The Mercenaries’ Tale – 1.06 The Irish

Malone fixed his eye on the stout gentleman before him. The man was overdressed for Undercit, wearing a brown flannel suit, complete with waistcoat and bowler hat. The suit had seen its wearer through thick and thin, with frays and tears all over it. The man himself had seen his own share of wear and tear too, being a pug of a fellow with a big round bald head featuring pits and scars all over it. The bartender recognised the him as being Big Murphy, one of the more prominent influences in Undercit’s various lesser businesses – cock fights, pit fights, fight fights, all the businesses that involved people hurting each other for the amusement of others. He was also the figurehead of Undercit’s resident Irish¹ gang, which was why Malone hadn’t already reached for his faithful shotgun.

“Might’ve seen ‘em,” grunted Malone, fixating his eye on the glass he was turning in his hands against his grubby cleaning cloth. He nodded at the booth in the corner, reluctantly. “That might be them over there.”

“Thenk yeh Mister. Before ai ‘ave a chinwag with ‘em, ai fancy a pint. Wan for al’ me mates, too.”

The sentence lingered for a moment. Malone had to ask.

“What mates?”

Murphy cleared his throat, turned his head in the direction of the door and cupped one of his sizeable hands to the side of his mouth.

“Boys! Beer’s on me!”

They all strolled into the Hole, five of them darkening the doorway with their combined silhouette. Murphy’s lads took their places at their master’s side, some noticeably hefting an item that in themselves could be innocent everyday objects, but when combined with the look of sinister intent on the faces of the wielder and the way they were being carried, the implements heavily implied that they could be makeshift weapons. The potential applications of the rusty toaster that one of the gang had were particularly worrying.

“Ai’ll ‘ave a jar of Stormbreaker for all me lads ‘ere,” said Murphy. Malone obliged in his own slow, methodical manner, trying not to look at the shotgun just out of reach of his busy hands below the bar top.

The sudden crowd at the bar had not gone unnoticed. The loners at the tables were all sharp enough to know when to make a hasty exit and were all ducking out past the sniggering Irishmen. The mercs had dropped their conversation to a low murmur, and were glancing in the direction of the bar every few moments.

“It’s the Irish. Must be like a bloody family reunion for you Blaise,” said Doug through a half-grin. Blaise scowled at him.

“That’s not even funny. You have no idea how not funny you’re being right now,” she growled. Doug raised his hands in apology. Their robed friend appeared to be indifferent to the current situation and had not even looked up from their drink. “I’m really not in the mood for a fight,” said Blaise, “we came in here for a quiet drink.” Doug finished the last half of his pint in one big gulp.

“That’s funny, I was just getting a bit restless myself,” replied Doug as he slammed the glass down on the table before wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket.

“Oh gods, the big one’s coming over,” said Blaise, now staring intensely at her pint glass and trying to not be obvious in ignoring the hefty Irishman swaggering towards them. Doug, not being a beacon of tact, looked right at Big Murphy and grinned.

“What’s your fuckin’ problem, Paddy?” he announced. Blaise rolled her eyes. Big Murphy paused in walking towards them, pint glass in hand. He appeared to be taken aback for a moment, and then jerked the large outcrop of flesh that was the thumb of his free hand towards the direction of the bar.

“Oi ain’t Paddy. Paddy’s der fella at the bar o’er there.”

Behind Murphy, the short man at the bar holding a baseball bat like a walking stick raised his pint at them all in recognition. He was balding, but made up for it with large growths of brown hair around the sides of his face and under his chin. Almost a dwarf in stature, Paddy was the shortest member of the crew.

“Are you taking the Mickey?” said Doug in disbelief, staring at the short man and looking back to Murphy. A tall, straggly man with a thick mop of ginger hair, a large moustache and a peg-leg stood by the bar removed the pipe from his mouth and raised it as they chimed in.

“Oim Mickey, fella.”

“I give up,” sighed Doug. “What do you want, pal?”

Murphy marched to their booth and grinned. He was missing one of his top teeth and he stank of liquor and sweat.

“I hear thet ye’re the feckers that took down Ol’ McGuinty last week, at Filvais Avenue?” he asked between mouthfuls of the thick black brew in his hand.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Blaise. She was massaging her forehead with her right hand and was trying to outstare her pint glass. Doug rubbed his chin with his normal hand, drumming his mechanical fingers on the table as he looked up at the ceiling in thought. Their friend in robes remained uninterested in their surroundings.

“McGuinty…McGuinty…doesn’t sound familiar,” said Doug. “But then we kill so many people that it gets hard to remember if any of them were screaming in Irish before we finished them off.”

There was a loud smash as Murphy threw his glass at the wall above Doug’s head, the thick beer and shards of glass showering over his hair. Doug appeared unconcerned as Murphy slammed his massive paws down on their booth table.

“Ye broke Murphy’s feckin’ law!” yelled the big Irishman, “ye broke the law abet not interferin’ with Murphy’s business partners! An’ nigh me and the lads here are gonna haf te teach yer all a lessin! ‘specially ye, young O’ Donnell!” He shook a pudgy finger in Blaise’s face. “Ye shud know better than te mess wif ye heritage!”

Blaise broke off the staring contest with her glass and turned her glare on Murphy.

“The only lesson you could teach us is how to put on such a horrible accent. You’re all a bunch of ‘typers² as far as I’m concerned.”

That was the last straw for Murphy, who had gone beetroot red in the face. He brought his melon-sized fists upwards in an arc, preparing to smash down on their table. Doug, who had finished carefully brushing the bits of glass out his hair and off of his shoulders, was one step ahead of him having gripped the table’s edge in his mechanical fingers, ripping it forward towards the Irishman. Murphy’s hands passed down on to a table that was already toppling over, so he overbalanced and fell sideways on to the floor.

Malone was already reaching for his shotgun, but had forgotten about his blind spot in the moment. Mickey brought his full glass across in a fast swipe that caught Malone on the temple above his eye patch, knocking the bartender backwards helplessly into a shelf of bottles. Malone passed into unconsciousness as the Irish swept towards the mercs.

Unfazed by the approaching Irishmen, Doug was distracted by the prone body of the big man next to him. He leapt over the upturned table and Murphy grunted as Doug introduced his steel toecaps to his ribs a couple of times. The first approaching of Murphy’s men, a man in braces and a flat cap called O’Reilly, grabbed the table between himself and Doug and swept it aside with a loud clatter of overturned bottles and tankards. O’Reilly lunged for Doug, gripping him by the shoulders and heaving him away from Murphy with such strength that the merc stumbled and collided with one of the Hole’s several rotting wooden support beams, sliding to the floor in a most ungraceful manner.

From his position on the floor Doug had a nice view of the Hole’s roof above him, and into this view stepped the leering faces of O’Reilly and a gentleman with a thick bushy moustache and top hat called McGuire.

“I’m not getting involved,” muttered Blaise, rubbing her temples and frustrated that any chance of a peaceful resolution had once again flown the coop the moment Doug had opened his mouth. Her robed companion didn’t say anything. They were busy staring at what had been a full pint glass of cool³ beer only five seconds prior but was now thin air, the entire glass having been tossed onto the floor by Doug when he had overturned the table it had been sat on.

O’Reilly suddenly doubled-up, the natural response when a man lying on his back stamps on your balls so hard that one of them pops. Leaning forward, Doug got a good grip on the man’s braces with his hands and, using his foot against the man’s crotch as a pivot point of support, rocked backwards and heaved the man’s head into the support beam next to him. There was a dull crunch like that of dry leaves, a small cloud of sawdust and a groan as O’Reilly’s eyes rolled back into his skull. Doug’s smirk of victory was short-lived as two hundred pounds of Irishman that had now gone limp in his hands fell on top of him.

“Let me help yer, fella,” said McGuire, rolling O’Reilly’s body off of Doug with his foot and grabbing the merc by his shoulders. He hefted the merc on to his feet, took ahold of him around his neck and under his normal arm and then began to squeeze. Doug could only flail his bionic arm around as he struggled in the choke hold. The bionic arm, being made of solid material and fixed joints, lacked the complete agility and manoeuvrability that comes with a natural human arm, and was left clicking and whirring just out of reach of McGuire’s head as Doug tried to bend it enough to reach back.

“Bugger you, arsehole,” spat Doug, wriggling in the ever-tightening grip.

“Did I ever mention that oi’m somwhet of a wrestling fan?” beamed McGuire. “Me mate Mickey ‘ere on the other hand favers a round or two o’ golf.” Mickey, the tall peg-legged Irishman, strutted towards Doug and McGuire, tapping a rusty and slightly bent golf club on his shoulder. “Oi loike to help him with his swing, but oi think you’d make a better volunteer,” chuckled McGuire.

Watching the violence unfurl like a particularly graphic tapestry, Blaise sighed again as she lifted herself out of her seat with the intent to help her friend. Her progress was hindered by two things; the first was that O’Doyle – a muscular man with second or possibly even third, fourth or fifth rate cybernetics replacing many parts of his anatomy, the most obvious being his right fore-arm and a sizeable portion of his skull – was standing to her left in a most menacing manner. The second was Murphy, whose hand appeared next to her head as he gripped the bench she had been sitting on, using it to hoist himself up off of the floor. As he drew level with her, their eyes met and his brow creased into a frown as he remembered what she had said to him. His lips curled back into a snarl, and Blaise swiped her hat off of the seat next to her and dived aside just as he lunged for her. He crashed face-first into the seat cushions, rolled over to see where she had disappeared to and received a face full of boot for all his trouble as she swung her foot into his face. This only aggravated the man further, as with a loud slurp he gobbed out a wad of blood on the seat he was lying against. His hands groped out towards her and narrowly missed her leg as she scrambled up onto the top of the booth in a bid to escape. O’Doyle the cyborg appeared at the next booth over, kneeling on the seat there and reaching out. With a deft skip she hopped over O’Doyle’s grasping hands and leaned against the wall, smiling mockingly at the two Irishmen as she crossed her arms.

“Grab her ye eedjit!” yelled Murphy at O’Doyle. He turned around on the seat and realised that there was a third mercenary in the group. Here he could make out that under the mask was the proud masculine jawline of a man. This Robed Man was still sitting calmly in the booth with him, just watching.

“What the feck are you lookin’ at?” Murphy snapped, seething. The Robed Man contemplated his answer before giving it.

“The bar. I could do with another drink.” He stood up and crossed the room, ignoring Murphy and stepping casually around the upturned furniture and various gang members, including the one prodding his friend in the ribs with a golf club.

“A little help?” wheezed Doug, choking from the arm pressed against his larynx. The Robed Man ignored him, but happened to brush Mickey’s shoulder as he marched past.

“Watch where yer fecking going-” growled the tall Irishman, waving his club threateningly at the back of the robed figure who was walking away from him. Taking the opportunity, Doug dug his heels into the floorboards and with his fingers found some purchase on the iron grip around his neck. He launched his head backwards into McGuire’s face, sending the Irishman reeling with a bleeding nose. Doug whirled on his former captor, snatching the man’s tattered necktie up in his hand, tugging it, and launching his forehead into the other man’s forehead. The room spun as Doug’s centre of gravity played roulette, his skull reeling from its application of frontal and reverse headbutts.

“Argh! What the fuck did I do that for!?” swore Doug, clutching at his head and stamping the ground with his foot. As he shook his head in an attempt to align his vision, his victim McGuire had collapsed backwards over the Hole’s centrepiece, his head a wall of thick, cloudy pain and pin-pricks of aching as he splayed out on the well.

Realising that Doug was free, Mickey panicked and lashed out with his club, smacking Doug across the back and sending him stumbling into McGuire. The two men grappled with each other on top of the well, fighting to disentangle themselves. Mickey hesitated, afraid to lash out further in case he hit his friend. He sidestepped around them, watching Doug and McGuire curse and swear as they fumbled against one another, hoping to find an opening within which he could insert his golf club against Doug’s head.

Paddy the dwarf stood on the bar top, eyeing the Robed Man strolling towards his direction. Hefting his baseball bat, one that had been hollowed out in the tip and filled with lead, he waited for the mage to pass and aimed a powerful swing at the mage’s head.

Pang!

The bat never came into contact with his target and, with a short burst of green light, Paddy was flung sideways on to his shoulder, knocking glasses to the floor as he skidded along the bar’s surface. Confused and now sticky from the years of spilt beer that coated the bar, Paddy picked himself up, hopped down from the bar and chased after the Robed Man, who was now walking around behind the bar. Paddy tried again, this time aiming lower, towards the back of the man’s legs.

Pang!

Again, there was a green spark and Paddy’s attack was tossed aside before he could connect with his target. Feeling as though someone was trying to make a fool out of him and getting quite pissed off about it, Paddy decided on the only course of action he knew: hit it harder and faster than before! It may not have seemed completely logical but then Paddy was not the most imaginative of souls and after years of solving problems by hitting them until they went away, Paddy wasn’t about to change his ways now⁴.

The Robed Man smirked, highly amused by the little man’s attempts to break through his shield. As pangs of green sparked around him, he clasped a glass from the shelf below the bar and began to pour himself a pint from one of the pumps.

Blaise was still playing keep-away with the largest two Irishmen. Murphy had followed her up onto the booths now, O’Doyle waiting on the floor to grab her the second she attempted to climb down. Blaise had other ideas, however. There was a vertical support banister at the end of the booths which she grabbed and used to swing around and launch a kick into O’Doyle’s face. It had little effect, as Blaise simply bounced off of his metal skull and landed hard on the floor.

“Bloody cyborgs,” she cursed as she rolled sideways and righted herself up. She blinked as she realised that dangling from O’Doyle’s cybernetic arm was a coiled lead that plugged into a socket on his elbow. Hanging from the other end of the cable tied around his fist was…yes, blinking again didn’t make it disappear, it was definitely a slightly rusty toaster.

“Feckin’ grab the bitch!” Murphy yelled as he stumbled across the booths as fast as he could. O’Doyle hesitated for a moment, the cybernetic components in his brain experiencing heavy lag as it processed the command. Blaise jogged backwards as O’Doyle lumbered after her. She knew that she would be unable to bring him down on her own – he had enhanced strength, so she would have to keep him at arm’s length. The customers that had made their exit when the gang entered the Hole had left bottles and glasses discarded on the tables. In Blaise’s hands they became ammunition as she hurled them at her pursuer. They had little effect, merely rebounding off of his head plate and chest as he picked up speed, closing the gap quickly while she looked for anything else to throw at him. She braced herself against a table, cornered, as O’Doyle raised his arms, lumbering like Frankenstein’s monster, his hands closing in towards her throat. Her hand groped behind her and stroked a possible weapon as he bore down on her. She nimbly plucked a mostly-full bottle of beer from the table, the bottle’s stem in her fingers, and in one continuous motion she lifted it and smashed it over his head. Beer spilled out, flooding into the gaps of O’Doyle’s head plate and dribbling over his nose and cheeks. As his fingers graced the delicate flesh on her neck, there was an abrupt fzzt. A small burst of white electricity illuminated the uneven gaps of O’Doyle’s skull plate as his brain short-circuited. There were sparks, a small LED light embedded in his forehead blinked a few times and then gave up. O’Doyle was frozen in place mid-strangle, a tableau of robotic inefficiency. Blaise sighed through her teeth with relief and prised herself out of his iron grip.

The respite was short-lived as a crash and heavy footsteps sounded from nearby. Murphy had jumped down from the booths, knocked another table out of the way and was charging towards Blaise with murderous intent in his eyes. She barely had time to jump out of his way, Murphy ploughing into the defunct cyborg with all the coordination of a raging bull. The defunct cyborg didn’t yield, resulting in the big man careening off of O’Doyle and tripping, landing heavily on the floor on his collarbone, chin striking the floorboards. With a loud click there was suddenly a noticeable bulge in the shape of Murphy’s upper left arm – a dislocated shoulder. As Murphy rolled on the floor, clasping at the irregular shoulder, Blaise did a quick survey of what was happening in the rest of the bar.

At some point, Mickey had managed to slip the golf club around Doug’s neck and was attempting to throttle him with it. The only reason this wasn’t working was that Doug had his normal arm caught in the hold against the shaft of the club, preventing enough pressure from being applied. Doug was still on top of McGuire’s legs, his bionic arm attempting to reach McGuire who was just barely managing to stay out of its way, pinned against the boards nailed over the well.

Blaise peered at the nearest table and swiped a glass ash tray from it, throwing it like a Frisbee at Mickey. It struck him hard in the back of the head, the glass splintering on impact. A damp patch of fresh blood welled up in his hair and he yelped, freeing Doug as he stepped backwards in surprise. As the shock misted his perception of where he was, he promptly fell backwards over the recovering form of O’Reilly, who groaned from his position slumped against a support beam. Striking his already bleeding head on the floor, Mickey decided to rest for a moment to try and overcome the concussion from his position on the ground, which was suddenly a lot more comfy than he would have previously guessed.

In the fuss, McGuire pushed Doug off of him and ran around to the other side of the well, crouching slightly behind it. Doug and McGuire circled the well, looking at each other. To McGuire’s surprise, Doug started laughing whilst he fished around inside his jacket.

“Wh-what are ye laughing for ye mad bastard?” McGuire asked. Doug found what he was looking for and produced a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. He pulled one of the thin white sticks out and placed it in his mouth.

“I’ve been trying to grab you with my arm. You look terrified of it. Well, maybe I should explain exactly why you’re right to be scared shitless of me and my arm. You see it only has three fingers, yeah?” he raised his bionic hand so that McGuire could have a better look at the fingers. There were indeed only three arranged as a three-pronged claw.

“That’s ‘cus I only need three. Know why?” Doug asked as the lighter clicked in his normal hand as it lit the cigarette, momentarily giving his features an eerie glow. McGuire shook his head to say no, slowly moving around the well to match Doug’s movements, keeping the well directly between them. Doug placed his lighter back within his jacket.

“This middle finger,” said Doug in a matter-of-fact voice as he displayed the hand, “is used to make obscene hand gestures. The left finger is used with the middle finger to make even more obscene hand gestures. Do you know what the third finger is used for?” McGuire didn’t want to know. His patience slipping, he decided to make a break for it. Before he could make more than two steps, Doug had thrown himself across the planks of the well, his bionic hand grabbing around his throat. Cold metal dug into the Irishman’s neck, he felt as if he couldn’t breathe, that his jugular was swelling. Warmness seeped around his crotch.

“The third finger,” Doug carried on as if nothing had happened, “is there because it’s hard to grip you around the throat with only two.” He took the cigarette out of his mouth with his free arm and stuck it into McGuire’s left eye. The Irishman let out a blood curdling scream as the pain seared through his skull, a scream that was cut short when Doug slid backward and pushed McGuire’s head through the ancient boards covering the well. The merc sniggered as he admired his handiwork, the Irishman stuck firmly within a fresh crack in the boards of the well, splinters of wood pinning him and jabbing his flesh. A whine drifted from somewhere within the well.

In the moment of relative quiet, groans and moans aside, both Doug and Blaise were aware of the low pangs on the other side of the bar. They looked over.

Paddy the dwarf had come to the conclusion that the Robed Man was the mage of the group that Murphy had warned the gang about – the fact that around 42 attempted blows to the man had failed to connect was a pretty good indication. Even more annoyingly, the mage appeared to be enjoying a pint of beer and wasn’t even acknowledging him. Curious, Paddy tapped his bat toward the mage’s back. It hit an invisible surface that rippled in green light about 5 inches from the mage’s spine, with a soft pang. He tried again towards the man’s arm, to a similar effect. Paddy was genuinely having problems with the concept that hitting it harder and faster in this instance could actually be the wrong action to take. He was struggling to grasp the idea that the more energy placed into his attack, the more violently the shield resisted.

The dwarf clambered up on to the top of the bar once more, and stood for a moment, head and hands resting on his bat; it was almost the same length as him. The mage turned to regard him for a second, and then returned to staring forward at nothing particular, sipping his pint of beer. Paddy watched the almost-full glass as the mage placed it on the bar in front of him; there was far too much head on it, as if the Robed Man was unaccustomed to pouring a pint. Just then, there was a moment of inspiration in Paddy’s mind, a purely spiteful and pointless way to lash out at the mage. With a yell, Paddy brought his bat down on the glass, shattering it to pieces and splashing beer everywhere. Shards of glass and puddles of beer slid down an invisible surface just in front of the mage.

“Heheh! Well watcha gonna do now, ye fecker!” gloated Paddy, enjoying this minor victory. “Gonna go cry to yeh momma that I spilled yer beer good?”

The Robed Man sighed, not so much depressed or bored, but in mild annoyance. Paddy’s eyes followed the Robed Man’s arm as it stretched out straight in front of him. The fingers at the end of it came together. As the fingers clicked, the dwarf was suddenly very aware that his head was very hot. Bringing up fingers to grope at the hot patch on his head, he flinched as they were singed. Realisation dawned.

Doug couldn’t contain his laughter, because watching an Irish dwarf whose head is aflame jump down off of a bar and run screaming through a toilet floor, although not clever, is bloody funny. Blaise contained her smirk, remaining bemused all the same. The mage picked up another glass and began to pour himself another drink from the pump.

A feral scream cut through the brief moment of merriment like an executioner’s axe. All three of the mercs looked towards the source of the commotion, and found that it was Murphy. He had just popped his shoulder back into its socket by with the assistance of a support pillar, and at some point had removed his jacket. Breathing heavily, he leant his torso against the pillar, his face against it like it was a vertical pillow as he regained his composure, eyes closed in relief. Murphy, no longer using his brainpower trying to combat the pain of his dislodged shoulder, was quickly becoming aware of the quiet in the bar, and of eyes looking at him. His eyelids shot open, and the glare he gave to the mercs was one of pure Irish rage. Blaise tensed as the piercing stare came her way.

Murphy’s head swung towards his side, where O’Doyle was still frozen in the process of strangling thin air. Murphy stepped over to the defunct cyborg, flexing his repaired arm in circles with audible cracks of bone-on-bone. He extended one of his mitts and patted O’Doyle on his head plate.

“Aww, beer’s gone t’is head. Useless feckin’ shitehawk!”

The mercs watched on as Murphy lowered himself and, with some difficulty, began to hoist the cyborg up on to his shoulders horizontally. Doug clapped when Murphy finally straightened up, the mass of frozen cyborg sat on his upper body. O’Doyle must have weighed about four or five hundred pounds easily, considering the weight of the solid metal implants.

“I’m impressed,” stated Doug. “I take it you’ll be fucking off home now?”

“Actually,” grunted Murphy under the bulk of his mate, “thought oi’d kill ye all now, ye bastards!”

Murphy spun on his foot with an unexpected deftness and, on the return of the spin, swung O’Doyle off of his shoulders like a log, assisting the launch with a flick of his wrists. The cyborg sailed at Blaise, who hadn’t expected the incoming mass at all. She had to throw herself to the floor and closed her eyes expectantly, waiting to be crushed by the hefty man-missile. She felt the breeze over her head and detected the passing shadow through her eyelids by the change in light, but the pressure of weight on her never came. There was a loud, stiff crunch of solid materials and a series of creaks and snaps. Opening her eyes, she noticed that the room was suddenly a lot dustier, it was in the air. From across the room Murphy was walking in her direction, seething and full of purpose. She locked up when she saw Doug – he was looking just above her, and he was aghast. That set off alarms for her, because Doug was rarely worried about anything.

“Get out of there!” he warned, beginning to jog towards her. Hesuddenly fell backwards, a botched attempt at leaning out of the way of the chair that flew past his shoulder. Murphy had thrown the chair as it happened to have been between him and Blaise.

Blaise didn’t stop to take in her surroundings; she pushed herself up from her front and kicked herself into a roll. A rush of air and dust from behind indicated that it had been the right move to make. From the unprepared roll she landed on her side and looked back, only to see that the barroom was now full of roof. She could see that the cyborg had missed her, but had gone straight through one of the brittle support beams. The wooden post had splintered and buckled from the sheer force of bionics and flesh hitting it, the top half of the beam yielding as it caved in, dragging a portion of the ceiling down along with it. Plaster, bricks and wooden beams fell into the area, sweeping towards her. Blaise flinched, but there was an abrupt lack of sweeping air and dust on her face, and the world in front of her was green-tinted. A sizeable chunk of splintered wood bounced off of the air in front of her and settled. She smiled, looked across at the mage stood behind the bar and mouthed the word “thanks”. The Robed Man gave a nod and returned to their pint.

The roof was still collapsing, the first collapse now giving the flimsy roof an excuse to finally give up on being whole. Murphy was caught in the middle of the debris as the collapse rippled into towards the centre of the bar. The Irishman disappeared from view momentarily as rubble rained down on him. It pelted against him and bounded off of him, and it seemed that a collapse happening on his head was just a mere inconvenience. He had not strayed from his path towards Blaise, mouth twisted into a snarl, as he purposefully marched towards her. As the roof collapse came to its finish and the dust began to settle, he paused briefly when he found his path blocked by one of the remaining few tables in the bar. Rather than simply knocking it aside he lifted it clear off of the floor and threw it like an athlete throwing a discus, the table hurtling over Blaise and smashing into the wall next to the bar, going through it slightly and embedding itself. The Robed Man regarded it for the briefest of moments.

“Hmf,” was all he could contribute.

Blaise pulled herself off the floor, glancing to where she had last seen Doug, hoping that he had more of a plan to deal with this situation than she did, only to find that he had vanished. She frowned and quickly turned on her heel as heavy footsteps indicated that Murphy was coming for her again. The hulking figure of the Irish gang leader was closing the gap between them quickly now and yet something behind him made Blaise smirk. Doug had snuck around what was left of the room so that he could come at Murphy from behind. With a run up and a boost off of one of the fallen ceiling beams, he flung himself onto the big man’s back, his arms wrapping around the thick slab of neck and tightening up as much as they could.

“ Ha! Got ya now, you Irish twat!” he exclaimed in triumph. Murphy began thrashing around violently in an attempt to throw the merc off, but Doug tenaciously held on for dear life.

“Get off o’ me ye lil’ fecker!”

“Yeehaa!”

With Doug distracting Murphy, Blaise pulled her coat open just enough to be able to reach in and pull out a semi-automatic pistol. It looked well cared for, the gun barrel spotlessly clean and the handle inlaid with rosewood, a rose decal intricately carved therein, giving it an ornamental look. That wasn’t to say that it didn’t look any less dangerous than a normal pistol; the gun had undergone some serious modifications in the past to make it as deadly as possible despite its decoration, most noticeably a larger barrel and a gas-operated firing mechanism. This rose had a deadly thorn.

Blaise casually raised the pistol so that it was pointing towards Murphy’s head. Once happy with her aim, she loudly cleared her throat, catching the gang leader’s attention. His eyes fell onto the gun, the colour draining from his face. Her face was emotionless as she spoke to Murphy.

“This is a terrible waste of a bullet.” Her eyes glanced up and met Doug’s, making a connection and delivering armfuls of information without having to speak a single word. Her arm remained firmly in place as she pulled the trigger; the lack of movement displayed familiarity with the kick of recoil, this merc having fired a gun with purpose many times before. Murphy flinched as the deafening shot echoed around the room, the bullet speeding towards him. He felt the bullet’s air trail past his face as it sped towards the far wall, severing a rope that had been tied there. The top of the rope snaked upwards as the weight on the other end – namely one of the ornamental and yet utterly useless iron lighting fixtures – succumbed to gravity now that it wasn’t tied down to anything. As the fixture fell like a broken cyborg, Doug leapt off of Murphy’s back as it crashed heavily onto the bigger man’s head, flooring him. Doug landed awkwardly on his side and rolled over to face Murphy, chuckling over the close call.

Doug couldn’t resist. Sitting up, he crossed his legs and removed a fresh cigarette from his jacket, having lost the last one in someone’s eye socket, and placed it in his mouth. He paused in the process of lighting it with his lighter, looking down at Murphy.

“I’d offer you a light, mate,” he said, “but I can see you’ve already got one.” Doug lit his cigarette as Murphy groaned in response, either from concussion or from the joke. Blaise didn’t pay Doug’s pun much mind, keeping her pistol trained on Murphy all the meantime.

“Hmm, you know he’s not going to stay down for long, right?”

“Yeah, our chum Murphy here, he’s a tough bastard. Even a bar collapsing on him doesn’t stop Irish pride. Malone’s gonna be piss-” Doug stopped mid-sentence as he rose into a crouching position, glancing towards where he thought he had heard someone groaning. He had, the majority of Murphy’s men were stirring. Sensing the potential for further troubles ahead, he jumped to his feet, rushed to the bar and vaulted sideways over it. At the display rack where Malone kept his spirits, he grabbed the first bottle he found, which happened to contain vodka. He forced it open and looked frantically around for some cloth to jam into the top. There was a surprising lack of options considering Malone’s favourite pastime was wiping glasses clean. Doug grabbed up the only rag on the bar top, a greasy scrap that he figured wouldn’t be missed. He fed it into the top of the bottle then looked to the Robed Man for support.

“Gotta light?” he asked, flashing a sly grin at the mage as he leaned across, holding the bottle out expectantly. The mage’s jowls twitched as he frowned at his compatriot, unsure if Doug was simply being inane or if there was some form of master plan at work. In the end, his curiosity got the better of him and he pointed a gloved hand out towards the rag, an emerald flame dancing on his fingertip. Doug’s grin broadened as he dipped the end of the rag into the flickering flame, setting it alight.

“Much obliged,” Doug thanked him, giving a mock salute with his bionic hand, his normal one having to hold the bottle so that it wouldn’t be crushed by his indelicate bionics. He climbed up on to the bar just in time for McGuire to pull his head out of the well, and for Mickey and O’Reilly to pick themselves up off of the floor. The gang all considered the fact that the bar now had a skylight, the mass of rubble and wreckage where there used to be chairs and tables, their great leader at gunpoint under an iron…thing and finally, the grinning man with the psychotic look in their eyes brandishing a flaming bottle. McGuire went pale.

“Sure yer ‘aven’t ‘ad enoof today lads? Oi tink it’s last orders,” Doug mockingly announced in his best Irish accent. The three thugs looked from each other, to the Molotov cocktail and back again as they calculated their chances. O’Reilly was the one who decided first.

“Murphy ain’t payin’ us enuf for dis shoite,” he summarised, dusting himself off and making his way to the exit, rubbing his aching head as he went. The others hesitated momentarily and glanced towards the prone form of Murphy on the other side of the room. Realising that their boss being knocked out was the last buckled nail in a hastily assembled cheaply-made coffin, the two of them elected to hurry after O’Reilly. Doug sniggered as he noticed that McGuire was painfully picking splinters of wooden board out of his face as he walked away. McGuire paused at the door and dabbed a finger on the eyelid of his cigarette-damaged eye. He hissed and winced in pain as he touched it. Without comment, he leaned over the bar, helped himself to the blue sparkly eyepatch hanging from the rack, and slipped it on, adjusting it over his mutilated eye. He gave Doug one last pout before leaving.

Blaise hadn’t moved from her spot next to Murphy. The big man was pulling himself up, quite the feat with a lump of iron on his back. The light fixture slid off as he managed to get on one knee, and then finally stand up, wobbling slightly but otherwise fine. Dusty, bruised, shoulder swollen, Murphy looked down at Blaise as one might regard a punctured tyre, a mixture of annoyance, panic and defeat. He could have reached out and grabbed her by the neck right then but it somehow didn’t seem to matter anymore.

“I could have shot you,” stated Blaise, looking him right in the eyes. “In the face. I didn’t.”

Murphy grunted. He made a show of dusting himself off despite the fact that he was caked in dust that only a shower and a change of clothes could get rid of. He turned and waded a little bit into the rubble, shifted some of it and picked up his bowler, which now had a big tear in it and a dent in its dome. He placed it back on his head, into the slight angle it had been before and, realising that his jacket was somewhere under the bar roof, he walked towards the exit, pausing only to mutter “much obliged” to Blaise as he passed her. Just before he could leave, Doug had to get in one last word.

“Faith and begorrah, mate.”

“Feck off,” was all Murphy had to say, leaving.

Content with his last bit of wit, Doug smiled from his perch up on the bar. He remembered there was a bottle in his hand, and grinned wide because he was just in the mood for a drink. Lifting the bottle, his eyes registered the cloth slowly burning in the top of it, the green flame now almost reaching the bottle’s contents. He yelped. Blaise and the mage watched as he leapt down, looked around in panic, and then ran straight at the toilet door, leaping and hopping over roof debris in his path. With a swift kick of the door, he reached back and threw the bottle hard into the toilet. There was an unexpected howl and scream, and Doug remembered that the toilet was where Paddy had scurried off to while aflame. He’d thrown the bottle right as the dwarf was preparing to leave, having managed to extinguish his flaming head in one of the sinks.

“That’s the funniest thing I’ve seen all week,” said Doug, watching the dwarf rolling around on the floor while on fire. He remembered Leeroy and his bleeding crotch. “Actually, make that the second funniest thing. Maybe tied first. Anyway, I’ll leave you to it.” He closed the door on the screaming dwarf.

“What the fuck did you do to my pub?!”

Malone was conscious again, shotgun in hand and casting his eye over the complete wreckage that now occupied the Hole. The Robed Man walked around from behind the bar, drinking down the last of his pint, and placed the empty glass on the counter in front of Malone as he passed.

“Good day, barman,” was all he offered as he walked out of the pub.

“Malone,” said Blaise in her best apologetic voice, “we’re really sor-”

“I don’t want to hear it! You’re barred! All of you, out!” growled Malone, still hiding behind his shotgun. Blaise sighed and went to leave, waiting for Doug at the exit. Doug was walking to the bar, despite the shotgun pointed at him. At the bar he dug around inside his jacket with his normal hand, and then brought out a wad of Kronz notes. He began to count through the notes with his thumb, gave up, and placed all of it on the bar.

“Should cover it. If it doesn’t, stick the rest on my tab. Also, there’s a cyborg under all this lot that might want seeing-”

“OUT!”

Doug shrugged, and walked over to Blaise.

“Was that all the money you earned from our gig before last?” she whispered. Doug chuckled as he rooted around in his pockets for his cigarettes and lighter.

“What’s the point in money if you’ve got nothing to spend it on?” he replied. He laughed heartily as Blaise rolled her eyes, and they departed the Watering Hole, or what was left of it.

As Doug’s laughter filtered out into the bustle outside, Malone placed his shotgun back in its cosy shelf under the bar. He surveyed the war zone that had been his quiet pub, face drooping like wax under heat. Walking around the main collapse of the roof, he looked over the damage wearily. To add insult to injury, there was a horrible smell. Where was that smell coming from? A sort of…burning. He sniffed the air, and traced the origin to the toilet door. Now incensed again, he was going to give a good kicking to whatever was causing that stink. Just before he could approach the toilet door, it swung open as a dwarf completely aflame ran out of it screaming and arms flailing, the room behind it completely ablaze.

“MCCRACKEN!” was the only thing Malone could think to yell as the dwarf ran at him.

The Watering Hole would need a little refurbishment before it could open again⁵.

---

Post by Sean Patrick Payne | October 15, 2013 at 11:00 am | The Mercenaries' Tale | No comment

Tags: Big Murphy, Blaise, Doug McCracken, Gratin, Old Malone, the Hole, the Irish, the Mercs, Undercit

Comments are closed.