Aaren laughs. "I'll get started on dinner then. There's sausage rolls to snack on while you're waiting."

-The speed at which Lan and 'Chelle vanish into the kitchen might suggest they have either superspeed, or teleportation. Really, they're just eager.

Percy is not surprised, though he doesn't teleport either. He will go munch on sausage rolls as well.

Aaren clearly has experience working around teenagers munching things in his kitchen while he cooks, and in fact, there's a sense that he likes doing so.

"So," he says as he starts chopping things, "Percy, you given any more thought to what you want to do? You want to stay here, or want us to figure something else out?"

-'Chelle hesitates for a moment, and she seems conflicted, and there's a sense of loss that she tries to shove away.

That's sure a shoved emotion.

"I would like to stay, but I don't know if you could deal with the burden of having another mouth to feast upon your delicious food."

"See, you'd actually be helping me not have to buy yet another freezer there..."

Percy basks at him for a moment...

"...What are you hiding?"

-All three of them are careful in how little they visibly react to that, but there's a brief moment, where they all seem... concerned, and wary.

Aaren is quiet for a moment, focused on his chopping, and then he sets his knife aside and turns to lean against the counter. "I feel like you have some idea of what you think we're hiding?"

It's not evasive, and there's no intent to not answer, but Aaren wants to know exactly where he needs to start this explanation.

"I am not planning to tell anyone," he says to Lan. "You... you noticed something different about me when the gang attacked your friends. I think it's the same sort of thing..."

"You're not exactly wrong." Aaren points one finger away from himself and creates a visible spark from it. "We're elementals."

"Oh," Percy pauses. "I don't know what I am."

That strikes Aaren as...lonely?

"Welcome here," he says. "What exactly you are only matters if you want to know?"

Percy face turns flat. "There is a complication with that question. I am something capable of sensing other people emotions' but I don't actually have any of my own... I sort of copy the others."

"-Ah." Aaren frowns thoughtfully.

'Chelle looks conflicted again. "I- we're not- this isn't making you want to stay is it? Like- I don't know how to ask this. I don't-"

"You really don't have to worry... I have something like a self-preservation instinct and some desires that are not... quite emotional enough to be emotions, but they are there. And I can have preferences. I do prefer to stay here. And it feels good stay here."

-Okay, he's trying to reassure her, that's good- (She thinks?)

"That's good to hear," Aaren decides. "I'd like you to have a think about whether you would, logically, benefit from knowing more about yourself, about this? There isn't a right or wrong answer here. If you decide you want to, Ange has a library bigger than this house. If not, well. You're still Percy, and I think we'll like having you around. We certainly have so far."

He thinks for a moment. "Is there a downside to knowing more? It sounds useful in case there is more to it than absorbing emotions and sensing danger." He does not pause. "I should tell you... the absorbing emotions has a moral component to it. And if I am a good company, it's mostly because you are good company."

"I suppose we at least don't have to worry about you running off with the silverware then?"

Aaren throws a cloth at Lan's head. "We don't have silverware anyway," he says, as though that's the end of the matter. "I can't think of a reason knowing more about what you can do is a bad thing. They say knowledge is power and all that."

Nod. Percy basks.

"I must say there is yet another dreadful truth." This is obviously not serious.