Favuxo's life had been mostly a series of observations made for the benefit of the favuxian collective consciousness. In his billions of years of existence, he had considered only a very small number of the situations that he had come across to be truly intriguing. One such situation had been two million millennia ago, when he had witnessed the sudden and mysterious transformation of a galaxy into an intelligent life form. Another was what he was busily observing on Earth. He'd conceded that he could not deny his interest. It struck him as only natural that what happened to the cadopekens would interest him, since they were the species he would soon join; yet, for some reason he also found it interesting to ponder how the humans would deal with a danger for which they were so completely unprepared. Favuxo thought that the fact that the energy beings didn't intend to be a danger ought to complicate matters even more, although he doubted that it would for the humans.
Having in his mind all of the knowledge which favuxians had accumulated about them, Favuxo thought of himself as quite an expert on humans. He thought that he could understand a human better than a human could. He concluded that when faced with any totally new experience, most humans would try to ignore it. If that were not possible, they would attack it. Only a very few would rush to embrace it. Using this assumption, Favuxo decided that even if cadopeken science had never developed the red fluid, the cadopekens would still have been too much of a threat to the routine for the humans to allow them to live. All that remained, according to his deductions, was for each energy being to make an appearance somewhere in the city and be killed by whoever would be around. He saw very little possibility of anything else occurring, and calculated that the crisis would be over within a few days.
Favuxo decided that enough time had gone by that the humans surely would have distributed the guns and bullets. Prepared to observe his prediction coming true, and yet somewhere in the back of his mind expecting the unexpected, he oriented himself around the middle of a busy street. Several cars passed through him, then the traffic ground to a halt.
The evening sun blazed just above the horizon, casting a multitude of colors across the sky. A blinding glint of sunlight reflected off of each car as it moved slowly past. Behind, on the sidewalk, pedestrians shielded their eyes with their hands. They looked not only ahead of them, but periodically in all directions. Favuxo could recognize both fear and anticipation in their faces.
Favuxo had come to view this scene with no reason to expect anything interesting would occur, and yet he felt something would. In his ten billion years he'd become proficient at anticipating the actions of life forms, and something deep within him told him that the humans were at a point of critical stress and that this was a likely juncture.
For a while more interested in his own thoughts than in the world around him, Favuxo refocused himself on the situation when an energy being came out through the wall of a nearby building. It moved into the street, through several cars. Pedestrians and motorists alike were shouting and reaching for their weapons. Dozens ejected their deadly cargo at the same moment, the bullets convening upon the energy being in the middle of the street and dissipating the being into the air, unto nothing. The human life, or perhaps cadopeken life, was destroyed instantly.
The bullets continued on their various trajectories, embedding themselves deep into whatever was in their way. Screams filled the crisp evening air, as the bullets hit a dozen pedestrians on each side of the street, as well as several motorists.
Favuxo watched for a while, at once fascinated and terrified. He did not fully understand why, but he found in himself a strong desire to leave the place, to go far away from the Earth and its inhabitants. Perhaps, he thought, these deaths frightened him because in the faces of the dying beings he saw reflected his own fears of the Inabilin.
His journey complete, and the Inabilin being less than a month away, favuxians (including Favuxo himself) were again allowed to visit Cadopek. Focusing his mind on preparing for the Inabilin, Favuxo placed himself inside the cadopeken capital city.