Bar brawl

"More of a challenge than you were prepared for, was he?" Katarina gloated in-between mouthfuls of food, after the battle Sven had been escorted out of the building by Katarina who had came to his rescue. Even if the guards knew Sven was the man who killed their beloved general, even they dare not go against the blade princesses commands for them to stand down and pardon the intruding human. After escaping The Dome, Katarina had brought them both to a close-by inn where she made good on her promise to feed them.

However from the sights of things, the offer to feed them wasn't entirely altruistic. Sven wasn't sure if it was because she was an orc or it was because she was 6'4 and well built, but she was shoveling platefuls of food down at a time, a kind of legendary appetite he hadn't prepared his mind to witness so soon after such a near **** experience. Today had been full of surprises, even Snake's last words to him had been weighing on his mind. Sitting at a private booth off in the corner away from eavesdroppers, Sven finally gave in to the questions that were dominating his mind.

"You know, Snake said some pretty interesting stuff before he died." Sven took healthy swig of whatever foul tasting booze was poured into his flagon, it wasn't very tasty but he enjoyed the kick it gave him when it reached his blood stream. Katarina actually stopped shoveling food into he face long enough to give him a good look, even now she felt strange feelings welling up inside of her whenever she looked directly at him. "He claimed that the rebellion was just, that the ruler of the Triadom was a shitty king who denied the Terran Foci a cease fire three times, that he cares more for his gem mine than he does for the life of his men. Any of that true?" Katarina merely rolled her eyes at the accusation.

"And then he almost killed you because you let your guard down, look I knew Snake since he was a boy. He was always full of lies, tricks and schemes even back then - good at them too, he once convinced me that taking baths softens the skin and makes you weaker in battle. After a week of not washing myself, my maid servants had to wrestle me to the pool so that I wouldn't stink out the entire castle." Katarina blushed at admitting the naivety of her youth, Sven couldn't help but snicker. "Snake is a one in a million type of orc, he's all brains and no brawn and if you let him get to you then he will misdirect you to your peril." Katarina finished her sentence by forking a particularly plump sausage to her black hole of a mouth. Grumbling to himself, Sven wordlessly conceded the issue to Katarina for now, after all what she was saying was making a lot of sense. After a while of relative silence apart from Katarina's lacking table manners, Sven finally spoke up again.

"I take it that it was your doing, cutting that rope to his escape route?" Sven asked, Katarina with a mouth full of food just nodded and smiled dumbly, bits of meat and other foods dangling between the small gaps in her pearly white teeth. Sighing Sven shoot his head, this girl was more aloof than he had first given her credit for.

"So whose next? I think I have one more in me before I need to sleep." Sven stretched his shoulders to make sure all the kinks had been ironed out, both Katarina and Adriana gave Sven a disbelieving look all at once, not quite sure they wanted to believe he had said it so soon after his near **** experience with the last general.

"Actually I have good news I received from my father just before I came to rescue you, four of the weaker generals have been successfully assassinated already, the fifth was a failed attempt and our sources say that he has left the capital with his army, so that leaves only one general left inside the capital, and the main thorn in our side if we want to truly do away with the treachery." Katarina swirled her spoon through her mostly clean plate. "Xavier." She finished. Xavier, the number one general among the Triadom's already elite entourage, known for his brutality and prestige on the battlefield, if he was all that remained then he could stop all of this madness in one night, going to pick himself up off the seat, Katarina stopped him.

"You're not going anywhere, do you think our movements have gone unnoticed by Xavier? We have him pinned down in his little seat of power, but he's more than aware that if you go to see him under the kings orders, that you're simply there to kill him. You'd be walking into a trap, and this time unlike with Snake's case, you might not get a chance to fight your way out of it." Katarina warned, Sven could see the sense in her words once again, aloof she might be at times but a tactical commander she remains.

"I agree with her Sven, you should rest and see what tomorrow brings us." Adriana touched his forearm under the table reassuringly, she could see in his eyes that he had some fight left in him but she knew that this impulse if not tempered with wisdom would be the end of him. Sven sighed as he conceded the point once more, but admitting they were right didn't do much to quell the hunger he felt inside. He wanted to go out there and destroy Xavier, to prove to everyone that the losing to Snake earlier on was just a fluke, a stroke of bad luck that sullied his reputation needlessly, his blood burned for it and he could feel restless.

Looking into his eyes while he went through these thoughts Katarina could feel her heart racing once again, thoughts of her own flooded her head with things she wanted to do to him right now, confusing thoughts that contradicted one another. She wanted to fight him, she wanted to punch and be punched, she wanted to fuck, she wanted to win, she wanted to lose, she wanted to mount him when she won, she wanted to get mounted by him when she lost. Stabbing her fork down onto her wooden plate suddenly she willed the thoughts out of her mind, just what in blazes was coming over her?! Such thoughts... And about a human no less! Such depravity!

Sighing Sven releasing himself of his bad impulses, he had noticed it long before but hadn't paid it no mind until now, but he knew that he was changing in a way, ever since that class change - no, perhaps before then? First he had chalked it off to being able-bodied in this world as opposed to a room bound hermit in his old world, or maybe it was because he was becoming more adept with social situations, or his training and lived experiences were guiding him down a more violent path. Thinking back on his first few days when he was reborn in this world, he had been very different to who he was now inside and out. When he had first met Elise, he felt awkward around her and shy, hesitant to act on the obvious sparks flying between the two - but now? When he had met her again on that boat journey he hadn't hesitated more than a minute in claiming her womanhood as his own.

"Watch out, here comes trouble." Sven was just about to catch as he was brought out of his musings. From their spot in the corner of the room, they saw a band of less than reputable looking orcs enter the room. Sven observed them cautiously, they were a scraggy bunch, ill equipped with mean faces, lifeless eyes that can only come from men with a howling past and a number of notches on their blade. The group sauntered up to the bar clutching their diverse array of scrapyard weaponry and wen't to menace the bar keep. Sven couldn't hear what they were saying, but saw that the inn keeper first shook his head in response but was soon grabbed by the scruff of his shirt and picked up over the bar, secondly the bar man caved in and pointed towards Sven's table.

Looking over to Sven and his party, the group made a bee line to their table. Standing up Sven stood in front of Adriana and Katarina, the latter of which was trying to hide her appearance so that she wouldn't cause any problems for Sven's cover. After all, any one of these bar patrons could see this piece of intrigue as a bargaining chip to cash in with Xavier. The leader of the bunch, a staunch orc equipped with scatterings of scrap metal plating around his body, a big beer belly and hawk perched upon his shoulders stepped forward.

"My men back in Vassir say you're the guy I'm looking for, the man who killed a number of my gang members on the streets. Got any last words, tin man?" The orc asked menacingly, holding out a slip of paper the hawk had delivered to him from his gang members back in Vassir with one hand, and clutching his steel club in preparation with the other. Sven rattled his memory for who exactly these people are, but then it struck him. Just before he had stormed Bergh's mansion, some street thugs had tried to take his party members away from him by **** and he had to cut them down. So, these men in front of him were seeking **** for their fallen gang members - or maybe it was just a simple matter of pride, at any rate this wasn't going to be countered by words.

"You idiots should have ran while you had the chance, the likes of you are no match for the man standing before you." Adriana huffed in an unconcerned manner, in fact she hadn't even drawn her weapons yet, she looked completely unfazed by the prospect that these orcs were looking for a fight. Seeing how they were being dismissed so casually, the thugs grit their teeth, still sizing Sven up as an opponent. At first glance, he had looked just like another adventurer with his tin suit and air of importance that all class bearers seemed to hold for themselves, but now that they were so close to him they were starting to rationalize certain facts about Sven. The first fact was that now that he was standing up, he looked a lot more fierce, towering over the other combatants with ease. Secondly, his 'tin foil' armor was actually quite thick and expensive looking, it wasn't the kind of armor you put on for show. And lastly, the weapon he wore was a flail, meaning he was likely a Gate Keeper, a rare class due to its difficulty in controlling the flail, but given how expensive his gear was, one of two positions were likely: Either Sven is a pushover who spent all of his daddies savings on some top range gear, or Sven is proficient in the class enough to push a significant profit out of being a Gate Keeper.

Sweat began to form on the brows of some of the more experienced thugs heads, maybe they had approached this situation improperly from the start and were only now beginning to regret it. The leader began to back away as somewhere deep inside he sensed that if he elevated matters to ****, there was no way he would be leaving this room alive.

"Where do you think you're going?" Sven asked calmly, letting his flail swing to his side. The hunk of metal swung like a sinister pendulum, a promise of **** if the leader ever decided to run. Even as it dangled from side to side, it commanded a presence the thugs hadn't felt before in their entire lives, a kind of fear words can't conjure, a kind of terror that can only be felt by a sixth sense.

"G-Get him men! He can't take on all of us!" The captain shouted as he prepared to attack but at the last second, he pulled back and went to retreat. While he fled, his hawk flapped its wings and flew away from his side in a **** attempt to flee the battlefield as well - perhaps sensing his owners distress, or maybe it had sensed Sven's bloodlust. At any rate the winged beast flew around the room chaotically in an attempt to find an open window or door, anything to escape. While this was all going on, the thugs who were still under the illusion that their boss was fighting with them, all charged Sven at once with their sharpened sticks and their nailed bats.

With one roundhouse swing of his flail, Sven effortlessly crushed each of their skulls with one swing of his chain weapon. In a matter of moments, the angry thugs who out numbered him 1 to 8 were now sloppy puddles of waste on the bar room floor. Without missing a beat, Sven lasso'd his chain using Hook Shot to wrap around the bosses ankles just as he reached the door. Dragging him to his feet, Sven retracted the chain and pulled the panicked Orc kicking and screaming towards Sven, soon enough dragging the birdless orc through the messy remains of his men - this action eliciting terror fueled screams from the previously cocky thug.

"So you're the kind of guy that kidnaps women and auctions them off at **** trades, huh? Rob people as well? Maybe killed a couple of innocents, right?" Sven released the thug by his ankles and let his flail dangle a couple feet above the horrified mans head. Covered in his friends blood and scattered remains, the orc could only look up at Sven with wide, petrified eyes. In fact, looking down at him, Sven wasn't even sure he could see anything but the whites of the mans eyes. He was so scared he couldn't even speak, so Sven carried on.

"People like you are worthless dregs of society, give me one good reason why I shouldn't just kill you right now?" Sven put a bit of a swaying motion on his flail for added effect, however the orc still had his tongue tied, paralyzed by fear. "Very well, you had your chance." Sighing, Sven extended the chains on his flail, letting the jagged hunk of metal fall down towards the orcs face.

Just as the metal was about to make contact with his face, the orc made a hysterical sound that caused Sven to relent on his chains descent. The boss was visibly sweating and panting rather audibly in the now remarkably silent room, previously filled with rowdiness and merry making, now cut short by the acts of significant **** performed by a singular swing from Sven's flail.

"I'll talk! Anything you want to know! Just ask!" Looking down Sven could see the man had pissed himself from the fright Sven had just inflicted. Katarina who had been silently seated up until this point went to stand above him, the frightened boss who had his eyes previously locked onto Sven's were now placed on her, just now recognizing who it was that was seated with Sven. His eyes flashed with realization as his brain put 2 and 2 together.

"There's rumors that Xavier has ties with some nefarious street gangs, is this true?" Katarina asked, the man looked at her, then to Sven, and finally to his flail before he returned his gaze back onto Katarina. He knew that he was useless to them if he lied, and saving Xavier's hide wouldn't mean he could save his own. Right now, it was tell the truth or die, he knew that for a certainty.

"Yes! Xavier hired us to cause problems for the peasants! I don't know why but it's the truth! I swear it!" The boss blubbered, Sven shot a look at Katarina to see if she had any clue as to why Xavier would want to do this, the look she had made Sven assume that she didn't know.

"Would you be able to organize a meeting with Xavier? He's on pretty high alert right now, impossible for us to infiltrate without him knowing about us." Katarina asked, the man stopped to think for a moment before nodding slowly.

"M-Maybe, nothing is certain but I can try for you." It was Katarina's turn to shoot Sven a look, a look that asked if he was willing to trust this man to enact their plans. Sven furrowed his brow for a moment but nodded his head yes in the end. If they could find a way inside that would minimize losses on both sides, that would be the best course of actions. Sven had misjudged Snake and had almost paid the ultimate price, had Adriana not been there to save him of course. No, this time Sven knew he would have to be cautious and utilize every tactic to his advantage, even if that meant putting his trust into a ruthless thug.

"Very well, make this meeting happen and your life will be spared." Sven removed the flail from the mans head and returned it to his side. The orc sighed in relief and shakily got to his feet, still covered in his friends blood and a torrent of piss of his own making. Bowing, the orc fled to the open door that many others had fled out of the moment Sven had taken out more than half a dozen orcs in a single swing.

"Do you think it was wise to trust a man like him?" Adriana asked, still eating small portions of her food as if nothing had happened. It tasted dry and unappealing, she'd much rather have a pint of Sven's delicious blood but this grub would have to do for now.

"Maybe not, time will tell I suppose." Sven signaled for the bar keep to get him some drinks. After a fight like that, Sven felt like drinking something a little strong. Rushing to fill out his order, the bar keep profusely apologized for alerting the thugs to Sven's location, but Sven reassured him knowing that had the man refused - he would have been killed by the thugs. The bar keep simply didn't have a choice, Sven wasn't going to hold a grudge against somebody like that.

Taking a swig of the strong drink that was unconditionally offered to be free of charge by the bar keep, Sven considered the final fight ahead of him. After all, it doesn't matter how many pieces remain on the board so long as you checkmate the king.