Work Text:
Hannah had been looking for a fight.
She almost always was, yeah, she won't deny it. A fight can get all kinds of things going. Blood. Lust. Friendship. Dinner. Fights are handy.
But this time, she had needed one to get one very specific kind of thing out of her head. So she'd gone looking in the next town over, where there wouldn't be any reminders of a certain thing/person/bastard son of an lumpfish.
"How? How are you closed, you blood-sucking leech on your mother's ass?"
Her hand hurt, a throbbing bruise that she'd have to get Dee to fix after she pounded the side of her fist into the door of this bar a couple more times, for emphasis. It was tempting to blast it down. The thought of it exploding inward with a good strong wha-boom was way more tempting than the three she'd had the thought about before, because holy hellgoats, are you fucking kidding?
"Come oooon, Hannah, let's just go home. We have alcohol at home. Lots of it. At home."
This was why she wasn't blasting away. She hadn't been surprised; she'd been really intent on showing why not being an open and functional bar was a bad idea. That was the only reason why Violet had been able to tackle her down to the ground from behind. Then Betty had sat on her chest. And Dee had kicked her in the leg hard enough to hurt. It hadn't been a shining moment.
That stop on the bar crawl from hell had been the second, and unfortunately no one had been around to receive the whomping she could have delivered to witnesses. Since then, they'd all trailed after her on her personal quest around this freakishly quiet town. It might have been what some would call supportive if they hadn't been mouthing off all the way, just loud enough for her to hear.
"It's pretty obvious what's going on, Hannah," Dee said right behind her. She wasn't quite using a pacify-the-crazyperson voice, but it came close enough to make Hannah start to grimace before Dee continued, "Sawyer-"
Hannah immediately spun around with a hard growl. "What did I say about saying that name?"
Dee's eyes narrowed, but she didn't back down from the finger shoved at her nose.
A quick pain in her side "Ow! " made Hannah jerk and look down into Betty's apologetic grin.
"See, Hannah, while you've been pounding, we've been thinking," Betty said, hands out, fingers spread and unthreatening. Or ready to poke again. "He with the name we're not saying, don't worry, but he is the captain of the guard in Palisade."
"Yes, the fucknut is," Hannah hissed. "So what?"
"He shut it down. He got them to shut it all down."
There was just enough admiration in Violet's voice that Hannah seriously thought about reaching under all that hair and strangling her. Until she remembered what happened the last time she'd tried that. It had involved a lot of cursing and a new pair of pants, enough said about that.
And she had to admit that it made sense. Fuck.
"I'm a bad-ass mage," she grumped. "Maybe they all shut down because of my awesome and fear-inspiring reputation."
"A bad-ass, totally predictable mage," Betty agreed, patting Hannah on the butt.
**
Dee did not look for fights.
None of them really did, except for Hannah. Fights appeared in front of them, or came as part of the package of a quest, and then they'd happen. Putting opponents down in a good bloody fight with the other Queens at her side could be incredibly satisfying. On her own, though, Dee avoided conflict if possible. It was just easier.
Which is why it was a surprise to everyone, including herself, when she leaned across the high wood bar, grabbed the bartender with her left fist, delivered a straight-armed punch to his nose with her right, and then dropped him back to collapse out of sight.
"Um," Violet said in the utter silence that followed.
Dee turned back to their table, head high, fire still burning hard in her throat, and said, "Get Betty. We're leaving."
Hannah and Violet rose with confused frowns, but stood together without argument and headed toward the corner for their fourth partner. Dee nodded, thankful, and started for the door.
"Aw, hey there, you want some of, whoa, what're you-"
Dee looked back to see that Hannah and Violet had each grabbed one of Betty's arms and were lifting her away from the bench with the bright-haired twins, who'd been as handsy as the smidgen sat happily between them. The grins on the twins' faces made Dee's hands curl tight again, so she gritted her teeth and turned back to open the door and get out into the sun of a day that had been going just fine until then.
The other three came out of the door in a muddled rush, Betty squirming and kicking up silent a storm, Violet's hand clamped over Betty's mouth. From the look in Violet and Hannah's eyes, they'd clearly explained what would happen if there was any attempt at biting.
Only once the door was closed behind them did they lower Betty until she was standing and unmute her. They both kept ahold of her arms, though, because no one standing there was an idiot.
"What in all the hells, Dee?" Betty demanded, stomping a foot because she could now.
"Excellent question," Violet agreed. "Unless there's something trying to get out of one of the hells. Then I don't want to know."
"A better question is how come you're the only one who got to pound on someone," Hannah said, and that was what loosened the tightness in Dee's throat.
She shook her hair back and leaned down, hands on her knees, to look Betty in the face. "Those weren't one of your kind of mushrooms those guys were going to give you, sweet," she said.
Betty went still with wide eyes, and Violet and Hannah together growled, "What?"
Dee sighed and straightened to rub a hand over her face. "I was about to order when I heard the bartender offering this guy a chance in on the night's bet. And the show."
"Oh no, no they weren't."
The scowl on Hannah's face promised blood. Dee put a hand on her arm as Hannah let go of Betty and started to swing back to the door. "I handled it," she pointed out.
"Punching the dickwad taking the bets isn't handling it, Dee!" Hannah yelled.
"Nope," Violet said. She stepped forward, hands closing and opening like she was getting a grip on the sword she had left at home. "I've always wondered how well a guy can perform without his head. This is one way to find out."
"No, no, that's not- "
"They were going to…" Betty's subdued voice trailing off on that thought stopped Dee, stopped all of them. They turned back as one to see her standing there, shoulders hunched, with her mouth turned down and eyes dark. Something tightened around Dee's heart, this time. Should they go back in, do some actual pounding?
"That kind of mushroom," Betty finally said, "is not nice. Or fun. I want to go home."
"Okay," Violet's voice was soft now.
Betty put her shoulders back and looked solemnly up at Dee. "Thank you for punching the dickwad, Dee," she said.
A half laugh escaped before Dee could stop it. "You're welcome."
**
Fights tended to find Violet.
There were things that were wrong in the world, everyone knew that. Specific situations went wrong pretty often, too. And people, they were wrong all the time. Thing was, when that wrong got in her face, Violet figured it needed to be punched.
"It's kind of a problem," Hannah said.
"Really?" Violet asked, teeth bared and fist jabbing down over the table they'd tipped to form a wall in front of them, all her weight behind the blow. Satisfied that the orc wasn't going to try again, she crouched to look Hannah in the eye. "Because you've never struck first."
Hannah opened her mouth. Violet stared her down until Hannah shrugged and licked at the blood still seeping from the small cut on her upper lip. "Okay, we both have a problem."
There was a clang and yelp that rose above the sound of general chaos ranging across the barroom. Curious, they pushed up just enough to see Betty standing on top of an untipped table with a sharp grin on her face, and a large metal plate held ready to fly and a stack of more at her feet. Dee was standing beside her with a bottle in each hand, one still weighted with liquor, one broken and jagged and offering an extra edge of danger.
"Step right up!" Betty shouted. "Two Queens, no waiting!"
Violet looked again at Hannah. "Good thing we're all problem solvers," she said.
**
Betty fought if fights needed fighting.
There were lots of other things that were fun to do. Eating. Fucking. Sleeping. Fucking. Questing. Eating. Fucking. Fights, though, they could lead to some of those other fun things. Especially the fucking. Whenever possible, everything led there.
There was still some fighting going on over by the door right now, but Betty had taken care of her part, along with the other Queens. Except there was one over under a table who looked like…oh, never mind, Dee got her.
"You're a mess, little bug."
Betty smiled up at the beautiful being called Faeyri. "Yeah," she said.
"I don't know how that all started, it was just…" Faeyri looked around, brows knit in the loveliest way.
"Don't know how it got started?"
Betty looked away from Faeyri to see Hannah stepping over and around bodies to get to them. There was a bruise on her arm and a look in her eyes that was both exited and pissed, which seemed normal until Hannah was suddenly in Faeyri's face saying, "Want me to tell you how it got started?"
"Hannah," Betty said, tugging at Hannah's arm. "Stop."
"You two," Hannah said instead, "were blocking the bar while you sucked so hard on each other's faces that-"
"The bar is huge," Faeyri said back, a stubborn scowl pursing her pretty mouth in a really tempting way. "We couldn't have blocked the whole-"
"People started shoving-"
"Uh, Hannah," Dee started, and Betty shot her a grateful look.
"How immature do you have to be for shoving to start-"
"Immature?"
"Hannah," Violet sighed, and yeah, Betty wanted to sigh, too.
"Okay, how about this, how immature do you have to be to be almost mounting each other in-"
Faeyri's eyes sparked, bringing a new light to their darkness that captured Betty's heart and attention until she heard "-need to get laid-" come out of that pretty mouth, which made Betty and Violet and Dee say, "Oh, no," and made Hannah's right fist land in that wonderful face.
"Aw, why?" Betty asked.