It had already been an eventful day when Mike hit his first bar. Not -often- a big drinker, he'd stuck at first to soft drinks, before realising that the sort of people he wanted to talk to were the sort of people who would not talk to an OJ drinker.
Mike looked at the array of bottles available, but eventually settled for a bottle of beer. Bud is Bud in any language, and the young guy working behind the bar even managed a 'Wassssupppp!' for his English speaking customer.
Three fruitless conversations later, Mike left the bar. He was down a lot of Francs, but since the introduction of the Euro, the Francs were now useless. Mike was grateful the guys had been too drunk to notice.
He meandered along the rue, taking in the sights, grateful for the high school French he'd absorbed years before. He was far from fluent, but could make his way around the city. He knew his gauche from his droit, and his café au lait from his Irlandais café, even if he didn't know where all the accents should go.
Besides, he had a knack for languages. A few hours in a foreign city, and he could be comprehensively incomprehensible like no other.
Another bar loomed large on the side of the road. This one looked far seedier than his previous haunt. Would Blade have spent time in here? An NRI agent would often become acquainted with the underbelly of an area first off, he remembered Face saying once.
He pushed the bar door, noting how gloomy the bar inside was. A tingle ran down his spine as he stepped into the darkness.
Nightcrawler felt bored. She'd been searching the bars and clubs of Paris for Wells's target for a long time. She was footsore, sweaty, and hot. The bar she'd entered was deliciously cool and gloomy, if a little loud. She sank into a bar stool, and held up a slender finger to attract the barman's attention. He took his time walking over to her, his piggy eyes lasciviously tracking over her, taking in every detail.
Crawler sighed inwardly, but only a slight frown betrayed her annoyance. Behind her, the bell on the door rang as someone entered. Looking past the porcine barman, she watched on the bar mirror as a young man entered. Over the top of her sunglasses, she saw him look around curiously, noting the pack of young men clustered around the large screen in one corner. Though early in the afternoon, the men were already quite drunk. They were raucously cheering the sports on show on the screen, and as the newcomer walked past them, they erupted in a frenzy of yelling and leaping.
Mike glanced at the men as he walked past. He recognised the match: 1998 World Cup final, where France became football champions of the world. In only a few hours in the capital city, he'd already learned that the French were passionate about 'Les Bleus.'
He walked up to the bar, glancing at the only other person there. She looked to be a professional woman, mid-to-late twenties. While she was wearing loose fitting clothes of no particular designer note, she had a bearing about her which sent an alarm jangling in his head. He looked a little closer, and noted the expensive looking chain around her neck. This woman was not quite right, he thought. Why on earth was she in a pit like this?
He waited for the woman to rebuff the barman's clumsy attempts at flirting. The man seemed harmless enough, but as Mike watched, his temper shortened visibly. Eventually, the woman, who had so far only spoken in short words, spat out a phrase that rocked the barman. He shut up, and moodily fetched her a bottle of Perrier. He slammed it on the counter, no glass, and took her money. Mike grinned slightly as he carelessly short changed the woman, although she didn't seem to notice.
"Un Kronenbourg, s'il vous plaît," Mike said, in response to the barman's enquiry. The beer arrived, slopping over the rim of the glass as the barman banged it on the counter. Mike grinned to himself as he raised the glass to his mouth. The barman stomped off to a back room where someone was shouting at him.
"Revenez ici toi le dullard en graisse! Mon père avait raison! Je devrais ne jamais vous avoir épousé!" (1) came the cry. It only seemed to worsen the barman's temper.
The youth was grinning, Crawler noted. She looked closer at him in the mirror. He seemed to be in good shape, with long brown hair pulled into a loose pony tail. There was something about his eyes, she thought. Then she realised what it was. As she was looking at him in the mirror, so he was watching her. She wondered what he saw.
As she evaluated him, a number of the drunken football fans approached the counter. One banged on the wood several times, calling out in a loud voice:
"Hé, père! Nous avons besoin de plus de boissons! Zidane est sur le point de marquer encore! Nous avons besoin de pleins verres pour pousser dans le ciel et pour se tremper avec de la bière parce que nous sommes un paquet d'abrutis ivres!" (2)
Mike grimaced as the young men began whistling and yelling at the back room. It didn't take much knowledge of French to work out what was going on: They were thirsty again. When their rousing chorus failed to bring forth the barman, the leader of the group stepped behind the bar, and started to pull his friends frothing pints of beer.
The guy looked up, and finally realised that the bar was not empty. His eyes slowly focussed in on the woman, and Mike could see her tense. He frowned slightly. It wasn't hard to work out what was coming next.
"Hé assez dame. Vous voulez venir boire avec nous? Nous n'obtenons jamais de parler aux femmes mais je sais ce que je voudrais faire à une si j'obtenais jamais la chance. Voulez m'aider à accomplir mon imagination?" (3)
It was an invitation of some sort, Nightcrawler surmised, and a crude one from the hooting the man's friends were making. She grimaced slightly, and wondered if she would be hit on by every man she met in this country. She smiled as sweetly as she could, and then shook her head. She said, "Non. Laissez-moi." (4)
The man's expression went from leeringly seductive to incredibly angry. Once again his friends were hooting and hollering, but this time he was the source of derision.
"Chienne!" he spat, and Mike lowered his beer to the counter. Leaving his hands free, he gave his full attention to the floor show. The woman, curiously, was not apparently affected by the insult. Instead, her features remained calm, even seeming to brighten slightly.
"Monsieur, vous êtes un robinet," (5) she replied sweetly, getting up from her stool to leave. The man's friends laughed drunkenly as she walked past them, leaving the man frozen behind the bar. The beer he was pulling overflowed the glass, and slopped down the front of his trousers, which seemed to reawaken him from his trance. He stepped out from behind the bar, pushing at his friends to get past them. Reaching out, he grabbed the woman's wrist, and yanked her around to face him.
"Chienne! Vous regretterez d'avoir dit ça...." (6)
Nightcrawler's eyes narrowed behind her sunglasses, and she was preparing to swivel on one heel to punch the man in the face when another hand clasped the man's wrist.
"Monsieur. Ne le faîtes pas...." (7) Mike began, stumbling over the half remembered words. His fingers squeezed the man's wrist, but the Frenchman was too drunk to realise. He yanked at the woman again, trying to pull her over, but the woman held her balance with a quick movement of her feet. Mike noted the shuffle absently, putting it down to some basic martial arts training. Then all thoughts went out as the Frenchman brought his right arm up in a hammer blow that brought his elbow into fleeting -but painful- contact with Mike's jaw.
The stranger stumbled back, and Nightcrawler chose the moment to swing her arm out and backhand her captor across the jaw. His grip loosened as he stumbled backwards, crashing through a table in best bar-fight tradition. Nightcrawler turned to run, but another pair of hands held her tight as the leader's friends advanced on her.
Suddenly, the stranger was back in the mix. He fired off a high kick that snapped shut the jaw of one of the men. The man dropped bonelessly to the floor, groaning in French.
The attack held the men at bay, briefly. Mike snarled defiance at them, his eyes blazing, and a trickle of blood oozing past his lips. He turned to face the woman and the man holding her. He became a moot point suddenly as she twisted and brought her knee up between his legs. Mike blinked, and tried to work out whether the momentary glint on her ankle as her trousers were twisted had really been a lethal looking knife or not.
With the ring of men surrounding the two of them, he decided that now was not the time to wonder about the woman's undergarments.
Nightcrawler regarded her opponents dispassionately. She did not see them as a threat, and even without the chivalrous help of the stranger, she could see the pack of them off. They were simply too drunk to fight properly.
She looked down, and straightened her outfit. Looking back up, she noted with a smile of satisfaction that none of the men had taken the chance to move in closer to her. With luck, weapons wouldn't come into play in this fight, and no-one would be seriously hurt. Stabbing people tended to make it difficult to move around freely.
Mike rubbed thoughtfully at his bruised jaw, contemplating the forces arrayed against him and his newfound friend. It was hardly New Hampshire, but back then he'd had a gun and the Force. And several dozen Ewoks. And so on. Now he had someone on his side -probably- who seemed to know something about self defence.
On the plus side, they were all pissed as farts. He just hoped his bruises didn't show too much. He did have a good excuse, but he suspected Cochran would frown upon him getting into a pub brawl.
"My French is not good, Mademoiselle," he offered.
"But we both speak B... English" she replied.
"I don't think they do," Mike commented.
"Me either. You fight?" she replied.
"Do you?" he countered.
"On three, then," she ordered. "One!" She lunged, and one man dropped as the heel of her hand caught him under the chin.
Two, Mike thought, kicking an assailant in the chest, and sending him backwards into a friend. Already the woman had downed three of the men.
Three. And the bar was clear. The woman had weaved and twisted, leaving bodies scattered around the bar. Mike finished the last of the men with a hard right hook. In the three seconds, he'd taken down two men. The woman had flattened more than half a dozen.
Nightcrawler dusted off her hands, before turning to face the stranger.
"You fight well," she said, glancing at his opponents.
"So do you," he replied, slightly awestruck. "Where did you learn to move like that? I haven't seen anything like that since. . . ." He stopped. "I mean, it was amazing!"
"I get around," she replied, closing the matter.
A bottle shattered, and the two turned to face the source of the sound. The first man, the guy with the crude chat-up lines, had regained his feet and had smashed a bottle on the bar. He held it by the neck, its jagged points ready to stab deep into his two opponents.
Suddenly, he dived at Nightcrawler, who twisted aside rapidly. The speed of her movement threw him off balance, and he careened onto the floor. As he struggled to regain his feet, Nightcrawler swung her leg high, and brought her heel crashing down on the back of his neck. He slumped, insensible, to the ground.
As the woman turned around, Mike slipped his hand back into his pocket. While she'd been otherwise occupied, he'd taken the chance to pull out a tiny digi-cam (8) he carried with him, and snapped a couple of quick pictures of her. While he felt momentarily guilty about not helping her, he rationalised it with the knowledge that the only help she'd need from him was if there were about ten of him. And if she was tied up. Besides, he mused, she fought like. . . .
A Noghri. There it was. Mike accepted that he didn't know much about martial arts. But Shalla did. He'd watched her fight in martial arts competitions, and the only person she'd ever lost to was a Noghri. And that fighter's style and movements were very similar to this woman's. And she'd, maybe, nearly said Basic instead of English earlier. It was a lead, albeit probably a dead one.
She turned away from the downed man.
"Chien," she spat, derogatively. Then she looked at the stranger.
"Thank you," she said shortly, before turning to leave.
As she walked out of the door, Mike watched her reach down and adjust the cuff of her trousers. Was she realigning the knife he thought he'd seen earlier?
But the movements were quick, and it might have been nothing. Besides, why the hell would she need a weapon? She *was* a weapon. He looked around the room, at the scattered bodies of the beaten men. Then he looked at the bar, and realised the barman and his wife were peering over the top of it, absolutely petrified. He turned to leave as well, pausing to look one last time at the carnage he left behind.
"Lambinez moi," (9) he muttered, before heading back out into the city.