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The door opens onto a dimly lit bar. Two men in suits sit at a table by the wall, speaking in low voices; they don't look up when Mary Anne and Ramon walk in.

Four men at the pool table in the back do look up, then go back to their game. Their rolled up sleeves show off jailhouse tattoos--tattoos that mean murderers, time served, rank in their organization. Just because they aren't staring openly doesn't mean they aren't paying attention. The fact that no one makes a fuss just yet over Ramon's machine gun is telling.

A waitress in a short skirt goes by with a tray, delivering drinks to the suits by the wall. Mary Anne heads for the bar, taking a seat that's a few stools over from the next man. She beckons the bartender over.

"Vodka for me and my friend," she says in flawless Russian. "And keep them coming. We're out on the town tonight."

The bartender shakes his head. "You picked a hell of place to come," he says, but pours the drinks all the same then wanders down to the customer at the other end of the bar.

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Ramon keeps from smiling at her display for Kostya, though he wants to. It would ruin things though so he carries on facing down Anton. And then Anton steps up after Mary Anne has finished - and clears the table.

It's Ramon's turn to grip his cue though he hopes he stops before anyone notices. Anton takes the money with a triumphant grin that makes Ramon want to slit his throat there and then.

'We play again,' he says, curtly. 'Five hundred this game.'

Mary Anne translates quickly, and Anton gives a breezy reply, tucking the money into his back pocket.

"He's says he's happy to keep taking your money for as long as you like," she tells Ramon.

"We get to go first this time."

'Lucky us,' he says, drily, and breaks. The balls make a loud crack as the white hits them but none go down.

Anton is smirking at him. He wants to kill that man, so much.

He'll get his chance.

Anton sinks his first shot easily, but misses the follow-up. Mary Anne takes that one, and two more besides. She's still posing for the boys with every shot, but her eyes are more focused.

When she misses on the fourth ball, she shrugs and backs off to let Kostya shoot, moving to stand beside Ramon.

"You going to let this game finish, see if Anton's fuse is blown once we win, or are you hoping to set him off before then?" she murmurs.

He contemplates a moment. Anton is not looking pleased with the way its going for him and Ramon doesn't want to wait much longer.

'I'll finish the game. Then we'll rub it in his face a bit and that should do it.'

And if it doesn't, Ramon'll just take him out anyway.

"Sounds like a plan to me."

Kostya makes two clean shots before missing utterly. Mary Anne taps her pool cue against Ramon's leg.

"Your turn, người yêu."

'Not a problem.'

He raises an eyebrow at Anton, letting a slow smirk spread across his face. The man visibly twitches and Ramon laughs quietly before bending over the table and clearing it.

When he straightens his eyes are still on the man.

'You lose, amigo.' The guy should be able to understand the gist of that.

'Time to pay.'

There is a moment when everything is perfectly clear to her.

Anton's jaw clenches as he understands perfectly well that he's been had. He probably thinks they threw the first game on purpose, Mary Anne suspects. She watches his grip on the pool cue change, shifting to make it a weapon.

Kostya's eyes widen and for the first time he looks more at the gun in her waistband than her ass just below it. Mary Anne gives him an apologetic sort of smile.

She hears the two goons on the wall behind her start to shift their weight; she wastes a moment wondering just where Ramon put his machine gun, but then dismisses it. It will be somewhere he can reach, and beyond that, he's plenty well armed.

The two suits in the corner lift their heads, paying attention to the group by the pool table for the first time. The waitress catches a hint of the tension in the air and runs into the back room, the door slamming shut behind her.

And then all hell breaks loose.

Anton is the first to move, swinging his cue at Ramon's head. He blocks it with his own and flicks the end up so that it catches the guy under the chin and knocks him back. This gives him enough time to grab a knife that's up his sleeve - he knows exactly where the machine gun is but that wouldn't be any fun.

A glance in Mary Anne's direction shows that with two behind her and Kostya in front, it would be the gentlemanly thing to do to take one out for her before Anton gets his ass up. There's one close by anyway - Ramon steps to the side and with one fluid movement, buries his knife behind the man's ear.

He's aware of people moving in the main part of the bar and the bartender has disappeared - for a gun? To get help? Just running? He doesn't care - he leaves the knife stuck in the goon's head and pulls out another, moving round the table to the one he really wants.

Ramon's show of chivalry is much appreciated; it lets Mary Anne devote all of her attention to the other man behind her.

A quick check over her shoulder helps her line up the strike, and then she's bringing her pool cue up hard between his legs. He makes a strangled sort of noise and Mary Anne's next strike breaks the cue over his head. He drops to the floor, down but not out.

Still, down is enough for now. She needs to check on Kostya.

She looks up just in time to see him thumb his gun's safety off.

"You don't get to play games like that in here, little girl," he murmurs, then pulls the trigger.

She drops low, the bullet punching into the wall behind her while she tries to work her way around the pool table without getting shot.

Ramon ducks too because that's what you do when someone is firing a gun in close proximity to you. He's at the other end of the table from Kostya though, with Anton between them - who is on his knees and trying to pull a small gun out of his boot. It's jamming on the hem of his jeans though and he won't stand up because there are gunshots and he knows that Mary Anne is carrying as well as his friend.

Ramon doesn't bother getting his own gun out, that'd be too easy. He laughs wildly and launches forward instead, throwing a hard punch into the Russian's face. Anton is no weakling - he takes the punch and seems more than happy to abandon his pistol for the time being and engage in some old-fashioned punching, leaving Mary Anne and Kostya to their own devices.

Getting around the pool table and staying out of Kostya's line of sight are quickly proving impossible. Mary Anne draws her own gun and fires under the table, her shot clipping Kostya's knee.

He curses, dropping to the floor; Mary Anne scrambles around the table and kicks his gun out of reach. Kostya reaches out and grabs her by the ankle, yanking her down beside him. She shouts in surprise, kicking for his face, but he ducks out of the way. Hauling against her leg to help himself sit up, he punches her hard enough to make her ears ring.

"Why do you have to be so angry, pretty girl?" he murmurs, while Mary Ann blinks dazedly. "All your showing off...We could have had some fun, you and I; we still might, after Anton kills your friend.."

Julian's knife drops smoothly from her sleeve into her hand and she lunges to bury it in Kostya's throat. "We could have," she replies, voice barely louder than the breath and blood hissing out through Kostya's neck. "But who ever said I was showing off for you?"

She jerks the knife one more time, then pulls it free as Kostya falls back. She wipes the knife clean on the dead man's pant leg, then rolls to grab her gun and see what's become of the guy she downed earlier.

Anton is spitting things in Russian at Ramon, who ignores the because...well, he doesn't speak Russian. But he thinks he'd ignore them even if he did, he's having too much fun. When he notices that Mary Anne's plugged Kostya, he stands and kicks Anton hard in the face. The man reels backwards, clutching at his nose - Ramon takes out another knife.

'Get up.' He makes an 'up' gesture with the blade. Anton climbe to his feet five feet away, eyeing Kostya and their other friend with all the blood pouring from their throats. He seems to make a decision that that's not going to happen to him - so he rushes at Ramon with an angry bellow, yelling something and swinging madly for his head.

Ramon laughs once more, steps under the swinging arm and happily buries his knife in Anton's gut. The shouting comes to an abrupt halt as air leaves his lungs and he freezes a moment, impaled on the blade.

'You lose, amigo,' Ramon says again, and with a glint in his eye, slowly begins to twist the knife in the man's belly.

Three down, and one to go. Mary Anne rises with her knife in one hand and her gun in the other, only to find that the man she'd pummeled into unconsciousness earlier is back on his feet and he has Kostya's lost gun.

"Bitch," he snarls, and pulls the trigger.

Mary Anne lunges out of the way, the bullet skidding off her collarbone instead of getting lodged in her shoulder. Before he can fire again, she charges through the space between them, hitting his chest with her shoulder and shoving him into the wall. A slash of her knife knocks his gun free and she shoves the muzzle of her gun into the man's gut.

"Yes. But not yours."

Two shots and he starts sliding down the wall. She leaves the third in his head.

Ramon takes an inordinate amount of satisfaction from the look on Anton's face, the way he's trying not to make noises of pain and can't help himself, the feeling of blood running over his hand and the pleasure of ripping the knife free and watching the man collapse to the floor and curl up. He's dead within a minute and Ramon watches the whole time, smirking at him. He's not worried about the fourth guy - he knows Mary Anne can take care of him and will enjoy doing it.

He does look round at the sound of the bullet though and frowns when he sees blood on her.

'You OK?'

She nods.

"Just a graze. I--"

Anything else she might have said gets cut off when one of the suits gets up from the table and starts crossing the room. Mary Anne shifts her grip on her gun when he reaches into his coat, but blinks in surprise when he pulls out a business card. The man offers it to her, murmuring in Russian, with a nod in Ramon's direction. Mary Anne manages to rein in her visible shock long enough to make a reply and the man nods. After he and his associate leave, Mary Anne turns back to Ramon, holding up the business card and grinning crookedly.

"Apparently we made quite the impression. We just got offered a job."

Ramon stares for a moment then breaks into a laugh.

'If its as much fun as this every day, I might even consider it.'

Except he'd end up killing the people at the top and taking over. He's genetically predisposed that way.

'You want to stay and get drunk here or somewhere else?'

He eyes the bodies scattered around and down at the blood staining his own clothes. Hmmm. Decisions.

Edited 2008-03-03 21:28 (UTC)

Decisions, indeed.

Mary Anne tucks the business card into her pocket.

"Suppose we should probably take the party elsewhere, just in case the cops show up."

Not that she couldn't get them out of there in a heartbeat; it'd just break up their good time.

"But first..." She heads over to the bar, bracing herself against a stool to slip over the bar, then spends a few moments rifling through bottles. "Aha, here we go." She sets two unopened bottles of vodka on the bartop before climbing back over.

"You care at all where we go from here?"

'Don't care at all.'

He puts his knife back in its sheath up his sleeve, then retrieves the other one from the head of the first guy he took out. It's given a quick wipe before he puts it back in his boot, then he picks up the machine gun and slings it over his back.

'If we're staying on Earth it's probably better if I don't go to America.' He thinks. 'Or South America, or Britain. Or most of western Europe, or Australia.'

Those countries being generally friendly and him being an extremely wanted man. He picks up a bottle of vodka, opens it and takes a long swig, then pours some on his hands to help with removing the rapidly drying blood on them.

'Apart from there, we're fine.'

She arches an eyebrow at Ramon's creative approach to handwashing, then takes the bottle from him to try it out herself.

"Okay, new question: you interested a place to relax, or is loud and crazy okay with you?"

She sets the vodka bottle on the edge of the pool table, then crouches down beside the man Ramon knifed in the beginning. His shirt--a black, button-up long sleeve--is the least destroyed of any of the one's on the dead men, and certainly less destroyed than hers; between Kostya's blood and her own, she looks a little too nightmarish to be going anywhere in public.

With practiced efficiency, she peels the shirt from his body. Slipping her own over her head (with only a slight wince at the pull against her wound), she puts his on; she has to knot the bottom at her waist and roll up the sleeves, but other than that, it's a serviceable fit. She keeps her back to Ramon until she stands up, re-dressed; he's got a nice view of her tattoo during the process, but not much else.

He finds himself wishing she had turned around but pushes it away. Her back is still stared at appreciatively.

'Anywhere you like.'

He looks down at his own shirt which is, unfortunately, white. Then shrugs because fuck it.

'I'll ditch the gun somewhere outside. Lets get out of here, I'm bored now.'

Adrenaline's running high and he just wants to go out and get hammered.

"Ditch it here," she says, retrieving the two bottles she left on the bar.

"We can head out through the front door."

Not that she can't travel otherwise, but it's tends to be less disorienting for other people when she uses doors.

Hey, Ramon's used to walking though Shadow with Random. He'd be OK. But he's really not bothered so he just takes the gun off his back and wipes it down for fingerprints before throwing it on the floor.

'Ready when you are.'

Mary Anne checks to be sure her shirt covers her own gun, then shifts the vodka bottles so she can open the front door. She steps through into a crowded club, the bass line pounding loud enough to make any lyrics unintelligible. A bouncer stops her just inside, having to yell into her ear to be heard. She yells back and hands him one of the bottles of vodka. The man checks the label, eyes widening, then heads into the club.

Mary Anne motions for Ramon to follow her; the bouncer leads them to a semi-private booth in the back. The music back here isn't so much softer as just low enough to carry on a conversation without screaming.

"So, what do you think?"

;'Looks good to me.'

Looks perfect. This is going to be a good night.

'What did that guy want?'

He jerks his head in the direction of the bouncer.