•On the Way Down•

A Helping Hand

The rancid smell of alcohol was potent throughout the cramped bar. It saturated everything and choked every new comer entering the bar along with the smoke cloud clinging to the ceiling and making the odor twice as pungent in this tight space. Regardless the patrons in the bar took deep breaths like alcohol and smoke was their drug of choice. Even when it burned going down.

A newcomer this late in the evening, a burly man with as many teeth missing as stains on his shirt, lumbered into the bar. Going a head and plopping himself down on one of the small bar stools that lined the counter. With few patrons skirting the walls and even fewer remaining at the bar now that it was well pass one in the morning. The rowdy brute slammed his fist down on the cheap lament covered counter to order attention for someone to sever him now.

Late enough in the night as it was on a Sunday, only two bartenders were stationed to work. A man and a woman. Both waiters looked complacent at each other. Here was another troublemaker. But neither of them cared as he just blended into the rest of the rugged drunks that frequented the watering hole. After a handful of boisterous orders and some choice words from the man, it was the the woman who came over to serve the man and shut him up with a drink.

"What will you have sir?" she asked as politely and peppy as the beginning of her shift even though she'd repeated herself what felt like a million times today.

"Oooo," the man leaned forward on his haunches and looked at the name tag above her chest, "Jiro Hitomi, aren't you a sweet looking piece of eye candy." The man cackled only to grab the collar of her work shirt without an ounce of hesitation, "Come here and give me a lil sugar on these rims woman!" He bellowed while tugging at Jiro's shirt and trying to grope whatever part of her he could find with his free hand.

"Aye! Enough knock it off!" Jiro yelling more of anger than genuine fear of this trashed heathen. Raising a hand above her head, she made contact squarely across the face with all of her palm.

For the echo in the bar it made, the damage was surely minimal. The man turned his face and spat a wad of spit trailed with streaks of blood across the room, "I like em with fight," A smiled crossed his scaly lips, revealing rotted and missing teeth filling his grin. Then he jerked on Jiro's white button down shirt.

The deafening sound of ripping fabric caught all the other patron's attention instantly in this tiny space. Eyes from all the rest of the men and women in the bar converged on the ruckus happening at the bar. With an audience now the rotten drunkard drew her face right up to his and Jiro could smell the scent of stale alcohol seep from his partially agape mouth. She gagged and wiggled in protest to the treatment of her own body. He paid her no heed as she struggle with every fiber in her. Then the man reached around and grab a handful of her ass in his calloused hand even when all eyes were on him.

"Hey!" Jiro shrieked absolutely past her limit now. This was not going to be the end of her shift. She struggled wildly and balled her fist to make contact with his chest and face him multiply times. The man ignored her attacks and just began trying to feel her up more. Jiro screamed and fought but all the men drinking at the bar laughed and pointed at the scene. Seeming to take pleasure in the horrible scene. While the scant few women left over from the evening tipped their heads down and held their breath it wasn't them for once. Flailing it was a seemingly lost battle for the bartender.

Just as the burly mans huge hand was going to invade her ripped shirt. A drink cooler few over the counter and made audible contact with the man's face. Missing Jiro by a single hair on her head. But missing her regardless when she crouched down to the counter and the assailant fell back with a squelching noise from thing that shouldn't have made that noise/

"Ooof-!" he grunt even interrupted as the giant cooler made him loose his grip on his prey. Jiro fell back over the counter and onto her bottom just as the man fell to the ground with a heavy thud. Wincing she looked up and saw who threw the large cooler. It was the other bartender working with her.