It's compulsive. He can't not react. "You shouldn't distill humans down to their species being all they are," Knives says, tone utterly, utterly devoid of anything like mischief, because he does not make jokes. "And you're hardly hopeless, regardless. You're young. If you don't like it, change it." Gone were the days where he'd hope to get Vash to ever see his side, take up his cause. Changing how things went may well be impossible, and given time might well not be a closed loop, it wouldn't help him anyway.

But maybe some other Knives and some other Vash would have it better, with a little determination to change things.

"Ah, I'm sure you'll learn plenty of things just through idle experimentation. It might be the best way to learn to not fear what you are capable of." And perhaps, in the middle of a town, so when a black hole gets loose, chaos follows! .. Hm, no, that would probably be bad in the long term. "Barring that, if Bill Conrad still lives, or your .. little ship of uncrashed survivors, they may be able to help as well." He reaches down, stopping briefly, and picks up a pebble. "Visualization might be easiest, ordinarily, but if you trend towards making small black holes the way I favor metal, that's best done out here."