It took a lot of machines and a lot of power to do it - the people who ordered it done were definitely evil. _{[He's being very careful to not refer to Cid in that group; he got the impression that the man was actually very decent, all things considered.]} Bastards. They drained the life out of the espers, using it to power machines called magitek. But the espers were magic themselves - they all had something that wasn't unusual by esper standards, but was unknown in the rest of the world. So if we're looking at this in the same way...

_{[He glanced back and forth between the two of them, looking more grim as the discussion went on.]} In this case, we're the espers. For better or worse we all have something they want to examine. We might need to find out what it is.