(no subject)

[nestingdevil]

Some meet by way of familiarity. Others meet by means of chance - when fate lines up just right, when everything falls uniquely into place.

They, however - they met by way of gunshot.

The kid had a rugged, alleyway look about him - which was common in this side of town. It hadn't even caught his attention. A simple pint of beer, a cigarette ashtray in tow, and Greed left him be. As his eyes wandered to other company.

A snap of the fingers caught him later. The kid had been hovering over the bar, his hand flung lazily into the air like a drunk at last call. Except he wasn't drunk, he couldn't be. Not with that hardened look, that steadiness in his ice-blue eyes. Whatever the kid wanted, it was burning under the skin. And in the few short seconds it took to strike up a conversation, Greed immediately knew what. "What can I do for ya, kid?"

His guest shot him a smile - wild, feral. A cocky attitude to fit the brazen demeanor. "Actually, you're the one I'm looking for." Greed didn't have much time to sputter out more than an unrelenting "Ah-?" before the gun was out, cocked and pulled. Glass shattered, bottles buckled and belched. Someone had screamed, but it wasn't the homunculus himself. He didn't have the means of doing it, really.

That came par for the course when one was missing most of his head.

Greed's spine hit the back of the bar, sending a spray of blood across the stained-mirror backside. His body hit like a thrown rag-doll, the remaining slack of his jaw showing off exposed gums and teeth. The gunman had smirked at his work, though the homunculus hadn't found out about that until much later.

"Name's Dante, the demon killer. I'd tell you it has a nice ring to it, but it doesn't look like you're gunna take my call," Dante had climbed over the bar, sliding through a smear of blood and glass to further inspect his work. "Gotta say, this is kinda a fucking disappointment." Later, Greed would bring up the story on more than one occasion. Dante stuck his fingers into what remained of the Sin's skull, his lip pilling back in protest. "Fucking gross."

But he didn't have much time to cue up his next retort.

An electric sizzle snapped, a red glow tuned out. And a hand full of thick knuckles sprung, like a ghoul that just wouldn't quit. Even when the fabled head shot should have done the trick. Greed rose to his heels, the pieces of his skull reforming in bits and chunks. A puzzle done in a madman's design and the only word he heard was a single: "Shit-"

The kid was a good few feet away the Sin finally came to. Greed groaned, his palm spreading to cradle his newly-reformed skull. "Ah-," he started and his neck snapped with a throw, the bones crunching as they slipped back into their assigned places. This was the first time they ever met and it would pave the road for later. The starting stones and there was a long mile of 'em just waiting.

He cracked open an eye, his sunglasses having been whipped off in the gun blast. Thankfully, they didn't come to any harm. Instead, they nestled in a shriveling pile of left-overs - the trails of blood slowly twiddling away to ash. Gone and forgotten. Greed's eyes fell on the pair and his expression pulled his lower lip downward. As if the action had been more of a bother than actual, cold-blooded murder. "Tsk," he groaned and his legs shot out. Allowing him to disappear behind the bar while Dante's gun made a loud, finalizing click.

"Ok, so maybe you're not such a disappointment. But shit, that's a new one princess."

Greed reappeared to meet the empty sockets of not one barrel, but two. His thumb slid against the glass of his shades, running a streak of red across them. He clicked his tongue to the roof of his mouth, pressing the pair against the side of his leg. One swipe had them clean and he put them behind him on the prep station. "That's a little rude, barging in here like that." But there had been a smile there; dangerous and sharp, deadly and wide.

Dante had known that look. Then, now, and forever. "I don't tend to play nice with fuckhead demons. Sorry."

What had happened next would forever burn into him; that laugh. Relentless, billowing. It had quaked off the walls, shook the wood and disappeared into the depths of the 'Nest that led more to the imagination than reality. It should have been what cued him in at first, but then again - Dante had never considered himself an analyzer.

And neither did the man before him, he would later find out.

"A demon? You've got me all wrong," Greed had practically purred out his words. As he cooled, calmed - his body slouching with a natural sense of ease. "-I'm not a demon, kid. If you came here for that, I'm sorry to disappoint." But. There had been a but there, both of them knew it. Something had crawled across Greed's skin, something Dante hadn't seen before. It had been black - like charcoal, like oil running distinct paths mapped out in crude rectangles.

And it was what caused all the trouble that started soon after.

In total, the damages were beyond the thousands. Liquor, property - but it was the result that mattered. The tallying up would come later, pushed and prodded out of Dante's proverbial tab. He kept a running one at the 'Nest, one that he knew would follow him all the way to the grave. That didn't matter anymore, though. While avarice had a keen sense of knowing when it was due, sometimes the payment was mutual.

Sometimes, one bullet could change everything.