Lenny 'Skullripper' Bates, the seven-foot/four-hundred-pound/multiple-homicides leader of the pack, slowly turned his massive head to dourly regard Joey behind the bar, as that man now started to babble in sheer panic, "Look, big guy, they wouldn't leave and I don't-"
"Who?" crawled past Bates' lips and fled for its very existence.
"Oh," gulped Joey. "Right. Nobody here but us- Nobody at all, I mean- I'll be at the end of the bar cleaning off the blood on the glasses from last night." The bartender scurried along to take up his position there, and got busy at his job of making sure he managed to achieve the average life expectancy of 75.6 years for males in the United States, as presented by the CIA World Factbook 2009. Starting with ignoring whatever happened back there at the table.
Satisfied, Bates swaggered over, the floorboards creaking in agony during his passage, and he stopped at the edge of the corner table, his dead eyes examining tonight's candidates for slaughter and gangrape, with the specific course of events depending solely on how Bates decided his biker buddies would most find entertaining for the next couple of hours. Starting to take a breath to inform his victims that they were truly fucked, the boss of the outlaw motorcycle club was suddenly interrupted.
The guy with the eyepatch, a big grin on his face that meant this guy had absolutely no idea how deep in the shit he really was, now leapt out of his chair, to stand before Bates and wave his right hand in front of the enormous man's face, thumb and pinkie curled in with the other three fingers extended straight up, with that idiot then cheerfully whooping, "Three for one, Man-Mountain!"
Examining the hand still waving before his face and idly contemplating for a moment just biting it off at the wrist, Bates switched his gaze back to where the totally-clueless guy was enthusiastically bouncing up and down on his feet, and the biker then rumbled, "What the fuck you talkin' 'bout, asshole?"
"A three for one bet! We do three things that none of you or your-" the guy paused in his excited babble to lean past Bates to peer at the other subhuman bikers lined up behind their leader, all beadily examining their latest prey, to then pull his head back and continue, "-tribal subordinates can do, and then you all have to do one thing that we tell you to do!"
There was total silence in the bar then, as Bates just eyed the pleased man before him, like that guy actually thought he could talk or con his way out of whatever atrocity was going to happen. On the other hand, it'd be even more fun to see how far he and his old lady would go before they realized the hopelessness of their situation. A facial muscle on the biker's face quivered, his upper lip rising a fraction of an inch to show a flash of fang, as Bates then growled an amused agreement, "'Kay. Whaddya gonna do first? It fuckin' better not be somethin' you just pulled outta your ass."
Flopping back in his seat at the table, the one-eyed guy made a casual sweep of his arm that sent all of the empty whiskey glasses that had been resting on the tabletop flying away into the opposite direction from those around the table, to crash and shatter onto the floor. Bates didn't move a muscle at the noise, just watching the guy look up and grin at him, to then say, "I've been here a while, and I haven't even gotten a decent buzz on. So, here's the thing. You pick three full bottles of whatever booze that's in this place, and I'll drink them."
Bates lifted an eyebrow over hearing that. Actually, it was a pretty fair challenge, one that he and others of his pack had managed before lots of times. Still, there was a problem with that. "Naw, I ain't gonna spend a coupla hours watchin' you drink 'em, even if you can-"
"Oh, I'll drain them all in a minute or so each. Five minutes, tops, for all three."
Five minutes? What the hell did that guy think Bates was going to use in the bet, that pissy French bottled water, Per-something or other? Uh-huh, no fuckin' way. An evil light began to gleam in the biker's eyes, as he turned his head to rumble, "Joey, find three bottles of the special stuff, and then get your ass up here with 'em."
"Gotcha, Bates," Joey resignedly replied, knowing he didn't have a choice. The bartender moved along the counter, to then lean down and retrieve several bottles from under this before straightening up again, his hands full of glass containers. Joey then walked to the end of the bar counter, around it, and along to the table, carefully stepping past Bates, before depositing together onto the tabletop three bottles of alcohol that the one-eyed man regarded with evident interest, particularly the name on the labels: EVERCLEAR.
In a gloating tone, Bates informed the guy who'd made the bet, "That's 190 proof booze, asshole. Ain't nuttin' stronger than that, ever. So, you wanna quit now, so we can start havin' fun?" The biker leader started sadistically snickering, only to once more be interrupted.
"Actually, you can first check on all of those bottles, to make sure they're the real thing. I don't want you claiming I won by drinking something fake." The other guy calmly stared up into the startled features of the enormous criminal offender, whose face then became totally suspicious. Bates glared at Joey, whose own face turned pure white in his apprehension that he might ever be thought to do anything that would piss off the Raped Rhino Riders.
Somewhat mollified, Bates turned his attention back to the table, where he picked up one of the bottles of Everclear. Closely examining the bottle cap and its seal, the biker then twisted the top off, pitching away the discarded cap. He did the same for the other two bottles, and when they were all ready to be drunk, Bates gathered them up again, and one at a time, he dribbled a dollop of clear liquid onto the tabletop, leaving three separate small puddles. During this, Bates also stuck the tip of his left index finger into the stream of alcohol, bringing that digit up to his mouth to lick it, smacking his lips at the neutral taste and the sudden numbness of his tongue that proved it was the real thing. However, there was one final test to be made, and after putting down the last open bottle by the others, Bates dug into his jeans pocket, producing his Zippo lighter with its skull and crossbones design along the steel exterior. Flipping the lid open, the biker flicked the lighter into ignition, and then he held the produced flame over the three puddles of Everclear on the table, one after the other, which produced a triple result of each of those puddles at once bursting into a blue flame that gaily danced on the tabletop.
"Okay, it's all on the up-and-up," announced a satisfied Bates over his shoulder to his buddies crowding behind him to watch as he flicked off his Zippo and put it away, to then lean forward while casually pressing his left hand down three times in a row on top of the blazing puddles to put them out. He remained in his position of looming over the guy watching with fascination how Bates' left hand, still indifferently resting on the tabletop where it had snuffed out the last puddle, now had a thin stream of smoke curling upwards from between the fingers, bringing with it a smell of scorched meat.
Xander looked up right into the biker leader's broken-toothed sneer, for the one-eyed man to then confidently say, "I'll start when you back off. You want to time me?"
Straightening up and feeling a little taken aback at the absolute certainty in the other guy's tone, Bates hesitated, before glowering at him and shrugging, "Fuck it. It'll be fun to see how much you put away 'fore you drop dead and leave this fine mama with us for a little party." The ex-convict now vilely leered at Faith looking totally unimpressed at everything that had occurred at the table over the last few minutes.
"Yeah, whatever," muttered Xander in a equally blasé tone that perfectly matched his companion's indifferent expression at the announcement of her coming sexual assault. Still, there was an evident glint in his remaining eye, as that seated man now reached out to pick up the far left bottle of Everclear, to then lean back in his chair as he lifted the bottle to his lips, tilting the container straight up, as Xander now opened his mouth and relaxed his throat, letting the liquid inside pour down in a steady plunge, as he easily chugalugged the entire 12-ounce bottle of Everclear in less than a couple of seconds.
The only sound in the bar then was the soft *thud* of the bottom of the empty bottle hitting the tabletop, as Xander returned the container back by its fellows, to then grab the middle bottle of Everclear and repeat exactly the series of events that had drained the first bottle.
*Thud*
One more time.
*Thud*
After he had finished with the last bottle, the man with the eyepatch suddenly became still, looking unblinkingly straight ahead, as Bates and the entire biker club standing there now leaned forward in absolute fascination. Even in their violent lives, they didn't often see someone commit suicide before their very eyes, and drinking over a quart of liquor that was 95% grain alcohol inside a half-minute was virtually lethal for everybody on earth. Holding their breaths, the motorcycle gang waited for the guy to start entertaining them with his terminal convulsions, after which they'd start lining up by their status in the club in preparation for pulling a train on that hot woman there now intently examining her fingernails.
Instead, Xander Harris abruptly turned his head, to enthusiastically beam at the dumbfounded gang, as he whooped, "Now that was a rush! Fellas, we need to celebrate!" The man bounced to his feet from his chair, causing the entire group of bikers to scuttle backwards a few steps, to then stop and stare open-mouthed as that should-be-dead-now guy reached forward to grab the three empty bottles of Everclear liquor. Gripping the necks of two bottles in his left hand and the neck of the other bottle in his right hand, Xander now struck a pose, as Faith then groaned and put her hands over her eyes to shield herself from the coming ultimate badness, with her next resigned words from her lips directed at the bikers, "Jesus Christ in the mountains! You just hadda make him do his Tom Cruise imitation from that totally crappy movie, didn't you?"
Smirking at everyone in the bar, Xander Harris now started to expertly juggle the three bottles, passionately humming the entire soundtrack from 'Cocktail', as the bottles spun, rose, and fell in his nimble-fingered hands.