"...smart."

"The selfish reason isn't the main reason, though."

"It's just a conversation, I'm not gonna judge you."

He grins and shrugs. "So, you got a spiel prepared or should I figure out questions to ask?"

She lifts an eyebrow. "I'm not doing your work for you."

"Is he dead?"

She chews on her lips for a few seconds then says, "Can't say."

Zash thinks she means that literally, actually. Huh.

"What exactly is his story? Where'd he come from, how'd he just show up out of nowhere, and what happened to make him vanish?"

"He's from Warrens City but he was a nobody before that day. As in, no one really knew him very well, he didn't stand out. He made guns, but before that day most of us didn't carry. We certainly didn't know how good they could get. He armed us with his best, and his best was good." She pauses then says, a bit more uncertainly, "But you could probably tell? Mother said your gun looked very good too, though of course she didn't test it."

"Well I haven't actually ever used a Frank Marlon and looks can be deceiving, but... yeah that looked very good."

"Well, most of them are useless now, no one's been able to maintain them since."

"Since...?"

"So he became famous, right, and people started coming over to get his guns. He could've gotten really rich but he mostly didn't sell the guns; he took your measure and decided whether you deserved a gun and which gun if so.

"There was another robbery at the bank, and this time it went very south, and a few people died, including his wife and kid. The robbers had been using his guns."

"...oh."

"He sort of stopped, after that, and then he was... gone."

But not dead. She didn't say dead. He's starting to get a picture here.

"Had the robbers stolen the guns from other people...?"

Shrug. "Who knows. It probably didn't matter, to him. He still gave someone them and then they were used to kill his family."

And here's their coffees.

"Why did he give the guns away like that?"

"He used to say it was the great equaliser. The robbers could do what they wanted because the situation wasn't equal; give the people as much power as the robbers had and then it would work out."

"...and then he was confronted with the fact that everyone being equally capable of killing each other still means people die."

"Mmhm."

"Well that's absolutely tragic."

"That's a day on this wretched planet of ours."

"It doesn't have to be."

"You're very idealistic."