Anger
Such a volatile thing. It rages like fire, making people do things they wouldn't do otherwise. If not regulated, one would be completely overtaken by it. At the same time, however, it is such a human emotion. It showed just how far a person would go for their own beliefs, how far a person would go to defend something. Of course, there is another side to the coin, but even that showed the variety of humanity.
Anger is often expressed to defend something, whether it be a person, a kingdom, a belief, or any of the many things out there.
Knowing this, Aries wondered:
'Is what I am feeling anger?'
If it was, was it truly the anger of humanity? No… No, it wasn't— Not in his eyes at least. He saw the emotion he was feeling as no more than the primal anger shown by beasts. He wasn't angry to defend something, nor was he angry due to something he believed in.
While he would love to think that he was feeling anger for Emmet, He had simply gotten aggressive due to these creatures invading his home. To him, this was no different from the times he defended his territory in the cosmos.
Sigh…
Looking down at the blood on his hands, he thought:
'Human emotions, will I ever truly feel them? Or even understand them?'
He turned his eyes back to normal and jumped off the rat corpses. He flashed the blood off his arms before walking through the door and heading back to the kids.
Turning the corner, he saw the purple-haired girl pacing back and forth while biting her nail, looking distressed. The other children sat against the wall, huddled together while covering their ears and keeping their eyes tightly shut.
They were definitely not expecting him to come back in one piece, if at all. Despite their beliefs, however, he came back perfectly fine, only covered in blood, which was not even his.
Hearing his footsteps, the purple-haired girl ran up to him and grabbed his shoulders and asked an onslaught of questions.
"Are you alright? Are you hurt? What happened? Did you change your mind?"
Her voice was panicked and full of worry. Each word she said came out shaky. She was about to ask another question, but paused just as she was about to. It seemed that she didn't notice the blood before, because she looked Aries up and down, then took her hands off him and looked at them.
"Wh-What is this…"
Her breath became even more shaky, and her eyes became unfocused. She backed away from Aries, her eyes not moving from her hands. Her mouth opened, as if about to scream. Noticing this, Aries wiped off the remaining blood from his hands on his pants and covered her mouth.
"Shhh… Keep quiet, we don't know if more of them are around here."
Lifting his hand from her mouth, he continued.
"Understood?"
The Girl nodded, still visibly shaken.
Using the underside of his shirt, Aries wiped off the blood from her hands. It was at this moment that the other children noticed that Aries had returned.
Instead of letting them notice the blood and react as the purple-haired girl did, Aries left them with a few words and left.
"Go to the town square, I'll meet you there."
Then he dashed off into a nearby alley. The children, confused, looked at each other. Even so, they still listened to him.
***
Aries kicked himself off a wall in the alley he dashed into, and jumped on top of the old and broken buildings.
He decided to take himself away from the kids because if they screamed due to the blood, then a swarm of those mutant rats could possibly be drawn to them. So instead of trying to keep them calm, then bringing them to the square himself, he decided it was best to leave and send them by themselves. This way, he will also be able to explore the area more to see if he can find anything.
Standing on top of the broken wall of a building, he scanned his surroundings to see if he could find anything of interest.
Not long into his scan, he found a mutant rat running in a specific direction. Since it could possibly be going to its nest, Aries decided to follow it.
He released his disguise and allowed his body to return to its true form. Spreading his two pairs of wings, he jumped off the broken wall and glided toward the rat to keep as quiet as possible, making sure to flap his wings every now and again to keep airborne.
Now that he was in the air, he could truly see the state the area was in. There were little to no buildings intact, and the ones that were, were on the verge of collapsing. Garbage was littered everywhere, as well as the occasional corpse. The people all looked like walking corpses; some were no different from corpses, completely unable to move.
Strangely enough, though, there weren't as many people here as he thought; in fact, there were barely any at all.
'How strange.'
Lios was a small town in comparison to other places, or so he's heard, but it was still quite large, and while Lios wasn't exactly poor, it wasn't prosperous either, so the number of people in the slums didn't add up, especially with how many decrepit buildings there were.
Nevertheless, Aries decided to ignore it for now and deal with the rat problem first. He could deal with it at a later date if it came up.
Soon enough, he saw the rat run into an abandoned temple.
"Hmmm."
He glided down to the ground and stopped in front of the doors, which were slightly open. Instead of entering immediately, he transformed into his serpentine form and kept his size at the level of a mundane snake.
After doing this, he slithered through the open door.