His first assumption had been correct, Slade would realize as he looked down on the corpses at his feet. Blood loss had been what had been what it was that had done in the two of them. Neither of them had any major injuries on them that the trained assassin could see, but they both had plenty of cuts. Some of them likely ran deep, and in the middle of a fire fight it is very to lose track of new injuries if all they do is bleed.

A part of him wondered when it was that the assassins sent after them had switched to this tactic of simply bleeding them out.  At least he knew that it was a gentle way to go, which wasn’t what he figured the assassins had in mind at first.  A different part of him toyed with the idea of hunting down those that did this and repaying unto them the same care that they had showed Yumiko and her husband, but he knew at the end of the day it was simply business and that there would be nothing to gain from taking a personal stake in this.

That wouldn’t stop him from offering a discount to anyone who offered him a job that ran counter to the guild responsible for this however. 

His musing were cut off quite soundly by the drawing of breath next to him and he turned to look in time to see a little girl trying to stab him with a kitchen knife. He could have easily countered the, quite literally, childish attempt to harm him but he stayed his hand.  A number of things clicked into place at seeing the young girl, a good couple of years’ worth of offhand comments that Yumiko had said now made perfect sense, as did why the couple hadn’t simply abandoned the house when the battle turn unwinnable.

Then the knife hit his leg as was deflected off by promethium mesh in his leggings and he was brought back to the present. He just quirked an eyebrow at Jinyah as he stood there not caring that the gesture would go completely unseen due to his facemask, before speaking in a dry tone “You’re going to hurt yourself holding it like that”

A moment later Slade would crouch down to be able to more easily look the little girl in the eye, smiling slightly at the resemblance that the girl had to her mother. “What made you try that anyway?” He’d ask casually as he mulled over this latest surprise.