“Jackie, have you been listening to a word I said?”

The slightly aggrieved tone in Trotter’s voice caught Jackie DeCoeur off-guard. Glancing across the table at her companion, she saw that he had crossed his arms in front of his chest, and wore a peevish look on his face. His expression was one that Jackie was familiar with: it was the face Trotter made when he felt like she wasn’t paying enough attention to him.

Which, she had to admit, was a fair complaint. Because, even as she flashed him a quick, gold-toothed smile, and brushed her leg against his beneath the tablecloth, she was still watching the three men across the room out of the corner of her eye.

“Of course I was listening,” she said, reaching out to put her hand atop his thigh, but not quite looking at him as she did. “I’m always listening.”

Trotter shook his head a little, and sighed.

“Then what did I just say?” he asked.

“You said the pianist keeps speeding up, and he’s messing up the dancers.”

From across the table, Trotter shot her a dirty look.

“I said that three songs ago,” he said.

Jackie shrugged her shoulders, even as her attention remained focused on the three men at the bar.

“You said that you’re getting bored with the show.”

“That doesn’t count,” Trotter said, sitting up a little straighter. “That was barely half of it.”

“You said that you’re getting bored with the show, and you’d rather take me upstairs, and do unspeakable things to me.”

Trotter was quiet for a moment. He just kept looking at the side of her face, which was just barely visible beneath the glow of the stage lights.

“Lucky guess,” he finally said.

“I do get lucky,” Jackie said.

Trotter sighed, and uncrossed his arms. He rubbed his eyes.

“What’s eating you?” he said. “I thought we were having a good time.”

Which was true – they had been having a good time. The two of them were seated together at a corner booth in a tacky little cabaret on the dusty outskirts of Verkell, which they liked to frequent whenever Jackie’s vocation took them out of the city – something that was happening with increasing frequency, now that the Waste had been pried open, and Verkell had begun to spill over its edges into the seemingly endless frontier. They had chosen the corner booth because it was close to the stage, and afforded a good view of the pair of rather charming snakes, who had been performing a creditable fan dance in spite of their questionable accompaniment from the tipsy fox manning the piano. They had also chosen the corner booth because it was relatively out-of-sight of the rest of the dim, dusty room, and, given that Jackie had earlier that day robbed an armored stagecoach carrying a small fortune in powdered luxite, it seemed relatively prudent to keep a low profile for the evening.

And, for the most part, the night had gone well. They had mostly been enjoying the show – although Trotter had been critiquing the dancers with such minute specificity that Jackie got the impression he would have preferred to be up on the stage himself – and, once they had begun to tire of the entertainment, they had converted a small portion of the day’s takings into several bottles of surprisingly good whiskey, which they had taken turns sharing as they played a game of secrets and lies. Jackie – who had started playing to lose about halfway through the game – had put away more than her share, and had been in a decidedly good mood up until a few minutes prior, when the three men she was now watching out of the corner of her eye had made their way noisily up the stairs from the card room below, and had claimed a trio of empty stools at the end of the bar.

“Don’t stare, if you can manage it,” she said to Trotter, whose expression had been slowly evolving from annoyance to concern the longer that Jackie went without answering his question, “but there’s two humans and a vash on the opposite side of the room. They’re right at the end of the bar, sitting next to that big minotaur who’s been there all night, drinking the place dry.”

Trotter was about to crane his neck to look, when Jackie nudged him beneath the table, and shot him a red-eyed glance.

“Don’t stare right at them,” she repeated. “I doubt they’d notice if you did, but it’s a bad habit to get into.” She poured the last measure of their whiskey into her shot glass, before sliding the empty bottle across the table in Trotter’s direction. “Hold up the bottle, and glance around, like you’re trying to flag down our waitress. And, if you just happen to glance at the bar while you do? Well, that’s only to be expected, isn’t it?”

Picking up the empty bottle, Trotter performed the little pantomime, as instructed.

“The human in the middle,” he whispered to Jackie, as he sat back down again. “The one with the basilisk-skin boots – he’s got a badge.”

“Good eyes,” Jackie said.

“That’s high praise, coming from you,” Trotter said. He slid a little closer to her, and now seemed genuinely worried. “Do you think they’re looking for you?”

“No,” Jackie said, shaking her head. “I got away clean. Besides, if they were here for me, I hardly think they’d be knocking back the drinks like that.” She nodded her head in the direction of the lawmen, who were enjoying themselves rather conspicuously. “Frankly, I’d be pretty insulted if they thought they could take a run at me in their state.”

“You’re drunk, too,” Trotter reminded her.

“Fair enough,” Jackie said, sparing a glance down at her waiting shot.

“Besides,” Trotter said, “anyone who was sober, and thought it would be a good idea to take a run at you? Well, they ought to have their heads examined.”

Jackie smiled at the white fox, and she slid closer to him, too.

“You know just the right things to say to a girl,” she said.

Trotter smiled back, but he was still visibly concerned.

“If they’re not here for you,” he said, “then why have they got you so bent out of shape?”

Jackie’s grin faded.

“Wait for that little red fox with the tray to walk past them again,” she said, “and you’ll see what I’m bent out of shape about.”

For a minute, she and Trotter half-watched the dancers – who were starting to appear visibly irritated by their pianist’s erratic tempo – while they waited for one of the circulating waitresses – a lace-corseted fox who was precariously balanced atop improbably-high heels and carrying a tray of cactus-battered eels – to circle past the bar again. When she finally did, she seemed to increase her pace just a little bit, as though she wanted to scoot past the seated lawmen as quickly as possible. But, before she could sneak by, the man with the badge and the fancy boots reached back and grabbed her bobbing tail in his hand, giving it a sharp pull upward.

The startled fox yelped. She tottered briefly on her heels, and almost bobbled her tray, managing to regain her balance only after several eel skewers went tumbling to the floor.

At the bar, the three men snickered. The second human – a thin, hatchet-faced man with a droopy mustache – put his fingers in his mouth and let out a high whistle, which the fox, who was walking away with her tail down between her legs, seemed to make a conscious effort to ignore. Meanwhile, the vash – who had bright orange scales, and a shorter-than-average tail poking out from beneath his old leather duster – gave the badge-wearing tail-puller a hard pat on the back.

“Oh,” Trotter said, turning back to Jackie.

“Yeah,” Jackie said, feeling her jaw start to set.

“They did that before, too, I take it?”

“Only every time she’s gone by.”

Trotter’s face turned down. “Some people do that to foxes,” he said.

“Anybody ever do it to you?” Jackie said.

“Besides you?” Trotter asked. A smile flitted briefly across his muzzle, but it didn’t last.

“That’s different,” Jackie said. “Context matters.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“So? People ever used to do that to you?”

“Sure,” Trotter said. “Back when I was working the street? All the time.”

Beneath the table, Jackie flexed her knuckles.

She stretched her neck. She rolled her shoulders. She picked up the last whiskey shot from the table. Throwing her head back, she downed the drink in one go, before wiping her mouth on the edge of her sleeve, and slamming the glass back down on the table with a sharp crack.

Then, after adjusting the angle of her hat, she stood up.

Before she could step away, Trotter reached out, and caught hold of her by the hand.

“Jackie, remember what you’re always telling me to remind you?” he said.

She looked down at him, and she smiled.

“That I tend to make mistakes when my pockets are full?” she said.

“When your pockets are full, and when your glass is empty,” he said, nodding down at the overturned shot.

“Duly noted,” she said, and she put her other hand on top of his paw, and gave it a little squeeze, before she pulled away. “Now, if you will excuse me for a moment, I’m going to go make a mistake.”

“Jackie, don’t kill them – please. They’re not worth the trouble, and I don’t feel like running tonight.”

“Oh, I’m not going to kill them.” She nodded in the direction of the lawmen at the bar. “I’m just going to give them an etiquette lesson.”

“You know that you don’t have to do this to impress me, right?”

“I know. But, if I happen to impress you in the process?” She winked at him. “Well, so much the better. I like impressing you.”

Then, before Trotter could try to change her mind, Jackie DeCoeur walked over to the bar. Once she was standing behind the three seated men, she cleared her throat.

“Don’t suppose you gentlemen’ll mind if I join you?” she said, clapping one hand on the back of the tail-puller, and the other on the back of the vash, both of whom stiffened noticeably beneath the contact.

The tail-puller in the fancy boots turned around to look at her. After taking maybe a second to size her up, he pulled back the edge of his coat, revealing the pistol dangling from his hip holster.

“Bar’s full,” he growled.

By way of reply, Jackie grabbed hold of the vash’s stubby tail with both hands, and, before he could so much as open his mouth to protest, she yanked down and back as hard as she could, pulling the startled viashino right off his stool. He fell awkwardly to the floor, where his head cracked back against the rough boards with a loud thud.

“What’d’ya know?” Jackie said, as she eased herself onto the vash’s freshly-vacated barstool. “A seat opened up.”

Down on the floor, the vash looked stunned, with a glazed look in his eyes as he tried – and failed – to find his footing. Back at the bar, the man in the fancy boots moved to draw his gun, but Jackie was faster than he was, and, quicker than a man could blink, her hand was on top of his, and she held his hand fast in place, so that he could not get his pistol out of the holster.

“Who in the seven Hells are you?” the man growled at her.

“I’m a harbinger of the future,” Jackie DeCoeur said to him, and, with her free hand, she slid her dark glasses off her face, so that she could fix him with her red eyes. “And I’m here to tell you that, just about five seconds from now, you are going to be apologizing – profusely, and sincerely – to that fox over there, for your ungentlemanly behavior.” She nodded her head in the direction of the tray-bearing waitress, who, like everyone else in the room, seemed suddenly to have frozen in place, and was watching the goings-on at the bar in a kind of transfixed silence.

Even the piano player had stopped, Jackie noted with some satisfaction.

Then, tightening her grip around the man’s fingers – which earned her a sharp grimace, and a painful intake of breath – she added: “The only question, frankly, is whether you’re going to be apologizing out loud, or in writing. Because you may find it very hard to be properly heartfelt and sincere if, come five seconds from now, you don’t have any teeth left.”

On the next seat over, the hatchet-faced man was moving to stand up, and he, too, looked like he was about to go for his gun, so Jackie drew one of her own pistols and leveled it at his head, which made him stop with his hand halfway to his holster.

“Don’t worry,” she said to the hatchet-faced man with the droopy mustache. “You’ll get your chance to apologize, too. But, for now, I think your friend, here, ought to go first,” and she nudged the tail-puller with her boot.

“What the Hell do you care about any of this?” the tail-puller asked, between gritted teeth, as Jackie kept crushing his fingers against the handle of his own gun.

“Honestly?” she said to him, and her red eyes flashed. “I don’t much like bullies.”

“Are you blind, or just crazy?” the man asked, jerking his head roughly down in the direction of the badge pinned on his lapel – a sheriff’s star, polished to a mirror shine.

“That’s another thing, too,” Jackie said. “I especially don’t care for bullies who hide behind tin stars.” Then she leaned in, close, so that the man could not avoid her gaze. “Anyway,” she said, “your time’s up. So how’s about we hear that apology?”

“Choke on a rope,” the man said to Jackie DeCoeur, and he spat in her face.

“Guess it’s going to be a written apology,” Jackie DeCoeur said, and she pulled the trigger of the man’s gun.

The man howled in pain as a bullet fired down through his foot, punching a hole through his expensive, basilisk-skin boot. Then, before he could do much else by way of protest, Jackie DeCoeur took her hand off of his gun and used it to smash his head, face-first, down against the bar.

The sound of breaking teeth was audible, as the man’s head snapped back from the force of the blow. Then he went limp, and slid off his stool, which toppled noisily over, falling sideways on the floor next to his prone form.

The hatchet-faced man was fully out of his seat, now, and he had a bottle in one hand, even though Jackie’s gun was still trained on him. Meanwhile, out of the corner of her eye, Jackie could see more men and women – all sporting deputy’s badges, and buzzing like a kicked nest of stinger bugs – galloping up the stairs from the floor below.

Apparently, every lawman for miles had decided to come drinking that night, Jackie thought ruefully to herself.

What was is that Trotter had tried to remind her? That she tended to make mistakes when her pockets were full, and her glass was empty?

Well, that was a moot point now, Jackie reflected. She was already mid-mistake, and there was nothing to do but finish what she had started.

Behind her, Jackie could sense the vash coming almost before she heard him. He must have finally regained his senses, because she felt the air behind her move as he lunged in her direction. Stepping sideways out of the way, she grabbed hold of the lizard’s duster as he dove past, and, riding on the coattails of his own momentum, she gave him a rough shove, sending him sliding down the length of the long wooden bar, sending glasses and drinks flying in all directions as he went.

With a loud snort, the enormous minotaur – who had been sitting next to the hatchet-faced man this whole time – stood up from her seat at the bar. Evidently displeased at seeing her whiskey go flying as the flailing vash slid past, she rose up to her full height, which made it plain that she was the possibly biggest living creature Jackie DeCoeur had ever seen – a veritable mountain of muscle, and a visibly angry one, too.

“You owe me a drink,” the minotaur started to say to Jackie, and she took a step in the red-eyed woman’s direction – just in time for the hatchet-faced man, who was drawing his arm back in preparation to swing the bottle he was holding at Jackie, to inadvertently smash said bottle against the minotaur looming behind him.

The hatchet-faced man spun around, where he found himself approximately face-to-chest with the towering minotaur whom he’d just hit. He actually had to crane his head upward just to see the minotaur’s furious expression.

“Oh, Hells,” he said.

While the hatchet-faced man was otherwise distracted, Jackie DeCoeur took the opportunity to kick him between his legs – and hard. Her boot found its target, and she was rewarded with a kind of strangled, soprano gasp from the man, whose eyes bulged out as he doubled over.

Jackie’s carefully-placed kick turned out to be a mixed blessing, though, since, as the hatchet-faced man dropped to the floor in front of her, that left no one standing between her and the minotaur as the minotaur’s melon-sized fist came swinging through the space that the hatchet-faced man had occupied just a moment before.

Jackie DeCoeur had never been hit by a train before, so she couldn’t make a precise comparison to the impact that she felt as the minotaur’s haymaker caught her just below the shoulder, but she had to assume that the effect would have been similar. The force of the punch lifted her literally out of her boots, and the explosion of pain that she felt as she slammed backwards into the bar was otherworldly.

Her head swam, she saw stars, and Jackie DeCoeur went down like a sack of potatoes.

“Oopsie-daisy,” the minotaur said, with an apologetic tone of voice that might have made Jackie laugh, if her world hadn’t been spinning. “Was aiming for him, not you.”

As the fog began to clear, Jackie could see that the minotaur was reaching down, to offer her a hand up.

She could also see that a pair of noggles with badges had crested the stairs and were charging straight towards them.

“Behind you,” Jackie managed to gasp at the minotaur. “Five o’clock, and six.”

The minotaur spun round on her hooves just in time to meet the first noggle head-on. She didn’t even punch him, so much as she simply extended her fist in his direction, and let him run straight into it.

The sound of the impact reminded Jackie of nothing quite so much as a meat tenderizer hitting a baloth steak. For a moment, the lower half of the noggle seemed to want to keep moving, even as his head came to a dead stop against the minotaur’s fist.

Then gravity appeared to catch up with him, and he went down in a heap.

The noggle’s companion – who was maybe a pace or two behind – appeared to have second thoughts, just then, and he tried to skid to a stop, but his newfound caution came too late. The minotaur didn’t even bother with hitting him. Instead, she simply dipped her head down, and hooked one horn though the stunned noggle’s belt. Then, with seemingly as much visible effort as she would have used to swat a fly, she flipped her horned head upwards, sending the noggle flying through the air, and onto the nearby stage, where he crashed through the piano with an off-key arpeggio of snapping wires and splintering wood.

“Didn’t care for the music, anyway,” Jackie said, as she managed to haul herself back onto to her feet.

“Me, neither,” the minotaur said, cracking a smile. She surveyed the next pair of deputies, who had stopped at the top of the stairs, and who seemed markedly less enthusiastic about diving headlong into the fracas than their noggle brethren had been just a moment before. “Don’t reckon we’re done yet, do you?”

“Don’t think so,” the red-eyed woman said, as she tested the movement in her arm. “Want to help me clean up this mess? I’ll be glad to buy you a replacement drink, and then some.”

“Why not?” the minotaur asked. She cracked her knuckles. “Been some time since I had a good fight.”

Then the minotaur put her horns down, and she charged.

The deputy nearest to the bar – a centaur with a white hat and a braided gray mane – managed to step out of the way, but the vash standing just behind her wasn’t so lucky. The minotaur barreled into him with the force of a runaway train, sending him crashing back through the staircase railing like it was made of straw. He let out a high-pitched scream as he tumbled to the floor below, followed by the sound of wood splintering and chips scattering, as one of the card tables in the gambling hall broke his fall.

The gray-maned centaur – who had just barely avoided the viashino’s fate – craned her head over the broken railing, to see what had become of her less-fortunate colleague. Whatever she saw down below seemed to cement a decision in her mind, because, before either Jackie or the minotaur could round on her next, she threw her hands up in the air, and shouted, “woah, woah, woah!”

Grimacing a bit from the pounding in her shoulder, Jackie stepped over a pile of moaning lawmen as she made her way to where the surrendering deputy and the visibly-disappointed minotaur were staring warily at one another.

“Should we take this to mean that you’re clocking-out for the night?” she asked, and she tapped a finger against the badge pinned to the centaur’s leather vest.

In response, the centaur un-clipped her badge, and let it drop to the ground, where it gave a couple small, metallic bounces, before coming to rest face-down on the floor.

“Let’s just say I’m off-duty,” the centaur said, “and, maybe, we can leave it at that?”

“Suits me fine,” Jackie said. Then she pointed down at the tail-puller, who was writhing in pain. “Your boss, though? Me and him were having a difference of opinion that we really do need to resolve.”

The centaur shrugged her broad shoulders, and her tail swished behind her.

“Never did like him much, anyway,” she said.

“Can’t possibly imagine why,” Jackie said.

Then, bending down, the red-eyed woman pulled the sheriff’s star off the moaning man’s coat, and she flipped it through the air to the centaur, who caught it with one hand.

“Congratulations on your promotion,” Jackie said. “If I were you, though, I’d wait ‘til tomorrow to start my new job.”

The centaur looked down at the five-pointed star, which, after a moment’s hesitation, she pocketed.

“It’s like I said before,” the centaur said, and shrugged. “I’m off-duty.”

Jackie touched the brim of her hat, and she nodded in the gray-maned centaur’s direction.

“In that case, have a wonderful night,” she said.

The centaur nodded back. Then she disappeared down the stairs.

Next to Jackie, the minotaur snorted.

“That was anti-climactic,” she said, with a shake of her horns.

“Night isn’t over yet,” Jackie DeCoeur said. Then, reaching across the bar, she helped herself to a bottle of dark liquor, which she offered to the minotaur. “Believe I owe you a drink,” she said. “And then some.”

The minotaur popped the cork off the bottle with her thumb, and she knocked back a drink that might have killed a smaller woman.

“Much obliged,” she said, before taking another long pull, and tossing the empty bottle aside. “But, like I told you earlier, I haven’t been in a good fight for a while.” She grinned. “That scratched an itch.”

“I can tell,” Jackie said. She probed her rapidly-swelling shoulder with an expert fingertip, and winced. “If you don’t mind my saying so, that was some punch you threw. I don’t think I’ve been hit that hard in my life.”

“Funny you should say that,” the minotaur said, and she glanced down, as if to study her own knuckles. “I reckon you’re the first person I ever hit who got back up, afterwards.”

The red-eyed woman grinned.

“I’ll take that as a badge of honor,” she said, before extending her hand in the minotaur’s direction.

“Jackie,” she said.

The minotaur took her hand, and shook it.

“Dazie,” she said.

“Dazie, I don’t suppose I could trouble you for one more favor?”

The minotaur shrugged. “I suppose that depends on what it is.”

“Help me find a pen,” Jackie DeCoeur said. “And something to write on.”

Very nice! Another fine addition to the "How Jackie Met Her Friends" anthology. Let's see, we've seen how she met Trotter, Hush-Hush, and Presto, and now Dazie. We've heard the second-hand story of how she met Jane (although that one's hardly a friend!) Let's see... Sharps, Sage, Gub, Ecks, and Tishia should pretty much round out the set (well, there are more people in Jane's gang, I guess. And a whole lot of kids...) So, that's something to look forward to!

I love Trotter's annoyance at being ignored.

The three guys at the bar got what was coming to them, but I feel a little bad for the poor deputies who had no idea what was going on. They were just doing their jobs! Oh, well. They should have picked a better time to do it, like the old gray mare (who ain't what she used to be.)

You know, with a name like "Red Jackie," I have a hard enough time remember that her hair isn't red. And then you have to go and make a reference to a song about a red-headed woman. You're doing this to me on purpose, Orcish, I know you are! Now I'll just have to keep wondering if she's changed at all, if her hair was still red.

There wasn't quite as much punching as I was expecting, but there was the railing break, the bar slide, and the bottle broken over someone's head, and that's a big ol' win in my book!

I am now imagining a situation where Trotter gets so annoyed at watching dancers on a stage that he finally just climbs up on stage and says, "Here, let me do it!"

I can also picture the conversation Jackie had with Jane to bring Dazie into the gang. I bet that was fun.

Jane: "But she's so...unsubtle."
Jackie: "These are bank robberies, Jane, not dancing lessons. Do you want someone who can get in and out of banks without being noticed, or do you want someone who can get in and out of banks with our money?"

Thanks a ton for posting! I enjoyed it immensely!

After a minute spent squinting at the hastily-scribbled note, Jackie DeCoeur could feel her eyes beginning to cross.

With a sigh, she handed the ink-soaked napkin to Trotter.

“Is it an apology?” she asked.

Trotter – who was standing off to one side, while the red fox, now relieved of her tray of eels, watched anxiously over his shoulder – read the note in silence, before scratching his head.

“Basically,” he said.

Jackie glanced down at the tail-pulling ex-sheriff, who she was holding face-down against the bar, with one arm -- the one he didn't need to write with -- pulled painfully behind his back.

“Is it sincere, and heartfelt?” Jackie asked.

Trotter shrugged.

“I don’t know that I’d go that far,” he said.

Jackie sighed.

“Get me another napkin,” she said, and she gave the ex-sheriff's non-writing-arm a twist, eliciting a howl of pain. “We're going to try this again, until we get it right...”