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Frontier Town Traveller's Haus - Guest Rooms

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Andre raised a hoof. "That is... appreciated, thank you, but it's more that he's... well, he said that if I don't tell people, he's going to. And he's surely gonna make it sound worse."

Oh boy. He sure sounded like the victim here. Dave had to be be thinking this was something completely mundane.

Andre cleared his throat. Better just put his plan in motion. "So... you know that people can be pretty bad, right? Like, hurt other people for their personal gain, or just out of hatred or a feeling of supremacy?"

He waited for Dave's response, watching closely for his reaction.
 
Jesus Christ. Ridley'd threatened him into this? He was about to tell Andre that look, no, that was some creepy fucking blackmail and he would personally get up in Ridley's face about it and possibly have a word with Betel about what the fuck, but Andre kept going before he had the chance.

Dave peered at him. "Okay. And what, Ridley's got you convinced you're a bad person because of whatever thoughtcrimes he saw in the dungeon?"
 
Oh boy. Yeah. This was where it would all go downhill.

Maybe it was just better to get it over with.

"I killed some people back home," Andre said, quickly. "But they were abusers and rapists and pedophiles a-and bigots, too. Scumbags! They deserved it. I made sure with my aura sense, they didn't regret a thing. They deserved it."

He couldn't meet Dave's eyes. His heart was beating in his throat. In seconds' time, he'd get to hear it all over again. What a monster he was.
 
Dave stared at him. What. What. What in the name of fuck.

At the first sentence he'd thought Andre was joking or exaggerating or something, that he was just blaming himself for something for no good reason, but no, then came the justifications. Abusers and rapists and pedophiles and bigots - each of those words in the fucking plural. How many fucking people was he talking about? Was Andre, this baby deer with enormous eyes looking away guiltily like Jean when she'd broken a plate, some kind of vigilante fucking serial killer?

It sure explained the reaction when he'd brought up the police. The experience with criminals. Why he'd seemed so weirdly fucking normal in this group of larger-than-life weirdos tangled up with dark shit. It didn't explain why in God's name Betel would bring him here.

His skin tingled hot and cold at the same time, his pulse racing uncomfortably, a strange stickiness in this throat. "The fuck?"

His voice came out cracked and unsteady.
 
While it may have been better than being chewed out right away, Andre still didn't know if he liked the fact that Dave's reaction was so vague. He could tell already that it was not positive, but the extent of Dave's disgust was yet to be revealed. And Andre would have to pry for it. Like digging into a corpse to find the gallbladder.

Gods, what an incredibly macabre simile. Fits a psychopath like you.

"Okay, so," Andre started, stealing glances at Dave and getting singed with every look, "can already see you're not a fan. That's fine. However... i-is it really so bad? I mean, I'm doing this to protect my community. And I really, really make sure that they deserve it before I do it. I'm not some kind of... slasher villain here. I don't..." Well. First lie incoming. But he lied about it to Ridley already, it was fine. "I don't like doing it. It's just something I have to do."

Andre knew that he should look Dave in the eyes when he said this, to seem like he was telling the truth. It was easy with Ridley, since he had little respect for Ridley, but Dave had an authority to him. Andre forced himself to meet Dave's eyes and held the gaze no matter how the judgment burned him.
 
God, Dave wished Andre would stop talking. Every godforsaken fucking rationalization was making this so much worse. It'd be one thing if he had the decency to be remorseful about it. Instead he was here still going on about is it really so bad and protecting his community. Fuck.

"Oh, you have to," he said, his voice still not sounding right. "Great. So you're a sheltered twentysomething artist living off your rich parents' money, in a modern civil society that sounds pretty much like mine give or take a few sapient Pokémon, and because bad people exist and you want to protect your community, you've decided to appoint yourself and your magic mumbo-jumbo sense judge, jury and executioner? No possible way there could be anything slightly fucking dodgy about this?"

The Deerling hadn't moved, other than to finally look him in the eye. Dave glanced at the door. Andre was here because he'd made a promise to Ridley. Ridley was still alive, right? He would've heard about it if Ridley was fucking dead, murdered by a homicidal deer who'd decided he deserved it? Betel, please fucking tell me this lunatic you summoned didn't murder Ridley.
 
'Sheltered twentysomething artist living off your rich parents' money'. Shit, Andre didn't think Dave would go there. He'd been prepared to hear that he was a monster - well, he wasn't prepared, really - but his financial situation? Damn. So it really was as bad as Andre had feared.

But he couldn't dwell on that. He had to make his case.

"Yeah, yeah, I know how it sounds," he said, unable to stop himself from sounding offended. "If I heard anyone else tell me they did that, I wouldn't trust them to be doing it right either. But I can't hide behind what it sounds like as an excuse not to do it. I can't just sit idly by when women are being beaten and children are being groomed and I have the power to stop it." He was getting riled up now. The anger restored his confidence. He was in the right here, goddamn it. He wouldn't have done all this if he wasn't.
 
Butterfree said:
Betel, please fucking tell me this lunatic you summoned didn't murder Ridley.
Click to expand...

Ridley is currently alive and well, Dave.​
​
On Forlas, specifically – not his homeworld! That is to say, he has yet to be murdered.​
​
He might never be murdered, in fact—!​
​
...Ah, please excuse me, I am not at ease with this topic... ​
 
canisaries said:
"Yeah, yeah, I know how it sounds," he said, unable to stop himself from sounding offended. "If I heard anyone else tell me they did that, I wouldn't trust them to be doing it right either. But I can't hide behind what it sounds like as an excuse not to do it. I can't just sit idly by when women are being beaten and children are being groomed and I have the power to stop it." He was getting riled up now. The anger restored his confidence. He was in the right here, goddamn it. He wouldn't have done all this if he wasn't.
Click to expand...
"So you want to do something about it, and the first thing you think of doing about it is fucking murder?"

Great. Yeah, he should've just gone and shot Isaac Daniels. Problem fucking solved. That's how you make the world better, just murder all the scumbags. Nobody left but people who love Pokémorphs. Happy, idyllic fucking future.

Betel's answer was awkward as ever, but it did sound like he hadn't killed Ridley. Dave took a breath. So Ridley found out, and... he just wanted him to tell more people about it? What a weird-ass fucking demand.

"Like, it sounds like you've got police over there," he said. "You're telling me there's nothing you could've done to report these fuckers' domestic violence or child grooming or whatever the fuck short of personally going vigilante? Nothing you could've done to, I don't know, help the victims get away from them? Christ. Appointing yourself the moral authority on who deserves to live or die is the first sign that you're a fucking lunatic who should not be trusted with moral authority on anything. Last guy I knew who thought he was blessed with moral authority from on high tried to shoot me and kidnapped one of my kids and shot another one three times in the back of the fucking head."

(And then Gabriel had roasted him to death, and he'd fucking deserved it.)

Seething anger had crept into his voice, shaking again after he'd steadied it. His pulse still pounded in his veins, throbbing with stings of Radiance. What the fuck was this conversation? Why was Andre like this?
 
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Andre let Dave speak freely, even though he wanted to interject at many points. His anger, though, was rising further.

Once Dave was done, Andre spoke again. "I'm sorry that happened to you," he said - he really was - "but I can't be scared off from acting by concerns of going too far. And the police? The justice system? See these people get convicted, if that would even happen, and get sentenced to, what, a couple of years? That's not good enough. These aren't the kinds of criminals that will straighten themselves out. Once they get out, they'll just keep hurting more people. Maybe go back to their last victim and show them what for. No, these people need to be removed. They deserve to die - they deserve that and worse."

Hopefully Dave wouldn't ask what that 'worse' was. Ridley probably wouldn't accept him lying about that. Omitting, however, might be fine.
 
Oh yeah, he was sorry that happened to him. He didn't sound very fucking sorry.

"Yeah, bet that guy would've also said he 'couldn't be scared off from acting by concerns of going too far'. Newsflash, random assholes just deciding to murder anyone they think deserves it isn't a sustainable way to build a society. You think they deserve death 'and worse'? What's that supposed to mean?"
 
Well, there was that cold creeping in again. The thought that he was in the wrong. The thought that he'd always been in the wrong. That he never should have killed anyone, never should have even paid for a hit on the scumfuck that extorted Ellie.

But no, how could that be? How could he be in the wrong? The people he killed were simply evil. They deserved what was coming their way. Dave didn't, Dave's children didn't. The responsibility for realizing that was on the person that came after him. People couldn't be told not to act drastically for good causes as a whole. That was how fascists rose to power and maintained it.

Right now, though, Dave had asked about the 'worse'. Andre would have to tell him. But he didn't need to be specific. Maybe Dave would get the picture with a vague enough answer and wouldn't demand Andre to confess to gruesome sadism, as Articuno had put it.

"Pain," Andre said. "They deserve pain."
 
He'd been expecting a counterargument, more rationalizations. Instead, all Andre said was that they deserved pain.

Dave stared at him for a nauseating second. Isaac had suffered as he'd died, roasted like in the Hell he believed in, and it was self-defense but the fucker had fucking deserved it-- "So that's what you do? You make this whole noble consequentialist argument about how it's all about getting them off the streets, making sure they don't hurt more people, but you think they deserve pain, so, what? You torture them first? Kill them slowly?"
 
Dave's stomach twisted in revulsion. He stared back at Andre, this little deer half his fucking height admitting to murder and torture without remorse. This entire fucking situation was absurd.

"So then it's not about getting them off the fucking streets at all, is it? It's not about how they'll get out in two years and hurt more people. It's about you and satisfying your own personal sadistic fucking justice fantasies. If that's what it is, then just fucking admit it."
 
Andre would have felt wounded. Andre would have felt like it was a deep stab into the very core of his being with a spear wrapped in barbed wire. Andre would have begun to break, his innermost doubts pouring out of the cracks of the barriers he'd built around that condensed little ball of fear that he was someone - something - terrible.

But he didn't. No, that entire construct in his mind was invisible, intangible now, like it had never existed.

Andre knew nothing about the glow that ignited in his eyes, and he was deaf to the thrumming in his words to follow.

"I am not a sadist," he said loudly. "I do what I do because it is the right thing to do. It is not a fantasy of justice, it is the truest form of it. It is the righteous order of things my world desperately lacks, and I am its deliverance."

He wasn't a monster. He was a good person. He was a fucking hero.
 
And suddenly, Andre's eyes erupted into a glow of Radiance, his voice reverberating with the familiar buzz as he declared himself the truest form of justice.

"Jesus Christ," Dave said, ears flattening, hackles rising as he backed away. "Do you even fucking hear yourself? You even sound like a religious nut. Like an unhinged megalomaniac with a fucking god complex."

Unconsciously, he'd bared his teeth in a snarl. His heart raced, his voice off again. He took another glance at the door. Andre was smaller than him, this was ludicrous, if he tried anything he'd fucking get him first.
 
For a little deer, the sight of a predator baring its fangs would never fail to bring a surge of adrenaline. That hormone, combined with growing Radiance, was a volatile combination.

But it did not combust. It was close, but mercifully just short of it. A sudden wave of cool self-reflection came next, dampening the gunpowder. Andre replayed what had just happened in his mind and came to the conclusion that the most urgent thing to do right now was to calm down.

He looked past Dave and managed his breathing. He'd rarely had to do this before in his human life, but he'd guided enough of his friends through the process of grounding to know how to do it. Did he do it well? He didn't know, but it helped, at least a little.

"Let's be smart about this," he said, looking back at Dave. He spoke slowly now, more quietly than before, and the glow in his eyes was dimming. Gods, had someone overheard him when he was announcing himself as the deliverance of true justice? "Fighting isn't going to benefit anyone. What we need to do is just let it go, both of us."

Even if Andre was right. Ugh, fuck. He could be mad about it later.

"I need to know something before I leave, though," he said. "Are you going to tell the others about this?"
 
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