LogFAQs > #907663403

Within an instant Owen was face first on the ground. Aaron pushed against the back of Owen's skull, grinding his eyes into the stone floor, and flexed his powerful arms as he held him in place.

"Before we begin I want you to understand something," Aaron said with a level tone. "My fingers are pressed against the back of your brain already. If I punch forward with just a bit of force I'll kill or severely main you, crippling your mind permanently and leaving you an empty shell."

"So if you're thinking about doing anything extreme, even if that would only take a few seconds to enact..." Aaron's mouth twisted into a scowl. "Don't. It's not worth the risk. I can kill you faster."

"I know I can." That might have been a bluff but Aaron sounded very certain and very confident.

While this was happening, everyone had already risen to their feet. Well, everyone except for Leone. Leone was sitting there seemingly unaffected, prodding at a piece of sausage with the fork that he was awkwardly trying to wield in one hand. Then, once he skewered it, he looked up at the two. "Well, this is a bizarre turn of events," the catlike rogue muttered.

Zephyr's tail was swaying. He stood there perched on the top of the wagon, an arrow drawn. It was hard to say if that was pointed at Aaron or at Owen right now. It was hard to say if even Zephyr himself knew the answer to that.

Enoch moved into a position to get closer to Aaron. But he wasn't holding his weapon and he kept his arms to the side and with his palms facing forward. "Do you mind telling us what you're doing, Aaron?" Enoch asked. "I can't imagine that you're attacking this guy for no reason."

Jamison adjusted his broken frames, with the lenses now missing, and said nothing. He squinted at the situation unfolding before him.

"Before I begin," Aaron said, "let me tell you a bit about myself."

"I was born in Pelengreer and drafted into the army at a very young age. Spent years staying in supply camps or sleeping in ditches on the edge of battlefields. I remember a few that went into stalemate for months, and we never got to get out of those ditches until the siege broke. It's pretty fair to say I'm a tenacious bastard. But I'm also well trained and I don't often make mistakes. I would have died long ago if that was the case."

Make mistakes? What did that have to do with anything? Kidd just moved his eyebrow slightly, made a weird expression with his mouth, he was sure (Susal would have told him how foolish he looked right now), and he kept watching. It was clear that Aaron was working his way toward some kind of point.

"And I can tell you right now that based on what I saw yesterday, there's a good chance this guy might be our enemy." Aaron shook his head. "No, it's more fitting to say... if I take my hand off the back of his skull, he will likely kill us all instantly."

"That's a bold claim to make," Leone noted.

"I know I'm not the only one who saw it," Aaron went on. "Those things came out of his head, right? And the enemy seemed to be getting affected by whatever he was doing. Do you think that kind of power is natural? How different do you think it is from what we're going to find down in this pit below us?"

Leone twiddled the fork in his hand, practicing on balancing it and twirling it between his fingers. It was relatively clumsy compared to how Leone carried himself, but it seemed naturally dexterous as compared to the average person with no training.

"But that's not all," Kidd concluded. "You're saying that you don't make mistakes, right? So this is based on something you've seen before?"
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~* Now I only see your dull imposter ~*
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