Say what you will about dwarf bars, but there’s one thing you can’t knock, and that’s the whiskey. Yeah, all the tables are about as high as your waist and the strippers have beards, but the drinks make up for it. It’s why I do what I do. So long as I keep the trolls out, it’s all I can drink. And if I can’t keep the trolls out, well, I’ll need more than your average street doc can manage, anyway.
Sure, I get it all the time, “An elf bouncer? At a stump bar?” They might even laugh a bit, but they get over it pretty quick. Slipping the tip of a retractable razor under a person’s chin tends to have a pretty sobering effect.
What? You honestly thought I was clean? Careful you don’t jack into an electrical socket, cupcake.
I remember this one time, some human go-ganger comes strutting up to the door all hopped up on Blue Nine. His eyes are all bugged out and he’s practically drooling all over himself. Way he was twitching I thought maybe someone had loaded him up with a cranial nuke. You can bet I didn’t flick a blade out. I don’t care how good your dry cleaner is, he isn’t going to get brain stains out of nanofiber .
So, there he is at the head of the line, blathering on like an idiot. It wasn’t too much of a problem since I could still wave people in that deserved to be here. Then he had to go and ruin it by waving a Predator around. I could feel my drink allowance spilling to null. Bastard left me no choice but to work for my pay.
Running my tongue along my molars, I fired up my reflexes (not that I needed them with how bad he was tweaking). Poor frag face didn’t know what hit him? Grabbing his wrist with one hand, I chopped upward with the other. Snapped his arm like cheap plastic. Must have been some good Nine. He didn’t seem to notice.
Luckily, the moron forgot to hit the safety on the Predator. It hit the ground but never went off.
A quick kick to the chest knocked him back, his broken arm flopping around like a ragdoll. I don’t even think he saw dive and roll to his gun. The complete look of shock on his face as his body jerked from two in the chest and one in the head told me that much.
Took a bit for the clientele to come back after the ruckus, but Lone Star didn’t give me too much of a hassle. One look at the gang colors and they ruled it a suicide, and hauled his rotting carcass away. Even earned myself a little one-on-one time with Bubbles back in the VIP section.
To tell the truth, I could use more nights like that. So, go ahead chum. Push me some more. I could really use a drink.
Written as an entry piece for the SciFi Smackdown. Had to be 500 words and any SciFi subgenre. Decided it would be fun to play with some cyberpunk.
