she spat. The Brit then took a closer look at the spat out piece, and realization hit her.

"This is pork!" Hortensia cried, "No wonder it's awful, it's nasty pork! Chicken is the default for dango, dangit! If you have a different meat for your dango, you gotta mention it! Morons! And since Hortensia's taste buds had been rattled enough to make her severely lose her cool, she was ready to go at Meiyun's other profession without missing a beat, "You know, when I came in here and saw you, I thought it was a good thing that you hadn't quit your day job after my sister absolutely crushed you in a wrestling match the other day. But I guess you can't even put the fries in the bag right, either!"

[CaptainL]

After Meiyun set the plate down on Hortensia's table, she turned and headed back to take her next order. No use in waiting around, she thought - when the place was this busy, she needed to keep moving to ensure things would be running smoothly. No one really thought the food at House of Lai was all that great, but no one really had a problem with it, either. Surely this girl would be happy enough, and she could go back to business as usual.

But that was where she was wrong. Just as Mei was about to attend to another customer, she heard a cry from behind her - a cry that made her go rigid and stand up straight. "Excuse me!?" She spun around to face Hortensia, where she balled a fist and slammed it against her palm. Her eyes narrowed on her with a glare. Who did she think she was, casting such aspersions on her family's cooking? She was dishonoring her time-honored family recipe, and that was dishonoring her own proud bloodline! Meiyun could never stand for that!

"That's my house specialty you're insulting!" Meiyun cried. "The Lai family has perfected their art of cooking pork dango for untold generations, dating back to ancient Taiwan!" She didn't actually know if that was true - in fact, she had just now made that up - but she wanted to believe it. "And who are you to come to a restaurant just to insult the food, huh? You didn't have to eat here! And I don't see you doing better! If you're that picky, the door is that way - you can make your own food!"

Already, Meiyun's reaction had drawn a few odd looks from the other customers, some of whom had begun to look on with a rapt curiosity. But it was the next thing out of Hortensia's mouth that truly struck Mei like a truck. Her jaw dropped, and her face paled. Now she knew who this girl was - she had been present at some of the matches of one Ivy Aster, the same Ivy Aster who had dealt her an ignoble defeat in Meiyun's last match! And Hortensia was all but rubbing that fact in her face! Now, Meiyun wasn't just standing up for her family's honor. She was standing up for her own, too! How could she have any respect for herself if she allowed a customer to heckle herself like this!?

"Why, you..! Your sister just got lucky!" she boasted, taking a stance. "You have no idea how much I've trained to one day become the greatest fighter LAW - nay, the world - will ever know! If you really want to see that for yourself, I'll take you on right now!"

[deezcastforms]

Hortensia was obviously heated enough to not care about social etiquette, but she was still cognizant of it in the back of her mind. And that part of the pinkette's mind that had been drilled on manners from a young age was just about the one part of Hortensia that was smiling right now. Meiyun was getting confrontational and aggressive while Hortensia was still only talking about the food. Not to mention that she, an employee of the establishment of which Hortensia was a customer, was challenging her to a fight. Hortensia had been handed the moral and societal high ground on a silver platter, she'd be able to get away with so much.

"Well you clearly haven't been training for your waitress job if this is how you treat paying customers," snarked Hortensia. "Confronting and challenging your customers for expressing their opinions, making up false claims to do so," she didn't know the Taiwan thing was made up, but she was calling out other things that Meiyun had said. "Firstly, I came here because this restaurant's food and service is supposed to be reliably adequate, and I didn't feel like risking a bad meal in an unfamiliar area. You've simply failed to live up to that standard."

"And secondly," Hortensia started to heat herself back up, "LUCKY? Ivy got lucky when she kicked your butt without you landing a single hit on her? When she beat you so fast that she was in and out of the ring in literally less than two minutes? You're saying that was luck? You know what? Fine! I'll kick your butt too! Let's take this out to the parking lot."

Hortensia and Meiyun went outside, a decent chunk of present clientele following them out to watch. Some bringing their food with them, others leaving it to come back to. "Alright, we go until somebody gives up or is knocked out," Hortensia said. "If you win, I'll apologize for insulting your food and calling you a pathetic wrestler, admit that you're good at wrestling, and pay double for my meal. But if I win, then you have to apologize to me on behalf of the restaurant for the dango and personally for your service, admit that you're a pathetic wrestler, and pay me what my bill would've been for my meal out of your own pocket." After listing her terms, Hortensia crossed her arms and leveled a smirk at Meiyun, do we have an agreement?