nomans_land | Octovern, since that's where all the cool kids are.

Octovern, since that's where all the cool kids are.

Rated R for violence.

1.

It's a good thing all those wanted posters show a black haired angry twin of Vash the Stampede, because the one with hair so pale it might as well be white hasn't been noticed yet by anyone of the Federal sort. Just one more dust covered caravan cockroach in a city full of them.

It has taken Knives the better part of three months to get here.

On foot for almost all of it.

Being picked up a few iles out was nice but almost pointless by then, still, he'd hitched a ride, gotten dropped off and promptly relocated to the nearest restaraunt, bar or otherwise useful source of water and food, neither of which he actually needs.

Pretend to eat and drink, even if you don't have to

He also has no need for human clothing, but he's at least bothered with that, and is dressed in depressingly ordinary bluejeans and boots, black turtleneck shirt and sky blue crop top jacket, fingerless gloves on his hands and dark sunglasses more often than not hiding his both eyes and a twisting pale scar. It hides every single glowing line he struggled to easily obscure or that could catch an unexpected reflection of the light. He could be anyone, if 'anyone' paid for every single transaction in coins instead of paper bills, but nothing flags to humanity as obviously NOT human, which is the point. He doesn't think to hide from his own kind. Why would he?

And so he sits, a careworn bag sitting at his feet, working very slowly through a blueberry muffin and a tall glass of water with a lone icecube in it. Nothing to see here, move along.

2.

Knives, pack once more over his shoulder and map in hand, is losing the fight with navigation. The map's several years out of date and does not at all have all the modifications and camp outs and construction that's happened since the worlds merged. Which leaves him standing on the side of the road at a crossroads that simply doesn't exist on the map, scowling at the grid-marked map in his hands.

This is absolutely Ann Street. Ann Street should run right to North Street, but it does not. Not anymore.

Now there's an entire gun shop in the way and several shanty-town level buildings, and he's not entirely sure North Street even exists anymore. A trio of armed Federal troops march past; they ignore him and he only gives them a cursory look until they stop to update the wanted posters nailed to the gun shop's wall. While they might be on the lookout for a certain pair of notorious outlaws, he just doesn't fit the profile.

The names on some of those posters, though..

He crosses the street, dodging a tomas-pulled wagon, and stops in front of the dozens of posters to study them with a furrowed brow. Whoever's coming up with these things clearly is a terrible artist, while that's his name it looks nothing like him except for the beauty mark. "...Really? Not even a price tag?"

Aren't these supposed to come with a bounty, instead of 'Reward Upon Capture'?

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A familiar face -- minus the cross that usually hangs across his back -- drops into a seat just two tables down, looking exhausted and annoyed. There's something wrong with the plants here, he's decided. The fight's over. Why do they keep bringing people here? It doesn't make any sense! Octovern is the last place he wants to be right now, with the local feds and Earth forces both looking for any of Vash the Stampede's cohort. At least his face isn't the one they're looking for, but that'll only buy him soo much leeway, given how many duplicates of people are wandering around.

He digs in his pocket for cash, but only manages to scrounge up a handful of coins. Is it enough for a cup of coffee? Maybe. Probably not. Goddammit.

The fighting could be ramping up, out of sight and out of mind. The things that could be going on in the wastelands were endless! One such duplicate that Wolfwood's worrying about looks up from his blueberry muffin as someone else enters but sits a bit further down. Hearing about duplicates and seeing them in person is somehow very different, and that is not the same merciless killer he knew of that looked a little similar.

Those look like flesh and blood hands. There's no whir of mechanics when he passed by either. Knives spends a minute comparing the two in his mind; they could be the same in personality, or completely, wildly different though he decides shortly that probably there's more similarities than differences. Without the similarities, that man would still be a teenager.

Knives rises from his seat, picking up his muffin and water and giving his bag a boot in the direction of Wolfwood's table; for better or worse there's only one way to really assuage his curiosity! The glass is set back down there instead, and the muffin, and when he sits it should have come with asking if it's alright.

Instead of asking he sets a stack of glossy coins on the table in the middle, shiny and new and absolutely not in his hands or pockets a minute ago. Enough for a drink, maybe a small snack. The economy is a ridiculous notion to begin with, so despoiling it with counterfeit but otherwise flawless coins is not a problem.

Wolfwood's just about accepted that he's going to need to beg for work in order to pay for his lunch (and, given the number of refugees milling about, chances are that nobody's hiring and he'll just have to be hungry for awhile) when somebody's duffle slides across the floor to park itself at the seat across from him. It's such an obvious, stupid start to a fight that he's quite frankly embarrassed for whoever it is -- they're gonna pretend that he tried to steal their stuff, and then try to shake him down for whatever he's carrying, it's pathetic -- but the man who rises from the table across the way, the man who sets his drink and lunch down on the table opposite Wolfwood, the man sitting right there, alive and hale... that's not a man.

His stolen gun is a comforting weight in the small of his back, but he doesn't dare reach for it. He doesn't dare breathe. That's Millions goddamn Knives sitting there in a pair of blue jeans, casual as anything. Helping himself to a seat like they're friends.

Wolfwood swallows hard, hands flat on the table where Knives can see them. Behind his own sunglasses, his eyes are wide with panic. Can you blame him?

"You're supposed to be dead."

Hi, boss.

Ordinarily when dealing with twitchy humans, offering empty hands was a good idea, they'd just assume he's unarmed and thus safe, but that's not going to work on someone who knows what he is. In light of that certainty, he returns to picking at his muffin with excruciating slowness. It's going to take a while to actually eat the whole thing, unless a worm happened by and stole it.

"And you're supposed to be a cyborg, but nary a gear or wire to be seen." One pale eyebrow rises above the edge of his sunglasses. "Why don't you get yourself a drink, it might settle your nerves a bit."

It's not the fear, really, that gets to him. That's a perfectly sensible reaction for anyone not used to contending with him. But his own servants shouldn't be among that number, so someone has been naughty! Or some other double of himself is a lot more temperamental, and given the Punisher's antics in the past he really isn't sure which he should go with.

Look, the serial killer angel sat down next to him instead of just tearing him to shreds along with every other person in the place, so maybe acting like he's not thinking violent thoughts will let him live a bit longer? He's got no illusions who -- or rather, what -- he is to Knives, just a bit of filth shaped like a man who can be sent out on tasks Knives is above doing himself.

At least, that was his role with the Knives he knew. This one is... different. This one is eating.

"I don't have any money." He's not budging one inch, thanks, although behind those glasses he's taking in every detail of Knives's appearance and behavior, gears -- metaphorical, not mechanical -- churning away in his head as he tries to figure out what the actual fuck is happening here. Nobody else in the place seems to recognize Knives, somehow, but it's really only a matter of time before that changes, right? "And I don't know what the fuck a cyborg is." They're going to recognize him, and then things are going to get very bad.

He has to get Knives out of here. He has to get him out of town as far away from all these people, from Miz Melanie and the kids, everyone, before he murders them all. His face twitches in something resembling a smile. "You wanna take a walk?"

The only thing he's tearing to shreds right now is the muffin he really doesn't want to eat. If he could just will the thing into disappearing LIKE it was being eaten he'd be a lot happier about the entire effort. "Use those." He gestures to the small stack of coins he'd set in the middle of the table. "They can't tell the difference."

No one's recognized him yet, and it might be because while Vash The Stampede flagrantly ran around in a long red jacket that just screamed 'notice me!!', Knives doesn't have any such reputation. He favored blue, that's for certain, but he had yet to encounter a single poster advertising a blue-clad rampaging outlaw. "Cyborgs have mechanical parts; limbs, organs, eyes, whatever they need. Some can even swap them out when they want to do something different." Pointless conversation.

It's helping him piece together a bit exactly who he's dealing with, since Nick the Punisher he may or may not be but all the mannerisms are not exactly right. If this were the Punisher, then this request to take a walk would have dangerous ulterior motives.

"..Maybe after I finish lunch." Which is going to take him a very long time, okay. He could work on the same sandwich all day, he can do the same with a muffin. "If I'm supposed to be dead then you already know I'm not who you think I am. Relax." Though Knives is willing to bet his last counterfeit double dollar that Wolfwood is NOT going to relax, even saying it might make him less likely to. "If I wanted to hurt you I'd have done so already."

He's still eating. Slow as molasses in January, sure, but it's still happening. Wolfwood's incapable of relaxing around any version of Knives, but he has to admit, it does seem like this one isn't like the one he knows. Knew.

There's a dozen versions of Vash here, and at least one of them is so unlike Vash as to be unrecognizable. And if there can be a Vash who delights in killing, then maybe there's
a Knives out there who doesn't. Maybe there's a Knives who went a different route, like the little one is going to. Maybe this Knives isn't a threat.

And maybe he's just playing things close to the chest. Maybe he's out of power. Maybe... maybe guessing isn't going to get him any answers and he should stop it already.

"You're still him though, aren't you?" It's not a question so much as an accusation. Wolfwood's gaze darts away from Knives just long enough to take a quick tally of the rest of the patrons and staff of this little place, and still, nobody's looking at them at all. It feels like sitting on a powder keg. Like walking through worm country barefoot. "One in a million."

What went differently, that this man still walks around flesh and blood, unaugmented in any fashion that Knives can tell? He must be, or he'd be a child even by human terms, and yet there's not a sign he can see of any kind of modification, and he's paying sharp attention. Maybe things were vastly different, and the proof was in the lack of a three hundred pound machine gun. With no cybernetics to lighten the weight, those weapons would be impossible to operate.

But clearly, he knows him, and that keeps Knives wondering and a bit distracted with the wondering. He could just demand answers, but that wouldn't be as interesting. "Just one? If I'm just one in a million then based on current estimates I'd be.." He taps the table thoughtfully. "One of three or four." That might even be likely, if the rumor that there's at least two Stampedes in the city right now is true.

"But you're not wrong. Don't worry about them. Whoever they're looking for, I don't match up." He knows this isn't exactly true, since posters tended to be artists' interpretation anyway, but they're still not looking for a guy slumming around in jeans and cropped jackets, working on the same glass of water for an hour.

Oh, Wolfwood's augmented. It's just that all his augmentations were done in flesh rather than machinery, his DNA irradiated and mutated into something other than human, with untold surgeries to complete the process. He's not human anymore, not really -- he just looks like one.

The one of three or four joke goes right over Wolfwood's head -- is he commenting on the number of Vashes that are wandering around? The number of humans that this world's Knives left alive? "They're not the ones I'm worried about," he snarls under his breath. Now that the fear has faded somewhat, the anger is coming to the surface, and Wolfwood's already calculating just how many second it would take him to draw his gun and shoot Knives right between the eyes. So far, the answer is 'too many', but he's keeping the idea on the back burner, just in case.

Besides, if he hasn't killed his way through town yet, maybe he can't. Maybe he's out of juice, his batteries drained or however it is that plants work. "I'm more worried about some brother obsessed psychopath getting nervous and pulling ribbons of razor wire out of his ass to slice this place up."

"If one shows up I'll put a stop to that. I haven't finished my muffin." He does catch the open insinuation that he would be the one doing the slicing but the details were wrong, and he certainly didn't pull razorwire out of his backside like a spider with silk. It did leave for a diverting image in the mind though.

If he's worried about the muffin he should really be eating it faster, but it's so hard to do. "You should get yourself a drink before you say or do something foolish. If that's not enough money I have more." He could make more, at any rate, and that was nearly as good. Knives knows that humans can't be indulged too much or they got uppity, but this is a very different situation in a very different city! "I'm not going to abuse my employees, and although I know you're not in my employ, you're near enough that I'll extend the courtesy. For now." There's hostility in Wolfwood's bearing, and isn't that interesting? When did the assassin become brave enough to bare fangs at god?

Would a drink really help Wolfwood not say foolish things? Knives hasn't been around too many humans, if he thinks that's the case.

"No, I'm not your employee anymore. I watched you die.” He grins suddenly, a flash of those fangs. He might be terrified, but every predator knows that showing fear to something bigger and scarier than you is a good way to die quick. He already figured himself a dead man when he spotted Knives – might as well run his mouth while he can. “Best day of my life.”

It was also the worst day of his life, but Knives doesn't need to know that. “So keep your fucking courtesy.”

This seems to cause the plant to hesitate, head tilting to one side like a puzzled dog. Well, if he really wants it, and he really, really seems to want it..

"If you're so intent on your own slaughter I'll grant your wish, but why are you so desperate to die?"

It's pretty obvious Wolfwood's gunning for an execution and Knives will provide as wasteful as it is, but he'd always assumed the man's convictions went further than that. Part of his jacket uncoils like a rearing cobra, delicate layered blades fanning open in a gleam of light along sharp edges. If the goal had been to not be noticed, that's going out the window very soon. "Execution at the hands of someone who you know isn't involved seems unusually stupid for someone of your caliber and education. Are you sure you want to continue this?"

Does he ever have a goal when he starts running his mouth? It's just part of who he is, a habit that even the Eye couldn't shake loose. He talks shit when he's nervous, when he's outright scared, when he's faced with something he can't handle. It makes his opponents take him less seriously, sometimes, or makes them mad so they make mistakes, giving him openings. Like now: any second now, somebody in this place is going to notice the supernatural stuff happening with the plant-blond man, and there'll be screaming, panic, and eventually, feds and militia, Earth forces. Vash.

He doesn't want to die. He really doesn't. But some things are bigger than himself, and the safety of Miz Melanie and the rest of the orphanage brats, currently housed nearby, is the best of all those things. "What I want is for you to leave. Leave the city, leave the planet, and never come back."

A 'good Knives'. Who'd he been kidding? If his response to a couple mild insults is to threaten death, then there's nothing good about him. "I don't care what world you're from or what you're involved in. I still know you. I know what you are, and I know nobody here is safe until you're gone."

Nearby is a terrible place to be, when Millions Knives proves his name. Hopefully those orphanage brats aren't that close at all, since Wolfwood chose to repeatedly poke a bear and then pretend he wasn't begging for it when it turned on him. But humans were always good at playing the victim when they cause their own downfall.

"If you're really worried about anyone's safety at all, why are you going out of your way to try to provoke me into doing harm?" A second slow, long coil of blades joins the first; if Wolfwood had hoped he was dealing with some powerless remnant it seems he was gravely mistaken. It's not his first mistake today. "If you think nobody here is safe unless I'm gone, then you also think I'm not going to stop with just you. So why do you want to die? Why do you want this city to die?"

There's no sense in talking to him -- angels don't listen to the words of pathetic mortals. "I don't--"he snarls, but before he can finish whatever he was going to say, the young woman at a nearby table finally spots the coil of blades rising from Knives, and lets out a bloodcurdling shriek, tripping over her chair in her frantic attempt to run away from the monster.

Here they go.

"Get out, run!" Wolfwood hollers, turning in her direction. He uses the motion to reach behind himself, drawing the stolen revolver and bringing it around with every single bit of his strength of speed. He's gonna shoot Millions Knives in the goddamn face. The only one dying here is you, he thinks at Knives, squeezing the trigger.

The people here in this shop are hopelessly outmatched, lacking the sheer numbers needed to get past Knives' defenses. He sighs, a much put-out sound as a shrill scream rings out, and as soon as she trips terrified toward the door in an effort to escape, one of the two coils of blades flashes out like a striking snake to try to, much like a snake, enshroud her in loops of sharp blades and bring her escape attempt to a sudden stop.

Shooting Knives in the face goes about as well as Wolfwood likely expects, the sharp ting of metal impacting metal as the second ribbon of blades fans open in a blur of protection, burying the bullet in the ceiling. There's a third sinister coil of metal now, and this reaches immediately to try to snare Wolfwood the same way he tried to the screaming girl. If he catches either one, too much struggling is going to be rather painful but the cutting edges aren't turned inwards just yet. Maybe he intends them to flay themselves apart in their efforts to escape. Or he's planning to monologue them to death while they're a captive audience.

Wolfwood isn't the only person in the restaurant with a gun -- this is, after all, Noman's Land. The screaming woman freezes as the loop of blades coils around her, shrinking in on herself to try to avoid being cut on the sharp edges. The rest of the restaurant patrons and staff are divided in their reactions -- about half scream and run for the door, shoving each other out of the way as they run. The other half pull guns of various calibers out of their coats and belt holsters and open fire, a barrage of bullets that aren't aimed so much as sprayed in Knives's direction. Some of the shots go wild and hit Wolfwood, tangled as he is in Knives's blades.

He's still going to shoot Knives. There's eight bullets -- seven, now -- left in that gun, and no matter how tightly that coil of blades holds him, he's still going to keep firing. Anything else is giving up, and he has to keep Knives occupied as long as possible so that the panicking waitresses can get away, and call the feds.

Richochets are suddenly about to be a problem for everyone, with the amount of bullets flying, and Knives tolerates it for a few seconds before generating more of his lethal toys and setting to destroying each and every weapon turned on him, including Wolfwood's. It's going to mean losing thumbs or hands for a few if he can catch them all, and the worthless ingrates are unlikely to even be thankful they're still alive. Look at them scurry like the vermin they were. Somewhere in the swirling silver cascade, two single blades flash out, to bury themselves in the door's frame and jam it shut.

Only then, when he finally silenced the roar of gunfire does he even bother to rise, his gleaming barrier of metal leaving him bereft of his nice jacket, but he still has his turtleneck on. Dark colors mean it's impossible to tell if he's been struck by any of their efforts. Did creatures such as he even bleed red? "The next person to pull a weapon dies. Settle down and I'll allow you all to leave alive, but I will tolerate no more of this foolishness." He knows plenty about humans, he's been raising them for long enough, breaking the wild ones and culling the impossible. In every crowd there's always a few defiant ones, but if the rest thought they'd escape alive, half the time they'd turn on their own kind. The lack of dead so far might tip that in his favor, if they think they might get mercy.

Wolfwood is one of those he expects defiance from, but Knives hesitates to simply kill him and be done with it. Or any of them, but it's Wolfwood he's watching.

The ordinary humans in the restaurant were willing to open fire on a threat that appeared right in the middle of their breakfasts, but they've all seen too much death and destruction caused by superpowered people over the last year. There's groans and whimpers from the injured ones, but without their guns, what can they do against somebody like Knives? One of the men, wizened from the sun and with one eye lost long ago to a horrific looking scar, has gone ashen with fear as he murmurs Knives's name under his breath. Who else but the brother of the Typhoon can summon blades like that? The name rings like a death toll over the small group, and they all go very silent and still, fully expecting that, regardless of what Knives says, that this encounter will end with their deaths.

Wolfwood doesn't know how to be silent or still. His gun's empty but it's still a weapon, and if he could move he'd be happy to use it as a club to knock Knives's brains out. But even the Punisher isn't stronger than an independent plant. He strains against the coils of metal, unmindful of any damage he takes from the blades. The feds are coming, and when he hears the commotion, when he hears about the summoned blades, Vash will be coming. Vash will deal with this. Knives won't get away this time.
Wolfwood's grin is bloody and feral as he claws his way ever closer to Knives, fighting his way forward with every ounce of strength in him.

"You should've stayed dead, you bastard."

Terror is fine as long as it's not noisy terror, the moans of the injured but not likely to die an acceptable compromise. "I never died. It's never been close." Even with the dark sunglasses on, Knives' expression turns pitying. What a ridiculous notion, him of all people, dying. When he was a child, that could happen and nearly did, but grown, and against such a paltry thing as this little uprising? This effort to get closer is allowed, and it's tangible through the loops of metal that he's allowing it. "What did you think was going to happen when you chose to go out of your way to pick an argument? All I'm here for is a meal." His muffin has been the victim of a stray bullet, splattered in blueberry pieces all over the table. He didn't really mind, he didn't want to choke the rest of it down anyway. "These people didn't have to get hurt. They could have remained blissfully unaware, but you just had to light a match and see if anything explosive was around. If I didn't know better I'd say you were hoping I'd kill them all so you didn't have to."

He glances at the humans, now thoroughly cowed, but that wouldn't last. Any opportunity would be an opportunity taken. He lingers for a long moment on the man who bears a scar like his own, and the grip he has around Wolfwood tightens, intending to lift him clear of the ground. It's going to hurt, there's no way to be flesh and blood and be held in place by that many knives and not get cut. "It seems the rest have better sense than you do, Punisher. I won't kill them for your stupidity, now that they're properly respectful. Hopefully they'll stay smarter than you, and won't make me regret freeing them. Out the back, all of you." All of them, including the woman who'd screamed and tried to flee, released of her cage of shiny metal, but not including Wolfwood. Knives isn't concerned at all about the Feds, the closest he has to any idea of who they are is the paramilitary force of July, and what could they hope to ever do? If he knew, he probably wouldn't leave anyway, such is his certainty of his superiority over every living thing in this city.

He let them go? The humans stream through the door the second they're released, climbing over each other in their rush to get out, to get away. Wolfwood's breath hisses through his teeth as Knives lifts him, bleeding from a dozen places (including a bullet wound low in his side that'll cause a lot of problems here shortly, if he's still alive by then). Why did he let them go? Why didn't he just kill them all? He was eager enough to pull his blades out when Wolfwood taunted him, but he didn't kill a single one of those humans. It doesn't make any sense.

This Knives is strange, but he's still Knives. He's still a murderer... isn't he? He still can't be trusted.

"You don't get a meal." His tone is furious, his face twisted into a snarl, but his heart's pounding a mile a minute with terror. For all his bravery, he doesn't want to die, not here. Not like this. "You don't get to hide, asshole. They deserved to know about the monster they were dining with."

Octovern is no longer officially under martial law, but there are still officers and agents of half a dozen agencies on every street corner. By now, that terrified waitress has found one of those officers and told them about the man who somehow created knives from thin air. Alarms are going off in the capitol building at that description, and there'll be soldiers, and armored vehicles, and every other weapon they can scrounge up converging on this restaurant in, oh... two and a half minutes.

He laughs, sharp and dry. "That's an odd stone to be throwing in this particular glass house, Punisher, or were you planning on listing your own sins to them?" There's a difference to Knives in Wolfwood and those nameless, faceless people he'll never care about and never know. They might prove worthy of life, families, offspring. Wolfwood, on the other hand.. it might take generations to carefully breed out his flaws, if they're inheritable. "You should have left the monster to sleep, if you thought you knew what it was capable of. This blood, those injured people would have been unharmed if you kept your mouth shut, or had the sense to back down." He picks up his pack and pockets the coins he'd made earlier. No point in wasting them. The motion isn't entirely smooth, a hitch that marks some unseen pain that he isn't visibly acknowledging. Was there a Stampede rushing to Wolfwood's rescue? It seems not, or surely one would have appeared, right in the nick of time to save him from a thousand tiny cuts. Maybe he's waiting outside. Knives is headed that way, and he's going to drag his victim with him.

Humans aren't good at doing the sensible thing. At least one or two are going to run for whatever passes for guardsmen in this place, and then he'll have to disarm them too. How tiresome! If there were more cities he could draw a respectable foundation pool from, maybe he would kill them all and be done with it, except there isn't according to the news. He gives his coiled blades a little shake, frowning and muttering to himself. "Perhaps this stupidity can be trained out, even if you're not my dog."

If there’s a Stampede on the way, he’s sure taking his sweet time! This block is about to become a war zone, though, as every tank and plane and soldier in the city is funneled in the direction of the repeated reports that Millions Knives is back in town. The neighborhood hasn’t noticed yet, so there’s still people milling about, going on with their days (although some of them have stopped, seeing the people running out the back door of the restaurant, and there’s fingers being pointed and the beginnings of worried discussion)… but there’s a rumble from the north side of town that promises to interrupt the day with chaos and explosions very soon.

That little shake digs the blades even deeper into Wolfwood’s skin. His suit is ruined, absolutely sliced to shreds. He still can’t figure out why he’s still alive, though.

“Yeah, I’m stupid. Stupid as hell, but I’m no coward.” He saw that hesitation as Knives reached for the pile of coins, and he’s doing the math on Knives’s healing, based on what he’s seen of Vash. If he can spot the dark place on Knives’s black clothes that indicates bleeding, better believe that’s his new target… assuming he ever gets his hands free again. Until then, he’ll just have to run his mouth. “B’sides, you didn’t give me a chance to run. You saw me first. I didn’t have a choice. Can’t let you sneak around, an’ do whatever you’re planning.”

Chaos reigns whenever either of Rem's children roam free, it's merely the intention behind it that changes. And chaos is soon to descend! "Was it a courageous path to try to assure many die alongside you? That sounds like cowardice to me." Freed of the need to protect himself from hails of bullets all but the one long tentacle of blades realign themselves from sharp metal to what looks like blue fabric strip by strip until he has his jacket mostly intact again. Wolfwood might get lucky, in time, the blue will definitely mark blood far more clearly than black.

"I had no reason to give you a chance to run. Nicholas the Punisher is amongst my most loyal and dedicated, and he'd have appreciated a free drink." A loyalty earned through the continued safety of those he cares about, and there was no Vash to lure him astray. He couldn't help but feel disappointed, of all his Guns only Legato was less likely to stray, but the rest also didn't have a string of orphans who's quality of life and survival hinged on being cooperative and loyal. "I'll have to think of a nefarious plan, since you're so certain that I have one. I'll make it appropriately monstrous." Speaking of chaos, it's probably going to ignite as soon as he steps outside with his ribbon of blades holding an entire grown man off the ground, and these new ones might not be given the same level of grace he'd shown the others inside, not with the smell of blood following them out. Monsters are bad enough, short tempered and injured monsters.. this might be going from a bad situation to a catastrophic one.

The other people in the restaurant would have been acceptable collateral damage, had they all died, yes. The whole block would be an acceptable loss if it meant stopping Knives from whatever he had planned. He tried to wipe out all of humanity, last time – a dozen or so people caught in the crossfire wouldn’t even keep Wolfwood up at night.

“Oh please. You don’t take a shit without havin’ three nefarious plans for wipin’ your ass.” Even from up in the air, there’s no mistaking the growl of approaching tanks. Hope Knives is ready for a full-scale assault, because this little restaurant is about to become a hole in the ground. Unable to move, Wolfwood just bobs along, wondering distantly if the Earth forces will end up shooting him before Knives has a chance to slice him in half. Even odds, really.

“I know you’re not gonna tell me why you’re here, but do me a little credit for knowin’ there’s a reason, an’ it’s not a reason that’s good for the people here.”

And that’s all he’s got time to say, because Knives was right – as soon as he steps through that door and gives the soldiers outside a target, they’re going to open fire. There’s soldiers everywhere -- standing out in the street, crouched alongside and behind the handful of armored vehicles that the city has left after the last time a Millions Knives came to town, there’s snipers on nearby rooftops… they’re everywhere, and they all open fire at once. At the ends of the street there’s still civilians being evacuated, running as fast as they can in all directions, just so long as that direction is away.

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I want you to know I struggled to not introduce him as Bill Nai.

science rules!

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