[color=lightgray][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][table][row][/row][row][cell] [h3][color=steelblue][i][b]Ash[/b][/i][/color] [i][b]&[/b][/i] [color=crimson][i][b]Thalia[/b][/i][/color][/h3][i][b][color=white]Location:[/color][/b][/i] Education Center (M) [i][b][color=white]Skills:[/color][/b][/i] N/A [/cell][cell] [right][img]https://i.ibb.co/6ZrqbnS/Ash-FC-3.jpg[/img][img]https://i.ibb.co/zrhf0KK/Thalia-Portrait-II.jpg[/img][/right] [/cell][/row][/table][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][/color] While Ash was no scholar of the human mind, he did have to pass certain core classes back in his Academy days which included both basic psychology and philosophy. To begin with, he had no idea why he would need this knowledge; Ashton was going to be a Sapper officer, and that was that. The more he performed his duties, the more these studies demonstrated their ongoing relevance. In this particular case, he gave note to the method utilized by the Professor which greatly resembled a modified Socratic Method, turned to specific purpose. Not that she called for him to defend a philosophical standpoint by intentionally arguing the counterpoint and requiring explanation, but a series of pointed questions, rallied against his earlier statements made in hopes of cementing her narrative, established in part by eyewitness testimony. In short, she looked to be setting conversational traps which Hunter could overcome readily by keeping his responses consistent. Maintaining his own narrative which did not contradict previous testimony might have sufficed. Or not reacting emotionally. There were some stumbles on Hunter's part; nothing irredeemable. At first. His response to the last question asked of him did not seem to help matters any. It was an obvious goad. This didn't look like it was about getting a straight answer. That ship had sailed. This appeared more like a test of character. Maybe there was remorse present, or regret, or simple confusion about things and a voiced desire to do better and learn the customs of the community. But Ash didn't really hear any of this. As Hunter gave the last piece of his testimony, Ash's visage remained as stone. The only thing which served to reveal his mindset was a slipped utterance, audible possibly to Nigel, who was sitting right next to him: [color=4682b4]"Aw, shit... just clam up, kid."[/color] He almost felt like facepalming. This was damaging. If he were part of the Council, it might have influenced his opinion in a less favorable direction. Unless other factors were at play which Ash could not personally detect, this had to have been detrimental to his case. Applying a wholly different mindset to this last line of questioning, Thalia looked on to the testimony with a surprised and curiously entertained expression on her face. She did not comment aloud, nor so much as clear her throat in concern of distracting, however minute a possibility it might be, what was going on in front of her. This was, lacking a better term, surreal. If she had to nail down a favorite part, it would rest somewhere around all of the things that Hunter [i]didn't[/i] plan on doing if he was exiled. Nope, he certainly would not (specifically) shoot at the wall, hurl explosives over it, and in no uncertain terms would he lead a horde of Zeds back to bebother their last mortal days. In the moment that followed this detailed descriptor of things that he would not do, Thalia looked closely, half-imagining that Hunter might give an exaggerated showing of a wink whilst nodding knowingly. Thalia was intrigued at what might happen next, and so quietly slid down in her seat to get more comfortable. She leaned her head to one side and rested her chin on a closed fist, and gave the stage her rapt, near full attention. Surreal.