With his job done, Enzo pulled the bike around to an angry and bleeding Rosh, who still had his NSP leveled at Enzo. Enzo smiled and stepped off the bike, gesturing with both hands towards the machine. It was trailing a thick column of smoke and there were several new dents on and around the feusalage. Rosh spat blood into Enzo's face as he mounted his damaged toy. Ferris pulled up beside him with a new helmet prepared. Kroger and Shinai were approaching from the distance with a sidecar mounted on Shinai's bike, Kroger seated comfortably in it behind a fifty caliber machinegun.

Enzo maintained his shit-eating grin.

"You have caused nothing but trouble in your wake with every step you've taken, Vincienzo." Rosh began his dramatic solliloquy, "I will not so easily give up on the debt you owe me. I have been waiting over a year to extract it, and I shall wait longer still. You won't always have the protection of Luca Pavone. And when you finally betray him as you inevitably will, I shall be present and most forceful in my-"

Rosh was cut off when he and his bike were blown into miniscule pieces by a massive blast. Yards away from the smoking crater that was formerly Rosh; Enzo lie on his back, holding the smoking hand-rifle Arin had tossed to him moments ago, its BLACK round spent. The vagabond groaned and sat upright, staring down at the weapon which had just knocked him onto his back. He looked back at Arin quizzically, as if to ask 'Was that supposed to happen?'.

Kroger and Ferris stood in awe, their mouths agape behind their helmets. Shinai, however; stepped forward calmly.

"I guess that leaves me in charge." he said, turning to Luca, "Pavone, if you would, when you transfer our payment, arrange to have Rosh's share added to the militia funding instead of our group. He was planning a donation this year. And, if you're ever in need of our assistance again, feel free to call. We have an FTL capable dropship, and we're always looking for work." He handed Luca a card and turned back to his bike, signaling the others to follow suit. And like that, they were gone.

Enzo still sat on the ground nearby holding the new rifle. He looked utterly confused. "I was just gonna pops him one in the leg to shuts him up an' he explodes's on me..." he muttered, "An' thens thats guy talkins about somethin' or other debts I owes him."

Enzo turned to Luca with a sideways look of perplexion, "Who were those guys, again? An' why dids that guy blows up? An' how was I supposeds to knows them?"

Naoko bounced off the windshield violently, leaving a little spiderwebbed crack in her wake where she had struck.

Her off hand was slick, so finding a grip on the bare metal on the cab was difficult to say the least, but she was lucky enough to catch hold of a bullet hole before going over the side. She stopped sliding with a jerk that jarred her throughly. When the world around her calmed down a bit, she managed to lift her head to examine the battlefield. It was all done and over with.

Corpses everywhere. Well, that was pretty familiar.

In a wash, everything that she had been instinctively ignoring flooded back. Her joints and muscles hurt where they had torn or bruised, and her arm was screaming desperately for attention. When she went to stand, it seemed as if she were made of lead, and her body did not want to respond. Letting go of the bullethole and falling into a puddle of bloody slush, Naoko forced her legs to work properly, landing on her feet in spite of the sudden and violent strain she had just endured.

She crouched there for a few moments, just sucking in air. Then, she began to pick her way through the carnage towards Luca, Enzo, and the fallen Nekovalkyrja. She glanced over to the corpse. The hemosynthetic material was still calling to her, oddly. She would have to make the transfer soon if she wanted to use it. But somewhere in the body was a parasite, probably still alive, and it was giving her pause. Soon it would die from seperation, so she just passed it by.

Once she was within a few paces of Luca and Enzo, she found a helmet that wasn't destroyed or bloody and sat on it.

Then Naoko said, loud enough to be heard, "You people are crazy, yo."

Enzo looked over to the tiny Neko sitting near him and leaned in towards her. "Well, it's a living, " he bgan, but then caught himself and narrowed his eyes at her, "Say, weren't you that little nakeds lady back on the ship? How'd yous gets all the ways out here, and how did yous tear up that big Neko so good?"

Naoko craned her neck, looking up. Technically speaking, she was still more or less naked except for what was left of the rough little shift she'd cut out of a rag, but did not feel like mentioning this.

"I decided to fall asleep in one of your ammo cans, I woke up here," she explained, entwining the fingers of her off hand in her hair and trying to straighten the matted mess out. The blood was drying. It was going to be difficult, and that was frustrating.

"And I dislike being patronized," she added, "so do not narrow your eyes at me that way, please."

Enzo chuckled at the comment. "I was just narrowing them so yous wouldn't fall into my eye socket if yous tripsed." While he was speaking, Enzo idly plucked the filter off of his next cigarette and handed to Naoko as a rag for her hair.

He made a satisfying sound as he lit and dragged on the unfiltered cigarette, acquiring a stronger sensation from the burning tobacco.

Naoko accepted the cigarette filter in the sense that she did not reject it, but did not make much of a move to accept it, either. In the end, she stopped messing with her hair to take hold of it. Then, she frowned.

"This, too, is a form of patronization. Give me something I can actually use, preferrably something that does not smell like smoke."

Enzo frowned at her. "Everything else woulds be like a circus tent to yous... I know!" he shuffled through his pockets for a moment before removing one of the watches he had bought on Nepleslia Prime for his scamming.

It was delicately wrapped in a thin paper and a silk bow was tied around it. Hanging from the bow was a tiny charm of cheaply made plastic. It was shaped like a dead tree, spindly branches arcing out from its center. It represented some kind of Lorath watchmaker's mark which Enzo had been trying to emulate. "You coulds use it like a comb and the paper likes a towel. And it's pretty, and it's real, so I aint's patronizing yous no more, see?"

This time, Naoko accepted the scrap of thin paper, the bow, and the charm with both hands - mostly because she needed both hands to keep a good hold on all of it, but at least partially from politeness. She felt the thin paper speculatively, setting the bow and charm aside after a cursory inspection.

That was a little more like it.

"Thank you," she said.

Then, she leaned forward, pulled most of her hair into her lap over her shoulder, and began to patiently dab at or rub away what blood could still be soaked onto the paper, figiting at every little strand and worrying, internally, at how difficult it was going to be to get the caked mess out. It was a strange sight on the middle of a ravaged field of war.

But on second thought, with this company, it probably fit.

Robert finshed off a zombie that was standing near him and Arin. He wasn't really sure what had happened to make them standing so non-violent but it made his job easier. He looked around to Luca. "Are you Ok Boss?" he asked a little unnecessarily. He jogged over to help, slinging his Fatboy as he went

Darkness. That was all Vincent could see. Shifting patterns of black on black, like a snake moving under a silk rug. Little embossed patterns of darkness shifting and weaving on an ebony background.

Then the darkness quivered, and a pinprick of white broke through. The pinpricks increased in number until his vision was filled with an almost blinding white light. Then -

"AGH, SHIT! SWEET FUCKING HELL! GODDAMN LOUIS MOTHERFUCKING PASCO; WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?!" Vincent was prone, laying in the street where he had been standing before. He didn't remember much about what had happened prior to blacking out. There had been a projectile, and then a thud, and then pain. Vincent remembered a lot of pain. He looked down.

A big scar on the front of his armor where plates had buckled with impact force, pressing in hard against his chest. Vincent gasped suddenly, and the pain surged into his torso. Cracked ribs shifted, grinding against their broken edges. Vincent counted at least six. He was a lucky man, once again.

Vincent gritted his teeth through the pain and then, with excruciating slowness, moved one hand up to turn the COMM switch on his helmet to the "active" position. "Need a medevac here," Vincent grunted, "I'm counting a concussion and several cracked ribs." Then he laid back and stared at the cieling for a while, wondering.