Bar Fight

Okay...

Sorry for taking so long with this, but things got a bit crazy when we went to Sal's.

It started out okay. Ken let us in and we went up to the counter to talk to Sal. It was quiet and empty that night. Sal was alone there, cleaning some glasses, while the white haired guy who works there was getting some tables cleaned off.

"Reaper," he greeted me. "How can I help you."

"I need you to tell me something," I said.

He sighed.

"What's this about?" he asked.

"What do you know about the Game Master," I asked.

"More than I'd like too," he admitted. "I notice the pyromaniac is absent. And Julia's with you."

"That's right," I said. "Her brother and Terrence were both dragged into one of the Game Master's tournament."

"I see," he replied.

He set down his rag and placed both hands on he counter, closing his eyes.

"The best you can do is cross your fingers and hope they can make it out okay," he said.

"I can't do that!" I said. "I have to get to them. They need help."

"That's a bad idea," Sal said.

"I'm full of those," I said. "You know about the Game Master, right? There's gotta be a way into his domain."

"There's plenty of ways," he said. "But it's not a place you want to go."

"That doesn't matter," I said. "I need to get in."

Sal breathed a deep sigh before opening his eyes and looking at me.

"The answer is no," he said. "I can't help you."

"Bullshit!" Ciel snapped at him. "You work for him, don't you!?"

Sal immediately turned his attention to her, glaring. I've seen him angry before, but the look on his face now was absolutely livid. Ciel, of course, didn't back down.

"You've got those poker themed tables and you unexplained abilities that you use to keep dozens of Fear servants n check," Ciel continued. "He's the reason behind all of that, isn't he!?"

"Shut up," Sal growled.

"Answer me!" Ciel demanded.

Sal suddenly vanished, and then Ciel let out a shriek as he reappeared behind her, grabbed her by the hair, and lifted her a foot off the ground.

"I do NOT work for that monster!" Sal hissed.

I made to draw my scythe, but before I could, the white haired guy came up and raised a giant war glaive to Sal's neck.

"Put her down, Sal," he said softly. "Calm down."

Sal took a deep breath and released Ciel. The white haired guy breathed a sigh of relief before quickly tapping Ciel of the head with the handle of his glaive.

"You just had to fucking trigger him, didn't you?" he said.

I drew my scythe and swung it at him. He block my attack with his glaive, as I was expecting. I locked eyes with him.

"Don't fucking touch her," I warned, before turning to Sal. "What the hell is your problem?"

"I'm going to have to ask you all to leave," he said.

"Not gonna happen!" I said. "I need to get onto the Board, and your my best shot at getting there."

"It took me over a hundred years to escape that place," Sal said. "I'm not going back."

I took a step back.

"You really are one of his servants," I realized out loud.

He glared at me.

"Not. Any. More."

"Justin," Julia whispered to me. "Stop talking. You're just gonna piss him off more."

She stepped forward, looking into Sal's eyes.

"Sal," she said. "Please. My brother's in danger."

Sal looked away, but I noticed hat his expression soften a little.

"You know what he has planned for him," Julia said. "Help Justin get there. That's all I'm asking."

Sal closed his eyes for a minute before responding.

"Only Justin," he said. "No one else."

"Wait a second!" Ciel snapped. "I'm not letting that idiot go in alone!"

"You're going to have to," Sal snarled at her. "That's my offer. Take it or leave it."

"We accept," I said.

"Good to see you all finally agreeing!" Said a mysterious new voice.

We all turned to see a man sitting at one of the barstools, shuffling a deck of tarot cards. He was dressed in a black long coat, had slick black hair, and gleaming crimson eyes. His right hand was blood red in color.

"How many times do I need to shoot you before you stop ignoring your perma-ban?" Sal asked, annoyed.

"Relax, Sally," the man chuckled. "I just dropped in to let you know that you're about to have some company."

The man placed 4 of the tarot cards on the counter, face down.

"Emissaries," the white haired guy said.

"Mm-hm," the red handed guy nodded. "You'd best be prepared for a party."

"Emissaries of what, exactly?" I asked.

"The Game Master," Julia replied.

"So they're trouble?" Ciel asked.

"The don't have to be," the red handed guy said. "I'd be more than happy to lend a ha-"

Before he could finish, Sal appeared behind the counter, aimed a shotgun at the guys face, and straight up shot him in the head.

"Whoa!" I gasped. "You killed him!"

"He'll be fine," Sal said, strapping a longsword to his back.

"You shot him in the face!" I said.

"He's had worse," Sal replied.

Ken came in the front door and asked "Is everything okay in here?"

"Emissaries are on their way," the white haired guy said.

"Shit!" Ken said. "What should we do?"

"Let's see which ones are coming first," Sal said, flipping over the first of the cards. "The High Priestess. They're bringing a healer with them."

He flipped over the next one.

"The Hierophant," he said. "Great..."

He flipped the third one over.

"The Sun," he groaned. "Shit... That means..."

He flipped the final sign and then clenched both of his fists.

"The Ace of Cups," he said. "Damn it all..."

"Shelly," the white haired guy muttered.

"Okay, here's what we're gonna do," Sal said. "Ken, get Julia to safety."

"But I can fight!" Julia protested.

"We can't risk that," Sal said. "Ken, now."

Ken nodded, then raised a hand and opened a portal into some weird, dark place. Julia reluctantly walked through with him before shooting me a look.

"Give them hell," she said.

The portal closed.

"That leaves us with four," the white haired guy said. "Same as them."

Sal nodded.

"Justin, if you want my help, you're going to have to help me," he said. "I need you to deal with the Sun. Sykar, the Ace of Cups' lieutenant. You're the best suited to fight against him. He's the one with the glowing claws."

"Okay," I said.

"Isaac," he said, addressing the white haired guy. "You handle the High Priestess. Keep her away from the others. Don't give her a chance to heal them."

"Got it," he replied.

"So I'm left with that Heirophant guy?" Ciel asked.

"You should be bitchy enough to handle him," Sal said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ciel demanded.

"You'll see," Sal said. "Let's go."

We all stepped outside and waited. A few minutes later they showed up. Two guys and two girls. One of the men was a silver haired dude with a creepy grin and a clawed gauntlet on his left hand. The claws weren't glowing, but no one else had claws, so he must've been the Sun Sal was talking about. The other guy had short brown hair and looked really bored. The first girl was a redhead in a blue gown, carrying a staff. She looked kind of cute, actually.

And then there was the last one. The woman who seemed to be leading them, carrying a machete and looking really damn pleased with herself.

"What do you want here?" Sal demanded.

"Where's the girl, Sal?" the woman asked.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sal said.

"Don't lie to me," she said. "We know the Reaper brought her along with him."

Sal sighed.

"You made a blog post before coming here, didn't you?" he said.

"Sorry," I said. "She's not here anymore! You guys missed her."

"Very well," the woman said, raising her machete. "Then you're going to tell me where she's run off to."

"No." Sal replied sternly.

"Alright," she said. "Be that way."

Then another of her appeared right in front of Isaac and kicked him into the wall behind him. The original her faded away a second later, revealing itself to be some kind of afterimage.

Sal leapt into action, drawing his sword and slashed a her, only for the blade to pass straight through her afterimage as she appeared a short distance away and hit him with a blast of golden light, knocking him back through the door of the bar. She walked in after him while addressing the others.

"See if you can beat some answers out of them," she said. "If not, just kill em'."

The Sun guy (Sykar, I guess) turned his attention to me, grinning.

"Okay, fuck the battle plan, let's do this!" I shouted, charging at him.

It'd be awfully hard to do things as Sal had planned with Isaac out of commission, but I was sure I could handle things. Ciel went right for the brown haired guy while I made my way over to the other two. Sykar's eyes and claws started glowing with a bright white light, and his claws seemed to grow a couple inches. I swung my scythe at him, which he managed to deflect.

"Heya, handsome!" He said, moving in to scratch at me.

"Not my type!" I exclaimed, sweeping his legs out from under him.

As he fell over, I brought my scythe up and swung it down at him, piercing into his chest as he hit the ground. I was then struck by a burst of golden light that sent me flying a few feet. It hurt pretty bad, but it wasn't enough to kill me.

I pulled myself back up to see the girl with the staff, the High Priestess, hovering over Sykar, with a hand raised over his wound, which was glowing with gold light. She glared at me and aimed the tip of her staff in my direction, letting out another blast of light. I dodged it and dove for my dropped scythe. She fired another blast, but I grabbed my scythe in time and managed to deflect it with a quick slash.

I charged at her, readying my scythe, but Sykar got back to his feet, wounds fully healed, and got in my way. The two of us started fighting, deflecting each other's blows as best as we could. Then the High Priestess fired off another light blast, which I managed to defend against, but Sykar took advantage of the momentary distraction and clawed me across the chest. His claws burnt to the touch, and I stumbled backwards, clutching at the wounds they left. The High Priestess readied yet another blast.

"Hey bitch!" Ciel shouted, distracting her.

We all turned to see that the Hierophant was sitting down, nursing some knife wounds, while Ciel charged at the High Priestess.

"Fuck you!" Ciel yelled, engaging the High Priestess in a fight.

I turned my attention back to Sykar.

"My healer's better than yours!" I said.

He and I continued fighting. While he was focused on my scythe, I threw in a kick to his kneecap, surprising him and causing him to loose balance. I took the chance to maneuver behind him and hook his torso with the arc of my scythe. Then, with a sharp shift of my weight, I slammed his body into the ground, cutting into his skin as I did.

The High Priestess managed to push Ciel away from her and then twirled her staff above her for a second before yelling loudly and slamming it down into the ground. There was a giant pulse of gold light that knocked both me a Ciel off of our feet. As I hit the ground, I caught a glimpse of smoke coming from the bar. Just what was going on in there.

The High Priestess raised her staff again, and two spheres of golden light appeared from it, and zoomed toward Sykar and the Hierophant. They both rose to their feet, as their wound faded away. The High Priestess slumped over panting, and the Hierophant went over to her.

"You okay?" he asked.

"That took a lot out of me," she replied, rising back up. "But I can still fight."

Then there was an explosion inside the bar and Sal was launched out of the front door and hit the pavement hard. The Ace of Cups calmly stepped out. Her eyes were glowing just like Sykar's, as was her machete, which had grown a bit larger. She had some bruises and cuts, but a gold aura briefly passed over her, healing them all.

"How pathetic," she chuckled. "I thought with your reputation you'd be tougher. Guess the hype was exaggerated, huh, big guy?"

She lifted her machete, ready to strike at him, but Isaac got back up and got her attention.

"Shelly!" He snapped. "Get away from him!"

"Oh?" She said, turning to him. "And what are you gonna do if I don't?"

Isaac quickly gulp down the contents of a small glass bottle and than smashed it on the ground.

"What was that?" She asked, sounding genuinely worried for once.

Isaac's eyes began glowing white, and the High Priestess suddenly let out a loud shriek. She fell backwards, and one of her arms appeared to pin itself to the ground, as if being held there.

"Get off!" She shrieked, struggling against something I couldn't see. "Let me go! Stop it!"

As she continued kicking and screaming, Isaac set his sights on Sykar, who dropped to his knees, clutching his left forearm and expressing legitimate agony.

"My hand!"" He cried out. "My fucking hand! What the Fuck! AHHHH!"

"What are you doing!" the Ace of Cups demanded. "Stop it!"

But Isaac wasn't stopping. He turned his attention to the Hierophant, who began scratching wildly at his skin, panicking.

"Get them off!!" he shouted. "My god, make them get off!"

The Ace of Cups was seriously looking pissed, and she took a few steps toward Isaac before stopping in her tracks and clutching her head.

"Get out!" She demanded, glaring at Isaac.

"Never!" Isaac said.

He looked like he was in pain, and was clinging desperately to his glaive as if it were a walking stick. As the Ace of Cups made another pained step toward him, Ken burst out of a portal and rabbit punched her from behind. She stumbled forward and turned to him, outraged. She swung her sword at him, but before she made contact, she faked him out by teleporting behind him and leaving an afterimage where she just was. This didn't phase Ken at all, as he just turned and side kicked her right in the solar plexus before her attack could connect. From that angle I noticed that he had discarded his shades, exposing his eyes. While I couldn't see them perfectly from that distance, there was a distinct flash of red there.

"Your deceptions won't work on me, witch," he said, hitting her again.

Sal then got back up and joined in, double teaming her. As they did, I gripped my scythe and made my way over to Sykar, who was still crying over whatever was going on with his arm. I raised my scythe, preparing to decapitate him. But as I brought it down, the High Priestess got in my way and blocked my attack with he staff.

"It's... not real," she told herself.

Her eye was twitching a bit, and she still seemed to be struggling somewhat against whatever Isaac had down. I her staff aside and kicked her in the face, knocking her out. Deciding I should deal with her before she caused any more trouble, I raised my scythe, ready to impale her.

Spare her.

I hesitated as Daniel's voice sounded through my head.

I'm a Timberwolf, I thought. That's not my style.

Suddenly, an image of her smiling and giggling flashed through my mind, only for a second.

What is this? I thought.

A memory, Daniel replied. From another world.

Other worlds don't matter! I thought. She's an enemy! I need to finish her off!

Please, Daniel said. Trust me.

As I stood there, contemplating whether to deal the coop de grace, a man in a black cloak, the same man I had seen in Anthony's file, appeared, using a black pistol to block one of Sal's sword slashes. Everybody stopped what they were doing. A wave of terror that I didn't understand washed over me. I didn't know why I was scared. I just was. I seemed like everyone was. Even the Ace of Cups was shivering. The only ones unaffected were Sal and he cloaked man, who just stared at each other for a moment. Sal stepped back, still glaring at the newcomer. A small mechanical claw came out of the man's, sleeve, gripping the gun and pulling it inside the sleeve.

"You and your kind are no longer welcome here," Sal said.

The man sighed. Then he turned into a giant cloak-like shadow, and flew through the air, scooping up the other Emissaries before folding in on itself and vanished. The fear we were all feeling faded away.

Sal stared at the bar for a second before going to check on Isaac, who was leaning against the wall, clutching his head.

"That was reckless of you," Sal said.

"I'm sorry," Isaac said. "We were losing. I had to do something."

"And I thank you for that," Sal said. "Now go home and rest. That must have put a lot of pressure on you."

"Okay," Isaac said, getting to his feet and pulling out his phone. "Better call a ride."

"When you get the time, inform the other employees that we'll be closing for a while," Sal added.

"Sure thing," Isaac replied.

Sal then walked into the bar. The rest of us followed him. The place was a wreck. Wood was smashed and smoldering, broken glass was strewn all over the place, and almost every table and chair had been broken to splinters.

"Oh my god," Ciel muttered.

Sal sighed deeply as he examined the damage.

"I'm sorry," I said. "This is my fault, isn't it?"

Sal turned to me. The look on his face was... I guess somber is probably the best word I can think of for it.

"I can't blame you for this," he said. "You couldn't have known that they'd follow you here. That they would follow Julia."

"I let them know she would be here," I said. "That was stupid of me..."

"It's okay," Sal said. "They're the ones at fault here. We've had an agreement for years that states they are not allowed to do any of their hunting in or near my establishment. This is a neutral place, and they betrayed that."

"That other guy was the Ace of Swords, right?" I said, remembering the tarot card attached o his picture.

"Yes," Sal replied. "One of my best customers. It was hard to slap the ban on him like that, but that's what they get for violating my terms."

"Why are they after Julia, anyway?" Ciel asked.

"She's special," Sal replied. "It's not my place to tell you why, but the Game Master despises her."

"He wants her dead?" I asked.

"Worse," Sal said. "He wants her to suffer. He wants her to want to die."

"That's fucked up," I said. "That's why he took her brother..."

"That's right," Sal said. "On the topic of Julia, is she safe?"

"Yes," Ken replied. "I gotten her somewhere they won't know about."

"Good," Sal said. "I want you to do the same for Keran. She's too important. We can't let her be caught up in this war."

"Yes sir," Ken said. "I'll go take care of everything."

"Good," Sal replied.

He turned his attention back to the damaged bar.

"How much would it cost to fix all this?" I asked.

"Nothing but time," Sal said. "Every floorboard. Every brick. Every pane of glass. Everything that makes up this place is under my control."

"Whoa," I said. "Seriously?"

"This is my home," he said. "I have power over it. Unfortunately..."

He telekinetically lifted a beam of wood, returning it to its rightful place and repairing it. It seemed somewhat difficult for him.

"...My power has its limits," he said. "I will take a lot of time and energy to et this place back in working order."

"Damn," I said.

"It can wait," he said.

"You can uh... crash with us for a while if you need to," I offered.

He thought for a little while about that.

"Alright," he said. "I won't trouble you for long. I'll make some arrangements soon."

"It's fine," I told him. "No problem."

"Now," he said. "On the matter of getting you to the Board. I'll need to make some calls. It may take a few days to get in touch with someone who can get it done. But I promise you, I can do this."

"All right," I said. "I trust you."

"You realize, though, that by infiltrating the Board, who will become an official competitor in the tournament," he said. "There will be no way out aside from victory or defeat."

"Fine by me," I said. "Whatever it takes to help my friends."