He was dead. That much was obvious, given the circumstances.

There was a hole in the side of his head, about the size of a fist, which oozed blackish-greenish-brownish sludge onto the grass beside him, pooling thickly as it congealed.

His hands were torn and bloody, fingernails shredded, the skin around them bleeding, knuckles bruised black and blue. His wrists, too, were beaten pretty badly; one of them was broken.

His stomach was torn open, revealing a mess of shredded tissue and chips of bone, stomach acid and blood intermingling on the ground, turning the dust around him to mud, deep red in color, gluey and viscous in consistancy.

His eyes were wide open, and that was the detail that stayed in the minds of those that saw him. His silvery blue eyes, wide open, as though in shock at the state of his own corpse, and completely unharmed. No blood was in them, and his face was virtually unmarked. Those eyes staring up at the sky, the bright sun reflecting off the pigment, highlighting the little streaks of silver, like threads in an elaborate costume, turned lighter by their surrounding of blond eyelashes.

His pale lips were sealedshut, a bright streak of blood splashed across them, trickling to the corners of his mouth and just beginning to slide down the smooth curve of his jaw, marking its progress in a pale red path along his jawline. His head was tilted up, up, and the path was a long one that ended presumably somewhere within his shirt.

It was strange, his face was so unmarked one could almost pretend he was fine. But then the eyes were drawn to the pool of brains spilling out of his hat, then the intestines strewn across his arms, then the details, the gravel in his knees, the cuts on his ears, the gash that bled darkly all the way up the inside of his arm.

His soul was fine, however. It was easily reassembled into a new body, replicated by Respawn, and he ran out like a shot, taking almost the exact same path that had gotten him so swiftly killed last time.

He came upon the body on his way back to the fight. He saw it first, then me, standing over it.

He grinned at me, waved, came closer. His new body was perfect, entirely unmarked. He stood at my side and together we looked down at his old body. Respawn was so busy putting men back together, it hadn't gotten around to collecting the shells yet.

He knealt by his dead body, and leaned over it as I watched, rooted to the spot, fascinated. He touched his living forehead to the dead one, then, with a glance and a smirk in my direction, kissed his own kadaver's lips ever so gently.

Then he was off, to protect and defend, and I was left to marvel at modern science.