[And now the boy is confused – which makes sense, considering he is seemingly a new arrival. Diavolo slackens his grip entirely and allows him a closer look at his nails. They're short, uneven from nervous picking, and covered in chipped polish. Someone had done this for him once, he recalls. The woman who called herself a "guide" had showed him her claws, her poisonous spines – every weapon she had, patiently explained to him when he was a trembling bundle of nerves curled on the ground.

It was no great reassurance. But it was something soothing, the act of having all the strengths of a frightening stranger laid bare for him like that. And – and the last thing he needs is another enemy. Not when the ones he already has are too great. Not when this former-human, new and untransformed, could go and tell others what he'd witnessed. Not when circumstance could guide him straight to those Diavolo despises most, not when he has given no reason to be trusted. He could be forging an enemy himself with his actions. Maybe it's already too late.

He doesn't want to step away, lest the boy flee out of sight in the space created, never to be seen again, but he does pull back, breaking the stare that is stressful enough for him. There's no telling how it makes the other feel when being grabbed was enough to set him off. If it was him pulled aside by a monster twice his size... he'd be out of his mind with fear.]

My kind are not nearly as animalistic as some of the others. [He starts slowly, finding it hard to speak. But he swallows, and continues.] No claws. No fangs. Just – just the horns, and the wings, and the tail. Everything else I have is – is magic. Light, and lightning. [And woefully unpracticed and unrefined, but as reassuring as that may be to hear, it isn't something he'll readily admit.] I – I won't touch you. I can... stay further away, if that's what you want.

[Is that what she'd told him? It seemed to spring up so naturally from her. But for him, the words are strained and so very difficult to find.]