The short, somber-cloaked stranger slid out of the cold, dark, wet twilight into the only marginally brighter tavern, his wide hat obscuring all but a glimpse of his mustelidine features. He eased through the crowd, slipping his cloak from his shoulders, and sidled up to one end of the bar. "Liquid Cocaine." Watching the large, heavily scarred server set up his drink, he glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the bar - dingy, dark, drab, and, for the main, the denizens would rather drink than be descried. Or described, for that matter. What looked like the bartender's brother - although with the scars, for all anyone knew it could be his mother - stood beside the door, watching for trouble.
A minor altercation began between the large wolf and the diminutive, and fairly slim, jackal in the short jacket and slacks on one side of him, apparently about who was paying for the drinks, and how. It started to get out of hand, the jackal brandishing a knuckled fist in the face of the lupine. The mustelidine slid a coin to the bartender, muttering "For the bottle, if you don't mind." The bartender cocked an eyebrow, as the bottle was deftly removed from his fingers, and broken, equally deftly, across the back of the head of the skinny girl.
To the astonished gaze of the wolf, without turning, he stated "I just saved your life; more importantly, your soul. She's a Succubus by the name of Keaton." His hat tilted downwards for a moment. "And I'd make tracks, were I you. She's not as unconscious as she makes out." Oblivious to the disapproving gaze of the bartender, he reached for his drink.
"I hate it when people interrupt my drinking," he muttered, "especially before I start."
"Oi.. we have a Creature-Being policy of live and let live, here." the bartender objected, one meaty fist on the bar, the other under it.
"I've been sent to pass her a message, and this is part of it; after I'm done, she can come back and try again, for all I care." The stranger shrugged, and drained his drink.
Behind his back, Keaton rose silently, like the sun easing over the hills in the morning, her murderous gaze on his back. As she rose, she flicked a knife at the stranger's back. He leaned sideways and caught the blade as it flew past him, without even turning in his seat, and placed it hilt-downwards on the bar; balanced neatly, he spun it gently. "That's my cue, I think." The bartender's other hand started to rise, with whatever heavy club he had under there, for breaking up trouble, rising with it.
The stranger removed his hat with his other hand, then dropped it to the bar, and rolled to the other side as Catastrophe dropped through the space the stoat had just vacated, demolishing the stool entirely. The bartender decided discretion was the better part of valour, and vanished behind his bar. His brother, likewise, vanished with the crowd; hanging around when the Watch broke up festivities was a good way of waking up behind bars, with a heck of a hangover, since they assumed everyone was guilty and acted likewise. Usually with clubs of their own.
The stranger grinned unrepentantly at Keaton. "Shame on you, Miss Jyraneth. Attacking an unarmed man from behind." The smug smile on his muzzle belied the condemnation in his words.
"Best place to attack from; they can't see you coming. Besides, you're not unarmed." she retorted, pausing to take stock, and adjusting her one-handed grip on her mace.
As they talked, he'd dropped his cloak across a chair, revealing a full-length leather coat; rising from the collar of the coat, and bisecting his white-furred head completely, was an ugly scar, a double helix of stitch-marks stepping along a central line that led under his muzzle, up the left cheek, across the left eye, over his head, and down under the collar again. Worse, the eye that was bisected by the milky-white scar had stitch-marks on it as well - smaller, but still present. Overall, the uncanny effect was as if someone had split his head in two, and yet not killed him. The unsettling grin on his face didn't help much. Between the two of them, they totally distracted attention from the strange, faint blue tattoo reaching halfway up his neck on either side.
"Yeah. I know." He touched the scar, gently, with one foreclaw. "I'd rather see it coming, though."
"Watch this, then." She growled in return, and, wings unfolding behind her, launched a tentacle at his head.
The tentacle sliced through the air and missed his head by a hair's breadth, kissing his cheek as he dodged deftly to the side. He paused, touched his cheek, and grinned at Keaton. "Thanks, I needed a trim." She glared back. The rest of the bar was almost empty by now.
He paused, and ostentatiously removing a cigar from a pocket, one eyebrow raised to Keaton, declaimed politely "Care to try again? You could always trim the other side..."
She snarled something unprintable, and lashed out again, this time with more tentacles. He dodged one, cut the cigar cap on the second, held a match to the third, lighting it as the razor-sharp edge whipped back, then lit the cigar as he backflipped over a table, and puffed an insouciant smoke ring at her as he shook out the match.
He casually dropped the match onto the table, removed the cigar from his mouth, and wafted a handful of smoke in the direction of Catastrophe. "Are you compensating for something, or does that big stick there have other uses that you wouldn't do in polite company?"
Keaton snarled, smashed the table to splinters, and swiped at him again on the backswing. He ducked the splinters, dodged the swipe, and kept moving.
"Ah, yes, I forgot. You're not very polite at the best of times. Forget I mentioned it." he smirked, staying out of reach.
Keaton moved after him, her hand gripping Catastrophe's hilt and her lip curling. "Stand and fight, you fucking weasel!"
"I'm not a weasel, I'm stoatally different." he rejoined. "Which is weasely wecognised, you callow canid. Can you swing that girder fast enough to actually hit anything?" He dodged another strike, and continued "Or are you limited to the words in your vocabulary for offensive warfare? I dread to think how many of your targets have died of old age awaiting any damage..."
"Go fuck yourself!" she shouted, swiping at him, ineffectually, yet again; she'd destroyed a fair number of them by now, without getting close to connecting with him. On the other hand, she only had to connect once, and the fight, such as it was, would be effectively over.
"How boring. Other people are much more fun, particularly when they're lively." He skipped out of the way of another tentacle swipe, and around a table.
"Come closer, and I'll show you lively!" The table joined the other detritus on the floor in pieces.
"Ooo, you promise?" He slipped sideways, then forwards, ending up inside her arms, right in front of her for a moment, before beeping her on the nose and diving between her arms and rolling out of reach.
"Now, don't say I don't try to help." His smirk, which hadn't left his face, was, if possible, even bigger now.
"You godforsaken bastard, you can help by standing still while I crush your head!" She attempted to remove it, by way of demonstration.
"I'll pass, if it's all the same to you."
She snarled some more obscenities at him.
"Do you speak like this with all your friends?"
"You're no friend of mine, you pipsqueak!"
"Aw. I thought we were getting on so well. Would you reconsider my affections? I have a lot to offer the right girl..."
Keaton screamed in rage, and threw a table at him with her tentacles. She missed, but not by much.
"Now, is that any way to talk to someone who's just doing his best to improve your day?" He grabbed a tentacle as it went past, and used it to flick himself out of the path of the flying chair that followed the table.
"Fuck you!" The chair shattered to pieces. "And the horse you rode in on!" Followed by the other three, in an arc around the room after him.
"But he's such a placid ride!" He dropped under another table as it flew at his head, and rolled back to his feet.
"Gah!"
"What, speechless already? And here's me having put all this thought into my responses. You'd think you could manage, what with all that experience." He grinned, as expected.
She swore at him, at length, and swung, yet again missing by fractions of an inch.
He dodged, and commented, taking the cigar from his teeth, "Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?" He blew her a smoke ring. "On the lips, I mean."
"Don't even mention her, you bastard, or I'll kill you where you stand!" she howled.
"Ah, pity. Some of my best lines. Ah, well. It's a good thing I prefer living to being smart, although it's a close thing..." Biting down on the cigar, he slipped backwards, out of range, and dropped what looked like a short stick from both sleeves. He caught it, shook it oddly, and flicked both of them upwards. The sticks popped a handle out each when shaken, turning into a pair of tonfa on the way up, and dropped back neatly into his hands. He spun them around to cover each forearm, then paused, and waited for Keaton to reach him. "May I have this dance?"
He raised one crooked eyebrow - the scar pulling it slightly to one side - and slid around on the floor as if he were greased; wherever she threw a blow at him, he wasn't there, having stepped aside, or back, or ducked, or even just turned in place, letting the tentacle slide from his fraying coat, leaving yet another hole in it. He sighed; "I liked this coat, I did."
He paused for a moment, glancing down at the table that had appeared, as if by magic, between the two fighters, and frowned. As Keaton swung, two-handed, at the table, he threw his left tonfa up to slow Catastrophe's fall, and stepped sideways, reaching to the posy some random stranger had left on the table in their eagerness to get away. He snapped it away, letting the mace shatter the table, and spun in place, only to bound up the haft and, using her own return stroke, launched himself low and long, over her head and the table behind her - leaving the posy behind her ear on the way past.
He rolled over the table, dropped to the floor behind it, and spun back to his feet, his coat flaring out behind him in a way that would have taken your average special effects team over a hundred tries to duplicate. He grinned. "It looks much better there."
She snarled, ripped the posy from her ear, and threw it at him, all the while spitting curses, then lunged over the table towards him, and swung hugely through the space he was standing in. As she did, he moved one arm into the way, deflecting neatly, then the other, blocking the return backhand strike. Then again, and again, each hammering blow neatly blocked or deflected, almost before it could be seen, robbing each strike of its' power with flashing, economical movements.
"You know, you've got an awfully foul mouth. I'm almost tempted to find someone cleaner. Do you have a older, gentler sister?"
"She's dead, you bastard, and you will be too! Just wait!"
"Now, now. Is that any way to treat an admirer?"
Refraining from moving backwards, now, he stood, toe to toe, and blocked each strike; be it with tentacle, hand, or foot, each was either dodged or deflected or, at a pinch, hammered to a halt with almost as much force as she was attempting to apply to him.
"You know, I'd have thought you were better than this, Miss Jyraneth. After all, you've got far more limbs than I - at least right now. Maybe you're just more used to using them on friends?"
She spat back. "What, you knife your friends in the back? Fucking typical; never trust a greasy fucking ferret further than you can bloody throw the slippery little bastards."
"Oh, deary deary me. I told you before, Miss Jyraneth, I'm not a ferret, either. I'm stoatally different. Honest."
"I don't give a shit what the fuck you are!" she barked.
"You should. It might make the difference between life and death, one day. It probably won't, but it might." He rolled backwards, end over end over a table, and smirked at her. She flipped the table at him.
He flicked both tonfa across the room, at the wall behind him, where they stuck, and caught the table by the edge, sliding backwards a half a dozen paces. "Anyone would think you didn't like me, dear." He flipped the table, caught it by the legs, and proceeded to fend off half a dozen rapid strikes, each one removing chunks from the table top, until he was left with just the leg in each hand.
He looked at the shattered remains. "Well, that splinters that idea."
Keaton lashed out yet again, and he dropped both the legs and himself, and rolled backwards, bouncing off the floor to grab both tonfa, then off the wall to pull them free, shooting out and over the attacking tentacles, rolling over another table, and back into the fray in one smooth sequence.
"'Into the Valley of Death, rode the three hundred...'," he quoted.
"What the fuck does that mean?" she snarled.
"Oh, nothing important. At least, not just now."
In the brief pause, they could hear from outside the sound of ringing bells, and tramping feet drawing closer.
"The Watch! Shit, I'm outta here! So long, sucker!" and with that, she ran for the door, her wings morphing into a new form around her as she slammed through it and out into the night.
"But the messa... Ah, nuts." With that, he sighed, shrugged his shoulders, put both tonfa away, and crossed back to the chair with his coat on it - just about the only furniture left whole in the room. He hooked his coat from the pile. Slipping into it, he drained his glass, and rolled his wide, dark hat onto his head, once more concealing his features, placed enough coin to cover the damage on the bar, next to the glass, reached for his cloak, and headed for the door. Along the way, he snapped up the top half of a coat rack, and, inexplicably, dropped it down the back of his coat, rising over his head.
Just as he got there, the doors crashed back, a cry of "City Watch, nobody move! You're all under arrest!" ringing through the air. He froze, his hat low on his head, his cloak over his shoulder... right next to the coat rack, and looking just like another one.
The City Watch flooded in, and spread around the room. As soon as they cleared the door, he slipped through, leaving the half a coat rack on the doorstep, and disappeared into the night, snickering quietly to himself.
... To be continued.
After all, Our Hero has a message to deliver, doesn't he?
... Doesn't he?
Keaton is copyright Keaton the Black Jackal. All other characters copyright llearch n'n'daCorna.