"No, wait!" Ivy cried. She reset her posture, smirked, and added, "
It's about time.
"
"No more do-overs," Kay groaned, through clenched teeth. "This is cringy enough as it is!"
Ivy gave Keileigh a coy smile, and came around the counter with her arms spread wide. "Someone's grumpy." The demon was tall, taller than Kay, and every curve of her was as absurd as the excuse for a dress that covered everything in the technical sense but nothing in the figurative sense.
"I'm not!" Kay whined. Her voice was more muffled when she continued, her face buried in cleavage. "I'm really, really not."
Van and Mad shared a look and shrugged, and joined in the hug from either side.
"
You guys,
" Ivy said. "I heard you were all here but I've been so busy!"
Keileigh, muffled near to the point of inaudibility, said, "I hate you all."
"How long has it been?"
Van said, "Most of a decade?"
Ivy leaned over and kissed the top of Van's head, then did the same to Maedwynn. "Too long."
"We're 'ere now," Mad said. "Van thinks we need yer 'elp."
"Well of course you do. You guys were always lost without me."
Kay made a sound that reminded Mad of a dying goat, which in turn prompted Ivy to hug her more tightly and kiss the top of her head too.
"You're right," Ivy said, very matter of factly. "We need drinks."
"Not you," Van said, when Maedwynn was the first to cheer.
"Like Ah'm not gonna drink," Mad said, irascibly, as she backed into the door.
***
The best bar on the station was, in fact, one Mad had not yet visited, but it took her all of fifteen seconds to feel the pounding through her feet. One floor below, in the reactor sector, was
the forge
. There in that bar, for the first time in years, Maedwynn could feel the folding of iron in her bones. Of course, it was only a matter of time before she'd be in the room herself, doing a bit of upkeep on her hammer, now that she knew where it was.
When she looked over, Van was giving her a familiar smile.
"Of course there's a bar righ' above it," she muttered, leaning in close enough to nudge her sister with her shoulder.
"Every inch of this station is ten feet from a bar," Keileigh said, striding between them on her way toward a booth. "And they better have wine."
"I know what you like," Van said, giving her girlfriend a playful swat on the ass as she passed. Then she clapped Maedwynn on the shoulder and pointed toward the bar. "C'mon."
"I'll have whatever you two have," the tall demon said, as she moved around them. "
Kay! Wait!
"
The bar was a little thinned out so late, House Three according to the clock on the wall, but they still had to shove their way through the crowd to get the attention of the keep. Even though it was louder there, the clear peel of each hammer strike was much more audible.
Ductwork behind the bar,
Mad thought.
Smart.
The smell, too, was incredible. Maedwynn closed her eyes and breathed it in. All of it. The sweat. The exhaust. The fumes. The dwarves. This was not the first time she'd had the
oh my gods, I'm home
sensation, but it still hit like a number ten jackhammer every time.
"Five ales," Van yelled, "and a chardonnay."
"I'm gonnae boke. Wha' mannera numpty," grumbled a heavyset, mohawked dwarf, from his stool next to where Van had pushed through, "ordersa goble'a piss?" He turned his head just enough to sweep a ferocious, if short, beard over his shoulder.
Van, for her part, was grinning as wide as Mad had ever seen. "Caz, I swear to fuck, you get uglier ever time I see you."
"The old maern cannae save ye now." He tilted a little to the side and spat at Van's feet. "Stockin' piss? 'ere? At the Anvil? He'd've been
up to high doh.
"
Van planted an elbow on the bar and looked down at her boots for just a moment. "Well, he's dead now, so I don't think he cares."
"Shut your gob ye ned prick," Caz snarled, turning even more toward her.
Van kept her cool, and passed two and then two four mugs over to Maedwynn's waiting hands. The angry dwarf followed the motion, leering back at her from under the bristliest mohawk Maedwynn had ever seen.
Mad looked at her sister and smirked, saying, "Ye know, Ah hear i' now. Ah hear it. It'sa bi' much."
Van got the last ale and her glass of wine, and Maedwynn turned to head back. She knew, immediately, that this was a mistake. In the blink of an eye, right behind her, there was the scuffing of a stool across smooth plexcrete, the hiss and awe of onlookers, and the meaty thud of a fist, followed very shortly by two glasses crashing and the sound of her sister hitting the floor.
Mad half-turned, and held up the mugs for a moment. "Come take these? Van'll be wantin' 'em when she ge's up."
Ivy bit her lip as she wiggled through the crowd, her eyes as big as saucers. She reached over another dwarf entirely and slipped her fingers through the wide handles of the mugs. She towered over the various maern and wae quickly forming a circle, but took great care to maneuver around them, saying, "Oops!" and "Excuse me!" with every step.
There was a small half-circle around where Kay was turning Van over but the one she'd called Caz was between them and Mad, giving her a look that seemed ludicrously hateful given that they'd just met.
Mad held her arms out at her sides, and said, "Why—" and got no further before Caz took a swing at her too. She made a rookie mistake, merely leaning back out of range of the punch, and instantly regretted it. Her center of gravity was behind her feet, where it was doing her no good against the half ton of pissed off that was bearing down on her. He was torqued all the way to his right, which probably meant that he was about to come back the other way with his off hand, so she did the only thing she could think to do, out of position where she couldn't leverage any kind of strength; Maedwynn slapped him.
The room went completely silent, except for the echo of palm on cheek and the crystal-clear ring of iron on an anvil.
Caz looked stunned. He touched his cheek and then looked around at the crowd, stupefied. "Wha' mannera—"
And then she slapped him again.
Judging by the response from the rest of the room, which was a lot of shocked gasps, more of them than she'd expected had spotted the way she'd clapped his ear. Caz's jaw hung wide open as he touched his middle finger against his ear, and the tip came away red. This had the effect she'd been going for, getting the big maern to take a half step back and give her some space, but at the cost of making him so mad that he wasn't even looking at her anymore, but through her.
The kind of mad that wasn't going to hear her no matter what she said, regardless of the fact that she'd partially deafened him for a little while.
Ah well,
she thought.
What followed, ironically, bore a stronger resemblance to actual boxing than what she'd done with her sister on arrival at the station. Caz was so furious, so out of his mind, that it seemed like moving his arms was all he could manage, and Maedwynn made him pay for every single throw. She showed him shoulder rolls, a high guard, a high cross guard, and a pawing long guard that took the steam out of more punches than got through cleanly.
Finally, after nearly half a minute of letting the bull swing at her, after letting him tire himself out a bit and riding through a slew of glancing blows, Maedwynn struck back. She stayed low, hitting him with a left, right, and left to the sides of his belly, and when he finally tucked down low enough to get his elbows to cover his sides she put a right across his cheek hard enough that his nose was sideways when his head snapped back. He did the thing every puffed up maern did when she got a good shot in and gave her a showboating leer, but he was so focused on trying to pretend she hadn't hurt him that he didn't see the uppercut coming until it was too late.
She put everything she had into it, the cleanest, sweetest, textbook-iest example of an uppercut that she'd ever thrown. She had that full chest expansion, smooth footwork right on the line, and all the torque her hips could muster, and she knew the moment her fist connected that it wasn't enough.
