The bar was quiet for a Friday night, especially considering the woman slinging the drinks. Her silky black hair fell to the swells of her ass through her tight black skirt, framing a sweet face with dark, inquisitive eyes. Even under a sports bra and a loose white tank, it was obvious why every guy in the bar, myself included, stared. She was gorgeous.
I heard as much, but I wasn't expecting just how goddamn jaw-dropping she was. The Seventh Heaven had a reputation and it wasn't because of the drinks. She plunked down a bottle of beer in front of a patron and he stammered, "T-thank you, Tifa."
She smiled at him, and it actually touched her eyes. Good trick, that. The best bartenders were experts at faking smiles and that mean more than just an upward swing of the mouth. I could read the tension in her limbs and stance, but the poor schlub melted like she offered to blow him. When he scurried away to join his friends at a table, he left behind at least a forty percent tip.
Tifa was not the only one in the bar to draw my eye. Seated in a corner, a mountain of a black man pretended to focus on his own drink and not me. He might have been just another brawler in a city of toughs in Digitown if it wasn't for his arm on the table. Not his actual arm, the flesh and blood one he rested on the bar near his drink, but a mechanical one, detached from his shoulder. The thing was capped with what looked like a steel bowling ball. I thought I heard of this guy. Barnaby or something like that.
In another corner, close to the door, a beautiful, tall brunette flipped the lids closed on a pair of woven baskets. A small stack of bills disappeared into her slim purse. She was whisper thin but with killer legs under a pink dress. A pink ribbon in her long hair matched the dress, and I dearly wanted to see where the flower necklace around her neck disappeared to between her perky breasts. The woman had style, but she was already moving for the door, waving at the black-haired bartender. The bartender waved back, and the brunette was gone.
I headed in Beefcake's direction and took up a seat next to him at the bar. "That arm make it hard to get dressed in the morning?"
He snorted, lifted his drink, and drained it in one go. He rapped the empty glass on the bar and Tifa cast him a long-suffering look. He grinned, then shifted his focus to me. "You Spike?"
I reached into my inner jacket pocket, pulled out a business card holder, took one of my cards out, and tossed it in front of him. Spike Sterling, Problem Solver. It had my office number and address too.
"You sound a hell of a lot more masculine than the person who called me," I said. I took off my jacket and tossed it across the stool next to me.
He pointed a thick finger at the bartender. "She's the one you want to talk to. Tifa Lockhart."
I knew the name from the call, but she wasn't in my files. "She owns the place?"
"Yeah. She call you about the thugs trying to intimidate her out of the place?"
I nodded. As if on cue, four guys stumbled through the door, all of them toughs, all of them piss-drunk. The call from Tifa came in about guys like these, guys who couldn't take no for an answer. I stayed loose, watching them out of the corner of my eye but not making a move yet.
"Oh shit, Tifa, you lookin' good tonight," one of them drawled. He was flabby but I thought he might be packing some muscle underneath. The rest of them were scrawnier but muscular in the wiry way of people who worked with their hands.
"Tonight's not the night to be messing around, Moreno," Tifa said, twisting the top off another bottle of beer and pushing it in front of a patron. She swept up the money on the bar and hurried towards the till.
The four guys took up spots near her, which put the one at the edge close to me. All of them wore badly fitting jackets and crop tops with so many goddamn useless zippers and belts it would have taken me all night to count them. I'm not sure what the hell was going on with their shoes, either. One guy seemed to be wearing yellow rubber booties. Another had mismatched leather shoes, both of which were done with -- yup -- even more zippers. Fashion in Digitown, man. This is a weird, weird place.
The guy looked at Barret and me blankly, and I asked, "How ya doing?"
He ignored me and focused on the bartender's tits. I couldn't exactly blame him, but my ego bruises easily. I liked attention when I wanted it.
The fat one, Moreno, drummed his fingers on the bar. "Ain't ya going to serve us?"
"I can already smell the alcohol on you. I'll get you water or some coffee, but that's it."
"We don't need you telling us when we've had too much," another one of the guys said with a voice so high it reminded me of a whistle.
"Four shots, four draft beers," Moreno said.
Tifa gave me a quick look, then leaned on the bar. Moreno and the others got an eyeful of what cleavage the sports bra would allow, and that was still plenty. They drew in a collective breath, and Tifa's hand shot out, lighting fast. I'm not sure I've ever seen faster. She grabbed Moreno by the ear and in one swift motion slammed his head down on the bar, breaking his nose and sending him reeling. His stool tipped and crashed at the same time I lashed out with a fist of my own, a backwards, awkward strike that nevertheless had all the momentum of my time with my dumbbells in my office. I hit him like a train and sent him flying backwards off his stool. He landed on his ass and somersaulted backwards, landing on something hard enough to make it audibly crack. He screamed, but I was already moving, going for a third guy while Tifa snapped a punch at the fourth. She missed, just barely, but I was there, a fistful of my guy's collar and the one she went after.
I jerked them both close to me, and growled, "You ever heard of Spike the Problem Solver?" They looked at each other and nodded. "That's me. And this bar is under my protection. Tell your friends, jackasses."
With that, I shoved them backwards. One of them hit an errant stool and went down with a startled cry. The other one bounced off a pool table and ran for it. I kicked the stool guy in the ass and he sprinted like he was coming off the blocks, out the door in a flash.
That left Moreno and the guy whose arm I'd broken. Moreno lay on his back, gripping his busted nose. I nudged him with my toes. His breath came in short, pained whistles. "Fuckin'... fuckin' bitch..."
I moved my foot to his face and hovered my shoe above his nose. "I think you meant to say, sorry, Tifa, we won't ever come back here."
When he didn't say anything, I shrugged, and settled the foot on his face. He screamed, "Sorry! Sorry! Never coming back!"
"Good boy," I said. He pushed himself upright, listing crazily side to side, and stumbled after his two friends. The remaining guy had a serious break, and whimpered when I drew close. Barret, the big man, came over holding some kind of jewel in his palm. Materia, I realized. He frowned at the break, raised the materia, and warm light pulsed between him and the guy on the ground. The cuts healed, but the break remained.
I offered the thug a hand, and he took it with his good one. His cry when he stood up made me pity him, and I turned to ask the bartender if she had a phone. But she was already on it, and spoke to emergency services about picking the guy up and transporting him to a healer or a hospital. She hung up a moment later.
"Go wait outside for your ride," I said. "And if you ever come back in here, it'll be two broken bones, and then three, and so on until you've learned your lesson."
He stumbled out, whimpering under his breath. Everyone else in the bar stared at the three of us.
"Anybody else want to start something?" Tifa asked. No one did, and everyone hurried to stare at their drinks like they might find the answers to all their questions at the bottoms of the glasses and bottles. To me, Tifa said, "Thanks. Spike, I take it?"
I nodded and started picking up fallen bar stools. "Yeah. And you're the one that called me. Those guys weren't the ones causing you trouble, were they? I think you two could have handled that."
The doors opened and she smiled tightly. "Nope. But they are."
I turned. A big muscular bastard wearing, of all things, blue wrestling pants, a cape, and an honest-to-God tiger mask strolled in, accompanied by the fat guy and two more thugs I hadn't seen before. The place went dead silent again, and people rushed the door. The tiger guy watched them, his expression unreadable under the mask, then gestured at the door. One of the thugs locked closed and locked it.
Then the shit was on.
The fat guy, his face still caked in blood, went right for Tifa. She hopped up on the bar, her whole body tensing. I had no more time to pay her any attention. Barret grabbed at the bowling ball arm on the bar and worked on clamping it to his shoulder. I circled in his direction, creating a wall between the thugs and him until he could get in the fight. The tiger-faced bastard cocked his head at me, but didn't move. His two thugs rushed me, an electric baton and a short sword in their hands. I worried about what the short sword could do to me if the guy managed to cut me, but that electric baton would put me out long enough for the guy to finish me off if he zapped me with it.
He waved it menacingly at me, and I grabbed someone's forgotten bottle. He sneered, but I wasn't going toe-to-toe with him. Instead, I threw it at his face, He dodged it easily enough but took his eyes off me long enough I could sweep in, grab his arm, and jerk it towards his pal winding up to slash my shoulder. The zapper hit the other asshole in the ribs and he gave a yelp. Not down, but more cautious now. Good. Cautious was dumb. They should have rushed me, the way they started to.
Behind me somewhere, I heard the fat guy cry out. Go Tifa. I still held the guy's arm with the zapper, so I twisted it behind him, hearing something crack. He yowled, but I wasn't done with him yet, not until he was out of the fight. I kept twisting his arm, bringing the zapper closer to his neck until he tried to jerk away. Big mistake. Whatever I'd done to his arm was amplified, and he screamed as the cracking got sharper, uglier. He dropped the zapper and I kicked it away just in time to step sideways away from a chop from the short sword guy.
Someone grabbed me from behind. The tiger-mask guy. He spoke nothing, but growled just like a tiger would. "Cute," I said, and punted backwards as hard as I could. He caught the blow full in the nuts but didn't wince -- damn. Must have had protection, or the steroids he was no doubt on shriveled his apples into grapes. Either way, he held me tight, his breath reeking of something sour. The short sword guy lifted the sword again, and instead of kicking at him or trying to get away, I jumped straight up. It threw the tiger mask guy off and he tried to control me, bring me back down. It distracted both of them long enough for Barret to rush in and smack the sword guy across the jaw with his bowling ball arm.
Enough teeth and blood spattered the wall that I thought he'd killed the guy, but the thug collapsed and wormed his way blindly towards the door. "Mah teef, mah teef," he moaned.
The tiger mask guy let me go, but it was a ruse. He wanted enough wiggle room to twist me around and hug me tight, so tight my vertebrae popped. Barret tried to rush him but he caught the ball hand with one of his huge mitts and ripped the artificial arm away from Barret's shoulder. Beyond the masked guy, Tifa stood over the fat man as he backpedaled towards the door on his ass. She winked at me, and stepped forward. She hit the tiger mask guy as hard in the breadbox as I'd ever seen someone punch another human being. The guy barely noticed it.
He gripped me tighter still and it was getting harder and harder to breathe. This sort of shit shouldn't have worked in a real fight, but tell that to my chest. I had enough time to think about the mask, why he wore it, what he was hiding under there, and then I remembered my childhood and my father telling me how much pride wrestlers took in their masks.
