Welcome to Gaia! ::

(Yay! ^^ I got a 5! ^^) Aveto's shadow began to shake then it quickly turned into a snake. Mike whispered something to his own shadow and then the snake quietly slithered up Aveto's shoulder and began to whisper, "Mr. Aveto, ask you attorney i-if I can testify. I can defend you since I know what a nice person you r-really are." Then the snake slithered back down to the floor and turned back into Aveto's shadow.

-Mike

"I don't know Mr. Aveto well enough to know what he looks like normally. But yes, he looked twisted. He grinned over the unconscious man like a cat about to eat a mouse."

((Oh, I'm so sorry! ^^; ty so much for counting it as a four! ^^) "Thank you very m-much," he said. Mike was sure that he could defend Mr. Aveto, however, Nina didn't seem to be helping much. "I have to be able to help him. He's been so nice to me and now I have to repay the favor by making sure he stays out of prison," Mike though to himself.

-Mike

He wasn't defending anything, it was a screaming attack, and he was enjoying it. I say he was enjoying it with every fiber of his being.

(cof cof sweatdrop )

Myles takes the stand and is sworn in. He doesn't look at Aveto as he is asked to tell the truth et cetera, but he does glance in Aveto's direction as he replies, "I do so swear."

"I was out taking in some peace and quiet as I often do. My Gift allows me to basically hear peoples' nervous systems, and it can lead to a bit of sensory overload around crowds for too long. So I had climbed a tree to relax.

A bit later, Nina Nevermore and the boy arived, and then shortly afterward Aveto showed up. But Aveto's arrival was interrupted by the masked assailant who rushed out of the woods holding a gun in one hand and a black bag in the other. For some reason this fellow decided to approach Aveto instead of shooting him. He knocked Aveto down, but Aveto swept the attacker's legs out and put him in a sleeper hold. II didn't see exactly what happened next due to the angle, but the assailant's gun went off and after that the man was unconscious on the ground. He was still alive at that point, though.

After this, Aveto threw a rock at the assailant and missed. His eyes then changed color as some sort of atmospheric disturbance surrounded the fallen assailant and deep cuts manifested on the assailants body. I watched both Nina and Aylen use telepsychic Gifts to calm Aveto. I'm not a mind reader, but over the years I've had ample opportunity to observe different parts of the brain at work, and I know the parts of the brain that tend to be used by telepathic and empathic Gifts.

Next, the Constable arrived on scene. While he was tending to Aveto's wounds, Aveto used a telepsychic Gift. In response to this, a large number of crows descended on the assailant who regained consciousness as the crows ate him alive. Constable Jones attempted to scare the crows off with his gun, but by the time he succeeded it was too late.

After the Constable arrested Aveto, I reached out and sensed the electrical fields of the area. People leave trails as they walk, that are especially easy to see in undeveloped areas. It was then that the truly odd parts of the assailant's behavior came to light. I observed that the assailant's path followed Aveto's for as far as I could sense, through the woods. So the assailant had been following Aveto for some time and for some reason chose to wait for Aveto to leave the woods and attack him in front of witnesses. The assailant also chose to come up and attack Aveto at close range with both his hands full instead of shooting him from a distance."

"Posession is an interesting thing. When a normal person thinks or does things, the electrical impulses move throughout the nervous system like dominoes falling. You can watch the progression flow from synapse to synapse. This is also the case when someone is acting on a post-hypnotic suggestion. But when a supernatural force is influencing the brain, it's like the dominoes all falling at once. But in answer to your question, there was nobody else in the area and even if there had been, I would have seen Aveto being posessed. And he wasn't."

"The assailant was unconscious until the crows attacked, and I didn't need a sensory Gift to know that he woke up when the crows started eating him, just my ears. His screams of terror and pain were more than enough to tell me that"

"Aveto was not in danger, nor did he feel that he was in danger. The Constable had arrived and had the situation under control, the assailant was unconscious until the pain from the crow attack woke him, and Aveto's brain was not in a panic state."

"I can't vouch for his sanity, but I can tell you his actions were not supernaturally motivated when he killed the man. When the whirlwind rose up and cut the unconscious man, Aveto had no cognition. He literally wasn't thinking. The only brain function then was coming from the parts that regulate body function, and from the center of his Gift. But after that, when he called the crows to kill the man, his actions were not supernaturally motivated, nor was he panicking. His "fight or flight" response hadn't been activated."

"As I said before, supernatural posession leaves a clear signature. Nothing came from outside of Aveto. He wasn't consciously controlling himself when the man was cut up, but he was rational when he killed the man. If someone else was controlling his actions it would have to be a post-hypnotic suggestion."