BOB's Bar (Tales From The Multiverse Book 2) Read online

  “In the center of the space was a round pit, easily fifteen meters across.” Rika stopped and met each set of eyes around the table, grinning as she did so. “The pit was filled with some sort of rubbery grease that seemed to liquefy when still, and congeal when hit. I know this because just then, a guy in an inflatable T-Rex suit got kicked onto it, the stuff hardened, and he slapped it like…well…something rubbery getting slapped by a guy in an inflatable T-Rex suit.”

  Niki said with a laugh.

  Rika shot back.

 

 

  “What’s a T-Rex and why is it in a suit?” Kelsey asked.

  “You know, a dinosaur? Like the things they have on those animal refuge worlds? The big ones, all fangs…well, the real ones have teeth—they’re not too fangy when it’s an inflatable suit. But listen, that was only the half of it. The guy who had knocked him back was in some sort of weird, stubby dog costume. I learned later it was called a corgi. Not sure how he had his legs folded up to fit in there, but he was pretty ferocious. He had armor on his back and, somehow, a big, plastic mace in his hand. He jumped on the T-Rex, and the crowd went wild.

  “Right about then, Leslie punched Barne in the shoulder, and said, ‘OK, If you’d told me it was a place like this, I would have stopped somewhere and gotten a costume!’”

  “‘You know about...whatever this is?’ I asked. ‘Is this a thing that no one’s told me about?’

  “‘Oh hell yeah.’ Chase nodded vigorously. ‘Well, if by ‘a thing’ you mean ‘something that happens deep in the bowels of stations that no one really talks about,’ then yes. You don’t always find a good group that’s really into it—but it looks like these people totally are.’

  “I said something about how it really must all be about gambling, and Chase coughed behind his hand—which meant he planned on placing some bets. I was about to ask how much, when Barne interrupted. He was grinning at Leslie like he was about to have a religious experience and said, ‘Les, you don’t need a costume, just go as you are.’”

  “Now remember, Leslie looks like a cross between a woman, a panther, and pure sex appeal right now. Of course, it was right about then that Leslie and I realized why Barne had wanted to go there so badly.

  “Thing is,” Rika said with a laugh, “Barne never gets the best of Leslie. She just played him right off, running a hand down her side. ‘In this dress? You’re out of your mind if you think I’d go in that pit wearing this.’ Barne opened his mouth to try and convince her—and it probably would have been the very definition of crass—but Leslie held up a single finger.

  “‘Think very carefully about what you’re going to say next, Barne.’

  “Given Leslie’s recent kill count in combat—I’ll give you a hint, she was in the lead—it won’t surprise you to learn that he did not say a word and we found some seats, settling in to watch the current bout.

  “The corgi had given the T-Rex some really good wallops to the head with his plastic mace, but the weapon didn’t hold up well, so once it bent, the dinosaur guy managed to get back on his feet and level some kicks at the corgi. Then they got all tangled up and rolled around for a bit, until finally the corgi was on top of the T-Rex, and he started jumping on him till the dino-guy called out ‘Yield!’

  “The crowd was on their feet cheering like they’d just watched true gladiators fight. The two fighters cleared out of the ring to make room for a pair of women. One was dressed like a tree, her arms up in these big, thick branches, and the other was dressed like a beaver—”

  Rika glanced at Artur, who had started to open his mouth. “No, little robot man, not that kind of beaver. The one that chews on trees and makes dams. I have no idea if this beaver versus tree matchup was planned or if it was just luck of the draw. Anyway, they went at it for a while, and the beaver-woman was doing her best to fight the match in character, gnawing at the tree-woman with these big, long, rubbery teeth that did absolutely nothing…. Honestly, I don’t know what her plan was. Eventually, the tree-woman just sat on her, and that was that. It was kinda anticlimactic and a few ‘boos’ came from the crowd.

  “Right about then, Leslie got up to get us all drinks at the bar next to the bleachers, while these two massive dudes got into the pit. One was dressed like some sort of cop, and the other was dressed like a firefighter. They seemed to be a bit into the more…sensual aspect of wrestling, and I got bored with it. I wanted to see more corgi versus T-Rex kinda action!

  “I also thought it was a sure thing that the cop was going to win, ‘cuz he had this massive, meter-long club, but then the firefighter activated this weird rig on his back, and it started sucking up all the grease and spraying it at the cop. It hosed down the first two rows, too, but they all just cheered like mad. The cop didn’t stand a chance; the spray blew him right out of the ring, and the firefighter did a victory lap, blasting the grease up into the air and dancing in the weird, goopy rain.

  “Once their match was done, the announcer called out that it was time for King of the Hill. At the exact same time, I saw this all-black figure step up to the edge of the pit.

  “‘What the fuck?’ Barne blurted out. ‘Is that Leslie?’

  “‘Oh, crap,’ Chase muttered, giving me a worried look. ‘Look at her dress, it’s covered in that grease. The firefighter must have hosed her down.’”

  “Awesome,” Amanda commented.

  Rika laughed. “Well, Barne sure thought so. He was shaking his head, somehow looking both delighted and sad at the same time, and said, ‘Damn…she never brought our beers. But I’m sure as hell not going to grab one while this is going on.’

  “While Barne tried to convince Chase to go get beers for us, I reached out to Leslie over the Link—which is how we talk mind-to-mind.

  “, I asked her, then saw that she was tearing off the lower half of her dress and I thanked the stars she was wearing underwear. Then she tied it around the lower half of her face like a mask. I guess she was going for some sort of cat-ninja look or something.

  “Cat ninja in her underwear?” Floribeth asked, rolling her eyes.

  “ Leslie replied, a bit tersely if I remember correctly.

  “ I swear this was supposed to be a joke, and I wondered if she’d take it that way.

  “

  “Up above, a holoroster appeared over the pit, and Leslie and three other wrestlers were up first. Whoever won that round would go on to take on another trio of opponents, and so on, until one person came out on top. I could see that Leslie was gonna have to fight her way through four rounds to get to firefighter guy.

  “‘You want the same thing as before?’ Chase asked while standing up. I guess he’d decided that getting Barne a beer was preferable to having the surly old fart badger him about it for the rest of the match.

  “I told him ‘Yeah,’ and remember stretching up to give him a kiss—Chase and I are an item, if I hadn’t mentioned that bit before—and then pushed him aside so I could watch Leslie climb into the ring. Her tail was swishing so much, I wondered if she even knew what it was doing back there.

  “Her first opponents were the T-Rex, the cop, and the beaver woman. A horn sounded, and Leslie barreled straight at the cop and elbowed him in the face before wrestling his baton away and whapping the T-Rex upside the head. I’m pretty sure it didn’t connect with anything…his actual head was lower down, but it made a hilarious ‘fwubub’ sound. A second later, the beaver-women smashed into the T-Rex and knocked him out of the ring. She almost followed aft
er, but managed to stop herself in time.

  “‘Why the hell didn’t she fight like that with the tree-woman?’ Barne yelled shoving a fist right in front of me, obscuring my view. ‘I had money on her then!’”

  Rika had said the words in her best Barne impression, but knew she really couldn’t do him justice. She took another pull from her growler—smiling at the new slang term she had—before carrying on.

  “So while that was going on, the cop closed with Leslie. I could hear him bellowing for her to give his baton back, but Les only laughed at him. Was kinda nice to see…. She hadn’t laughed in a bit. Then again, the sound she made was more of a ‘I’ll break your arm if you try to take it back’ laugh, which was kinda scary, if you ask me.

  “Even though he was pissed at beaver-woman, Barne was going mad with glee to see Leslie fighting in the grease pit, alternating between slurs for the cop and encouragement for Leslie.

  “The two traded blows for a bit, the cop trying to close with Leslie, while she danced away. Then beaver-woman was back in the mix, and the three of them circled each other for almost a minute when suddenly the cop lunged at Leslie; she tried to dash out of the way, but the rapid movement made the grease solidify around her legs, and she went down with the cop landing on top of her.

  “Beaver-woman piled on, too, and it just turned into this thrashing melee. I started to get a bit worried for Leslie—she was down on the bottom of the pile—but she’d not sent out a call for help over the Link, so I let her have at it.

  “Suddenly, she was standing up, but the other two were still fighting it out. She swung her baton down—I’m not sure how she was still holding it—on the cop, catching him right in the bridge of the nose. Then she grabbed the beaver-woman by her costume’s big, floppy teeth, hauled her to the edge of the pit, and flung her over the side.

  “The cop guy had struggled to his feet, and blood was just pouring down his face. He looked like he was going to try Leslie again, but she took a menacing step toward him and he backpedaled, falling out of the pit, much to the crowd’s delight.

  “At that point, the announcer came on proclaiming ‘The Cat Burglar’ to be the victor of the first round, and another batch of contenders formed up to get in on the action.”

  “Beaver-woman? The Cat Burglar?” Kelsey just shook her head. “Wow.”

  “Only the finest become cops, I see,” Floribeth added.

  “Leslie went through the next two rounds without any trouble, and I could tell she was having a blast. Honestly, after what we’d been through over the last month or so, we all needed to decompress, and that ridiculous costume combat was just the thing. Granted, Leslie wasn’t really in much of a costume, but I guess it was enough for the crowds. I mean, she looked hot, so that helped; in my experience, an attractive woman can get away with a lot.

  “Chase came back before long with my beer and I was just finishing it off when the fourth round started. This was the one we’d been waiting for, the one with the firefighter guy.

  “Mmmm, love a good firefighter,” Amanda mused.

  Rika laughed at the red-headed woman. “Well, I’m more into men with some mods, but I suppose a firefighter would do in a pinch.

  “OK, so down in the ring I could see how pissed Leslie was—just glaring at the firefighter as he stepped into the ring. Then she bent down and scooped up a big glob of slime, flinging it right in his face before things even kicked off. When the bell did sound, she went right for the guy, still holding the baton.

  “Now, if you haven’t picked up on it, I should remind you that this whole thing was kinda meant to be more fun than serious. No one is supposed to get very badly hurt. However, Leslie had been riding that line the whole time, and with firefighter guy, she totally crossed it.

  “You see, while it looked like he was in a big suit of professional gear, the costume was mostly foam—barring the machine he’d used to suck up and spray the grease.

  “‘That was a bad move,’ Barne commented on Leslie’s grease lobbing. ‘She’s gonna get it with both barrels.’

  “Sure enough, the firefighter guy blasted twin streams of grease at Leslie before she even reached him, bowling her right over. Especially problematic for her was that the other two people in the ring—the tree woman, and a guy wearing a big, foam, mech costume—both went for her as well. Obviously, they’d all identified her as the biggest threat and wanted to get her out of the way.

  “So both the tree-woman and foam-mech guy dove on top of Leslie, and for the second time, I worried I’d have to go down there and fish her out. I guess I made to rise, because Barne put a hand on my shoulder.

  “‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘She’ll be pissed if you pull her out.’”

  “So I sat there, wishing I had nails to chew, while the firefighter gets in close and pulls tree-woman aside so he can blast Leslie some more. But then her foot comes out of the flailing mass and catches him right between the legs. She hit hard enough to lift him off his feet, and he fell forward onto the mech-guy.

  Bethany Anne grimaced. “Damn, sack attack.”

  Artur glanced at her. “Ye can’t do better?”

  Bethany Anne shrugged. “BOBby Broken-Nuts, Charlie No-Sack, his balls be jingled, those swamp nuts be sprouting mud, the nuggets be crushed, the family jewels be cracked, those grapes be made for wine, that’s a pair of sad ‘nads.” She stopped when Artur put up a hand.

  Rika grinned at Bethany Anne before continuing. “I’ll have to remember some of those. Now, the crowd had been screaming with delight when Leslie went down, but when she nailed the firefighter in the junk, it was just a sea of groans. I was worried that the crowd wanted her to lose, but when she got back to her feet—barely recognizable, all covered in the brown grease—they just cheered all the louder.”

  “As Leslie was wrestling with the tree-woman—who was surprisingly robust—I noticed a half-dozen people making their way down the aisles. Not that it was unusual, but they were all wearing long, dark cloaks and were moving at a pace that would have them arriving at the pit simultaneously.

  “I asked Niki, ”

  “Of course I’d already seen them,” Niki chimed in, addressing the group. “So I highlighted the weapon bulges I could make out under their cloaks and initiated a combat net for the group.”

  Rika nodded and resumed the story.

  “ I warned Leslie over the Link, and saw her head snap up and take in the sight of the six people advancing on her—which resulted in her taking a thick rubber branch to the face.

  “ Barne asked, already out of his seat and moving down the aisle toward the pit. I remember making some sort of non-committal response as I signaled for Chase to move to the next aisle on the right while I pushed through the stands to the left, our goal being to come down behind the attackers…or whatever they were.

  “By the time I reached my aisle, the figures in black were only five meters from the pit, so I loped down the steps to catch up to them.

  “I was just a couple meters from the guy in my aisle when I realized that Leslie had somehow taken the firefighter’s grease cannons from him, and was aiming one nozzle at the dark figure in front of me, and the other at the woman standing in the aisle to my left.”

  Rika chuckled at the memory. “I didn’t even have time to warn her off before she opened up with the cannons, screaming something like, ‘You want a piece of this?!’”

  “Say hello to my little friend,” Kelsey intoned while making machine gun gestures.

  Amanda giggled. “I'm Tony Montana! You fuck with me, you fuckin' with the best!” Amanda added, putting on her best Al Pacino accent.

  Cain laughed, but it was the weapon stored in the slot harness on Rika’s back that held his attention.

  Rika looked at the two women and cocked her head. “No idea what that reference is, but I think you’ve captured Leslie’s intent. I dove to the side, but so did the cloaked guy in front of me, and Leslie fo
llowed, hosing us both. To this day, she claims that she didn’t see me, but I’m not so sure—largely because she got me in the face. Of course, she’ll tell you that’s just because I’m so freakishly tall.

  “So anyway, she hoses two of them, but the other four whip out pulse rifles—not sure if you have them where you’re from, but they fire concussive shockwaves. They’re not lethal at more than a meter’s range, but they can pack enough of a punch that you might wish they’d put you down for good.

  “All around us the crowd is deathly quiet—well, except for some who are chomping on whatever snack they had in hand…. Oh, plus a girl who’s in the aisle, puking up some of the grease she got in her mouth.

  “Then the guy Barne is creeping up behind calls out, ‘You’re that woman who sang at the Officer’s Club a few weeks back. We got a job for you.’

  “Now, this is rather perplexing to me, because I thought everyone there knew we were Marauders, but then I realized that since we’d been flying all over the Peloponnese System, taking out pockets of bad guys, it was entirely possible that Leslie’s actual employer was unknown to these tools. All they knew was that aside from being the hottest grease-covered woman they’d ever seen, Leslie had a set of pipes that could make demons cry.

  “‘I got a job already,’ she yelled back. ‘Hosing down assholes like you...uh...with this grease! You want some?’”

  Rika looked around the table. “Yeah, Leslie sometimes fails at her one-liners pretty bad. That was one of those times and I felt kinda embarrassed for her.

  “Anyway, while that was going on, we were all having a rapid-fire conversation over the Link. You see, Barne was itching for a bit of a fight. He wanted to get down and dirty. But both he and Chase only had pulse pistols, while I was fully armed—I sorta have a thing for not letting myself be vulnerable. Ever. But even if I wasn’t packing enough firepower to kill everyone in the room—which I was—I didn’t really want to get into a fight, since I kinda have trouble throwing a soft punch.”