The male appeared utterly unconcerned with the choice, at peace with living or dying, uncaring of the violence and pain - and yet not unplugged, either.
He would have made an exceptional soldier, Xcor thought. If he hadn't been castrated by his mommy.
"So your solution," Xcor murmured, "is mutual self-destruction. "
"What is it going to be?"
If Xcor had had his backup in place, there would have been a better way to handle this. But no, the bastards were nowhere around. And it was a fundamental tenet of conflict that if you were facing a well-matched enemy, who was well-provisioned and well-couraged, then you did not engage - you retreated, remarshaled, and lived to fight under circumstances more favorable to your own victory.
Besides, Assail had to be kept alive long enough so that the king could come to see him.
None of this sat well, however. And Xcor's mood, already dark to begin with, went utterly black.
He didn't say anything further. He simply dematerialized to another alley about half a mile away, letting his departure speak for itself.
As he re-formed by a shut-up newsstand, he was furious with his soldiers, his ire from the confrontation with Assail transferred and magnified as he thought of his males.
Initiating a search of his own, he went from abandoned building to club to tattoo parlor to tenement until he found them at the skyscraper: As he took form, they were all there, loitering as if they had naught better to do.
Violence replaced the very veins in his body, threading throughout him - to the point where he began to feel the hum of insanity within the confines of his skull.
It was the blood hunger, of course. But the root cause did nothing to temper the emotions.
"Where the fuck were you?" he demanded, the wind ripping around his head.
"You told us to wait here - "
"I told you to come find me!"
Throe threw up his hands. "Goddamn it! We all need phones, not just - "
Xcor launched himself at the male, grabbing him by the coat and throwing him up against a steel door. "Watch. Your. Tone. "
"I am right in this - "
"We are not having this discussion again. "
Xcor shoved himself away and walked off from the male, his duster getting thrown to the side from the hot, gale force blowing o'er the city.
Throe, however, would not leave it alone. "We could have been where you wanted us to be. The Brotherhood has cell - "
He wheeled around. "Fuck the Brotherhood!"
"You'd have better luck doing that if we had methods of communication!"
"The Brotherhood are weak for their technological crutches!"
Throe shook his head, all aristocrat-who-knew-better. "No, they're in the future. And we can't compete with them if we're in the past. "
Xcor curled his hands into fists. His father - rather, the Bloodletter - would have pushed the son of a bitch right off the side of the building for this insolence and insubordination. And Xcor did take a step forward toward the male.
Except no, he thought with cold logic. There was a more useful way to handle this.
"We go into the field. Now. "
As he leveled his stare at Throe, there was one and only one acceptable response - and the others knew this, judging from the way they got their weapons out and readied themselves to engage the enemy.
And ah, yes, Throe, ever the dandy who appreciated social order, even in a military situations, naturally followed suit.