Chapter 364: The Breakfast Special Had a Restraining Order

The kitchen floor opened beneath a cook who clearly hadn’t been told breakfast included a practical exam, and a huge blunt head forced its way through the serving hatch.

Its jaws closed around a hanging pan, flattened it and spat the remains across the counter. Someone at the next table tried taking a photograph, proving confidence could survive well beyond the point where intelligence had left the building.

The animal looked like an oversized digging lizard, with shovel-shaped forelimbs and thick plates along its back. Nothing about it showed grafts or altered tissue. Thermal vision gave me a hot body, not a convenient label promising Bio-Recall would solve it.

The owner slapped his red switch. Metal shutters dropped over the front windows while a cheerful recorded voice welcomed us to an unforgettable encounter.

"You could have managed unforgettable with the sauce prices, you miserable prick."

[System: New objective, mate. Get yourself, the spider and the six customers out through the service exit alive. Four thousand EXP and twenty IP, because apparently evacuation now comes with a breakfast special.]

The cook dragged himself onto the counter while the creature shoved farther through. I told him to follow the customers, then looked toward the rear door beneath a green exit sign.

A chair blocked the narrow aisle. I used Mine Now on it from within three meters, giving it a clear landing space against my tail, then pushed it flat beside the wall. Its weight hurt enough to remind me that theft wasn’t a substitute for planning.

Lukas pulled a frightened woman away from the serving hatch. I placed one portal beside our table and the other in the visible clear space before the rear door, well within twenty meters.

"Through the opening, keep moving, and nobody stop to review the bloody experience."

Four customers stumbled through before the first eight seconds ended. The cook followed while Lukas helped the remaining pair down the aisle. I kept my head outside the portal’s path, watching the lizard drag the entire hatch frame loose behind it.

The last customer tried collecting his coat from beneath his chair.

[System: That’s fair, mate. Getting eaten in the wrong jacket would be humiliating for the family.]

I hooked the coat with a tendril and threw it at him, which finally convinced him that I respected his priorities enough for him to run.

The portal closed after the cook cleared it. Three minutes now stood between me and another pair of openings, while Mine Now still had time left on its own shorter cooldown.

Lukas reached a metal kitchen trolley beside the aisle. Its lower shelf carried sacks of flour, giving it enough ordinary weight to make the wheels complain when he shoved it toward the creature.

The lizard struck the trolley instead of the departing customers. A sack burst across its face, and it sneezed hard enough to turn the diner into a bakery operated by explosives enthusiasts.

I laughed once before realizing the trolley was rolling backward down the sloped floor toward the same exit we needed.

Lukas caught its side rail and tried steering it against a table. I pressed my lower length along the opposite edge, adding my weight while keeping the wheels away from his feet. The table folded, the trolley jammed, and my breakfast landed upside down beneath its front axle.

That last part made the situation personal.

The customers reached the rear door, only to find its push bar moving without releasing the lock. Above it, a red indicator flashed in time with the owner’s remote.

He stood inside a small glass-fronted booth beside the counter. Instead of helping, he had aimed a handheld camera at us and started talking about audience participation.

I felt an ordinary little tune rise in my throat.

Lukas heard it and stopped asking whether I had a plan.

I slid behind the fallen table, staying low while the flour-covered animal shoved at the trolley. The owner’s booth had a side opening for staff, and he noticed me only when I reached the clear strip beside his shoes.

His hand moved toward another button.

I struck his wrist against the counter with my tail, caught the dropped remote against my underside and kept humming while he discovered that a paid performance could include consequences.

"Which button opens the rear door?"

"The green one, just don’t break anything else."

The detector gave no warning. I pressed it with a narrow tendril, heard the release click and shouted for Lukas to move everyone outside.

The owner tried reaching for his camera instead of holding his injured wrist. I couldn’t decide whether that made him dedicated or simply the most professionally annoying person I had met since leaving home.

I pushed the camera onto the counter and looked at its screen.

A small recording panel showed the cage release had been armed before we arrived. Beside our live feed sat an instruction to keep the rear exit locked until the premium segment ended.

There was nothing accidental about the animal, the shutters or the people trapped between them.

Lukas called from outside. Everyone had cleared the service door, including the cook, and the lizard was discovering how many breakfast pans fitted inside its mouth.

I trapped the booth’s sliding panel behind the fallen camera stand, leaving its owner separated from the animal by his own safety glass. Then I followed the empty aisle out, taking the remote and recording device with me.

The moment I crossed the threshold, the objective completed. Four thousand EXP filled the empty bar, and my IP rose to four hundred fifty-five.

The customers gathered beyond the kitchen wall, shaken but standing. The cook informed his employer through the glass that he was quitting, then asked whether anyone needed a man who could make eggs without releasing livestock.

I checked the stolen recording screen before answering.

Our footage already had a prepared title featuring a rare red winged serpent, and the production stamp beneath it belonged to Rex’s Roadside Wonders.