Chapter Text
When The Mechanisms landed in The City he was sure that he was in for a right good time. Spending a few decades high on senseless violence sounded like just the thing he needed to blow off some steam. He had been there for the better part of a decade, having a grand time killing paupers and drinking the bars dry. He hadn't seen much of his crew in his time in The City, he thought that Ashes might be a mob boss, but that was all he could really say.
Jonny did not like the Toy Soldier. It was relentlessly cheerful and never seemed to mind when Jonny shot at it in frustration. In fact, he had thrown it out of the airlock multiple times. However, it has always shown up later, smiling at the “jolly good show” of being thrown into space.
With that being said, it was a part of the crew, and Jonny didn't tolerate anyone disrespecting his crew. Sure, he might make fun of Nastya and The Aurora and he may get into gun fights with Tim, but God save the poor soul who dares to speak a single word of slander about any of The Mechanisms. After all, it was impossible to not be a little fond of the crew, even (especially) the Toy Soldier.
This is why he reacted the way he did when he heard some scornful mocking in one of the better whiskey joints in the lower levels of The City. Jonny sat alone, blood-covered hands raising a glass to his lips. When he first heard fractured sentences drifting over from the group of patrons sitting in a different booth, he hid a smile behind his cup when he heard a mention of an “uncanny wooden thing”. Jonny hadn’t heard anything from the Toy Soldier since they got to The City, so he focused on listening to the conversation behind him, letting the din of the bar fall into background noise. And the words that he heard when he focused on their conversation made his vision go red with blind rage.
“-Yeah, there's no way that wooden whore could be anything other than a stupid nymph,” he heard a rough voice say before the lot of them burst into raucous laughter, “Dionysus really needs to pick ‘em better,”
From what he knew, the nymphs that worked for Dionysus provided “entertainment” to customers. He had killed a few in his first months in The City, not knowing that they were nymphs. He soon learned that Dionysus cared about them enough for it to be more effort than it was worth to murder those particular residents of the city. He found it a tad hard to imagine the Toy Soldier being particularly drawn by that profession, but not impossible. It was essentially just making people happy, and the Soldier was never quiet about how much it liked making people happy.
He was drawn out of his thoughts by another disdainful voice, “I know someone who spoke with it at one of Dionysus' parties and they said that it didn't blink the whole time, and always spoke with the same eerily cheerful voice, no matter what it was saying. I don't know why Dionysus’ clientele would be so taken with that uncanny nymph,” When he heard this he set down his cup, drink splashing out due to the excess force, and stood up. He may claim to find the Toy Soldier irritating, but that didn't mean he wasn't allowed to want to brutally murder the people in the booth behind him.
He tried to hide the wild wrath that was evident in his expression and plastered a bitter grin on his face before walking as casually as he could over to the booth where those bastards were sitting. As much as he liked murder, he wanted to make sure that it was the Toy Soldier that they were talking about, just to justify his anger. He looked down at them and was thinking bitterly about how these people didn't know the Soldier, thinking about if they had spent any time around it they wouldn't be saying those things about it.
He stood over the table, cracking his knuckles behind his back to keep from strangling the group of people “Hello chaps! I’m Jonny! Mind if I ask what you fine fellows are talking about?” They looked up at him in irritation, but protests and curses died on their tongues when they saw the edge in this strange man's eyes, as he was just waiting for one of them to make a wrong move.
So they didn't, and just sat, anxiously silent and staring at the gun on his hip, as this imposing man sat down next to the broad-shouldered woman who had brought the subject of the wooden nymph. When Jonny was sure that no one in the group was going to leave he asked again, this time failing to curb the unsettling violent edge in his voice, “What were you talking about before I sat down?”.
He looked around the group, to each of their faces, in turn, to find, unsurprisingly, that none of them were meeting his eyes. At this point, his hands were itching for the familiar recoil of his revolver and he longed to feel blood splatter on his face as he watched each of them die. But he held back, it would be worth it to make these poor motherfuckers say those things to his face, and it would be so satisfying to see the color drain from their faces when he told them exactly why he was making this the last day of their lives.
He was grinning maniacally at this point and as the others at the table grew more afraid, one of them finally spoke.
It was the stocky woman who piped up, her eyes still trained firmly on the table, but she seemed to steel herself before she said, “We were talking about Dionysus’ new nymph, and how creepy the wooden slut is,” she sneered, gaining confidence and hoping to find a kinship with this threatening stranger over a shared contempt towards nymphs. She raised her eyes and her face fell when she saw the expression on Jonny’s face. The twisted rage was evident from the way he bared his clenched teeth and the deranged hatred in his eyes.
She opened her mouth to stutter out an apology, but was cut off by Jonny raising a hand, “Does this nymph have a name?” he forced out the words, as though they were difficult to get that past his teeth. And to be honest, they were, he would so much rather be killing these people instead of continuing to talk, and at this point, he didn't want to just shoot them, he wanted to break them. He wanted to crush their very being, but he waited, he wanted to make them say its name, and then he could do what he wanted to.
The woman who had been speaking before looked at him with terror, the bravado she had before was gone, replaced by fear, “P-please, let's all just walk away from this,”
Jonny rolled his eyes and drew his gun. For the brief moment it took to place the muzzle under her chin the eyes of everyone at the table were filled with blind panic, and that was almost enough to make up for wasting so much time. A pathetic cry broke from her lips, and he smiled cruelly, “What's your name?”
She looked at him through tear-filled eyes and said “L-Lyra Adamos,” and he worked hard to make his next words as false sugar sweet as he possibly could.
“Okay, Lyra! Now, what is this nymph's name sweetheart?” he chuckled kindly, “Remember, answer or you die!” he smiled at her ignorant tears and prepared himself to pull the trigger when his attention was drawn by a sudden sound from across the table.
“It's called ‘The Toy Soldier’ okay?!” When he heard the Toy Soldier’s name Jonny was filled with a renewed fury, he turned his head towards the voice and raked violent eyes over the nervous little man who had just spoken and took a few moments of consideration before carefully speaking.
“I have known the Toy Soldier for 8 millennia,” the faces of the people at the table fell into despair as they realized that they probably weren't going to get out of this alive, “it has been part of my crew for most of that, and I have never known it to be anything other than lovely, no desire to kill, all it wants is to make people happy,” and then, after a moment more of thought, “fuck all of you!” He promptly removed the gun from under Lyra’s chin and shot the man across the table in the side.
The rest of the bar finally took notice of what was happening, the other patrons of the bar not even considering alerting the proper authorities before gathering their things and hurrying out the door. The bartender just looked mildly exasperated before ducking under the bar.
Jonny smiled sadistically and twin shots rang out as he spun around and shot the remaining two people in the backs of their knees. He exhaled in satisfaction at finally being able to hurt these people and took a moment to revel in the feeling before going to each of them and tying their hands behind their backs.
He was going to take them to see Ashes.