lays down... woodkid once again DELIVERS another banger and all i’m thinking about is how perfectly guns for hire matches 2 parts of vi’s story
1) the transitional era for vi where, after witnessing the horrors of fighting nidhogg (and watching saaral - my other wol, xaela, half-drake - violently slaughter his own grandfather) just. causes vi to leave the scions without a word. just up and fucking disappears under mysterious circumstances, hops on a boat to kugane’s ports, and when the scions finally arrive there, vi’s like. so fucking powerful, has completely changed under modern pressure to fit in, is rich as all fuck, and is a criminal. vidar died in ishgard, and vi was born in kugane. he’s conniving, awful, a hitman, a druglord and addict, a brother manager. i mean fuck, dude, he straight up tears a man’s throat open with his teeth in the middle of the dori markets.......... and feasts upon his aether in front of everyone. he’s a fucking monster.
2) the era for vi where, after he deals with hades, vi finally settles into his... hollowness. the depression, the makeup that doesn’t hide the bags under his eyes anymore, the want for needless bloodshed to stop but doing what he has to do. he’s in recovery, likely under heavy surveillance, won’t even look at the scions, answer questions. after all, he can’t face them after he abandoned them, then outright betrayed them, even tried to thwart their plans and potentially kill them. he was manipulated by emet so easily, as the man was vi’s first... real romantic interest (as ugly as their ‘relationship’ was). best way to describe vi at this point is a dead man walking, knowing he can’t return to the scions but also knowing he has no home in kugane anymore either. he doesn’t want forgiveness, can try to right his wrongs, but lord is he tired of the killing. going into endwalker, he wants to finish what needs to be done: a vigilante, an anti-hero. the only one he wants to kill is fandaniel, but zenos... he’ll go into that fight knowing he can’t let zenos live, but also being okay with the idea that they take each other out.