The Major trembled and inhaled sharply.
There didn’t seem any point in lingering in the men’s room now that he had his gun, so Batou emerged and headed for the bar. He spoke again over the comm. “Major, I’m in position. Do you copy?” There was no response. By now, Batou was starting to worry but he was also face to face with the bartender, a fit, bare-chested fellow covered in tattoos, with a right-eye implant and a pure dark mech left arm. From his glowering expression, he clearly was not among the legion of bartenders famed for being good listeners.
Batou decided not to even try questioning the guy; no good could come of it. “Beer,” he ordered. While the bartender retrieved a bottle, Batou used the mind-comm again, this time trying for dry humor. “If you don’t answer, you’re gonna hurt my feelings.” No answer.
The bartender thumped the bottle down in front of Batou and opened it, giving the Section Nine soldier an inhospitable glare as he did so.
Batou took a swig of the beer, which tasted like it had been recycled, and glared back at the bartender. With no response from the Major, he tried an alternative. “Ladriya, do you have Major on comms?”
Ladriya came through clearly on the comms, but her reply was not comforting. “Got nothing. Signal’s still blocked.”
In the VIP room, No Pupils struck the Major again with the electric prod. She couldn’t stop herself from flailing against the pole, chained there by the handcuff. Sparks tumbled about her and she fell to her knees, her breath trembling. She was thankful that at least Tony stepped away from her, taking his smell and sweat to an almost safe distance, taking a seat on the red leather sofa that ringed the walls.
“I’m afraid I get bored rather easily, so…” Tony paused for effect. “If you don’t want to talk…” He paused again and began tapping his foot to the beat of the music pulsing through the walls from the main room. “Maybe you wanna dance!” He hissed rhythmically in time with the taps of his foot and began shaking his shoulders to the music in a manic shimmy.
No Pupils giggled, swallowed, and jabbed Major with the electric prod again. He gave a cry of pure excitement as she jerked and gasped.
Still at the bar, Batou was getting impatient and anxious. He didn’t like either of those emotions, so he was shoving them down in favor of growing anger as he spoke into the comms once more. “Major, come on. Answer me.”
He couldn’t help noticing that yakuza enforcers at a number of tables were staring at him suspiciously. As a holographic stripper beckoned, her words indistinct, the two bouncers who’d let Batou in earlier approached him from behind, one of them jabbing a pistol into his ribs.
Batou exhaled and inhaled, irritated. He turned to the bouncer who had cautioned him at the front door and used the man’s words against him. “I thought you said no trouble.”
In the private room, No Pupils cried out with joy as he continued to jab Major with the prod. Tony made boom-box vocalizations, boogying to the beat pulsing in from the club’s sound system.
The Major gave another agonized gasp, arousing her tormentors even further.
“Dance,” Tony told her. He continued to sigh and click along with the music as he danced toward the Major.
“Ah-ha!” No Pupils shrieked with laughter.
The Major’s gasps became louder, her trembling more violent.
“Ah-seeeee…” Tony was now trying to sing along with the music, sounding as though he was building to some sort of ecstatic climax.
“Mmm… no,” the Major quivered.
“Eeeeee…” Tony’s singing got even stranger.
“Enough.” The Major’s voice shook.
Tony was so giddily delighted to hear his captive beg that he stopped dancing to listen to her and started chortling.
“The truth is…” the Major went on, marshaling her strength. She would only get one shot at this.
“Mmm,” Tony encouraged her.
She fought down the tremors and slid both arms up to grip the pole above her, and then all the vulnerability, all the fear and panic melted off her expression and left a wicked smile in their place. “…I wasn’t built to dance,” the Major concluded. She took a moment to savor the gangsters’ reactions, then leapt up and flipped in mid-air, descending to kick No Pupils in the head. Then she swung herself inverted on the pole, her feet pressing to the ceiling as No Pupils sent another charge into the space where she had been an instant before. Sparks flew, but he had no time to react as she spun and whirled around the pole, planting both feet in his chest and kicking him back into the sofa with a freight-train blow.
Diamond Face uttered a mechanical-sounding growl through his enhanced jaw. Tony seemed too far gone to appreciate that the tables had turned. He laughed and clapped as the Major flipped back onto her feet, kicking Diamond Face. Even his gasp of pain sounded mechanical. The Major kicked him again, snarling.
She turned to Tony, unleashing a flurry of punches that sent him reeling back toward the door. Tony emitted an “Ooh!” of pain, but even then, the Major was afraid he might be enjoying himself.
No Pupils recovered sufficiently to lunge, knife in hand. The Major ducked out of range as Tony fell out the open door into the bar.
Most of the patrons were startled and alarmed, but Batou was relieved to see the Major through the doorway. He reeled back, head-butted one of the bouncers and smashed the beer bottle over the other one’s head. The man staggered back, trying to dash beer and broken glass out of his face.
The other bouncer now swung his fist, still holding the pistol. Batou easily blocked the blow and grabbed the bouncer’s gun hand, shoving it aside. The revolver went off with a loud, flat bang, blowing through the torso of the man Batou had hit with the beer bottle, and sent him tumbling to the floor. Batou wrenched the shooter’s gun arm around with both hands, slamming it against the bar with an agonizing snap of breaking bone.
Every patron in the Sound Business nightclub took notice. Nearly all of them were members of one kind of criminal fraternity or another. As one, the gangsters put down their drinks and turned toward Batou, while the civilian patrons screamed and ran for cover.
The bartender grabbed a gun from under the counter. Batou, still gripping the armed bouncer’s hand, slammed it down on the bar, causing the other man’s gun to shoot the bartender.
“Oww!” the bouncer cried.
And all hell broke loose.
Batou, seeing a pair of gangsters taking aim at him, turned the bouncer’s hand so that his pistol took out the two yakuza before they could fire. Behind him, the bartender uttered a few dying groans.
The Major was still in the private room. She wanted to help Batou, but she was still handcuffed to the stripper’s pole and still fighting No Pupils. He came at her and she punched him in the face. He yelled.
The sounds of the private room fight were entirely swallowed up by the commotion in the main bar as people shouted, yelled, shrieked and either tried to run or find shelter, or else figure out who they ought to kill.
Batou, settling on two more gangsters, used the bouncer’s hand still clamped around the pistol to shoot them both.
Diamond Face rejoined the fight in the back room, pulling a pistol. The Major grabbed his arm at the same time she redirected a knife strike by No Pupils, meant for her neck, into Diamond Face. The man groaned in agony, clutching himself where he’d been stabbed. No Pupils grabbed the Major by the throat, but she threw a hard elbow into his face, using his weight against him so that he lost his balance and went down.
At the bar, Batou snatched the pistol completely free of the bouncer’s hand and shot him, then kicked him down into a conversation pit, knocking down two more gangsters who’d been preparing to open fire.