Gentlemen of Irrepute

A bottle of Slophouse Reserve Whiskey slammed into the side of a table, leaving the holder of the bottle’s neck, a muscular bull of a man, with a viciously pointy weapon. To either side of him, two steps behind, were two men, one wielding a still-smoking black powder pistol as a club and the other with an as-of-yet unshattered brother to the leader’s bottle. The mob advanced toward the two men in the corner, one tall and lanky with dark brown hair and prominent muttonchops and the other of average build with a mess of black hair and a perfectly managed goatee. Both men wore the outfits of the Pizon harbor laborers and held a small dagger they had taken from their recently shot. Crouched defensively in the corner of the now vacant saloon, they argued frantically in hushed half-whispers.

“I told yeh, Chops, we gotta do this diplomatically.” The shorter one said, slipping the word ‘die’ into ‘diplomatic’. “But naaooo, you hed to go and take a captive!” He spat on the bleeding corpse in front of him.

Chops sneered at his shorter companion. “And I told you we should wait for Snide. But ‘naoooo’,” he said, mimicking the other’s accent, “You had to go and start tossing around that your one of the Gentlemen! I mean, really, Goat, what’s diplomatic about walking up to the Duke of Pizon and telling him,” he switched into an accent again, ‘The Renown Gentlemen of Class, Fortune, and Irrepute are heeyah for yer valu’bles and yer daugh’er’?”

Goat and Chops looked at each other, still sneering, before throwing the knives toward the oncoming trio. They found sheaths in an eye and a throat, leaving the leader standing alone. It dawned on him that his prey now outnumbered him and had hidden skills, so he flung the bottle toward the two, which veered widely, and fled out the door.

Chops bent down and retrieved the dagger as well as a couple of coins and the unbroken bottle before turning back to Goat.

“For an ultimatum like that, we needed to wear suits.”