"Ah, me favorite diner on this part of the galaxy!"
Opening the door, Long John Trenway waltzed through and into the main dining area, offering all the staff a bow and tip of his hat. All the workers there knew the pirate, although to them, he was just John, a frequent and happy face in the family-run business. Everyone who worked there, from the waitresses to the busboys to the cooks had a friendly greeting for the large man. Even the owner, a Sullustan man, came down from his office to shake the cyborg's hand, and his three kids rushed forward out of the back, calling out for John.
"John! John! Tell us a story! Pleaseeeeeee?"
The cyborg roared with laughter, patting each of the children on the head with his left hand, his real hand.
"Ah, good morning to ya, Nien, Tien, and Poki. Of course I gots a story for my three favorite little Sullustans. Come on, have a seat with me at the table. Martha, dear, I'll have the usual. Eggs an' bacon for this humble cyborg!"
The waitress nodded with a smile and went back to the kitchen to place the order. Meanwhile, Long John spun and weaved a tale for the three children, who were in awe of the old traveler.
"So, there we was, in what remained of the planet Alderaan. Couldn't see past me own hand, and me ship was under attack by...pirates!"
The three little aliens gasped. Ol' Long John chuckled and continued.
"We was outnumbered, three to one-no, it must've been five to one! Most of me crew thought we was doomed, I tell ye! But yer humble storyteller here, he had something those nasty scallywags didn't have: a brain! So, we flew about and around, navigating the asteroids, hiding, carefully biding our time while the less skilled buccaneers were in a rage trying to find us! So hasty they was, and so full of themselves thinking they could outsmart us, that the asteroids did most of the work for us! Only a tad few ships remained to pursue us, and I, a humble yet skilled man, zipped through the chunks of rock and debris and blasted off into hyperspace, leaving some very, very, bewildered pirates behind to wonder where I and their fellow swashbuckers went along to!"
The three children were bubbling with questions, and John simply sat back and waited for them to run out of breath. Of course, the story was modified. He was under attack in what remained of Alderaan, but it was by a military convoy in search of the ship that had plundered and raided half of the systems in that part of space. But the rest of it was true. For the most part.
"Come to think of it, lads, I just remembered another story. Oh, just a moment, my little friends! Ol' John has to eat first!"
The kids grumbled and complained about the sudden appearance of John's food and the interruption of story time, but they dutifully gave the cyborg his space, choosing to go to the back of the diner and reenact the story, with them zipping about and pretending to be pirates in an asteroid field. Long John gave a hearty chuckle and dug in to his food, glancing around the diner. Most of the other patrons had heard the story too, and were quietly discussing it amongst themselves, in slight awe of the seasoned spacer before them. It always brought them back wanting to hear more, which was part of the reason the Sullustan owner liked John so much. Good business days were sure to come when Long John Trenway was in this part of Coruscant.
[member="Luna Nox"] [member="Tanya Thiran"]