Facing your confusion! (Morning, for Selenus)

Slowly and carefully, the child seemed to be regaining her cool. At least now Selenus didn't have to worry about accidentally killing a child with an induced heart attack or induced hyperventilation, which would've wrecked havoc on his conscience. Thankfully the child didn't immediately run away from him the moment he released her, lest he would've probably made his current situation even worse.

Good, she understood him clearly. The seed of fear was planted, but fear often wasn't enough when a higher power offered you protection (Such as the cadets). Would they even listen to the little girl? How old do you have to be to file a report to the cadets? Eh, questions for later.

And then the best thing that could've happened happened: She started laughing, and laughing hard. With this done, the fear that he'd be an issue worth reporting was gone, but the fear of what he'd do (Or wants to give off the impretion that he'd do. He wouldn't actually do anything.) if she eventually did decide to report him would linger in her mind if she ever came to consider it. Human psychology was tricky like that, and in this case it benefitted the robot wolf.

"Yes, well," He began. "I'm just trying to be polite. It's nice to meet you, Tatum." Then she admitted that what happened did indeed scare her. "Don't trespass into private property again, and I won't have to."

"Okay, okay, deal," She replied, holding out a hand to shake on it. "That is a really bizarre definition of polite."

If I wasn't so desperate to meet new people, I'd give him an earful for this. Okay, to be fair, it was my fault. This is exactly why I don't visit Sunlake Palms often. All the short cuts require running through said private properties.

"So, you're obviously hiding here, and if you have that... let's not talk about that for a while..." She pause to let her hesitation through. She hated even the thought of reliving the experience. "But regardless, you have beef with the Cadets? What the heck did they do to you?"

"Yeah, well, politeness is entirely subjective." This world's weird obsession with making Selenus become acquainted with small children was going to be the Death of him. He just knew it. "Besides, I already explained to you why I did what I did. Just consider this a form of trying to apologize for how rough I was on you." Selenus used the wires on the end of his tail to grab Tatum's hand and emulate a handshake as closely as he could.

Selenus internally grimaced at Tatum's following question. It wasn't exactly a comfortable topic for him, but at the same time he did kind of owe her an explanation, so... "It's not about what they've done. It's about what they think they've done. Let's just say I'm not exactly supposed to be alive." Well, he was never alive to begin with if you go by the scientific meaning of the word, but Tatum would surely understand what he meant by "alive" in this context, wouldn't she? Children were whimsical and mostly immature, but they weren't dumb (unlike the majority of adults would like to believe.).

That last line gave her everything she needed to understand what is going on. Not everything she needed to know what was going on, actually. This left her with a lot of question. She just realize she didn't have the right to ask them at this time.

"Oh, I get it now," She replied, "Or at least I've seen enough anime to know what kind of deal is going on."

Well, he did technically give me a big secret... a secret for a secret?

"Well, it's not as major a secret as yours," she said, already deciding to share a little, "But... I'm not supposed to be out here. I'm supposed to be at home studying."

Now that the two weren't locked in a two-sided struggle to escape/prevent the other from escaping, Selenus was finally able to completely take in the appearance of the little girl in front of him. Though the high-collar jacket she was wearing covered up most of her face, there was still a little bit of her face that Selenus could properly see. Red hair, blue eyes, freckles... it was as if Tatum had no dominant genes whatsoever and was composed entirely of recessive ones. He'd seen people with recessive traits before, but for a child to have two recessive traits (one of which was even harder to inherit due to her skin color) plus one genetic mutation that should've also decreased her chances of inheriting the skin color that she had... Selenus could've won the lottery multiple times over with that insane ammount of luck.

"Have you, now?" Selenus highly doubted that any anime would do his current situation justice. Sure, they might portray situations similar to his, but Selenus highly doubted Endymion tv would air an anime that paints Persona Users in a humane light. "I'll take your word for it." Then again, there probably were one or more animes that glorified the Cadets and their antics. What did Selenus know? It's not like he watched much TV.

"And why exactly are you here then?" Selenus would ask. If he had an eyebrow to raise, rest assured he would've raised it. "Don't get me wrong, I get that studying can be a pain for humans, but why exactly are you trespassing on private property? In fact, this isn't even the first time you've done this, is it?" She had hinted to having done this before during her little monologue. Why couldn't people just think instead of speaking their thoughts to themselves? It'd get them in a lot less trouble.

"Well, that's an easy question," She replied, "The first time around, I was looking for shortcuts.  I'm an explorer, and I've been looking for all the ways to explore Endymion to the best of my ability.  Every new route, every new short cut, every new path, especially if you're brave, could show you something new.  But I learned the hard way that Sunlake Palms doesn't give you a lot of opportunity in that regard.  I still remember that one guy, I think his name was Mr. Wilson, he got mad and called me a menace when I jumped though his yard.  I barely got away without him seeing my face."

Boy did she want to laugh at that memory.  Even if it was not funny, she still wanted to laugh.  Okay, maybe a small giggle would be alright.

"As for now... well, Sunlake Palms is usually a boring place.  It's nice when you need a relaxing walk, but I'm looking for something new!  And just recently, I've found three new things!  I found this really awesome magician by accident!  I was actually TRYING to avoid going into peoples yards, but then I got so caught up in enjoying the relaxing walk that I crashed right into his front door!  He turned out to be a really nice guy!  He did a magic trick and even gave me a tootsie pop!  By the way, it takes roughly two hundred and fifty licks to get to it's center.  I decided to check and boy did I need a lot of water after that.  Anyway, the nice magician told me to go look through the Garden path.  I've never been, so I went there.  

"That's were I found the second new thing.  There was this school photographer there.  She's apparently seen a lot of Endymion, maybe more than I have!  She even said I could come and visit her at the school photography place!  Well, I asked if I could, and she said she'll try to see if they'll let me.  I am definitely going later!  

"As for the third thing... Well, I bet you can guess."  To the last line, she finished up by playfully booping Selenus's nose.  "Boop."

Selenus listened intently as Tatum explained in detail her antics as a self-declared explorer. Though, he was sure he'd heard about an old man named Wilson chasing away children from his property before, specifically on TV. A report on the news, maybe? Was this Mr. Wilson some sort of child criminal? Selenus decided to put the thought aside for now. He'd get back to that later. This meant that Tatum had kept breaking into private property despite having been told to stop doing it before? Seems like scaring her wasn't entirely unnecesary now, then.

...Was she talking about Gabe? It certainly sounded like she was, and he was pretty certain Gabe lived in Sunlake Palms as well. The more you know. "I think I've actually met that magician before. You could say we're friends." He knew that Gabe was oo generous for his own good, but where'd he get tootsie pops to just randomly hand out to children? Had he experienced private-property-invading children before and had stocked up to be prepared for the next time? Why did Selenus never ask follow-up questions?

He wasn't familiar with any school photographers, so this was someone that Selenus didn't actually know. She sounded like a nice person, though.

Selenus's head retracted into his neck a little bit when Tatum touched the tip of his nose. He didn't exactly have much to say, so he'd simply stay silent and wait until Tatum continued the conversation herself. Hopefully she would ask a few questions or bring up a new topic.

OOC:

It seemed fate would smile down upon the robotic dog.

"You said you know Gabe?" She replied, a little surprised now that she thought about it, "For someone whose trying to be a lawn ornament, is it really wise to let other people know? I mean, your secret is safe with me, Explorers honor, but I'd worry for you if more people find out. How do you know Gabe, anyway? Did you accidentally walk into his yard too?"

"I'll have you know I wasn't trying to hide from Gabe." It was true that he'd been rather carefree with his discretion as of late (something he was desperately trying to repair) but the circumstances under which he'd met Gabe were very different. "We're close friends. We have been for some time now, from even before I went into hiding." That was a blatant lie, but Selenus wasn't about to tell a child that he met Gabe when demons planted seeds of mania in their minds and they subsequently used their newly found personas to slaughter the demons together. Luckily for Selenus, it was incredibly easy to lie when your voice was artificial and digitally controllable. "I didn't accidentally walk into his yard. In fact, I didn't even accidentally walk into this yard! I'll have you know I live here!" Selenus would jokingly harrumph, pretending to be offended. It was all in good fun.

Another giggle from the child. Another success for Selenus!

"I guess I'm the only one trespassing here, huh?" She said with casual friendless.

"... I'm the only one trespassing here, huh..." she stated again, realization dawning on her.

"I'm so sorry!" She suddenly blurted out, bowing low several times, "You made me promise not to do that anymore and I'm still doing it! I should get going! I should go find new places that I can legally explore!" With that, she quickly got to her feet and rushed herself over the fence.

She peeked over the fence to say, "If it's okay, I wanna be able to visit again! I'll just knock on the fence next time! That should be okay, right? Sorry for intruding on you and thanks for letting me visit!" And without another word, the child was gone.

It's official! she thought to herself, I now have a good enough excuse to visit Sunlake Palms more often! But next time, no more property invasion! It's the thin and narrow from here on out! As far as she was aware of, anyway.