This would be the spot where a more elegant soul would wax poetic about the horrors of working class thugs populating a dive bar before the sun dipped below the low mountains. This is also where one would realize that he was very much not a beautiful, sensitive soul, and would very much prefer that anyone that thought so would kindly get the fuck away from him, or buy the next round. Either or worked really. Not that he was drinking; yet, anyway; but that didn't stop him from looking for a better, far cheaper way to fund his myriad of vices than his own meager coin. Because really, who enjoyed bleeding their own finances to stare at the bottom of a tankard all night. Not him, of course.

Right.

Moving on.

The bar was calm, for the moment. Most of the crowd at the moment was the tail end of the dinner rush; the place had a decent enough hot dinner option that the dregs with barely enough coin for their rent, let alone food, could mostly afford. Hot, palatable, if not anything to write home about, cheap. A good source of easy money for the owner. Worked well enough for him. A few slabs of heavy bread, a gruel trying to pass as stew full of lumpy things claiming to be vegetables and some stringy grey… things, hilariously called 'meat'; enough to scare a lesser constitution. He'd definitely had worse. Salt and the muddy swill they dared to call coffee made it go down easy enough. Likely shaving days off his life every time he ate the goop, but whatever. Everyone dies, eventually.

Wooden tables, wooden chairs; little things that in another world might have peppered an outside garden, shoved almost too close for comfort in a room that was more cave than building, having been carved into the mountain face to save money. Yellowed lights like old style wall sconces flickered from aging bulbs and spotty power; more surprising if they paid the bills than not; walls textured to look like they weren't the raw stone wall of the cave space. The only natural light was tempered by the greasy, dusty blinds pulled mostly closed across the front window wall, somewhere near the back bar a wood burning heater stove that would have been at home in a house two hundred years prior served to take the heat up a notch and provide a source of hot water for whatever. Not cleaning the servingware, that was for damn sure. Not likely for cooking either, he doubted any fresh water had been added to that pot of stew in generations.

Hnnn. To order his first round of something pleasantly alcoholic or not. Really, the biggest concern of his moment; drunk before or after sundown. Before meant worming into some group or person's pants to fund his habits; after he might get away with a sliver of dignity intact (and less a chance of another hit on his criminal record). Decisions, decisions. Maybe if the bar wench would reappear, he'd be able to decide. Walking up to the bar was just entirely too much damn work for not enough reward at that exact moment. He had no bones to pick, no tab to settle. He was reasonably comfortable, and for the moment he had the tail end swill to finish from his dinner. Maybe wait and see a bit. Someone else to churn the pot and get things started. Or to summon the woman doing a damn fine job of losing out on any tip from him that night.


Wc: 600

Jerrick had spent most of the day training and wanted to get something to eat. He thought about leaving to go back to Iwagakure, but he wanted to spend more time here. There were a lot of things he wanted to do before going back to the rocky mountains of Tsuchi no Kuni. Once he made it in, he luckily was able to get a table by himself. He put in an order and he waited for a while. Though, he was able to get a cool pitcher of ale as he waited. With each gulp, he poured another. Then, he poured another. The pitcher was empty and it took about another fifteen minutes before it was filled up again. The service was disappointing and he was truly ready to leave. He didn’t even get his fill of alcohol. The ale was weak and he waited so long for the food that he thought about sneaking out. There wasn’t a tab that he knew about. It would have been easy for him to just leave without being seen. Jerrick was hungry and he didn’t want them to waste any of the food, so he sat and waited.

If he had to wait any longer he was going to flip this place inside out. Though, he remembered that he was a visitor in this village and needed to act accordingly. The wait continued as he took a swig from his mug. His pitcher was half empty and was starting to get warm as he attempted to preserve some of it. Eventually, he just changed his mind and continued to throw back the ale. He felt like it didn’t do anything. Jerrick figured that he had been drinking too much over the course of the years. His thirst was hard to quench. On the other side, it was probably the weak stuff they watered down to serve the late hours. One could only handle so much disappointment before you would give up. His stomach started to growl and he figured that he was probably better off going somewhere else. Closer wasn’t always better in this case. There were plenty of other spots he knew he could get food that were further out that had better service. To make insult to injury, there weren’t any decent looking women either. He totally lucked out. There seemed to be no escaping this endless hell.

After waiting for so long, he finally received his food. It wasn’t steaming and it definitely wasn’t hot. Jerrick’s eyebrow started to twitch. What kind of mess was this? There were four plates of food and none of it was hot. The waitress didn’t even bother to apologize. Jerrick sighed as he felt his anger start to build up. A Shinkai wasn’t just going to casually eat mush. He was now hoping that the food didn’t taste bad as it looked. Grabbing his fork and knife, he started to cut into the dried looking pork chop. The pork chop tasted like it had been cured before it was cooked. Who cured pork chop? This could literally kill a man. Though, Jerrick started to take it as a challenge. He finished the pork chop grimacing as he moved went on to what was supposed to be vegetables. Then, he went on to the next plate and attempted to eat that. The struggle was real. Jerrick couldn’t take much more of this. He even attempted to speed up his  eating to try and get the food down as fast as humanly possible. There was nothing that would make him come back for more. Jerrick wondered why anyone decided to put up with this service or this supposed stuff called food. It was overall disappointing and disrespectful to his inners.

Jerrick continued to eat as much of his food as he could. He ended up getting to the last plate as he started to slow down. It was the last bit of food he was willing to purchase to feed his frame. The next thing he noticed was a plate that flew into his pitcher. The remaining amount of ale splashed like a wave into his plate. Jerrick dropped his fork including the chicken that was on it into the vast amount of alcohol. The man who threw the plate was obviously drunk, but it mattered not. There was no excuse for this insanity. His eyes started to become bloodshot. That was it. He just couldn’t take it anymore. A loud scream rang out through the dive bar. Some of the patrons turned around in their spots and stopped what they were doing. Jerrick flipped his table into the air and punched through it like it was a sheet of paper.

“I’m not taking this anymore!” he screamed.

Jerrick rushed toward the man who threw the plate. He began toppling other people’s tables as some patrons were getting out of the way. He was like a raging bull. Picking up the man by the collar he threw him down onto the table and picked him up again. Jerrick had grabbed the man by his legs and tossed him into a table that once sat a family that had stopped by. The man then began to beat this guy’s face in. One punch lead to another. Jerrick seemed to not give a damn about anyone or anything. It had been a long time since he had a freak out like that, but it felt good. All those months of rage finally came out all in a single bout of anger. The Shinkai’s rage wasn’t one to be reckoned with.

953

Ah, the fun was starting early then. Tables flying, people yelling, plates shattering. Fun times, alright. All bets were off, in the confusion he slid down under the tables abd started worming his way around the feet and legs of the furniture, every so often popping up to grab a tankard of whatever grog was available and scoping out were the fighting was. Oh, he wasn't trying to run; no, he was working toward the yelling and punching, but taking the long way to maximize his drunken fun times. Plus, this let him shove tables and people strategically so that smaller fights started and spread, until the whole place was a frothing mass of testosterone and rage.

That was when he slid himself into the middle of one of these little fights and started throwing punches. Random really, he was just tossing hands at whoever was in range before vanishing to the next tangle with a roar of laughter and bodies dropping. Forgotten alcohol was gathered as he moved around, used as both lubricant for his flying fists or thrown to encourage more boiling explosiveness out of the crowd. The tangles of bodies blocked the exits, concentrating and force directing the focus inward and exacerbating the situation delightfully. Civilians made for boring targets, but he had full be careful about laying hands on ninja. Not that he was afraid, he just couldn't risk being seen. To many headaches, there. Not worth unless he was taking out someone he really didn't like. Which was to say, many of them, but still, to gain his freedom he needed to be careful in his revelry.

Or frame someone else for it. Not that he really had to, he wasn't these one one to flip the first table after all. He could claim self defense. Or just keep thr-...

Oh. Well. He was dripping with piss warm beer. Someone got lucky. Yeah, no. This wasn't going to stand. Temper he had on spades, as well as a habit of lighting himself on fire, or at least spitting it, when angered. Given that he was in a decent mood to start, he was settling for only spitting fire at tables and such to scare and anger the patrons brawling about. Space quickly formed around him as people scrambled away from the flames on pure instinct alone, but he used that to wind up a nice dashing run; giving him a chance to running leap up over the crowd and flying tackle a few of the largest brutes to the ground and start wailing on them with fists and anything he could grab at.

There was a shed of logic to his insanity, embolden the lessers to go crazier by watching the big bads go down, and more coin slipping into his pockets as he worked over the brutes. Oh, he was bling to top off his coffers a bit from this; or try to, anyway. Likely wouldn't get much, and if someone jumped him he was going to come out down a fair bit, but eh; now wasn't the time to be smart. Now was the time to be a drunken idiot. "Eeeeeh! Fuck ya momma!" He was screaming random insults, throwing his voice like a damn ventriloquist to confuse and enrage anyone not fully participating in the insanity. "Yer dick's so small a Hyuuga couldn't see it! I saw ya chuggin' yer boyfriend's balls last night. I'mma tell yer wife to buy a strap cause that's how ya roll! Yer skin's so greasy they can oil a wagon wheel with your pillowcase." He'd get pretty nonsensical and downright crass, it didn't matter to him so long as skulls not tied to his person cracked and he could pocket the spoils while filling his belly with more of that piss ale. It was weak, but it did eventually buzz rather nicely. Eventually. "I saw better noses on kids drawings. Are you part rat, cause those are some serious teeth? You kiss yer whore with that mouth? Damn, she must really need the money to let that mess of snaggleteeth near."

Ah, fun times. Fun times.

WC: 690 || 1290

Jerrick would continue to punch the man to a bloody pulp as some random guy kicked him in the face. It was totally on. The kick knocked him across the room as he landed on top of two other guys that started fighting. He wondered where the kick had come from as his rage didn’t quite allow him to focus. Jerrick jumped out and grabbed the first guy he saw. He didn’t care who they were or where they came from. There was an old man he lifted up by his neck. The man was grasping at his neck for Jerrick to let go. Heavy breathing came from Jerrick as his rage continued to boil over. The old man barely let out a yelp before Jerrick started to realize what he was doing. Jerrick put the old man down and quickly bowed in apology. Then, a plate flew across the bar and hit him in the shoulder. Jerrick turned around to try and see who threw it. He couldn’t get a firm view to see who through it. The next thing he knew, he was being tackled. There was an attempt to get the individual to release him, but it seemed like the guy wouldn’t budge. Jerrick lifted up his fist that he interlocked and slammed down on the intruder’s back twice to get him to release him. The guy coughed as he was then released.

The scene reminded of an all out brawl he had with his military unit so many years ago. He was still a private at the time. It started off as two hot heads that got into it with one of the sergeants. Somehow the fight just erupted with the whole camp going into a huge free for all. Jerrick had to get a tooth repaired after that fight. It was glorious and he didn’t even feel any pain until after the fighting subsided. The commander punished them for days on end. He couldn’t remember a harsher punishment that have three days of live training. They weren’t even allowed to sleep or eat. They were only allowed to drink water. A lot of them ended up losing a large amount of weight during those days. What made it more interesting was the fact that another fight broke out not even a week later. The commander then extended the punishment to a fourth day. There were no problems after that. This was probably the closest he had gotten to that day. Unlike then, Jerrick anger was nothing to mess with. It was hard for him to turn it on and off.

Jerrick picked the guy up and then punched him dead in his chest. The guy bulked from the punch and fell to one knee. Jerrick stood the guy up as he moved to a wushu mantis stance and moved onto striking him in the man’s gut. The man fell to the ground as he then heard a bunch of obscenities flying around in the air. The old warrior couldn’t tell where the words came from, but they started to get him riled up again. Jerrick screamed at the top of his lungs as he started to attack anyone in sight. Though, he seemed mad at the world. The feeling of letting himself go was amazing. This was truly what he needed right now. It was nothing like a bunch of strangers fighting each other in a cacophony of chaos. It truly made him feel alive. The feeling was like a new fire that was reignited within his very soul. With each thrust and jab of his fist, it felt like he was once again on the battlefield. If it wasn’t for the reason of just getting the stress off of his chest, it was worth coming here today. It seems like the fates really had his back.

It was almost like the walls of the bar were going to collapse. The raving bastards putting in all of their drunken effort into blowing off whatever steam they could. There seemed to be nothing stopping them. A few people had already passed out from exhaustion or were forcibly knocked out by their opponent’s. It was a grand time to be alive. Most of the tables seemed to have been turned to splinters and or heavily damaged beyond repair. The waitress and the cook seemed to hide themselves behind the bar. As the cook would occasionally yell out, “my tables” or “there goes my livelihood.” Jerrick didn’t even notice him. He wasn’t even really that angry anymore. He was simply enjoying himself too much to truly be that mad. Jerrick couldn’t help himself. He didn’t care if he got into any trouble. Though, he figured that the Tsuchikage would kill him for acting out in such a way.  The warrior would have to wait and see what would happen to him if the Tsuchikage found out, but he wasn’t worried about it. Jerrick was totally in the moment.

847/1800