At-The-Crossroads Cafe

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The At-The-Crossroads Café is a café and inn usually found in the center of Boston. It was found sometime after the Big Dunk by survivors when they needed shelter and food following the disaster. The café is run by Mx. Crossroads and the cafe's one and only staff member and is colloquially referred to as The Owner At-The-Crossroads (or simply the Owner).

Biography

The At-The-Crossroads Café was found by Big Dunk survivors following the major disaster when the Dunkies corporation's coffee bean synthesizer failed. Mx. Crossroads was very welcoming and there seemed to always be enough room, food and first-aid for survivors. At-The-Crossroads was soon known as one of the major locations post-Dunk and garnered a reputation for being a safe house for those who needed shelter.

The café is located close to the center of any city, often in walking distance of the city's major Internet League Blaseball stadium on most days, fittingly often at the corners of an intersection, but is most often found in Boston close to the Boston Garden stadium. The whole building is 4 stories tall, the café taking up the first two and the apartments taking up the top two. There is roof and basement access via a stairwell at the back of the building.

The titular café itself is a small narrow space that takes up the first two floors. The first floor balcony that overlooks the front portions of the café is accessible by the back stairwell. The café is decorated with blaseball memorabilia leaning towards the Boston Flowers, but decorations from other teams also exist, like the "Honorary Chicagoan" sticker on the storefront windows and a model of a taco tesseract (a "tacoract").

The stairwell also lead up further to the apartments on top of the café, with one apartment unit on each of the two floors. Despite this, there are always apartments ready on either two floors despite it being physically impossible for more than 2 inhabitants to be staying at any given time. Mx. Crossroads is always available on the premises, but no one has been able to determine where exactly they live on it, as their room was never found and they always seem to disappear around a corner or through a door.

Mx. Crossroads

Mx. Crossroads (or "Cross" to their friends) (they/them) is a middle-aged non-binary person and self-proclaimed owner of the At-The-Crossroads café. They have a cheery and understanding disposition, often providing help to their guests and customers whenever they need them, usually in the form of advice or simply someone to talk to, but will dispense material help like offering one of the apartment rooms above the café or food when requested, no questions asked and no payment required.

Mx. Crossroads' origins are undetermined. Interviews with them often trail off and Mx. Crossroads has a tendency to answer any identifying questions like "How old are you?" with "Oh I'm quite old." and "Where do you come from?" with "Born and raised Bostonian, young man." despite having no birth certificate or any other identifying documentation registered in Boston.

It is assumed the name "Crossroads" is simply an affectation of being the owner of the café but Mx. Crossroads does not seem to have any family, and no one has any memory of when the café was ever built originally. Mx. Crossroads' true name is unknown.

Paranormal Status

The At-The-Crossroads Cafe's paranormal status is often a topic of debate amongst Bostonians and anyone else who has visited the café. Somehow, even though it ought to be physically and statistically improbable, there is always a table and meal ready for customers and there are always rooms available for guests. Most glaringly, the building itself has been known to move from street corner to street corner, either in Boston or in other major cities where a Blaseball team reside.

Customers are known to talk about how the service there is surprisingly quick with meals and drink ready in mere minutes, and sometimes without Mx. Crossroads ever approaching them to wait on their order. Occasionally, the food is already prepared at a reserved table without the table having been knowingly reserved or the meals ordered ahead of time.

The apartment rooms for staying are always furnished with the guest's creature comforts in mind, usually before they even knew the rooms are even available for staying in. It's very common to hear stories of guests coming in at night past the cafe's working hours asking for a night's shelter at a moments notice and Mx. Crossroads always having a room to spare.

Guests have been known to mention how they can sometimes find inspiration or epiphanies from the café surroundings, and have been commented by guests to be "too convenient to be coincidence." Guests often cite seeing words in their food or drink, or the way certain memorabilia and other decorations are arranged too conveniently, spelling out simple sentences that inexplicably refers to their current issues at the time. One time a guest has mentioned how they decided to end a relationship following noticing how the titles of books on a shelf read "And He Was, No Good, For You, Leave This, Relationship, With That Man," in that order. When asked, Mx. Crossroads answers "Oh, that's funny. I don't remember having those titles before."

The building itself has been documented to appear in different locations, sometimes in Boston itself or any other major cities or locations that has a residing ILB team, or very occasionally whenever someone is in dire need of shelter. No one is really certain how or when the building moves locations, but it always integrated cleanly into the local geography without disrupting the neighboring buildings or fields. Then it moves from a location, it's as though it was never there at all and would not have physically been possible to have ever been there, like when it's wedged between two buildings one day, but the buildings then occupy the same corner as though the café was never there.

Mx. Crossroads denies the stories and does not seem to acknowledge the changes in locations.

Undetermined Spy Loyalty

For some inexplicable reason, Spies have trouble with approaching the building or interacting with Mx. Crossroads (barring Denzel Scott). Despite their best efforts, the Agency is unable to determine the At-The-Crossroad's allegiance, despite it being a building and therefore would only have allegiance to whomever currently controls the building itself.

The Spies have determined Mx. Crossroads is not to be approached by anyone from the Agency after the first few attempts to questioning them have lead to severe stress attacks without any influence from Mx. Crossroads themselves. Scott, however, can be seen interacting with Mx. Crossroads freely whenever the Spies are playing in Boston.

A small team of highly trained senior Spies with advanced scanning equipment can be seen camping in a dark secluded corner of the café, and Mx. Crossroads has instructed the other patrons and guests not to disturb them. Scott delivers them their rations whenever the café is in the same location as the Spies.