So when Deathstroke carried the unconscious girl past those half-grown children toward the city gate, he could feel their gazes fixed on the twin guns at his waist.
Those stares were so burning they seemed ready to melt the beautiful jade grips. Every sallow, emaciated boy wore a wolfish look of greed.
Young people were like that. They did not know their own limits, nor did they know what they could afford to covet.
But the bald, muscular man testing them understood. His weathered face was covered in the marks left by time—scars and bitter memories—but at this moment, there was only fear.
Because the one-eyed man was looking at him like a demon.
"Damn it! You little bastards, watch your eyes! Have you forgotten your fathers' names?! I'll gouge your eyeballs out! Look at me! Don't look around!"
He swung the whip and long wooden stick in his hands, lashing the boys as he cursed them loudly, as though their fathers were his mortal enemies.
In truth, these boys' fathers were all his masters and friends. While the adults had gone wandering off to who knew where, he remained in the city to teach the children fighting techniques, train their eyesight, use slingshot-like contraptions to simulate firearms, and tell them just how powerful a revolver could be.
Taking up a gun meant a man had grown up. It marked the beginning of his destiny, when he would face responsibilities and obligations and write a story unlike anyone else's.
Coveting another person's gun often meant a fight to the death. To gunslingers walking the Wasteland, a gun was life itself.
If you wanted someone else's life, they would kill you first—even if this was right outside the city gate.
After berating the boys for a while, he forced an ugly