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Kam had no reason to be in the bar that night, except that he wanted to be. Years wasted on a fruitless search for his brother and still his favorite thing to do, as it had always been, was get drunk in a crowd of grungy strangers.

He shouldered his way through the slight crowd lingering near the pool tables and immediately looked up to figure out which bartender was on for the night. That's when he saw her. Without another thought to his drinks, Kam made a line for the petite woman minding her own over a thick script.

"Do you ever stop working?" was how he chose to address his first partner after a two year absence - just like he'd never been gone.

He flopped down onto a bar stool next to her, his heavy dreads pulled back into a wide band that he hadn't even been able to double. He tapped the top of the bar once he caught the bartender's eye, then glanced down at the print that had consumed all of Penny's attention. Some things never changed.

"The same as every other questionable degenerate in here," he reached for the beer he had order and gave her a small salute with it, "trying to get s**t-faced." Kam had a working mental list of the cheapest bars in town, with detailed notes of their levels of grunge and service. This place met his fairly low standards, especially considering a lot of his hole-in-the-wall favorites had closed in the two years he'd been gone.

He settled back to watch the end of the exchange between Penny and the bartender, inwardly pleased that she was still the same old Penny he'd always known. Loud, crass and totally without a ******** to give about it. He took a large gulp of his beer, swallowing nearly half of it, and set it down in favor of tracing a dark finger along the rim of the shot she'd ordered.

"Oh deeeeefintely," Kam drawled out, staring after the fuming bartender with raised eyebrows. "Glad to see you haven't lost any of that girlish charm, Pen." He smirked and grabbed his shot glass, then turned and held it out in her direction for a salute. After a second's thought, he glanced from his shot to her tiny arms, then readjusted the height a little lower with a sly grin that said everything he didn't have to. He'd forgotten how incredibly small she was, but for the time being refrained from giving her any s**t for it. He could mock her for being a midget later.

"What's the occasion tonight? Did you crush an intern's will at work?" He glanced at the script again, to see if he could read any details that seemed more exciting than normal. It looked like the same drab as usual. "Did you win an award yet?" He paused, then. "Do they even have awards for this?"

Kam took his shot and slammed the lid down seconds after his tiny companion, laughing with a cough as she slugged him. He grimaced even as he tried to give her his a*****e grin, probably because he's swallowed his booze down a little wrong in surprise.

"I don't think it counts if it doesn't have your name on it, Penny. That's pretty much the number one rule of award winning." He raised an eyebrow at her for dramatic effect, looking up from the recently emptied beer glass, only to find that she was staring down at her script. He wasn't even sure she'd heard his snarky remark.

Work Penny was no fun.

He leaned onto the bar and waved one giant hand at the bartender. "Hey, two more beers for me and three rounds for me and Tinkerbell each, okay?" If he had to warm the bartender up at the expense of Penny's pretty unshakeable ego to get his drinks, so be it. She still punched like a girl. He sat back down on the stool and leveled his gaze at her, shrugging slightly at her.

"I've been working at a gym, saving people's asses, just the usual stuff." He'd been taking his Squiredom pretty casually. He still wasn't sure what he was supposed to be fighting for and that woman had made him wary of getting tangled up with the wrong enemies. Fighting monsters was the only thing that made sense, they were obviously bad. His sudden reflection was cut short when the bartender sat down two beers, then completely forgotten as the great man continued to lay out three glasses in front of them each.

Kam brought up a hand to chest level and did a very typical bob and sway with his torso, even going so far as to bounce his head a little. "Why you baby sitting only two or three shots, I'm a show you how to turn it up a nooootch.." his rap trailed off into a hum as his head bouncing got a little more pronounced. Kam had let his tolerance slip a little.

When Penny climbed onto the bar and began rapping, Kam laughed and cheered her on without question. This was what normal people did, right?

As she mistakenly lit a second cigarette, Kam reached out and swept the original one from her hand, pulling it to his lips and taking a long, long drag. The smoke was expelled quickly in one puffing, curling spray of breath. It dissipated into the hazy bar atmosphere even as he drew in a fresh, deep sigh, reaching out to tap the ash off into a chipped ashtray on the bar top.

"Probably because I skipped town and went to find a brother that doesn't want to be found," the words were a solemn, drunken confession but he was beyond the ability to depress himself over things that were unchangeable. Instead he brought his hard won/stolen cigarette back to his lips and pulled himself up to sit on the bar top. As he drew in another breath and expelled, his words poured out with the billowing smoke.

His gaze drifted out over the scene around them, drinking in the various bar regulars. Bikers, nitwits, girls with big boobs.. girls with big boobs.. girls with big boobs.. bikers that were sneering? His gaze shifted away from a pretty redhead and settled on a man (and a few others around him) that seemed genuinely irritated by his presence. Or was it Penny's? It better not be Penny's..

"Hey bartender!" his gaze shifted from his observation and back to the man that seemed half amused and half nervous. Did he think Kam was going to destroy his bar? Kam never did anything that reckless. Right? Right. "Could you deliver a couple more shots, my man?" He drew out a few bills from his wallet and smashed them down onto the counter top. The look on the bartenders face said it was enough - or more than enough, given the fact that Kam didn't quite understand the concept of numbers. Regardless, the shots were in front of them and Kam had one raised to salute Penny's existence in no time.

"To the best ******** partners these cosmic bitches could hope to find." His shot stayed extended, his eyes locked onto Penny with all the hope he could muster in a half delirious state of mind.

It was good to be home.

Kamboja's face was buried in a mug of beer when Penny sent the stool she'd been sitting on flying into a crowd of tables. His brows furrowed and his attention slipped past the rim of his beer to the scene that was unfolding in slow motion before them. He had a front row seat to the disaster. Instead of putting his beer down as the man approached, he followed his path with a turn of his head and opted to drain the glass while the behemoth was occupied with something else.

That something else was Penny and.. Penny's face. A suddenly enraged Kam found himself in possession of a perfect weapon. Instead of checking on Penny, he opted to retaliate.

"Who the ******** do you think you are?" He slid off the bar in what he imagined to be an effortless motion, though in reality he stumbled a little to the side when his feet met solid ground. One hand raised to point a shaky, accusing finger at the steaming biker. When he opened his mouth again, he seemed poised to scold the leering man. Then he swung with the other hand, altering his decision at the last minute and opting to throw his pub glass at the a*****e's head instead. It struck and sent the man stumbling in a daze, which in turn caused a raucous roar of laughter from the dreadhead.

That laughter was cut short as another man tackled him against the bar top, then was completely forgotten as a slug connected with his ear. Ringing exploded inside of his skull and drowned out the sound of swears and collisions - people were fighting around them. Not just bikers, the whole bar was in an uproar. Through his blurred vision he was having a hard time making sense of who was on his side and not, but he knew he had yet to see his tiny partner anywhere. He groaned and tried to right himself without ********," he began, but the you was cut short as a blow to his stomach robbed him of breath. He doubled over with his back pinned to the bar, suddenly aware that his arms were being held down against the wooden slab. He struggled, but these men were huge. One or two would have been fine, but this was an army of stinky, angry idiots. Kam couldn't get away from this, but Gehenna could. Probably not a smart conclusion, but he was drunk and no one expected him to be smart anyway.

"My turn," he hissed under his breath, reaching for Gehenna in desperation. As the transformation took hold, his captors let go and took a few hesitant steps back. Clearly nobody in this bar had ever seen a transformation before and when Gehenna was standing there in all his armored glory, a few of the men even seemed to second guess their decision.

Until some drunk a*****e put two and two together.

"Terrorists!" the first cry began, followed by others in succession. The temporary truce was destroyed and the same two men rushed him again, with less success than the first round. He caught the first under the chin and sent him flying back over a table. The second he kneed in the groin, watching him drop with extreme satisfaction. They were coming at him fast now, spurned forward as common sense was abandoned and sheep mentality took hold.

"You could help any time now," he called over his shoulder, drawn farther and farther into the crowd. He was aiming to impede, not cripple, which made this fight a lot harder. He was taking as many blows as he was throwing and though Gehenna seemed less apt to succumb to the pain, he wasn't going to be able to win this fight without her help. He could fight his way out, but it wouldn't save them both from injury.

The farther he was drawn into the crowd, the less vision he had of the bar top and where she'd disappeared. Fighting his way out meant abandoning her and Gehenna couldn't do that. She had to be okay (because Ghen wouldn't accept any other possibility), which meant she needed to get up and help him. Cimmerian wasn't a wimp, Penny or not.

"About ******** time," was the only answer Cimmerian received as she called out her warning. Truthfully, he was just glad she hadn't suffered a concussion or something.

Gehenna dodged a punch to the face just in time to see the bolt fly out and land at the feet of the man that had thrown it. As the darkness swallowed every civilian he was trying to wrangle into submission, he couldn't help feeling a little relieved. Sure, a grown man without superpowers really wasn't a match for a Mars Squire but it was a lot harder not to kill them when they were so weak. Even if they were dicks, he was pretty sure killing civilians wasn't in his job description.

As soon as Cimmerian abandoned her post on top of the bar, Gehenna set to work taking advantage of the time she'd bought them. The man closest to him that had only just missed slamming his fist into his face was sent sprawling with a good shove to the chest, sending him tipping over a table backwards. The next got a swift clock in the side of a head, just enough to make him crumple down where he stood.

"It's a lot easier to knock them out when they're too afraid to move," though the snide remark cost him a kick in the shin from a brave biker. Unfortunately, Gehenna also had shin guards. He laughed and caught him by the ugly leather vest he was wearing, slinging him across the floor so hard that he only stopped as he connected with a bar stool. One-by-one they circled the bar, knocking out the patrons like they were playing whack-a-mole with cheat codes.

As the last one was felled by his over zealous partner, a still buzzed Ghen offered her a high-five (which was more like a medium five because she was almost a midget).

"I like all the dangly bits." His free hand motioned at her flowing hair. Cimmerian always seemed more polished than Penny and he felt inclined to tell her. It was kind of a compliment. It was only as he looked past the tiny warrior that he noticed someone that hadn't been knocked unconscious - though he looked on the verge of passing out anyway. The bartender stood crouched behind his bar, watching the pair as they stood calmly in the center of their wreckage. It was nothing knew to them, but he could see why the guy was kind of concerned.