Spirale is different in many ways to both the bad old days and the complicated middle period: unless he slips his skin, people don't pale at the sight of him, here, don't react with fear or anger or suspicion at his (deserved) reputation alone. So it's almost refreshingly mundane (heh) to meet a hostile figure, to see a weapon pointed at him and realize that it's out of nothing more than a natural paranoia.
He'll admit to being little impressed, too, even somehow bizarrely pleased by the gesture even as it sets off the echo of an old, tired ache. People around here don't listen to their instincts enough.
Still, he doesn't actually mean any harm, his capabilities for inflicting it aside, and much as that gun looks like a standard-issue newcomer's BB in the reflected glare of the streetlight, a pellet to the eye would probably still hurt like no one's business. Especially if someone's thought to start making them in silver.
Deescalation, then. Bigby raises his hands, slowly but with an affected casual air. "Ignoring 'someone like you' for a minute, I could say the same thing about y -"
The shadowy shape that has been slowly approaching - that Bigby had noticed and dismissed as typical inexplicable Spirale canine behaviour - crosses some invisible line.
Heat, near-scorching, long-cooled. The eerie, anticipatory near-silence of night in the desert. Something wild, yes, but patient and waiting, unhurried, content not to hunt but simply to watch its prey's slow, inexorable march towards its open maw. Papyrus, and ink, and a sharp tang of brass and lifesblood. The stale, dusty scent of bones in an old, cold tomb.
And something looming - something scorching - something indescribable - something he can never forget, no matter how far he runs.
"Which one are you," snarls the spawn of the North Wind at the god in his midst. (Some part of him already knows.)
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