Gray's Tavern
I downed the last of my beer and
tried once again to convince Blaine it was time to leave. It wasn’t late; I
just hate drinking at Gray’s Tavern. It wasn’t the prices, which were pretty
standard for your local bar. The place also had a decent location and a good
size to seat the regulars as well as anyone who wandered in out of curiosity
with a long bar, a couple of tables, and several booths in the back. Actually
there wasn’t really anything bad about Gray’s Tavern at all, it’s just that I
hate drinking at a bar populated with superheroes and supervillains alike.
Blaine
wouldn’t hear it. “Come on, Peter. Happy hour isn’t even over yet,” he said as
he ordered two more beers. I let out a sigh and caught a glimpse of myself in
the mirror behind the bar. I brushed my hair back to the side and readjusted my
tie. The rest of our coworkers from the bank left about a half hour ago when
two pyrokinetics started launching fireballs at each other, setting their table
on fire as well as some of the surrounding walls. The fact that the place didn’t
burn down nor the rest of us reduced to ashes before the bouncers tossed them
out proved they weren’t A-class Supers like Phoenix or Dragon. They probably
weren’t even B-class either. Possibly just some small-time punks looking for
trouble when they’ve had too much to drink. The bouncers, as well as a few
patrons who had their nachos roasted and drinks boiled, took care of them
easily.
I looked around the room, though not
really expecting to see the more famous Supers. Some patrons were still dressed
in costume as if they just got off work as well (or trying to avoid anyone
finding out who their secret identity was). I saw Captain Shield and Pandora
shooting pool, his stick resting on the table while he held his pool cue above his
head. The remaining members of The League played cards with the members of The
Titan Three in one of the booths in the back (which they surprisingly did often
when they weren’t arresting them for bank robbery and property damage). Supers
were, after all, just normal people who needed to unwind and Gray’s Tavern
seemed to be the place a lot of them frequented. Perhaps just for the company
of those who were just like themselves.
It’s no surprise that Blaine felt right
at home here. I sat on my stool, nursing my beer while he made jokes with the other
Supers at the bar and ran his fingers through his blond hair in what he
imagined was an enticing manner. Unlike me, his tie was currently around the
neck of the bartender who continued to tease him by dissolving into smoke
everytime he pulled her closer. Blaine always was more of a people person. Plus
he had some basic mind control abilities. Not enough for anyone in The League
or The Sovereignty to take particular notice, just the basic D-class, possibly
C-class on a good day.
Suddenly there was the sound of a
bottle smashing on a skull and the bar went silent, which was never a good sign
(fights occur at Gray’s Tavern nightly and the band never skips a beat, much
less stops, unless a lot of shit’s about to hit a really big fan). I turned to
see Captain Shield, leader of The League, covered in broken glass and drenched
in whiskey. Forming a circle around the table was The Doppelganger and roughly
a dozen of his clones, all of them looking exactly like Captain Shield except
the blue and silver of his costume was inverted on the clones. One of the
clones grabbed the arm of Pandora, pulling her out the seat and behind him
while muttering something about cheating on his brother (I wasn’t sure if he
meant The Doppelganger himself or The Doppelganger’s actual brother, if he had
one).
Pandora touched the clone’s forehead
and instantly his body began to decay, from rotting flesh to bare bones to
dust. Captain Shield grabbed the closest clone and threw him into the far wall
and the sound of every bone in its body breaking echoed throughout the bar.
This seemed to signal for the rest of the bar to erupt. Old rivalries awakened
and new ones sparked as strength met speed, elementals challenged technopaths,
and other powers I’m almost certain are still undocumented went flying
indiscriminately around the room.
However,
not everyone who came here was a superhuman. Some normal people just wanted a
chance to catch a glimpse of their resident Supers, or perhaps catch one or two
of them unmasked when they’ve had too much to drink (secret identities paid out
in the five figures if you could find a newspaper to sell a picture to that
wasn’t afraid of a Super bringing down their entire building the next morning).
The curious types always wandered into Gray’s Tavern to see what Supers were
like in their down time away from saving or destroying the world. The
adventurous come to Gray’s Tavern to see the almost inevitable fight that is
sure to break out. And right now, they were all definitely getting their monies
worth. Cameras were going off left and right, only to be met with a fist, kick,
or a stray blast of something or other.
I,
being one of the normal humans, jumped over the bar to find Blaine already
there, helping himself to a beer he’d clearly just taken from the cooler.
“Shouldn’t
you be out there, fighting with your fellow Supers?”
He
laughed, grabbed another beer and tossed it to me. “Hell no. Using mind control
in a cramped place like this is a sure way to get blindsided, especially with
all of them just randomly attacking each other.”
The
various crashes, smashes, and screams on the other side of the bar started to
get louder. Jets of flame, lightning, and psychic beams flew over the bar,
destroying whatever bottles were left. “Shouldn’t this place have security
measures for something like this? A-class bouncers? Stasis fields? Neutralizing
waves?”
Blaine
laughed again and tossed his bottle over the bar and into the mob. “You really
think your local bar prepares for something like this?” He opened up one of the
cabinets below the bar. Inside was an uncovered black box filled with neon red
tubes and smelling of exhaust. It was a neutralizing wave emitter (I recognized
it from the one we have under each teller desk at the bank). From the color of
the tubes, which were normally green, and the burning smell filling my
nostrils, it clearly wasn’t built to cancel the amount of abilities going off
at the moment, but was doing the best it could (which was probably why we all
weren’t buried under rubble yet). “There’s probably a couple of these around
the bar, but it doesn’t look like it’ll do any good with all those Supers, not
to mention half the members of The League, out there.”
“I
told you we should have left earlier,” I said as I pulled my knees into my
chest and sat on the floor. I looked over at Blaine, still drinking any bottle
he could take from the cooler without poking his head above the bar. Between
the two of us, I was never the planner but right now I wanted nothing more than
to get the hell out of here. I only needed to get passed the mob of Supers in
an old-fashioned, alcohol-fueled, bar brawl.
This will be my first time posting an incomplete story. If you're hoping for the next part of the story to follow as quickly as the other stories did (see Mr. Thompson or The Final Case for Detective Jones), well those were finished when I posted them. So far its just this, a rough section on how Peter and Blaine make it out of the bar, and a rough outline of the story. I'm hoping that this will eventually turn into a bigger project than the other short stories I've got, though we both know that hope will probably fade into just wanting to put in a proper ending to the story. Fingers crossed for part 2 to be finished in a couple of weeks and the hopefully part 3 next month...
