Fantasy Iron-Age X-Men

[Darkling0096]

Participants: Darkling0096 Generation_Delta22

---

With the pelting rain turning the streets to mud and driving most with sense to walk under the eaves of buildings, it was little wonder anyone with sense had stuck indoors. Taverns and public houses were fit to burst with how many people had come inside for a drink and to get out of the weather for a while. Others with no money or having other business to attend made their way under eaves and awnings, evading the rain and mud where they could, and all but sprinting across gaps in shelter where they had to.

Others were not so lucky as to have a choice in where they got to evade the weather. The poor and the cursed could get lucky, find a good spot out of sight to hide from the weather, but odds were just as likely that someone else would also find the spot, and a hobo was always expected to leave when a person that actually mattered appeared. Sometimes they didn’t go peacefully, and were ousted, taking with them a bruise for their troubles, if they were lucky. Depending on the temperament of the individual, they often weren’t.

A few establishments had signs at their doors in the common script, some with translations to other languages declaring who they did not offer service to. On most of them, that extended to cursed people. People with afflictions, magical, alchemical, otherwise, that rendered them… no longer people. A vampire looked like a person, but it was a monster, and services would not be rendered to monsters, plain and simple.

Striding under the eaves with destination set on a tavern with a bouncer at the door, a woman wearing a cloak with a deep hood to guard against the rain walked with heavy steps on the boards of the establishment’s porch. She stomped her feet on the edge of the deck to shake off the mud and water from her boots before taking a step to enter the building. The bouncer reached an arm out and blocked her path, shaking his head.

“Drop the hood,” he ordered, finding suspicion in the weight of her step. The sound of her footfalls was far too heavy for someone her size, something odd.

The woman smiled wryly, the bouncer’s gaze falling to her teeth. Did humans usually have that many canines? Reaching a hand to lower her hood, her eyes shone in the light of the door lamp. Not like a humans eyes simply catching the light. Like an animal’s, glowing in the dark. “Satisfied?”

The bouncer grunted, shaking his head and pointing at the sign. “No curses.” A standard response, one the black-haired woman had come to expect when dealing in towns.

“I’m not here to spread it,” she assured, “I just want a drink. I’ve got coin.” She reached under her cloak for her coin purse to prove it, but the bouncer put his hand up.

“Doesn’t matter what you’re here for, what matters is what you are, and I can’t let someone with a curse into the building.” The bouncer shook his head and tapped the sign for emphasis, “What are you, anyway? Vampire? You wouldn’t be able to enter without invitation anyway.”

Letting out a laugh, the woman lifted her hood back in preparation to go out into the weather again. “Fifteen years ago I was called a werewolf, now a vampire. I’m not sure if that’s better.” Turning around, she added over her shoulder, “At least this time it’s a doorman and not farmers with pitchforks and torches.”

 

[Generation_Delta22]

From the direction the woman had come from there had been a man walking towards the tavern, he wore a cloak himself only to cover his body leaving his head to be showered in the rain pellets. The man walked up on the porch and noticed the two talking, he saw the human had turned her away from the tavern and strutted up with confidence as he pulled out his coin pouch.

"Hey there friend, I don't think you would want to turn her away now would you? You know letting coin walk away is bad for business, turning her away would be a few more coins you could've had in your pouch!" He smiled and opened up his pouch, he pulled about five coins out and held them up to the man to try and persuade him. "I've been here a lot and I don't think your boss would be happy to know someone who wanted to drown their sorrows and give coins to his work had been turned away just because of how someone looks?" His red eyes had glowed as he stared at him, his smile never wavering as he confidentally talked to him.

 

[Darkling0096]

The bouncer glanced at the second cursed fellow. Great, two of them. He was a large human, he looked like he could wrestle a bear with his bear hands, but he was not a cursed human like these two seemed to be. Against a werewolf and whatever the man was, he was probably dead. Glancing at the sign, then at the pair... Well he was a meathead, not a moron. Taking the coin, he looked dead ahead at the streets. "Enjoy your drinks," he stated like a man freshly fluent in Minding-My-Own-Business-ese.

Looking at the strange eyed man as the bouncer let them pass, the woman raised an eyebrow as she stepped inside. "Someone's comfortable with bribery," she observed, quiet enough only the strange man could hear her. Not that anyone else could, as loud as the tavern was once they were inside.

 

[Generation_Delta22]

"Bribery will you most anywhere if you have the coin, the mentality of man is that if they get their coin then they dont have to worry about anything." The odd man spoke to her as he walked in, he took in the air of ale,sweat, and another smell that he couldnt place his nose on but it wasnt anything that smelled sweet. "Ive been coming here for years, i know the bouncer like I know my own mother....but sometimes there is another one who is a hard ass and wont even look at me when I walk up to him."

The man would sigh as he walked towards the crowded bar with a confident strut, he placed his hands on bar top and smiled to the bar keep who had been serving the folks of the tavern who walked back and forth for their drinks. "Hey there, one mug of wine and whatever the lady would like to order!" He pointed to woman he had just met, waving her over to bar so that she could order. "Here order what you want, first drink is on me for the night." He smiled and pulled up a chair to sit down on. "Whats your name? I dont think I have seen you around here before?"

 

[Darkling0096]

"The strongest you've got, keep it coming," the woman said to the waitress, before looking back to the strange man, surveying his features. By the strange eyes, he also bore a curse. Mutation, alteration, enchantment, whatever one was inclined to call it, the layman's word was "Curse". She was less inclined to reveal hers, but when encountering an unknown it was a fair idea to try and gauge theirs. Unfortunately when all she had to go on was that he could make his eyes glow and the doorman seemed scared enough of him to turn a blind eye, well that left quite a few possibilities. Times had changed from when she had last been in this country, it seemed. Someone so brazen with their curses would have likely been impaled by a herd of angry townsfolk that he might spread his affliction to their children, at least that was how she had experienced it.

Registering his question, she blinked. In the dimmer, indirect light of the tavern's interior, her eyeshine didn't reflect so strongly as to be visible, and now her eyes seemed only to have a pale red iris instead of glowing green in the dark. "Mikaela," she decided after a while, though the word sounded strange coming out of her mouth, like it didn't fit her tongue properly. "You may call me Mikaela. And your name?" Starting to sit down, she had to part her cloak, revealing a sword hanging from her hip, and all manner of pouches and buckles adorning the belt it hung from.

 

[Generation_Delta22]

"The name is Vic but others call me Victor, take your choice cause I don't mind what you call me...just call me late for a drink." He snorted as he sipped his wine, he had taken off his cloak to reveal a fine apparel with short sleeves and colorful markings all over...there had been red and green with bits of leather attached to the shoulder's. The cursed man only stared with a smile as he drank his wine, his eyes glowed with soothing red and his fingers would twirl around the lip of his mug before he set it down.

"Mikaela...a wonderful name that just comes out sweetly..yet your own words make you seem unsure? Is it not your true name or are you just giving me a false alibi?" He chuckled, his put a hand under his chin and leaned on it as he stared unto with eyes that looked like they could look into her soul.

 

[Darkling0096]

"It is the name my mother gave me, but... I have not been called it in many years," Mikaela glanced to the bartop as the tender placed a mug of something that smelled flammable in front of her. Lifting the drink to her lips, she made a face and set it down, "Apparently strong and tar are synonymous here," she sighed, tapping her fingers on the mug as she debated internally whether the potency to overcome her resistance made up for the lacking taste. , "I hope you are not expecting that rescuing a lady from the mean doorman would escort you to her chambers." She rolled her eyes as she mocked the ridiculous idea. "So, what is your business? I don't know you and I doubt you know me, by any name. Why would you bother with me?"

Hers was simple enough, she was a sellsword looking for work, and that work was hard to come by when you weren't where people were. The rain forced her to seek shelter, and that was why she had found herself in this discussion. A strange one, but she'd been engaged in longer, more boring and pedantic ones before. Maybe this one would be more interesting, at least until the weather permitted travel again.

 

[Generation_Delta22]

"I don't expect nothing of it, I rather be in someone else's chambers...you look like you would shattery leg before we even got to the room. I just want to know who I help, don't mean nothing bad by it when I say I haven't seen another cursed around this town. I've been here my entire life and seen only humans...you know something's odd if you are here." He chuckled and teased her, he didn't dare look away as if he did she would disappear.

"A tough woman like you shouldn't be in a place like this, they love to cause trouble and with you they would get a kick out of it. Human gangs around here love to make trouble with regular folks, they pickpocket you or fight you for coin yet when they get their arses kicked they try to their kinfolk like a bunch of bitches." He shook his head as he came chugged the rest of his wine, the red liquid dribbled off his chin and onto the counter as he signaled for another drink. "Two more wines and something stronger for my friend! She needs to get that wet feeling out of her! Warm her up!"

 

[Darkling0096]

"Hold the drink," Mikaela put a hand up as the bartender started to mix another, turning on her stool to face Victor directly. "You speak boldly for someone looking to avoid trouble." She cocked her head as she looked the strange man over again, "This is the front bar, not a private booth. You do not surely think that speaking so openly where we aren't welcome will-" A surly drunkard sidling up between them from behind Mikaela interrupted the woman. He squinted at Victor to confirm what his beer-distorted eyes had seen, jabbing a sausage-link sized finger into the red-eyed man's chest.

"You ain't suppos' to be here," the drunk growled, "How you get past the bouncer?"

Mikaela blinked at the drunk's forward rudeness. She leaned in her chair to see around to what Victor was doing, but the bulk of the large fellow prevented the effort. She'd have to climb onto the counter or walk around the bloke to see, and if she was going to do that, she might as well leave, for she'd only be marking herself as someone else these drunks should take interest in as a cursed one. Annoyed, she put some coins on the counter and downed the tar-like beverage she'd been served, standing up and turning to leave before this got messy. Victor was a stranger with strange intentions, leave him to the consequences of his loud behavior. Unfortunately she was less successful in this endeavor. One man with red glowing eyes was obviously cursed, a woman next to him leaving a situation wasn't suspicious. But when the candlelight caught her eyes just right and a green flash reflected, well that was a second cursed human. In an establishment where they were expressly denied entry? Well that was fighting words, that. She got a few steps before a crashing fist met the side of her face. There was a loud metallic crash as she went through a table and a wet cracking sound as the fellow's knuckles broke. When she sat up, the melee had already escalated. Two drunks fighting turned into a dozen drunks fighting and no one seemed to know what they were fighting over, only that fists, chairs, and bottles were flying and you'd best swing before you got swung on!

 

[Generation_Delta22]

Victor had watched her go flying into the table and frowned in an instant, he gritted his teeth as he pulled out coin from his pouch and looked into the fat fingered man with an angry face. "You ruined what would have been a nice drinking time, now you will deal with the consequnces.... asshole." He spoke with a pissed off tone before a red sort of aura came from his hands and surrounded the coin before he was able to flick the coin into the man's open mouth. The coin easily slipped through the man's teeth and down to his gullet, he would stumble back and hold his fat neck as he tried hard to get it out but would fail as his throat would explode and leave a nasty, bloody wound that had disfigured his face.

"Alright now! Who is next! I have plenty more coins....i am not afraid to paint this tavern red with any more blood...we just wanted to have a nice drink, and he ruined it...so if anyone else would like to be another bloodstain on the bar please be my guest!" Victor would pull out another coin and flick it at the man who had punched Mikaela, it had gone into his leg and exploded with a red mist that covered the ground and splattered on other drunks around them who had been fighting.

 

[Darkling0096]

With that, total drunken chaos erupted. Chairs, tables, bottles, smaller members of the crowd, something was picked up and swung at whoever was in arms reach as soon as the explosion set off fight or flight within every drunk in the building, and considering it had been caused by a cursed man, that was fight. Shattering glass and flailing limbs, shouts and shattering bottles, a vicious melee drowning out Victor trying to avoid the situation by talking tough with a demonstration of force.

Taking a deep breath as she stood up, Mikaela clenched her fist, then unclenched it. These were just drunk idiots, she didn't need to kill them, just mess them up enough to get out of the building. Unfortunately with all the chaos that might mean a lot of broken bones and bruised flesh before the coast was clear. "Woosah, Mik, you just got off the-" She started to tell herself to calm down before she hurt herself or someone else, but when Victor blew a man's leg open and he went tumbling, her efforts were refocused instead to redirecting the drunk into a nearby wall. A reminder she sorely needed that this was not a rough sparring session, this was a fight. Alright, fine. My turn.

Ducking under a thrown punch, she popped up behind the man and slammed her the corner of her elbow down on his outstretched bicep. The metal in her bones made the already hardest part of any human's body that much harder and heavier, and with a scream the man fell, clutching his broken arm. "I just wanted a drink," she muttered, loosing the clasp of her cloak and letting it fall. Kicking a knocked-over chair up and grabbing it, she slammed it down on another drunk and started towards the idiot that kicked off this mess. not the drunk with a leg more akin to a crushed tomato and a freshly broken nose, but the idiot who'd bought her way into the building and just couldn't keep his secrets quietly enough to get a drink in peace. She had some choice words for him, but there was a fight going on in every direction that kept her from going the way she wanted to without getting in the thick of it.

 

[Generation_Delta22]

The man who held his coins and would begin to throw them at the humans who ran at him with raised fist, his fingers were quick as the small coins would blow within seconds of reaching their targets and causing wounds that would take time to heal. The man would only frown as the men would keep fighting, his eyes darted all over before they would meet Mik who had been walking his way. "You see! Now you are all fucked, I have my friend with me...and she will kick your ass!" He yelled again before hopping up on the counter, he stood out from among the men as his accuracy with hitting the large targets was getting easier.

"You take the ones on that side, and I'll get the ones over here, they don't seem to be wanting to make peace so we will need to fight our way ou-!" Vic's words would be cut off as a table had been thrown him, knocking him down off the bar and behind where the barkeep would be hiding from the fighting that this man's vocalness had started. "s-shit...fuck that hurts, hey Mik! Y-you uh want to help me get up?" He yelled for her as he was pinned with his right arm underneath the large table.