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Okay. [Well. She appreciates him being straightforward but also hm.] What would you have suggested then?

First of all, you shouldn't have just taken her body away like that. You should have let us look at her. Also, what was with us being locked in rooms all night? And also, why are there wererats here? Isn't this some kinda fancy mansion? You should hire better pest control.

[Hmm.]

If you had looked at her right away, the infection would have spread. We didn't want to put anyone else at a risk until precautions were put into place. And it's not our fault the rats got in!

[But...she pouts.] We were locked in our room on Thursday too, you know.

Well. [That makes some sense. Huffing.] Okay. You could have just told us that.

[But that's sure something.]

You guys were also locked in...? Do you know what happened with that?

Sorry. [She does sound apologetic at least.] We weren't sure what the damage was and we had preparations to make on Friday. There wasn't time.

[There's a nod following that.] That night, the door to our room shut and we couldn't leave even if you guys called for us. The house is old...sometimes it just does things like that.

Has something like what happened to Nikki happened before?

Uh...the rats were definitely different! [The rats were so much.] Nothing like that has really ever happened before.

So what made you decide to do that whole trial and execution thing? If it was my house, and someone turned into a wererat and started biting people...well, it doesn't seem like the plan you'd come up with on the fly.

That's why we couldn't talk to you guys on Friday! We had to come up with a proper procedure to follow what happened and instill the rules of the house for the sake of the house and its guests.

...it took us a little while to figure everything out. [...]

Do you believe in justice, Mr. Thymos?

Yeah, I do. But I don't think what happened today counts.

What would your idea of justice be in a situation like this then?

I think it was right we worked to find out who did it. Michiru needed to know the truth. But you can't just go around executing people! Especially when we don't know why something like that happened to Nikki. We could have kept her locked in that cage for now and tried to find medicine to cure her. Or if it wasn't a sickness, if she actually committed murder on purpose, then she should go to jail.

That's what I believe.

...Mr. Thymos, we don't exactly have a jail nearby. [She blinks a little like she's surprised nobody else has actually said that before.] I understand your concerns, but for the safety of the other guests we couldn't afford time to look for a solution that wouldn't come.

...besides. What's better for the benefit of the guest? Being locked up and tortured, or relieved from the monster inside of her?

Tch. You can lock her up without torturing her. It seemed like it was holding her pretty well. And I'd say being dead isn't exactly a big relief.

In a sense, you're right. [How to explain...]

Have you ever been sick or really badly injured?

Not really. I broke some bones once? And another time, my arm was set on fire. But nah, not really.

You seem very nonchalant for someone who was set on fire...[No, not the time to get distracted!] But let's say it's like this. What if it was like you broke your bones, and those bones didn't heal. Instead, even more of your bones broke until all of your bones were broken. That doesn't seem like a good thing, right? Wouldn't you want to fix the broken bones?

Yeah, but if I broke a bunch of bones and wanted to fix those bones, I wouldn't want to be killed with a trident.

That wasn't the right part of the analogy to focus on. It was either take care of this now, or leave Nikki to suffer a worse fate. You saw what happened when we released her from the cage. And if something like this happens again, we have to be prepared.

[To use the cage again? We just don't know.]

Who's the one telling you that something worse will happen? Is it Master Blue?

[She shakes her head a little.]

On Friday when we were preparing for the trial, we looked at a bunch of options for what we could do. After discovering what happened and observing Nikki ourselves we realized it was going to get worse.

Where'd you find these options? And...observed Nikki? When, after we caught her?

Research mostly. You've noticed there're lots of worlds besides your own, haven't you? There were a lot of places we looked. It took all of Friday to narrow it down. When we realized that the monster still had a hold of her and started to change her permanently, we knew we really couldn't avoid rule seven.

[He definitely has not realized that, but it sounds boring and he doesn't care, so moving right along...]

So why make us do a trial at all? Why not just tell us, hey, Nikki turned into a wererat and we have to kill her? It's not like we could stop you.

[Next time she'll illustrate in crayon for him..]

The rules don't work like that. And anyway do you really think all of you would have agree to kill her without proof?

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