Ehh guess it can’t be helped. The one you work for - [Greed listlessly rolls his ankle. A second gust of sand quivers about his boots, its dry dust white and ashy. The Sin gives a tentative look over his shoulder. The clear sky and all its stars appear to melt by the time their reflections find him; like that of an insatiable pit, black and impossible, cooking the world alive. It’s how they always seem to meet - when the sun’s gone away and the night, well.]

[It makes for strange company, doesn’t it?]

[One of his wings unfurls from his back and as it stretches to the very tip, the former homunculus creases a grin.] You can make it back on your own, can’t you? Shouldn’t be too hard. [Which is true. The trail’s still patted down from the way they came. Small divots dish out the sand in uneven bowls, a couple of stones have charcoal(ed) since he passed. No. Marco could find his way here, he’ll have no trouble going back. However, if he happens to get a little lost on the way? If he stumbles in the process?]

[Call it a personal skim off his debt: a little satisfaction to his misery.]

Guess I’ll leave you to it, then. Ah, and Marco? [Humming, the Sin’s second wing snaps open to his right. He catches the barest hint of a breeze between his sails and while the air traps, the leather skin wrenched from point to point begins to throb. The tarry oranges and flecks of gold, a hot-air balloon’s nightmarish mimic. He flaps them once, twice, a third and the backs of his heels lift from the desert; their pull as wrenching and sticky as adhesive on the bad side of a fly trap.]

Don’t think we’re finished yet, hmn? I’ll keep my end of the deal. Make sure you keep yours. [It’s finality in a statement. A single, humid-sigh and the former homunculus takes off. Leaving his laughter to trickle in like a gaggle of coyotes, mocking the moon.]

[Because kill him once, sure. But try to swindle the devil a second time and boy, boy, boy:]

[”It’s your soul, kid.”]