Bar talk/fight! 2

"You are not from around here I figure," the bartender said as he wiped a glass that was in his hand with a dry cloth. "You don't have an accent but I don't believe that you are from Cali... Perhaps you are Swedish?"

"Minty with her head and arms on the table didn't even look at him as she responded, "And what makes you say that?"

"Because the most beautiful women usually come from around there," he responded.

Minty raised her head and though drunk, she firmly stared him in his eyes after he said those words.

"Is what I heard from a friend of mine once," he added as he placed the cup down and poured in a new liquor for her to drink.

Minty grabbed the drink and chugged it down and then placed her head back down on the counter. "Well, you are both right and wrong. I am not from California, but I am not from Sweden either." *Hic* "Next."

The bartender let out a sigh as he placed away the liquor bottle and looked for something new that would cater to his customer's unique needs.

"These kids," he said as he picked up the next bottle, "Are they yours?"

"Yes," Minty answered directly.

"Well I don't see a ring on your finger," he said pouring the next drink for her. "Adopted?"

Hearing the word adopted, Minty tensed up a little bit as her hand curled up into a fist and shook itself slowly. "They are MINE," Minty so thoroughly expressed as she pulled her hand off the counter to retrieve her next drink quickly. In fear that she would break something if she didn't.

The bartender noticed this and thought, 'Either she must be barren or she was adopted when she was a kid.' "I apologize," he said in a soft tone. "It seems that I overstepped my boundaries. That was not my intention."

"Intentions mean NOTHING!" Minty said as she chugged her drink down her throat, "If you can't live up to what they were for."

The bartender felt that this speech was directed more to herself than it was to him. 'Is she beating herself up over something? Could it be because these kids here aren't real Mafia members, but only people with hopes of becoming one someday?'

'No, that would be crazy,' he reconsidered. 'No one goes out of their way to actively hunt down the Mafia unless they were with the police. And even then that is still unlikely because such a person wouldn't be safe.'

'But looking at her now, perhaps she has never lived a safe life to begin with, seeing as how she is so casually drinking liquor in a place that is being overridden with violence right now.'

"You say that intentions don't matter, but perhaps they do," he so boldly claimed as he carefully picked out the next drink for her. Minty was listening but she didn't look up.

"Intentions are important because even if you fail to achieve what they were for, they are proof that at the very least you tried to change something in your life. And that goes a long way," he said as he slid the next glass of liquor towards her.

She picked it up, looked at him with tired eyes, and then stared back at the glass. "Mhm," was her only response.

The interaction between the two was interrupted as they heard the loud crack of a table being broken. Looking across the room, they could see a person dressed in a black and red suit was being ruthlessly abused but a younger kid who looked older than he actually was and was wearing a ponytail.

The kid in the suit was being tossed from table to table, and whenever he was given a chance to fight back, he wouldn't be able to get a hit in before being punched in the face and getting knocked down over again.

The bartender looked horrendously worried as he turned to Minty and asked, "He is one of your kids correct? Shouldn't you go and pull him out of the fight? If you need help, then I can get involved."

Minty looked at Dawn, squinted her eyes to make sure she was seeing correctly, and then turned back to the bartender and said, "He will be fine. He can handle this much."

At this point, the bartender was starting to have doubts that these kids were actually hers. He could not imagine a mother letting her child get beat up like that and saying that it would only make them stronger. It felt almost inhumane.

He would have called her out on this, but after overstepping his boundaries once, he was surely not going to do so again unless he was willing to lose his first adult customer since the bar was first established.

Moving on and trying to keep the conversation going, he asked with a small stutter in his words, "Pardon me, but if I may ask. What should I call you? I am yet to receive a name for my current customer."

Minty who was swirling the liquor in her cup around responded with, "Mint. You may call me Mint."

The bartender giggled a little bit hearing her name and this caused Minty to become upset. "What!? What's so funny!?" she demanded to know.

"It's just that," he started. "I find it quite funny to call you that because you have silver hair."

Minty's face showed disapproval as she scowled and said, "It's not my real hair, it is a wig. The kids were so enthusiastic that I should play dress up with them that they at least wanted me to wear a wig if not a full-on suit."

"My natural hair is black!" she added.

With a smile still on his face, the bartender said, "Well, wig or not. Silver hair suits you Mint."

Minty who had been swirling her liquor for a while now finally decided to drink it and she chugged it down in one go. After tasting it, her eyes went wide for a while as she said, "This is the one! Give me more of this one."

The bartender wanted to pour her another glass but she had her hand out as though waiting to receive the entire bottle.

"Mint," he said to her in a sincere voice, "I can't give you the whole bottle. But I can pour it for you, one cup at a time."

Minty frowned hearing these words and her eyes were locked on the bottle for a while. But then she went from staring at the bottle to staring at him.

She crawled up the bar counter with her hands and knees, and slowly made her way to him. He backed up a little and hit the shelves that were placed on the wall, and this was the first time that he had noticed how close the wall was to the counter.

Minty placed her hand on a shelf next to his head, as she leaned in closer and whispered to him, "You don't get to tell me~what to do." As she said these words, her other hand took the bottle from him, and Minty went back down to her seat.

The bartender was flustered, and honestly couldn't even be mad. Yes, it was unorthodox for a lady to drink from the liquor bottle, but she was paying for everything. Liquor and damages.

And there was a lot of damage he could see as he looked around the room from the counter.

But his main concern was over the kid fighting against the one with the long ponytail. He was getting beaten up a lot.

****

Over on Dawn's side, he had gotten back up after being thrown down again. He was bruised and hurting on multiple parts of his body but he didn't care about that. He knew he would heal.

What frustrated him the most was that he was unable to land another blow on the opponent he had been facing against. Mister Ponytail was simply the better fighter of the two.

"I must say, I respect your resolve!" Mister Ponytail said.

"Shut up!" Dawn replied. This wasn't about resolve to him, he just wanted to hit the guy who had hurt him so badly and let off some steam, but his opponent was just too good.

As Dawn was thinking about what to do next, he felt a push on his back and someone saying to him, "Time to switch," and the next thing he knew, he was being twirled around and thrown into somebody else.

And now Dawn was being faced with a new opponent who smiled a lot.

"Ouch," Mister Smiley said as he rubbed his head while still smiling. "Your friend is so heartless. Just throwing you right at me."

"Not my friend, but you are right. He is a bastard. Although I'm sure he already knows that," Dawn said as he got up.

"So, looks like you and I will be fighting now," he added.

Mister Smiley looked at him and couldn't help but laugh a little with a bigger grin on his face. "Are you sure you can even keep fighting? I saw you over there getting your face punched in and body slammed through tables. You are already at your limit, so don't try to act tough," he said revealing his eyes for a few seconds before closing them again.

Dawn moved his muscles around, flexing out whatever he could for a while to feel if there was still any pain lingering around his body. After he finished, he stared at his hand as he closed and opened it repeatedly and whispered to himself, "Limit huh? I'm not sure if I have that anymore."

Moving forward, Dawn went in to punch Mister Smiley in the face, and Mister Smiley did the same thing. The two of them collided in the middle and Mister Smiley stumbled back a few steps while Dawn was still standing in the same position as when he got hit, but his head had been swung back a bit.

Dawn brought back his head to the center and then looked at the fist he was making and shook it vibrantly as he said, "Finally! Finally, I can fight back!" He had yelled those words out with enthusiasm as he went in to get another hit on his opponent.

****

Cyrus dodged a blow that was aimed at his head and then went in for an uppercut. Mister Ponytail saw this and ducked his head backward back not without being grazed a little bit against his chin.

Mister Ponytail threw out a fury of fists at Cyrus but Cyrus dodged each and every single one of them while moving to the side of him in order to get behind Mister Ponytail and hit him on the back of his head.

Mister Ponytail turned around and retaliated by jumping forward to try and land a downward punch on Cyrus but he backflipped out of the way. Then using his hands mid-backflip, Cyrus pushed his hands off the floor and propelled himself further, allowing him to land on top of a nearby table.

Mister Ponytail wasted no time making his next move as he dashed towards the table and kicked its legs in order to make Cyrus lose his balance and stumble over, but Cyrus had already jumped towards the ceiling and grabbed onto some metal bars up top. Using the bars, he moved himself forward and then dropped down behind Mister Ponytail once more.

"I've been wondering, are you the weakest one in your group? Or are you only adept at running away?" Mister Ponytail asked. "Because the other guy seemed to hit way harder than you, but yet you seem to know what you're doing more so than him."

Cyrus calmly responded, "Well, I've been pulling my punches so as not to end the fight too early. After all, you spent a good while beating up one of my own. So, it's only fair if I get to do the same to you, right?"

Cyrus then darted his eyes to Mister Ponytail's hand to see that a black silk chain had been wrapped around it. "Oh, and I will be needing that back once this fight is over. It belongs to a friend of mine."

Mister Ponytail smiled as he went to pick up a weapon that was lying beside a wall. It was a long metal pipe made of steel. He grabbed it with one hand and clenched the other hand with the chain as he said, "If you can take it from me."

Cyrus smirked as he passed his hand around the brim of his hat and said, "I think that it's time we end this fight."