Break

[Shamino]

Break off just a little piece of me,
to try, to taste.
To feel, to smell before you eat it.
Take off a portion of me to display,
display me as a trophy.
And when my usefulness comes to an end,
drop me and kick me away.
Hide me under your bed,
put me into a box, like a doll, to be forgotten.
Do this, and be like them.
Turn the person you displayed so proudly into a dusted has-been,
and make the revolutionary a war-crimnial.
Take time not to be with me, but to reflect on me.
To look at me as the man that tried to do,
and not the man that did.
Why should the life of such a man,
be in the palm of one fool's hand?

[maniac___]

Because he has no choice.

[Shamino]

A man with nothing to lose is much more deadly than a man with something to gain.

[maniac___]

I would not exactly agree on that.

On one hand, a man without things to lose can afford to be more brutal, while a man with things to lose, will not risk using some methods or others.

On the other hand, a man with nothing to lose may be more careless, driven by desperation, fanatism, self destruction, while a man who has something to lose will be accurate, cautious, and attentive.

They both can be destructive, and deadly. But a man with things to lose is more cautious.

Now, a man with things to GAIN, is hardly related. I man with things to gain, comes, does the job, and gains it.
Risks are considered against rewards, but they are not compared.

[Shamino]

The man with nothing, has nothing. If he is reckless, who cares? If he dies, he dies. He has a goal, but he doesn't care if he attains it. Even if he does as much as damage as possible, when he dies, he dies. And he doesn't care. There is no sense of loss- he felt that when he lost everything.

A man with something to lose, when he does lose it, goes off the handle. Possibly to self-mutilation, destruction of others, suicide. Or shutting themselves up forever. I'd rather die acheiving a goal, and knowing that no one will be affected by my passing, than see someone die and spend the rest of my sad life holed up in my home.

[maniac___]

You are tricking yourself into a dangerous illusion of recklessness being equal to deadliness.
If you mean deadly by meaning destructive, you can sure go ahead and blow up a frag grenade in front of the business office, and kill whoever is in the way.

If you mean deadly by being precise, you would never take a metal object inside a protected building. You would take out the exact man you want to take out, through a window of a neighboring building.

A man who has nothing, doesn't have to design escape plans.

Deadly is a term that can be freely played with. Sure, you can bring more death if you do not worry about your own life, but killing someone who is protected, is not necessarily easy. Your enemy may also have protectors who have nothing to lose, and they will react, and block your way to their best ability.
Your reckless destruction will detonate on them, as you engage them, and you will fail your task.

To bypass defenses, and not detonate on them, you must act with cunning and precision, and that requires considering losses. It demands natural fear as an instinct.

The fact that you are ready to die for your cause, does not mean you will succeed.
I would say, a healthy mix between courage and caution is required to truely achieve the goal.
A real maestro will know to mix these things in good proportion, when to jump, and when to hold still, and he will have the devil's luck.

The conversation is now shifting away, however, from the subject of killing missions to a slightly more sentient one:

What is better - to die for a friend, or to see a friend die.

[Shamino]

To manipulate both parties involved so that it never comes down to having a friend in the jaws of death. Prevent the large problem from BECOMING large, by tackling it when its small.

[maniac___]

Excellent. Now you get an A.