Like most things Martian, bars and restaurants of the red planet were ostensibly Japanese. High end bars all had at least one piano player, and the staff usually included a dozen kimono-clad hostesses whose job it was to entertain guests. Being that these guests were either salarymen or made men of the yakuza, this mostly meant pouring drinks, lighting cigarettes, and engaging in small talk without interrupting customers or mentioning politics. Decorative aquariums were commonplace, especially considering the status displayed by keeping fish alive on a desert planet, while dishes were usually well-prepared seafood as well -- Oysters, sushi, and so on.
Postcards of Martian taverns showed backlit glass bars lined with bottles of whiskey or sake, which were traditionally only differentiated only by label; The cheapest spirits lined the bottom of the shelves and were adorned with plain, solid color labels, whereas the most expensive top-shelf bottles would proudly display silver, golden, or holographic labels. After purchasing a bottle, guests would sign their label and it would be put on display above the bar, to show the world their status as a man capable of spending thousands of dollars on the same whiskey put into the white-labeled bottles at the bottom shelf.
The Shaggy Yak Pool Hall was not such an establishment. Then again, it was not on any postcards.
The bar had all the trappings and accouterments of a dive bar, despite the well-kept neon sign outside. Christmas lights of varying levels of operation were strung above the bar by staples, and in lieu of an akachĹchin, a cardboard cut out depiction of one had been ziptied to an old grate covering one of the windows. In retrospect, perhaps the bar didn't seem too great from the outside either. The wall opposite the bar had only two booths attached to it, with a faded picture of the bar's titular mascot sprawled across the brickwork. In the bar's dim lights, the faded yak resembled an ancient cave painting, as if some early Martian caveman had gathered some blackish mud and tried to depict a mighty auroch he had slain.
Though Martian, and even visibly Japanese at that, The Shaggy Yak Pool Hall lacked any semblance of the luxury and culture Mars was known for. Upon further inspection, one would find that the establishment lacked any real pool tables. The back of the bar had four holo-pool tables set up, though this was hardly the same game. Holo-pool implemented purchasable powered cues, mini golf-esque obstacles, cue ball powerups, and most of all, a difficulty that could be rigged by the house. Hundreds of years ago, the grandfathers of the men inebriated or lonely enough to play such a stacked game were more likely seated at computerized countertop slot machines. Thousands of years ago, their grandfathers were likely sitting on rocks breaking soft rocks with harder rocks for fun, while cleverer cavemen painted the shaggy yaks they had killed on cave walls.
It was a loser bar, in short. Not even the kind of place where one would pick up dangerous drugs or saucy prostitutes. The type of hole in the wall inhabited by divorced men with poorly dyed hair, legless veterans of long-forgotten wars, and strung-out junkies. At this precise moment, the barstools were occupied by an obese freight pilot, a crew of bounty hunters who had failed their last mission, and the loser of the last holo-pool game who had begun to drown his sorrows in the bar's cheapest available cocktail. Regular dregs of society.
The crew of the Absolute Magnitude had been in the pool hall for all of thirty minutes, having respectively ordered a piĂąa colada, two neat whiskeys, Spar-Letta soda, bottle of water, and a hot milk, the last of these being rejected by the bartender as a legitimate request. For a group of six, as the bartender had mentioned twice now, they were not particularly big spenders. Normally bounty hunters at bars were looking to drink kegs at a time in celebration, though this crew in particular seemed rather somber.
The reason for this was their most recent failure. Sure, the crew failed all the time, but this was an especially infuriating failure -- The crew had staked out and captured a conspirator of Martian terrorists hoping to bring eighteenth-century Japanese nationalism to the red planet. True to his movement, green fugitive Yoshiharu Hosoi performed an honorable suicide, death poem and all, during transport in the ship's airlock. Having successfully robbed the government of information and the Absolute Magnitude of a bounty, the only thing left to do had been to eject him into space and continue their trip to Mars for fuel and drinks.
"I'll be right back." The largest member of the crew said, turning to the grimy jukebox across the room.
