❛ "zero” survivors  after someone asks about        my personal life. ❜ 

        ❛ don’t hold it like that,    you’re bound to injure yourself.          is this your first gun? ❜ 

so the lead had been bad.  the whole gig had been bad.  the floorboards and the catwalks, creaking with  bad bad bad.  nothing rhys hadn’t pretended to know how to deal with before.  laughed his way through reassurances that tasted funny and  off.  trying to talk to  psychos  in a way he had chairmen in board meetings..  not the best route.  neither had running been high on an already meager list.  but hearing how  nice his face was  had a way of losing its flavor when, too many now, had he seen wearing the peeled off masks of others.  no one he’d recognized, but..  better safe than sorry—  yadda yadda.

the midpoint between explaining the expense of his attire and the false praise of one of their  dos..  they’d been a flash.  a blur in peripherals that warranted an alarm and he’d debate the existence of that shriek, crawled up and out his throat, later.  call it a misunderstanding or an accident or, maybe, it hadn’t ever happened at all.  point was,   “ oh man.. wow, uh..  for the record, i’m not crying, i’m just, yanno.. really happy to see you—  is that a new helmet ? ”

bad lighting didn’t steal anything from the aw of them.  all tall and—  he was staring.  right.  it was weird and people on pandora, even the ones he’d gotten used to the sight of, had habit of getting jumpy when he stopped blinking.  smoothed a sweaty palm down the slight of his hip, the impasse hurtled with minor fumbling before the company ahead, all thunderous approach and shouts he’d stopped trying to decipher a meaning of, had put a haze of dust in the air.   “ oh, them ?  that’s not  TROUBLE.  no no, that’s, uh.. the locals.  absolutely had this under control—  seriously, that helmet is really cool. ”

they don’t say anything, don’t even move a hair as the crowd in front of them start growing agitated, even when they can sense the shift in the air ╾╾the turn to bloodlust. the feeling of incoming battle that sings through their veins but zer0 does nothing but turn their head to the company man they had met ╾╾ encountered, really ╾╾ a few times before, oddly enough always in a situation like this.

the neutral black screen of their helmet remains for a few seconds, even as a chaotic cacophony erupts behind them, the limbs of the locals twitchIng, machetes and guns and daggers already slashing restlessly at the air. then zer0’s mask, still facing rhys, turns to a heart, acknowledging the compliment.

they stay like that, staring and poised in perfect stillness, only moving in the breathing that shakes their lithe frame, even as the psychos around them begin to fall, cut down by an unseen force. when their illusion disappears and they’re visible behind the crowd again, only two well-placed slashes are needed to quiet the few that remained. the assassin sheaths their bloodied katana and slowly, as if their aren’t tank motors revving in the town behind them, walks back over to rhys. 

       ❛  your  wounds  are  healing  slowly.  what  was  that  thing?  ❜  //  @haikil: sc.

          ❛ i cannot be sure.     it attacked from the darkness.             i will hunt it, soon. ❜ 

        ❛ so we meet again.     how are you always getting          into such trouble? ❜ 

( scrubs sentence starters )

          ❛ they will not be pleased.           but if we hide him well, then ╾╾             they can’t know it’s us.❜

the words are spoken with little inflection as the assassin picks up the feet of the corpse, ready to drag, and starts scanning the area for a suitable bush, or ammo dump, or anything really. of course, they’re in the fucking desert, so it’s all open plains and skag as far as the eye can see.