The Zookeeper Ch. 03

Chapter 3

The Rocky Road to Dublin

Los Angeles isn't exactly a place where it's easy to surprise people; much like New York, by the time its inhabitants reach adulthood, they've already seen their fair share of aspiring musicians, actors, and artists of all kinds crossing their paths, and they've grown accustomed to vibrant colors and the most eccentric outfits.

It was probably only this that allowed Azuki to enter the pub without causing a stir and to reach the counter with relative ease. Relatively, because despite the patrons having already seen someone walk through that door with their multicolored hair, ample bosom, or skin-tight leather pants wedging between marble-like cheeks, few had seen them all together, and no one had ever seen them topped by a perfect and captivating face like hers.

Her swift approach to the counter was punctuated by ecstatic, yet incredulous "Holy Fuck" from both men and women until she hoisted herself onto the high stool and became less conspicuous by leaning forward, hiding her face (as well as the prominent cleavage barely contained by the lace top proudly displayed under the open leather jacket) within the cascade of darkly shiny hair.

If behind her, however, the patrons continued to revel in the sight that the leather of her pants perfectly highlighted, in front of her, across the bar, the bartender certainly had the better luck: a few asses like Azuki's, after all, had been seen around, but a face as expressive, intriguing, or even simply beautiful as hers was a privilege that was reserved only for a few photographers working with the most highly-rated jet-set models. What's more, that pin-up face was wrinkled by an expression so tired and shadowy that it was the dream of every bartender ready to "listen" to a hottie like her.

Never so happy that he had chosen that job to pay for his studies, the young man in the black apron approached her, hiding quite well the enthusiasm that pervaded him.

"Good evening Miss!" He said loudly enough to be heard over the lounge music that a live band was playing, but not loud enough to attract too much attention from some playboy looking for prey who could beat him to the prize of the century "Bad night?" He let slip, betraying his desire to start a conversation.

What a stupid, self-centered whore she was! She could change her appearance as she pleased and instead, even when she wanted to go to a random place to mind her own fucking business, she couldn't help but "wear" the one with the body of a "Performer of the Year" porn star topped with the face of Aphrodite herself.

How the fuck could she think that she didn't have all the eyes of every straight male within a 100-yard radius, as well as those of several women of all sexual orientations, glued to her? Oh, wait a minute, she didn't think that at all, in fact having all eyes on her was precisely what she had in mind when he had sculpted every single detail of that body. It was purposefully made to make everyone's dick hard.

For fuck's sake! But if she only liked to fuck women, why the fuck had she modeled herself that way?

But deep down she knew: beauty, appearance, for better, was the VIP Pass to please everyone without having to do anything.

When you are beautiful, especially if you are a woman and you are extraordinary beautiful, all males immediately treat you as a goddess on earth, and even women seem to give you "the honor of arms": they may be envious, but they know, they recognize, the power you have.

That was her forbidden dream: to please others without having to draw blood every fucking second of her life to prove she deserved their respect.

It had worked, of course.

It had been a long time since she had learned to assume that appearance, and ever since then, she had always managed to reserve for herself a niche of serenity in which she could let her guard down by receiving all the free attention she desired.

It had not worked out as well as she had hoped, though.

And it was her own fault. Because she had a hole in her soul that that superficial attention could not fill. Yes, there was some easy dopamine to be found in the looks and words of normal people, but it wasn't enough.

The happiness she wanted lay in being accepted even with that chasm inside her, which was the exact opposite of the stunning front page wonder with which she now beguiled her viewers, primarily the bartender who was still waiting nervously to see if he had botched the approach or if he might still have a chance.

Azuki, however, was still thinking about how, long ago, before she developed her metamorphic powers, to even think of trying to let out an ounce of her true nature she had cultivated a wonderful eloquence as well as an extremely pleasant and agreeable personality to put at ease the people she wanted to approach.

It was, however, only a pitiful veil that she knew was wholly inadequate to conceal her Abyss.

Now that he could rival in beauty the most desirable women on earth things had obviously changed. The restless gaze of the boy in front of her proved it to her: he was the one trying to gain her approval, not vice versa.

But her jaw-dropping beauty differed from her old friend eloquence only in the thickness of the fabric. The Pitiful Veil had become a heavy drape of gorgeous velvet, but it hid the same corpse beneath it.

And she knew it very well.

Fuck! Why was she even thinking about these things! Cassie was right: she had to drink. And it had to be something strong, a hit so powerful that it would reach her brain before the depression did.

With a somewhat aggravated gesture, Azuki ran both hands through her hair, uncovering her face and looking up, only then remembering the bartender was still there in front of her eagerly waiting for her to respond to his sincere interest in the progress of her evening.

"You have no fucking idea how shitty it is" She sighed, folding her arms back on the bar and looking away so as not to embarrass the young man even more.

"Are you expecting someone?" The barman immediately continued, wanting to make sure he wasn't setting himself up for the worst embarrassment of his life.

Azuki turned again, looking cynical and smiling sarcastically.

"Yes, a colossal hangover. I'm pretty sure she told me to meet her here."

Smokin' hot and not smug? The bartender was on the verge of pinching himself to verify that he wasn't dreaming, but he recovered his focus just in time to strike while the iron was hot.

"Ah yes, this is definitely the place. I hope you're not a jealous girl, though, because you're not the only one waiting for her!"

Azuki smiled genuinely amused at him, and as a reward for his efforts she added a vaguely alluring look to her expression that, however, immediately got the young man on edge.

"Do you mind if I use a vaporizer?" She asked him as she pulled out hers, not surprisingly stowed in her cleavage "It looks like a cigarette, but it has no combustion or nicotine."

The bartender knew that at this point he would have to tell her something like that it was okay with him but he didn't make the rules or that if he then let her do it he would have to allow everyone to do it, but he was no dummy and, in lieu of doing all that, he nodded, smiling with a bit of a dumb look as he wiped a cloth in front of her to clean her part of the counter.

"Thank you," she said purring like a pussy, immediately getting the barman to drop everything to rummage through his pockets and then produce at lightning speed a lighter.

Azuki chuckled spontaneously upon seeing the confusion her eagerness had caused "Ahaha! No, thank you. No combustion, remember?" And she lit the vaporizer with a light tap on the back before taking a long drag.

The slack-jawed expressions the man had as he stared at her without uttering a single word told her how, not unlike her, he was also appreciative of sluts who used cigarettes to pose and this caused her to stamp that fawning smirk on her face that only worsened the bartender's confused state.

She was such a stupid whore. All it took was for someone to give her a couple of pleasantries and then everything was fine and she could even laugh.

That is to say: all it took was for her to make a couple of passes at someone and for that someone to fall for it to get her spirits back up.

But after all, wasn't that how it was supposed to work? Hadn't she just said that was why she was "dressed" like that?

Glittering beauty, instant adoration, cheap dopamine, forgotten problems.

The circuit was working great, except for that stupid brain that wouldn't shut up and ruined everything by noticing the scam and refusing to forget about all the hard work she had to do just to stay afloat in that fucking life.

She had to turn it off, and there was nothing that would turn it off better than bathing it in pure alcohol, exactly as planned.

The change in the chemical balance in her brain evidently must have been mirrored in her expression as well, because when she came back into focus, Azuki clearly noticed that the young man's had become gloomy as well, perhaps worried that he had done something wrong.

"Yes, sorry," He said, putting the lighter away and going back to wiping her counter "Are you trying to quit?"

No, I just use it to look like a Slut was the correct answer that should have come out of her mouth, but she instead used the variant

"No, I just have an oral fixation" Usually this explanation added an extra hand of sluttiness to her scene, but this time it came out still so tainted by her emotional instability that it legitimately sounded like a medical issue instead of the bullshit it really was.

"Ah... okay. Can I... What can I get you?" He tried, trying to go back to being professional to reset the conversation and Azuki jumped at the chance to return to her original plan.

"Ah, yes, thank you. Can you make me a Knight's Beer?" Azuki's request, however, was met with an embarrassed silence.

"A... Knight's Beer? But is it an imported one?" The bartender, who certainly did not want to disappoint the customer of the year, asked her quite distressedly.

She blinked a couple of times trying to figure out what was wrong with the request that had seemed simple to her, and that was all the time it took for her to get to the answer.

"Pfff... What a dumbass!" She scolded herself after blowing out the white vaporizer cloud "You don't call it that here. Wait, I wanted to order you a... a..." She hesitated, quickly scrolling through her mental dictionary. "A Boilermaker! That's what it's called!"

"Aaaah, okay!" Sighed the young man, going back to smiling as he felt the pressure lift "Beer with whiskey shot in it! Coming right up!" He exclaimed with renewed enthusiasm as he moved toward the tappers.

"Yes, But..." She suddenly stopped him "... I have a special request: can you pour it like a U-Boat, use a Special Export as beer and a peat from the islands as whiskey?"

The bartender froze again in mid-gesture, trying to process the request as quickly as possible.

"It's... It's a curiously specific request... Let's say yes, I can, but I'm not sure they mix so well together" He objected as mildly as possible.

To be fair, the fact that he had raised the question instead of staring at Azuki's boobs as he drooled over and answered "Yes Mistress" spoke volumes in favor of his competence, a trait she greatly appreciated, so she felt compelled to give an explanation, albeit a succinct one (as opposed to simply answering him "Mind your own fucking business").

"I need the whiskey and the Special Export for taste as well as alcohol level. In fact, if you fill up the whiskey shot to the brim I'd just be happy. I want to stay sober as little as possible. To down such shit in one shot, though, is a bit... inconvenient. But if you turn the shot of whiskey upside down, it only mixes when you drink and doesn't overflow, so you can drink it a little at a time."

"For Sure. Between peat whiskey and special export you get a nice gradation and the foam from the beer then increases the absorption. It's a good plan to forget quickly where you live, too! You clearly know what you're doing, though, so.... here it comes!" He resolved by pulling a bottle of beer out of a cellar and one of whiskey down from a shelf.

Obviously the barman complied with the request for the whiskey glass filled to the brim and soon it was upside down in the mug of dark beer, waiting to spill its smoky passenger into the dark sea around him.

Azuki stood for a moment staring at the drink almost mesmerized, or perhaps locked in silent prayer to be freed by it from that eerie grip in which she felt her mind was trapped.

Finally, in a fluid gesture devoid of hesitation, she took the glass and lifted it, raising her elbow in perfect Irish style, drinking greedily sip after sip until she had consumed half the drink.

The smoky taste of the whiskey mingled with the roasted malt and coffee of the Guinness as it slid over her tongue and then flowed down into her stomach where she immediately felt the alcohol set to work to work its way to her brain.

It was a distinctly welcome sensation and, combined with the taste she so enjoyed, had the effect of making her sigh with satisfaction as she noisily set her glass down on the counter.

"Aaaah! Fuck yeah!" She commented a little too loudly.

"Shit what a blast!" The bartender echoed her decidedly impressed by the feat "The... Wasn't the plan supposed to be that served as a U-Boat you could drink it slow?"

"The plan was to get hammered before realizing how shitty I feel.. And I have to tell you, I already feel like I'm on the right track."

Decidedly smug, Azuki brought her cigarette to her lips taking a deep breath in and then reclining her head back and forcefully blowing a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.

As she dropped her arms down her body, finding comfort and peace in the foreboding of the elation that would shortly seize her, the smoke fell back on them, scattering the scent of incense with which the vaporizer was loaded.

Even more than before, the bartender stood transfixed, staring enraptured at her and then attempting to use that moment of apparent quiet to resume the conversation so awkwardly interrupted earlier.

"Is.. Is that how they call it where you come from?"

Azuki slowly opened her eyes, remembering that she was still not drunk enough to afford to ignore the person she was talking to, but at the same time realizing that she had completely missed the point of the question.

"What?" She replied in return.

"The Knight's Beer. Earlier you said 'What do you call it here?' Is that the name of the Boilermaker where you come from?"

"Where do you come from as in you don't think I'm from around these parts?" Azuki replied with the playful smile resurfacing, trying to mask the stressed desire to escape from reality that pervaded her.

"Well... even with the coming and going of starlets, you certainly don't see many girls like you around here." Azuki took another sip of her drink, managing to resist the temptation to embarrass the bartender again by asking him to clarify what he meant by that statement, and opted to advance the conversation with a more neutral approach.

"And where do you think I'm from?"

"Uh... um... I... I would say Russia? Or Europe?" Azuki actually knew that by "Europe" the bartender meant precisely the "European" category on Pornhub, which meant "Eastern Europe," but she didn't dwell on the nuance. Instead, she took another drag from the vaporizer, enjoying the scent of incense that came from it, and then opened up with an unexpected confession.

"Truth be told, the Knight's Beer comes from Italy. That's where I had a Boilermaker for the first time, but those that served it to me, didn't call it that."

"Are you from Italy?!" The boy asked, genuinely surprised, eliciting Azuki's spontaneous laughter.

"Ah ah ah, no!" She laughed, taking another sip from her one-way ticket to the hangover of the century. "Actually, I'm... a bit of a 'mix.' But I've been to Italy quite a bit for work, and it was one of the most... intense experiences of my life. Some idioms have stuck with me."

"For work? What do you do for a living?"

"What do you think?"

"Are you a model?" The bartender immediately replied, seizing the opportunity to dish out the flattery he had in store since he first saw her enter.

Azuki felt a strong temptation to once again indulge in it and play the airheaded slut to attract even more flattery, but she drowned that idea with another sip of her drink, then surprised herself with another confession.

"Ah... Thanks for the compliment. But what if I told you that I actually have a rather dangerous job?" She asked, lowering her gaze to the glass, letting herself go to gloominess.

"Re... Really? What kind of job?"

"I'm a zookeeper," She blurted out, well aware of how incredible the statement was.

Indeed, on the other side, the statement was met with total disorientation, leaving the bartender not only speechless but also unable to decide what expression to make.

"What... What do you mean?" He finally managed to formulate.

"You don't believe me, do you?" She retorted before taking another deep sip of her magical potion.

"No, I..." he tried to dissimulate, but with very poor results.

"Oh, come on. I know what you're thinking: What the fuck does she mean she works as a zookeeper? Not to mention, 'If she were selling blowjobs, she could live in Beverly Hills.' You're nice not to say that, but you wouldn't be the first to think it, even with more... colorful words."

"Well, that's not exactly what I had in mind, but now that you mention it, you have to admit it sounds a bit strange for a beautiful girl like you to have a job like that."

"Doesn't it?" she asked with sad sarcasm as she continued to stare at the glass as if she could see the entire story that had led her to be sitting there trying to forget everything by washing it away with a flood of alcohol. "But that's exactly it. I ended up there somewhat by chance. It was supposed to be just a brief experience, but then I got stuck."

"So you're a veterinarian?" the bartender tried to figure it out. "I didn't think it was such a dangerous job."

"If you've ever tried to shoot an antibiotic pill down a domestic cat's throat, you can imagine what it's like when you have to do it to a tiger," she commented sarcastically, then seized the silence that hailed her response to take another sip of her drink and thus approach the bottom of the first glass.

"Wow," the other said after the time it took to visualize the scene. "I thought there were safety measures for wild animals."

Azuki, in turn, let out an exasperated laugh, bordering on gloom, then continued her story.

"I am the safety measure. What I guard cannot be locked behind bars. The animals I deal with can tear you apart in one bite, but at the same time, they are precious specimens to be protected from any harm, even 'emotional' harm. No electric prods, no traps, no restrictive harnesses... no tranquilizers that could upset their delicate tummies." Azuki decided to interrupt the overly audacious metaphor, but only because, as she formulated it, her mind filled with echoes of the Banshee's screams and those of the recruit who had literally exploded in her arms not more than a few hours earlier. She decided then to change the plan and finish drinking rather than finish talking.

With a sharp movement, she lifted the glass and emptied it in one gulp, then set it down with such a force that made the overturned glass of whisky inside the beer glass clink with a crystalline sound.

"Aah! One down!" she emphasized, pleased. "More to go!"

A pleasant tingling made its way into her stomach, accompanied by a warm sensation spreading in her belly.

Azuki pushed the glass aside, passing it to the boy, and making room in front of her. She decided that she had drunk enough alcohol to allow herself some more freedom and to play the slut a little more. So, with a theatrical gesture, she lifted her rack and then leaned it on the counter, propping herself up on her elbows, and then taking another drag from her cigarette while waiting for the next round.

Obviously, the bartender wasn't particularly receptive to the new order from his customer. Rather, he seemed (rightly) focused on the pair of melons she had just served up, especially now that, displayed so prominently, the black lace of her top didn't hide very well the fact that she wasn't wearing any kind of bra.

That looked like the story of her life: a tangle of absurd stuff and gibberish that, when you start to sort it out, looks like nothing more than the stupid invention of a crazy broad, and you forget it as soon as a nice pair of tits pops up.

"Come on, they're not going anywhere. I'll keep them here for at least another couple of rounds," Azuki teased the bartender, seeing him completely fixated. "But don't take advantage, and keep filling my glass."

Still speechless, the bartender forced himself to look away from that fat load of tits to look her in the eyes and then mumble some syllables that were supposed to be some kind of excuse.

"No... I... uh... it's just..."

"It's all good. I don't mind if you look at them... If it doesn't distract you from the very important task of keeping me supplied with beer and whiskey."

"Oh, yeah," he immediately snapped, getting the ingredients for another dose of Azuki's potion, but unable to keep his eyes from bouncing back and forth between the drink and her pups.

Giving proof of considerable skill, the bartender managed to complete the preparation despite her voluminous distraction and served the drink right in front of all that blessed mound of flesh that was cluttering his counter and to which his eyes had once again become glued.

This time, the sight mesmerizzed him, preventing him from resuming the conversation. However, unlike before, his gaze was much less nervous, thanks to Azuki's absolute lack of modesty, allowing him to gawk without the slightest hint of embarrassment.

After enough time had passed to make it clear that "I don't mind if you look" wasn't just a polite phrase and that talking wouldn't break the spell, the bartender recovered enough to put together a coherent sentence, although he continued to keep his eyes fixed where they were.

"Sorry, but I have to ask: are those..."

"... All natural, yes," she anticipated, jiggling her breasts to demonstrate their consistency.

"Kudos to your mom," the young man commented quietly, enjoying the view of the soft spheres dancing in front of him.

Azuki let him enjoy his contemplation as she returned to her own and resumed sipping her drink.

It took at least three sips before the bartender felt uncomfortable again, realizing that, even with such an accommodating customer, the insistence of his wordless gaze was dangerously approaching that of a creep.

So he decided to stop... not speaking. Because there was no way in hell he was going to miss this opportunity when a babe like that was flaunting her boobs to his face and letting him look at them as much as he wanted.

"It's... Sorry, but it's really hard..."

"... Not to stare," she cut him off again. "I know. I have trouble not staring at them myself each morning in the mirror," she confessed, well aware that this mental image would only increase the bartender's horniness. "But I don't know why you're apologizing. Do you think someone stole my turtleneck sweater and bra?"

"Uh... what sweater?" the bartender asked, uncertain.

"The one I'm not wearing. Do you think I left the house wearing a modest little sweater and a supportive bra, and then evil robbers stole them from me on the street, forcing me to walk around dressed like this?"

Still somewhat unsure where this conversation was going, the young man tried to follow it, even looking Azuki in the eyes again.

"Oh... no, but what does that have to do with anything?"

"It has to do with the fact that the only other alternative is that I put my boobs in this lace top with nothing underneath of my own volition. Do you think I dressed like this thinking you wouldn't look at them?"

"Well, you should be free to dress as you like without..."

"Oh, for fuck's sake, yes, we hear that phrase a lot, don't we? Well, I don't want to ruin the other princesses' tale, but it doesn't apply to me: I know damn well I have a pair of knockout tits, and I like the attention they get me, so I dress exactly the way I need to get it. So don't feel embarrassed about looking at them: you're giving me exactly what I want." And to emphasize her point, she took the glass of ice-cold beer and, before bringing it to her lips to drink again, she rubbed it on her breasts, immediately causing her nipples to stiffen and poke prominently through her top.

"Bloody Hell..." The bartender gasped, unable to prevent his eyes from widening at that sight and shocked by her brazenness "We could use more customers like you" He added and then stood enraptured by the view.

"Bah, I don't know. I have to tell you that I don't think I'm being all that charitable: at the end of the day I like to be looked at, but then I'm not a great dick fan, so I disappoint a lot of expectations. Men can appreciate my "gifts" better, but I don't appreciate theirs as much."

"You mean..."

"... I'm a lesbian? Look: my girlfriend would have serious trouble believing that, given the amount of times she has caught me getting my boobs kneaded by a man. She says my sexual orientation is "Naughty Drifter" however, statistics say that I drift very easily toward women, while I am extremely selective, as well as naughty, about men."

"There's a lot to unpack for one sentence, but I'll limit myself to: your girlfriend?"

"Yep! A half French girl all dark-looking that I live with. If it weren't for her, I would have killed myself a long time ago. She's the one who gives me the strength to put up with all the crazy shit I have to deal with" Gratitude sounded sincere in Azuki's voice, but this only added to the other's confusion.

"Aaaaand.. This dark-looking half-French girl also doesn't mind if I stare at your rack, or is there a jealous girlfriend in my future who stabs me at the end of my shift?"

"Let's just say she's pretty understanding about my needs to get a little more attention, although she'd certainly prefer me to have other hobbies."

"For real? Because I don't know how it works elsewhere, but in my opinion here we're a little bit beyond a little more attention. I don't know how I'd take it if my girlfriend said to someone else it doesn't bother me if you stare at them, especially after passing a cold glass over them."

"Oh, how cute! - she quipped distinctly sarcastic before taking down a big swig of the corrected beer - And who knows what your girlfriend would do if she knew what kind of patrons you entertain."

"Well, if she existed," he didn't hesitate to retort, "I think she'd be staring at them with me. Sorry, but that pair of twins you have transcend sexual orientation: they're a work of art. You can't get mad at your boyfriend for staring at the Mona Lisa; you stand next to him and admire it together."

"Ha ha ha!" She laughed, immediately abandoning the sarcastic frown "Well played! Flattery always works on me! Anyway, if it makes you feel more comfortable, she's the one who sent me here to blow off some steam, and I assure you she knows perfectly well what kind of slut I am when I go out by myself."

The barman distented his look, as if he was genuinely relieved, but at the same time he seemed to get a little sadder.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to lecture you, but it just really seems to me that you don't need any more trouble and I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to give you any. I haven't quite figured out this zoo thing yet, but it's written all over your face that you can't take it anymore and you really do everything you can to not think about it," Azuki sighed with a defeated but at the same time peaceful expression, relaxing her face and dropping the mask of an oversexed slut to return to the weary resignation that attitude was supposed to conceal.

She took a break by taking a drag from the vaporizer as her face slowly changed expression, retaining only the smile, which however more resembled a tired grin.

"Touché" She admitted puffing up a cloud of smoke "If you can tell even with my boobs hanging in front of you, it means it's serious indeed."

"It's clearly impossible not to look at them, but so would it be if you had put on the turtleneck sweatshirt you mentioned earlier. With a pair of those you certainly don't need a lace top to draw attention; let alone put on nothing underneath. The ice cold glass trick then was pure overkill. It's like you have a neon sign that says, "Look here!" And a tiny sticker on your forehead that says 'but not here'." Azuki sneered a little more and drank some more of her beer savoring it along with the simile the bartender's words were conjuring up for her.

"It's like a magic trick" She finally proffered gloomily "You draw the audience's attention to the blatant gesture, the colorful sparks, so they don't look at the other hand which is the one that really makes things happen" Another sip of the drink that was beginning to show its beneficial effects "This time I think I've gone too far with the special effects"

"If it makes you feel better, you're amazing enough that it would have worked anyway if only you hadn't come in here with your hands in your hair, the desperate need for a hangover, and I hadn't seen you change mood like a roller coaster in the space of two drinks"

"It's the story of my life, you know? An endless series of magic tricks to distract the world from..."

"From what?"

"... from me I guess. That is, from the real me. From that boring, mediocre, lazy version of me that lies hidden behind all the pyrotechnic effects" The end of Azuki's sentence found her with her gaze once again lowered to the glass, the words directed more at herself than at the bartender.

The latter was once again caught off guard and took a moment to phrase his incredulous question.

"Boring and mediocre? Come on you can't be serious! There is nothing mediocre about you! You are the antithesis of mediocrity!"

"Because of my looks? What if that is also a trick? What if it's a complex make-up under which completely normal, indeed ugly, stuff is hidden?" She retorted, her thoughts turning, as they often did, to how she was now so far removed from her original appearance in both time and form that she no longer knew whether it was she who was influencing her own disguise or the other way around.

The insinuation was obviously absurd without being aware of Azuki's powers, so the young man again found himself silently trying to interpret a metaphor without knowing that he was instead confronted with the candid truth, as she used that pause to raise her glass again and fill with more liquid courage.

Eventually the barman gave up on that riddle, but not on the idea of helping her out.

"Pfff... I really don't know what they do to you in that "zoo"; but shouldn't you just give it a break? There must be another way to make ends meet, right? You certainly wouldn't struggle to find work as a model, but if the industry doesn't appeal to you and you can settle for it, they're always looking for new staff here alone, and a girl like you would be tipping the scales. I know you might have to give up a lot of things, but are they worth what they're putting you through? Are they paying you that much at that 'zoo'?" Azuki had listened absentmindedly to the dissertation she had heard a thousand times before about how much she would make as a model or "how good you would feel if you worked here" (another great classic that really meant "I can't wait to enjoy 8 hours a day of spectacular hottie to jerk off to when I get home") as she took ever-increasing sips of her drink, but when the bartender touched on the subject of her paycheck, such hysterical laughter erupted in her throat that she nearly splashed all the beer in his face and had to put her glass down in a hurry so as not to spill it on the floor.

This was followed by several coughing fits interspersed with that uncontrollable laughter while, bent over the counter, Azuki did her best to contain the former, but not the latter.

Finally, only the laughter remained, low and deep, dark beyond what could be expected, the spasms of her diaphragm, uneven and uncontrollable, causing her large breasts to bounce around.

"What... what did I say?" Asked the young man completely caught off guard.

Azuki propped her forehead with the palm of the hand that held the cigarette, making her look like a strange smoldering unicorn, and gathered her strength to put into words the absurdity she had just realized thanks to that simple boy so far removed from the cosmic mechanics of the League.

"Heh heh heh. I get a refund."

"What?"

"For all the crap I have to put up with. I get expense compensation plus room and board. That's how much they pay me."

"Are you fucking kidding me?!" Blurted out the other, eyes wide in disbelief.

The question came as Azuki took another swig of beer in the hope that its alcohol would make the whole thing seem more acceptable to her. So, unable to speak, her head nodded bobbing conspicuously as if she were head banging at a Metallica concert to compensate for her silence.

"JudasChrist yes!" It was the first thing she uttered as soon as she swallowed the drink "It's all charity-like stuff. All Pro Bono, for a noble cause or something. A humanitarian mission that I have to be grateful to be a part of."

"But then why don't you just leave?"

The hilarity of the situation quickly died down at that question. The laughter that still tugged at her lips died down well before its echo faded and Azuki's pupils swelled within amethyst-colored irises as her gaze fixed itself at a point far away in time and space where the answer to that basic question actually laid. That question Azuki carefully avoided asking herself for fear of discovering she had no answer.

But in the alcoholic courage that the drink was now giving her, all frills removed, even the answer sounded simple and above all sincere.

"I can't" was the extreme summary she found "Everyone.... All animals need a lot of attention, I could never leave them unattended. If something happened to them I would never forgive myself" She then deepened, carrying on that daring metaphor.

"And can't the guys at the zoo find someone else? Or at least someone to help you?"

"There are no other people willing to do the things I do. In fact, it even turns out that I have a special skillset that allows me to handle animals that couldn't even be kept in captivity. If I were to leave they would simply have to be put down. And as tiresome as it is to care for them, I couldn't live knowing that because I couldn't handle the pressure, they had to die."

The tone of her voice returned calm and reflective, telling her that she was taking too long a break from the booze, so as soon as she finished her sentence, she pulled up her glass again to take two long sips in a row, chasing the intoxication she so longed for.

"It seem to me, though, that those at the zoo are taking advantage of this sense of duty of yours: they're some fine motherfuckers!" Commented the honestly invested bartender.

"I'd love to tell you that they are, but instead I don't know. They really are all fine people who really believe in collecting and caring for these animals. They're just very busy with the highest systems and they don't really know what's going on down in the cages. From the higher ups it must look like I have an easy job, or I make it look easy. You know, one of the reasons I've been hired is that no matter how shitty a situation is, one way or another I always manage to work it out... by myself, to boot. So when the crisis is solved someone comes in to check on how things are going only to find me perhaps covered from head to toe in mud, shit or blood (or all three), but with everything in perfect working order. So they leave with a shrug commenting only with a 'Clean yourself up: this is no way to work' and instead of telling him to fuck off I reply 'Yes, sir' because I am too exhausted to argue and because, as they say, I have Great Stress Tolerance, which to them means that almost anything can happen to me without me going crazy."

Azuki celebrated her long reflection by indulging in some more of her drink while the bartender, after only a moment's reflection could not help but comment with a well-placed:

"I wish they were here now to understand the difference between Great Tolerance and Infinite Tolerance."

Still intent on savoring the smokiness of the drink, Azuki hurriedly downed her sip so that she could raise her glass again and say

"Here's to the coincidence of having found someone else who knows this life tenet that I repeat at all staff interviews, in the hope that someday some of the brass will ask themselves a few questions!" Then she downed whatever was left in the glass and savored the feeling that excess was bringing her.

"And what does your girlfriend think about all this?" He asked as he retrieved the second glass to rinse it.

"She wants to kill them all, of course, but she sees that I can't tear myself away, so every time something goes wrong all she can do is stick her tongue in my mouth to distract me from all this shit with an R-rated french-kiss. Needless to say, the way things are going, I spend more time in the bedroom than a porn star."

The spicy detail that Azuki disclosed should have attracted the young man's attention like a magnet, but she dropped it with such a raw tone that she managed to keep her teasing to a limit, though it was certainly not ignored.

"Then there are days like today, when even the deepest french-kiss can't fix things, and so she sends me off to get drunk as shit while she prepares a girls' night out to reset my brain," Azuki mentally complimented herself on how she had eventually used the term girls' night out instead of filthy orgy. The sacrifice embellished by the fact that this time she could act all slutty big time while telling the plain and simple truth.

"And what happened today to get you all the way here?"

"Ah..." she sighed "... Where do I start?" She wondered putting her hand back on her forehead once more in a pensive pose "Got it: from another Boilermaker" She finally said tapping her knuckles three times on the counter to emphasize the lack of a full glass in front of her.

"Re... Really?" Made the bartender very doubtful "You do remember it's the third one, don't you?"

In response Azuki took another drag from her vaporizer, nodding conspicuously.

"Uh uh... do you think I don't have the money for the third round?"

"Um, I think you don't have the pounds to handle the third round. Do you know I've seen bikers over 200 end up badly with three of those?"

"Uh oh. What a rookie move..." She replied, always with the sly look she used when she was "distracted" enough to be willing to play with her prey "... Why? How much do you think I weigh?" She reciprocated before taking another drag from her cigarette.

"Fuck" Commented the other noticing the trivial mistake "Okay, no, wait, I've got it" stalled him elaborating his way out of the treacherous trap "I'd say you're about 110, 120 pounds!"

Azuki blew out the smoke laughing.

"Ha ha ha! Yes, without legs! Nice save, anyway. With someone less sensitive to flattery I'd recommend you put on at least twenty pounds more, but still stay twenty, twenty-five pounds below the number you're really thinking in order to come out of a situation like that clean."

"Well, I may have gone short in estimating how much your 'twins' weigh, but you know... it's not like you see that many of them around here!"

"Twenty pounds of boobs sounds like overkill even for me, but I guess that's a nice gimmick to get me to propose a hands-on test to see how much they really weigh... because that's where you were going with this, right?"

As if Azuki had just uttered an incantation capable of petrifying his victim, the bartender was instantly paralyzed, the conniving smirk decorating his mouth and voice cut off along with his breath.

The boy's brain in fact got stuck in a multiple choice on how to answer that simple yet very dangerous question.

"But... but... what kind of fucking evil trick is this?! If I say Yes I sound like a maniac, if I say No I sound like a liar. What did the barkeepers do to you to hate us so much?"

"Maybe I'm not so right in the head and I like maniacs. And if you had the guts to be honest you could win the lottery," she sneered again.

"Or, and hear me out, maybe, just maybe, you're doing the same trick all over again, how about that?" He caught her off guard instead.

"Which trick?" She did a little bewildered at not being in control of the conversation.

"The one involving an ice cold glass on the nipples. The one with the giant sign hanging from your boobs to hide the small note on your forehead. We were about to have a serious talk about what happened to you today to be here getting hammered and instead I find myself here tempted not only to look, but you've even raised the stake to touching. Doesn't that feel kind of a déjà vu?"

For a long moment, Azuki tried to come up with a sharp sarcastic reply to the bartender's all-too-timely interpretation, but then she could not help but honor its veracity by turning serious again, underscoring the effort with yet another sigh.

"Ugh... Okay. I deserved it, and I swear I'm not doing it on purpose. It must really depress me to talk about all this shit. In my defense, though, I must say that I still don't see my third round of Boilermaker."

"Fair enough" Admitted the bartender in turn, promptly retrieving the necessary ingredients and mixing them with expert and resolute movements, preparing the drink in record time and placing it in front of her almost defiantly "There you go. Now it's your turn."

"You're not worried about me getting knocked out anymore? Will you take me to your house if I get plastered sick?" She chirped with a seductively frowning look.

In response, the young man gave her a scowl that he accompanied with a dry "Don't you dare try that again!"

Azuki giggled to hide her nervousness and resigned herself to honor her end of the bargain... but not without the help of her third cocktail.

Extinguishing her laughter into a long, heartening sip, she made at least a quarter of the drink disappear before taking a deep breath in, preparing herself for the combined effort of mentally reliving the whole ordeal, plus having to recount it in metaphors fit for a barkeeper.

"So: my day started with an excursion. I was to babysit a class of children on a school trip" She began, painting her recruits as tender, innocent creatures leaving the safety of their home to learn about the world "I was to take them to see one of our Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits farms: one of the few things we have that is not dangerous, but still extremely rare and valuable" She went on to transform the U. N. soldiers who formed the security ring around the Alaskan dig area into fragile little animals to be diligently cared for "The field trip was to show the brats how things really work in a zoo like ours: all the work that goes into it, even for seemingly autonomous and simple creatures like rabbits, the responsibility we as janitors have, the day-to-day necessities, even without spectacular things like being a dentist to an elephant or administering antibiotics to a tiger."

"Sounds like a neat idea" Interjected the bartender quite involved "Although I guess the kids wanted to cuddle the precious rabbits at all costs."

Azuki took advantage of the pause to take another sip and model the image suggested by the bartender on the morning's mission.

"Oh yeah, they wouldn't stop" He continued to improvise, referring to how the young superheroes kept seeking the soldiers' attention by showing off how much they were, indeed, Super. "But that I was prepared for: that's quite normal, at that age what would you expect them to do? Even though I was alone, I felt pretty comfortable. I mean, compared to the shit I usually have to deal with, for once I felt like I had hit the jackpot, and even though the management had left me to do everything on my own as usual, at least this time I didn't have to go fishing for a giant fucking crocodile in a sewer pipe to shove a suppository up its ass."

"Did you... are you serious? Did you really have to put a suppository..."

"Did you not pay attention when I told you it was a dangerous job? And, yes, I really had to do it, and even that time without outside support, and just think, you didn't even see me come by that night to get drunk, so imagine how shitty this is going to get."

The bartender frowned sincerely concerned by the grim foreboding and crossed his arms, instinctively assuming a defensive pose.

"What happened then?" He asked, no longer able to hold back his curiosity as she downed some more smoked courage.

"A pack of dingoes" She replied harshly as she set her glass back down on the bar, picturing the super-powered mercenaries as rabid, predatory canids "A fucking pack of wild dingoes managed to get into the rabbit preserve on the one day I have a bunch of brats to walk around."

"Oh fuck! But are they aggressive toward humans, too?"

"Towards adult humans? They give them a wide berth, but, see, the only adult human within a ten-mile radius was me. Otherwise this bunch of assholes sees nothing but a hoard of furry, juicy little snacks and a handful of hairless little monkeys who just stopped sucking milk from their mother's tits."

"I guess the kids must have been scared..."

"You wish! Instead, the first thing these cartoon-grown gnomes do when they see a pack of drooling beasts running toward the bunnies is grab a branch from the ground and chase after them to hunt them down and defend the little critters" She paraphrased, describing the recruits' clumsy attempt to intervene in defense of the soldiers.

"Oh my God. Have any of the children been bitten?"

Sensing the genuine concern of the boy actually figuring poor babies in danger, Azuki decided to cut short the beautiful metaphor she had so well crafted.

Breaking her narrative streak, however, was a difficult task, so much so that she needed a deep drag from her cigarette to muster the necessary resolve.

"Uhfff..." She exhaled noisily "No. I'm too good not to be able to stop a pack of stray dogs from butchering half a dozen children armed with sticks... which by the way slammed into a dingo's snout always have quite a deterrent value."

"Ah thank goodness" Commented the other sincerely relieved "Come on though, then: all's well that..."

"Oh yes. Just peachy" She sarcastically interrupted him and then left him gasping in bewilderment as she took a couple of swigs until the glass was half empty

"Do you have any idea..." She then began again in a completely different tone, foreshadowing a distinct change in the mood of the story "... of the face a child raised on bread and superheroes makes when he has to watch fluffy little animals, whom he had sworn to protect, splash blood in every direction as they are slaughtered by filthy rabid dogs?" She asked, staring at the drink for courage as images of the massacre and blood-laden snow flooded her memory.

The force of the image reached even the young man whose face immediately bent into a mournful mask.

"I killed them all. Like the dogs they were. But it took me time. As I was catching one on one side, another barked at a child on the other side and I had to run to save it. In the end there were at least 30 dead rabbits. Had I been alone I would have saved them all. And no kid would have seen what the guts of a Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits look like."

"Shit..." He sighed, nervously passing a hand over his mouth.

"And do you have any idea..." She again upped the ante, repeating the oh-so-functional story-telling pattern "... of the face a child makes when he sees his "teacher" covered in dingo blood after he watches her smash the skulls of all those filthy beasts? The triumph of good over evil is much less poetic when you find out that the good guys use the same savagery as the bad guys to win their battles."

"Fuck, I'm sorry..." He could only manage to say, dismayed.

After another drag from the vaporizer, Azuki blew out the white smoke directly against the glass to watch the spectacle of the rippling fog tendrils swirling around the glass.

"As soon as I shot down the last of those bastards, I called the Operations Center to report the whole mess. I expected them to put me on the cross for the huge mess... but what do I hear instead? That I did a great job taking down the dingoes. That they were counting on me being able to take care of it myself. That they had been trying to get rid of them for a while, but they were too smart to get caught by a hunting party. Praises that I don't even hear on my birthday..."

"But... what about the rabbits? What about the children?"

"Collateral damage" She commented, literally repeating the words used by the CO to respond to the same questions "If I hadn't been there the dingoes would have had free range and wiped out the whole farm so better thirty rabbits than all the rabbits. What about the brats? Well, if I didn't have brats to take on a field trip, when would I ever drop by pygmy rabbits? In admin they worked it out with a parental signature on a liability release form and everything went back to running as smoothly as before."

"I don't understand" Made the bartender confused "What if the dingoes didn't happen to show up today? What if they had attacked tomorrow? Or the day after tomorrow?"

"Does it make more sense to you if I tell you that since we are a multimillion-dollar international foundation, we can keep track of all the movements of any small animal or larger within 150 miles of our reserves?"

"But then..."

"They knew very well what route the dingoes were taking. The problem was, somehow, this time even the dingoes were able to know when the hunters were lurking in the rabbit reserve. They may have been able to sniff out the testosterone of the brawny males or whatever, but, whenever from the headquarters they saw the beasts approaching and dispatched the studs to wait for them, lo and behold, the dingoes would scamper off, leaving them to wait all day like dummies surrounded by fluffy bunnies. Instead this time instead of testosterone they must have smelled milk and pussy and thought it was their lucky day..."

"Did they use you as a decoy?" The bartender asked in stunned acknowledgement, his eyes wide and his jaw gaping in amazement

"A poisoned bait, but yes."

"But what if one of the children was really hurt?"

Azuki took the glass back in her hand to take a light sip, beginning to feel the full effect she had been seeking from the alcohol come forth, and then answered simply

"Collateral damage. Liability release. End of story. But then again, go figure: there's always that dumb bimbo on duty who fixes everything anyway. She'll find a way: she always does."

Tired she leaned her head against the palm of her hand holding her cigarette, getting lost again in the dark color of her way out of all that shit.

"And you are always sure that those in this zoo are not assholes?"

"Not all of them," she replied blandly, wobbling a bit on the stool, her head decidedly lighter.

"Well, anyway, I understand why you're shaken. I also have to apologize: I admit that when you told me you were a zookeeper, I hadn't thought at all that you would have to deal with situations like these."

"Don't I have the physique du rol of the one who busts the dingoes' heads?"

"Not really" He was quick to respond. He would have liked to go on with several compliments about her beauty, but he was fully aware of how inappropriate this would have been, and there he stopped.

"Even the dingoes must have thought the same thing..." She commented a little absentmindedly, still lost in the memory of the adrenaline-pumping moments of that morning.

"Now don't think about it" He tried to relieve her "It's over and now you have a dark half-French girl awaiting you, and your girls' night out" There would have been other things he would have added as encouragement, things like tomorrow is another day or that things would be better, but given how Azuki's story had been able to surprise him, he was afraid he would end up conjuring specters of even more terrifying days.

In response to his attempt, however, his patron remained indifferent at first, her eyes still glued to the mug as if it were a crystal ball in which to divine past and future; only after a few moments did her seductive lips flex into a faint smile, giving him hope that he had succeeded in his intent.

That hope was soon thwarted, however, by the growth of that smile, far beyond the mere relaxed complacency of a happy thought, until it crossed over into a decidedly disturbed laugh of black humor.

"Hehehe... Eheheh... Uh uh uh uh uh..." Deeply resonated a sincerely unsettling diaphragmatic laugh "It's funny you should say that. Because that's exactly what I thought as I loaded the traumatized kids onto the bus to take them back to the headquarters" Azuki's hand finally reached back to her concoction and brought it to her lips with evident greater parsimony than before, then continued the dramatic pause with a drag of the cigarette with her head thrown back only to plummet forward resting her elbows on the counter and exhaling the smoke just before turning to the barman with a piercing look "But you know what? It was fucking eleven in the morning and this shitty day was just beginning."

Gritting his teeth partly out of embarrassment partly out of compassion, the man was about to honor his part in that narrative and ask her what happened next, but Azuki was now elated and fired up enough to continue on her own.

"Since even I felt like I had to handle more than my daily dose of pain in the ass, I went back to home base to take a fucking shower and a healthy fuck to pretend that this whole thing never happened. I could already smell the scent of my little French girl's pussy calling to cure me of the obvious PTSD, when..."

Just as if she wanted to physically open a parenthesis in the story's most cathartic moment, Azuki suddenly pulled back again, reestablishing her distance and crossing an arm under her ample breasts as her cigarette hand returned to its resting position beside her face.

"You know..." She began again in a completely different tone, preparing to metaphorically describe the Banshee locked up in the Orbital Station "... that the foundation has captured a wolf specimen from fuck-knows-where, the fur wonderful and soft, white as snow, blue eyes like a husky's, as big as a calf and with two rows of sharp teeth to make a shark envious? She should be like the last of her kind and I really hope so with all my heart because as nice as she is to pet when she is in a good mood, the real peculiarity of her breed is that when she howls she emits a sound so piercing that it literally tears out the eardrums of human beings and the frequency she uses kind of short-circuits people's brains and triggers epileptic seizures in the mildest cases and directly homicidal psychosis in others."

Azuki interrupted the story to take a drag from the vaporizer while observing the reaction of the barkeep, who, given the latest developments, merely waited a bit tensely for events to unfold.

"That's why they nicknamed her the Banshee. Because of that and the fact that when she gets pissed off, she becomes a men-shredding nightmare that even an industrial meat grinder can't keep up with her. But not everyone, you know? Not everyone is affected by the howl of the Banshee the same way. It seems that to a very few lucky ones that infernal sound doesn't pierce their ears or churn their brains. So far, however, the foundation has only been able to find one of these very lucky humans. Do you want to try and guess who it is?" She asked just before leaving the question unanswered to take another drag from her cigarette without, however, taking her eyes off the barman this time.

The latter in return could only desperately run a hand over his face before answering the essentially rhetorical question.

"You."

"Bravo my fucking Sherlock Holmes!" She quipped at him while resuming her earlier latently psychotic demeanor, leaning back almost over the counter with the clear intent to further intimidate him "You, with this brilliant deduction of yours, have won yourself a nice boob squeeze! I, on the other hand, won as a prize the exclusive custody of a fucking killer beast because no one else is able to get close without getting their brains blown out. Ah, mind you: when I say it doesn't make my ears bleed, I don't mean I'm immune, alright? Every time that little beast screams, it's like I'm in the front row of a Cradle of Filth concert blaring a sampler of Nails on Blackboard Volume 2. It's just that my brain doesn't drip out of my nostrils like it does to others."

With these dutiful clarifications made, Azuki pulled back again and took the drink back in her hand to sip some more, temporarily letting the bartender breathe, who, thruth be told, got a little stuck on the boob groping part.

"Now, with this episode of The Wonders of Nature over, let's get back to our evening quiz: what day of the week do you think the aforementioned demonic beast chose to get hysterical and start howling nonstop so that the assistance of her tamer was absolutely necessary to make sure no other zoo employee ended up in a coma?"

Now reduced to staring at her with a look of extreme pity, the young man refrained from answering yet another rhetorical question.

"I didn't even have time to say goodbye to the brats when one of the admins crept up on me like a stalker and updated me on the situation, informing me of the absolute priority of this emergency and of my moral imperative to rush to the rescue of humankind, whose safety certainly could not be put on the same level as my need to lick a twat to keep from freaking out."

"Did he really tell you..." The bartender interrupted her, this time unable to remain indifferent to the continuous and brazen sexual references.

"No, honey, I'm paraphrasing because I'm drunk by now. But whatever he said to me, that's the translation that my brain registered at that moment. And, unfortunately, you understand that if you put it down like that (and in the admin they always put it down like that) it's hard to object, even if you're actually on the verge of a nervous breakdown and you wouldn't need a lick, but an all-you-can-eat buffet of shagging to forget what fucking life they have you living. So I went down to the cages, where, needless to say, I found a fucking mess. People screaming, paramedics screaming, animals screaming, and, of course, the She-Wolf on a rampage howling the loudest fueling this beautiful circle of hell."

Azuki paused briefly taking another shot of Boilermaker, now more out of determination not to waste the sacred nectar than out of necessity.

"The security officer shoves me inside the soundproof fence, without so much as a "good luck," and there I am covered in blood and chunks of dingo brain, with the scream of this fucking monster being so loud I can't even think and making my intent to slit my wrists only vaguely pause when she stops screaming to snarl at me threatening to kill me."

"You don't... Don't you use any kind of protection?"

"Oh, love, of course I do" She was prompt in responding in a sarcastic tone, determined to take advantage of that unintentional assist "I'm on the pill. You can come inside me no problem" She taunted him mercilessly, achieving the inevitable result of making him turn purple "Ah, you were saying so I wouldn't get mauled? How sweet of you!" She continued, proving that she was not trying to avoid the subject again, only that she could not help but slip in sexual metaphors every three by two.

"No. They're fucking useless. In fact, they just make that beast think that you are there to fight with her and thus make her angrier. Do you really think that if the secret of this job was to physically subdue animals, I would be so good at it? Okay, I crack the dingoes' heads open and I'm decent at doing a cobra hold on crocodiles, but I'm basically always more like a pair of boobs stolen from porn than a pair of arms stolen from Middle Eastern conflicts, right?"

"Then what? How do you force something like that to obey you?!" He asked, forcing himself to ignore the avalanche of sluttiness that alcoholic drunkenness had unleashed inside Azuki and honoring her effort to stick to the story by remaining in turn focused on the outcome of that fateful encounter.

"You cannot" Was the simple answer "Or rather, you must not. In theory we would have the tools to teach her a lesson, but it would be the wrong lesson. She would become not a rare specimen that the zoo looks after and cares for, but a prisoner. And prisoners want only one thing: to escape from their prison" The alcoholic momentum that had sustained her so far seemed to come to a sudden halt, like a racing rally car getting bogged down in a big puddle of mud. Her wandering, bubbly gaze had become fixed and lucid again, indeed, almost hallucinated.

"What's going on?" The young man asked a little worriedly.

As if he had pinched her, Azuki seemed to suddenly awaken and the first thing she did was grasp the glass firmly and take another sip, this time more substantial, more craving, as if the intent was to chase away an unwanted thought with more alcohol.

"Fuck. Nothing. Something just occurred to me."

"What?" He could not contain himself.

"Later" She put off "First let me finish the story. Where did I leave off?"

"How do you calm such a beast" He helped her decidedly puzzled, but in turn eager to complete the story.

"There, yes. You can't force her without becoming her enemy. First you have to convince her that you are not there to make her worse, but better. That you are there for her."

"And how do you do that?!"

"You stand in front of her and let her know that you are not afraid she will bite you. Be careful: she mustn't think that you don't see her as a threat, otherwise she will prove to you that she is by ripping one of your arms off. She must think that you don't care. That you would let your arm get torn off just to be there with her. Because you want to help her. Then you are no longer a problem, but a solution--and you don't rip arms off solutions."

"So it all depends on being able to bluff well?! I get the risky business, but isn't this a real gamble?"

"No, I didn't explain myself" She clarified a small gulp later "You must not bluff. It has to be true. You have to be convinced that it's more important for her to be well than for you to have two arms. That way when she sinks her teeth into your shoulder to see if you bluff, you won't show fear and she will calm down... Or at least she'll think it's pointless to bite you."

In the smoky alcoholic cloud in which she was immersed, Azuki fervently hoped that in the boy's future there was no need to tame a wild animal because she had no idea if the things she was saying really worked on wolves... but the metaphor had its needs and the show had to go on.

"If you can get this far without losing limbs, then it's time to move from words to deeds. Now you have to solve her problem before she thinks that even though you are not a threat, you are pathetically useless and therefore good only as a snack. So here I am studying the various shades of murderous growl to try to understand them and find out the reason for the hysterical fit."

"And did you succeed?" Entered the bartender decidedly captivated by Azuki's gab.

"Do I have both arms?" She retorted, raising them in the air to make them clearly visible.

"And what had happened?!"

"She had broken the kibble bowl," she proclaimed harshly, somewhat ruining the poetry of that epic tale of exotic animals and fearless tamers.

"She had broken..."

"Yeah."

"And for this one thing..."

"Yeah"

"But..."

"Look: I'm sorry there wasn't a painful thorn stuck in her snow-white paw, but the tragic truth was that she had taken one bite too many and smashed her beautiful feeding bowl. Then in a chain of events, angry about the whole thing, she had knocked the other bowls around, even spilling the water... which had made a hideous mess with the food on the floor... which she had rolled over as she squirmed around to do the angry prima donna scenes... and having a dirty coat for the young lady is totally unacceptable. Since she was screaming, though, no one could come in and clean it up. But she still doesn't get this, and so when no one comes in, she just howls louder. So people stay away even more and the cage just gets dirtier and she gets more pissed off.... And here I come."

Dramatic pause underscored by a perfect one-two of sip of drink and drag of cigarette.

"So I spent my afternoon first shoveling stinky mush and wolf shit off the floor while a murderous beast cursed at me because she wanted me to clean her first, not realizing that if I did then she would get dirty again, and then showering the aforementioned beast who, of course, hates water and demands to be dry-cleaned or by magic and who then keeps screaming to complain, occasionally trying to bite me to punish me for my audacity" She concluded and then indulged in a deeper drag from the vape as she adjusted herself on the stool.

The pause was prolonged as the bartender thought about what could be said to comment on such a story, but he kept getting stuck on the mental image of a hottie like her being employed as a janitor in a stinky cage and could not get his head around such a waste.

"Geez..." He huffed, in an attempt to rid himself of such mental burden as he massaged his nasal septum in a gesture of frustration "... No wonder your girlfriend gave you permission to drink a truckload of beer and whiskey. I hope at least your workmates thanked you for the rescue."

"Oh, you bet they did," Azuki quipped blatantly sarcastic "As soon as I left, a roar of applause and the jubilant cheers of all my friends awaited me!"

"Did they?" He asked not at all convinced.

"Hell no. That bunch of assholes slammed me into a wall, shot at me with a fire hydrant, sprayed me from head to toe with chemical sanitizers, went over it again with another round of high-pressure hydrant and dried me off with an industrial fan. A great day for my vanity."

Boilermaker sip.

"They even tried to tell me something about drafting a report, but I had crossed the line. So I told them all to fuck off and went back to my apartment. You know how romantic I felt, though, after this beauty treatment? My pussy was drier than the Sahara Desert: they even managed to ruin my anti-stress plan."

Azuki brought the glass close to her lips again, but froze before lifting the bottom, pointing her amethyst eyes at the remaining beer as if meditating and then desisting from her intent, putting the drink back on the counter.

"I almost got into a fight with my girlfriend; when I came back I was so aggravated that I yelled at her just because she asked me if everything was okay."

The young man in turn placed his hands on the counter as if to share her concern.

" Hey, don't blame yourself. Under such stress, it's normal to react harshly. Did she take it out on you?"

"She just said, 'Come here,' and then shoved a foot of tongue in my mouth, making out with me until it reminded me of my original plan" She retorted, finally hinting at a sincere smile as she lost herself in the "tender" memory.

The bartender smiled in turn, sensing the peace of mind that the memory, no matter how lewd, was bringing to his very original customer. This positive note along with the abandoned glass seemed to the bartender to be Azuki's signal that she wanted to end her story on a hopeful note, so he reached across the counter to take the mug back, though not yet quite empty.

She, however, though ever so slightly absent, intercepted the gesture by placing the palm of her hand over the glass, stopping it, then raised her questioning gaze to the young man.

"Oh, sorry" He made "I saw that you had left the sip halfway through and thought you didn't want any more."

Azuki's smile became tinged again with the biting irony that had accompanied her narration for so long.

"I put it down because I wanted to save some gasoline for the final sprint" She carried herself forward leaning over the counter, taking on a more seductive attitude. "It must be these big drunken eyes that keep making you think I'm such a softie. As if a dingo slaughter and a grooming of a killer she-wolf were enough to make me fall into depressive alcoholism..."

She pulled back again, dragging the glass with her, almost hugging it and then hiding it in her ample breasts.

Back in her seat, she peered again inside the glass, observing the tiny glass lying at the bottom, now almost uncovered.

"... But I guess by now this story is actually becoming boring as well as objectively tedious. Let's go, then, for this final sprint!" And that said she suddenly pulled up her glass and downed all that remained of the drink, one sip after another.

Now no longer completely in control of her body, Azuki brought the glass down rather harshly landing it on the counter with a sharp clatter, the small glass transformed into a pinball bouncing inside the tumbler with crystalline echoes.

"Ah! - She sighed, sending down every last drop and then rocketing off again - In short: the story ends with me lying face down in my French girl's hot pussy and just barely considering that maybe life isn't total shit, when, I swear to you, a general alarm goes off with sirens and everything because one of the kids from the field trip has gone berserk and is using a spray can and a lighter like an improvised flamethrower, shouting that next time he's going to beat the dingoes" She summed up, paraphrasing the incident on Deck 12 to the extreme.

"Of course, since I had taken them on the field trip, they ask ME to stop the brat from getting hurt. So they force ME to drop everything halfway and run to the cafeteria. Fifteen minutes pass and I am again in the midst of screams and cries with the addition of uncontrolled flames. Thirty minutes later the child has detonated the canister, but, thanks to me, he is safe. I, on the other hand, have paramedics on me removing four aluminum shards from my shoulder. Another five minutes and the same paramedics politely invite me to get the fuck out of there, since my shift is over and so it's not like I can just sit there and have a good time, since tomorrow is another day and I can't fucking take it off..." Azuki was not happy at all that she had to churn through that last hallucinating part like that, but she was honestly tired and to reiterate another complaint about how she could never get off for a second without fate conspiring against her would honestly be repetitive no matter how sincere.

So she merely vented her frustration with another deep drag from the vaporizer, which she then blew out in an attempt to exhale with it also the tension that had built up from the narration.

"... And that's how you find yourself at the end of the day in an Irish Pub downing whiskey and beer on tap like there's no tomorrow" She finally concluded giving him space.

On the other hand, it was not easy for the barman to ride on that last sharp gallop.

Finding the right answer then seemed impossible for him.

The only thing he managed was to express his disbelief in the crudest way

"But... Are you serious? You're here with fresh stitches?!"

In response she lowered the shoulder of her leather jacket to show the still fresh dressing taped over her shoulder blade. Obviously she was simulating it with her powers, just as she was simulating all of her clothes, but on the other hand she could hardly reveal to him that she had no trace of the accident because she had regenerated her tissues at the cellular level. Certainly not after going to the trouble of making up that whole zoo story.

"Fuck..." He only uttered bleakly, realizing only at that moment that he had secretly hoped that his charming patron had made it all up just to "further accrue attention."

"... But seriously: why do you do this to yourself? Someone like you shouldn't end the night using a quart and a half of alcohol as stress therapy. The worst work-related risk you would be facing should be..."

"... An occasional gastric lavage to get rid of sperm buildup from the stomach?" She interjected with her typical Swiss boarding school student elegance.

"No. Come on, don't be a jackass again: I'm serious. What's the point of all this? This job obviously wears you down, exposes you to enormous risks, doesn't pay you properly, and doesn't reward you. Why do you keep doing it? Let them take care of the snow wolf themselves! Instead of standing there risking having your arms bitten off you could do literally anything else with your girlfriend. I'm sure that after a day with her you never feel like barricading yourself in a pub getting hammered while telling how bitchy she is to you."

The bartender's umpteenth call made her lower her gaze again, draining it of all bravado and leaving only a weary sarcasm attracted to the glass of her now-dry drink.

"Damn... I should have saved some for an emergency like this" She sighed with a resigned half-smile. "You know when I was staring off earlier and told you that something had occurred to me?" She then resumed, bringing the bartender's memory back to a few minutes earlier.

The young man merely nodded seriously, regaining the curiosity of that moment and waiting for her to go on.

"I was telling you that we can't teach that beast a lesson because otherwise we would make her a prisoner. And that would only make our surveillance more difficult, because prisoners only want one thing: to escape from their prison, remember?"

"Sure: I'd say it's hard to forget such an effective explanation."

"Yeah, I was really proud of the way it came out. I was already thinking that I should have it printed on some T-shirts or some mugs.... But then I thought about it further and realized. I am a prisoner. A prisoner to this whole thing, a prisoner to my duties, a prisoner to this Zoo."

"In a way I understand what you mean," he echoed her.

"Even though I give myself a lot of very articulate explanations, I know it, I feel it that I'm a prisoner to all this stuff. Or maybe I realize it now because I'm drunk and I can't tell myself bullshit. At the end of the day, though, I know it. And yet I'm here. Yet I don't run away. I don't even think about running away. I just think about hanging in there one more day. To hold on a little longer. Yet I know, I also feel, that it is true that prisoners have as their only thought, their only priority, to escape. It's just that it never occurred to me to get away from this whole mess."

Azuki's eyes had never left the empty glass and there they remained as her hand once again brought the cigarette to her mouth to draw from it a deep drag, taken to best gather her thoughts so as to bring that heavy realization to a conclusion. "I think I realized at that moment that I was lying to you," she just said in a single breath after blowing out the white smoke.

"In which sense?" He asked, still unable to figure out which rabbit hole Azuki was tumbling down.

"When you asked me why I'm not leaving, I told you that I care too much about animals and feel too responsible. I think I told you a lie... even though I thought it was the truth at the time. But when I realized I was a prisoner who didn't want to escape, I figured it was something I was telling myself as well to keep up a semblance of respectability."

"It actually seemed to make sense to me as an argument."

"Oh, sure. The best lies seem like sensible reasoning, that's why they work so well."

"And that's where you realized the real reason?"

"No, I mean: yes. Or rather: I remembered Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi. Do you know it?"

"Hard NOT to."

" Well, at the end, after the guitar solo and right before we get back to the very famous chorus, Bon Jovi takes the stage again with a phrase that I had never really paid attention to... because it just seemed like a catch phrase, a somewhat cryptic aphorism just for show... But instead it was... The Truth. It says, "You live for the fight when that's all you've got." That's it. That's the Reason. Or rather: the truth is that there is no reason. When all that fills your life is the struggle to keep going, that becomes your life itself. And so you simply go on because you cannot stop. Because if you stop, you've lost even the last thing you have left. And that's where I stand: all my life seems to be made up of is this constant struggle to keep everything going, without a why or rather, because if I stop, if I leave, I feel that nothing will be left of me."

Fuck. That was the only word that came to the bartender's mind as he stared at her intently, dumbfounded. She was such a beauty. Both sensual and angelic at the same time. If he had to put a face to perfection it would be hers. Such a creature should have had the world at her feet and instead she stood there before him, with two eyes that would have bewitched saints or devils alike, yet drowned in the most sincere suffering he had ever seen.

On several occasions during that conversation he had hoped to "unmask" her, to discover that she was in fact like all the other pretty faces that had passed that way to whom nature had given the looks of gods but the brains of hamsters.

But no.

Instead, a chat held at a counter had been enough for him to discover a complex and equally fascinating personality.

That was not fair: had she been beautiful and stupid he could have given a damn by labeling her distress as the usual sterile complaint of starlets who do not realize that they are the cause of their own ills.

But how could he remain quiet that way? And at the same time: what could he do to comfort her without making himself look like a creep? Although he would have liked nothing more, it's not like he could jump across the counter to hug her without looking like a deranged maniac.

"Is that how you feel right now?" He then said, settling for playing sideways "Do you feel like that's all you have? What about your girlfriend? Doesn't she count?"

Azuki's wistful sigh told him that he had managed to bring her at least a little back from that dark path she had taken, but definitely not in the way he had hoped.

"Ah... My girlfriend..." She echoed almost lost in the vapors of the liquor. Then Cassie's mental image fully reached her, causing her to widen her eyes as she realized the trap she was falling into "Shit!" She exclaimed angrily to herself "I'm such a moron! What the fuck did I come here for if I end up like this!" She asked herself, making her inner monologue audible for the first time "The plan was to get drunk so I wouldn't think about all this stuff anymore: let's stick to that! Come on, put down three shots of tequila let's end on a high!"

His patron's sudden awakening took the bartender completely by surprise. He was ready to handle a sad warrior princess in a moment of weakness, but now that she was rearing her horse again to charge off again? What was he to do?

"Shot of..." He stammered to buy some time "No come on, you can't be serious. You're already loaded, if you keep this up..."

Her switch now flipped, Azuki brought all her "weight" forward, leaning almost menacingly toward the bartender, purposely putting her twins on display and squinting her eyes in a look that was not reassuring at all.

"If I keep this up, I'll tell you what will happen" She nipped him in a voice so hoarse and sensual it sounded like the growl of a she-wolf "What will happen is that you'll pour the three shots with salt and lemon in tow, I'll down them one after the other like there's no tomorrow, and I'll put two hundred-dollar bills on the bar for you to settle the bill and tip. Then I'll put another one for your colleague, who was kind enough to cover for you all this time while, instead of working, you were hitting on the hot patron. So he can carry on his pious work and keep covering for you while you come with me to the john to find out what it's like to grope a natural 36DDD."

Azuki's resolve in describing how the situation would evolve shortly thereafter plummeted upon the young man like a runaway train, leaving him noticeably shaken, his jaw clenched nervously as he tried to think of what to reply to such a proposal and NOT to think about how tightly his pants were getting at his crotch.

"Wait... Listen..." He mumbled quite uncomfortably, trying to listen as much as possible to the little angel who from over his left shoulder was trying to suggest how a gentleman should behave "You're... You're drunk. And engaged. You don't know what you're saying. Let's call your girlfriend so she can pick you up before..."

"Before what?"

"Before..." He repeated again, however, without being able to stop his gaze from going straight down Azuki's cleavage instead of keeping her piercing gaze in check. Over his right shoulder, the little devil rubbed his hands together, pleased at how simple his job would be this time.

"Do you want to call her to ask her approval?" Said Azuki without backing down, but fishing for her mobile phone from inside the interior pocket of her leather jacket and then unlocking it with a glance.

"No, what the fuck are you doing?!" He bolted in such panic that he tried to grab her phone. With a swift and extremely precise movement, certainly not one belonging to someone with an alcohol content close to two points, Azuki moved the smartphone beyond his reach and then made it disappear inside her side pocket.

The bartender's expression amused her to the point that she wanted to burst into laughter, but realized that it would be too much for her poor victim; so she simply smiled mockingly and then tried to defuse the situation.

"Listen: you're very, very, kind and considerate to go to all this trouble, but if my girlfriend had to dump me each time I let someone grope my tits, we'd have broken up a long time ago. I'm NOT gonna fuck you, I'm NOT gonna message you on the sly tomorrow, I'm NOT posting our picture on social media with the hashtag #onenightstand. It's just a boob squeeze: a way we Naughty Drifters have of thanking listeners who can hold up to an hour of mumbling without telling us 'fuck off. No complications, no consequences, no strings attached...."

Over his right shoulder, the Little Devil was now sprawled on a deck chair after lighting a cigar, so ridiculous was the ease of that feat. On the other side, the Little Angel had his halo smoking from how hard he was struggling to find any plausible foothold to defend his cause and, to be fair, he managed to prove his worth with one last desperate attempt.

"You've chugged a truckload of booze.... I don't want you to wake up in the morning regretting that you made a stupid decision" He tried in turn half-heartedly about what he was saying, especially since he was in no way able to tear his gaze away for even a second from those two garden-fair melons that were threatening to explode out of her top at any moment.

"... And I don't want you to wake up with that regret either. It's just that I've already woken up several times with the memory of getting my boobs squeezed in a club toilet the night before and here I am with no regrets, while I get the impression that it's not clear to you how stupid you'd feel waking up in your own bed and remembering that you told a big-titted babe in a slutty mood that you didn't want to grope her boobs."

Although the bartender decided to blame dry throat for his inability to reply to his patron's wit, the truth was that the Little Devil was instead underscoring Azuki's pitch by mic-dropping rapper-style.

"So? Are these shots coming in?" She repeated, as the bartender seemed not to regain the gift of speech "The sooner I get them, the sooner..." She left on hold in the hope of unfreezing the young man. But she hoped in vain.

She then took a moment to stare almost tenderly at that puppy bamboozled by her soft mounds before putting an end to that matter.

"Let's see if with a little incentive..."

Acting completely natural, Azuki slipped the tip of her index finger into the top edge of the lace top and then gently pulled it downward; the result was that her left tit bulged out in all its glory, eventually resting fully exposed on the counter.

Her admirer's revival was immediate, as if an adrenalin syringe had been rammed into his sternum.

"Fuck!!!" He blurted out between his teeth, trying to restrain himself so as not to attract attention. Instinctively then, trying to prevent anyone in the club from noticing what was going on, his hand snapped forward to cover all that goodness, but, in doing so, he simply ended up wrapping the soft orb in his grip, effectively performing the act he had tried so hard to avoid.

Once his hand came in contact with Azuki's breast the situation could only get worse, as the bartender's brain instantly realized that: a) Although his hand was not small, that wonder of nature overflowed profusely beyond its confines, b) The perfectly balanced texture between firm and soft seemed made for one thing only.

And so it was that his fingers responded to that irresistible natural call by sinking several times into that inviting pudding, savoring its texture, even before the barman actually realized what he was doing.

Completely at ease in that surreal situation, Azuki on the other hand did not move an inch, her chin always resting relaxed on the palm of the hand that still held the lit vaporizer between her fingers.

Unable to refrain from torturing her prey, however, she could not hold back from responding to the young man's attentions by letting out a torrid, satisfied moan.

The sensual approval again wrenched the young man out of yet another ecstasy in which he had lost himself: his eyes became big round panicked marbles as they rose from the contemplation of her naked breasts only to cross hers that were waiting for him sadistically pleased, made even more deadly by the passionate smile that accompanied her gaze.

By now too overwhelmed by events to rationally decide the course of his own actions, the bartender once again obeyed the first impulse that passed through his brain and jerked his hand away.

Azuki's hand's left moved an instant before his and, with a movement almost too quick to be caught by the human eye, wrapped itself around his wrist in a gentle but at the same time unbreakable grip, preventing him from retreating.

"Easy..." She whispered to him melodiously as one might do to a dog to tame him "It's all right. The secret is to act calm and spontaneous. If you keep making slow movements, the only one who will notice what is going on will be your colleague who has already been covering us for an hour."

Bewitched as if spellbound by Azuki's chanting tone, the bartender obeyed in his own way, stiffening his body to prevent any sudden movement, but, at the same time, unable to prevent himself from turning his head with short, slow, nervous jerks to his left, where he knew the aforementioned coworker's station was.

And indeed there he found him, fortunately also at a slow moment in the service, stunned and slack-jawed, his wide-open eyes turned toward them, aimed fixedly at the young man's hand, clearly intent on harassing the girl sitting in front of him.

The barkeep further turned to stone, completely unable to get out of such a situation.

Fortunately, he was once again rescued by his patron, who, again with the confident attitude of someone in her natural element, did nothing more than cross his coworker's gaze with a completely innocent one, and then send him a flickering greeting with her right hand.

The other one, dumbfounded by the brazenness, found no other appropriate reaction than to wave shyly in turn, only to catch the very subtle invitation to continue minding his own business and then turn away and pretend to work.

"See?" She did, turning back to face the bartender, "Just. Keep. Cool." She spelt out slowly, simultaneously guiding his hand, which she still held captive, in a gentle, but generous and repeated groping of her still naked breasts.

"Now I'll let go of you slowly and you will slowly slide your hand across the counter. Then you will take the bottle of tequila and we will pick up where we left off. Okay?"

With his breath still short and his mouth still too slurred to speak, the bartender merely nodded slowly and mechanically; it did not slip Azuki's eye, however, that as he did so, his hand was still clinging to her boob and kept on sampling her buttery texture even without any stimulation on her part, in fact sinking his fingers even more into her softness to enjoy it to the fullest.

Azuki smiled slyly as she stared at him smugly and then loosened her grip a little to let him know that he could move freely, but that there was no hurry to remove his hand, at the same time going to take a deep drag from the e-cigarette.

In response to this silent invitation, the barman took heart and, though always extremely cautious so as not to be found out, went for a full-blown groping, repeatedly squeezing and exploring her with his fingers in all her seductive softness.

Azuki savored the lust and craving conveyed by that gesture, closing her eyes and breathing out the smoke with a deep, sensual puff.

It was only when her breath became a faint hiss that she released the young man's wrist altogether; he caught the signal and, even if reluctantly, let go in turn. As he drew back, however, he could in no way resist the temptation first to caress and then to take between his fingers the perfectly proportioned pink nipple and squeeze it rhythmically between them.

Appreciating the initiative, she then waited for him to finish before sneakily harpooning the edge of the top and then bringing it back into place reverting to a somewhat decent appearance.

Seeing, however, that the young man's gaze still lingered on her chest, Azuki took the liberty of indulging in a further lubricious comment.

"See, she liked it too..." She said as she ran the tip of her index finger over the lace, where a fully erect nipple now prominently stood out.

"You really are crazy..." He finally managed to articulate, clearly meaning it as an adoring praise rather than a judgmental criticism.

"And also a very big...?" She lingered, wanting to dampen the erotic charge she had created with a bit of self-deprecating humor, yet still keeping the ball in play.

The barman smiled, put at ease by Azuki's light and casual attitude, and managed to return to some level of normalcy.

"... Naughty Drifter, if I understand correctly" He finished the sentence clearly ironic.

"Ahahah!" She laughed cheerfully, liking the reference "I see we've been paying attention!"

"I just hope your girlfriend is as tolerant as you say."

"Oh, she's more than tolerant, I assure you.... But is 'this tequila shot coming or do I have to get the other one out too?" She finally brought him back in line, demanding fulfillment of their agreement.

In response, the bartender jolted briefly swallowing heavily and fell back into ranks and, this time without arguing, pulled out the small glass and bottle and then placed the salt dispenser next to it and finally sliced the lemon into four.

All with a diligence that said much about the motivation the experience had imparted him.

As soon as he finished filling the glass, the bartender looked up only to find himself facing Azuki who already had the back of her hand sprinkled with salt and who, staring him straight in the eye with a look of sultry defiance, ran her tongue along the length of her hand, picking up every last speck.

Seeing that major hottie snake her plump tongue between her perfect blowjob lips was a sight worthy of the best onlyfans account he could think of, and it did not go unnoticed by his nether regions.

Pleased with her performance, Azuki focused back on her alcoholic goal, grabbing the tequila glass with a fluid and quick gesture and then downing it all at once just as she had promised.

Finally, with the heat of the tequila invading her mouth and throat, she shoved the lemon wedge into her mouth, biting into it and mixing its sour taste with that of the spirit.

To savor the best she ran her tongue over her teeth, closing her eyes as if in meditation: when she opened them again she cast a lecherous glance at the bartender, letting loose a moan of appreciation.

"Mmmmmm... But does your boss know that you use the Kah Anejo to mix shots for already drunk customers?" She asked referring to the expensive black skull-shaped bottle from which the boy had poured the spirit.

"I have to tell you, I'm going happy going home tonight even if I get fired on the spot," he replied with his still dreamy gaze fixed on her glass.

Azuki adjusted his cigarette between her lips and thrust his hand into the other inside pocket of her jacket, pulling out a wad of bills held together by a paper clip. From this she slipped out a one-hundred dollar bill and unceremoniously placed it on the counter, punctuating the gesture with the exhortation

"On with the second round!"

There was a moment's hesitation on the bartender's part as he followed the rolled-up cash with his eyes, then Azuki took the cigarette back between her fingers and blew out a cloud of incense that brought the young man back to reality.

"Let's not slack off, we were on the right track!" She emphasized, mocking him.

He had a little twitch and picked up the black ceramic skull and then poured its contents into his despotic patron's glass.

In the blink of an eye the ritual was performed again, including the lascivious glance and serpentine tongue.

The second round was followed by a more satisfied "Aaaaaah" and another fishing in her jacket pocket followed by another hundred-dollar bill splattered on the counter.

The young man's eyes made the same twists and turns as before, but this time he could not contain himself:

"What are you doing?" He asked her rather worriedly.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" She retorted without taking him too seriously.

"That you are drunk and randomly placing cash on the counter."

" What do you mean randomly? Weren't you paying attention when I said One hundred bucks a glass, two for the drinks and tip and one for your coworker?" She reminded him, giving evidence that she was not as altered as she wanted him to believe.

"Yes, but I didn't think you meant it. Tomorrow maybe you won't regret having your breasts cupped, but I don't think you'll be so happy if you wake up with three hundred dollars less in your wallet."

Azuki wrinkled her lips into a sly smile, matching it with a quick drag from the vaporizer.

"Having your breasts cupped seems to me quite an understatement for the massive boob groping you gave me earlier..." She ruthlessly flogged him, resulting in an immediate reddening of the bartender's cheeks along with his silence, which was useful in unleashing the next detail "... And I should also tell you that even though I look like a runaway, I have enough money saved away that I could live in the Maldives for the rest of my days... which makes three hundred dollars for a bender a laughable commodity and only makes me feel dumber since I can't quit this shitty job."

The bartender would have liked to doubt that statement of hers, but the sheer size of that wad of cash was pretty clear evidence of her good faith.

Which, however, led to another problem.

"So you're a lonely, beautiful girl, in a pub, at night, drunk and waving a roll of hundred-dollar bills. What could possibly go wrong?" He quipped, hinting at the countless risks involved in her conduct.

"Well, he who shall live shall see" She relented, ruling that she did not have the energy to explain him that for her, after that morning's massacre of mechanized soldiers, an attempted robbery with rape represented at best an after-dinner diversion. "Let's go for the last round so I can then hit the john... hoping no maniacs are listening and waiting there for me to manhandle my boobs," she alluded not too subtly, then lifting her glass for a refill.

The barman found himself utterly devoid of the right words to reply to his patron's sarcasm, so he merely performed the gesture rather mechanically, admittedly more attentive to her beautiful eyes than to her irreverent snark.

With her glass full, Azuki performed the triple move and, true to her word, completed the show by placing the last bill with Benjamin Franklin's portrait in front of the young man.

At that point the barman felt it would be his duty to bring the conversation back to the excessive amount of money she was dishing out, but instead he was imbued with a holy terror that utterly crippled him: the moment of truth had arrived.

Although Azuki had already proven him that she was not just a loud mouth, his brain still could not believe that such a beauty was about to...

Amused to see all that tension in the young man's eyes, Azuki thoroughly enjoyed that moment, prolonging it with a deep drag from her cigarette as she kept her eyes locked on him to magnify his distress.

Only when it was obvious that he would not be able to hold his breath a second longer did she decide to close in for the kill.

"Do you have a restroom that only you employees can access?"

She asked after breathing out the puff of smoke in a way only a real slut would be capable of.

"Y... Yes. It's the door next to the women's one with Staff Only written on it," he stammered, positively on the edge.

"Great, so now I'll get up and walk over there. You go on a break and explain to your coworker what these one hundred bucks are for, then join me as casually as possible so we can have some privacy and give you your real tip."

She uttered as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

"O... Okay" He only managed to say instead.

Azuki finally got off the stool that had carried her through that evening of swinging moods. Her movements were as seductive and smooth as a panther's, but when she placed her heels on the ground she could feel the elation embrace her sense of balance.

It was somewhat sweet feeling her head waving around and having to be careful to check her stride so as not to make it sway, although, with the athletic skills she possessed, this was an extremely easy task.

In fact, the bartender merely noticed the moment of pause she took after standing up, then his eye was riveted to that centerfold ass that hypnotically swayed with each step, any hint of intoxication absorbed by the runway walk with which Azuki constantly moved about.

When he finally saw his patron's hips disappear around the corner of the fateful hallway, the young man immediately set out to carry out the orders he had received, sprinting toward his coworker to earn his precious aid.