Abruptly, Aries stood up, breaking the trance his eyes had put Hawk into. "I guess it doesn't matter," he said with a slight shrug.

Hawk began to struggle again, his fingers scrabbling uselessly at the ropes tying his wrists together, his wings flexing--he could almost pull his wings out of the binds around his torso, but too much of the longest feathers were trapped too tightly against him...

"Well, this is it, birdie," Kei said mockingly, giving a little wave as Aries stepped forward. Hawk froze up, heart thudding loudly in his chest, as the end of Aries's knife crossed his vision. "It's been fun."

Aries tilted the knife up, placing the blade lightly against Hawk's throat, and reached over to brace his head. Hawk shut his eyes.

The black noise had begun to hiss out of Aries's finger joints again, burning off in tiny jets away from Hawk. As Aries's fingers neared Hawk's head, strands of white hair began to stand up, as though pulled by static electricity. A pale glow ghosted between the ends of Hawk's hair and Aries's thumb, and then--before Aries noticed, if he would've at all--it arced, becoming a brief, bright flash of lightning between the two surfaces--

Then suddenly the light blazed up, accompanied by a loud bang that made the weird animal guarding the truck start, and Aries was frozen in place as somehow his arm blew out upward--his sleeve tore as sheets of noise erupted from it, rushing away from the blinding bluish-white light that had consumed Hawk in front of him.