Chapter CCCV: Burnin’ Down the House! ~Redaz

Redaz sat unconscious on a stool, with his head on the bar. A small puddle of drool was forming in front of his mouth. He hadn't had a single drink, due mostly to the fact that the bar tender was restraining himself from killing him. Redaz had fallen asleep out of boredom while he waited for his companions.

Suddenly he jerked up and blinked dazedly. He idly wiped his mouth as he looked around the suddenly quiet bar, "What happnd?" he mumbled.

"That felt like an earthquake," someone a few seats down said.

"We don't get earthquakes around these parts!" a somewhat elderly drunk shouted to the man.

"Well what do you think happened? Someone just hit the ground at an ungodly speed and caused that tremor?"

The bar remained quiet for a moment as everyone wondered how he'd come up with that idea, then most of them burst into laughter and returned to losing their sobriety.

Redaz hung his head, still sleepy; then he decided to amuse himself. He took an empty glass sitting on the bar next to him and tossed it to the side. It flew toward one of the bar's patrons, but stopped in midair, halfway through its flight. Redaz squinted at it, it slowly moved forward, until it was in the corner of the drunk's blurred vision. He slowly turned his head to look at the unidentified movement. At that moment Redaz glanced at another patron out of the corner of his eye. The first drunk turned around as the glass followed the motion of Redaz's eyes.

The glass hit the drunk in the back of his head. The other patron burst into laughter as the glass shattered. The slowly sobering man with the headache turned and looked at the guffawing oaf.

"Ya think that's funny?!" he grabbed the mug he had been drinking from and walked over to the laughing man. He swung his arm and smashed the mug on his jaw.

He stopped laughing, and sneered at the man staring over him. He stood and looked him in the eyes, then punched his attacker in the nose. He staggered back, recovered and they both lunged at each other, grappling and staggering about. The bartender looked up at the commotion, and ran to get around the bar and stop them, but Redaz reach out and blocked his path.

At that moment the two fighters fell over a table that was playing host to a poker game. Cards and money flew into the air, the table snapped in half and the four players shot to their feet, shouting at the two men now lying on the floor before them. The players pulled the two to their feet and then, with two players for each would-be fighter, began pummelling the two. At this point the friends of the fighters, that had stood up at the onset of the original brawl to drag the loser home or treat everyone to a drink on the winner's tab stepped into the fight. It didn't take long for enough tables to be bumped, punches to miss and glasses to fly to turn the whole thing into a good ol' bar brawl before the bartender could stop it.

Redaz sat at his stool and grinned at the drunken carnage. It was then that he thought that, perhaps, his distant companions hadn't seen his signal fire, a glass of alcohol is a bit hard to see after all. So, this decided, Redaz leaped over the bar and began taking every bottle of liquor kept behind under and in the general vicinity of the bar, and hurling them over his shoulders, letting them smash against the walls, floor, tables and, on occasion, a patron's head.

It was when he reached the last bottle that the barman had finally given up his vain efforts to stop the fight, and had resigned him self to sit behind the bar, wait it out and bill the survivors for damage. He now stood over Redaz and glanced at the empty spaces that once housed all his liquor. "What the hell are you doing?!"

Redaz looked at the last bottle of alcohol, which he held in his hand, then at the bartender. "...Leaving," he said with a grin.

He then hopped up on the bar, stood tall, put his index finger and thumb in his mouth, blew out sharply, and managed to cover most of both digits with saliva.

He disgustedly wiped his hand on his robe and looked over his shoulder at the angry barman. "Do you happen to know how to do that finger whistly thingie?"

The barman put his fingers in his mouth in much the same way Redaz had, inhaled deeply, and let out a loud, shrill whistle. Every person in the bar froze in the middle of whatever they were doing, much to their surprise.

"Excuse me everybody!" Redaz shouted, "I am about to leave this bar, and I think it would be in all of your best interests to do the same."

At that, Redaz hopped off the bar and slowly began walking across the room. Everyone in the bar followed him with their eyes, out of shock and confusion. After a few paces, Redaz pulled his arm up and behind his back, he brought it forward and threw to bottle he'd been carrying at the wall, he took two more steps and broke into a run.

If this were a movie, and not a written story, this is the point at which the camera would go into slow motion. The bottle flipped end over end in the air, then its bottom edge hit the wall. Even in slow motion it would take only and instant for hairline cracks to run all over the bottle, and then come apart as it shattered. But rather than causing a wet spot on the wall and leaving a few shards of glass on the floor, a magic spark went off as the bottle broke and instead of liquid coming out, an explosion emerged from the broken bottle. Flames coursed down the walls that had been recently soaked in alcohol. They reached the floor, covered in booze, old and new, and raced even faster. Once they got to the tables, covered in fresh alcohol and old spills of failed quaffings, there was too much kindling for the fire to be stopped and the blaze grew. By this time Redaz had reached the door, barrelled through it and staggered across the street to catch his breath.

As Redaz stood up and regained his composure he watched as men ran out of the entrance and a few who were still not entirely sober leaped out of the ground floor window. After a moment a group of younger men and some women who had not been in the bar came running out, probably people staying at the inn for the night. Redaz hoped they hadn't had anything important in their luggage.

Suddenly two metal hands grasped his shoulders and dragged him backward into an alley where they threw him to the ground. He looked up at a suit of armor with two glowing eyes, and a robot with sunglasses.

"Are you insane?" a voice from within the armor asked.

"Have you not heard a word we've told you this entire time?!" a more familiar voice said.

Redaz turned toward its source to see D'Nel, Scilas, an as of yet unnamed human, and an unfamiliar lizard. He'd seen some like it on Zolott; Yoshies he thought they were called.

"Glad to see you found me," Redaz stood up and brushed himself off, "Who're these fine fellows?"