One moment, Pheres is all but growling, snapping out each word with a disdain that feels personal. His reasons are all hoofbeastshit - there's no way the drones are going to look at his warm skin and flushed face and think undead cullbait, fluorescent eyes or not - but that's not stopping him from spelling it out in his sharp-ass tone, like he's personally schoolfeeding you on life.

The next moment, he slaps you, a solid thwack that sends you stepping back with surprise, and he wrenches free of your grasp. When you reach up to touch your smarting face, your fingers come back damp with vivid gold blood, and all you can do is stare.

He hit you. He fucking hit you.

You should be furious. You should be irate: your meteor hammer is literally a twitch of your fingers away, locked away in your signing modus. There's no reason not to bring it out. You've culled people for less, and as Sipara's made it viciously clear, he's not even your fucking enclade. Pheres is functionally a stranger.

Fuck this shit. You've culled friends for less.

But you don't pull out your hammer. You just stand there and stare, feeling something curdling in your gut you can't quite identify.

(He's terrified, and it's not so much pathetic anymore as it is worrying.)