"I'm curious, dandelion, is that the mouth you speak to your mother with?" My words were flat, my eyes hardly bothering to meet the woman's as she ordered my attention to the next customer without so much as a thank you. Fortunately I was not employed at the bar, and I was able to relegate my gaze to falling heavily on her with my crystalline eyes narrowed and unblinking. This was the reason I much preferred the solitude of the dark work room in the weapons shop to spending my time in bars around individuals I would have preferred to solicit only conflict from; how entitled did people think they were?

There was something I had always resented about bars, regardless of what my recent behavior might have spoken for me. My brother had an affinity for spending time in them, and where he went often I was sure to accompany him even if I generally despised the sticky smell of alcohol soaked wood and sweaty bodies. For too long, I had worked in a bar as a bartender and bouncer, forced to work with skimpy clothes-clad women who wore too much makeup and not enough personality and serve women of an even lower class. My customer service suffered at the hands of my impeccably well-kept temper (ha), rendering me useless more often than not at the end of my shift. Needless to say, that stint of my employment didn't last entirely too long, leaving me at the mercy of jobs that required little interaction of the service nature. When words laced with hapless venom fell from the woman's mouth, I could only pause to watch her reaction to the drink that was placed in front of her. I had given her absolutely no cause to feed me such disdain, especially when the drink that had been placed in front of her would have been free of charge, regardless of whether I worked in the bar or not. Her lips began to curl into a smile that was reminiscent of what I assumed Ursula from the Little Mermaid wore on her purple, grotesque features, and in response my fingers twitched on the cigarette that I'd slipped from the pack in my pocket to lift it to my lips and light it with a flick of a zippo. The first exhale arched from my lips in a slow manner, my gaze still anchored on the audacious woman seated at the bar, her attention flicking to taste the drink placed in front of her.

"Manners would dictate that I ignore your insolence, though I would much prefer acknowledging you as an ungrateful cow. Maybe that makes us even, Bessie."

I shrugged a shoulder, a cloud of irritability changing the color of my eyes from crystalline blue to near-white. At this moment, a familiar Shadow detached itself from my figure in order to wind it's way across the bar and hoist itself up onto one of the seats beside the offending woman. Removing my attention from my Shadow and placing it to the task at hand of pouring myself a glass of scotch, I took my time in exiting the back of the bar in order to finish my cigarette, exhaling the smoke slowly as if to attempt to rid myself of the agitation that was building like heat on a set of coals attempting to light a fire. After nodding a hello to a familiar face, it was high-time to return my attention to the patron.

"Perhaps I should warn you of the same."

Light on the sour? Her heavy handedness with which she doused herself in the flavor was obvious. I couldn't care less what reasons the woman had to feel so stately that the problems of her day were important enough that others need suffer the consequences. I had been partaking in a rarely public good mood, though it's exuberance halted immediately at the pompous way her words befell my ears, treating my gesture as if it were that of a commoner serving her royal highness. And it was in that moment that the Shadow ran it's fingers along the wood of the bar before shoving the glass of the woman's shadow, causing the real glass to fling towards her. Once I realized that the Shadow was playing it's own game, I stepped in to blink my eyes once as she began to stir the drink which caused the glass to shatter.

The addition of a silken, masculine voice seemed to catch the Shadow off guard as it retreated into the darkness, becoming immobile against my figure once more. I felt my fingers drumming on my knee, almost accidentally wishing that Azrael had been present in order to give me a reason to display unprecedented (okay... not true, maybe for today) amounts of anger and violence, though both of which began to swirl internally instead of being given any kind of external release. Zero to 100 quickly, I guess. But then again, that seemed to be the nature of my temper in particular. When the discussion of blood rose to an audible decibel, I found myself suppressing the distaste for vampires in order to allow myself the amusement of the woman drawing attention from another predator.

"Unwanted attention might as well be on your resume," I all but murmured, an eyebrow cocking at the man's entrance. The woman began to spew words in an attempt to bait the vampire, who curiously looked like he had intended such a response. After taking a sip of my drink, I moved my less than amused gaze to rest on the pair now, thoughtfully catching snippets of 'bodies' and when the conversation took a ... ghostly turn, I grit my teeth in order to swallow whatever resistance I had of helping either one. "For someone so cocky, you are unobservant," I said slowly, standing before the two. "Congratulations; you have just won the attention of one of the oldest hunters in the city. Exit stage right, and then you can rip each other's throats out in the alley," I suggested with mock-jovialness that would strike both that the hunter was in fact watching now. I knew her well â€" Anubis, she was called. And she'd noticed both of them with her freakishly ancient eyes.