Vultana heard the crunching of the wounded lupine soldier's boots in the gravel of the roof as he ran for her location.  She heard him zigzagging, evidently hoping to avoid being shot... but she had no munitions left, though she doubted he knew that.  But... was he coming for her, on the highest roof, or was he trying to get to the stairwell?  All she had to do in the latter case was wait until he was gone, and then she could make her getaway... or retrieve her last bit of ammo.  Unless, of course, it was a trick, to get her to expose herself...<br/><br/>She gritted her human teeth inside her beak.  What to do?  If he was coming for her, she could try to kick or punch at him as he leaped up, thus sending him hard at the ground... but, no.  Surely he would be ready for that, and she was no match for a trained warrior... or at least, she didn't feel like finding out if she was.  And if she simply stood up and tried to fly away... he would just shoot her...<br/><br/>Besides... some small part of her<span style="font-style: italic">refused</span>to let him leave alive... even if trying to finish him off would cost her her own life...<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Fuck it,</span>she thought, and rolled away from the edge, leaving the empty rifle there.  It was useless right now, and taking it would be detrimental to what she was planning.  She dropped over the far side of the stairwell shed, and as she heard him leaping from the gravel on the other side, she dropped all pretense at stealth as well.<br/><br/>"<span style="font-style: italic">Master!!</span>"  She shrieked at the top of her lungs, staggering toward the edge of the roof.  She stretched out one arm beseechingly, and had the other hand clamped over her wound.  "Master, no, don't<span style="font-style: italic">leave</span>me!  I can't<span style="font-style: italic">fly</span>like this!<span style="font-style: italic">Don't leave me!!</span>"<br/><br/>By the time the wounded wolf would make it to the roof and clear the area he'd reached, all he would see would be the abandoned rifle... and a nude, part-avian woman staggering after her cowardly master, who would apparently have jumped off the roof and flown down out of sight.<br/><br/>Or so she hoped.  Berus had loved having her pretend to beg for her life, sometimes not really pretending.  She'd been convincing, he'd told her often... she just hoped she was convincing<span style="font-style: italic">enough</span>.<br/><br/>--- --- --- ---<br/><br/>Dreamer sighed deeply.  It was looking more and more like this would come down to a fight... again.  Though he'd been ready to kill them before, now he didn't want to... not if he could help it.  He shook his head as he gazed upon the four men staring at his arm and wondering who the hell he was.  The situation was pretty much beyond rescue at this point... there would be bloodshed, barring a miracle.  Some of the blood spilled would likely be his; hell, if they got lucky enough, he might well die here.<br/><br/>But Maeve had begged him not to kill those men earlier... and Sherra was surely ready to unload that SMG into these guys with the direction the conversation had taken.  The situation was unidirectional right now... there was only one possible outcome.  So why not try something drastic?<br/><br/>He turned away from the men and shambled off to one side of them before turning to face them with a gloomy expression.  They were lined up across the road before him, surely easy targets for Sherra to spray them with bullets and hopefully miss him... if it came to that.  However these men weren't quite hostile yet, just confused; they weren't aiming their weapons at him yet, and his was still pointed at the ground also.  His enhanced reflexes would allow him to bring it to bear and pull the trigger before they could.  The men would be in a crossfire... if it came to that, which it surely would...<br/><br/>"You're right," he said, his voice quiet.  "Shark didn't tell me to go to Clent Station.  I'm going there, but not by his orders.  And I'm passing this back way to avoid detection, because I don't want to have to kill anyone."  He shrugged, then jerked his chin at the wound in his arm.  "I'm a cyborg.  I'm enhanced.  That's why I was able to kill that guy, even though he shot me full of bullets.  His name?  You might know him.  Lanner."  He shrugged again.  "Left me no choice."<br/><br/>He took a deep breath.  "I don't serve Shark.  Never will.  I'm going to Clent because I refuse to help in this war.  I refuse to enslave or slaughter the furs.  I want equality between humans and furs, not for one to dominate the other."  He fixed his gaze on the leader... Yuri, if he wasn't mistaken.  "If you really believe in what Shark is doing, then fight me, and maybe you'll get lucky, or maybe you won't.  I'm not invincible."  He shrugged again.  "But if you believe, as I do, that the rebellion has lost sight of its noble goals, and that Shark is just a tyrant, then we can go our separate ways, unharmed, without hostilities."<br/><br/>He kept his gaze on the leader, making sure not to glance at the station wagon.  He wanted these men to react honestly... without realizing they were in the crosshairs of a neko girl's keen gaze.<br/><br/>If they were really Shark's men, and tried to attack him, he would put a bullet into the first man to make the attempt.