He'd asked himself a simple question a hundred times, a thousand times, more than he could count. More than a mortal mind could fathom and more often than any healthy man should.

'Why can't I have one.' 

His smothered grimaces and dull, brown eyes like a gun's threaded tunnel aimed at hurried hugs, to shoot jealous glances at a million tender moments suffusing the open space he'd found himself in. 

Love.

Sickly sweet saccharine affection the likes of which could drown him as surely as he craved its embrace.

A parent handily handing a hot meal to a hard-headed young man looking more callous vagrant than student, despite the ember of indulgence and affection burning in his averted gaze. 

A sister, perhaps, pressing two cold-pads against a lightly bruised forehead while her 'patient' squirmed in discomfort as the uneven pitch no doubt dug into his backside.

Two men bearing identical rings making up for lost time. 

It was interesting how the world had changed, that such public displays might be normal, romantic even. 

Perhaps it were the venue, a smoking crater of a city surviving some months past the 'First Incursion'

Regardless of the type, he couldn't have it. He couldn't have one. Not a single person he could trust, nor confide in or comfort or care for. The lone woman who he'd have considered lay crushed a mere twenty or so meters under his feet.

And suddenly he were armed and heavy, darting to and fro from confined artillery while the smell of her sweet, sweet blood choked him. 

Glittering orange irises bore small holes through his chest, the sick scent of burnt skin wafting through the ruddy, black suit he'd so carefully concocted at the very start of his odd adventure.  

Each pretty amber orb held enough rage to smite him where he stood. Each wrathful, reckless swing of their owner's arms erupted wild, crescent flames crackling past his prior position faster than a blink. Each wave blasting the derelict, cracked concrete to shrapnel which haphazardly painted small red rivets across each death-dancer's skin. 

A Red-flushed face dotted deep, oozing crimson fitted with a nose far too stout for her features, and a mouth, turned down into a twisted snarl from which he could see every one of her sharp, piss-stained teeth briefly shining like daggers amidst the flashfire. 

A bellow reverberated in the bunker she'd trapped him in, a rich voice like a roaring New Year's bonfire shook his bones with its rage, "I hate you! You think you're better than me?! You're just some mute, overconfident jackass with mommy issues and luck, You're NotHI- AAAARHH-" 

Hers was a scream he'd preferred not to hear, it grated on his ears like the nervous crinkle of a drowning ember, but ten times as loud. 

He idly spun a small razor as he advanced upon her loud, writhing body. The stretch of his charred hand sharpened his resolve with every frivolous spin held hand in hand with pain like pins. She'd need focus to burn him, he doubted much would be available. An arm crushed under half a ton of concrete would do that to anyone. 

Cr-ak- "AHaA - URRRG-!" - and there she goes, twisting her torso against the ground in a feeble attempt at escaping. He'd reckon the arm was on by mere flesh at this point if her crinkled croaking weren't enough an indicator. Didn't seem much holding it together but stretched, angry flesh a hair's thread from tearing from taut, tanned shoulders. 

Reddish, teary rivers with three banks and two streams shone beautifully on her sun-touched skin, regardless of the mud-stone flecks she seemed so insistent on mashing her face into. 

As if memory of her current state'd combusted within her mind, the woman's thick neck awkwardly wrung towards his crunching boot steps and eyes snapped open past what he'd thought possible for her. The desperation in her clouded, sunset iris', it invigorated him. 

Her words stumbled over each other, a flame drowned fully, speaking through mouth froth, a frantic mish-mash of pleas, apologies and enough begging to make sympathy in the most ungodly of men. 

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"P-please- I-I'm - don't hur- please-" 

"-calm, fräulein," his voice growled as softly as he could, a stride taking him behind her prone form, shocked still by his demeanor, perhaps. He removed two yellow gloves, neatly placing them onto the coarse rock nailing her arm to the floor and grinned an ecstatic smile, pulling his cheeks taut to each end. 

With pale palms he gently grasped her painfully short, reddish hairline, tearing her gaze from the ground till each frantic eye strained up to the ceiling, perhaps in some sad attempt to see her former... friend. 

His lips grazed the apex of her ear as the other arm teasingly snaked its razor's edge along her rhythmically pumping windpipe. Plucking its blunted blade down each expressed ring as a lithe finger caressed the line where her pulse danced a fiery plea for aid only he could administer. 

Oh dear, she almost cut herself, her struggles weakly redoubling as his breath painted the inner crevice of her cherry-blooming left ear. A voice like a filthy meek, rat ran ragged through her teeth. 

"Th-They set me up to this, I-IswearPleaseDo-" 

"Calm. Darling," practically spitting the words as he tightened his grip on her hair, leveraging a bit higher, enough for discomfort, but no more. 

She froze again. Understandable. If the position wasn't motivating enough, he'd bet his words were. He'd not spoken much a kind word to any as they traveled and fought. 

He'd hardly said much in the way to her, certainly nothing the likes of this. 

He always enjoyed her voice, the wild roar of challenge in every inflection. They'd been glued at the hip for so long, yet never had he heard her sing. 

Today, she would sing for him.

BANG-POP! 

A purple explosion trialing to feeble orange and reds amidst a deep blue sky awoke him from a memory equally treasured as it were resented. 

Slowly, like ice melting to miniscule drops in summer, the air above a damp pit ignited and burned bright, as all things would with him. Melancholy forcefully molded into a tempest of turbulent, scarlet scorn contained in a small, human vessel unassuming to all visible eyes.

His sadness ignited like kindling and a bonfire burned within his eyes, threatening to consume every hated sight before him.

The ember drowned, a wave of dread cascading over any shred of mind he'd had and crushing every intention under a hundred feet of freezing-cold currents.

He'd never forgive himself for what he'd done.

"It's not my fault."

It never was.

—

Everything was his fault that schewpid bastard, she'd kill'im the next time he swaggered his mute arse over her street, the bloody wanker, she'd be right unsurprised iffin' 't were literal.

She downed another malformed, oak keg half the size of her head, dirty blonde hair slapping th' barman like a lightning crack from how hard she'd thrown it back. A thunderous slam wolked a sa'isfied sigh out two dainty pink lips who wore a loose scarf 'a yellow foam from which 'er voice as boisterous as it were deep leapt above the din o' a busy pub, 

"Oi Hardy, how much you rekon' I'd put till 'm half mi drunkle Tim?"

Hardy, w'ose name was roily Micky, replied in that bit’er cockney accent she'd slowly began to decaipher, "Two more till yuh lil' ass pass out on mih counter, I cah afford any more repairs till next month, Dan Sam." 

The dark man, havin' said 'is piece, turned topsy n' almost smacked Samantha in the face with his own hair, bundled dreadlocks laced wi'h a band o' colors red, yellow ‘n green. Luck’ly for all individjals invulved, ‘e was a radder tall fella hoo towered over a good deal of 'is patrons. Rumor had it 'e ran in from fareign on a baske'ball scholarship before the, 'blost'. Hogwash, she knew, but he'd certainly fit the bill, long and lithe as 'e were. 

Hardy, nay Micky, occupied himself well with an odd shelf lower down the rows upon rows of half-stocked brackets. All filled with a wide collection a' sparkling ales, half-broken bottles, glimmering glasses- he's got'a cute arse. 

"D FU- !?" 

Tohni't 'as shapin' roight up it 's. 

—

Slow breaths. 

In through the nose. 

Hold. 

Out through the mouth. 

Hold. 

Repeat. 

Again and again he repeated, till focus rejoined him and fruitless rage reflected on itself. Almost a minute passed, and not a moment too soon. 

Thum

A thick sound to match the movement of a messy teak door repurposed from an unlucky table, dull as the room's new occupant. 

His Lamb secretary, recently employed, greeted him like an excitable little squirrel, "Night Mr. B, Tuff's 'bout finished wit' the rest, would jou mind joining lil' old me on a walk around the town?"

Well, at least this one knew her place. The world was shaping up to be dangerous, excessively so, it wouldn't do much good to traipse around at midnight without an escort. Preferably a sharpened Fang. 

"Unfortunately, I must decline. However, I'm sure Tank would be most grateful for your company, Ms. Richards. Do enjoy your night," an even, almost detached voice escaped from behind a tall monolith of a machine whirring worriedly in the center of the rather small room. 

Her smile twitched once before a squirrel once more possessed her to assault his delicate eardrums, "... Alright boss, see ya next week!" 

CRACK

The shoddy door slammed behind her, luckily mitigated by his equipment prepared just for sonic attacks. 

He flinched regardless, he'd get Taffy to school her on proper etiquette within the workplace. Sarah Richards was the most productive worker he'd ever seen, but her manners reflected poorly on herself, which reflected back onto him, and then onto the company. 

He liked the girl, fantastic work ethic, got along well with his employees, very helpful. But, a Lamb was still a Lamb. He'd rather she not piss off an associate by accident. None would be able to save her, nor want to, he imagined. 

The machine before him puffed and roared once, Blue knit his brow and lightly tapped the blocky thing with a single hand tinted a luminescent reminder of his namesake. 

Circuits refired and reconnected, moving in and out with the odd piece phasing into the shifting beast of metal and fused into a poor man's supercomputer. 

Blue saw the path each bolt of current flowed in her, a giant map of ghostly sapphires arranged in hellenic, skyscraper-like arrays, sparking and sparkling with each metallic hum.

The machine beeped happily, a collection of cameras sized each and every way flashed onto the large Flatscreen repurposed from a TV as large as he were tall. 

Beautiful. 

He could work with this. 

Perhaps the company could afford a few more days vacation.