Ash held up his hands in the mortal gesture of 'I surrender so please don't shoot.’ He said “I get it. You're Volatile. That doesn't mean you have to be volatile. See? Decay doesn't make people melt with age. Harakiri over there doesn't only harvest suiciders. Put the halberd down and we'll talk. You've been deceived. I believe we've all been.”

Volatile’s head tilted, cramming serious thought into his overly large head. The halberd dropped, sparing the barbers to cut buzzes and trim beards another day.

“Good. Ready to talk?” Ash asked, lowering his hands without giving off a false sense of attack. Speaking of shorn hair, he was almost certain the blade had chopped a bit of the scruff off his head. Much like eating, haircuts were unnecessary. This made him grumpy. He wanted his hair back but it had been so long since he changed his style that he couldn’t remember how to produce it. And the middle of a reaping revolt didn’t seem like a good time to ask.

The halberd clattered to the street. Volatile crossed his arms, moving to hide behind a swath of illustrious, black hair. “I don't appreciate being lied to.”

“Me neither.”

“I'm not happy.”

Sirens sang in the distance, closing in on the broad strokes of destruction Volatile handed out. Under the tank top, his suit throbbed with life power.

Ash stepped closer, slow and steady. “You’ve circumvented natural order. How does that make you better than me, if what you claim is true?”

“It doesn't.”

“That's right.” Ash was trembling, shocked that his brazen distraction was paying off. “I believe Time sent you to harvest me.”

“Yeah.”

“She sacrificed Detritus at Grand Gorge and expected me to bring his life essence back home to Sol.”

“She has seemed a lot edgier ever since she killed Song.”

“That's right. She has.”

Brave pedestrians had already arrived well before the paramedics. The reapers had no choice but to speak louder over the collaborative effort taking place all around them.

“Do you know anything more?” Ash asked.

“Not off the top of my head.” Volatile huffed, flushing red.

He thumped his chest, then peeled off his tank top. Another thump, a blast of breath. Pacing through the dead, he took a hold of his harvesting suit’s tubes.

“You should put your shirt back on,” Ash said.

“No. No, I’m mad and I want answers. We’re going to get answers from Time even if it means marching to Sol’s Adytum.”

Ash took him by the shoulder, slowing but not fully stopping his pacing.

“Listen to me, friend. I already have a plan. It was set in motion when my good friend Detritus died.”

Volatile frowned, squeezing his suit’s tubes. “I remember Detritus. Idiot blew himself up.”

“Well,” Ash started to correct.

But a shadow snuck in behind Volatile; a shadow by the name of Harakiri, who raised her sickles and wrapped their angled blades around the brutish man’s throat.

“I’m going to kill him. You’ll harvest him. Love told me your plan, Ash.”

Ash shot a glare toward where he last saw Love, yet she wasn’t there by the fountain. She had settled in atop his shoulders with Hatred hanging from her back.

“No,” Ash grabbed the blades and peeled them from Volatile’s immortal flesh, where blood dribbled. “I think we might make a friend of Volatile yet.”

Volatile smiled. His teeth were jagged and azure, yet something in his glinting eyes said everything was going to turn out alright. For the reapers. Humans were having a rough time.