“Am I not family?” 

His fingers close, but it is only air that he is grasping. She is slipping away, a lithesome shadow turning her back on him as nature had always intended. He smiles to see it, the lines of his mouth crinkling with an artisan’s pride and a craftsman’s joy. She is perfect in word and deed; no mere facsimile of the creature she had been before, but a genuine article of faith brought back from the depths of history and neglect. To be party to her thinly-veiled subterfuge was a reminder of lives they have long since been dispossessed of, and to watch her flee felt more sublime than it should have. She was playing her role to a degree of perfection he could help but be delighted by, so much so that he nearly forgot his part role to play. He sighed with a love for it all, and love for her.

“There is nothing inside worth taking home with us,” he demures at her backside.

She glances over his shoulder at him like a nymph on an escapade, showing him her fret and worry in the sharp contractions of perfect brows and full, sweetly plump lips. She is perfect in form and shape, just like every incarnation before. It gives him hope that this would be her last, bereft of the faults he had forever found in the incarnations he devised previously. Some had been [i]too[/i] willful, others too submissive. Some had possessed none of the charm and guile memory spoke of, while the rest veered so far off temperament, it could scarce be said they were Gabriela at all. He had killed them all, over the centuries. Indeed, like any true craftsman, he destroyed defective products. He hoped this one would not meet so similar a fate. 

But she is gone, and he is left outside in the cold of night with only his choler for company. Taking the gauntlets hanging off his harness and sinking his hands into them again, the Outsider seals the articulate plates in place and flexes his hands. There is a brief moment given to testing the haptic feedback of the armour’s sensorium, but he quickly grows bored of it when he reflects that Gabriela did not intend on coming back out at all, at least not to him and perhaps not alone. This is a displeasing prospect, but not entirely unheard of. There was a magnetism to his beloved that attracted all kinds of ne’er-do-wells and overeager sycophants, and while he may have preferred it not to be the case, he had long ago since come to accept that she will forever have souls willing to intercede on her behalf. 

There was one such soul now, barring entry into the tavern. Worse, she seemed intent on keeping him out through violence. An errant bouncer if there ever was one, he wonders why these things continue to bother him no matter how many times they happen. But he supposes everyone has their own roles to play, no matter the circumstance. He can respect such dogged determination, even if he somewhat pitied it. Reaching to his hip and unclamping his helmet, the Outsider lowers the piece of armour over his head and rights it until neck seals engage and the armour pressurizes. Then he starts to walk, reaching behind him to unclamp an archeotech lightning claw from the small of his back to fit it over his right hand. The movement is both deft and precise, speaking volumes towards habit and ritual. 

[b]”You’re in my way.”[/b] 

Amplified by the speaker ports in the devil’s helm, the Outsider’s soft tenor comes out with a tinny electronic feedback that does little and less to diminish the smooth quality of his voice. No booming baritone, no overstated rumble to jar the bones and frighten the nerves, just a voice from behind the narrow slit of a visor backlit by a perfidious red. Faceless, the armoured knight raises his right hand and waves it dismissively with a snarl of servos while activating the ancient (perhaps futuristic) generators of the claw, each curving scythe spitting to life with crack and shower of sparks. He tests the talons with murderous theater while his shadow passes over Raine, scissoring two curving blades with a rasp and pop of conflicting powerfields. 

[b]”Think carefully on your choice. If you choose to fight, if you choose war, it is a path you will not be able to turn from once the first step is taken. It carries with it a terrible price."[/b]

A pause; patience beyond measure. 

[b]"Move aside. I won’t ask you again.”[/b] 

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