Once Upon A Time

    Once upon a time Number 2 tried to make Number 6 kill, to kill him in fact. This took place during a fencing match, Number 2 tried his level best to make Number 6 kill him, but he couldn’t do it, causing only a flesh wound to Number 2’s shoulder. It might be asked why Number 2 was attempting to turn Number 6 into a killer, perhaps that’s what he wanted to turn 6 into a killer, an assassin. Although this Number 2 failed to make Number 6 kill. One of his predecessors was actually successful in that regard. They put Number 6 in a dangerous environment, an American frontier town in the 1800’s. The Man With No Name was made town Sheriff of Harmony, he may have agreed to wear a badge, but it took more then good old fashioned brute force to make him wear a gun. In fact it took the murder of Cathy to make Number 6 put on a gun and face the Kid in a gun fight. The result being the Kid had been gunned down and left for dead in the street, lying in the dirt! Okay, the Kid had been nothing but a cardboard cut out, and the killing only in Number 6’s mind, but Number 2 had made Number 6 kill! So if that is what Number 2 in ‘Once Upon A Time’ was trying to do, he failed, where as one of his successor had already succeeded. But what about ‘The Girl Who Was Death,’ Number 6 killed both Schnipps, the Girl, and a number of Schnipps’ henchmen when he sabotaged the rocket, making it explode! If that episode was a window into his former life, then ZM73 was a trained killer, not a 00, but working for British Intelligence nonetheless. He may not have liked killing, he may have used it only as a last resort, but ZM73 was capable of killing the same as anyone else. But that doesn’t answer the question of why Number 2 was trying to make Number 6 kill. And if he had killed Number 2, what then? Number 6 and the Butler sealed in the Embryo Room with a corpse until the time lock released the door! Number 2 said Number 6 had killed in the war, which war had that been? Certainly not WWII, Number 6 would have been a boy then, and still at school, but he would have been old enough even for the Korean War. I suppose they had to have Number 6 having fought in “a” war so to fit in with the soldier of Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Man.” So perhaps in ‘Living In Harmony’ The Man with No Name, as a sheriff, he had become tired of killing and so refused to wear a gun again, expect in exceptional circumstances. And according to ‘Once Upon A time,’ having killed so many in the war being in a bomber crew, he had had a stomach full of killing, and so refused to kill again. But that still doesn’t answer the question of why Number 2 wanted to make Number 6 kill! Perhaps as one Mr. Anonymous suggested in a comment, Number 2 was turning Number 6 into a killer, an assassin in order to kill/assassinate Number 1!

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