It’s not like I can just say ‘Oh, I’m so sorry for all of that! Actually it was my evil twin/mom who did all of that in my body, not me! So the two of us aren’t enemies at all~!’, right? No one would ever believe that!!! It would 100% just sound like I’m dodging responsibility! I’ll end up sounding like some kind of untrustworthy deadbeat!

  Well… But what else do I have left to say, though…?

  =Um… I’m sorry for all of that. I wasn’t… myself when I was doing it. But I’ve changed! I’m a changed pnt! I’m a pnt that doesn’t want to fight you anymore!=

  The wolf-dragon eyed me over looking completely like he didn’t believe me, so I guess my words came out sounding just as untrustworthy as I’d feared, huh?

  I panicked for a moment in the silence, but considering he wasn’t making any strange moves and truly seemed like he was willing to talk to me right now, I decided it would be okay to release his mouth from my hold. It would be a pain if he decided to bite my head off again, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world, really. What’s one repceable head in exchange for peace talks, am I right? That zer of his that it looked like he almost used might be a problem, though. If he decided to try and use that, then I might just have to go back to muzzling him again!

  Well, if he tries anything funny, I can just remind him of these two little hostages that I have over here, now can’t I?

  He watched my tentacles as they slithered slowly away from him, but the wolf-dragon didn’t seem to make a single move to bite or zer me, so I think we’re really making progress. And since I freed his mouth, shouldn’t we naturally continue talking? With all this uneasy silence, a few ideas have popped into my head, you know? And now that I’ve reminded myself about these hostages that I have, I’m starting to feel a little like I can get away with a bit more than I previously thought I could, at least as far as talking is concerned.

  =...You know, I don’t agree with what I did, but it’s not like you guys are completely innocent either! Your side did their share of violence against our people too! And what about all my siblings that you’ve had to kill while stealing our territory from us?!=

  Oops, okay, maybe I’m getting a bit too impassioned here! These are supposed to be peace talks, not accusations!

  “I agree that we are also not without bme… However, we were simply doing what we must to survive.”

  Oh wow, okay, so maybe I was wrong! Maybe airing out your grievances or whatever is how this is supposed to go…? But wait, I don’t like what he said! ‘We did what we must to survive'? He’s saying there was no other choice, so they had to take our nd?! They had to kill or forcefully assimite our people to survive?! That doesn’t sound true at all!

  What, are he and mom the same person or something?! Why is everyone’s excuse that there was no other option?! Did no one ever tell these people that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind?! Why does it keep devolving into this stupid argument?!

  =...Why do you think that way?=

  That question took everything out of me not to shout in the stupid dog’s face. Really, I wanted to scream and smack him and use violence to get him to open his dumb Avatar eyes to the truth! But I’m a big and important pnt right now, and these are peace talks, peace talks, you hear me?! Talk is in the name! If there’s still room for talking, then we gotta talk first! It’s the rules!!!

  Honestly, it’s incredible that I’m even thinking like this right now. When I first got strong and came over to the Wind territory, my whole pn for fixing things had really just been to eat everyone, you know? Just like always, I was gonna solve all problems with consumption. I figured if I just ate all the people from the Wind and Fire territories then it would magically save the forest. I truly thought that way, without a single thought for any of the innocent people, just trying to live their lives, that I might have eaten along the way.

  Thinking back on it, I wasn’t any better than mom, if that was what I was pnning.

  No wonder she only stepped in to take over when I suddenly deviated from that pn.

  But you know what? For once, I don’t think this is something that can be solved by eating everyone! Mom showed me that the hard way… She showed me how wrong all of this was. And now, I’m going to do everything that I can to solve this the right way, like she wasn’t willing to.

  Maybe mom’s circumstances sucked to learn about, but they really helped to know before I tried to convince her of anything, right? So if I wanna show this dog how absolutely horrendously wrong his actions are, then I guess I should know where he’s coming from too. Was this just another stupid use of mom’s shitty excuse, or is there really more to the story that I don’t know?

  If I’m gonna be the pnt of love and justice that this forest needs, then I’m gonna have to be a bit more thorough before I decide to bite someone’s head off!

  The wolf-dragon kept his head firmly facing towards me, looking somehow defiant, but I could see his partially hidden eyes darting around the pce, constantly looking at his people and his comrades with a huge amount of worry and love.

  “...The nds we were created in cannot sustain us. They are harsh and unforgiving nds, nds not suitable for any kind of life. What small sanctuaries we’ve found are quickly being overcrowded, and what meager food we can manage to grow can’t feed all of the hungry. My people are living terrible lives, a majority of us being forced to become homeless and starving… Our merciful Spirit was saddened by our plight and could no longer watch us live in such conditions, not when there’s open, fertile nd that could save our people here.”

  Yeah, that story pretty much matches up with what the town’s leader or whatever he was told mom in the fshback. Totally makes sense as a motivation too, really. Makes them sound sooo pitiful~. But you know, now that I’m hearing it directly from the horse’s (wolf-dragon’s) mouth, I have a few questions that I’d like to have answered. Like for instance-!

  =So it was the Wind Spirit that told you to come here and invade?=

  This is a really important point to establish, at least in my opinion! I don’t think this particur piece of information was mentioned in the fshback at all! If it was specifically the Spirit’s advice to do this, rather than just the arbitrary decision of a bunch of starving people, then that would drastically change my pns; I doubt it would be easy to convince this ‘Wind Spirit’s Avatar’ that the words of his god-thing should just be ignored, after all.

  “Yes. The Fire Spirit’s territory couldn’t be considered, as it's not suitable for our kind, so we turned to the Forest and Water Spirits instead. But when the Wind Spirit looked to the other Spirits for help and guidance, they unmercifully refused. You can see now why this war was the only choice we had left if we wanted to survive.”

  Ah okay, so they asked for a peaceful solution and were turned down, I see. Honestly, if they started this war for survival instead of their egos, then I really don’t know how I’m gonna-

  [Let me crify something for you, child.]

  Huh? …Forest Spirit, is that you? You were listening this whole time…?

  [Yes, of course I was. And I must say, I dislike this Avatar’s phrasing! The Wind may have come to Water and I, but we weren’t asked for ‘help’; We were asked to hand over swaths of our nd to them!]

  Whaaat, like for free? Did the Spirit not offer any other kind of compensation or anything? Or like even a trade or something?

  [Pffft… Even if they had, we wouldn’t have accepted. The Wind’s nds hold nothing that would sway us.]

  Oh… So basically you’re saying that those negotiations were going to fail from the start. Gotcha.

  Heyyy, wait a minute! This brings up another one of my questions!

  =Okay, so your people were starving and homeless… But why couldn’t you just send some people here and not take the nd for the Wind Spirit? Why did it have to be colonized so you guys could live here?=

  I mean, maybe it would be a little impossible (or at least very very uncomfortable) for him and me, since we both have cores embedded in us and serve our respective Spirits, but from what I’ve been told, the average core-less person wouldn’t feel the uncomfortable feeling that you get from being in another Spirit’s territory, not even if they were actively worshiping a certain Spirit like mom was! So then why didn’t they just send those advanced parties to find some pces to live and leave it at that? Maybe the Forest Spirit would have taken a little bit of offense, but I’m sure it would have been less offensive than literally stealing its nds from it!

  For the first time, the wolf-dragon in front of me looked a bit ashamed, and his eyes that had been looking around at his people suddenly shifted to look down towards his still trapped paws.

  “...My people aren’t allowed to live outside of the Wind Spirit’s territory… The Wind Spirit has decreed it so.”

  Whaaaat? Are you seriously telling me that the Wind Spirit said that to them?! The same Wind Spirit that was supposedly ‘saddened by their plight’?!