"I told you he was gonna be here—" whispers the guy pointing his gun at the bank employees urgently.

"Shut up!" screeches "Zash". "There can only be one Human Typhoon here! Give me a reason not to shoot you!!"

        "Or have you shot," says the guy with the machine gun.

            "Uh, hey, I uh..." says the girl with the machine gun, noticing something.

"Do you know where we are?" Zash asks with some curiosity.

"...the bank?" replies "Zash" dumbly.

    "Warrens City," sighs the machine gun girl.

"Right! I knew that."

"And do you know what Warrens City is famous for?"

"...the gunsmith? He's dead, impostor!"

"Maybe! But what he did do was outfit this whole town with guns. Now, I know you've heard the rumours about Frank Marlon guns over the years, but tell me..."

And he looks around at the people suddenly popping around walls and out from behind crates and through windows, one by one, everywhere, dozens of them surrounding them completely and bringing their Frank Marlons out. "Do you think you're lucky enough that if the whole town shoots you'll survive?"

"—what the fuck you never told me these people—"

    "I didn't know!" exclaims machine gun girl. "I thought all Marlons were scrap metal—"

"It's a bluff!" cries fake Zash almost as if he's trying to convince himself of that as he decides it's a good idea to try to shoot—

Except the actual Zash is already holding his gun again in a fraction of a blink of an eye and another fraction later he's shot fake Zash's gun out of his hands before he could even start to aim. "That would have ended really badly for you, Human Typhoon. Thank me for saving your life."

Three separate people cock their guns and point them at fake Zash.

"Thank you," he squeaks.

    "Hey uh I think this was a bad idea actually," says rifle guy nervously, eyeing real Zash's gun and making some calculations in his head about how fucking fast Zash just did what he did from a position where both of his hands had been raised. That was... a bit terrifyingly superhuman.

"It really was," Zash says with feeling. "Now, I am going to abuse these people's goodwill towards me and ask them to not kill you—"

"Oh, come on!"

    "They come to our town—"

"—so if you know what's good for you you will throw your weapons down right this second and you will leave and you will, again, thank me for saving your lives."

"Thank you for saving our lives," say the four simultaneously, throwing their guns to the ground, turning tail, and running like hell.

He waits until they're out of sight before dropping the menacing affect and grinning. "Thank you, guys, that was really nice of you."

"Most of these guns don't even shoot," says Hal from where he's standing up from behind a crate, clicking his trigger uselessly several times to prove it.

"Oh, I know. But clearly they didn't, so thank you for playing along."

"So..." starts Jill from where she's getting out of hiding. "Did I hear you say you're Zash the Stampede?"

        "Wait, what?" says Gabriel.

    "That fool, Zash the Stampede?" sneers Lin.

            "Does that mean I can say I got turned down by Zash the Stampede?" says Dennis.

"Zash the Stampede, me? That's crazy, it'd be like saying John the Drunk is actually Frank Marlon!"

They all look at each other and collectively decide to drop the subject.

That's what he'd hoped, yeah.

Except John the Drunk, who hangs back while people disperse so he can talk to clearly-not-Zash the Stampede.

"We were rudely interrupted," he says.

"You know, that was very rhetorically convenient for my point," he says, starting to lead the way on a walk. "Guns can help people by making things more equal. Or they can help people in other ways than that. And there are other things that can also help people than guns, and other ideas than making things more equal.

"And what I was saying was that helping people is much more than that. Helping people is about meeting them in the middle, it's about understanding what they need. It's about knowing what the world is like and meeting it in the middle, too. It's a lot harder, and a lot more complex. It's not just giving people guns."

"I know all of that, I didn't think guns were the only thing—"

"But you don't really see," Zash interrupts him, stopping walking and then turning to face him. "Because you're also a person to be helped. You also need to make yourself feel better, you're also a person who deserves kindness and love and peace.

"I know it's unfair. I know it's horrible that the world is going to keep turning while the most important people in it are gone. But if you're going to be alive then you gotta live. You gotta face the world, you gotta see these people who have, who have...

"...they love you, you know? They give you hell but you haven't starved, they've sheltered you and kept you around. Hilda keeps asking after you, Jill is an enormous fan, they all went along with it when you told me your name was John. If you go to them and say, hey, I need help, they'll help you. You can find your life again. I know it's been years, I know you don't know what life there is left for you, but there is a life here left for you. I just know it."