Luzh was strange in many ways, to take even worldly stupidity: his sympathy for Susan McCanareicle was visible to the naked eye, only the blind (and she herself) would not have noticed. And he was hiding it. Or the other: his strength, as it soon became clear, would have been enough to turn Browning and Assa annoying him into a capybara or any other animal. And he didn't use it. And in general, everything he did and spoke seemed to be the opposite of what he had expected. Some kind of abnormal.
As Aeslie puts it, "illogical". But it was this abnormal and illogical one who saved them there at the Forbidden Landfill. He saved them, though he could have died or lost his magic. For him the same thing.
After that Browning thought, very seriously. That day it seemed to him that his head hadn't buzzed like that since the day he chose to live. Browning hadn't thought of anything clear, he put ashes on his head - isn't he a fool? - he asked Yugorus directly if he was afraid to be in a hot pan after his death. And also all these forks, pits with flames, belts of intestines, rains of lava, other uncomfortable things ...
Ugorus smiled, joined hands, and a white pigeon with an olive branch in a beak swung up from them, sat down on a narrow shoulder. But Ugorus still spoke himself:
- The world is more complicated than yourselves, and it seems to me. Both the living world and the dead world. You'll never guess whether you'll get in the pan for any action. Yes, and whether it is. And in general, think, colleague, how many pans do you need to have enough space for everyone who is wrong about something? Do they - demons - have a cast-iron factory?
Browning was overwhelmed in the first moment, in the second he got angry, in the third, he coped with himself and thought again. And Luzh, still smiling, scratched the pigeon's neck. The conversation didn't lead to anything. But they became less likely to fight.
The damned school continued to live its life. A vataga of children joined the investigation. The vataga consisted of three people - the Redhead, the Strategist and the Inventor. So Browning at first called them to himself because he could not always remember the names of non-parishioners at once.
The children... even the children in this school were amazing. It was worth one stubborn, not stupid Porrie with his serious reasoning, paradoxical arguments about magic in gears and sincere care for friends, especially Mergion. He loved her as adults could not always love her, and persistently dragged her out of the abyss of madness, where she fell.
And Browning also saw it, not laughing, as in the case of Luzhzhou, but rather making mercy. And Porrie was not afraid of adults and their clever reasoning. Porrie quickly became an indispensable member of the investigative team in a stupid, doomed to failure detective squabble. And Porrie should not have even asked about the hot pans: such souls are not saved. They'll be able to figure it out anyway.
But Browning himself, it turns out, could not.
When Phantom Ass directed his partner, Yulu, at him so ridiculously, he almost loved them. All of them. Even Yugorus. Ugorus, perhaps, is even more. He loved it without wishing to send him to some "true path" or a hot frying pan. I loved him for nothing. Why not? Because they were all a family, all of them wobbly, colossal, stupid Perverts. A real family. And he never had a family. And then...
A lot of people are probably wondering what it's like to get a magical power from the bay. Imagine omnipotence running through the veins, boundless happiness ... Browning could not fully answer this question. He only remembered that at the first moment it seemed to him as if he was on the move: inside everything was torn apart. In the second moment, fear came, and in the third moment, awareness. Missing. He died. God will never accept him like that. If he was a righteous man, nothing would have happened. So, he didn't used to be...