And the Fourth Princess of the Ensolian Imperium has no idea where to start with this.

At least back home, father would have the final say in all staffing issues! Part of her Consciousness Committee cries.

No, ever better. Another thought process corrects it. Mom and dad took care of everything.

Sophia Elise doesn't even know where to start with this group of twenty four, and she takes a good few minutes slowly pacing back and forth in front of this row of gathered staff. Her footsteps quieter than a whisper, each of her breaths cold and controlled, and those eyes scan over each one of these lowly peasants like a hawk selecting prey.

Rule of Four. Part of her reminds. Rule of Four staffing! We know this, we ain't idiots!

It's that stupid political philosophy drilled into her brain by public policy tutors, that Sophia Elise the Third's contribution to her very distant descendant hopelessly mundane yet critically important.

Four corners of the court: shields to protect from warfare, mirrors to watch thy back for intrigue, quills for greasing the gears of the political engine, and veils for the information and countering outside intelligence.

Should probably replace quills with typewriters. A very off-topic side of this girl suggests. We are living in an era where those exist…

Ok. Sophia mentally slaps herself back into focus. Shields, Mirrors, Typewriters and Veils. We've got the Impericutta with us, so we got a shield. Mirrors… we sorta have Mori so we guess that counts. And for quills and veils…

Sophia takes a moment to pause in her inspection march, stopping right next to that Dominion Guardsman who stands with her arms to her side, a strange creature at attention from what was just minutes before a casual presence.

Mori could also be a veil…

"Guardsman…" The Fourth Princess coldly whispers out to that woman. "Are there any limitations to my selection?"

She's put her off guard with the unsolicited question, with Mori Fushimi taking a glance around the room. "I-I'm… I don't believe I was given any limitations by Zai, Ma'am."

"Hmm." The Princess nods gently, cold, darkly.

How many are we allowed to choose anyway? She asks herself, now really panicking. If we choose too many, Zai'll think we're some super needy, crazily greedy princess who takes and gives nothing in return. But if we don't pick enough then we could be forced to come back to him and ask for more…

There is no winning in this world.

There is no such thing as the perfect middle ground, the happy compromise.

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Everything is a wrong answer, and someone would always hate whatever outcome came of anything.

Ok lock in girl. Her entire consciousness committee comes together cohesively for this. We need a good analogy for us. If we were with Zai right now, and we had our greatest possession in our hands…

A donut. Sophia interrupts her own thought processes. A chocolate glazed donut. Chilled from a winter's day, so the glaze would crumble in our mouth, and the dough would be ever so perfectly chewy.

If a thought process could sigh it would, and it almost does. Ok, if we had a chocolate glazed donut in our hands and we had to offer part of it to him. How much would we be offering to him?!

Now this was an easy question to answer, and she replies with a near angelic calm: Probably like twenty five percent.

If a brain could give itself a stroke, it would.

This man is our husband, and we'd give only twenty five percent of our most prized possession? Did we forget that this is the human being that we like in a romantic way?

Sophia grimaces slightly, trying not to show it on her face.

Twenty five percent it is, a quarter of one—six out of twenty four.

And the city itself gives this advice, from the rivers of blood spilled in its streets, inside empty homes, within the halls of temples and the chambers of castles: Make your choice wisely.

Sophia Elise the Eighth should speak to each one, ask that battery of questions without hesitation.

The Biographics: the age, the birthplace, the families behind the veil of skin and cloth.

The job: the experience, the past, the work that they execute in this well oiled political machine of Zai Tianci.

The life: the wild cards, the hobbies, the task and purpose that drives every human forward through despair and desperation.

Sophia Elise the Eighth should ask those questions to each of the twenty four in an agonizing interview aired to each and every one. Lock eyes with each of them for five minutes straight, each delicate answer spoken from each mouth taken into emotionless consideration; vetted in an averaged statistical bunch and chosen strategically to fall into the four corners of Imperial royal staffing philosophy.

Sophia should do such a thing.

Because we're choosing who gets to put the poison in our food tray, after all.

But it's been almost sixteen hours since she's slept, sixteen hundred minutes since a single nap passed through her brain, a hundred and sixty thousand seconds since she's been able to leave this vast horror of real life and into the comfort of a good bed for a trial version of death.

So the Fourth Princess of the Ensolian Imperium, now the Princess-Consort of the Dominion, does what she does best and streamlines this entire, mind-numbing process into just a single line of reasoning:

Vibe check. If they don't pass the check, they ain't gettin' a paycheck.

And in an instant she finds the six.

It's in the straightened stance that they hold, in those eyes that meet her's: there's something different that sets them apart from the eighteen others in their midst.

Three from the plains, the blood in their veins derived from the farming villages and cities built within the circular line of the seven heavenly guns. One half-southerner, whose split heritage could be between those exiled south, and the natives who took them in. Two northerners to polish these six off, whose features seemed far too similar to chalk up to chance; Sophia herself making the assumption of close family, siblings perhaps, from her own head-canon of backstories.

Each of them stand at random in this crowd, each of them stare at her, and each of them tenses when she speaks her cold order to the rest as she points to the six. "The rest of you may leave. These ones… they will stay."

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