It had only been two weeks since they had made the deal. And from the looks of it, Blake and her boys seem to be pleased with their fair share. Along with that, Butch couldn't help get the feeling that Blake was somewhat like him. Then again, she does imitate a few things from him. But not only that, Blake did teach him a few things from her life time. Not surprisingly, Butch's gang and Blake's gang noticed that their relationship was getting stronger; but they wouldn't dare say anything about that, knowing them.
The next town the gangs arrive at had a saloon. They figured they could stop here for the night and get something to drink, too. They entered the saloon, and, not surprising, the place was filled with scandalous women with at least two to three men at once. Blake rolled her eyes. "I was afraid we'd run inta all this shit…" she muttered to Butch. They turned and saw Jake flirtatiously walk towards one of the women. While the rest of the men chuckled at Jake, Blake just face palmed herself.
Jake went to one of the women and said, "You come 'ere of'en~?" and was bitch slapped by her. The gangs muffled their laughter, even Blake tried not to giggle. "Okay… Didn't think I deserved that…" he muttered, recoiled and tried again. "Sorry. Didn' introduced myself~. Name's-" and was bitch slapped again. Blake couldn't help but giggle. "Think you deserved that one?" she said. Jake nodded. "Yeah. I think so…" he muttered. They all just laughed.
She felt a hand on her shoulder. "That normal?" he asked. "Beyond," she replied. Butch smirked and said, "Why don'cha git yerselves a table? I'll be over there." He pointed to an empty bar stool next to a man dressed in ash grey. Blake nodded… But then her look changed.
She kept staring at the grey cladded man.
Had she seen him from somewhere before? The grey just looked really familiar-
"Blake? Whatcha thinkin'?
Blake's train of thought was interrupted by Butch's slightly concerned tone. She blinked and looked right at him, saying, "Oh, uh… It's-it's nothin'. I jus'… jus' though he-" she pointed to the man "-looked familiar." Butch looked to where she was pointing. Blake shook the feeling off and said, "Well, alright, you can go o'er there. We'll be sittin' here, m'kay?" Butch nodded and took the seat next to the grey cladded man. He told the bar keep to give him a thing of whiskey. Butch looked into the mirror where the drinks were. He couldn't help but to see the man's eyes. The dark grey-blue eyes against his white beard-
"See something?" the man asked, making Butch jump from the man's Hispanic accent. He looked to his right, then back to the man before pointing to himself. "M-me?" he muttered. The grey cladded man chuckled and nodded. "Of course you, Butch. Who else would I be talking to?" Looks like the man already knows who he is. The grey cladded man glanced over to Blake's table and said, "So I see you're with the Seven Deadly Sins." Butch nodded without thinking and replied, "Right." The bartender brought him his whiskey and nodded his thanks to him.
...
...
...
But after a second, Butch's face went from stern to confusion. He turns to the man and repeats, "Wait… The Seven Deadly Sins?" The Hispanic accented man nodded. "Haven't you noticed?" he asks. "Their characteristics… Their personalities… Everything?" Butch looked back at Blake and her gang's table and back to the grey cladded man. Well, okay, Jake was pretty obvious but the others? What did this man know about them that he didn't.
"What're ye tryin' ta git at?" Butch asked. The man only grinned and pulled out a paper from his coat, looking back towards Blake's table and placing the paper between them. Butch raised an eyebrow when the man opened the paper. The paper had her gang's faces on them, including the bird's, like they were from wanted posters. The faces were neatly arranged in a seven pointed pentagram; on top of the pictures were the names of the seven cardinal sins. Butch looked at the man and said, "The hell is this?" The man grinned and gave a reply that made Butch frustrated. "The seven sins. Envy, greed, gluttony, lust, pride, sloth, and wrath-"
"I git that!" Butch replied angrily. "I mean: why the hell do you have them like this? What's the point?" The Hispanic accented man knew he was getting irritated, so he gave him his best straight forward answer, "Each one of those people are representations of the seven sins. Each with their own story of how they came to be." Butch's curiosity got the best of him. "How are they represented?" His question was more concerned towards Blake, because she was underneath 'wrath'.
The man smirked and started, "I like to go in order, so let's start with envy…"
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…
"Walliwitz is an Australian born man. His whole name is Louis Walliwitz, but prefers to be called by his last name. Now yes, Walliwitz is in fact a Jewish name, but he was not born or raised Jewish. He was a Catholic man. But as he grew up, Walliwitz was usually ignored by his family, due to having his back hunched up like that. They considered him deformed and an outcast. Never giving him what he wanted, just giving him second had items. He wanted to join the Royal British Army, but they refused him.
This kept up for a very long time. His envious attitude kept up to the point where his devoted Catholic family thought he was possessed by some 'envy demon'. All he wanted was what everyone had. And it had angered him. He wanted to be normally formed, he wanted… well anything, really. He finally had it and left his home and came to America. But even so, he saw that people had everything he did not have, and was, therefore, envious."
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Butch looked at Walliwitz after the man finished his story. He now wanted more information. He wanted to know everything. "Envious for more, Butch?" He looked back at him with a blank expression. The man took his knife off of Walliwitz's and went to Japhet's. How could a bird be part of the seven sins? "W-wait. How in the hell's a bird part of this mess? What does he have ta do wit' anythin'?" Butch asked. The man didn't hesitate to stab the bird's picture and continue…
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"You know why that eagle is much bigger than any other bird? It eats. Now you may think that's normal, but this bird eats more than he needs to. He will hunt anything and eat it. He even eats the humans' scraps. Sometimes, he brings more than is needed to the gang. He has eaten so much, that he is getting bigger every time. He gets more muscular with all the things he eats. It will not stop until it thinks it is full.
Now how he came to Blake was interesting. The bird had mistaken her for a horse somehow. The bird was about to eat her alive; but it didn't. It just perched on her horse and gave Blake its game, once it realized she wasn't an animal."
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'Well that explains that bird's size…' he thought. "Now Edgar," the man said, making Butch look up. "Edgar's is… very interesting as far as greed…"
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"Edgar Tosonini was born to wealthy family. The family owned one of the best railroad companies in Italy. That's where they get their wealth. He had loved being brought up in such a wealthy family. Now, when it had come the time for an heir to keep the family business going, his older brother got the job. Edgar was the second of five children; two brothers, two sisters. His brother Tony was the one who got the inheritance.
This made Edgar furious. He wanted the money for himself, and no one else. So, then, as an act of jealousy and greed, Edgar went into his oldest brother's room… And killed him in his sleep. He got rid of the body before anyone noticed. When the family found out about the death, they had no choice but to give the inheritance to him. Little did they know that the murder was out of the cold hearted greed lying inside of him. They never realized how out of hand this greedy soul has gotten. Once the company's employers found out, they had him reported to family. They realized that he was so corrupted with greed, he would only give the employers just barely half a percent of the money earned from the railroad.
The company demanded the family remove Edgar of his position and have him exiled from Italy. They listened to the employees, striped Edgar of the wealth and told him to never come back. The furious Edgar then took himself to America. It was then he had heard the rumors of silver being found out here, and moved out here."
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Now that sounded awfully too much like Latham Cole. In fact, he thought that Edgar man was somehow related to Cole. Guess not.
"Now I bet you are thinking about that Jacob boy, aren't you?" the man said taking a swig of whiskey. Butch just gave him a look, definitely not amused by his joke. The man looked at Butch then raised his eyebrows and continued...
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"Jacob Herrington and his sister, in their older years, could dance, not only for performance, but for... other things. Jacob went his way with women while his sister... Can't think of her name; anyway, she went off in her own direction with her dancing career. Her brother, not much older than her, would go with women each and every night. His actions gave him the reputation of-"
"I think I've heard enough already!" Butch said with his hand raised to make them man stop talking about Jake's little sex life. The Hispanic accented man pursed his lips and took another swig of whiskey.
Butch looked over at the table. "How 'bout that 'Freighter' guy? What 'oes he got ta do wit' anythin'?" The man smiled and simply said, "Pride."
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"Freighter, not sure how that name came to be, he is really named Ray Sanchez Voluncostene; born into slavery many years ago. He had always dreamed of being a free man. Now knowing the laws of the South, he knew this would not be so easy to achieve.
You may have heard about the North's fight to free the slaves, haven't you? Well, young Freighter had to escape to the North in order to be free. Of course he was caught just before he could even cross the border to his freedom.
The next month, he was set free. Ironic isn't it? You go an' run to get your freedom an' get caught and the next you are a free man. This had gotten to head too quickly, and is proud to not only be a free man, but a free African man."
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"That woul'n' surprise me as much," Butch muttered, glancing at the muscular African man, "for a guy like him to do that..."
The grey cladded man took a sip of his whiskey and said, "Neither would I."
"Now we have the last two, right?" Butch asked. The man nodded and commented, "Sloth and wrath... For sloth..."
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"Demitrius Poloski, or if you hadn't noticed already, 'Scuzz', was not a working man. All he wanted to do was laze around and sleep. He had a job at a bank up in New York but lost that due to his laziness and unorganization. His family have said he was a disgrace to the clan and had beaten him for his behavior. All Demitrius wanted to do by then was to escape the life of the big city and come out to where there was hardly anything happening.
And so, Texas was, to him, the place for him. By the time he got here, Demitrius has not found a single job; but then again, "the man chuckled, "the boy was 'too tired' to find a job."
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That left the man with the last sin: Wrath.
But that didn't seem to be right. Butch has not ever noticed anything too wrathful about Blake; except maybe a few of her threatening actions, of course. So how could she be the sin of wrath?
"H-hold on a sec!" Butch exclaimed. "...This doe'n't make any sense. How is Blake even wrath? She never once said anythin' 'bout anger issues. How could you be sure o' that?" The man looked at Butch with a concerned look. This made Butch feel a little uneasy. "An' she said that someone had killed her whole clan dead." Why was this man giving him this look?
"What did she tell you?" he asked sternly. Butch went ahead and summarized Blake's story, glancing at her table to make sure she wasn't looking. The man in grey just stared at Butch before taking yet another shot of whiskey and saying, "She lied to you."
What? Lied? What was he talking about? "She told you, and her men, her 'dream family'"
Okay. What in the hell is guy talking about? What is this 'dream family'?
"She told you about a family she had always wanted but could never have. Blake would dream of this family each night... But she probably doesn't anymore."
This didn't sound too good. "What did happen? What's she hidin'?" Butch wondered. The man took his knife off of Scuzz's picture and examined it for a few moments. "All she was hiding this whole time," he said, "was what she never wants to mention again for as long as she lived. Something… very awful..."