“Heh! Not up to you? He’s your prisoner, you’re the ones who brought him to the Rebels. You think they wanted him here? They don’t exactly treat prisoners well, especially such dangerous criminals…” Krom sighed, scratching the back of his neck. He wasn’t treated particularly well and was under high security all of the time, even now he was being watched pretty closely incase he tried anything otherwise he was kept in a single small room with limited facilities and hardly any light. It was nice to get out and about every so often, but that was all the relief on his sanity he was allowed. The Rebels never made a proper prison because they didn’t prioritise taking prisoners of war without trying to reform them. It was the same on all sides, even the Galactic Police treated their prisoners with absolute control over their physical and mental state before deciding on their sentence. Whatever though, this was all about seeing whether Takeshi could keep his temper under control and turn it into power, but that didn’t seem to be happening as he continued to get all cheeky and back talking. “Heh, old man? I’m only ten years older than you. ‘Old man’ is my father!” he sighed, rolling his shoulders, “And I already told you: I’m doing the talking while you do the training! You’re supposed to be able to focus while I am! And speaking of…” Walking to where he was right beside Shu he tapped his foot out in front of him before tapping Shu’s own foot, causing Shu to open his eyes and let out a squeak. “Don’t you think meditation is an excuse to sleep! I can tell the difference…”

--

All Viral had ever wanted was answers, but every single one of them had come to a dead end. He wasn’t like any of them, he wasn’t like anyone he had ever met before the creation of the other Beastmen and had been actively seeking out answers before knowing of their existence. They were all confident in their existence, they knew why they were around and were quite proud of it. They were made fully knowing of their existence to fight, but he had been told an array of things he was supposed to do that never had a clear answer. His damaged genetics had been fixed, he wasn’t supposed to be a threat anymore and yet there he was being treated as such. Just what was he supposed to be? Why was he kept around like some test subject? And they wondered why he had never seen them as a family, it’s not like he could ever remember any of them treating him anything like he knew to be what family is.

Hearing Vegeta finally speak he thought he was going to get an answer, instead he had been left stunned by it. For his own good? Everything he had gone through, all the constant monitoring and restraint, that had all been for his own good? Staring at Vegeta in confusion he narrowed his gaze, trying to figure out what he was trying to say before feeling taken aback by the look Vegeta had decided to give him, taking a slight step back when Vegeta started to laugh before coming to a halt at his conclusion.

Vegeta’s conclusion stung pretty hard. Even though he had become used to thinking of himself as a problem to anyone near him to have someone tell him that just drilled the thought many times worse into his head. He was seeing all the instances he had been an issue, whether it was causing trouble for the company or something drastic like sending them all into space. ‘It’s you’ was Vegeta’s strongest and most sincere-sounding conclusion, that he had been the main source of the problem. Something was wrong with him, everything had been wrong with him and with everything tried on him to correct the problem it was never going to be corrected because he was the issue. He wanted to bark right back at Vegeta and tell him he was wrong for saying that and was just making excuses, but he couldn’t. It was all his own fault, nobody was ever going to be able to fix it for him: he was far beyond help. Staring at Vegeta as he laughed once more he clenched his teeth, staring at him as he admitted defeat.

Flinching slightly when Aito broke the tension with quite a loud single clap he looked to him with the same expression he had given Vegeta, his stance hardly changing. Just what could he possibly add to all of this? Did that mean this little session was over if he was already trying to bring him to his own conclusion? That didn’t help, telling him that he was doing an awful job protecting the Earth by being away from it too. All of this was a failure, he had failed and turned into a problem. Opening his mouth as if to speak his eyes didn’t look at anywhere in particular as Aito mentioned the beasts randomly. Only his solar energy? Of course that was an exaggeration, they could kill them just fine without him. Letting out a slight groan he reached his paw up to his head, rubbing it slowly.

“…Enough of this. I understand it all well enough”. If Aito was trying to change the topic it wasn’t going to work. If he thought the mention of battle was going to immediately dismiss the topic at hand then he really thought of him as a simple creature with a short attention span. Growling lowly he moved to walk past Vegeta, not even giving him a glance of acknowledgement. If he was the problem then he saw no reason to stick around and if Aito felt the need to suggest it was his skills that were needed against those beasts then he could go ahead and fight them himself. They didn’t truly need him; besides, Aito was practically giving him the call of dismissal with that final line of his. “I don’t need anymore sessions! You can go back to being a happy family while I take care of the beasts…”