The Sovereignty (part 1)

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...