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Frontier Town Traveller's Haus - Guest Rooms

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And just like that, Andre was back to appearing jarringly normal, as if it had never happened. Dave's hackles were still up, feet backed up against the wall.

"And what, you're going to kill me if I do?" His heart pounded sickeningly in his chest. "If you're liable to just go out there and merrily murder and torture people, then yeah, I'm telling people to stay the fuck away."
 
Andre's jaw tensed, and the radiance threatened to return. This was bullshit. No one could handle the truth - two examples already showed that - so no one should be told.

Still, there wasn't a single fiber in Andre's body that wanted to kill Dave. Dave was still a good person. Not evil, at the very least. Andre would never kill someone like that.

"No. I won't kill you if you tell the others," he explained, forcing himself to stay calm. "Just like I haven't killed Ridley for extorting me. I don't target people who don't hurt others. You haven't hurt anyone to my knowledge, and I don't think you will. So trust me, you're safe." Andre spat the last word. It was a joke. A spiteful joke about him being such a massive psychopath that he would actually go around telling people whether they were safe from him or not. Though Andre didn't know if Dave would pick up on that. Probably wouldn't. Fucking whatever.
 
Dave took a breath, eyes still on Andre. Yeah. He hadn't killed Ridley, had he. Whatever warped sense of justice Andre had going on, it didn't include murdering people to shut them up. Small comforts. Even though, in the ostensibly consequentialist framing, it'd be only fucking logical, wouldn't it.

"Are you going to kill anyone else out there? Wayfarers, locals?"

And that was about it for what even made sense to ask about. He couldn't control what would happen when Andre was back in his home universe. Hell, Andre wouldn't even remember whatever happened here. No hope anything would change on that front. He'd keep killing and torturing and there was nothing anyone in Forlas could do about it.
 
"No," Andre said. "Not only do I not know how I would even go about it, I don't have the resources or aura sense here that I have back home, so I wouldn't get enough insight into a potential target to judge them reliably." He paused. "Then again, if it's someone like Alexander - and it isn't the express wish of the Wayfarers to take him in alive - yeah, I'd kill him. Not that I honestly think that choice would fall on me."

It may have been smarter to leave that addendum out when the goal was to convince Dave he wasn't a threat to other people, but Andre supposed it was the lingering radiance in him that had loosened his lips.
 
Dave shuddered, looking away. He wouldn't lose any sleep over someone killing the nightmare demon dragon who was fixing to take over the world. At that point they were off in fantasyland anyway, fighting monsters. Being Andre would just make it worse, because then it'd come with all this fucking baggage.

He exhaled. Andre'd said all that shit about justice while hopped up on Radiance, like he actually fucking believed it. "You really think you're doing this to make your world a better place?"
 
"Of course," Andre said. "The thing that makes me seek out new targets over and over again is my wish to see justice realized and my sense of duty. Nothing else."

That was true. While the intense fear of a human being who knew they were going to die was very pleasing to Andre's aura sense, it had never been a factor in his decision to execute someone. And it never would be. If it was, Andre would really be the monster Ridley and Dave saw.

"So... again," he said. "Are you going to tell the others?"
 
Dave looked stiffly back at Andre. The guy was obviously fucking delusional in the worst way. He deserved to get caught and rot in jail for it. He sought out targets. He justified himself with lofty consequentialism while clearly motivated to torture by some weird fucking sadist impulse for retributive justice, the kind of impulse normal people didn't fucking act on.

And whenever he went home, now or later, he'd keep doing it. Until then, one way or another, Dave actually fucking believed him.

"If it matters, I'll tell anyone who needs to hear it," he said. "But for now? If you're not a danger to anyone else here, I guess it doesn't."

And maybe that'd incentivize Andre to stay within the line.
 
Andre sighed, relieved. "Okay."

He thought for a moment whether he wanted to say anything more. He couldn't think of anything.

"I'll just be leaving, then," he said, walking to the door. "I'll let Ridley know about this. We'll see if he needs me to tell anyone else." He gave Dave one last look. "Bye."

He exited the room and closed the door behind him. In the hallway, he looked around for anyone that may have overhead something, but couldn't find anyone. Hopefully he hadn't shouted enough for people in the other rooms to hear him.

He shook his head. He needed to get out and go for a walk. Yeah. A walk sounded good right now.
 
Dave took a breath, finally relaxing muscles that'd been tensed since Andre's confession.

Betel summoning him here was a fucking choice. He supposed it was Andre's world that'd sent him, technically - so, what, did his universe agree that what he was doing was good and moral? What the fuck was wrong with his universe?

He wanted to keep grilling him on his justifications. Make him address the contradictions. Admit that he wasn't some grand fucking ideal of justice, whatever the fuck his Radiance was telling him. Probably he'd just run into a brick wall if he tried. But for a guy so convinced he was doing the right thing, the dissonance drove Dave fucking nuts.

(Maybe, if they talked again, he could brush off his skills at explaining morality to a moral alien.)

Slowly, he returned to the bed and picked up his book again. After about ten minutes of failing to concentrate on it over the furious arguments in the back of his head, though, he gave up, sighed, and headed out to the Zera.

God, he could use a fucking drink. Or several.

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