Damned Drunks (Altamira)

[Silver]

"Drunks."

I sneered from the corner table, or where it had been. The dim lights pushed against the influence of the smoke inside the sorry excuse for a bar. The Dome had a hell of a lot of facilities, but this one was new to me. Seeing the fighters-in-training for a thousand generations was one thing, but watching them get drunk and pissed off was something else. My own table had been overturned and dragged away already, used in some fight or another, and I was propping my legs up on what seemed to be some kind of stool. It had been broken at some point and about half of the legs had been sawed off to correct the damage. It was a great footrest.

A bottle of wine sat in the crook of my elbow. Tasteless drunks had always amused me. Bourbon and vodka had their biting tastes, a bit worthwhile when all you're after is to sink into some hard drunkenness, but this place didn't have those. What this place had was beer—something I knew by reputation, since I found the smell so repugnant that actually tasting it was about as out of the question as kissing a yak—and a lot of it, a dozen different kinds of rotting wheat in liquid form. The beer wasn't the worst, though, because they also sold mead. Alcoholic honey had its charms for little kids, but adults drinking that kind of swill was just ridiculous, especially taking into account the color.

"Yeah, drunks," I replied, unfolding my legs long enough to scratch my shin with my toe. I was drunk myself, but I held my liquor. People like the bawdy idiots at the bar or the brawling idiots in the table area, those guys looked drunk and smelled drunk and acted drunk like it was going out of style.

Me?

I sat. Too calm to really notice, too annoyed to be bothered, most people never made the mistake of interrupting me in drunk-mode. I sniffed regally and cast a glare at the newcomer who had shifted in beside me. He looked young. He looked annoying. I felt a pang of something. It might have been anger, but I was really too far gone to really care what it was, exactly. He shifted until he was comfortable, and I watched him with the same flat glare. He looked uncomfortable again within a few seconds, and shifted again to compensate for it. My sneer came back and I looked away ... but not before I kicked him off the freaking seat. I didn't come to the bar for the social graces of its scum-sucking denizens, and certainly didn't come to watch someone not drink. He was a waste of space.

By the time he stood up, he had already been stepped on twice. Tough luck for him. Why he came the Dome, I have no idea. He could have gotten walked on anywhere, no need to come to a combat school to do it. As he stood up, towering up over my slouched form from what looked like a meager six feet, his face became bitter and angry. I noticed, because I had a nice view, but I could have missed it pretty easy. I guess that latter possibility was what happened to him, because my scabbard snapped his knee in sideways and he became a lot more afraid a lot quicker.

"Buzz off," I growled. Another swig of wine was all it took to make me forget he existed.

[Altamira]

I wasn't planning to end up here today. I guess that's the whole thing with alcoholism, right? You don't plan for this crap to happen, really, but you can't help yourself. It's a crutch. You reach for the bottle.

The bloody headache just wouldn't go away. I tried aspirin, tried resting, tried the massaging your temples deal. Every sound was still like a rusty saw across the surface of my brain. Then an idea sprouted--or rather, it was something more like an impulse. I remembered this bar. My feet walked down the hall to this place all on their own; they were steps long remembered. I'd come by this way after a long day of teaching, fed up with students and the Dome in general, and forget my problems over a couple dozen shots of tequila.

It was somewhere where no one gave a damn who you were. Teacher, woman, whoever--they'd serve you all the same if you had some bills in your pocket. Once in a while, some idiot would waltz in, but more or less, you could sit back and insult people all you'd like, and all anyone would ask for was another coin for the lamp you'd broke.

Today, I was on another rambling rant, this time about boots--the tequila and I had decided that something about them didn't make sense, the way they could never decide on one way to look, like they had someone they were trying to hide from.

"Some go 'round bein', bein', bein' tall," I announced to the world in general, " 'n some not tall, and they squeak, like theys whisperin'... see-crets."

I whirled around in my stool to some poor unsuspecting sap who had a look as friendly as a bear-trap. It clearly said; don't talk to me. But in the mood I was in, I didn't need any encouragement. " 'N then, then, then there's botas pretas, y botas marrónes, always in diff'rnt shades like they don't want you to, to...know their identi-whatsit. Identity."

I slapped the guy companionably on the back and held up my glass for another shot of tequila. He grumbled, and tried to turn away from me, but before either of us knew it I was putting an arm around him and busting out into the chorus of "These Boots Were Made for Walking".

When he didn't join in like everyone else had, I mumbled some curse and my elbow flew up and caught him in the gut, knocking him off his seat. "Don't be a, a, a arse, alright?"

[Silver]

I had a sudden inkling of inspiration. I knew how the stool had gotten broken. I knew why. A distant emotion welled up in me, one my body recognized, and my mind went blank as I sat there on my rear. A few people nearby had been sitting around long enough to know there was a good reason for them to vacate. Well, there actually wasn't, but then they didn't know that. I'm not the type to go laying waste to anything nearby just because one damned drunk was stupid enough get me pissed off. Speaking of, the drunk in question had yet to get my full attention. I took the time to concern myself with the spreading scarlet stain on my shirt. The wine had spilled. The wine I had paid good money for, the wine I was drinking, had been spilled.

There could have been more subtlety to the way I stood up, but I was drunk. I was also Angry, complete with capital-A, and my self-restraint had been shattered sometime between when she had slapped me on the back and hit me in the stomach. It wasn't even that hard a hit, given that I had been slugged by some of the biggest heavy-hitters of the heavy-hitter industry (I swear to god, they have a freakin' industry pumping out minotaurs and rock golems just to screw with my day.), but it had been enough to knock me over. I'm unforgiving. The cheap glass wine bottle slammed down onto the floor, suddenly righted by the sheer force of my (un)righteous wrath. A crack split its side, unnoticed while I eased to my feet and looked down at the little black-haired drunk who had ruined her own day.

"I hope you're gunna pay for that," he growled. I could have grunted. I could have shouted or screamed I could have just said it. I could have, but I didn't. I didn't do it that way because that just did not get the right message across. I was pissed off enough that I was going to hurt her but not enough that I couldn't be placated. Growls are just warnings.

I was warning her. See how polite I am? A warning. I'm very polite. Come to think of it, wolves are pretty damned polite, too; I wonder what a drunk wolf is like.

As I spoke, my hand made a vague motion between indicating and pointing at the cracked bottle of wine. That was just clear enough to make it obvious to some other people, the few who had been around a short enough time that they didn't see the fight coming, to understand in a burst of drunken clarity. They showed their understanding in the way all drunks show their understanding and their empathy.

"FIGHT!"

By the time he was done screaming it, the drunk in question had already gotten punched in the gut with a fist about the size of ham. I held myself calmly aloof as a small pocket of violent drunks joined him, while the others scuttled off into corner booths or upstairs rooms where they could relieve their aggression in a more humane way. God, I love drunks. Their priorities are so messed up that you can't help but laugh at them, when you're not busy crying.

[Altamira]

The owner of this very bar had been working on a particular sign for years. It would have gone next to his Health Bureau Rating of D, which he insisted stood for Deliciously Clean, and ran something like this:

No sHiRt,
No sHuEz,
aNd No GiPsyz.

He had been making this sign to prevent just such an evening as this--but every time he'd finished painting the thing and set it out somewhere to dry, it just seemed to disappear into the shadows mysteriously...

...It was generally agreed that there was nothing strange about this at all, and that no one should ask questions of the shadow magic-wielding gypsy with the notoriously mean-looking glare and even meaner punch.

I'd like to take this moment to clarify that if the guy had just joined in on my damn song, the fight never would have started.

Anyway--as soon as the first idiot shouted what might have been the call that stirs up the most attention in a crowd--even more than maybe "FIRE!" and "FREE FOOD!"--the entire ring of people that had been around me, submissively joining in on "These Boots Were Made for Walking" out of fear for their lives, hightailed it out of the bar before the last shout rang out. Grown men and ogres were crying, others beating the ever-living snot out of one another, and still yet others taking this opportunity to snatch up the drinks the various runners or brawlers had just left behind and ownerless.

Amidst all the usual barfight action--if you can really say he was amidst, the way he stood implying he was one of those "man as an island" types--was the guy from before, carrying himself with the level of outward calmness that only the really hammered can attain. Usually, while they're drooling on a pillow. I strode up to him--why? I was singing about boots a minute ago. Why's really not a factor here, is it? Well, I strode up to him, pulling a shortsword off the wall by the bar, and prodded him in the stomach with it.

"Y, y, you--the one who's got a face like you just stepped in steaming camel dung. Why aren't you running out of....of...my bar?"

[Silver]

Getting prodded by an unsheathed sword has never rubbed me the right way. It tends to piss me off. Being drunk didn't change that even a little itsy-bitsy bit, and I had to bite down to keep from actually trying to bite her. It may have occurred to me, vaguely, that I was getting really angry really fast for a really dumb misunderstanding ... but by that time, my sword had already rasped its way into my hand. My left hand, actually, which was important for some reason that I couldn't grasp with the haze of liquor bothering my mental reflexes.

The first thought that occurred to me when I looked down at her from about a foot of height advantage was that she was actually kinda hot, for a drunk. I credited that thought to the wine and the wiles of alcohol. I was so drunk that I was suffering from what most men called "lowered inhibitions" and I called "stupidity." It was better than the alternative, anyway: that I was in denial and projecting. Hell, she had black hair. I liked blondes. It had to be the wine. It could not possibly be that I was attracted to her.

That would just be weird and inconvenient. Really, really weird and inconvenient. Times a zillion. Plus some more.

In retrospect, slapping some sense into myself was a lot more queer than I thought it would be, and I imagine it left a bit of a red mark on my face. I blinked a bit, looked at my hand, and frowned in the general direction of the annoying drunk with the annoying sword. God, had I been reduced to redundancies already? Usually that didn't happen until I was high off blood loss and adrenaline. Don't look at me like that. Usually a fight doesn't go quite that far, and I only really enjoyed it once. It was kind of like an experiment, and I didn't even do it on purpose anyway. I'm not suicidal and I never was. One little stint in a sanitarium and everyone thinks you've lost it.

I snorted out a breath and tossed the scabbard at her with a careless flick of my wrist.

"I'm not crazy, I'm just bored," I muttered, mostly to myself but a bit to loud for her to miss.

[Altamira]

Drunk or not, don't think I missed it. The part of my brain that would make the connections between what I was seeing and the logical reasoning behind it might have been waterlogged worse than some halfwit's house on a floodplain, but my vision was more or less clear. The bastard's self-restraint lapsed for a moment there, and I saw him take on the stupid look most men get when they see my face for the first time--it's not all that flattering anymore, but at least he was looking mainly at my face.

I'll leave it up to you to figure out what the rest of the men I meet first look at--assuming you don't have the imagination of a librarian (you can take that a couple of ways--one, though is the fact that they're surrounded by all those amazing stories, and all they do is organize 'em into a system with decimals and numbers after a guy called Dewey), you should have some idea.

The look went away again, back to a face with all the humor of a crusty barnacle--but not before the idiot slapped himself. I mumbled something like, "D, d, don't get into a fight with yerself, yah?" Then he made a nasty little sound with his nose and carelessly threw his scabbard in my general direction.

I stumbled out of its way before it landed on the floor and clattered around like--well, at least what I've been told is like--a fish out of water. I've only really seen the smelly little things at markets.

"I'm not crazy, I'm just bored," he muttered. He apparently was already at the stage of drunkenness where you start to lose the ability to control the volume of your voice. This inevitably leads to whispering threats that you meant to yell and shouting out announcements before bathroom trips that you mean to mutter to your buddy.

I sort of gave him a blank look, and started to gesture with the shortsword as I said something like, "We can fix that."

Most people would've accidentally chopped their own hands off while drunkenly gesturing with a sword. I still seemed to have enough wits about me to just cut a little adroit circle in the air over and over. Training and experience just seemed to naturally fill in the places where logical thinking had left for a brief vacation--a survival instinct, maybe. One compensates when the other option's impaired.