Not That Bar

[awesome_lilly]

Mal leads them from Milliways to the bar, but it's Lilly who pushes the door open and steps in first. She glances around the dim, dusty bar, crowded with surly looking patrons, its one real decoration a badly flickering holographic pool table. There's a row of unidentifiable bottles behind the bar, and a bartender eyeing them warily. She loves it.

"Shiny," Lilly breathes, before stepping forward as Peter and Mal enter behind her. "Okay guys, who wants to get a table and who wants to get drinks? I'm buying, Bar changed money for me."

Comments

[badinlatin]

"I'll order the drinks." Mal removes the money from Lilly's hand, walking away toward the bar to procure sufficient alcoholic beverages.

[highking.livejournal.com]

Peter makes his way to a shadowy table - not that any tables in the place aren't shadowy. He's rather grateful that he's been given a job he can do without, say, having to know Chinese.

He gets odd looks the first couple times he says "Pardon me" when he moves past people, so he quickly stops saying it.

Adaptable, our Peter. Indeed he is.

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly follows Peter, smiling a bit at the people eyeing him.

"Duìbùqĭ," she says a few times before they get to a table and grab a seat. She looks around happily.

"This place is awesome, isn't it? I can't wait to see what Mal brings us to drink."

[badinlatin]

Mal comes back with three chipped glasses of Ng Ka Pe, which probably looks like some form of...whisky? to Peter.

"Try it, Pete. Put some hair on your chest." Mal grins at him with one waggly eyebrow.

[highking.livejournal.com]

Peter eyes his glass for a moment, then shrugs.

"Cheers," he says, then throws back a mouthful.

He blinks, and his eyes water, but he does manage not to cough.

"Strong stuff, I must say," he says, once the burning subsides.

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly takes a healthy swallow with no apparent issues and then nods.

"Yeah, definitely. Not like Atlantean but then, what is?"

She arches an eyebrow at both of them.

"You boys sure you can handle it? Because I know both of you have had issues with tequila in the past, and this is definitely stronger."

[badinlatin]

Mal grunts at Lilly, successfully hiding a smirk behind a captain face. "Just used to this, that's all. Tequila ain't around too much in my 'verse."

'In my 'verse' might sound weird to the people eavesdropping on the conversation from the next booth over, so Mal shoots them a rather pointed look before returning to face Lilly and Peter.

"Hundan eavesdroppin'. Ain't lookin' like we got stuff to sell, anyway." Mal's got a business face on now.

[highking.livejournal.com]

Peter's blushing, although he doesn't remember the hot tub incident, of course he doesn't, and also it's dark, so it's hard to notice the blushing.

But he takes another sip of his drink, just to cover his confusion for a moment.

"I like it," he says. "It's odd, but I like it. Rather better than I like tequilla, actually."

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly sighs heavily.

"I'm a little bit wounded by that. If I didn't like this stuff so much too, I'd be a lot more wounded."

She takes another large swallow.

"Anybody hungry? I could see what they have for snacks here when I go order the next round."

[badinlatin]

"They ain't gonna have much you're gonna be interested in, but you can try. Places like this ain't exactly known for cookin'."

[highking.livejournal.com]

"I didn't say I don't like tequila," Peter points out.

"I'm not really hungry, and I'm not entirely sure I trust the food. Besides, I'm inclined to trust the captain's experience."

He sets down his empty glass. "I will take another drink, though."

[awesome_lilly]

"Well then," Lilly says, polishing off her drink and smiling brightly. "I'll get the round, at least."

She shrugs out of her jacket, drapes it across the chair, and collects their glasses.

"Be right back."

As she saunters over to the bar, the men from the next booth turn as one to watch her. It might be the tank top which is both snug and considerably less clothing than most of the few women in the bar are wearing. It might be the pants, which rival Captain Tightpants' own. Whatever it is, it makes one of them get up and follow her over.

[badinlatin]

As Lilly starts being watched, so does Mal begin watching the piles of go se sitting in the next booth.

Not altogether wise to be lookin' at one o' Mal's mei-mei's like that. Unless she wants you to. But Lilly has better taste than these.

[highking.livejournal.com]

Peter's eyes narrow as the man - not even deserving of being called man, really - follows Lilly.

He has one eye on her, and one eye on Mal.

He doesn't want to start trouble, but he's willing to join in if somebody else does, especially if it's because of Lilly.

[awesome_lilly]

Over at the bar, the man from the booth has been joined by a friend from the pool table, and they've started talking to Lilly, who flips her hair over her shoulder and ignores them. The newcomer says something to get her attention, though, and when she looks at him he makes an expressive gesture with his pool stick.

It appears that he's trying to convey both the size of his "pool stick" and certain things he would like to do to her with it. Lilly snags a toothpick holding a highly suspicious looking snack together and mimics his gesture perfectly, with a bored expression on her face and the toothpick in place of the pool stick.

The man's eyes narrow in anger, and he leans forward, grabbing her arm and hissing something that sounds less than polite at her.

[badinlatin]

Mal seems to make it from the booth he had previously occupied to the bar at Lilly's side in fewer steps than it should have. Funny that.

"Is there something vitally important you can mutter in a language we can all understand?"

Mal's holster strap unhooks without drawing too much attention to itself.

[highking.livejournal.com]

Peter's close behind him, silent but tall and strong.

And glaring. A lot.

[awesome_lilly]

The man holding Lilly's arm, (the one she's mentally nicknamed Baldy for obvious reasons. Not the one she's nicknamed Ugly, also for obvious reasons) lets go roughly, shoving Lilly towards his friend and turning to face Mal.

"I was just tellin' the little biăozi pōfù here that she better mind her gorram manners, but I think that there's a lesson we can give her with no outside help, hăo?"

[badinlatin]

Mal's feeling lazy.

This is why he smiles at Baldy, slides his revolver out of his holster and pistolwhips Baldy in the jaw.

After the thud Mal eyes Lilly with a grin of here's-hoping-I-broke-'im.

[highking.livejournal.com]

There is a very brief silence during which everyone processes what just happened.

And then all hell breaks loose.

Well. Probably not all hell. Just a little bit of it. But Peter's never been in an out and out brawl before, so it's a little surprising when he discovers that he's slammed Ugly down on the bar, back bent at an uncomfortable angle, and is punching him repeatedly, as hard as he can.

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly has just enough time to nickname a few oncoming customers Smelly, Sneery, and Squinty before Sneery throws a drunken punch at her. She ducks instinctively, reaching around for something she can use as a weapon. Her hand closes around Baldy's dropped pool stick, and she grins.

In the absence of a pool table, a pool stick is basically a long pointy thing. And thanks to Peter, Lilly knows what to do with long pointy things. (Because of swordfighting lessons, people! Jeez!)

She straightens up, slips into form, and swings the pool stick gracefully into the side of Smelly's head.

[badinlatin]

This leaves Mal with the oh-so-appealing choice between Sneery or Squinty.

Mal chooses Sneery.

As evidence of this, as Sneery picks up a whisky bottle and smashes it against the bartop to shatter it, Mal punches him in the temple before Sneery turns back around to put the bottle to use.

"Nice place," Mal quips to the bartender.

[highking.livejournal.com]

...and Peter gets Squinty.

Alright, he can deal with that.

Squinty gets in one good punch as Peter turns away from Ugly, sending him reeling for a second - but he quickly recovers, driving his shoulder into Squinty's chest and sending him sprawling backwards over a table full of folk who'd just been trying to have a quiet drink and stay out of the fight.

One of them stands up, knocking his chair over backwards and starting towards Peter

[awesome_lilly]

His friends pull him back, though, and for a moment it looks like all that Peter, Mal, and Lilly will need to worry about is the slightly-more-than-seven not'dwarves and Lilly running out of nicknames for them.

There are snatches of conversation coming from that table that aren't so reassuring, though. Look at 'is fancible clothes - gotta be from the gorram Core - stupid chŭnrén should go back then - and then the leader, smiling a little, asks his friends how much they think rich boy's parents would pay to get him back.

Lilly hears and sees none of this, as she's busily occupied in keeping close to Mal and fending off large gross men with her pool stick/sword. It helps that she has no qualms in dropping form to poke them sharply in the balls.

[badinlatin]

Mal shoots a smile at Lilly for her creative uses of a pool cue, giving one of the not'dwarves just enough time to pick up a chair and ram against Mal's chest with the legs of it, throwing him off balance and nearly to the floor.

Instead of pushing back toward him, Mal rotates the chair so that the man's arms cross and drops his weapon, giving Mal ample leeway to thrust the back of the chair into his attacker's neck. Politely.