Feeding Frenzy at Shork Cafe LA

A day at the Shork Cafe LA…
Letter starts:

To whom it may concern:
I wanted to address the concerns levied against my establishment, The Shork Café LA, last month. There were some rather troubling matters brought to light and it was suggested that my staff and I write to headquarters to iron out all these difficulties and see if we can reach a proper decision on whether or not we can stay open.

Firstly, as a friendly reminder, yes, we do cater to humans quite often, and yes, we are aware of a couple of disappearances lately. I tell all my staff members that humans are off-limits as long as they are in our café, and we attempt to provide them with the same quality service and food as we would any other guests. As much of our products are frozen or chilled, we are a boon to those coming in who want to get away from the heat of the beach on a summer's day.

The tattoo and piercing studio above doubles as extra space should we get too crowded, and you'd be surprised how often we get requests for some of our more exotic offerings, like clit-studs, tongue-studs, and full-canvass backside illustrations. Above that, we have a fitness room for those energetic enough to take part. Oftentimes our customers will arrive breathless and sweaty, and as you might imagine, nothing goes better down the throat than a cool, refreshing chocolate milkshake.

We're quite proud of our Yoga courses and our local implementation of the “Run for your Life” program, which some of the humans among us like to partake in to keep their speed up just in case they're being chased later.

Before you ask, absolutely not, no humans are aware of us. The simple-minded fools still believe we're all just wearing costumes and outrageous attire to stand out. We do from time to time get humans who grow too curious and, well, we just don't let them inside anymore, safe to say.

I know I am beating around the beach a bit, as it were, so let's get right to the main point of things. The event that happened in late March of this year. As you well know, we are downright carnivorous things with voracious appetites. While my Fukushima shark tendencies burst through the surface at times, and I need a good meal, I reserve that activity to the lower areas with back alleys, and always with the worst of the worst, the corrupt, the homeless, the shiftless.

I refer you to Item A-1, the enclosed police report last month, March 14th at 11:35 PM EST, page 2, section B:
Officer: Miss Tigershark, did you show and give warning before you attacked the apparent assailant?
Miss Tigershark: I did. He was accosting me rudely and showing an intent to harm, and I felt threatened. So I said “I feel threatened.” and then I disarmed him.
Officer: You mean, he had a weapon?
Miss Tigershark: Well, I don't know about that. I just bit his arms off.
Officer: You “bit”…?
Miss Tigershark: Well, and his legs too. But I had learned all of this in a self-defense class on Youtube, so I can't really be blamed for following the advice of an instructor, now can I?
Officer: Well, no, ma'am, if-if you were being attacked, you have every right to defend yourself as… um, brutally as you like.

So you see from this exchange, I was completely within the rights of the law in defending myself. I'd also like to point out that neighboring communities have been in touch with me to provide similar services to alleviate them of undesirables, so it's really been a win-win situation for all involved.

In fact, for the benefit of your stockholders, I should also add Shork Café has been invited to branch out into these communities too. Lastly, it should be mentioned that we provide discounts to our wonderful men in blue, as well as nurses, first responders, and other civil servants. We provide free products on occasion as well for the retirement center next-door to us, should we be chosen to host their funeral parties somewhere down the line - which happens quite frequently.

There was some concern about my staff. I keep three waitresses on call during normal business hours and each one has a sparkling record.

There is Xiu, a snow-leopardess, who is our doll and breeding advisor. She also serves as our resident tattoo artist, and as you can see from Item B-2, she is quite blessed with talent. She does get requests sometimes from the humans for scarring tissue, and as shown in Item B-3, these are quite helpful in covering up old wounds such as lacerations and bites.
Indeed, we're so happy to have her!

Farah is a night dragoness in charge of Yoga classes as well as branding. We're very pleased she could join us because she has been trying to dispel rumors for ages about her kind. They're not always after princesses in castles, and just wishes humans would understand that ? and the fact that they are delicious with BBQ sauce. Nonetheless, as per our regulations, no humans are ever harmed in our café. Well, until lately.

Lastly, our lovely lioness Ashaunta, a waitress, marriage counsellor, and piercing and scarring specialist. At the Shork Cafe, she sees a chance, in her own words, to ?fix the human condition of widespread dissatisfaction and unhappiness by guiding humans back to those social norms that ensure mental health and happiness.
And she has been wonderful in helping many humans get their love back on track, in order to provide us with several children, who all show great affinity for our Cafe.

Now that I've outlined most of the details, let me next address the event that happened on March 28, 2022 at our establishment. As a rule, we open our doors at approximately 9:00 AM EST every day. I started the day bright and early by saying hello to Farah, who was just arriving for duty, and then sat down briefly to speak to Rico of the Ma-fia Boys, thanking him for his generous offering to the café of a brand new mixer and blender.
When he left, I next spotted two police officers coming in and sitting down. I served them the usual, discounted coffee and ice cream scoops, while they discussed a case. I try not to eavesdrop but I heard them talking about me, and that they were grateful I didn't bite off the fingers of someone so they could make a positive ID, who turned out to be a wanted felon. I was quite humbled and gave them more coffee on the house.

At 10:00 AM, Xiu arrived for her shift and we chatted some about the weather and thinking the beach might be closed today on account of thunderstorms. We decided we might not be very busy today, so we planned to close in the early afternoon if we didn't get the usual steady influx of business.
Mrs. Janet Grincham, one of our dear old women at Happy Gardens Retirement Center across the way, walked in about an hour later, and remarked about being so happy that ever since she ordered her husband the ice cream with the blue sprinkles, they have so much more enjoyable evenings, like in the old days. Xiu gave me a look and I tried to keep a straight face. You see, because we like to feast even on the older people, we'd been hearing lately about the power of Viagra to make men more frisky. So we have been offering special blue toppings of ground up Viagra to see how it goes. Needless to say, it goes well so far.

At approximately 12:30 PM EST, the rain was still quite heavy and we were resigned to closing soon. Ashaunta came in to see if there was anything to do, but I said she could return home as we would be done for the day. It was not five minutes later, that the event in question took place.
Someone we didn't recognize ran into our café for the first time, holding a gun at us. We were perplexed about what to do. He ordered us to all stand against the wall as he delved into our cash registers (we have two of them), and helped himself to what little earnings we had done that day, plus the cashbox, approximately $650. (Receipts are enclosed, including a photo of the broken cashbox) He was about to leave again when two police officers suddenly appeared from outside with their weapons drawn. The strange man fired twice at police and, well, this will sound hard to believe, and I know how secretive we must be, but this was more of an impulse, an instinctive reaction to danger. Farah gasped and, understandably, being frightened and fearing for her life, let loose a quick burst of flame from her mouth, which caught the stranger's hand carrying the gun. The stranger screamed in pain and tried to drop the gun, but it had almost melted in his hand and was now fused with flesh. He continued screaming and running around in a daze when suddenly Farah gasped again and a much larger, longer shot of flame lit the stranger completely on fire and he quickly fell to the ground in a smoking mound of flesh and bone.

The police officers stared in horror at the scene and, as regulations have dictated, we needed to do something about them to keep our true selves secret. Both Xiu and I leaped over to the officers and began biting and dismembering them, while Farah used her flames to render them to ashes in short order. Ashaunta, Xiu and I then did away with the stranger's remains in a few bites, while Farah dumped the ashes down the kitchen sink to drain away. We couldn't very well leave the guns behind, so they have become very useful for us in case of future attempts to rob the café. Although I worry about Farah these days, as she has developed a real taste for bullets and likes to crunch on them.

Which reminds me just now, I shall need to discuss with Rico and the Ma-fia Boys if we can get more ammunition.

But anyhow, I don't mean to digress. I'm sure you're all very concerned about what happened, and while none of us meant it to come to the grisly conclusion it did, we are above all quite apologetic and dismayed. We never meant for this incident to take place, and while we have taken steps to eliminate all traces of the event, it still does not help us much to see other officers come in and lament about their fallen comrades.
We realize this does a great disservice to the corporate headquarters and we truly wish we can resolve this amicably, without us having to close up our wonderful business. I'll await your company's decision with eagerness, and the hopes that the Shork Cafe can continue eating customers for many years to come.

Er… I meant servicing customers.
Damned autocorrect.

Respectfully,
Ms. Tigershark, Apikalia
General Manager, Shork Cafe
Cc: Willie, Cheatam and Howe, Attorney at Law

Internal Memo to Miss White

Recommendation from Legal as follows:

We suggest to bring in the whole team of Shork Cafe LA for retraining. For one, they need to realize that people that saw a “nonhuman” event are not directly a danger, due to human societies prejudices and mental inertia.
And, accordingly, that there is no need to killing and eating those people. It is usually possible to get them to accept that they didn't see what they did in fact see.
Whilst the humans working for the police are surely less likely to be automatically ridiculed and ignored by the wider human society, we saw several options for a quick cover up. For one, dragon fire or -plasma can reduce most soft tissues in seconds to charcoal. Accordingly, the assailant could have been turned into an ashpile with ease and then the remains quickly been mopped up with a shovel and bucket. We do have forms at most locations that can be near instantly converted to declare such events being part of a stand-up comedy routine or art project. Miss Tigershark should have had the awareness of the existence of those forms and reacted accordingly. However, by the time of writing her letter she still was not aware of them it seems. This speaks of insufficient preparation on her part.

Long term, we suggest to sending the team to Cafe Kabul or another cafe that is nominally in a war zone. Maybe being placed in a location where humans produce excess violence might do them some good to get their own aggressions under control, and allow for easier cover ups where they didn't.

Note:
Also, Cafe Kabul reports that their dragoness has stuffed herself so much on people threatening their guests or the cafes crew that she'll loose her ability to fly soon. So, swapping teams might be the solution to the current mess.