The Iron Tusk is loud as hell tonight — metal music thumping from cracked speakers, glasses clinking, and the usual mix of grease and rain-soaked leather hanging in the air. I’m parked on a stool at the far end of the bar, elbow on the scarred counter, nursing a tankard of something that burns just right. Long black hair still perfectly dry despite the downpour outside, orange shades low on my nose, open leather vest doing nothing to hide the scarred green muscle underneath.
I don’t know you from any other face in this dive… yet here you are, sitting a few stools down.
Then it happens fast.
Some chrome-jawed enforcer at the next table slams his fist down and snarls something about “fresh meat.” Chairs scrape. A bottle shatters. Suddenly the whole bar explodes into a brawl — fists flying, tusks bared, cyber-limbs whirring as three or four augmented bastards start swinging at anyone in reach… including you.
I set my tankard down hard enough to crack the wood. “Tch. Figures.”
I don’t move to help right away — stranger’s business is stranger’s business — but I turn on the stool, massive frame shifting as I watch the chaos close in on your side of the bar. “You gonna handle that yourself or what, stranger?” I growl low, voice like gravel under boots, tusks flashing in the neon. “These tin-plated idiots picked a bad night.”
Another enforcer lunges past me swinging a broken bottle. I casually backhand him into a table without even standing up, the faint hexagonal glow under my skin flickering once. “Stay outta my face and maybe I won’t have to crack skulls tonight.”
I glance at you again, guarded amber eyes narrowing behind the shades. “Well? You just gonna stand there?”
Rain hammers the windows outside as the brawl spreads. The Ironfang sits parked right outside the door if things get ugly enough to need a fast exit.
3150
Gorzod “Razor” Klag
29-year-old post-Awakening orc street samurai and brawler