The soldier had a giant grin on his face, not that anyone could see it.

Most of Despair was pretty much in ruins at this point. Several of the larger buildings had been essentially decapitated after some rather precise work with the Crucible, and their top halves were collapsed along some of the rest of the city. A gigantic pile of armored corpses was slumped in the center of one of the common squares. Isabled was chewing on one of the corpses, and her teeth were punching through the armor like a chisel through cheese. The only untouched building had a dense black wall surrounding it, and the soldier was saving it for last like a dessert on a four-course meal.

Approaching underneath one of the smaller houses, he crouched next to the edge and sank his hands into the rocks at the base, palm-upwards. With a grunt of effort, he straightened his legs and lifted. The house tilted with an ear-shattering groan, stone and dust drifting down from the bottom, and he walked under it. Lifting in the middle as he did, he made it to the center of the house and picked the whole thing up.

Slowly turning around, a sole bead of sweat on his forehead, the soldier eyed the wall off in the distance. Taking a brief moment to appreciate the remarkably solid construction skill of whoever had built the house he was holding, he set off at a run, building in speed. Taking a short hop, he tensed his arms and practically growled as he hurled the house at the wall.

It sailed through the air with a lot less speed than he'd expected - or perhaps that was just because it was larger than most of the projectiles he usually threw. Arcing through the air at a nice, consistent rate, pieces of it shedding off, it finally smashed into the wall. It broke into several large chunks, causing a large dent in the wall, and fell to join the other ruins of its neighbors at the base of the wall.

The soldier frowned. He'd already thrown six or seven houses at the wall, but he kept missing. It was a lot harder to hit the same place twice with such a non-aerodynamic projectile, although his circle grouping was pretty small, all things considered.

Daisy ambled over to him, splatters of blood all over her side and a wide smile on her face. It took the soldier a moment to realize that none of it was hers, although her gun was nicked in a few places. It was a forty-five-millimeter assault rifle he'd seen forever ago - he wasn't sure where he'd seen it, but it was the weapon out of his considerable arsenal that had the least kick.

Tagral was limping next to her, a sizable gash in his leg. He'd taken quite a lot more damage, and the dark shorts he wore were ripped in several places. The soldier's eyes narrowed when he saw him. If he was being completely honest, he wouldn't have minded if the demon had been killed in the firefight, but seeing as he would have respawned anyway, it wasn't too big of a deal.

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Daisy walked up and handed him the assault rifle with an easy grin. "Hey, thanks for this. It's pretty dang fun to use. Tagral here wanted one, but I think a close-range weapon might be more his style. He wouldn't leave me alone the whole time - pretty much tackled everything that so much as looked at me. I think he might have a bit of a crush, eh?"

She directed the final statement at Tagral, who gave her a tired smile. "Heh, I dunno 'bout that, miz Daisy. The way I see it, I'm a bigger fella and you're a smaller one. They're gonna go for you first."

Daisy blinked as she realized what the demon meant by that, and her ears drooped slightly. "Oh. So you - oh." There was a silence that Daisy and Tagral considered awkward, a silence the soldier spent realizing that Tagral had essentially run himself ragged trying to ensure that the Lepori wasn't injured. He wasn't sure how to feel about that.

Finally, she stiffly held out a hand and hesitantly said, "Thanks. I, uh... I appreciate that. Nobody's ever put their lives on the line for me."

Tagral accepted the handshake with a smile, wincing as the motion disturbed some of the worse injuries on his shoulder. "Don't worry about it. You'd... well, I was gonna say you'd do the same for me, but I'm gettin' the feeling that probably wouldn't be the case."

Daisy shrugged it away, trying not to make a big deal out of it. "You know how it is. You've got my back, I've got yours. That's how it works."

Tagral nodded thoughtfully. "Not with demons it isn't."

There was another silence. This one was awkward for everyone involved.

The soldier made an abrupt decision and walked forward, raising a gauntleted fist. Tagral's eyes widened in surprise as he approached, and Daisy hurriedly shouted, "Whoa, Doom, hold up a sec! He-"

Winding backward, the soldier sent a thunderous straight punch forward. He put strength into his back leg, twisting his spine and snapping his wrist forward for maximum power, and hit Tagral square in the gut. A green shockwave detonated from the impact point, making the rocks on the ground jump. Instead of getting launched, Tagral only got the breath knocked out of him. The shockwave carried with it the injuries that the demon had sustained during the fight, wiping the slate clean and fully mending the gash in his leg.

Stumbling backward, Tagral sucked in a deep breath and froze as he realized that it didn't disturb any of his wounds. Looking himself over, he slowly gazed up at the soldier. "Did you - did you just-"

The soldier turned around before Tagral could finish the sentence, feeling almost disgusted. Sure, the demon had probably saved Daisy's life several times over the past two hours or so, but he was still a demon. It was going to take quite a lot more time and work on Tagral's part to actually gain anything remotely approaching trust with the soldier... but this was a good start, and besides, Tagral wouldn't be able to fight anything in that condition. Using on him was a solely tactical move, the soldier told himself.

Behind him, Tagral and Daisy were both slack-jawed. Speaking out of the side of her mouth, Daisy asked, "That just happened, right?"

Tagral nodded dazedly. "Uh, yeah. He - he hates all demons, right?"

Daisy shrugged. "I guess you're the exception."

He wasn't. The soldier still hated him. Just a bit less than the others.