Blood, Death, and Friendship (4)

Starring...


 * Kane as Shax!


 * Grafsburg as Tirin Moor!

 The Autumn Maple was one of those nicer bars in Shantytown. Real leather seats, polished wood bartops and table tops, a real fine, upstanding establishment. As if that weren't enough, the bar was known to make some of the best tequila on the whole of Sutekh. Apparently one of the desert plants distilled very nicely. So, it would usually be safe to assume that the bar would be full on a night like this, especially given that it was still cold out. However, the bar was utterly empty, and was being avoided. Given that the front window seemed to have taken a shotgun round from the inside, and the neon sign that listed the bars name was flickering (having caught the same blast as it exited the front... Shax was inside, at the moment utterly alone. He was sitting on the floor, back to the bar counter, sitting rather limply, idly smoking a cigarette. Three bodies were strewn nearby him, while a few others were scattered elsewhere. Not all of them had died by Shax's hand, however. No, a couple were what happened when you missed a moving target in a crowded bar. And Shax, now surrounded by carnage, was simply smoking. A vague frown tugging at his lips.

 Tirin was strolling by just by sheer chance. Or maybe it was fate, conspiring against him as it often did. Whatever the case, the sight of a shotgun blast-hole in the window and a nearly-destroyed neon sign caught his attention, and out of curiosity he stepped into the bar to take a peek around. Seeing Shax with his back to the bar and sitting down turned that curiosity into genuine concern. "Shax! By the saints, what the feck're you doing in here? What happened?!" he asked, approaching his iguana 'friend'. Even despite his argument with Henry, the lemur had not quite abandoned Shax. He would no longer be offering to go off and kill people for him, but he wouldn't abandon him at least...

 Shax reacted a bit slowly, looking up blinking at first, as if he didn't recognize Tirin. That, fortunately, did not last long, and the iguana brightened. "Tirin! Fancy seeing you here... You aren't following me or anything, are ya?" He chuckled, seeming to forgot for a moment he'd been asked a question. Not for long though. His chuckle died rather quickly, the reptile looking over the messy bar. "Well... I -was- having a little private celebration. As for what happened..." He sighed. "What usually happens when people underestimate me." He looked up again. As Tirin closed the distance, it was easy to see his pupils were the size of pin-pricks. "I didn't start this one, I swear."

 "Fucking hell, Shax. You're drunk. Or drugged one." The lemur shook his head, gripping his headfur as he did so. No, he couldn't keep doing this. "Saints curse you, Shax... I can't be looking out for you like this anymore. This is the last time I put up with you, I swear..." Tirin sounded... angry. Quite angry indeed. "Explain what happened, and you'd better have a damned good reason for it."

 The iguana frowned a moment, hand with the cigarette pausing half-way. "You make it sound like I need someone to look out for me... I think the evidence that I can look out for myself is rather fucking blatant." He made a sweeping motion with his arm, at the bar in general, before finally finishing the movement. He inhaled, deeply, before exhaling. Calming nerves. Or trying to anyway. "So, those Slavers I was talking about earlier. They are now, ultimately, a non-issue. Got all but one of 'em, and he wasn't exactly high-management. So he got away. Dead Slavers is cause for celebration in my book. So I came here, feeling in a tequila-ish mood. Turns out the bartender on duty is a bit of a chemist on the side. Hey, good alchohol and drugs; win-win." He gave a thumbs up with his free hand. "Only one thing woulda made it a real party, and for that I was gonna go elsewhere. After I had finished the tequila. So I'm sitt'n, minding my own business, when this drop-dead sexy tiger wanders over, starts making small talk. Me, I'm think'n, 'Maybe I can get all three things in one place.' Score, right?" He pulled another breath from the rolled tobacco in his hand before continuing. "You can see how -that- ended... Anyway, turns out to be a trap. Tiger boy and his buds think that scoping out Homos, particularly ones that look frail and bendy, is a fun thing to do. Here, I rather politely told 'em to fuck off. They were mess'n with my good mood. Idiot number two, one of Tiger Boys friends, pulls a little double-barreled sawn-off. And thus..." He gestured to the room, actually looking kind of upset. "And the night started out so well, too..."

 Tirin sighed, rubbing his eyes with a forefinger and thumb. "Saints damn it Shax... You can't go anywhere without people getting killed." The lemur sat down next to Shax, looking through some of the wreckage for a bottle of what he assumed was tequila. He uncorked the bottle and took a drink; sure enough that was what it was. "I'm dead certain Henry doesn't approve of me talking to you. You have a habit of getting yourself into trouble whether I'm there or not... I'm thinking after this we might have to put our friendship on hold." He regretted saying that, but after nearly losing Henry last week the lemur was scared of something like that happening again.

 The iguana blinked again, a few times actually, as his mind processed what he just heard. Put a friendship on hold? Could you... do that? What the fuck did that even mean? He looked over beside him, at Tirin, a mixture of shock and confusion on his features. "What the fuck does that even mean?" At least he wasn't angry... Yet...

 "I'm saying I'm this shy of not speaking with you anymore," he said, holding his forefinger and thumb a few inches apart. "I'm saying that I think you're dangerous and going to get me killed one of these days, or get someone I care about killed, or make me lose them all the same. I'm saying your behavior is absolutely insane and that if I have to, whether I want to or not, I'll break contact with you completely." It hurt to say it; Shax had become something of a friend to him and had helped him a great deal once. And as much as he didn't want to abandon him, the pile of bodies the iguana had accrued since Tirin had met him scared the lemur and made him wonder whether his 'friend' was really a friend or not.

 "Hate to break it to ya, but if you aren't dangerous on this rock, then you're prey." The rest of it he didn't have a response too yet. He was staring more or less at the floor now, brows furrowed. Thinking. As hard and as honestly as he could, given the circumstances. "Tirin, I... Well... I mean... Ahh fuck." He took a breath, no smoke this time, and tried again. "Do you not like the fact that I kill people, or that I actually enjoy the fighting aspect of it? 'Cause, you've killed before. Back in that alley, when you found me about to get... Well, when those three muscle heads were going to try and beat me to death... You were way too steady to not have done it before. So..." He hesitated again, grunting in frustration. "You had to do this when I was high..." He muttered, to nobody in particular.

 Tirin shook his head. "I've killed people before, and I'm not denying it. But I want to stop killing people. And with the frequency that you end up killing people, or have people trying to kill you... That's going to make it difficult for me to stop." He sighed again and took another drink from the tequila bottle. "Henry and I've been talking. I think once he's found what he's looking for here we're going to go to Black Lake. I'm gonna join the Militia... Earn a life for ourselves."

 "Hey, no, that's cool man." He wave his hands, seeming to have forgotten about the cigarette in his hands. "I mean, your life, right? I'm not... I mean... I don't wanna dictate your actions. You do what you gotta do." He hesitated, pausing a moment to stop his mouth before it got ahead of him. "I mean... I guess... The point I'm trying to make is, killing isn't... It's not... Ah damnitall... It's not like you can avoid it forever. Not on this planet. Sooner or later, you're gonna run into a situation where either you, or somebody else, is gonna walk away. And it can't be both. Right? I mean..." He hesitated again, only at the beginning having looked over at Tirin. "Well, me... I kill because... Well, because... That's who I am. That's what I know. I don't do half-measures. I'm a very... all-or-nothing kinda guy. Very intense, heh." His grin lasted maybe for a second. "But I mean... That kind of situation, that all-or-nothing fight, that's why I kill. That, at the end of it, I... I mean..." His face turned into a snarl, and Shax gripped the sides of his head, eyes squeezed shut. "Never thought I'd regret the drugs... Sunovabitch..."

 "Well, that's the thing... I don't want to just cut and run. I mean, we've been in fights together; you helped me out when I was in a bind. I don't want to just end that. That shit forges a bond like nothing else." Tirin patted his chest with a palm. "But you kill people for reasons I can't even comprehend, Shax. You drink blood because it's supposed to 'empower you'. I mean, how do I know you're not going to turn on me some day?" He definitely regretted saying that, but it was too late to take it back now...

 The look Shax gave Tirin was, at best, furious. And at worst a murderous rage. But, the expression softened, turned into... Something else. His gaze, after slumping a bit with a quiet sigh, returned to the floor between his legs. "You dunno my whole story, so... Lemme put this part in clear terms. I don't make a lot of friends. Point in fact, I know I'm a lot of things, and easy to get along with ain't one of them. But if I call you a friend, and I mean it, that's... that's powerful, right there. Number of people I can call that I could count on one hand. And I know a -lot- of people." He breathed again, finally remembering the now mostly-gone cigarette. "I'm not random with the people I kill. Psychopath, sure, but I'm not insane. Anyone I fight has just as much chance to kill me as I do them. That's part of the excitement. But, friends? Those are... I guess kinda like possessions. Some of the few I have. Just, ones that do their own thing." He shook his head. "Errrrfff... Bad analogy. But, what I'm trying to say is that I like friends much better alive, able to interact. And friends you protect, right? That's... that's what friends do." He paused again, before acting on a whim. "That's my definition anyway, and I'm stick'n to it, heh heh..." Little, sad attempt at humor. Shax did not do well with deep emotional discussion.

 Tirin went quiet for a moment, then sighed and took another drink. "Shax... I appreciate that. But still... I can't be around you if you're gonna keep doing shit like... this." He waved his arms around, indicating the chaos around him. "It puts me in a difficult position. I mean, I like you okay? You're fun to be around. But... Damn it, I can't let you keep doing this. Deserve it or not, you can't just go around killing people all the time!" Hypocritical of him, definitely, but he knew that.

 "Hey, I didn't start -this- shit." Shax growled, refusing to meet Tirin's gaze. If indeed he was even looking at the reptile. For some reason, he couldn't bear to look at the lemur. "I wanted a nice evening. Get some vice, ya know? Alchohol, some nice feel-good drugs, little sex to just top it all off. And what do I get? First two, and then these jackoffs who decide it's fun to intimidate and degrade people who happen to have a different sexuality than them, show up and pull a gun on me. Fuck'n bad shots too; I didn't kill all of these people. Just the ones that tried to kill me." His excitement was building again, although not in the sense of enjoyable excitement. "And... And fuck you!" Shax pulled himself to his feet, glaring down at Tirin once he finally stood. "Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do? I live -my- life the way -I- want to! And there isn't anyone who can tell me otherwise! I don't tell you how to live, huh? Do I? You wanna live your life with a... a... Naive coward, hey! That's your fuck'n decision!"

 "I really highly doubt that they just decided to shoot you for no reason. What, you couldn't have told them to fuck off? Couldn't have hit them in the mouth like they deserved?" Then Shax went and did it, calling Henry a naive coward. That annoyed him enough that he stood soon afterward, getting into the iguana's face. "You shut your fucking mouth. He's not naive and he's not a coward! He's been through a lot."

<Kane> "Oh yeah? Coulda fooled me!" Shax was not intimidated by Tirin. Something nagged at him, but with the alchohol in his system, the adrenalin still in it, and one ruined mood... "Just what did he do to get himself sent here, huh? What, is he one of those idealist political prisoners or something? 'Cause he sure acts the part. Killing is necessary. Maybe not where he came from, but it sure as fuck is here. Slavers gave up any claim they had to decency when they decided to kidnap and break people for pay. Tell me I'm wrong. I fuck'n dare ya."

<Grafsburg> "I'm not telling you you're wrong! But these aren't slavers, Shax. These are just... innocent people! I mean, yeah they're assholes, but that doesn't give you the right to kill them!" Even if they'd pulled guns, there had to be more to the story than that. Shax had to have goaded them into it somehow, Tirin thought.

<Kane> "Innocent people? Innocent people!?" Shax didn't catch up on the subtle hint for further explanation, it seemed. In his defense though, he was a bit narrow-minded at the moment. "Oh sure, because innocent people pull fucking shotguns on you when you refuse to be cowed by their stupid self-inflated self-righteousness. Yeah. Right. You know who an innocent person is, Tirin? On this world? They're a victim." He hissed the word, leaning in close to the lemur's face. "An innocent person is nothing more than a mark. Innocence is the first thing to go on Sutekh. You have to be prepared to do everything, yes, fucking everything, in your power to get what you need. Or you will be chewed up and spit out. Dead."

<Grafsburg> "Easy for you to say..." Tirin mumbled. "You go looking for fights. That's hardly in an attempt to get what you need. That's just you being a fucking psycho." The lemur threw his arms into the air. "Whatever. I'm done with this conversation." He turned to head for the door, unless Shax attempted to stop him.

<Kane> "You knew what I was from the beginning, Tirin! Don't pull that bull- Hey! HEY! Don't walk away from me!" Shax nearly grabbed the lemur, rushing up behind him. But, all of a sudden, he stopped. His hand outstretch, but not grasping. Slowly he pulled it back, standing straighter. Well, straighter for him. All of a sudden the anger had fled, and the psychotic iguana was looking... self-concious? "Just... I..." He hesitated again, mentally backing up. "You... You never did answer me before." His voice had quite rapidly lost its volume. "What is it about me killing that frightens you? You're..." He licked his lips, now unable to meet the lemurs gaze. "You're frightened of something. Maybe not conciously, but... I know enough about people to recognize it."

<Grafsburg> Tirin paused and turned back to look at Shax. "I'm afraid of... ending up like you..." he mumbled. "I've killed people before but I want to... stop. But I can't. Everywhere I go people end up dying all around me... Like I'm cursed or something..." Maybe that was just the way Sutekh worked, but he was tired of it. He wanted to find something else he was good at!

<Kane> The iguana managed a weak smile. "Well, if it's any consolation, it took ten years hard work to make me the way I am... You won't turn into a little furry Shax just by being around me." He made a half-hearted chuckle, but could only look at the lemur in short, furtive glances. "I... Honestly? Wouldn't want anyone else to be like me anyway. I mean... I guess it's kind of impressive, in a demented sort of way. You know what I am. Fuck, -I- know what I am; I'm a fuck'n monster." There. He said it. Now Tirin couldn't use it against him. "But... I don't know any other way -to- be. And I'm not willing to bind myself to anything either. I've had enough of bondage..."

<Grafsburg> "I'm sorry Shax..." Tirin felt bad for the iguana. He put a hand on Shax's shoulder, giving it a squeeze. "Look... You can change. I know you can. I believe in you... I want to help you change, for the better. I mean... Do you want to spend your entire life like this?" He didn't know quite what to expect for that question, but he hoped Shax had some more ambition than just drinking, experimenting with drugs, and getting into fights.

<Kane> Shax tensed for a moment under Tirin's touch. For what, he wasn't sure. But... "You keep talking like I'm going to be living to a ripe old age, like some kind of survivalist." The iguana managed that little smile again. He also figured out what was going on with him; he was crashing. All the excitement had burned right through everything in his system, so now was coming the after-effects. The, now long dead, cigarette had staved them off for a while. "Truth is, I'm kinda surprised I survived as long as I have. Now, I'm not, ya know, suicidal or anything... I just know how my lifestyle goes. I'm not telling you this for pity or anything either. The past is the past. No use crying over what can't be changed, right?"

<Grafsburg> "I know you're not suicidal. All I'm saying is... Things can change man. You can... better yourself. It's up to you though." Tirin frowned. "I'm tired of burying friends. I've done it more than people think... It's never a pleasant experience. It gets worse each time, arguably." And it was the worst when he'd been the one to kill his friends. The lemur definitely didn't want to do that again.

<Kane> The iguana hesitated for a moment. The belief Tirin had in him was like a punch in the gut. How could someone else have so much faith in him, when Shax himself didn't have nearly as much? "Define... 'better'." He chose his words carefully. Or, tried anyway. "Stop being who I am, so I can fit into a society that doesn't want me? And I'm not talking about Sutekh, I mean..." He gestured up. "Them. That whole Dominion thing. Most everyone comes from them, right? They, we... You, I guess, bring that with you. Try and fit it for here. But... Why try and hold onto something that doesn't care about you?"

<Grafsburg> "I'm not saying try and fit in with Dominion society. But you can fit in somewhere. Sutekh's its own world, free from most Dominion influence. I mean yeah there's the spaceport, but when's the last time you've seen anyone come from it? I never have, not since I got here ten years ago." Tirin jerked his hand in the direction of the spaceport. "You could join a tribe. They'd take you in a heartbeat if you can carry your own weight. Or join the militia with me. Work to defend something..."

<Kane> Shax just shook his head. "I've had enough following orders for several lifetimes. Much longer than mine." He chuckled, yet still couldn't quite meet his companion's gaze. "The only person I want telling me what to do is myself. It's not like I don't appreciate what you're saying you wanna try." He quickly ammened on that last part, trying to forestall any more shouting. "It's been a long time since anyone but me has looked out for my well-being, but..." He flounded again for a moment, trying to word what he wanted to say. Damn the drugs... "I've been who I've been for so long, I don't think I can change. All but five of the 21 winters I've seen. At least, if my memory isn't totally shot."

<Grafsburg> "Just looking out for you. It's what I do. But I believe you can change for the better. We'll see... I've been wrong before." The lemur shook his head slowly and turned, walking out of the door of the bar and into the street. From there he pulled his coat closer to his body, warding off the pervasive chill of the winter night, and roamed the streets looking for... nothing in particular.

<Kane> Shax made it to the door before halting. He wanted to say... ment to say... Sighing, he let Tirin leave. He didn't know what to say. "I can stare down the barrel of a gun and poke witty remarks at Death, and yet I trip over my tongue trying to have simple conversation... Hmph. Some bad-ass I am." Kicking an empty beer bottle out of the way, the iguana surveyed the damage to the bar. Yeah, it was a mess... Nothing that wasn't fixable though. Still, it was time to clean up. After a fashion anyway. From the dead he took the money he could find, but he didn't keep much of that. Just enough for a room somewhere else. The rest was left in a big pile on the bartop counter, and discovered by the bartender himself when he slowly peeked his head out of the storage room, no longer hearing any voices.