I plonked the glasses on the table in front of Syl. "I think that's the good stuff," I said, raising my voice above the general hubbub, "though it's been a while. It might have gotten crap."
She held up her glass to me and said, solemnly, "Wheep."
I returned the gesture. "Wheep." Some battles forge a bond. For us, it was one where we harrassed a confused and helpless Jedi with inflatable weapons.
I barely had a chance to swallow the first taste before my phone started ringing. From what I could hear over the background, the ringtone was "Staying Alive". I didn't know if that was Dis playing around or if he'd copied Grace's preset. Either way, my latest leash was being yanked, and I didn't want the first phone conversation to be filled with yells of "What?"
I held up the phone to Syl, and told her, "Gotta take this," and, leaving my beer behind, went outside to talk to Ms. Grace.
I tried to think of something clever to say, failed to come up with anything and so answered the phone with, "Hello."
"Mr. Nolan," Grace purred in that irritating way of hers. "Did you miss me?"
"With every passing breath," I said instead of /I didn't even shoot/. "I wasn't expecting you to ring so soon."
"A girl likes to be unpredictable," she said. "I trust you're keeping up your end of the arrangement."
"Well, I've already demonstrated that the undersea hangar's up and running," I said. "I thought you'd appreciate that." I'd wandered away from the front of the tavern, and down a nearby alley a few silhouettes were detaching themselves from the walls in a depressingly familiar way. Still, if they'd leave me alone for long enough, I could finish the conversation.
"I had noted that," she said with a certain degree of condescension. "Is that all you're doing today?"
I could tell the trap that lurked in that question. "What do you take me for?" I asked. "I'm attempting to rebuild rapport with one of my old team, and she tells me she's been living here since I've been gone. So she could be a fountain of information if I can get her to open up again." There were a couple of rough-looking guys walking towards me with exaggerated nonchalance, and a glance behind me showed another two.
Six in total. Damn it.
"Oh, I'm sure your honeyed tongue can open all sorts of doors," said Grace in a tone that showed she knew full well she was double-dipping her entendres. "But it had best prove useful."
"I don't know what I don't know," I told her, "so I have to work with what I have." One of the rough-looking guys attempted to 'accidentally' shoulder-barge me, but I side-stepped and he looked a little silly. I was ringed with them, now. I wasn't going to get out of this while I was on the phone.
"My word," said Mr. Shoulder, "That is an exquisite telephone. Prithee, sir, may I examine it?"
Yeah, Mendellian thugs. Go figure. Grace was saying something, but I ignored her.
"I can't, I'm sorry," I told him, "you see, it's your mother. She's got a lot to say about you."
He blinked. "Sir is mistaken. My mother is dead, sir."
I widened my eyes at him. "Spooky, isn't it?"
While he tried to think of a reply to that, Grace demanded "What in hell are you talking about?"
I told her, "Hold on, I'm about to be mugged," and shoved the phone in my pocket just as Mr. Shoulder produced a knife from somewhere sneaky. He brandished it, holding it like a fencer, and said, "I really must insist on examining that phone, sir. I hear they can be disastrous for your health."
I noted which of the surrounding goons laughed loudest at that, since things were about to get ugly.
I'm not much of a knife-fighter. If I have to cause mayhem close-up I tend to go for my lightsabre, but leaving six dismembered corpses would likely be a headache for Thayer. I have, however, a lot of respect for knife-fighters. I once saw a couple of Rodian knife-fighters duke it out, and the winner bled out before he could get into bacta (so seriously, if a Rodian comes after you, shoot first). But the thing about knife-fighters is they pretty much need to be trained - the school-of-hard-knocks when it comes to knives tends to get you stabbed a lot.
Conversely, you generally don't need to be particularly good with a knife to stab people a lot. If you're using a knife to menace someone who's unarmed, you can use their natural 'I don't want to get stabbed' reaction to bully them around. And that's what Mr. Shoulder was doing. The dangerous knife-fighters keep their weapons close to their bodies, ready to punish anyone who comes within range. Mr. Shoulder was brandishing his like a talisman, which against normal people would probably be enough to scare them out of their valuables.
To someone like me, though, he was basically declaring, "Here is my arm! Do with it what you will!" So I did.
I've found, when violence is inevitable, it's important to be violent first, and violent hard. If bacta left scars, I'd have a few to show for when I failed to heed that rule. So I'd gotten a hold of his wrist before he registered that I'd moved, and a fraction of a second after that I'd pulled his elbow the way it's not supposed to bend, all while bringing my heel down on the side of his knee, dislocating it with an audible crack.
Now that his arm was floppy, I sheathed the knife in his thigh, spun an elbow into the face of the guy behind me, then sprang across the circle. I singled out the guy who'd durr-hurred the loudest at Mr. Shoulder's rapier wit, and gave him the good old Glasgow kiss. I got lucky, and Hurrdurr hit the ground at about the same time as Mr. Shoulder, though he appeared far more unconscious than the screaming comedic genius.
Life, it should go without saying, is not like the movies. The old kung-fu movie cliche is that the goons all attack the hero one at a time, who dispatches them effortlessly, just in time for the next guy to think he'll have more luck. In real life, give them a chance and they'll gang up, and you kind of need to be a Jedi to stay unhurt when they do. So the trick is not to give them a chance. When you've got people on either side of you, bulldoze one so you've got a chance to ring their bell and deal with the other one. If you stand there waiting for them to come at you one at a time, you're boned.
Of course, real life has some advantages, as well. While kung-fu movie mooks never seem to be put out by their fellows having the crud beaten through them, real people tend to be a little more hesitant. I'd just transformed myself from being some hapless dude with a phone to the guy who'd dropped two of them in about as many seconds. If I'd stood there and tried to look cool, they might have rallied and piled on, but I kept the pressure up, smacking them around, jumping from target to target. I split my knuckles cracking one of them across the jaw, which sent him staggering backwards, and another one I got with a solid hit on the solar plexus, which left him gasping. I made with the elbows, too, which I generally used to clip a guy as I was heading for another one. I got clipped myself, a couple of times, but nothing really worth mentioning.
I wasn't trying to kill them - that wasn't the objective. If it had been, I'd have whipped out the 'sabre and the fight would have been a lot easier for me. After about fifteen seconds, three of them had run off, one of them still wheezing and trying to catch his breath. Shoulder was still screaming at his broken limbs and his stab wound, Hurrdurr was sleeping it off, and Knuckle-Splitter was sprawled against a wall, cartoon birds going around his head and a glazed expression on his face.
I fished my phone out of my pocket, trying not to get blood on my clothes. "Sorry about that. You gave me too fancy a phone."
"It took you that long to fight off a mugger?" she asked. "That's somewhat less impressive than I've been led to expect. Are you going to be worth your wage, I wonder."
"Listen to that screaming in the background, and you tell me," I said, stepping away from the fallen. "I don't take too kindly to people who try and rob me."
"Neither do I, Mr. Nolan. Neither do I." She sighed. "Well, I suppose you're keeping up your end of the bargain at the moment. The Laets family will remain unharmed for now."
"You're too generous," I said icily.
"I really am," she said. "I try not to let it get in the way of business. Enjoy rebuilding your rapport," she said, and hung up.
I walked back to the entrance of the bar, only to find that Wheezy had been bailed up by one of the bouncers. Syl was glaring at him, with her arms crossed. She glanced at my way, frowned a little more, and then glared at Wheezy harder. "Why are you even conscious?" she demanded. Wheezy tried to frame an answer, looked behind him, and tried to bolt.
He did a good job of detaching himself from the bouncer, but unfortunately for him, Syl blocked him with a well-placed knee. He doubled over and started to shudder.
Syl wasn't having any of that. She grabbed his collar, levered him to his feet and looked him in his watering eyes. "I. Asked. You. A. Question," she snarled in that near-feral way of hers. She held out a finger at me without looking. "I'll get to you in a moment," she said, in a marginally more normal tone of voice. "Don't go wandering off." I looked at the bouncer, and shrugged. He studiously tried to ignore the pantomime taking place in front of him.
He began to blub an apology, possibly for his whole litany of crimes starting with him wetting the bed when he was three. The combination of his breathing issue, his emotional state and his Mendellian patois basically rendered him incomprehensible, but what was clear was that he was very, very sorry. Syl eventually tired of attempting to understand him, and shoved him back onto the cobblestones. The guy didn't even attempt to stand up, just started crawling away across the street.
It was simultaneously one of the saddest and most hilarious things I've ever seen.
Syl stalked over to me and quite deliberately poked me in the chest. "So," she said. "He's conscious. Explain."
"He and his mates jumped me while I was in the middle of the phone call. I didn't feel like ginsuing them, so I settled for fending them off. I left a few of them back in the alley."
"You got in a fight," she said levelly.
"Well, yeah."
"And you didn't invite me." She poked me in the chest again. "That was rude of you, Crispy Man!"
"I had a few things I was juggling, then there were six of them..." I trailled off and shrugged.
"Six!" She shook her head. "That's even worse! Plenty for both of us, and you hogged the lot." She frowned at me. "Are there any casualties I should know about?"
"One guy I knocked out with a headbutt, another might have a concussion, and there's a guy with a couple of broken limbs and a stab wound." I looked at Wheezy, who still hadn't managed to crawl out of sight. "And one who's had a dignitectomy."
"Stab wound? That doesn't sound like your style."
"It wasn't my knife. Stuck it in his thigh for safekeeping."
Her angry face cracked a little at that, but she tried to keep it going. "So I suppose we should just call them an ambulance?"
"Seems a little harsh to add insult to injury," I said, trying to keep a straight face myself. I leaned a little to address Wheezy. "Hey! You! You're an ambulance!"
Syl punched me in the shoulder, but it was a playful strike. "You know what I mean," she said.
"Rarely," I agreed.
Her angry face broke completely. "I should yub something at you, but you speak it better than I do, so you'd just start this whole go-round again," she grumbled. She shoulder-barged past me - I didn't sidestep it, this time - and said to the bouncer, "Excuse me, sir, but could you call an ambulance for the idiots who attacked my idiot in the alley yonder?"
"I'm not her idiot," I told him, and he ignored me, nodding to Syl and slipping inside the tavern.
"For your rudeness in leaving me out of the fight, Mr. Bleeding-Knuckles, I hereby fine you the next round," said Syl, pushing me inside the tavern in the bouncer's wake.
The noise in the tavern stopped me from making a florid acceptance speech, so I just nodded at her. We reclaimed our table - probably a good thing no-one had tried to nick it, with Syl in the mood she was in - and set about draining our glasses.
About half-way through, I asked, "So you speak Ewok, now?"
She yubbed, <I having some of the learnings>.
"Right," I said, trying to sound supportive. <Have you become a member of the tribe?>
<I not much know. They name me Tree-Cousin?> I nodded sagely at this, trying very hard not to giggle at her grammar. Or accent.
<It sounds like you've been adopted,> I yubbed back. <Congratulations!>
"Yay," she said, clapping her hands in delight. Or possibly ironic mock-delight. Or maybe both. I can never tell, with Syl. She shook her head, smiling, and downed the rest of her beer, then pointedly swapped her gaze between me and the empty glass.
I drained mine, and said, "Okeydoke, I'll be back in a sec."
The trip to the bar and back was utterly free of incidents of hilarity and bloodshed, which made a change for today. I put the beer down, and asked, as casually as I could manage, "So, how're things with Hobbie?"
The expression that flashed across her face made me regret the question. It was a smile.
"Things are good," she said, practically glowing. "Harder now that I can't dart offworld. We used to stagger our times off, but now he can get here about a month twice a year, give or take a few weeks depending on the higher up's. He's teaching the new pilots now, mostly, unless the old crowd is needed for something, so he's bored out of his mind, but he insists retirement is for old people, so," she shrugged. "Twice a year it is." Her face became far-off, even wistful. "Maybe once this is over I'll find a way to get off world a few times a year myself so we can up our chances at seeing each other like it was." She smiled distantly and drank, her mind obviously not here and now.
I nodded, while mentally kicking myself in the balls. I needed to remember that whatever I'd latched on to, those years ago, that wasn't real. I was sick in the head, back then, and maybe I'd just leaped at the first pretty girl to hit me with an inflatable alien. It wasn't mutual. It never was. And regardless of any hopeless aspirations, she was still my friend. Burdening her with the bleatings of an immature, crazy brat wouldn't do her any favours, and it certainly wouldn't help me. The only solution was to get over it.
I'd been trying for eight years. I'd crack it soon, surely.
She waved a hand, "Don't mind me, I always get a little soppy for about a week after he heads back." She smiled at me, but it wasn't the same expression she'd had a second ago. "What about you? A string of lovelies across the galaxy while you go on your bounty-hunting ways?"
"I wasn't a complete monk, but there hasn't been anyone serious," I said. 'I'm not really the string of lovelies type." I took a beer, hoping that'd be all. Most of the women I'd run into out there had either been homicidally insane or victims of slavery - in one memorable case, both. I'd never taken advantage of vulnerability - some had been so badly abused they thought it was required of them - but sometimes they needed someone to reach out to so that they could remind themselves they were a person, and I was the only one there.
I'm not made of stone.
I'm also not really stable relationship material. My job has me lying and deceiving when I'm not killing and destroying. I'm not really a catch.
"Any friends out there, then? I mean, other than Dis, who is an awesome friend in himself." She looked downcast for a moment, but snapped out of it with a definite shake of her head. "Y'know, someone to go drinking with when you've done a job well, that sort of thing?"
"I've met a few drinking buddies, but they're in the hunting trade as well. We go gallivanting around the galaxy and occasionally meet, but there's nothing reliable." Not to mention the fact that, as an NRI asset, I may be tasked to kill them and make it look like an accident, should they take the wrong bounty. I had to keep some distance. It didn't seem appropriate to say all that out loud.
She nodded slowly, "Ah. I see," she said, and maybe she did. She did have ooky magical powers, after all. "In that case, we'll have to make up for lost drinks when there's time, and if the festival's still on before you have to leave, I am SO taking you. It'll be hilarious," she grinned.
"Festival? Did I forget Thayer's birthday?"
Syl reached across the table and rapped me on my forehead. "Duh, but that one was months ago. I"m talking about the Honourable Man festival which, thanks to you, is being held off schedule this year."
"The... wait." <The Honourable Man Festival?> "Seriously?"
She gave me one of those serious nods that meant she was close to cracking up. <The Honourable Man Festival, very with the much important.> She immediately picked up her drink and began downing it, I guess trying to disguise the quiver in her shoulders.
"They have a festival," I said. She nodded. "Named after me." She nodded. "And they're holding it soon." Third nod. I dropped my face into the palm of my hand. "Oh, bloody hell."
"Off schedule, usually it's late-summer, just before autumn. Though I still haven't figured out how they keep track, with Mendellia being practically seasonless," she shrugged.
Oh, hell. "It's not late summer. Late winter. Just before spring. So the new hunters can face the rebirth of the world." I hung my head. "It's a sacred rite. The new warriors get initiated into the tribe." I shook my head. "Hell of a birthday I had the year they put me through it." I took a swig of beer, because that's really only the sane reaction. "And they've named it after me. Oh, crap."
"I wonder if Chuka will let me fight this time," Syl pondered.
"Don't ask for permission," I told her. "Just join. A warrior seeks guidance, not permission." I held my beer up to her. "It's sort of a test, you see."
"Oh, I haven't asked before, but now that I know THAT, I'm definitely going to give it a shot this time around." She nodded, and so I had no doubt she'd be stickfighting with the Ewok adolescents at the... the Honourable Man Festival.
"I'm tired of being a cub," she pouted. I took another swig of beer rather than comment that she had a way to go before she didn't yub like one.
"Shut up, you're thinking loudly," she said before downing the last of her second beer. I tried to challenge her by mentally reciting Jabberwocky in Huttese, but got bogged down on 'wabe'. ('Slithy', though, was a cinch.)
"Your round," I told her, giving up.
"You sure? Your eyes just crossed," she said with a knowing half-smile, but she still got up to get the round.
"I just found out there's a festival named after me," I groused at her. "Give me a break."
She laughed, and disappeared into the crowd.
Yes, I paid attention to watching her leave.
Like I said before, I'm not made of stone.
She'd been gone long enough that I was bracing myself for the screaming to start, but she picked her way back holding four glasses. She set them on the table and said, "This way we don't have to get up again."
And so we sat, drank, and talked. And, just maybe, I began to get over it.