The Many Adventures of Johny Apple Weedseed

Early Morning Brawl

Johnny has made a Bee line to his usual seat at the bar and not wasted any time getting flirty with the BarMaid, Kay.

Kay: Aren't you Fresh! Hush now! The day's hardly started and you can't be getting me all worked up and distracted before the morning rush starts filtering in!

She gave Johnny a slow lingering hug... and then whispered a long complex message in his ear...

Kay: Listen Carefully- I think you are in Danger. The three outaTowners, left rear corner table. Came into Town early yesterday, asking around for your Grandpappy, but by a name no one 'round here but me knows him by. Not sure if they know he's pushed on or not. Or if they know much about you or not neither. Ain't probably matter much... They ain't right. Been here all night since dinner service. Drinking like local yokal on his wedding night. But they don't look drunk. They don't act drunk. They wearin FrontierFolk dressins, but they don't be acting like no FrontierFolk I ever seen. You watch your back, eat, drink, and get a move on to your Mother's house and don't you come back till i send word, you understand me Johnny?

Looking him deep in the eyes as she finished whispering, she paused. A tear fell down her cheek. She kissed him briefly, and then rushed out the back of the Tavern without looking back.

He watched her go. 

He giggled to himself... both for not being sure if she was yanking his chain, or being deadly serious... and for paying more attention to her scent, the soft velvety touch of her cheek against his, and the irresistible swagger of her firm rear-end, as she hustled out the Tavern's side door.

He sat and took a deep breath, closing his eyes while reciting a short mantra of gratitude, hands open and suspended hovering over his food, which Kaya had already set for him at his usual spot, a few moments before he had walked in the door. 

Coffee.Cornbread with lots of butter. 

Both delightfully hot and steamy. 

He silently said his thanks, and heartily dug in.

He ate a few mouth fulls, and dranka few hot gulps, like a hungy man who's winter stockpile disappeared faster than originally  expected.

After slaking his initial burst of ravenous hunger, Johnny sat back in his chair a bit and let his attention wander around the room about without looking like he was reconnoitering.

The three strangers were suspiciously still, sitting straight backed like a church choir, and not three men who had celebrated the night away till dawn.

Johnny could not see their faces from this angle, too much back-light from the bay window a few feet behind them. He could see them well enough to confirm what Kaya had observed about them- they sure did not match their attire or their context. Their body language was all wrong.

In just that moment, as he was watching them, the Three Strangers all sat upright in their seats, and slowly turned their heads, in towards center, as though they were all quietly conferring with each other in hushed tones... but their mouths didn't seem to be opening and closing at all. At least not from the distance Johnny was observing from. Either the three were a set of talented ventriloquists from the Grand Opera Hall in the Capital City of the Interior, or these three strangers were communicating psychically, cause their eyes, the expression on their faces sure looked like there were conferring and debating something with each other.

This went on for a bit. Johnny finished his cornbread, and savored the last half of his coffee, paying the strangers no mind, but also keeping one eye on them at all times.

A group of drunken tourists, men who clearly looked like real born and bread EdgFolk, from another Township not too far from this one, and who were only just getting their three-day holiday party weekend really going, suddenly made a discovery.

Up against the front wall of the Tavern, kept forever in shadow because of the light streaming in through the small bright windows high up along the front easterly facing facade,  sat the dust covered HonkyTonk SelfCrank PlayerPiano. Not having seen a SelfCrank Player model, these drunk men only saw a piano before them... and they wanted to play it. They wanted to play it Badly. 

Pianos are, these days, extremely rare. 
This one in particular, even more so! 

The tourists suddenly erupted into cheers and clapping and random spurts of lines from the chorus of some song they all loved in common. The shortest among them decided to step up to the HonkyPlay and addressed himself and the crowd as though drunkenly meaning to imply that he 'may be a bit rusty at the ole ivory keys, but he would be game to give playing a song on  it a go cause he used to play professionally, don'tcha know?' All his palls cheered him on. 

Johnny smiled at himself. Those drunk tourists didn't realize what they were getting themselves into. The Three Strangers didn't know what they were getting themselves into either. 

Kay had been right to warn him.

The Strangers all looked at the drunken men and their sudden outburst, as did everyone else in the Tavern. But the Three Strangers, they clearly were merely playing at being curious... and it was clear enough to Johny that their real point of focus, was always at him.

They were waiting for an opportunity... a perfect moment. He could read it, sense it from them.

Before anything really even happened, he knew.He just knew...A Brawl was about to ensue.

And other than never having set foot in the Tavern in the first place, Johny didn't think there was any way to avoid it now.

Sure enough... Just as the gracious would be Honky player was able to sit down and begin a song... two ridiculous things happened almost at once, giving the Three strangers the opportunity they were waiting for...

1 Ogun and Harolde - Two of the most blustery and most prone to brawling, testosterone-amped, chaotic pair of young brawny men who lived along the whole of the Western Edge, suddenly burst in through the Tavern's Double doors! Laughing heartily, as they typically always did upon entering the Tavern, they burst through the doors with such force that they bounced back with a hard smack against the walls on either side of the door frame. These two men loved this Tavern, in large part because of the antique self-playing piano and its little mechanical figures that typically played music all on it's own quite magically just off to the right of the entrance. Harolde and Ogun have spent many a night and early morning here at the Tavern, and considered themselves VIP guests of the establishment and it's sole proprietor. They had long ago discovered that the right amount of force applied to both doors when entering the tavern would for some inexplicable reason justle the machineDrive that operated the mechanical figures attached to the piano and fully expected their bursting entrance just now to activate the mechanical HonkyTonk PlayerMechDrones to raucously awaken and stand up from their storage bins just behind the Piano, and sit down to do their pre-programmed routine.

2 Oscar Grach - the grumpiest cook this side of the Pale, who lived upstairs and didn't like mornings like this were the party from the night before never really died out, burst into the Tavern from the Kitchen, where he had been making himself some breakfast and a small private pot of his secret recipe coffee. He hated mornings. He hated being up and down stairs this early in the morning. He hated noise in the morning. He hated patrons who were still drunk and trying to party in the Tavern, this early in the morning. And he hated when Ogun and Harolde pulled their little stunt with the Piano this early in the morning. He really really hated that. And he really really hated Ogun, for reasons too complex to sort through now....

Needless to say, the early morning brawl became almost unavoidable when these two things happened at once, and the entire bar, including the drunk chaps who had fancied themselves fancy enough to deserve being heard by all those still sitting about in this Edgetown Tavern.

And, as expected, the moment that the Honky Tonk MechDrones stood up and tried to occupy the same space as the drunk choir fellas, and Oscar Ogun made eye contact with each other... the Tavern exploded in a Brawl, and everyone in the bar either ran away, or got sucked into the fighting.