Well at least he's making an effort. That's a start. He switched his focus back to Laika though and addressed her first. "My employer, a man by the name of Dax Strattix, is very well-connected, and a woman like you leaves ripples. If you've got enough resources, it's not that hard to track them back to their source." He didn't think that withholding information at this point, even something as simple as his employer's name, would be the kind of thing that would get her to sign on. He wasn't gonna lie, he needed this team. Every one of these people had something that would help him defeat Gortex, something he hadn't had in their last encounter. He almost reached up to touch the scar that halfway encircled his left eye, but managed to quash the impulse before it manifested. Gorram frakker.
"As for how you can trust me, you can't. You've known me for thirty seconds. I wouldn't trust me either under those circumstances. What I would do, though, is trust that I'm not dead yet, which means that this strange half-blind human standing in front of me must have a reason to keep me alive. I may not trust that it's the reason he says it is, but if his offer is genuine, then it's a hell of a lot better than sitting in this junk heap letting my anger eat me up inside." It was fairly obvious he'd had an experience or two with anger in his admittedly short lifetime, and his single functioning eye never left Laika as he waited for her response. Could it be unsettling having a one-eyed warrior stare you down? Yeah, but he was a soldier, not a psychiatrist. He didn't have time to waste with indecision.
"As for how you can trust me, you can't. You've known me for thirty seconds. I wouldn't trust me either under those circumstances. What I would do, though, is trust that I'm not dead yet, which means that this strange half-blind human standing in front of me must have a reason to keep me alive. I may not trust that it's the reason he says it is, but if his offer is genuine, then it's a hell of a lot better than sitting in this junk heap letting my anger eat me up inside." It was fairly obvious he'd had an experience or two with anger in his admittedly short lifetime, and his single functioning eye never left Laika as he waited for her response. Could it be unsettling having a one-eyed warrior stare you down? Yeah, but he was a soldier, not a psychiatrist. He didn't have time to waste with indecision.