The Official Bad Puns Topic

"I know of a beast capable of this." He raised his head and stared, as if he could see the moon shining clearly through the building in front of him. "It will kill many more families, just like this, exactly like this, without stopping."
He looked back down at the child. "That is, unless somebody stops it."
The boy asked him, "Can't you do something about it? Can't you kill it?"
The man looked pensive for a moment. "I could do something about it. But not without a price. You'd have to owe me a favor, and I would be obligated to call it in someday. A long time from now, perhaps, or maybe tomorrow."
He looked the boy in the eyes as he said this.
"What kind of favor?" The boy asked slowly.
The man shrugged. "About the same thing you're asking, I suppose. I may need your help killing a monster someday."
The boy thought about it. "Can I have conditions?"
The man smiled at him, and the boy instantly regretted asking. "I'm flexible."
The boy forged ahead, saying, "Only if it's actually killed people, and not one of those fake kinds of saying somebody killed someone by making them real sad or getting them into an accident, and only if I'm actually able to kill it, say, when I'm at least eighteen."
The boy had barely finished speaking before the man said, "Done and done. Now, do we have a deal? I haven't got all night." He held out his hand.
The boy waited a moment, thinking. "The less monsters in the world, the better, whoever kills them." He shook the hand. "Deal. Now, can you go kill it now?"
"Me? No. It's not my place." The man grinned, showing his teeth, as the boy opened his mouth to call him a liar. "You can, though. I can help you."
The boy blinked. "Uh, how? I'm ten years old. He'd just stomp me flat without thinking."
The man chuckled softly. "Trust me on this; he wouldn't."
He drew an oversized revolver from a hidden holster in the folds of his coat and showed it to the boy.
"Not when he sees you holding this. This can kill him, and he knows it. You may even have to chase him." His grin grew even wider as he watched the boy's expression change from awe to dumbfoundedness to plain disbelief.
The boy shook his head. "I couldn't even hold that thing."
"Could, too. Here."
With that, the man tossed the gun to the boy, who caught in his chest and sat down sharply, before holding it up by the grip in puzzlement.
"It doesn't weigh anything. Are there even bullets in it?"
When there was no answer, the boy looked up. The stranger had disappeared, and where the townhouses and dimly lit street had been was a grandiose manor house with a front parking lot that was bigger around than the boy's entire home.
The man's voice sounded from the empty air: "You'll find him in there. Don't worry, he can't harm you now. I'll be wanting that gun back when you're done, by the way."
The house's front doors swung open, and the boy entered.

[He goes in, finds the monster (which may or may not be, but probably is, a werewolf), the monster freaks out when it sees him, and the boy follows it through the house and eventually shoots it with the gun and kills it. The boy then turns to head for the front door, just to find himself back in front of the townhouse. The man holds his hand out for the gun, the boy gives it back, and we fade to black.
That is that character's origin story, and it's told around the same time we meet him (?); he's a werewolf hunter now, and has his own guns and silver bullets and whatnot.
Several books later, the character is forced to become a werewolf himself for some reason or other, and goes out to hunt down some asshole or other in a big-ass house. A coupla minutes in, he hears something behind him and looks to see the ghost of himself as a child. Realizing what's going down, he flees and seeks out his target to kill it before the ghost kills him. He's not even too worried about it, because knowing how werwolves inevitably go insane (?), all he can look forward to is getting his own ass put down. Whether he succeeds or not, the ghost boy gets him as fated.
What's happened is that, although the boy's loved one(s) were killed by... something, the dude in the origin (who, as is obvious by this point, can both see the future and fuck around with it) sent him to kill "a beast capable of this." Thus, they might not even have been killed by a werewolf.