"I cut off someone's toe once," a guy says, grinning all over his face and leaning into Pilot Princess Soul Defender Cinnabar's space, because Cinnabar is the tiniest one and that's a magnet for certain kinds of assholes in bars.
Usually, Moonstone would spot him and take care of it, but Moonstone's outside with her cigarette and her phone and her recent weirdly good mood, crooked little smile on her face as she chatters to — someone — out of earshot.
Cinnabar sips her rum and coke thoughtfully, then pops up on tippy-toes to earnestly ask: "What with?"
"What?"
"What did you cut his toe off with?"
They can both tell from his second of hesitation that he's just lost. "Like, bolt cutters," he blusters eventually, but she shakes her head firmly.
"C'mon, man," she says. "A guy who's itching to show off about the time he really cut a guy's toe off? He's got all the details ready to go. Salivating to tell it. Like, I once cut three fingertips off someone's hand with an industrial paper guillotine!"
"What the fuck," the guy says.
"It was nearly lunchtime, I wanted to get out of my crappy copier shop job, it wasn't a premeditated crime or anything." She holds his gaze, noisily sips her drink again. "Just frustrated and in charge of a big sharp steel blade and BAM!"
"Oh jesus," Sapphire says, from a couple of tables away. "She's telling that story again, somebody make her stop—"
"Do you know how much it bleeds when you cut off three of somebody's fingertips," Cinnabar says solemnly. "SO MUCH BLOOD. BLOOD EVERYWHERE. HUGE SPLASHING PUDDLES OF—"
"Cinnabar," Onyx says, tugging at her shoulder. "If you make Saph puke all over a bar again with this story, I swear to god—"
The guy leaves.
"Do you have to tell that story like you're a serial killer," Onyx says. "Between you and Moon, we're getting fucking cancelled any day now—"
"It's funnier that way than 'I fucked my hand up cutting paper and all I got was extremely fired'," Cinnabar says placidly.
