The man only had a single glance in those eyes before moving backward. He turned around with clenched hands.
"Get out of here! I don't want to answer any of your questions anymore," he yelled.
"What seems to be the matter? He only asked about your cat," Lucas was the only one unbothered by the unsettling tension the parlor was surrounded in. He picked up on the unusual habits of the man, noticing they weren't due to Kai asking the question but rather the content of the question.
Mr. Pyncheon pulled himself together after hearing Lucas. He cleared his throat and responded in a dejected voice.
"I have had some traumatic events with a cat I used to own. It was the most beautiful black cat I had ever seen. I raised it like my child for years, only for someone to hang it on the tree outside of my previous house. On that same unfortunate day, the house caught on fire. Everything was gone—my cat, my house, my savings... Elizabeth was all I had, and now she's also gone..." The man broke down in rough tears and rubbed his face aggressively.
The atmosphere of the room was weird. Xerxes wanted to know more about that past, but he was reluctant to ask because of the man's breakdown. Lucas, though, gave ultimately not a single sign of sympathy for the man. He moved closer to him.
"What's the address of your previous house location, and who started the fire?" he bombarded the man with these questions right in the face.
The man, startled, stopped crying. "It was an accident! We were on a trial of hell on that day!" he shouted in a gravely manner.
"And the address?" Unfazed by it all, Lucas was stubbornly still in the man's face.
Mr. Pnycheon groaned at him and gave him the address, kicking them out of the house on the dark street lighted by a few oil lamps that were too dim due to the darkness being too much for the little guys.
"Not bad, Lucas," Nova was genuinely impressed by Lucas handling the situation. He was ready to escape if the need arose, but Lucas miraculously saved the day and even got some important information out of him.
"Where do we go now?" Alexa was thinking of visiting the given address, but winter had haunted the sun back into his hiding before it had reached evening, and light was as valuable as gold, so everyone cowardly hid during the dark times, making the streets abandoned by all other than a few brave drunkards.
There wasn't a carriage running around here during this time, as it was a poor street with rarely any customers. The transportation carriages never took this route looking for passengers, marking this as the 'avoid at all costs' street.
The new to the new cruel world experienced its wrath in the cold, smelly, wet, uneven cobblestone path, which definitely wasn't welcoming them as Nova stepped on something squishy and sticky.
"There is no way... This has to be a camera prank or something," he said, disbelieving and afraid to look down.
"What happened?" Xerxes, a bit ahead of Nova, turned and asked.
Nova's face was pale and horrified, and his lips twitched, unable to say anything more. They had only taken a few steps from Mr. Pnycheon's house in search of a carriage or anyone wandering the streets they could interview to ask more about Elizabeth. Nova was at the end of the group's train, but even though he walked on the path of 4 other people, he was unlucky enough to step on something beyond disgusting.
"That's for sure poo-poo," Kai came to examine the situation from behind Xerxes.
Nova had already guessed by the smell of that thing, as he thought his nostril hairs must be all burned out by now; he refused to accept reality, fearing to look or move an inch from his current position. When Kai confirmed his suspicions, he seemed to fade into the darkness itself.
"I think... I'm going to pass out." Nova said he really didn't appear all that well.
Xerxes anxiously held his upper body; he was afraid of Nova actually becoming a body without a conscious. The last thing they needed right now was to get back to the station somehow; if no carriage appeared, they had to walk, finding their way around the city. So who would carry the tallest guy in the team on their back?
"Nova, it's not that bad as you might think; just shift your focus to something else while I take care of it, okay?" Xerxes took one of Nova's hands and put it over his nose to block the odor, assuring him somehow.
"How are you planning to 'take care' of it?" Alexa spoke from a safe distance, pinching her nasal opening shut with her fingers.
"I am not going near that monstrosity either," Lucas from the front of the now deformed train said.
How was Xerxes planning to take care of it?
Of course I also haven't the faintest idea!
"What are you doing, Nova? Aren't you the escapologist of this team? If you can't even escape from this much...you don't have any hope for the future! Prove you're truly deserving of the title and free yourself!" Kai suddenly broke out into a motivational speech.
There's no way that will work on Nova...nice try though.
Xerxes wasn't done lamenting when Nova expectantly moved on his own!
He untied his leather boots in a swift motion, and leaving the shoe to its fate, his feet escaped the prison bounded by the collaboration of the poop and the boot.
With his jaw open to the unpleasant air, Xerxes watched the scene from the front row; in a second he closed his mouth, retreating from the abandoned discards.
"Your feet don't have a protection layer now, so don't go stepping into something again," Lucas said before starting the team train, which passed through the shadowed streets in search of a carriage.