A/N: On we go! I'm aiming for at least one update a week here, but if I keep up the pace I'm at now, there's a good chance that I'll be able to update every other day or so.
A huge thank you to IRead2MuchManga99 for bringing it to my attention that quite possibly the most important thing didn't translate over into my author's note here from AO3! The title of this story is taken from the first line of the song "Way to Fall" by Starsailor.
Let's get this show on the road, Jesse's got people to meet and places to be!
"It's just a military operation?"
"Of a sort, sure. But Overwatch covers the, ah, prettier side of things. Blackwatch exists solely to get our hands dirty."
"…so it's just a military operation."
Reyes shot him a withering look from his position behind the desk, the papers scattered across the large screen he'd been observing momentarily forgotten as Jesse regarded him from his own seat across the table. He'd tilted the chair back onto the edges of its legs, and if it wasn't for the aching reminder that remained in his still-swollen nose, he'd have kicked his boots up to rest the edge of the desk. He supposed he should count himself lucky to have retained enough smarts to know when to pick battles.
And yet, that didn't seem to stop some part of his brain from still holding a grudge that it fully planned on repaying when the opportunity presented itself. The guy might've tossed him a bone with his "employment" offer, but Jesse was by no means indebted to him. He'd given him an eye for an eye already.
No insult went unanswered, after all.
He'd been invited to join the ranks of Blackwatch three days prior, and in that short amount of time his world had gone through enough inversions to make even the most skillful pilots sick. They'd fingerprinted him the second the cuffs had come off (which hadn't gone over well at first, he'd thought of booking it right then and there the moment the ink pad was brandished in his general direction), and his first day officially on the grid began. They'd slapped a wet rag over his nose and a platter with a cold turkey leg beside a pitcher of water in front of him as they sat him down across from a man, then a woman, then another man, then another woman, each asking him a series of pointless, flowery questions he would later be told were psychological evaluations. "Tell me what you see," they'd said as they held up flimsy bits of paper coated in misshapen blobs of ink, to which he'd replied "can't rightly say, ain't ever been much of an art critic."
The more petulant side of him wished he had known the purpose of the test before going in, as he'd done a pretty decent job of avoiding any concrete answers when he could. Not the best way to earn trust in a group, he'd imagine. If you danced in Deadlock like he'd been doing with these people, you'd likely find yourself on the business end of a sawed-off before you could so much as utter an apology.
Still, he didn't regret much. He gave them enough to go off of in the end, he supposed, because they'd shoved him in the direction of the showers and dropped a standard issue pair of sweats and a plain tee shirt with a bar of soap in his arms with a gruff command to clean the hell up and be back in the hallway before ten minutes were up. He didn't miss the disgust that flickered in the eye of the man who'd given the command as he stepped outside of the tiled room to undoubtedly stand guard outside. Jesse had watched him go with the first stirrings of resentment in his gut, but the promise of a hot shower and clothing that wasn't coated in an inch thick layer of grime was just too much to resist a second longer.
He'd met the man outside squeaky clean of blood and dirt after fifteen minutes and gotten a positively scathing glare for it.
Things had pretty much gone downhill from there.
The man had escorted him to a small room that was set up at the watchpoint (Colorado, they'd told him offhandedly when he'd voiced his confusion) as a sort of emergency room. They'd brusquely set his nose back to its normal alignment, and he'd taken enormous pride in himself when the medic had stared in shock as he hadn't flinched a millimeter. They had given him a half-melted pack of ice for the swelling. He'd tucked the pack in his pocket to be forgotten.
They'd given him a room for the short time they were planning on staying. A barrack, more like it, with a small, clean bunk and rickety, yet sleek writing desk along with a chair that wobbled on its back leg if he tipped it just so. A long, thin window lined the top of the wall, far enough away that the tips of his fingers would just barely brush the edge if he stood straight. It had been late into the night when he'd been shown his quarters, and the pale moonlight had filtered through the sliver of glass to mix with the watery orange circle cast on the floor from the pivoted, metal lamp mounted to the wall beside the head of the bed. A second pair of sweats and a plastic-sealed pack of generic T-shirts were on his pillow, and the man (a cadet, he supposed, he wasn't certain of ranks around here yet) had gruffly told him he'd be receiving his uniform after his information from the interrogation panned out and Reyes finished with the paperwork. "And don't even think about leaving this room until they've given you permission," he'd grunted, "or ATHENA'll shut you down faster than you can draw." The door had shut with force after that little tidbit was delivered, and Jesse could hear the heavy footfalls reverberating through the walls long after he'd gone as he was left to muse over who the hell "Athena" was.
Left to his own devices for the first time since the sting, he'd been forced to confront his thoughts in the quiet of the base as he triple checked the lock on his door. This was a different sort of night than he was used to. There were no drunken shouts outside his window, no rustling of cloth, no bursts of laughter from the diner, no gunshots, no insects buzzing into the night. This was a sterile, looming sort of silence that Jesse exhaled louder than usual into for even a hint of reprieve from.
The events of the day (days? He'd forgotten to ask…) overwhelmed him slowly as he'd stood in the middle of his room, and the longer he stared at the off-white paint chipping in the corner of the wall, the more his situation had sunk in to him.
He'd sold out.
Again.
Hadn't he learned anything the first time?
He'd sunk to sit on the edge of his bed, his eyes slightly glazed as he zoned out. Everything had had a surreal sort of filter over it from the moment he'd been dropped to the dirt back in the canyon, but the reality of what had happened hadn't truly hit him until that very moment.
He had shaken himself out of his reverie quickly enough (a man missing half his teeth and a jagged divot courtesy of a butcher's knife across his forehead dumping him out of his cot because idle brains end up spattered on the wall, Jes, stop sleepin'). Half-standing to reach for the desk, he'd snagged a pen as he'd slipped his boots off to sit back down. The smudged chalk tally inside them glared up at him as it always did, and he'd stared right back, the pen twiddling between his fingers.
He'd sat back against the wall serving as his headboard after the empty minutes had passed by, the pen uncapping in his hands as he'd slashed it across the bit of wall hidden behind the bed frame.
Day one.
The lock etched in between his fingers had itched with a vengeance as he'd swept his hat off of his head and hung it haphazardly over the lamp, the absence of his revolver settling heavily into his stomach and unnerving him as he'd realized just how defenseless he was. After checking the door's lock two more times, he'd finally settled with his back against the wall, the only light in the room seeping in from the window. He'd stared down at the tattoo for a long, long while that first night.
He wasn't free yet.
He'd just swapped one lock for another.
If he hadn't been through the wringer for the previous 48 hours, he didn't doubt that he would've had trouble sleeping that first night. As it was, he'd passed out almost instantly once he'd finally convinced himself to lay back against the pillows. The morning had come too quick for his liking, but he was alert, if not grouchy, by the time someone had come knocking to fetch him.
From there, the next two days passed in a blur of bureaucracy. This was where he'd eat, this was when he'd eat, these were his teammates, sure they're a bit frosty, but you did just put three of their own out of commission for lord knows how long and probably would have killed them given the chance, there's the bathroom, that's the gym, you won't be here long enough to worry about it much, yes, that was a gorilla on the video conference with HQ, no, you shouldn't worry about it, here's the list of information you'll need to report to Commander Reyes before you're fully in the system-
He'd gone to bed each night tense and with his head spinning as something poisonous in the back of his mind prodded him. There were so many rules, the who and the what and the where mattered so much here and Jesse simply couldn't wrap his head around it. He'd spent so long making it a point to not notice such things that he'd forgotten just how to reattach himself to them.
He'd been a grunt for less than a day before he'd grown to resent it.
His third day in the system rolled around, and he'd found himself being summoned to Gabriel's temporary office before he'd even finished putting his shirt on. The cadet (he still hadn't had a confirmation on that, but he'd taken to calling them just that all the same) that had delivered the message had poked her head in just long enough to get the words out blandly before heading down the hallway without waiting. Jesse had watched her go with unmasked disdain before trotting to catch up, hand jamming his hat to his head as he went.
He hoped they'd pull their heads out of their asses soon, because while it was true that he could deal with the filthy looks and muttered curses all day, they were really starting to get old.
He hadn't seen Gabriel Reyes since the man had introduced himself and left the interrogation room to be replaced by another man who would go on to extract all the information Jesse had on Deadlock. When Jesse found himself standing outside his door, his escort seeing herself out with a blasé wave, he discovered why.
His sturdy knock on the half-open door was greeted with a gruff "get in here," and he resisted the urge to bristle as he opened the door in full to find Reyes seated at his desk.
The man hadn't looked up as he came in, but as the door clicked shut behind him, he'd spared Jesse a brief glance before gesturing to the chair across from him. As Jesse moved forward, he'd spoken off-handedly.
"Take a seat. We need to chat."
Jesse couldn't quite stop the snort that had escaped him, and Gabriel's attention had shifted back away from the enormous stack of papers scattered across his desk to his newest recruit, his goatee shifting as he frowned and an eyebrow quirked in challenge as Jesse had spoken up.
"Ain't chatting all we've done, you 'n me?"
He'd meant for it to sound snide, but the swelling had only just started going down across his nose, and the comment only came across as nasal and pinched as his accent fought to be heard around it.
Of all the reactions he'd expected, the sharp, sarcastic laugh caught him by surprise.
It didn't last long, however, as Gabriel fixed him with that stare and promptly told him to shut up as he cut the laugh short.
And so he now found himself some twenty minutes later, mid history lesson on the making and workings of the elite force known as Overwatch. He'd heard of them, sure, but only in vague snippets regarding the ongoing Omnic Crisis that generally seemed too idealistic to be true. He'd listened skeptically as Reyes had given him his recruitment spiel, the cynicism plain on his face as he waited for the part that concerned him with the odd interjection here and there (mostly to see what sort of reaction he could get from the man). After what felt like an eternity of discussing the main dish, Reyes had finally whittled down to discussing their behind-the-scenes team of Blackwatch agents geared for-
"-fine, it's just a military operation, if that's what you want to call it, I don't care. You just need to know who we're dealing with."
Gabriel had risen to stand at some point in their discussion, his attention split between observing a series of maps on his desk and scribbling numbers and the odd note here and there across several of the pages present. Jesse had settled for tilting back his chair and folding his hands across his chest, his toe planted on the edge of the table's leg and tipping the seat gently back and forth.
"If I didn't know any better," Jesse drawled slowly, "I'd say you take offense at bein' labelled."
The commander pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes shut as he answered. "I really don't give a damn, kid. But if you're planning on underselling covert ops as "just" a government ploy, then I'm rolling with it. You'll get less questions that way anyways."
Jesse whistled, a shrill note of dry mockery. "Covert ops? Sounds fancy."
"You can't seriously expect me to believe you don't know what covert ops a-"
"And very, very not my style."
The exasperation on Gabriel's face multiplied tenfold. "It is now."
Jesse tilted his head to the side, expression thoughtful. He'd been pulling reads from the commander since he'd seen his face swim into view in the interrogation room, but there were some things he had yet to tell about the man. Organized. Clearly meant to lead, from the tone of the orders he gave. He'd clearly played a key role in the Omnic Crisis thus far, given his status, and yet…
Something wasn't adding up.
Jesse couldn't put his finger on it, and it was bugging the absolute hell out of him. He'd prided himself on his eye for trouble, and while Reyes spelled plenty of that, he did a mighty fine job of covering just about anything else.
"Alright," he finally said as Reyes tipped his attention downwards once more, "so it's a lotta dirty work, I get it so far. But I got a question for you."
"I'm certainly dying to hear it."
Jesse sniffed loudly and relished at the baleful look he was given in return. So far he'd pinpointed two pet peeves of one Gabriel Reyes. The sniffing was the easiest to execute by far. "How am I supposed to expect any of your little black-op flock to not shoot me in the back the second we hit the dirt and call it an accident, huh? They ain't exactly fond of me 'round here, and I only met an eighth of 'em."
Something dark swept over Gabriel's face as he opened his mouth to reply when his expression rapidly shifted, eyes unfocusing and head cocking to the side. Jesse was on the verge of questioning his sanity when Reyes' rolled his eyes almost imperceptibly and cracked his neck in one fluid movement.
"Remember the whole "who you're dealing with" bit?"
Jesse shot him a bewildered look. "How could I forget, you just told me. Y'callin' me stu-"
"Get ready to deal, then."
The words had no sooner left Gabriel's mouth than it happened.
"Where is he?!"
The shout from the hallway made it into the room a solid half minute before the voice's owner did. Jesse spared a cursory, somewhat alarmed glance to Gabriel, who didn't so much as look up from examining his desk for the millionth time that minute. As the sound of heavy footfalls drew closer however, he muttered distractedly from the side of his mouth, the crease in his forehead the only indication of his building agitation.
"Move your ass, kid, that door's about to give that nose of yours another run for its money."
Jesse didn't need to be told twice as he leapt up and shifted his chair a good distance from the door just in time for it to slam open. He gawked at the indent it left in the wall as the office practically shook with the force of it. His face had only been there mere milliseconds ago.
His attention wasn't held by the door for long, however, as the newcomer commanded it almost immediately.
"You."
The woman was relatively tall, her form filling the doorway almost as much as her presence filled the room. The coat she wore billowed behind her as she breezed past the doorframe, and Jesse found himself straightening his spine, sitting slightly taller despite himself as her eyes swept cooly over him and if that was a tattoo on her eye, that had to have hurt-
His own eyes darted to Gabriel, who had yet to look up as this new woman stalked into the room with a positively predatory glare.
Her palms hit the desk with a solid, satisfying slam, and Gabriel still would not look away from the papers before him. She spoke curtly, each word clipped and razor sharp around her accent as she addressed the top of Gabriel's head.
"Just what do you think you're doing?"
"I was," Gabriel muttered, "going over the details for the transfer." He finally looked up then, his eyelids heavy and a wry, humorless grin on his face as he kept his tone deceptively light. "But that's certainly not important. What are you doing here, Ana? I thought you were in the East on your way to Europe."
Ana, Jesse filed away the name as she leaned over the desk, her eyes narrowing as a finger jabbed into Gabriel's face. "I'm exactly where I need to be. But if you want to talk geography, then you'll be happy to know you're putting me a day off schedule with this little side-trip."
Gabriel simply stared at her benignly as he lifted a hand to nudge her finger away from his forehead. "And that's my fault now, is it?"
She huffed a dry laugh at that, a strand of dark hair fluttering out of her face. "What makes you think that?"
He shrugged heavily, and Jesse's attention piqued at the flicker of… resentment? Whatever it was, there had definitely been something in Reyes eye before he'd settled on staring cooly back, arms crossing taught.
"Seems an awful lot is these days."
"Oho, no you don't. You can pull this with anyone but me, Gabe. You know exactly what I'm here for, and I don't think I need to tell you when I want it."
"You're going to have to be more specific, A-"
She interrupted him almost immediately, but most of the anger in her voice had made way for something morose.
"A child? Are you serious? You recruited a child and didn't think twice about it?"
It took embarrassingly long for Jesse to realize she was referring to him.
His brow creased, the insinuation that he was no more than his age stinging as his gawk shifted between the two in front of him. Neither had spared a glance in his direction since before the conversation had began.
If there was one thing he hated more than being discussed behind his back, it was being discussed in front of his own damn nose.
"He turns eighteen in three months."
"That means nothing and you know it-"
Jesse cleared his throat derisively then, grabbing the attention of both parties in the room almost instantly. The two pairs of eyes bored holes through him for very different reasons, but he stood straight all the same, hands folding over his biceps as he mimicked Reyes position, ignoring the somewhat sardonic look in the man's eye when he did.
"Y'know, I reckon it'd be easier to get this conversation moving if we all stop pretendin' I'm not in the room."
Ana's eyes traced over him slowly as he spoke, and the way they lingered on certain areas unnerved him more than he liked to admit. The chalk on the cuff of his boot. The lock in his skin. The twitch of his trigger finger. The mass of purple swelling on his nose. His hat.
It remained there for an extra second.
Her gaze snapped to meet his eyes quickly enough that Jesse wondered if he'd imagined it. She stared him down, her expression torn between anger and consternation. "He offered you Blackwatch as a means for repentance, and you don't see something wrong with that?"
Gabriel's expression darkened, and he was speaking before Jesse could open his mouth. "Ana-"
"No, listen, Gabriel. You know best out of all of us just what goes into your operations. I would hardly call them repentant."
"The kid's got talent, and he chose this. I'm not about to take that away from him."
"You're the one who offered it in the first place-"
Jesse watched as the two argued, their voices rising steadily as they bounced back and forth, his eyes following their words like a spectator at a tennis match. It didn't take long for him to get exasperated. He cleared his throat again, speaking up when it didn't have the same effect this time.
"If I could just…"
"-didn't even think to let Jack know about this, you know how he feels about unsanctioned-"
"-Morrison can take it up with me personally if he's so damn affected by it, but frankly, I don't see how this has anything to do with him-"
Jesse's eyelids drooped, his own voice rising in volume to be heard over theirs, tone deadpan.
"Look, I don't think…"
"-about Fareeha? Are you just worried you won't be able to explain to her why she can't-"
"-n't you dare bring her into this, Gabriel, you are out of line-"
Jesse finally gave in as he rolled his eyes, his hands unclasping from his arms as he gave an exaggerated shrug.
Couldn't say he didn't try.
"Knock it off!"
If Gabriel looked positively mutinous at Jesse's shout, Ana looked ready to murder him and everything he held dear. He barreled on ahead before either of them could continue.
"Look, lady, I understand your… concern here, but I really ain't sein' how this is your business to be dealin' with. It was my choice t'make at the end of the day, and unless you're bigger than Blackwatch and plannin' on throwin' me in max instead of sendin' me into the field, then I'm gonna need a little more time to come to terms with some truly traumatic things here before goin' back behind bars for the rest of my life. Bein' a child 'n all that."
He'd been in shootouts with atmospheres less charged than the one engulfing the room.
Ana was staring at him, clearly still perturbed.
Gabriel just looked smug.
The moment was just stretching into the uncomfortable zone when Ana spoke, her voice low and gritty.
"And what will you do when they ask you to die for them? Will it have been worth it then?"
She barely bat an eye when he laughed at that, shaking his head with the hearty noise. "Ma'am," he started cooly, "I been willing to die for much less for longer'n you've probably had that coat. If I'm gonna be stuck in a cage here, I might as well get the pleasure of choosin' it."
Gabriel was giving him an inquisitive once over at that, the hard lines around his eyes still firmly in place. The commander caught the glance Ana discreetly shot him at Jesse's words, and his one shoulder lifted lightly as if to say you see?
Jesse got the distinct feeling she didn't.
And yet, the sharpness of the glare softened around the edges as the seconds ticked by, and Ana placed a hand over her face as she sighed. When she removed it, the anger had drained, leaving her eyes just… tired.
"Don't push your luck."
Jesse opened his mouth to respond, but she held up a finger as she continued. "I don't like it. I'll never like it, but if this is what you truly want…" Her eyes moved to his hat again, and he found himself adjusting it haughtily.
"Then I hope you aren't digging your own grave, my friend."
She left soon after, the mood in the room still tense but somewhat defused as she spoke briefly of the details of the "transfer" Gabriel was so focused on with the man, leaving Jesse to once again melt awkwardly into the background. He had been unable to get another word in to her before she was breezing back out the way she came with little more than a last cursory, searching look and a nod in his direction.
He couldn't help but feel as if she'd just signed his death sentence.
Her footsteps had long faded before either of them spoke. Gabriel did the honors, his voice dragging Jesse's attention away from the shut door.
"Captain Ana Amari. A co-founder of Overwatch."
"If that's her bark, I don't think I want to see her bite."
Gabriel waved a dismissive hand as he sat back down. "She'll get used to it. Just do me a favor and don't get killed right out the gate here so she can't say I told you so, hm?"
There it was again.
That odd, not-quite-serious, not-quite-humorous tone dashed with just enough bitterness to raise some questions in Jesse's mind. On the one hand, he could feel something in his cheek twitch in indignation. On the other… He sat back down himself, his chair tilting back slowly once more as he tilted his hat over his eyes, a shit-eating grin on his face as he played off of the mood he'd undoubtedly misread.
"Wasn't plannin' on it. But I guess we'll see how much I like it here. Haven't had the cosiest of receptions so far, might end up bein' better than whatever it is you yuppies got in store for m-"
Something caught the back of his calf, and before he could so much as flinch, his back smacked smartly to the floor, winding him as the chair fell with a clatter. Hat now knocked cleanly off from the force of his head colliding with the ground, his eyes were clear to see just what had happened.
Reyes had rounded the desk in an impossible instant, the toe he'd used to knock Jesse off kilter lowering back to the floor as he crouched to place his palms on his thighs and stare down at him. Jesse shook off the surprise, hot anger pouring into him as he realized what had just occurred.
"What the f-"
"If you ever," Reyes interrupted, and Jesse narrowed his eyes slowly at the frigid, dangerously calm tone, "hint that you'd rather get shot than work here again, then you're not just joining your buddies in max-security, I'm shipping your ass to Panama. Ever seen the inside of a Panamanian prison, kid?"
"When the hell would I have gotten the chance t-"
"It's not pretty."
Gabriel deepened his crouch, his knees bending entirely and his elbows coming to rest on the tops of his thighs as he lowered himself face to face with Jesse. The scars marring his face were oddly vivid from the bizarre angle. Jesse grunted and raised a hand to rub at the back of his smarting head as he started to roll out from underneath that piercing stare. He'd barely moved when Gabriel's hand shot out, gripping his wrist in a vice and twisting his thumb away from his hand to put the lock tattoo on full display as he kept speaking.
"Let me shed some light here. You, a Deadlock rebel-" He shook the tattooed hand for emphasis. "-are free to roam the halls under pretty damn minimal supervision until we're certain you won't either be pulling a disappearing act on us or causing any more trouble than you already have. You, who has made it this far in life by being the guy shooting back at ours. You, a seventeen year old, snot-nosed kid-" He held up his other hand as Jesse opened his mouth to protest, layering on the emphasis. "-have only just shot three of mine and put them out of the job until they've had surgery, and they should be considered lucky. So excuse them if they aren't opening their arms and inviting you for drinks just yet, they've got a lot on their minds."
He released Jesse's hand roughly as he finished. Jesse wasted no time in snatching it back to his chest as he finally got the clearance to roll away and into a crouch of his own, a slight snarl on his face.
"If that's the case then sir," he practically spat, words dripping with sarcasm, "my question still remains. How'n'the hell am I supposed to trust them when they obviously ain't feelin' much like trusting me?"
Gabriel's answer was immediate.
"Do you trust me?"
"You broke my nose-"
"You shot my men."
"-and then chucked me in a room before offerin' me an ultimatum that leads to prison or lap-doggin' for the military, so I don't think "trust" is the word t'be using here, no-"
"In that case," Gabriel said as he rose to stand, eyeing Jesse dryly as the younger man darted upright to match him in height, "you better start working on that. This whole business runs on being absolutely sure someone will be watching your back when you need them to be-" Jesse fairly exploded with a theatrical, drawn out sigh that Gabriel resumed speaking through. "That still "not your style"?"
"Oh, I'm sure we'll find out," Jesse said, "but the whole back thing still stands-"
"What, too much responsibility, having someone else's life at stake?"
"Havin' my own at stake! Y'still haven't told me what's keepin' the boy-scout brigade here from knockin' me off and callin' it a day!"
There was ice in Gabriel's eye as his voice reached a dangerously low level.
"We've got something called "morals" around here, McCree. I suggest you find yours."
No insult-
"I've got plenty already, thank y'kindly, but the vote of confidence there just does my empty lil' criminal heart such good-"
Gabriel didn't grace the taunt with a reaction as he circled back around the desk. He only held up a hand signaling for Jesse to stop mid-tirade when he was back to looking at those damn papers again.
"Worry," he said, "about yourself. Leave them to their own devices, and I can promise you they'll walk through hell and back at your side."
"'S not my side I'm worried about," Jesse grumbled under his breath, but he let the topic go as he realized how futile the argument would be. He didn't doubt the subject would be breached again, but they were getting nowhere fast with this current line of conversation.
If Gabriel heard the mutter, he was doing a fine job ignoring it. His attention was fully engrossed by the desk again, and Jesse, having already crossed about every line already drawn in the last five minutes alone, stepped forward to drop his hat smack in the middle of the mess.
"This all for me?"
The commander picked up his hat, tilting it in his hands and eyes chalk full of judgement as he chucked it back at Jesse's chest. He met his eyes as the younger man caught the object before standing in full and rolling his shoulders with a series of pops, hands coming to rest on his hips. The smirk that was slowly growing on his face did no favors to Jesse's dry well of trust.
"Ever been to Switzerland?"
A/N: heyo it wasn't ALWAYS sunshine and daisies here they're gonna need to work on their people skills before they reach the Bad-Jokes-at-the-Halloween-Party stage
ONWARDS TO SWISS HQ
Thank you for the favorites and follows! I'll reply to some comments real quick here as well:
Kat: Ayy happy to have you back as a reader! Thanks for the glowin' words!
DONACDUM: We'll see how things go, won't we?
IRead2MuchManga99: Thanks again for the heads up about the title! Glad to see you're enjoying so far!