Dying for a cause was as good as throwing your life away. A waste. The only way to live was to live for yourself, and that included shedding the other ties that burdened you. There were so many potential ways to fuck with people under the guise of a cause that it wasn't even funny. People became pawns, or worse. Takasugi was a new one. It'd be the first time he'd seen someone operating under a cause like this. It sounded like there was some personal history, outside of that desire for blood. In a way Sanzo could understand wanting to take things into your own hands (hell, he'd been in the middle of doing it on the way West), but there'd be a time when it was over, you had to stop. And Takasugi'd made it clear that there wouldn't be any such end.

"Letting myself be a pawn has no worth to me," Sanzo corrected. Although from what he could see from Takasugi, he was no more a pawn than he was. Instead, he'd made his cause into one for his own personal desires. "I'm talking about the fact that you're hiding behind this 'cause': if you think you're doing it for any noble reasons, that's a load of shit right there. You're saying that even if these people you're going against were to die, you'd keep doing the same shit, even if there wasn't any more need for that cause of yours. You can't go back."

Takasugi was moving. Sanzo'd taken several steps back unconsciously, instinctively; he'd been paying attention to that hypothetical situation he'd posed that he hadn't realized he'd moved in response. Through sheer will, Sanzo stopped himself. His hand shifted on the gun. The man was getting closer, and Sanzo didn't like it. He didn't like the way the man was trying to figure him out.

"Threatening means nothing," he'd seen plenty of threatens, empty ones and real ones. "If you did make a move, I'd have to kill you."