Floodwaters
Inactive Member
Dawn Station - Sector Four - Klimmeck's Hole - Late Evening, same day as the Veil arrived
Cigarette smoke billowed throughout the dimly lit, seedy bar tucked away beneath an aging building on a moderately-trafficked street in Sector Four's industrial area, surrounded by old scrap dealer shops, electronics repair booths, and a plethora of homogenous dry-cleaners and laundromats. Even though Dawn Station was in Yamatai space, where tobacco was outlawed, the local security forces typically turned a blind eye to the less-legitimate dealings within its walls, provided that they kept the riff-raff contained and distracted. The bar itself was mostly frequented by warehouse hands, truck drivers, and other assorted blue-collar rabble, happily soaking up the hard-earned pay that the rough-looking men and women squandered away when their shifts ended. Dingy faux-wooden chairs and barstools furnished the modestly-sized venue, but the most prominent feature was the huge U-shaped bar ringed with taps, drinking glasses, and people eager for another round. The whole place reeked of tobacco, booze, and sweat, and other than the bright glow of halogen lamps tucked away under the rim of the bar, bathing the area in a muted, dim whitish-purple glow, most of the light fixtures in the establshment didn't work. In a haphazard pattern, vidscreens all showing different channels of depraved entertainment hung from the ceiling, attracting vacant stares from a few of the patrons nearest to them, but largely ignored.
From the door, one could see Sienna's tank-topped torso slightly hunched over the left side of the bar, seated at a barstool, her eyelids looking a touch heavy as she took the half-empty glass of beer away from her lips and set it back down on the worn and fading bar with a thud. Reaching up with her left hand, she pushed the hair that had fallen over her eyes aside, tucked what little she could behind her ear as she glanced at the massive bearded man who had just taken a seat next to her, and eyed his powerful but unpleasantly corpulent physique with a strangely amused sneer.
"Hey buddy," she said, her words slightly slurred. "Spare a smoke?"
The black-bearded man, dressed in a filthy white T-shirt that looked as if it were about to split around his ample belly and a black sleeveless vest, looked over at her, pausing for a moment as if considering his response. "Sure, sweet thang," he said finally, reaching into the breast pocket of his vest and producing a pack of cigarettes. Rapping its end on the bar a few times, he flicked one out of the pack with his thumb and offered it to her. "Need a light?"
Sienna grinned and nodded as she plucked the rolled stick of tobacco from the pack and placed it lightly between her lips. "Please," she replied, though her tone was somewhat misaligned with what one would regard as polite.
The bearded fat man already had a lighter in his other hand, and reached across to comply. Sienna had to suppress a snicker at how he seemed to strain slightly at the mere act of rotating his torso, but she leaned forward and touched the tip of the cigarette to the little flame, drawing on it until it lit. "Thanks," she said, and leaned back as she removed the cigarrette from her lips with her index and middle finger, twisting her mouth sideways to blow a stream of smoke away from the fat man's face, and gave him a grin.
Tam was wandering through Sector Four, wondering what people found so intriguing about this station, plus it gave him a chance to look for locations to possibly look for objects to make improvised weapons out of in case they were needed. He noticed a bar and as he started to walk by he happened to glance in and noticed Sienna sitting at the bar. She was the only person from the Veil that he'd really had much contact with so he decided to walk in and see what she was up to. He lightly walked over to her after making sure his gloves were still fully covering his talons before tapping her on the shoulder and said, with a slight smile, "Hello again, wasn't expecting to find you this far away from home."
The tap on her shoulder caused Sienna to glance back indifferently, still holding the cigarette, and regard Tam from the side of her face. His statement, however, elicited a broad grin. "That's your angle?" she remarked wryly. "Walk up and say 'ain't seen you 'round here before'?" Turning slightly in her seat to better face him, the grin remained as she leaned her left elbow back on the bar, and put the cigarette between her lips once again. Even in the low light, Tam noticed that her eyes lacked the hawklike alertness they'd had earlier that day, and she looked much more unwound, even slightly wobbly. It was more than obvious she'd had more than a few drinks already.
Tam cocked his head to the side, eyeing Sienna carefully as his eyes narrowed slightly in mild confusion before he answered, "Angle, what do you mean by my angle?" He then decided it was time to be a bit of a smartass, so he leaned his head to one side while his torso swiveled and bent to where he was leaning to the side at a 70% angle or so before he asked in a flat tone, "Is this what you meant by 'angle,' or was it something else?" Regardless of her answer to his remarks he decided that he would probably stick around to make sure that the somewhat inebriated woman made it back to the ship intact rather than falling into a hole or some other such incident.
Sienna rolled her eyes and shook her head, but her grin widened slightly nonetheless. "You're a retard," she commented, then nodded to the empty seat next to her, opposite the fat man, before turning back around to face the bar once again, and picked up her drink. "I was aimin' to avoid the lot of y'all for long as I could, but if I gotta talk to one of you, at least it's the one I can stand." Raising the glass, she almost put it to her lips before she suddenly realized the cigarette was still there, and plucked it out, looking at the narcotic in each hand as if weighing some hefty decision for a second or two before deciding to drain the rest of her beer with one toss back.
Tam chuckled slightly before sitting down on the seat that Sienna had nodded at. "I tend to stick around like a bad smell, I show up on the wind and disappear just like that as well. I am glad to at least be somewhat bearable in the way of company," Tam replied with a slight smile that didn't manage to bear any of his teeth. He had found that showing some of his more...esoteric "modifications" had a tendency to make people give him frightened looks and shrink away from him. He looked at what the bar had available to drink and pondered, his enhanced digestive system would metabolize basically anything another carbon based race could eat or drink but some things never changed and he preferred drinks that reminded him of being back home so he looked to see if the bar had any Pygrinkamesh available, if it did then he'd order a double shot of it.
Lowering the now-empty glass as well as her chin once more, she thumped the vessel back to the bar pointedly, leveling her eyes on the nearest bartender, a dark-skinned woman who was trying entirely too hard to make herself look younger and more attractive than she was. When the black-haired and pigtailed bartender heard the thump, she looked over at Sienna, and with nothing more than raised eyebrows and one lifted finger, she silently asked over the bar's noise if she needed to bring another. Sienna nodded, holding up two fingers, then tilted her hand to point at Tam as well. The bartender nodded and headed for the tap.
Sienna took a long draw of her cigarette, appearing to ignore Tam for a few seconds before exhaling, tendrils of smoke puffing from her parted lips and nostrils as she looked lazily back over at the Gartagen. For no discernible reason, she snickered quietly. "So you get bored on the ship or something? Or you just miss me that much?" she chided.
Tam looked over at Sienna and smiled slightly before replying. "I suppose you could say it was a combination of the two. You are far more interesting to be honest in comparison to the overly tall half winged woman with the horrible speech patterns and the somewhat robotic, androgynous thing that is the doctor." Tam nodded to the bartender and as he noticed a bottle of Pygrinkamesh up on one of the shelves he pointed to it and a highball glass and held up two fingers to indicate how much depth of alcohol he wanted. He considered offering it to Sienna to see her reaction but he wasn't sure if the human's system could handle the shock.
The pigtailed bartender had just finished pouring Sienna's next beer and was about to draw another one from the tap for Tam when she caught his gesture, and nodded, setting the glass aside and moving to the bottle the Gartagen indicated.
The young captain laughed out loud and shook her head again in disdain, looking out across to the other side of the bar. "Damned if that ain't the worst compliment I ever got," she said dryly, tapping the ashes from her cigarette into a nearby ashtray. With raised eyebrows she looked back over at Tam, still grinning. "Best stick to your own species, I'd suggest."
Tam grinned back for a moment, but then his face fell a bit as well before he replied. "I never did do very well with my own species, I tended to end up getting myself in trouble. I do apologize if I've given offense."
"What makes you think you ain't gettin' yourself in trouble now?" Sienna asked with a raised eyebrow, and still grinning as she brought the cigarette up to her lips again.
"You haven't punched me, stabbed me, thrown me in the brig, made me clean toilets with my tongue, or left me with 200 displeased puggles, I'd say so far I'm doing all right," Tam replied with his own slight smile.
Her raised eyebrow arched even more sharply as Sienna took another drag on the cigarette. Around the burning roll of paper, her mouth remained curled upwards in the amused smile, but the bridge of her nose crinkled simultaneously in a slight sneer, and she shook her head with a roll of her eyes. "Not yet," she commented, exhaling the smoke as she looked nonchalantly away from Tam, idly watching a goateed young Nepleslian in the far corner of the place, trying to impress a booth full of dumb-looking young women with bombastic stories and carefully thought-out poses he was trying to make look normal. From the expressions on the young ladies' faces and the way a couple of them laughed occasionally, he was having at least some success. Her grin turned sideways as she continued. "You ask anyone else on the crew, it ain't but a matter of time. They all think I'm frackin' nuts." Just then the bartender arrived with another tall glass of beer for Sienna, and a thin cylinder of whatever passed for Pygrinkamesh there for Tam. Making a point of leaning forward to display her ample, if rather leathery cleavage spilling out over the low-cut shirt she wore for anyone nearby to see, she placed the drinks in front of each patron, then raised her eyebrows as she stood up, giving Sienna a hesitant, questioning thumbs-up. Sienna said nothing in reply, only nodded with a dismissive wave of the cigarrette clasped between her index and middle fingers. Suddenly, with a delayed look of puzzlement, she turned her eyes back over at Tam. "What the hell are 'puggles'?"
"They are Gartagen children, and they are also one of the biggest hazards to homeless Gartagens on our homeworld, they are small masses of muscle, claws, and teeth and they're as likely to want to play as want to eat your arm off," Tam replied as he took his drink and drank it in one swift swallow. "I'm pretty much considered nuts myself, at least by most normal Gartagens that is," Tam said with a slight smile.
Sienna's eyebrows raised high on her forehead again at the response. "Good lord, how did y'all evolve like that?" she asked, mostly with a rhetorical tone, shaking her head. "And I thought human kids were a pain." She reached forward and picked up her glass, holding it in her hand a few inches over the bar as if pondering something, then just chuckled once with a shrug.
"Side effect of...well nuking the everloving hell out of ourselves a few generations ago. When there's nothing to eat you learn to subsist on what is available, including each other. One of the sadder episode's in my species's history," Tam replied with a slight sigh before gesturing to the bar tender to ask for another one.
"Heh," Sienna replied, taking a moderate drink of her own beverage, her eyes not focused on anything in particular as far as the Gartagen could tell. "Least we got that in common. Here I thought humans were the experts on killin' each other. S'a wonder we're still around at all." The fat man that she had bummed the cigarette from stood up and walked away, though there was still a small amount of beer left in his own glass. It wasn't apparent whether or not he was leaving for good, or just going to the bathroom.
"I'm not sure our reasons were necessarily good, but we recovered and made our way into space," Tam replied as he watched the fat man walk away, somewhat warily since the man said nothing at all while he was listening to the conversation. Tam started fidgeting with his gloves a little bit, almost unnoticeably unless someone was watching closely before settling back into his seat and turning back to look at Sienna.
Placing her glass back on the bar, the young captain pressed her cigarette between her lips again and left it there, talking around it with one eye narrowed slightly against the billowing smoke, and folded her arms on the surface. "Y'know, vermin and germs are just as resilient," she said wryly with a sideways look at Tam. "Some of the worst things in the universe are the toughest to kill."
"This is quite true enough, although I consider myself to be remarkably tough to kill, all things considered. Frankly I'm lucky to be alive to be here talking to you," Tam said as he smiled a bit and looked around the bar at the people nearby. He shrugged and simply waited for his next drink, he was curious how the captain would react if he offered a drink to her.
Sienna snickered dubiously, taking another puff from her dwindling cigarette and exhaling through her nose. "And just why the hell am I so special?" she asked with a sardonic edge to her voice.
"Well because I find you intriguing personally. I mean honestly, I shouldn't have ever made it off that jungle planet alive at all, I've got...some substantial damage from previous missions that made that world far worse to my health than to many of my shipmates who died. So for rescuing me from there I have to thank you once more," Tam replied with a slight grimace as an involutary twitch rippled through his torso and pulled at the mass of scar tissue there.
"Psh," the young woman scoffed dismissively, watching as the bartender brought another shot of the weird-looking liquor and set it before Tam. "You paid for it, it was business. It don't mean nothin' more than that," she told him, dragging the last bit from her cigarette before snuffing it end-first in the ashtray.
"Maybe to you, however you made the decision to land, for all I knew you could have just taken the first half of the deposit and left me on that planet, and nobody else would have known any different. It may have simply been business to you, but to me it was a bit more than that," Tam replied as he picked up the shot and gestured. "Would you care to try something from my homeworld?" he asked with a small smile.
"No offense," Sienna replied, eyeing the shot in front of him, "but I seen you throw crates the size of a small car over yer head. I ain't touching whatever it is you drink." A wry grin spread on her lips again, and she winked slightly as she picked up her glass once more, holding it a few inches from her mouth as she continued. "Besides, I buy my own drinks." With that, she took another long pull from her glass, and when she set it down, she held back a violent hiccough, succeeding in containing the noise, but her shoulders jerked up in a brief spasm before she cleared her throat, wobbling slightly in her seat once more.
"'None taken, this is nothing special, just a high proof alcohol," Tam replied as he looked at Sienna with at least some mild concern as she wobbled in her seat he was ready to catch her, just in case she managed to topple over. He shrugged and slammed the double shot of 196 proof alcohol down like it was water.
In an instant Sienna regained her balance, snickering again for no reason before pushing her hair out of her eyes again, just as the vacant seat next to her was re-occupied, not by the fat man, but by a square-jawed young Nepleslian man with a shaved head and sporting a faded canvas jacket and a confident grin. "Well, I was gonna offer to buy you one, honey," the young man said loudly enough to catch her attention, causing Sienna to slowly turn her head towards him, and look him over with mild disdain. "But instead, you mind if I just sit next to ya?"
Sienna raised an eyebrow, her grin fading a bit as she regarded the pass the newcomer was making as if unsure of whether he was serious or not. "Think it's taken," she said, looking lazily around the bar for any sign of the big bearded man. Seeing none, she shrugged and looked back at him just long enough to answer before turning back to her beer again.
"No problem, I'll move if he comes back," the young man replied, flashing her a charming smile. "I'm Erik."
"Hey, good for you," Sienna dismissively answered without even the courtesy of looking at him, picking her beer up again and starting another drink.
Tam looked the young man over and shrugged, before gesturing to the bartender once more for another drink, although this time when she came over he pulled a small vial from one of his copious pockets and had it ready to pour into his drink.
Erik turned his face slightly to the side, still smiling and obviously undaunted by Sienna's deflection. Glancing in Tam's direction, he leaned in a little closer. "Not big on names, that's cool, that's cool. Who's your friend over there, then?" he asked.
Sienna leaned away from Erik as he pulled closer, looking sideways at him in turn. "Twin brother," she replied, slowing grinning at him in the manner a panther might bear its teeth in warning. "See the resemblance?"
Tam grinned at that, he was waiting for the guy to try something stupid. Meanwhile he continued to wait for his drink as he started twirling the vial in his fingers.
Either playing off Sienna's sarcastic retort as a joke, or truly oblivious to her disinterest, Erik laughed loudly. "Yeah, yeah, think I do," he replied, then flashed his cocky smile at the bartender as she returned with Tam's third shot. "Beer here, and get this pretty lady here one on me," he told her.
"Already got one," Sienna replied in very mocking, singsong tone of voice, swinging her mostly full glass in the air like a pendulum for both the bartender and Erik to see.
"C'mon, whatever you want. You sure?" Erik insisted, leaning his elbow on the bar as he turned to face Sienna, doing a poor job of concealing the way his eyes wandered over her body.
Tam took his next shot and cracked open the vial, pouring the contents into the alcohol, he'd always hated the taste of the Art of Death's signature cocktail and knew that the first two shots of the extremely potent alcohol would have at least somewhat deadened his sense of taste and the third would then be able to mask the terrible taste of the deadly-to-most-others concoction that he was going to be ingesting. He eyed the man Erik askance wondering just what he thought he was doing. "Thank you ma'am" he said to the bartender, realizing that he'd been rather rude previously.
The bartender smiled sweetly at Tam and returned to her work, while Sienna turned her head fully towards Erik, staring flatly back at him. "Positive," she replied. "Mind your own drinks, dude."
Erik shrugged and sat back upright, admiring Sienna's form once more before nodding. "Suit yourself," he said nonchalantly, but didn't turn away, remaining facing her with one elbow on the bar, his fingers intertwined.
Sienna shook her head and noted the vial Tam was dumping into his next shot. "What, the stuff they give you ain't strong enough?" she asked, glancing up at him quizzically, then back at the liquor.
Tam smiled slightly at Sienna's question and shook his head slightly left and right, "It's simply a horrible tasting medication that I have to take for my condition" he replied before sending a message to Sienna's PHC
The captain appeared both surprised and slightly amused at the reply, but before she answered her PHC chimed with Tam's message. Taking another long drink of her beer, she placed the glass down and waved a hand over it with a groan, apparently thinking it might have been someone from the Veil with yet another problem. She blinked hard a few times, trying to clear her vision enough to read the tiny floating letters, but when she noticed it was from Tam, she frowned. "Dammit, I'm sittin' right here, why'd you--" she started, then appeared to realize the gist of what was in the message, even if she was too cloudy-minded to read it in full. "--oh. Heh, gotcha."
Meanwhile, Erik's wandering eyes weren't taking a break as he plotted his next move, taking no notice of the message.
Tam then started to drink his drink, trying to drink as rapidly as he could while fighting off shudders as the toxins coursed through his body. One of the lesser known side effects for him of the Genewashes he'd been through was to make his body extremely efficient at absorbing and repurposing toxins he ingested although he couldn't ingest them too rapidly or it would still kill him. He'd finish his drink and set it down before watching the man Erik like a hawk.
Sienna watched the Gartagen drink the concoction, her nose slowly wrinkling as she saw how unpleasant the sensation must have been to make him react in such a way. When he finally finished it, she slowly shook her head with a cluck of her tongue. "Damn," she said in mild amazement. "Now I'm real glad I didn't take the first one."
Tam smiled slightly. "The drink itself isn't that bad, just the medicine tastes like week old spoiled cider. I don't understand why they make it taste so bad though," he said with a wry grin.
"Killer, man," Erik chimed in as his beer arrived, then raised his glass to Tam. "Dunno if I'd wanna go drink to drink with you."
Sienna groaned, her eyes rolling back into her head as she sank in her seat slightly. Looking back over her shoulder, she wobbled again very slightly as she leveled the cool gaze at the interloper again. "You still here?" she asked, sounding a bit more annoyed now. "Go find someone else to bother."
"Ain't nobody else in here looks as good as you, baby," he said with the smarmy grin again, winking at her. "And come on, you can't play the ice queen all night. You been sitting here all alone since I got here. Saw you right as I walked in."
"Charmed," Sienna said sarcastically. "Now seriously. Piss off already."
Tam finally decided to say something to the annoying man. "You've been asked to leave, I recommend you do it," was all he said as he gave the man a glare that was so cold it made liquid helium look positively balmy by comparison.
Erik's grin vanished, and he looked more than a bit taken aback by Tam's sudden intervention. "Hey hey, man, ease off," he said. "I'm trying to talk to the lady here. You mind?"
"As a matter of fact I do mind, I do believe you've been told to back off no less than 3 times by the lady, which to me means that it's time for you to walk away before you get yourself hurt," Tam said with a slight snarl edging into his voice.
"Look here, punk--" Erik snapped back, losing his faux-charming persona and revealing himself as little more than a thug.
"Shut the frak up, both of ya," Sienna interrupted loudly, throwing her hands up in front of her, the sudden movement nearly causing her to fall back out of her chair in her mostly drunken state. Catching herself at the last second with both hands on the bar, she sat up bolt upright, her hair falling over both of her eyes as she inhaled sharply through her nose, as if fighting off a sudden, mild wave of nausea. With another short, random laugh that sounded uncharacteristically like a giggle, she sat still for a moment, hair still over her eyes and a dumb grin on her face. "Just shut up." Calmly, she reached up and pushed her hair aside, looking over at Tam. "The chivalry is touching'n all, but ain't no need for it. I can handle this."
"I'm sure you can," another man chimed in. Sienna looked behind her to see a tall, strapping Nepleslian with broad shoulders, short cropped brown hair, and a stubble-framed chiselled face. Powerful looking forearms capped with big masculine hands jutted out from beneath a tight fitting gray T-shirt with an Aethersperm emblem across the chest, and faded blue jeans covered a sturdy looking pair of legs. The man smiled a smile that was friendly, but also carried a dire warning of what would happen if Erik challenged either him, Tam, or Sienna further. With a knowing wink at Sienna, he looked at Erik calmly, and put one of his big hands on the bar, placing a barrier between the young man and Sienna. "Let's not let things get out of hand, no need to take this any further," he said quietly. "There's plenty of other ladies here, but this one just isn't interested. I'm sure you're man enough to handle one rejection."
Tam looked at the new guy with a somewhat baffled look on his face before nodding to Sienna as acceptance of her statement. "I'd hope he'd be man enough to handle rejection, otherwise he'd probably be sharing someone else he's wooed bed instead of trying to pick someone up in a bar," Tam said somewhat snarkily.
Erik looked at the newcomer, then at Sienna and Tam, bristling with anger to mask his damaged ego and at a loss for words for a few seconds. Sienna chuckled loudly at Tam's comment, blinking her heavy eyelids slowly, and kept her hands on the bar to steady herself.
"Fine," Erik sneered, standing from his seat and glaring indignantly at the young woman, the taller man who had just arrived pulling his arm back as he positioned himself just off-center of between him and Sienna, patiently waiting for him to be on his way. "You couldn't handle what I got to offer anyway, you cranky bitch," he added caustically.
Sienna glanced over at the shaved-scalped man with a raised eyebrow and an ear-to-ear grin, her eyes derisively wandering down his torso to the front of his pants. "Is that what you're offerin'?" she asked, unimpressed, turning her eyes up at his with one raised eyebrow. "You may wanna wear looser pants, then. Least that way that tiny little bump ain't so obvious."
Erik's eyes went wide in fury, and his cheeks flushed bright red at the insult. Tam simply smiled at the ignorant young man. "You're not very bright are you?" he asked with a slight tilt to his head as he listened to Sienna lambast the poor fool.
"You stay the hell out of this, lizard," Erik snapped at Tam.
The other man placed a hand on Erik's shoulder in an outwardly friendly manner than still managed to very clearly indicate that his conversation was officially over, and resisting would bring severe consequences. "Let's go man," he said calmly. "You're embarrassing yourself."
Tam looked over at Erik and simply tilted his head as he replied. "Why should I stay out of anything? You are the one harassing my friend, it is not I who is harassing one of your friends."
Erik wrenched his shoulder from the other man's hand and squared himself at Tam. Sienna, still sitting between them, appeared quite amused with the exchange, looking between the three men posturing at one another.
The headstrong young man thrust a finger threateningly at the Gartagen. "Because unless you want me to wipe that dumbass, toothy grin off your face," he hissed through clenched teeth, rotating his hand and pointing at Sienna's face with his thumb, "she won't be the only one with more'n she can handle, bub."
With Erik's thumb now inches from her face, Sienna's grin vanished, and she leaned back away from it, obviously displeased at how close he was standing. "Dude," she slurred, turning her eyes up towards him. "Back the hell off." Erik didn't seem to hear her, however.
Tam's grin now seemed like it was about to split his face in half as he looked at Erik as he replied. "You can try, but I can guarantee you won't like what happens if you try."
"Let's go. Now," the other man interjected, this time more sternly. "I'm not telling you again."
A somewhat forced laugh belted forth from Erik at Tam's threat, and whether it was out of pure stubborn stupidity or some kind of misdirected spite, none of them could be sure. But in response, Erik proceeded to defiantly step forward and press his abdomen into Sienna's side as he wrapped his right arm around her neck, and reached across with his left and grabbed a handful of her breast as he leaned in to forcibly kiss her.
As drunk as she was, Sienna was understandably surprised and more than a little angry, and her eyes went wide at the unwelcome advance. Before Erik managed to lock his mouth on hers, her left hand shot upwards, the heel of her palm connecting squarely with his chin, causing his head to snap backwards as if it were on a spring. Before he even had the chance to realize what had just happened, however, the same arm she had used to strike him was locked around his right tricep, hooking his arm at the elbow, and he cried out in sudden pain as the smaller woman tightened her arm and lifted, bending his elbow backwards painfully as she rose from her seat just enough to cause him to let go of her chest, bracing himself with his free hand chest-first against the bar, helplessly struggling to free himself from the arm-lock. He however only had the chance to get in one good throe of pain before Sienna's other hand had him by the back of his head, and thrust his face savagely into the bar. A sickening crack resounded as the man's nose shattered on impact, sending a small spray of blood in several directions along the worn wooden surface.
"Mind if I take out the trash Captain?" Tam asked as he gestured at the now broken nosed and likely somewhat dazed young idiot.
Releasing Erik's arm and shoving herself off of him, the tipsy captain stumbled back a few steps, off-balance. A furious scowl was on her face, and her breath was slightly ragged, but she nodded venomously waved a hand in the direction of the bald-headed man who was hunched over the bar cupping his bleeding face with his good hand, writhing and groaning in pain. "Be my g--" she started to say before she lost her balance entirely and toppled over onto her backside. When she landed with a thud on the floor, several patrons jumped out of the way, llifting and shielding their drinks from being knocked over. As if she'd already forgotten what had just happened, the anger all over her face dissipated, and she started to drunkenly laugh at her clumsiness.
Tam rose from his chair and turned to the writhing Erik, grabbing him by the small of his neck and hefting his idiotic ass into the air and heading for the door. "I'll be back, just taking the garbage out. He can sleep it off in the gutter," Tam said once he started walking.
A hearty cheer rose up from the crowd who had craned their necks to see what the commotion was, and quickly spread through the bar as the unknown Gartagen moved to literally throw the troublemaker out, followed quickly by raucous applause and hooting. The as yet unnamed third man, who had jumped aside at Sienna's unexpectedly violent attack, watched in abject shock as the violence ended abruptly, but looked more than a little entertained at the entire ordeal. Laughing quietly, he joined in the applause as well.
On either side of where Sienna lay sprawled on her back, a stocky, older man in a warehouse jumpsuit and an unremarkable looking man with glasses bent down and took hold of each of her arms, helping her back to her feet. The young woman, still giggling at herself, allowed them to do so, her head lolling slightly to one side before she blinked hard and worked on regaining her balance.
Tam reached the door of the bar and suiting actions to words, he aimed his somewhat floppy cargo at a nearby dumpster and with a slight forward twist of his body sent the young man sailing out over the street.
As if he wasn't already reeling from the shock of how poorly the very brief scuffle had gone for him, Erik screamed at the top of his lungs as he sailed through the air, thrown as easily as a sack of potatoes, all four of his limbs flailing helplessly, adding quite the comedic effect to the already somewhat humourous sight. His eyes widened even further as he saw the dumpster at the bottom of his downward arc; more likely, they widened upon realizing that he wasn't quite going to make it. His wails grew even louder in the seconds before the back of his head slammed hard into the outside wall of the garbage container, stopping his momentum, and he crumpled up like a ragdoll before collapsing in a whimpering heap on the curb.
Tam watched him slam into the container and simply remarked, "Oops, next time I need to use a bit more power it would appear. MAYBE NEXT TIME YOU'LL LISTEN WHEN SOMEONE TELLS YOU TO BACK OFF!" he shouted to the now insensate man in the heap on the curb before walking back inside the bar.
The two men helped Sienna back to her seat, the older one giving her a congratulatory pat on the back as they walked away. The bespectacled one turned to Tam with a huge grin, and nodded gratefully at him with a firm slap on the shoulder. "Nicely done, friend," he commented.
"Eh, it wasn't my best, I normally don't miss" Tam replied to the man with a slight grin as he walked back to Sienna. "I think we've both had enough to drink, perhaps it would be a good time to get back to the ship," he told the captain.
Clearing her throat and haphazardly adjusting her hair, Sienna slowly turned her head and scoffed. "Like hell it is," she replied, motioning to her still-mostly-full beverage on the bar. "I still got this one to finish, and," she continued, lowering her face down next to the glass and inspecting her glass and the liquid within from entirely too close a distance, blinking to focus her eyes, "I don't think I got any blood in it. You go on back if you want, but I'm keen on seein' if I can get you to do that again." She hiccoughed once more, picking up her drink and leaning forward on her elbow, propping herself up as she turned to more fully face him. Glancing towards the door, she giggled uncharacteristically again. "Tossed like a sack of goddamn potatoes..."
The tall man who had tried to intervene approached them again. "That was incredible," he complimented the two of them, grinning.
Sienna looked over her shoulder at the tall man, her ear to ear grin morphing into something of a more predatory nature. With a shrug, she dismissed the compliment, and patted the once-again empty seat next to her before turning back to Tam. The man obliged and took the seat offered to him.
Tam looked back at Sienna with a somewhat resigned gesture and a shrug before sayng "I'll stick around as long as you do, I don't have anything else to do personally and it is amusing throwing idiots around like they're toys. Plus I'm sure you might run into trouble if you try to walk back on your own."
"Yeah, okay, 'Dad'," the captain replied with sardonic emphasis, taking another swig of her beer. Swallowing it, she smacked her lips and leaned a little too far to one side. "Y'know, I ain't no fragile little flower or nothin'. I did just fine on my own afore you came along." Behind her, the tall man took the seat, folding his hands in front of him and nodding as the bartender offered him a drink amdist wiping up the splattered blood on the counter with a bleached towel.
"I can tell that, you did very well handling that punk, but even the best can always use a little backup, nobody can see what's behind them, so having someone to watch your back is always a good idea," Tam replied as he watched the others in the bar.
Sienna snorted at that. "What, Gartagens don't have necks'r somethin'?" she chastised. "Here, watch this." Setting her beer down, she held her hands up as if about to do a magic trick, letting her droopy eyes slowly open wide, then as if it were some kind of amazing feat, she slowly turned her head to look back over her left shoulder, then over her right. Looking back at him, she flourished. "Ta-da!" she exclaimed, giggling at herself. "Now I know there's that other big asshole sittin' behind me." With that, she turned towards the bar again, looking over at the other man with a wink.
The other man shook his head with a roll of his eyes, and chuckled. "Cute," he said.
"Heh," Sienna continued, holding her beer inches from her lips once more. "Besides, y'put someone to watch yer back, they're just as apt t'stab you in it," she added to Tam. "You'll figure that out 'ventually."
"We have necks, but if I have someone in front of me trying to kill me or beat the snot out of me, I'm going to be focused on him, not on the guy trying to sneak up and stab me in the back. Oh, I'm sure a number of people would love to stab me in the back, but I'm pretty sure you're not one of them." Tam replied with a slight grin as he looked at Sienna.
The captain took another drink as Tam spoke, waving at the distant bartender and pointing to her draining glass, not bothering to stop drinking as she did so. When she'd drained more than half of what was left, she set the glass down, snickering at Tam as it hit the bar with a clumsy thud. "Give it time," she replied, lazily turning her head only partway towards the Gartagen, but never making eye contact. "You'll hate my guts jus' asmmuch as the rest of them idiots, then you'll prolly think diff'rntly."
On her other side, the tall man waited for his drink, and watched Sienna with concerned amusement. He didn't say anything to her, let alone get near her, given what he'd just seen her do to the last person that invaded her personal space, but he leaned back and peered around her at Tam, wordlessly asking him if she was okay with raised eyebrows and but a gesture of his finger at the back of her head.
Tam shrugged at the man's gesture and slightly tilted his head as he examined Sienna more closely as he said, "Somehow I doubt that I'll hate you, I have too many things to hate, including the monsters that shredded about 2 feet of my upper and lower intestines about a year ago. I frankly have no desire to run into those things again."
The bartender returned again, a beer in each hand, and set one each in front of Sienna and the other man, then turned to Tam, pointing a finger at him. "You okay, hon?" she asked, eyeing the empty shot glass in front of him.
Tam looked at the bartender and nodded as he said, "You have my thanks, but three is enough for me for now. I think I'll just sit around if it's alright with you."
Eyeing Sienna and their other companion momentarily, the bartender nodded. "All right, but make room for the paying customers if it gets crowded over here again, 'kay?" she said politely as she turned to respond to another man down the bar who was flagging her down.
Tam nodded to the bartender and replied, "Of course miss, not a problem at all."
Sienna had already drained the remnants of her previous beer by this point, and had shoved the glass away from her to make room for the next. Grinning again, she gave the Gartagen a sideways look. "God damn, you got any parts that ain't been blown up, stabbed, eaten, or whatever?" she chided, lifting the new full glass off the bar, but rather than lift it to drink, no sooner than she finished her sentence, out of nowhere she slapped the bar hard with her free hand, wheeling in her seat to face the tall man. "And fer frak's sake, would you say somethin'?" she shouted at him in a tone that couldn't seem to decide whether it was being playful or was genuinely annoyed.
The tall man twitched with a start as the young woman in front of him smacked the wooden surface, his own beer in hand, and looked with slightly widened eyes at Sienna with a broadening smile. "Uh, yeah," he replied. "I'm uh, I'm Tim."
Sienna sputtered slightly. "Tim?" she repeated mockingly, then looked back over at Tam as if sharing an inside joke with him, even though Tam had no way of knowing just what it was. Looking back at Tim, she laughed aloud. "Tim and Tam," she repeated, and swayed in her seat again, laughing uncontrollably.
Tam looked at Sienna and shrugged before replying. "A few things haven't been damaged, namely my face and some parts below the belt, but most of the rest of me is pretty covered in some impressive scars."
However, the young captain didn't appear to hear his answer. Fits of erratic laughter rocked her shoulders up and down, and she set the glass down on the bar, folding her left arm across her chest, propping her right elbow up in her hand as she covered her mouth with her other palm, by the looks of it trying to contain herself. For a second it looked as if she was going to stop, then she squeezed her eyes so tightly closed again that a few tears even leaked out as she was overcome with another fit of hysterical laughter again.
Tim, on the other hand, looked just as confused as he did amused. "Jeez, woman," he said with a grin, looking over at Tam with a shrug. "I didn't think it was that funny," he said to him over Sienna, grinning.
Tam looked at Sienna and chuckled and replied wth, "Well at least we're not Flim and Flam."
Raising his glass to the Gartagen, Tim laughed lightly and took a drink, eyeing the still-giggling Sienna. "True enough," he replied after the foamy brew came away from his lips, and he rested the glass back on the bar, still watching the captain with grin. "You gonna be okay there?"
It took Sienna another few seconds to compose herself, laughter still sputtering out of her in erratic bursts, and her face was still bright red. But she finally managed to clear her throat, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands, and exhaled through puffed cheeks with another titter. "Oh, man," she practically wheezed, looking over at the stubble-faced, hardy-looking man's upswept eyebrows and powerful shoulders, still grinning. "Yeah, yeah, I'm good," she continued, shaking her head at herself, almost like she was aware of how silly she was behaving on some level, but couldn't quite get it under control. "Priceless..."
Tam snickered a bit as Sienna continued laughing like a madwoman. "I try," was all he said in response.
Taking another long breath, Sienna forced herself to calm down around yet another uncharacteristically goofy giggle, and shook her head, draining an impressive portion of her beer in one gulp before slamming it back onto the bar.
On her other side, Tim continued to grin. "So, I heard you call her 'Captain' before you tossed that other asshole," he said to Tam. "You guys shipmates or something? No offense, hon, but you don't look seasoned enough to be running a ship."
"Frak you," Sienna fired back without hesitation or emotion, her vacant eyes not focused on any particular thing in front of her, and suppressed another hiccough.
Tam nodded to Tim before replying, "We are indeed shipmates and I think you'd be surprised, many people are far more seasoned than you'd think just by simple appearance alone."
"I guess that's true," Tim replied, taking a moderate sip of his own beverage, while Sienna just gave Tam an odd look that, while it still smacked of dubious, sarcastic amusement, had a strange quality of appreciation mixed in. "What kind of ship do you run?"
"Cargo, odd jobs, whatever the frak I please," Sienna responded to Tim, though she only briefly glanced his direction, cupping her hand around the glass that sat in front of her as she leaned on her elbows. "Just picked this guy up recently," she added, nodding her head sideways in the Gartagen's direction, "and he ain't been nothin' short in entertainment so far."
"Heh, that's true, I do try my best to be the plucky comic relief while also being a great mobile heavy metal collection point," Tam replied with a slight smile.
"An' the only one who ain't been 'round long 'nuff to think I'm a psychotic bitch," Sienna added, though it wasn't clear whether she was entirely kidding or not.
Tim furrowed his brow at the last comment, looking quizzically at Tam, getting no eye contact from Sienna.
Tam shrugged and looked back just as quizzically, "I have no idea why she thinks that of herself," he said with a slight sigh.
"Oh come on, Tam," Sienna spat, suddenly sounding much more annoyed than amused, sitting back upright as she glared at the Gartagen. "Wake the frak up. How have you missed it?"
Tam shrugged and looked back at Sienna calmly before replying. "Quite frankly because I've never seen you act in any way psychotic, and that's speaking as someone with personal knowledge of the ways a psychotic person can act."
The young captain sneered, shaking her head as she looked back at her beer, picking it up and holding it in midair as she responded. "I didn't say I am a goddamn psycho," she said. "I said tha's what all them slack-jawed idiots think I am. Goddamn rabble cain't follow the simplest frackin' instructions I give 'em, the first mate up an' decides he's bailin' out because I don't want him lordin' over me like a goddamn father figger," she continued, slowly turning her eyes back to Tam, "and two of the crew are robots. Robots with personalities, if you call 'em that. One of 'em takes every goddamn thing I say in some goofy-ass literal way, and the other one is such a frackin' child I swear I'd do better to hire an eight year old. Up an' threw a tantrum when I said he weren't allowed in private areas, 'specially when someone's takin' a goddamn shower or somethin'. Raided my cabin when I wasn't in thar, shredded my sheets and rifled through my goddamn clothes."
Tim just watched wide-eyed as the young woman launched into the unexpected angry tirade.
Slamming back the remainder of her glass in one drink, she then hit the bar with the empty vessel so hard it was a wonder it didn't shatter on impact. Turning her face back to Tam once more, she narrowed her eyes as she leaned a bit too far to one side, just barely managing to catch her balance before she fell completely over. "You tell me why I think that, now."
"Two robots? Who's the first robot? For that matter, who's the second?" Tam said somewhat confusedly. His face starting to curl into a bit of a rictus as he became confused. "I think your crew needs a lesson in discipline and actually listening to their captain, otherwise we're no better than a raggedy ass bunch of second rate scavengers, not the crew of a ship that wants to make money," he said with a slight snarl.
Sienna tossed an open, empty hand in the air in Tam's direction. "Thank you," she replied in exaggerated relief. "About goddamn time someone saw what I'm talkin' 'bout."
"You're welcome," Tam replied as he looked around the bar again to make sure nobody else was going to cause any more problems for the now rather drunk captain.
"Why don't you try to find a new crew, then?" Tim asked genuinely.
The question elicited an exasperated, condescending sideways look from Sienna. "Because like 'em or not, right now I ain't got a choice," she replied. "Long story, can't explain it to ya."
"I have time," Tim answered with a smile.
"Won't, then," Sienna snorted, flagging the bartender down for yet another drink, her face now looking even more droopy than ever. "Take your pick; I came here so I didn't hafta think about them assholes. I just want another goddamn drink."
Tim held his hands up defensively, surrendering to Sienna. "All right, all right," he said calmly, still with the friendly smile. "Sorry. I'll let it go." Looking across at Tam, the strapping Nepleslian leaned back just out of Sienna's peripheral vision, pointing at her back and mouthed the words, "Is she gonna be okay?"
Tam shrugged and mouthed back, "I'm not sure but I'll make sure she stays relatively intact and unabused by random twits."
"I can still hear y'all, y'know," Sienna scolded them, somewhere between playfully and irritably. Her next beer arrived, and the bartender lingered a few seconds to check on Tim and Tam, eyeing each of them with a questioning look.
Tam shrugged and looked at the bartender and decided it was time for another drink. "I could go for another one if you don't mind, madame," He said with a slight smile.
The saucy-looking bartender nodded and turned to go when Tim shook his head, declining the offer for now. In but a few seconds she placed another shot of the Gartagen liquor before him, and vanished once more.
Sienna hiccoughed violently again as she leaned further forward, slouching onto her elbows as she gazed at the umpteenth beer that had been set in front of her. She'd completely lost count of how many she'd had, clearly, nor did it appear like she cared. "So Tim," she slurred, looking over in the other Nepleslian's direction. "What are you, then?"
Tim looked puzzled. "Uh, what do you mean?"
"I mean what are you," Sienna repeated, raising her eyebrows and gesturing in midair with a sloppy, exaggerated roll of her hand. "Y'know, whaddya do? What puts money in yer pocket?"
"Oh," the man replied, finally catching on to what the drunken woman was asking him with a sheepish grin. "I run a crane at the warehouse down the street. Not exactly glamorous work, but it pays well, and on good days I hardly ever have to leave the control cabin."
Sienna wrinkled her nose, looking ahead of her again as she lazily lifted her beer from the bar. "Sounds boring," she replied nonchalantly, placing the rim of the glass on her lips again.
Tam shrugged at Sienna's reply before he spoke himself as he started drinking his next shot. "Boring can be good sometimes, especially when you need the downtime to recover from a hellish mission."
"Hmph," Sienna grunted, smirking at Tam around the rim of her glass, then put it back down. "'Zactly why I'm here."
"No, she's right," Tim replied, nodding in agreement. "It does get kind of tedious, even if it is good honest work. But it'd be pretty awesome to do what you guys do, I bet."
The young captain snorted slightly. "You kiddin'? It's a giant pain in the ass, running a ship."
"Better a pain in the ass than a pain in any number of other places I could list and show the scars for," Tam replied with a slight chuckle as he finished his drink and gestured for another one.
"Maybe, but your ass ain't near as cute'n shapely as mine is," Sienna replied whimsically. "Lot more tragic to mar it up." Tim flushed a touch red and didn't respond, but the spreading grin on his face was difficult to miss.
Tam chuckled. "Well this is true," he replied with a slight grin becoming evident.
Sienna snickered as she took another drink, putting the beer back a bit more slowly by this point. It wasn't readily evident whether her intake was slowing due to the limited space in her stomach, or the inhibiting effects of the alcohol on her motor controls, or even alcohol-induced nausea.
Tim's eyes wandered involuntarily down to Sienna's haunches, although he couldn't see much of them through her hips or the barstool. "Yeah, from what I can tell," he agreed.
Angling her face in Tim's direction with a raised eyebrow, Sienna looked him over as if he were an insect for a moment before grinning. "You forget what I did to that last guy?" she asked pointedly.
"Absolutely not," Tim replied quickly, holding his open hands in front of him with a laugh. "No way, no how. But you're the one that said it. I just agreed."
Tam just chuckled a bit as he watched the by-play between the two. "He's right though, you did bring it up, how can you expect a poor male brain to ignore that kind of invitation?" he said with a slight smile.
"Weren't no invitation," Sienna remarked, setting her glass down. She placed her hands on the bar and hoisted herself up on wobbly legs, and both Tim and Tam caught sight of the devilish grin on her face. When it appeared that she was about to topple to the floor once again, she turned on her heels, facing Tam, and stepped up onto the footrests of the barstool on which she was sitting, then slowly and seductively bent forward, making as obvious of a display of her hind end as she possibly could to Tim, placing one hand invitingly on her buttocks as she pushed it close to the man's face and wiggled it with a slow, deliberate waggle. "This is an invitation," she continued, snickering impishly.
Poor Tim was obviously not expecting such a brash display, looking more than a little shell shocked at Sienna's waggling haunches just inches from his chin. Even through his helpless look, however, the signs of a man conflicted about exactly how he should respond to such a thing were quite apparent, and he had to visibly fight off the furious blush on his cheeks as well as keep his hands firmly planted on his thighs as he stared down at the young woman's trunk.
Rising back to her full height, and still standing on the footrests of the barstool, Sienna laughed even louder as she looked down at Tim through strands of hair in her face with a predatory, come-hither grin. "Get the difference?" she asked, looking back over at Tam with a sloppy wink.
Tim just stared dumbly up at her, grinning like a schoolboy as he nodded slowly. "Damn, girl," he croaked
Tam smiled and tilted his head as one catlike eye winked back at Sienna and a twinkle shone in their depths. "Got it," was all he managed to get out without falling over laughing at Tim's reaction.
"Good," Sienna replied with another completely out-of-character giggle, then awkwardly started to rotate herself so that she could step down from the stool. "Then you-- whoop!!!"
Just as quickly as she began her last sentence, the barstool kicked out from beneath her, eliciting a surprised yelp from the young woman as her heels followed it briefly, then went straight out in front of her on her way to the ground. Tim leaped to his feet on reflex and reached out to try to catch her, but fumbled the falling female, succeeding only in deflecting her descent away from the bar. It turned out to be fortuitous nontheless, as she narrowly missed smacking the back of her head on the bar by no more than an inch, and spun sideways on descent, landing hard on her right side with a loud grunt. The stool clattered away, crashing into a nearby table, rattling the drinks atop it enough to spill some of their contents, and the men surrounding the table jumped back in surprise. "Oh come on!" one of the squirrelly-looking ones exclaimed angrily.
"Dammit, watch what you're doin'!" another one shouted at the same time.
Tam got to his feet as well and moved to help Sienna up while glaring at the men who'd complained and analyzing which ones would be the higher level of threat as he snarled, "Can it you morons, she tripped so lay off."
"So get her drunk ass outta here!" one of the fat guys in the back shouted back.
Sienna was quite clearly a bit dazed from her fall, made worse by her inebriation. But after little more than just a few seconds, she started to laugh again, as if she found the near-brain trauma she'd almost suffered hilariously funny. Tim maneuvered to Sienna's other side, helping Tam lift her back up, and glared coldly in the direction of the jeers before looking back at the Gartagen. "Just ignore them. They're a bunch of assholes, but they're all bark."
Tam shrugged and looked at the idiot fat one who'd made the comment and snarled, "If I wanted shit out of you I'd pull it out of your large intestine through your mouth." With that he turned back to making sure Sienna wasn't severely hurt from her fall.
Aside from being sloppily intoxicated, Sienna was mostly unharmed from her fall, thanks in part to her relative inability to tense up and brace on impact. She lazily slipped one arm around the shoulders of Tim and Tam each, still laughing and giggling at her clumsy display. Over at the table where the loudmouth men were, one of them crowed with a sarcastic cry of fear. Another one laughed at the childish display, and clapped him on the back as some of them started to return to their seats.
"Best get your bitch back in her cage, man," another one called out nonchalantly.
"Can it assmouth, or I'll do to you what I did to the last loud mouthed twit," Tam called back.
Several more indistinct jeers and taunts came from the table, but even as they muttered their tough-guy jabber just quietly enough so that Tam couldn't quite make out what was being said, they gradually returned to their drinks and their own convesations. Evidently none of them were quite stupid enough to challenge the Gartagen after what they'd seen him do to Erik, but it seemed they fancied toeing the line just enough to salvage some of their egos.
Regardless, Sienna never seemed to notice or care about the way the men referred to her, and she hung there suspended lopsidedly between the tall Nepleslian and the much-shorter-than-her Gartagen, her hair falling gracelessly over her eyes and a sleepy-looking, silly grin on her face.
Tim steadied the young woman with one arm around her waist, and the other gently holding onto the sturdy hand clasping his other shoulder, and looked over at Tam. "I think maybe she's had enough, don't you?" he asked rhetorically with raised eyebrows.
"I'm thinking you might be right," Tam replied as he looked over at Sienna and how thouroughly sloshed she evidently was. "I think we should get home soonish before I need to throw more idiots into dumpsters" Tam said to Sienna.
Sienna guffawed derisvely, her head awkwardly rolling sideways to look at the Gartagen, as if it were on a loose spring. "If ya mean the ship, hell no," she replied sleepily. "Last thing I wanna do is go back an' deal with any a'them pricks today. I swear, that uppity Amelia crosses me one more time..." Her shoulder moved a bit, apparently with the effort to pantomine clocking an invisible person in front of her square in the jaw, judging by the way the hand draped around Tim's massive shoulders clenched up into a tight, shaky fist, but all she managed to do was just shuffle around between them a little. After a few failed attempts, she giggled again in apathetic surrender.
"We can go find somewhere else for the night at least," Tam replied calmly. "I can get us separate rooms so that you have your own space to sleep in."
"Waste of money," the captain replied, and then turned her eyes up at Tim, a catlike grin spreading on her lips. "I think I'd rather crash on this guy's couch."
Tim looked a bit surprised, but didn't protest for a moment. After some consideration, he looked over at Tam. "Well, my apartment isn't too far," he offered. "And I do have some space. If that's okay with you, I mean."
Sienna laughed exaggeratedly. "Oh come on, I wiggled my ass in yer face," she said. "Don't act all goddamn coy on me now."
Tam chuckled at Sienna's reply to Tim's befuddlement. "That would work, hell I can sleep pretty much anywhere, just find me a nice rock as a pillow," Tam replied with a slight grin on his face.
"Nah, I wouldn't do that," Tim answered with an amused grin, steadying Sienna once more as she staggered again. "We can go close out our tab, and I'll take you guys there so we can get her settled in to sleep this off."
"I ain't plannin' on goin' to sleep yet, y'know," Sienna interjected with a sly, if somewhat prolonged wink at the big man. Tim's cheeks flushed a bright red, and he looked a bit apprehensively in Tam's direction, with a subtle shake of his head, doing his best to indicate that his intentions were honorable.
Tam looked at Tim, then looked at Sienna and shrugged. "I'm just along for the ride at this point," he replied to Tim's obvious concern.
Tim nodded, and slowly llifted Sienna's arm from his shoulders, which Sienna either allowed indifferently, or was completely oblivious to for the moment. "Can you, uh," he asked hesitantly. "Can you get her for a minute? I'll take care of the drinks."
"I got her," Tam replied as he just held her steady with one arm around her, not really exerting much of his strength since he wasn't trying to crush her ribcage by accident. The captain allowed herself to be transferred over to the shorter Gartagen, involuntarily holding onto Tam's neck and shoulder a bit tighter as she slumped against him.
As Tim freed himself from Sienna, he took the few steps forward back to the bar, but the moment he was more or less in front of the captain, her free hand reached out, and before Tam realized what she was doing, grabbed a liberal pinch full of the Nepleslian's backside, giving it a sharp squeeze. Tim jumped in surprise, his cheeks now furiously and brightly colored red, and with a nervous grin, he stepped to the side so he'd be outside of arm's reach. Sienna just giggled again.
Tam chuckled a bit as he watched the biplay between the two. Tam just continued to stand there to make sure that Sienna didn't hit the floor.-- again -- as Tim took care of the bill. Then it would be off to the stranger's apartment to babysit the plastered, and apparently frisky, young woman.
Cigarette smoke billowed throughout the dimly lit, seedy bar tucked away beneath an aging building on a moderately-trafficked street in Sector Four's industrial area, surrounded by old scrap dealer shops, electronics repair booths, and a plethora of homogenous dry-cleaners and laundromats. Even though Dawn Station was in Yamatai space, where tobacco was outlawed, the local security forces typically turned a blind eye to the less-legitimate dealings within its walls, provided that they kept the riff-raff contained and distracted. The bar itself was mostly frequented by warehouse hands, truck drivers, and other assorted blue-collar rabble, happily soaking up the hard-earned pay that the rough-looking men and women squandered away when their shifts ended. Dingy faux-wooden chairs and barstools furnished the modestly-sized venue, but the most prominent feature was the huge U-shaped bar ringed with taps, drinking glasses, and people eager for another round. The whole place reeked of tobacco, booze, and sweat, and other than the bright glow of halogen lamps tucked away under the rim of the bar, bathing the area in a muted, dim whitish-purple glow, most of the light fixtures in the establshment didn't work. In a haphazard pattern, vidscreens all showing different channels of depraved entertainment hung from the ceiling, attracting vacant stares from a few of the patrons nearest to them, but largely ignored.
From the door, one could see Sienna's tank-topped torso slightly hunched over the left side of the bar, seated at a barstool, her eyelids looking a touch heavy as she took the half-empty glass of beer away from her lips and set it back down on the worn and fading bar with a thud. Reaching up with her left hand, she pushed the hair that had fallen over her eyes aside, tucked what little she could behind her ear as she glanced at the massive bearded man who had just taken a seat next to her, and eyed his powerful but unpleasantly corpulent physique with a strangely amused sneer.
"Hey buddy," she said, her words slightly slurred. "Spare a smoke?"
The black-bearded man, dressed in a filthy white T-shirt that looked as if it were about to split around his ample belly and a black sleeveless vest, looked over at her, pausing for a moment as if considering his response. "Sure, sweet thang," he said finally, reaching into the breast pocket of his vest and producing a pack of cigarettes. Rapping its end on the bar a few times, he flicked one out of the pack with his thumb and offered it to her. "Need a light?"
Sienna grinned and nodded as she plucked the rolled stick of tobacco from the pack and placed it lightly between her lips. "Please," she replied, though her tone was somewhat misaligned with what one would regard as polite.
The bearded fat man already had a lighter in his other hand, and reached across to comply. Sienna had to suppress a snicker at how he seemed to strain slightly at the mere act of rotating his torso, but she leaned forward and touched the tip of the cigarette to the little flame, drawing on it until it lit. "Thanks," she said, and leaned back as she removed the cigarrette from her lips with her index and middle finger, twisting her mouth sideways to blow a stream of smoke away from the fat man's face, and gave him a grin.
Tam was wandering through Sector Four, wondering what people found so intriguing about this station, plus it gave him a chance to look for locations to possibly look for objects to make improvised weapons out of in case they were needed. He noticed a bar and as he started to walk by he happened to glance in and noticed Sienna sitting at the bar. She was the only person from the Veil that he'd really had much contact with so he decided to walk in and see what she was up to. He lightly walked over to her after making sure his gloves were still fully covering his talons before tapping her on the shoulder and said, with a slight smile, "Hello again, wasn't expecting to find you this far away from home."
The tap on her shoulder caused Sienna to glance back indifferently, still holding the cigarette, and regard Tam from the side of her face. His statement, however, elicited a broad grin. "That's your angle?" she remarked wryly. "Walk up and say 'ain't seen you 'round here before'?" Turning slightly in her seat to better face him, the grin remained as she leaned her left elbow back on the bar, and put the cigarette between her lips once again. Even in the low light, Tam noticed that her eyes lacked the hawklike alertness they'd had earlier that day, and she looked much more unwound, even slightly wobbly. It was more than obvious she'd had more than a few drinks already.
Tam cocked his head to the side, eyeing Sienna carefully as his eyes narrowed slightly in mild confusion before he answered, "Angle, what do you mean by my angle?" He then decided it was time to be a bit of a smartass, so he leaned his head to one side while his torso swiveled and bent to where he was leaning to the side at a 70% angle or so before he asked in a flat tone, "Is this what you meant by 'angle,' or was it something else?" Regardless of her answer to his remarks he decided that he would probably stick around to make sure that the somewhat inebriated woman made it back to the ship intact rather than falling into a hole or some other such incident.
Sienna rolled her eyes and shook her head, but her grin widened slightly nonetheless. "You're a retard," she commented, then nodded to the empty seat next to her, opposite the fat man, before turning back around to face the bar once again, and picked up her drink. "I was aimin' to avoid the lot of y'all for long as I could, but if I gotta talk to one of you, at least it's the one I can stand." Raising the glass, she almost put it to her lips before she suddenly realized the cigarette was still there, and plucked it out, looking at the narcotic in each hand as if weighing some hefty decision for a second or two before deciding to drain the rest of her beer with one toss back.
Tam chuckled slightly before sitting down on the seat that Sienna had nodded at. "I tend to stick around like a bad smell, I show up on the wind and disappear just like that as well. I am glad to at least be somewhat bearable in the way of company," Tam replied with a slight smile that didn't manage to bear any of his teeth. He had found that showing some of his more...esoteric "modifications" had a tendency to make people give him frightened looks and shrink away from him. He looked at what the bar had available to drink and pondered, his enhanced digestive system would metabolize basically anything another carbon based race could eat or drink but some things never changed and he preferred drinks that reminded him of being back home so he looked to see if the bar had any Pygrinkamesh available, if it did then he'd order a double shot of it.
Lowering the now-empty glass as well as her chin once more, she thumped the vessel back to the bar pointedly, leveling her eyes on the nearest bartender, a dark-skinned woman who was trying entirely too hard to make herself look younger and more attractive than she was. When the black-haired and pigtailed bartender heard the thump, she looked over at Sienna, and with nothing more than raised eyebrows and one lifted finger, she silently asked over the bar's noise if she needed to bring another. Sienna nodded, holding up two fingers, then tilted her hand to point at Tam as well. The bartender nodded and headed for the tap.
Sienna took a long draw of her cigarette, appearing to ignore Tam for a few seconds before exhaling, tendrils of smoke puffing from her parted lips and nostrils as she looked lazily back over at the Gartagen. For no discernible reason, she snickered quietly. "So you get bored on the ship or something? Or you just miss me that much?" she chided.
Tam looked over at Sienna and smiled slightly before replying. "I suppose you could say it was a combination of the two. You are far more interesting to be honest in comparison to the overly tall half winged woman with the horrible speech patterns and the somewhat robotic, androgynous thing that is the doctor." Tam nodded to the bartender and as he noticed a bottle of Pygrinkamesh up on one of the shelves he pointed to it and a highball glass and held up two fingers to indicate how much depth of alcohol he wanted. He considered offering it to Sienna to see her reaction but he wasn't sure if the human's system could handle the shock.
The pigtailed bartender had just finished pouring Sienna's next beer and was about to draw another one from the tap for Tam when she caught his gesture, and nodded, setting the glass aside and moving to the bottle the Gartagen indicated.
The young captain laughed out loud and shook her head again in disdain, looking out across to the other side of the bar. "Damned if that ain't the worst compliment I ever got," she said dryly, tapping the ashes from her cigarette into a nearby ashtray. With raised eyebrows she looked back over at Tam, still grinning. "Best stick to your own species, I'd suggest."
Tam grinned back for a moment, but then his face fell a bit as well before he replied. "I never did do very well with my own species, I tended to end up getting myself in trouble. I do apologize if I've given offense."
"What makes you think you ain't gettin' yourself in trouble now?" Sienna asked with a raised eyebrow, and still grinning as she brought the cigarette up to her lips again.
"You haven't punched me, stabbed me, thrown me in the brig, made me clean toilets with my tongue, or left me with 200 displeased puggles, I'd say so far I'm doing all right," Tam replied with his own slight smile.
Her raised eyebrow arched even more sharply as Sienna took another drag on the cigarette. Around the burning roll of paper, her mouth remained curled upwards in the amused smile, but the bridge of her nose crinkled simultaneously in a slight sneer, and she shook her head with a roll of her eyes. "Not yet," she commented, exhaling the smoke as she looked nonchalantly away from Tam, idly watching a goateed young Nepleslian in the far corner of the place, trying to impress a booth full of dumb-looking young women with bombastic stories and carefully thought-out poses he was trying to make look normal. From the expressions on the young ladies' faces and the way a couple of them laughed occasionally, he was having at least some success. Her grin turned sideways as she continued. "You ask anyone else on the crew, it ain't but a matter of time. They all think I'm frackin' nuts." Just then the bartender arrived with another tall glass of beer for Sienna, and a thin cylinder of whatever passed for Pygrinkamesh there for Tam. Making a point of leaning forward to display her ample, if rather leathery cleavage spilling out over the low-cut shirt she wore for anyone nearby to see, she placed the drinks in front of each patron, then raised her eyebrows as she stood up, giving Sienna a hesitant, questioning thumbs-up. Sienna said nothing in reply, only nodded with a dismissive wave of the cigarrette clasped between her index and middle fingers. Suddenly, with a delayed look of puzzlement, she turned her eyes back over at Tam. "What the hell are 'puggles'?"
"They are Gartagen children, and they are also one of the biggest hazards to homeless Gartagens on our homeworld, they are small masses of muscle, claws, and teeth and they're as likely to want to play as want to eat your arm off," Tam replied as he took his drink and drank it in one swift swallow. "I'm pretty much considered nuts myself, at least by most normal Gartagens that is," Tam said with a slight smile.
Sienna's eyebrows raised high on her forehead again at the response. "Good lord, how did y'all evolve like that?" she asked, mostly with a rhetorical tone, shaking her head. "And I thought human kids were a pain." She reached forward and picked up her glass, holding it in her hand a few inches over the bar as if pondering something, then just chuckled once with a shrug.
"Side effect of...well nuking the everloving hell out of ourselves a few generations ago. When there's nothing to eat you learn to subsist on what is available, including each other. One of the sadder episode's in my species's history," Tam replied with a slight sigh before gesturing to the bar tender to ask for another one.
"Heh," Sienna replied, taking a moderate drink of her own beverage, her eyes not focused on anything in particular as far as the Gartagen could tell. "Least we got that in common. Here I thought humans were the experts on killin' each other. S'a wonder we're still around at all." The fat man that she had bummed the cigarette from stood up and walked away, though there was still a small amount of beer left in his own glass. It wasn't apparent whether or not he was leaving for good, or just going to the bathroom.
"I'm not sure our reasons were necessarily good, but we recovered and made our way into space," Tam replied as he watched the fat man walk away, somewhat warily since the man said nothing at all while he was listening to the conversation. Tam started fidgeting with his gloves a little bit, almost unnoticeably unless someone was watching closely before settling back into his seat and turning back to look at Sienna.
Placing her glass back on the bar, the young captain pressed her cigarette between her lips again and left it there, talking around it with one eye narrowed slightly against the billowing smoke, and folded her arms on the surface. "Y'know, vermin and germs are just as resilient," she said wryly with a sideways look at Tam. "Some of the worst things in the universe are the toughest to kill."
"This is quite true enough, although I consider myself to be remarkably tough to kill, all things considered. Frankly I'm lucky to be alive to be here talking to you," Tam said as he smiled a bit and looked around the bar at the people nearby. He shrugged and simply waited for his next drink, he was curious how the captain would react if he offered a drink to her.
Sienna snickered dubiously, taking another puff from her dwindling cigarette and exhaling through her nose. "And just why the hell am I so special?" she asked with a sardonic edge to her voice.
"Well because I find you intriguing personally. I mean honestly, I shouldn't have ever made it off that jungle planet alive at all, I've got...some substantial damage from previous missions that made that world far worse to my health than to many of my shipmates who died. So for rescuing me from there I have to thank you once more," Tam replied with a slight grimace as an involutary twitch rippled through his torso and pulled at the mass of scar tissue there.
"Psh," the young woman scoffed dismissively, watching as the bartender brought another shot of the weird-looking liquor and set it before Tam. "You paid for it, it was business. It don't mean nothin' more than that," she told him, dragging the last bit from her cigarette before snuffing it end-first in the ashtray.
"Maybe to you, however you made the decision to land, for all I knew you could have just taken the first half of the deposit and left me on that planet, and nobody else would have known any different. It may have simply been business to you, but to me it was a bit more than that," Tam replied as he picked up the shot and gestured. "Would you care to try something from my homeworld?" he asked with a small smile.
"No offense," Sienna replied, eyeing the shot in front of him, "but I seen you throw crates the size of a small car over yer head. I ain't touching whatever it is you drink." A wry grin spread on her lips again, and she winked slightly as she picked up her glass once more, holding it a few inches from her mouth as she continued. "Besides, I buy my own drinks." With that, she took another long pull from her glass, and when she set it down, she held back a violent hiccough, succeeding in containing the noise, but her shoulders jerked up in a brief spasm before she cleared her throat, wobbling slightly in her seat once more.
"'None taken, this is nothing special, just a high proof alcohol," Tam replied as he looked at Sienna with at least some mild concern as she wobbled in her seat he was ready to catch her, just in case she managed to topple over. He shrugged and slammed the double shot of 196 proof alcohol down like it was water.
In an instant Sienna regained her balance, snickering again for no reason before pushing her hair out of her eyes again, just as the vacant seat next to her was re-occupied, not by the fat man, but by a square-jawed young Nepleslian man with a shaved head and sporting a faded canvas jacket and a confident grin. "Well, I was gonna offer to buy you one, honey," the young man said loudly enough to catch her attention, causing Sienna to slowly turn her head towards him, and look him over with mild disdain. "But instead, you mind if I just sit next to ya?"
Sienna raised an eyebrow, her grin fading a bit as she regarded the pass the newcomer was making as if unsure of whether he was serious or not. "Think it's taken," she said, looking lazily around the bar for any sign of the big bearded man. Seeing none, she shrugged and looked back at him just long enough to answer before turning back to her beer again.
"No problem, I'll move if he comes back," the young man replied, flashing her a charming smile. "I'm Erik."
"Hey, good for you," Sienna dismissively answered without even the courtesy of looking at him, picking her beer up again and starting another drink.
Tam looked the young man over and shrugged, before gesturing to the bartender once more for another drink, although this time when she came over he pulled a small vial from one of his copious pockets and had it ready to pour into his drink.
Erik turned his face slightly to the side, still smiling and obviously undaunted by Sienna's deflection. Glancing in Tam's direction, he leaned in a little closer. "Not big on names, that's cool, that's cool. Who's your friend over there, then?" he asked.
Sienna leaned away from Erik as he pulled closer, looking sideways at him in turn. "Twin brother," she replied, slowing grinning at him in the manner a panther might bear its teeth in warning. "See the resemblance?"
Tam grinned at that, he was waiting for the guy to try something stupid. Meanwhile he continued to wait for his drink as he started twirling the vial in his fingers.
Either playing off Sienna's sarcastic retort as a joke, or truly oblivious to her disinterest, Erik laughed loudly. "Yeah, yeah, think I do," he replied, then flashed his cocky smile at the bartender as she returned with Tam's third shot. "Beer here, and get this pretty lady here one on me," he told her.
"Already got one," Sienna replied in very mocking, singsong tone of voice, swinging her mostly full glass in the air like a pendulum for both the bartender and Erik to see.
"C'mon, whatever you want. You sure?" Erik insisted, leaning his elbow on the bar as he turned to face Sienna, doing a poor job of concealing the way his eyes wandered over her body.
Tam took his next shot and cracked open the vial, pouring the contents into the alcohol, he'd always hated the taste of the Art of Death's signature cocktail and knew that the first two shots of the extremely potent alcohol would have at least somewhat deadened his sense of taste and the third would then be able to mask the terrible taste of the deadly-to-most-others concoction that he was going to be ingesting. He eyed the man Erik askance wondering just what he thought he was doing. "Thank you ma'am" he said to the bartender, realizing that he'd been rather rude previously.
The bartender smiled sweetly at Tam and returned to her work, while Sienna turned her head fully towards Erik, staring flatly back at him. "Positive," she replied. "Mind your own drinks, dude."
Erik shrugged and sat back upright, admiring Sienna's form once more before nodding. "Suit yourself," he said nonchalantly, but didn't turn away, remaining facing her with one elbow on the bar, his fingers intertwined.
Sienna shook her head and noted the vial Tam was dumping into his next shot. "What, the stuff they give you ain't strong enough?" she asked, glancing up at him quizzically, then back at the liquor.
Tam smiled slightly at Sienna's question and shook his head slightly left and right, "It's simply a horrible tasting medication that I have to take for my condition" he replied before sending a message to Sienna's PHC
The captain appeared both surprised and slightly amused at the reply, but before she answered her PHC chimed with Tam's message. Taking another long drink of her beer, she placed the glass down and waved a hand over it with a groan, apparently thinking it might have been someone from the Veil with yet another problem. She blinked hard a few times, trying to clear her vision enough to read the tiny floating letters, but when she noticed it was from Tam, she frowned. "Dammit, I'm sittin' right here, why'd you--" she started, then appeared to realize the gist of what was in the message, even if she was too cloudy-minded to read it in full. "--oh. Heh, gotcha."
Meanwhile, Erik's wandering eyes weren't taking a break as he plotted his next move, taking no notice of the message.
Tam then started to drink his drink, trying to drink as rapidly as he could while fighting off shudders as the toxins coursed through his body. One of the lesser known side effects for him of the Genewashes he'd been through was to make his body extremely efficient at absorbing and repurposing toxins he ingested although he couldn't ingest them too rapidly or it would still kill him. He'd finish his drink and set it down before watching the man Erik like a hawk.
Sienna watched the Gartagen drink the concoction, her nose slowly wrinkling as she saw how unpleasant the sensation must have been to make him react in such a way. When he finally finished it, she slowly shook her head with a cluck of her tongue. "Damn," she said in mild amazement. "Now I'm real glad I didn't take the first one."
Tam smiled slightly. "The drink itself isn't that bad, just the medicine tastes like week old spoiled cider. I don't understand why they make it taste so bad though," he said with a wry grin.
"Killer, man," Erik chimed in as his beer arrived, then raised his glass to Tam. "Dunno if I'd wanna go drink to drink with you."
Sienna groaned, her eyes rolling back into her head as she sank in her seat slightly. Looking back over her shoulder, she wobbled again very slightly as she leveled the cool gaze at the interloper again. "You still here?" she asked, sounding a bit more annoyed now. "Go find someone else to bother."
"Ain't nobody else in here looks as good as you, baby," he said with the smarmy grin again, winking at her. "And come on, you can't play the ice queen all night. You been sitting here all alone since I got here. Saw you right as I walked in."
"Charmed," Sienna said sarcastically. "Now seriously. Piss off already."
Tam finally decided to say something to the annoying man. "You've been asked to leave, I recommend you do it," was all he said as he gave the man a glare that was so cold it made liquid helium look positively balmy by comparison.
Erik's grin vanished, and he looked more than a bit taken aback by Tam's sudden intervention. "Hey hey, man, ease off," he said. "I'm trying to talk to the lady here. You mind?"
"As a matter of fact I do mind, I do believe you've been told to back off no less than 3 times by the lady, which to me means that it's time for you to walk away before you get yourself hurt," Tam said with a slight snarl edging into his voice.
"Look here, punk--" Erik snapped back, losing his faux-charming persona and revealing himself as little more than a thug.
"Shut the frak up, both of ya," Sienna interrupted loudly, throwing her hands up in front of her, the sudden movement nearly causing her to fall back out of her chair in her mostly drunken state. Catching herself at the last second with both hands on the bar, she sat up bolt upright, her hair falling over both of her eyes as she inhaled sharply through her nose, as if fighting off a sudden, mild wave of nausea. With another short, random laugh that sounded uncharacteristically like a giggle, she sat still for a moment, hair still over her eyes and a dumb grin on her face. "Just shut up." Calmly, she reached up and pushed her hair aside, looking over at Tam. "The chivalry is touching'n all, but ain't no need for it. I can handle this."
"I'm sure you can," another man chimed in. Sienna looked behind her to see a tall, strapping Nepleslian with broad shoulders, short cropped brown hair, and a stubble-framed chiselled face. Powerful looking forearms capped with big masculine hands jutted out from beneath a tight fitting gray T-shirt with an Aethersperm emblem across the chest, and faded blue jeans covered a sturdy looking pair of legs. The man smiled a smile that was friendly, but also carried a dire warning of what would happen if Erik challenged either him, Tam, or Sienna further. With a knowing wink at Sienna, he looked at Erik calmly, and put one of his big hands on the bar, placing a barrier between the young man and Sienna. "Let's not let things get out of hand, no need to take this any further," he said quietly. "There's plenty of other ladies here, but this one just isn't interested. I'm sure you're man enough to handle one rejection."
Tam looked at the new guy with a somewhat baffled look on his face before nodding to Sienna as acceptance of her statement. "I'd hope he'd be man enough to handle rejection, otherwise he'd probably be sharing someone else he's wooed bed instead of trying to pick someone up in a bar," Tam said somewhat snarkily.
Erik looked at the newcomer, then at Sienna and Tam, bristling with anger to mask his damaged ego and at a loss for words for a few seconds. Sienna chuckled loudly at Tam's comment, blinking her heavy eyelids slowly, and kept her hands on the bar to steady herself.
"Fine," Erik sneered, standing from his seat and glaring indignantly at the young woman, the taller man who had just arrived pulling his arm back as he positioned himself just off-center of between him and Sienna, patiently waiting for him to be on his way. "You couldn't handle what I got to offer anyway, you cranky bitch," he added caustically.
Sienna glanced over at the shaved-scalped man with a raised eyebrow and an ear-to-ear grin, her eyes derisively wandering down his torso to the front of his pants. "Is that what you're offerin'?" she asked, unimpressed, turning her eyes up at his with one raised eyebrow. "You may wanna wear looser pants, then. Least that way that tiny little bump ain't so obvious."
Erik's eyes went wide in fury, and his cheeks flushed bright red at the insult. Tam simply smiled at the ignorant young man. "You're not very bright are you?" he asked with a slight tilt to his head as he listened to Sienna lambast the poor fool.
"You stay the hell out of this, lizard," Erik snapped at Tam.
The other man placed a hand on Erik's shoulder in an outwardly friendly manner than still managed to very clearly indicate that his conversation was officially over, and resisting would bring severe consequences. "Let's go man," he said calmly. "You're embarrassing yourself."
Tam looked over at Erik and simply tilted his head as he replied. "Why should I stay out of anything? You are the one harassing my friend, it is not I who is harassing one of your friends."
Erik wrenched his shoulder from the other man's hand and squared himself at Tam. Sienna, still sitting between them, appeared quite amused with the exchange, looking between the three men posturing at one another.
The headstrong young man thrust a finger threateningly at the Gartagen. "Because unless you want me to wipe that dumbass, toothy grin off your face," he hissed through clenched teeth, rotating his hand and pointing at Sienna's face with his thumb, "she won't be the only one with more'n she can handle, bub."
With Erik's thumb now inches from her face, Sienna's grin vanished, and she leaned back away from it, obviously displeased at how close he was standing. "Dude," she slurred, turning her eyes up towards him. "Back the hell off." Erik didn't seem to hear her, however.
Tam's grin now seemed like it was about to split his face in half as he looked at Erik as he replied. "You can try, but I can guarantee you won't like what happens if you try."
"Let's go. Now," the other man interjected, this time more sternly. "I'm not telling you again."
A somewhat forced laugh belted forth from Erik at Tam's threat, and whether it was out of pure stubborn stupidity or some kind of misdirected spite, none of them could be sure. But in response, Erik proceeded to defiantly step forward and press his abdomen into Sienna's side as he wrapped his right arm around her neck, and reached across with his left and grabbed a handful of her breast as he leaned in to forcibly kiss her.
As drunk as she was, Sienna was understandably surprised and more than a little angry, and her eyes went wide at the unwelcome advance. Before Erik managed to lock his mouth on hers, her left hand shot upwards, the heel of her palm connecting squarely with his chin, causing his head to snap backwards as if it were on a spring. Before he even had the chance to realize what had just happened, however, the same arm she had used to strike him was locked around his right tricep, hooking his arm at the elbow, and he cried out in sudden pain as the smaller woman tightened her arm and lifted, bending his elbow backwards painfully as she rose from her seat just enough to cause him to let go of her chest, bracing himself with his free hand chest-first against the bar, helplessly struggling to free himself from the arm-lock. He however only had the chance to get in one good throe of pain before Sienna's other hand had him by the back of his head, and thrust his face savagely into the bar. A sickening crack resounded as the man's nose shattered on impact, sending a small spray of blood in several directions along the worn wooden surface.
"Mind if I take out the trash Captain?" Tam asked as he gestured at the now broken nosed and likely somewhat dazed young idiot.
Releasing Erik's arm and shoving herself off of him, the tipsy captain stumbled back a few steps, off-balance. A furious scowl was on her face, and her breath was slightly ragged, but she nodded venomously waved a hand in the direction of the bald-headed man who was hunched over the bar cupping his bleeding face with his good hand, writhing and groaning in pain. "Be my g--" she started to say before she lost her balance entirely and toppled over onto her backside. When she landed with a thud on the floor, several patrons jumped out of the way, llifting and shielding their drinks from being knocked over. As if she'd already forgotten what had just happened, the anger all over her face dissipated, and she started to drunkenly laugh at her clumsiness.
Tam rose from his chair and turned to the writhing Erik, grabbing him by the small of his neck and hefting his idiotic ass into the air and heading for the door. "I'll be back, just taking the garbage out. He can sleep it off in the gutter," Tam said once he started walking.
A hearty cheer rose up from the crowd who had craned their necks to see what the commotion was, and quickly spread through the bar as the unknown Gartagen moved to literally throw the troublemaker out, followed quickly by raucous applause and hooting. The as yet unnamed third man, who had jumped aside at Sienna's unexpectedly violent attack, watched in abject shock as the violence ended abruptly, but looked more than a little entertained at the entire ordeal. Laughing quietly, he joined in the applause as well.
On either side of where Sienna lay sprawled on her back, a stocky, older man in a warehouse jumpsuit and an unremarkable looking man with glasses bent down and took hold of each of her arms, helping her back to her feet. The young woman, still giggling at herself, allowed them to do so, her head lolling slightly to one side before she blinked hard and worked on regaining her balance.
Tam reached the door of the bar and suiting actions to words, he aimed his somewhat floppy cargo at a nearby dumpster and with a slight forward twist of his body sent the young man sailing out over the street.
As if he wasn't already reeling from the shock of how poorly the very brief scuffle had gone for him, Erik screamed at the top of his lungs as he sailed through the air, thrown as easily as a sack of potatoes, all four of his limbs flailing helplessly, adding quite the comedic effect to the already somewhat humourous sight. His eyes widened even further as he saw the dumpster at the bottom of his downward arc; more likely, they widened upon realizing that he wasn't quite going to make it. His wails grew even louder in the seconds before the back of his head slammed hard into the outside wall of the garbage container, stopping his momentum, and he crumpled up like a ragdoll before collapsing in a whimpering heap on the curb.
Tam watched him slam into the container and simply remarked, "Oops, next time I need to use a bit more power it would appear. MAYBE NEXT TIME YOU'LL LISTEN WHEN SOMEONE TELLS YOU TO BACK OFF!" he shouted to the now insensate man in the heap on the curb before walking back inside the bar.
The two men helped Sienna back to her seat, the older one giving her a congratulatory pat on the back as they walked away. The bespectacled one turned to Tam with a huge grin, and nodded gratefully at him with a firm slap on the shoulder. "Nicely done, friend," he commented.
"Eh, it wasn't my best, I normally don't miss" Tam replied to the man with a slight grin as he walked back to Sienna. "I think we've both had enough to drink, perhaps it would be a good time to get back to the ship," he told the captain.
Clearing her throat and haphazardly adjusting her hair, Sienna slowly turned her head and scoffed. "Like hell it is," she replied, motioning to her still-mostly-full beverage on the bar. "I still got this one to finish, and," she continued, lowering her face down next to the glass and inspecting her glass and the liquid within from entirely too close a distance, blinking to focus her eyes, "I don't think I got any blood in it. You go on back if you want, but I'm keen on seein' if I can get you to do that again." She hiccoughed once more, picking up her drink and leaning forward on her elbow, propping herself up as she turned to more fully face him. Glancing towards the door, she giggled uncharacteristically again. "Tossed like a sack of goddamn potatoes..."
The tall man who had tried to intervene approached them again. "That was incredible," he complimented the two of them, grinning.
Sienna looked over her shoulder at the tall man, her ear to ear grin morphing into something of a more predatory nature. With a shrug, she dismissed the compliment, and patted the once-again empty seat next to her before turning back to Tam. The man obliged and took the seat offered to him.
Tam looked back at Sienna with a somewhat resigned gesture and a shrug before sayng "I'll stick around as long as you do, I don't have anything else to do personally and it is amusing throwing idiots around like they're toys. Plus I'm sure you might run into trouble if you try to walk back on your own."
"Yeah, okay, 'Dad'," the captain replied with sardonic emphasis, taking another swig of her beer. Swallowing it, she smacked her lips and leaned a little too far to one side. "Y'know, I ain't no fragile little flower or nothin'. I did just fine on my own afore you came along." Behind her, the tall man took the seat, folding his hands in front of him and nodding as the bartender offered him a drink amdist wiping up the splattered blood on the counter with a bleached towel.
"I can tell that, you did very well handling that punk, but even the best can always use a little backup, nobody can see what's behind them, so having someone to watch your back is always a good idea," Tam replied as he watched the others in the bar.
Sienna snorted at that. "What, Gartagens don't have necks'r somethin'?" she chastised. "Here, watch this." Setting her beer down, she held her hands up as if about to do a magic trick, letting her droopy eyes slowly open wide, then as if it were some kind of amazing feat, she slowly turned her head to look back over her left shoulder, then over her right. Looking back at him, she flourished. "Ta-da!" she exclaimed, giggling at herself. "Now I know there's that other big asshole sittin' behind me." With that, she turned towards the bar again, looking over at the other man with a wink.
The other man shook his head with a roll of his eyes, and chuckled. "Cute," he said.
"Heh," Sienna continued, holding her beer inches from her lips once more. "Besides, y'put someone to watch yer back, they're just as apt t'stab you in it," she added to Tam. "You'll figure that out 'ventually."
"We have necks, but if I have someone in front of me trying to kill me or beat the snot out of me, I'm going to be focused on him, not on the guy trying to sneak up and stab me in the back. Oh, I'm sure a number of people would love to stab me in the back, but I'm pretty sure you're not one of them." Tam replied with a slight grin as he looked at Sienna.
The captain took another drink as Tam spoke, waving at the distant bartender and pointing to her draining glass, not bothering to stop drinking as she did so. When she'd drained more than half of what was left, she set the glass down, snickering at Tam as it hit the bar with a clumsy thud. "Give it time," she replied, lazily turning her head only partway towards the Gartagen, but never making eye contact. "You'll hate my guts jus' asmmuch as the rest of them idiots, then you'll prolly think diff'rntly."
On her other side, the tall man waited for his drink, and watched Sienna with concerned amusement. He didn't say anything to her, let alone get near her, given what he'd just seen her do to the last person that invaded her personal space, but he leaned back and peered around her at Tam, wordlessly asking him if she was okay with raised eyebrows and but a gesture of his finger at the back of her head.
Tam shrugged at the man's gesture and slightly tilted his head as he examined Sienna more closely as he said, "Somehow I doubt that I'll hate you, I have too many things to hate, including the monsters that shredded about 2 feet of my upper and lower intestines about a year ago. I frankly have no desire to run into those things again."
The bartender returned again, a beer in each hand, and set one each in front of Sienna and the other man, then turned to Tam, pointing a finger at him. "You okay, hon?" she asked, eyeing the empty shot glass in front of him.
Tam looked at the bartender and nodded as he said, "You have my thanks, but three is enough for me for now. I think I'll just sit around if it's alright with you."
Eyeing Sienna and their other companion momentarily, the bartender nodded. "All right, but make room for the paying customers if it gets crowded over here again, 'kay?" she said politely as she turned to respond to another man down the bar who was flagging her down.
Tam nodded to the bartender and replied, "Of course miss, not a problem at all."
Sienna had already drained the remnants of her previous beer by this point, and had shoved the glass away from her to make room for the next. Grinning again, she gave the Gartagen a sideways look. "God damn, you got any parts that ain't been blown up, stabbed, eaten, or whatever?" she chided, lifting the new full glass off the bar, but rather than lift it to drink, no sooner than she finished her sentence, out of nowhere she slapped the bar hard with her free hand, wheeling in her seat to face the tall man. "And fer frak's sake, would you say somethin'?" she shouted at him in a tone that couldn't seem to decide whether it was being playful or was genuinely annoyed.
The tall man twitched with a start as the young woman in front of him smacked the wooden surface, his own beer in hand, and looked with slightly widened eyes at Sienna with a broadening smile. "Uh, yeah," he replied. "I'm uh, I'm Tim."
Sienna sputtered slightly. "Tim?" she repeated mockingly, then looked back over at Tam as if sharing an inside joke with him, even though Tam had no way of knowing just what it was. Looking back at Tim, she laughed aloud. "Tim and Tam," she repeated, and swayed in her seat again, laughing uncontrollably.
Tam looked at Sienna and shrugged before replying. "A few things haven't been damaged, namely my face and some parts below the belt, but most of the rest of me is pretty covered in some impressive scars."
However, the young captain didn't appear to hear his answer. Fits of erratic laughter rocked her shoulders up and down, and she set the glass down on the bar, folding her left arm across her chest, propping her right elbow up in her hand as she covered her mouth with her other palm, by the looks of it trying to contain herself. For a second it looked as if she was going to stop, then she squeezed her eyes so tightly closed again that a few tears even leaked out as she was overcome with another fit of hysterical laughter again.
Tim, on the other hand, looked just as confused as he did amused. "Jeez, woman," he said with a grin, looking over at Tam with a shrug. "I didn't think it was that funny," he said to him over Sienna, grinning.
Tam looked at Sienna and chuckled and replied wth, "Well at least we're not Flim and Flam."
Raising his glass to the Gartagen, Tim laughed lightly and took a drink, eyeing the still-giggling Sienna. "True enough," he replied after the foamy brew came away from his lips, and he rested the glass back on the bar, still watching the captain with grin. "You gonna be okay there?"
It took Sienna another few seconds to compose herself, laughter still sputtering out of her in erratic bursts, and her face was still bright red. But she finally managed to clear her throat, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands, and exhaled through puffed cheeks with another titter. "Oh, man," she practically wheezed, looking over at the stubble-faced, hardy-looking man's upswept eyebrows and powerful shoulders, still grinning. "Yeah, yeah, I'm good," she continued, shaking her head at herself, almost like she was aware of how silly she was behaving on some level, but couldn't quite get it under control. "Priceless..."
Tam snickered a bit as Sienna continued laughing like a madwoman. "I try," was all he said in response.
Taking another long breath, Sienna forced herself to calm down around yet another uncharacteristically goofy giggle, and shook her head, draining an impressive portion of her beer in one gulp before slamming it back onto the bar.
On her other side, Tim continued to grin. "So, I heard you call her 'Captain' before you tossed that other asshole," he said to Tam. "You guys shipmates or something? No offense, hon, but you don't look seasoned enough to be running a ship."
"Frak you," Sienna fired back without hesitation or emotion, her vacant eyes not focused on any particular thing in front of her, and suppressed another hiccough.
Tam nodded to Tim before replying, "We are indeed shipmates and I think you'd be surprised, many people are far more seasoned than you'd think just by simple appearance alone."
"I guess that's true," Tim replied, taking a moderate sip of his own beverage, while Sienna just gave Tam an odd look that, while it still smacked of dubious, sarcastic amusement, had a strange quality of appreciation mixed in. "What kind of ship do you run?"
"Cargo, odd jobs, whatever the frak I please," Sienna responded to Tim, though she only briefly glanced his direction, cupping her hand around the glass that sat in front of her as she leaned on her elbows. "Just picked this guy up recently," she added, nodding her head sideways in the Gartagen's direction, "and he ain't been nothin' short in entertainment so far."
"Heh, that's true, I do try my best to be the plucky comic relief while also being a great mobile heavy metal collection point," Tam replied with a slight smile.
"An' the only one who ain't been 'round long 'nuff to think I'm a psychotic bitch," Sienna added, though it wasn't clear whether she was entirely kidding or not.
Tim furrowed his brow at the last comment, looking quizzically at Tam, getting no eye contact from Sienna.
Tam shrugged and looked back just as quizzically, "I have no idea why she thinks that of herself," he said with a slight sigh.
"Oh come on, Tam," Sienna spat, suddenly sounding much more annoyed than amused, sitting back upright as she glared at the Gartagen. "Wake the frak up. How have you missed it?"
Tam shrugged and looked back at Sienna calmly before replying. "Quite frankly because I've never seen you act in any way psychotic, and that's speaking as someone with personal knowledge of the ways a psychotic person can act."
The young captain sneered, shaking her head as she looked back at her beer, picking it up and holding it in midair as she responded. "I didn't say I am a goddamn psycho," she said. "I said tha's what all them slack-jawed idiots think I am. Goddamn rabble cain't follow the simplest frackin' instructions I give 'em, the first mate up an' decides he's bailin' out because I don't want him lordin' over me like a goddamn father figger," she continued, slowly turning her eyes back to Tam, "and two of the crew are robots. Robots with personalities, if you call 'em that. One of 'em takes every goddamn thing I say in some goofy-ass literal way, and the other one is such a frackin' child I swear I'd do better to hire an eight year old. Up an' threw a tantrum when I said he weren't allowed in private areas, 'specially when someone's takin' a goddamn shower or somethin'. Raided my cabin when I wasn't in thar, shredded my sheets and rifled through my goddamn clothes."
Tim just watched wide-eyed as the young woman launched into the unexpected angry tirade.
Slamming back the remainder of her glass in one drink, she then hit the bar with the empty vessel so hard it was a wonder it didn't shatter on impact. Turning her face back to Tam once more, she narrowed her eyes as she leaned a bit too far to one side, just barely managing to catch her balance before she fell completely over. "You tell me why I think that, now."
"Two robots? Who's the first robot? For that matter, who's the second?" Tam said somewhat confusedly. His face starting to curl into a bit of a rictus as he became confused. "I think your crew needs a lesson in discipline and actually listening to their captain, otherwise we're no better than a raggedy ass bunch of second rate scavengers, not the crew of a ship that wants to make money," he said with a slight snarl.
Sienna tossed an open, empty hand in the air in Tam's direction. "Thank you," she replied in exaggerated relief. "About goddamn time someone saw what I'm talkin' 'bout."
"You're welcome," Tam replied as he looked around the bar again to make sure nobody else was going to cause any more problems for the now rather drunk captain.
"Why don't you try to find a new crew, then?" Tim asked genuinely.
The question elicited an exasperated, condescending sideways look from Sienna. "Because like 'em or not, right now I ain't got a choice," she replied. "Long story, can't explain it to ya."
"I have time," Tim answered with a smile.
"Won't, then," Sienna snorted, flagging the bartender down for yet another drink, her face now looking even more droopy than ever. "Take your pick; I came here so I didn't hafta think about them assholes. I just want another goddamn drink."
Tim held his hands up defensively, surrendering to Sienna. "All right, all right," he said calmly, still with the friendly smile. "Sorry. I'll let it go." Looking across at Tam, the strapping Nepleslian leaned back just out of Sienna's peripheral vision, pointing at her back and mouthed the words, "Is she gonna be okay?"
Tam shrugged and mouthed back, "I'm not sure but I'll make sure she stays relatively intact and unabused by random twits."
"I can still hear y'all, y'know," Sienna scolded them, somewhere between playfully and irritably. Her next beer arrived, and the bartender lingered a few seconds to check on Tim and Tam, eyeing each of them with a questioning look.
Tam shrugged and looked at the bartender and decided it was time for another drink. "I could go for another one if you don't mind, madame," He said with a slight smile.
The saucy-looking bartender nodded and turned to go when Tim shook his head, declining the offer for now. In but a few seconds she placed another shot of the Gartagen liquor before him, and vanished once more.
Sienna hiccoughed violently again as she leaned further forward, slouching onto her elbows as she gazed at the umpteenth beer that had been set in front of her. She'd completely lost count of how many she'd had, clearly, nor did it appear like she cared. "So Tim," she slurred, looking over in the other Nepleslian's direction. "What are you, then?"
Tim looked puzzled. "Uh, what do you mean?"
"I mean what are you," Sienna repeated, raising her eyebrows and gesturing in midair with a sloppy, exaggerated roll of her hand. "Y'know, whaddya do? What puts money in yer pocket?"
"Oh," the man replied, finally catching on to what the drunken woman was asking him with a sheepish grin. "I run a crane at the warehouse down the street. Not exactly glamorous work, but it pays well, and on good days I hardly ever have to leave the control cabin."
Sienna wrinkled her nose, looking ahead of her again as she lazily lifted her beer from the bar. "Sounds boring," she replied nonchalantly, placing the rim of the glass on her lips again.
Tam shrugged at Sienna's reply before he spoke himself as he started drinking his next shot. "Boring can be good sometimes, especially when you need the downtime to recover from a hellish mission."
"Hmph," Sienna grunted, smirking at Tam around the rim of her glass, then put it back down. "'Zactly why I'm here."
"No, she's right," Tim replied, nodding in agreement. "It does get kind of tedious, even if it is good honest work. But it'd be pretty awesome to do what you guys do, I bet."
The young captain snorted slightly. "You kiddin'? It's a giant pain in the ass, running a ship."
"Better a pain in the ass than a pain in any number of other places I could list and show the scars for," Tam replied with a slight chuckle as he finished his drink and gestured for another one.
"Maybe, but your ass ain't near as cute'n shapely as mine is," Sienna replied whimsically. "Lot more tragic to mar it up." Tim flushed a touch red and didn't respond, but the spreading grin on his face was difficult to miss.
Tam chuckled. "Well this is true," he replied with a slight grin becoming evident.
Sienna snickered as she took another drink, putting the beer back a bit more slowly by this point. It wasn't readily evident whether her intake was slowing due to the limited space in her stomach, or the inhibiting effects of the alcohol on her motor controls, or even alcohol-induced nausea.
Tim's eyes wandered involuntarily down to Sienna's haunches, although he couldn't see much of them through her hips or the barstool. "Yeah, from what I can tell," he agreed.
Angling her face in Tim's direction with a raised eyebrow, Sienna looked him over as if he were an insect for a moment before grinning. "You forget what I did to that last guy?" she asked pointedly.
"Absolutely not," Tim replied quickly, holding his open hands in front of him with a laugh. "No way, no how. But you're the one that said it. I just agreed."
Tam just chuckled a bit as he watched the by-play between the two. "He's right though, you did bring it up, how can you expect a poor male brain to ignore that kind of invitation?" he said with a slight smile.
"Weren't no invitation," Sienna remarked, setting her glass down. She placed her hands on the bar and hoisted herself up on wobbly legs, and both Tim and Tam caught sight of the devilish grin on her face. When it appeared that she was about to topple to the floor once again, she turned on her heels, facing Tam, and stepped up onto the footrests of the barstool on which she was sitting, then slowly and seductively bent forward, making as obvious of a display of her hind end as she possibly could to Tim, placing one hand invitingly on her buttocks as she pushed it close to the man's face and wiggled it with a slow, deliberate waggle. "This is an invitation," she continued, snickering impishly.
Poor Tim was obviously not expecting such a brash display, looking more than a little shell shocked at Sienna's waggling haunches just inches from his chin. Even through his helpless look, however, the signs of a man conflicted about exactly how he should respond to such a thing were quite apparent, and he had to visibly fight off the furious blush on his cheeks as well as keep his hands firmly planted on his thighs as he stared down at the young woman's trunk.
Rising back to her full height, and still standing on the footrests of the barstool, Sienna laughed even louder as she looked down at Tim through strands of hair in her face with a predatory, come-hither grin. "Get the difference?" she asked, looking back over at Tam with a sloppy wink.
Tim just stared dumbly up at her, grinning like a schoolboy as he nodded slowly. "Damn, girl," he croaked
Tam smiled and tilted his head as one catlike eye winked back at Sienna and a twinkle shone in their depths. "Got it," was all he managed to get out without falling over laughing at Tim's reaction.
"Good," Sienna replied with another completely out-of-character giggle, then awkwardly started to rotate herself so that she could step down from the stool. "Then you-- whoop!!!"
Just as quickly as she began her last sentence, the barstool kicked out from beneath her, eliciting a surprised yelp from the young woman as her heels followed it briefly, then went straight out in front of her on her way to the ground. Tim leaped to his feet on reflex and reached out to try to catch her, but fumbled the falling female, succeeding only in deflecting her descent away from the bar. It turned out to be fortuitous nontheless, as she narrowly missed smacking the back of her head on the bar by no more than an inch, and spun sideways on descent, landing hard on her right side with a loud grunt. The stool clattered away, crashing into a nearby table, rattling the drinks atop it enough to spill some of their contents, and the men surrounding the table jumped back in surprise. "Oh come on!" one of the squirrelly-looking ones exclaimed angrily.
"Dammit, watch what you're doin'!" another one shouted at the same time.
Tam got to his feet as well and moved to help Sienna up while glaring at the men who'd complained and analyzing which ones would be the higher level of threat as he snarled, "Can it you morons, she tripped so lay off."
"So get her drunk ass outta here!" one of the fat guys in the back shouted back.
Sienna was quite clearly a bit dazed from her fall, made worse by her inebriation. But after little more than just a few seconds, she started to laugh again, as if she found the near-brain trauma she'd almost suffered hilariously funny. Tim maneuvered to Sienna's other side, helping Tam lift her back up, and glared coldly in the direction of the jeers before looking back at the Gartagen. "Just ignore them. They're a bunch of assholes, but they're all bark."
Tam shrugged and looked at the idiot fat one who'd made the comment and snarled, "If I wanted shit out of you I'd pull it out of your large intestine through your mouth." With that he turned back to making sure Sienna wasn't severely hurt from her fall.
Aside from being sloppily intoxicated, Sienna was mostly unharmed from her fall, thanks in part to her relative inability to tense up and brace on impact. She lazily slipped one arm around the shoulders of Tim and Tam each, still laughing and giggling at her clumsy display. Over at the table where the loudmouth men were, one of them crowed with a sarcastic cry of fear. Another one laughed at the childish display, and clapped him on the back as some of them started to return to their seats.
"Best get your bitch back in her cage, man," another one called out nonchalantly.
"Can it assmouth, or I'll do to you what I did to the last loud mouthed twit," Tam called back.
Several more indistinct jeers and taunts came from the table, but even as they muttered their tough-guy jabber just quietly enough so that Tam couldn't quite make out what was being said, they gradually returned to their drinks and their own convesations. Evidently none of them were quite stupid enough to challenge the Gartagen after what they'd seen him do to Erik, but it seemed they fancied toeing the line just enough to salvage some of their egos.
Regardless, Sienna never seemed to notice or care about the way the men referred to her, and she hung there suspended lopsidedly between the tall Nepleslian and the much-shorter-than-her Gartagen, her hair falling gracelessly over her eyes and a sleepy-looking, silly grin on her face.
Tim steadied the young woman with one arm around her waist, and the other gently holding onto the sturdy hand clasping his other shoulder, and looked over at Tam. "I think maybe she's had enough, don't you?" he asked rhetorically with raised eyebrows.
"I'm thinking you might be right," Tam replied as he looked over at Sienna and how thouroughly sloshed she evidently was. "I think we should get home soonish before I need to throw more idiots into dumpsters" Tam said to Sienna.
Sienna guffawed derisvely, her head awkwardly rolling sideways to look at the Gartagen, as if it were on a loose spring. "If ya mean the ship, hell no," she replied sleepily. "Last thing I wanna do is go back an' deal with any a'them pricks today. I swear, that uppity Amelia crosses me one more time..." Her shoulder moved a bit, apparently with the effort to pantomine clocking an invisible person in front of her square in the jaw, judging by the way the hand draped around Tim's massive shoulders clenched up into a tight, shaky fist, but all she managed to do was just shuffle around between them a little. After a few failed attempts, she giggled again in apathetic surrender.
"We can go find somewhere else for the night at least," Tam replied calmly. "I can get us separate rooms so that you have your own space to sleep in."
"Waste of money," the captain replied, and then turned her eyes up at Tim, a catlike grin spreading on her lips. "I think I'd rather crash on this guy's couch."
Tim looked a bit surprised, but didn't protest for a moment. After some consideration, he looked over at Tam. "Well, my apartment isn't too far," he offered. "And I do have some space. If that's okay with you, I mean."
Sienna laughed exaggeratedly. "Oh come on, I wiggled my ass in yer face," she said. "Don't act all goddamn coy on me now."
Tam chuckled at Sienna's reply to Tim's befuddlement. "That would work, hell I can sleep pretty much anywhere, just find me a nice rock as a pillow," Tam replied with a slight grin on his face.
"Nah, I wouldn't do that," Tim answered with an amused grin, steadying Sienna once more as she staggered again. "We can go close out our tab, and I'll take you guys there so we can get her settled in to sleep this off."
"I ain't plannin' on goin' to sleep yet, y'know," Sienna interjected with a sly, if somewhat prolonged wink at the big man. Tim's cheeks flushed a bright red, and he looked a bit apprehensively in Tam's direction, with a subtle shake of his head, doing his best to indicate that his intentions were honorable.
Tam looked at Tim, then looked at Sienna and shrugged. "I'm just along for the ride at this point," he replied to Tim's obvious concern.
Tim nodded, and slowly llifted Sienna's arm from his shoulders, which Sienna either allowed indifferently, or was completely oblivious to for the moment. "Can you, uh," he asked hesitantly. "Can you get her for a minute? I'll take care of the drinks."
"I got her," Tam replied as he just held her steady with one arm around her, not really exerting much of his strength since he wasn't trying to crush her ribcage by accident. The captain allowed herself to be transferred over to the shorter Gartagen, involuntarily holding onto Tam's neck and shoulder a bit tighter as she slumped against him.
As Tim freed himself from Sienna, he took the few steps forward back to the bar, but the moment he was more or less in front of the captain, her free hand reached out, and before Tam realized what she was doing, grabbed a liberal pinch full of the Nepleslian's backside, giving it a sharp squeeze. Tim jumped in surprise, his cheeks now furiously and brightly colored red, and with a nervous grin, he stepped to the side so he'd be outside of arm's reach. Sienna just giggled again.
Tam chuckled a bit as he watched the biplay between the two. Tam just continued to stand there to make sure that Sienna didn't hit the floor.-- again -- as Tim took care of the bill. Then it would be off to the stranger's apartment to babysit the plastered, and apparently frisky, young woman.
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