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By the time the man's head bounced off the bar top for the fourth, fifth and sixth times, Demi began to wonder how all this would affect the terms of her probation. Not well, she thought. Yet, each time his head hit the bar, between cries of pain, he would grin and attempt to continue their conversation. A conversation that, if she understood what the man had said before his friend had started the bar fight, would, almost certainly count as a probation violation.

As more bottles and glasses shattered around her, Demi decided she needed to make a swift exit. Or a slow and careful exit. Definitely an exit of some kind. One where she encountered the least number of people attempting to kill other people was her preferred option. No. Actually, her preferred option was for the fight to come to an end and everyone apologise and shake hands. That option seemed unlikely.

"Is that all you've got?" One voice boomed above all the other noises. "My grandma hits harder than ... urk."

Demi didn't look. On her hands and knees, glasses threatening to slide off her nose, she scrambled towards the rear exit of the bar. Another smash and then a thump reached her ears and she turned to see a Sclarosor slump to the floor where she had previously sat with her hands over her ears. The Sclarosor's mandibles clicked several times before their segmented eyes closed. He could be dead, Demi couldn't be certain.

She continued crawling towards the exit as the fight began to escalate. The sounds of blasters charging and then firing made her entire body tremble. She only had a few more feet to go and she could run. Run to the nearest Crime Response Officer and plead her innocence. With luck, she would get away with simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If luck wasn't on her side, it would mean a return to Virt-Prison and a resumption of her sentence. Sentences.

With a shriek, she turned in a circle and began crawling back the way she had come as the man from before dropped to his backside before her. He had grinned at her again. She didn't like that grin. It looked dangerously like additional charges and court appointed lawyers that had no intention of proving her innocence.

"As I was saying, the name's Captain Frisson Packlightly and I have a propo ..." The sound of a blaster firing reached Demi's ears and, for some reason, she could not crawl away. "Oops. Stun. Stun. Always set it on stun in bars! Anyway, I have a proposition that could prove very lucrative for you."

Demi looked over her shoulder to see the man's hand, Captain Frisson Packlightly's hand, gripping her belt, holding her back, a wicked looking blaster in his hand. At the end of the bar, Demi could see the bottom half of a leg, bloodied, smouldering. Of the rest of the leg, or, indeed, the entire body, Demi could not see. That worried her even more.

"No. No, thank you." She reached behind her, trying to remove the captain's fingers from her belt. "I'm fine. It sounds nice, I'm sure, but I don't want any propositions today. Thank you."

The captain stubbornly refused to let Demi's belt go. She tried tapping at it, swatting it, digging her fingernails into that hand, but it didn't seem to faze him in the slightest, that grin remaining on his face even as blaster fire ripped through the Repli-Wood (a patented, copyrighted and trademarked product of the IBTST corporation) bar, smashing into the wall beside him, leaving a smoking hole. Demi dropped flat against the floor, hands covering her head.

"Hey, Lap, old buddy?" The captain shouted out as though greeting an old friend instead of hiding from an increasingly violent bar fight. "How's it going out there?"

A sound that resembled Repli-Paper (see above) becoming scrunched into a ball, or dried leaves as someone walked through them, came from the other side of the bar, but Demi had no intention of seeing what, or who made the sound. She only wanted to leave. Or survive. Surviving was enough, she hoped.

After long seconds, the noises of the fight began to subside. Fewer bottles and glasses smashed, though Demi thought that could be due to them all having become nothing but slivers and smithereens by now. Blaster fire had waned, possibly due to power packs losing charge. The sounds of people hitting people petered out, leaving only that crunching, crackling sound from the other side of the bar. It sounded like the crackling of victory.

Demi considered opening her eyes and seeing if she were, finally, safe. She didn't feel safe, but the sounds had fallen away and she could even hear the ambient music playing once again. Cautious, she lifted her hands from on top of her head and her face from the floor.

The bar's strip lights flickered, one hanging by only one chain. It seemed peaceful. But, then again, it had all seemed peaceful before the fight started. She could smell something acrid in the processed air but couldn't quite place it. Like Repli-Chicken (copyright, TM, etc), but different. Burned.

"Is it over?" She looked at her hands, surprised that she hadn't as many cuts and scrapes as she had expected, before rising to her knees. "Is that a Planeian?"

"That he is!" The captain listened as crinkling, crackling sounds emerged from the tall, flat figure on the other side of the bar, then frowned. "That can't be right. We should have, ooh, another thirty seconds before the CRO's arrive."

A thin, white, paper-like appendage waved towards one side of the bar, crackling noises accompanying the gesture and the captain began to tap his forehead with his blaster. More crinkling sounds came from the Planeian before it turned, almost disappearing from sight, to look out of the holographic door.

"What did he, it, they say?" Demi had still not looked over the top of the bar. She worried that, if she did, she would never be able to unsee the devastation the Planeian had wrought. The paper cuts alone would make her feel them in sympathy.

"Oh, nothing. Nothing important. It's fine. Now, about that proposition." More crackling sounds interrupted the captain and he turned an annoyed gaze towards the door. "It is fine! I planned for this ... no, not the off duty CRO's. You can't plan for random ... you know what. We can argue about this forever, but we have to get out of here. Demi?"

"You know my name?" Without thinking, she accepted the offered hand of the captain and allowed him to support her to her feet. "How do you know my name?"

The captain placed a finger to his lips and pointed towards the holographic door to the bar. The Planeian had either turned to the side, or moved somewhere else. Either way, Demi couldn't see them. Outside, however, she could see the shadows of heavily armed Crime Response Officers. Then, despite telling herself not to, she looked at the floor of the bar and squealed.

She couldn't count the number of bodies because their arms and legs and heads had become rearranged in the fight. Here and there, some still lived, groaning and howling in puddles of their own blood. If the CRO's caught her here, now, it would mean far more than a probation violation. It would mean a whole host of new charges. She would live the rest of her life within Virt-Prison, rushing through lifetime after lifetime of the pure, cruel, ignoble hell of banal twenty-first century existences.

After the first Virt-Prison life sentence, Demi had promised to herself that she would never break the law ever again. After the second, she had wanted to end it all. The third Virt-Prison life sentence lurked there, suspended for her good behaviour during the previous two sentences, but it could be reinstated at any time. Demi didn't think she could survive a third life sentence.

"How I know your name is immaterial." The captain swung open the rear door of the bar as though escorting a date. "Well, not immaterial, really. It's important that you know how important you are. And you are very important. Without you, I'm finished."

"That doesn't sound at all ominous." Despite her wariness, Demi did not want to be in the slaughterhouse, that the bar had become, when the CRO's breached the holographic door. She didn't want to be near this captain at all, either. "But, no. Thanks. Once we're out of here, we go our separate ways."

They had reached the darkened rubbish-strewn alleyway at the rear, through the door that few knew about, and Demi looked both ways before stepping out. She turned to say one, last goodbye to this strange man that wanted to put her liberty in harm's way, and saw that grin once more. He looked over her shoulder and nodded.

Demi turned, too late, to see the Planeian turn to face her, revealing themself from their two-dimensional profile, a bag in what passed for their hands.

"I'm sorry, but you don't really have a choice." The captain's words became muffled as the Planeian dropped the bag over Demi's head.