LogFAQs > #907663533

Enoch was the one who finished coming over and took a knee beside the downed man. He looked up at Torin and gave him a nod, then back down to Owen. "Let me ask you a question, are you planning to kill us as soon as this guy lets go of you?"

The pressure on Owen was released slightly. He gave a quick and thankful release of air. Then he looked up at Enoch by craning his neck, while still forced into the prone position. "N-No..." At that time, honestly, he was feeling like he had been forced pretty far. Maybe almost forced too far.

Owen somehow knew there was a part of himself that would have lashed out if Aaron had kept driving him into a corner. And yet now that the pressure had been relieved, he felt his timid self returning. The one who felt like, even if he wanted to reply something like 'If you throw me to the ground like that again you're going to get hurt,' instead he found himself unable to make that kind of bold threat. "I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't even know how, r-really."

"But is it true what he said?" Enoch asked. "Did you see something? Some kind of... creature? Did it give you these powers?"

"There was a moth, yes," Owen answered after some slight hesitation. It gave that power to Punch, and Punch had given it to him and Tristan. But now Owen was the only one left. He knew that if he told them this, they'd begin to suspect who else might have been infected. In order to keep things simple, he fudged the details a bit. "I got this power from the moth."

"I'm not sure if we can trust the bug, but it's not here right now either," Enoch concluded, looking back up at the boss. "As for this guy... he doesn't seem to me like he's lying."

Aaron scowled. "I really don't think this is a good idea."

The birds truly never stopped shrieking when Kidd was around.

"It wasn't a good idea for you to press the situation like that without warning," Kidd noted, sounding agitated. Whether that was with Aaron or with the sounds in his head, he couldn't say. But he did snap. "But here we are." It almost annoyed him that he thought Aaron might be right. They might be about to die in just a few moments. But, in the end, that was only going to happen because Aaron had attacked this guy first.

Intend to go back alive? What kind of stupid plan was this? All he'd done is take an unneeded risk that might have gotten them all killed.

Kidd wanted to close his eyes and think about Susal before he died. At the same time, he wanted them open in case something did happen. Maybe he'd be able to draw his gun fast enough to do something about it. Unlikely, but maybe. Throwing away his only means of defense seemed ludicrous in a situation with this much tension.

There was a crunching sound as Leone chewed on some fried vegetables. Then he looked back at the others, who had all gathered around the captured Owen. "Honestly... Aaron, wasn't it?" Leone waited for an affirming nod. "This isn't Pelengreer anymore. Sorry to say it but we do things differently here. And I don't know anything about this Blight King or these Psionics, but I can say for sure that I've never seen Owen do anything suspicious yet."

"It's entirely possible that his power, and his motives, are different from what you know," Torin concluded, adding to that. "You're in a different place now. The war is over."

Aaron knew that, too.

The field was empty now. All those corpses, all that death, and the fighting had just stopped.

Then why did he sometimes feel like the fighting was still going on...?
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