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Tequila Mockingbird was a classy establishment, in a grungy college town sort of way--the disheveled appearance was actually carefully cultivated by the staff to give the entire place an antique bookstore feel. Of course, none of that could be seen from the back alley; mostly it contributed a faded brick wall and a series of dumpsters, easy pickings for the destitute and sometimes worse. None of the bartenders were supposed to go out back on their own, for fear of something lurking in the darkness of the alley, but Zachary was never the sort to pay attention to warnings. It was a Friday night, and he had trash to haul and drinks to make. He wasn't afraid of any boogeymen.

The lanky man nudged the door open with one foot, dragging several heavy garbage bags behind him. With a well-practiced heave he swung the bags up and over into the dumpster, nodding at the satisfying clang they made when they hit the bottom. Dusting his hands on his pants, he turned and began to walk for the door when all of a sudden he found his space invaded by a girl made of sobs and running eyeliner.

"He--hey, slow down, it's okay, you're okay," Zachary stuttered, hands up and defensive as he backed a step away. He only half-listened as she began her story, his eyes following back the way she came. It looked like there was somebody slumped over at the edge of the alley. He furrowed his brow, rolling up his sleeves slowly. "Just--go inside, were they bothering you?"

The woman blinked, stopping mid sentence. "No, no, she saved me and she's hurt, go help her!"

Zachary gave the girl a look of apprehension, but nodded slowly, edging his way forward. He did his best to look at the injury of the woman on the ground and not the colors of her uniform, the style of it, the name it called to mind. "Christ on a cracker," he breathed in exasperation, bending down to one knee. "Don't move, okay? I'm gonna pick you up, and then we're going inside. I've got...bandaids or whatever until an ambulance gets here."

"Well s**t, I hope you know how to sew," he responded, eyebrows raised. He lifted her slowly, trying not to think too much about the sharp metal smell in his nose, the way her torso was warm, sticky, damp, and weighed like nothing. "Atta girl," Zachary nodded in approval when she reached up and over, keeping his eyes on hers so that they wouldn't be tempted to wander elsewhere.

"Alright, I need you to hold on, we're going up some stairs," he said softly, leaning in close as he used his boot to nudge in the back door and shuffle his way inside. He was mindful not to scrunch her torso in any way, or to knock her legs against the narrow staircase, doing something of a crab walk to get his way to the main floor of the bar, just as someone was coming around with a bus tub.

"Dude, what the ********--" the runner began, but Zachary shook his head sharply, shouldering his way past for the office in the back.

"Call 911," he grumbled back to someone as he nudged the wooden door open, laying the girl to rest on a table covered in bills and receipts. "You still with me?" he asked, his voice low and soft as he slid his arms from under her, reaching for a bookshelf and poking around until he found what looked to be a red lunchbox with a white cross on it. He popped it open, looking for something, anything, and after glancing over at her torso with a wince he tentatively reached for a stack of clean towels instead.

"I want you to put this on the bleeding and press on it, okay?" he said, guiding the stack of towels to her torso and reaching for one of her hands. "And tell me about your favorite music or whatever you want to talk about, but you need to stay awake." Through everything, his voice stayed even, but his amber eyes were boring into her, watching for any sign that she might be fading.

Zachary didn't have it in him to smile when she tried to make a joke--he was more concerned with blood loss than with making appearances or keeping chipper. "Yeah, well, four out of five doctors recommend not getting disemboweled--" he began, but he'd looked away for just a moment and what had been a bedazzled goddess with wings for bows had become just a girl clutching at her stomach, nearly giving him whiplash with how fast he did a double take.

"What the fu--how?" Zachary sputtered, glancing back to the other less injured girl as if she might have some explanation. He stared back at the girl on the table, trying to figure out how on earth she had an entire outfit under that leotard, but she grimaced and it make Zachary look at her face and that was when he felt his stomach lurch and fall past his shoes.

"...Van? Um? Holy s**t?" His voice began to pitch upwards as he realized that he knew this girl, that they'd hung out in high school until he'd lost touch with everything and moved away for a few years, and he hadn't recognized her until just now, and it was Vanessa's body he'd carried up the stairs and it was her blood on his shirt and didn't she look pale in this light? She'd been a super hero, they both had when they were kids and the world was kinder, but she was one of the senshi things too? And she was maybe bleeding out on his boss's table, that part was hard to forget.

"Do you, uhh, do you want some advil or whatever until the, uhhhhh, ambulance gets here?" Zachary blinked, the color draining from his face even while he fidgeted to keep his cool. He started to reach for the medicine kit again, but ended up just sliding it next to her on his way towards the door, shrugging his way between the bystander girl to get past the threshold and back into the hallway. Muffled by the wall between them, it was still pretty easy to hear the panicked shout of, "Dan, where the <********> is the ambulance?" He came back into the office a moment later, pacing with his glasses off so he could keep his eyes off her.

"Okay, so, they're going to be here any second, so you just gotta stay awake, okay?" Looking off into the vague distance of 'can't see anything', it was hard to tell if he was trying to reassure her or himself, but after a second he pulled himself together enough to put his glasses on and run his hands through the curls of his ruddy hair. In the silence, he looked at Van again, at once battling between running for a closet to hide and rushing to pick her up so he could run her to the hospital himself. He settled at something between the two, which manifested as awkwardly shuffling on the balls of his heels.

"So you're, like...a magic terrorist now," he opened, after a long moment of saying nothing. "That's cool, I guess. I'm a bartender."

In the rising cacophony of Zachary's own panic, he found shelter in the sound of Vanessa's voice, warm and sure. She made him feel more present, more here, but not in the way where he fixated on her torso bleeding out. Except now that he thought of it, he had to glance down, and there was the smear of red, setting off all the alarms in his head. "I--" He paused, his mouth twisting through several expressions. "--It's. Uh. Good to see you, except for your, uh, insides. But they're going to put those back. You're going to be okay." He continued to pace.

He almost didn't register that the other girl had a voice, and it was only halfway through her second sentence that he paused to glance up at her, his eyes still distant. "It's nothing, for real--do you think it's coming back?" Zachary's brow furrowed, and his head swiveled around the room in search of something to arm himself with, and settled with grabbing the wooden staff of a broom, holding it close to his body.

"Alright, Barb, so this is how it's gonna go down," Zachary nodded, rolling up his sleeves and moving towards the door. "So I'm going to go get Dan and he can hang out with you guys, he's cool, and then I'm going back downstairs to check it out, and if you hear anything weird, the door locks here, and you can push a chair on it to make sure nothing can get it open. Um. And if that doesn't work, check the desk--"

He stopped mid-sentence, tilting his head so he could better distinguish the sounds of sirens. "Jesus H. Christ," Zachary sighed, his shoulders deflating with the knowledge that help had arrived. "Scratch that, we're just going to meet them outside. You think I can move you, Van?" He reluctantly set the broom back down and walked back to the reclining girl, his hands suddenly cold and nervous. "I don't want to make it worse."