Something was wrong with Guardsman Mori Fushimi.

Sprawled out on the sofa like a drying fish, a book covering her face, snoring as sunlight flutters through the skylight.

It's an even enough breath, a tiredness derived from exhaustion more than anything else followed by the relative safety of this home giving this soul the chance to recuperate.

Well, recuperate to a point.

"Guardsman." Zai's even tone comes to her through a level of slight impatience. "Guardsman Fushimi."

"Mmmmm." This vector of the Dominion mumbles beneath her breath. "Ten more minutes, Sire…"

A frustration from his voice. "It's already noon, and you're still asleep. We need to talk."

"I know what time it is." She's awake now, but still keeping that book to cover her face. "I didn't get much sleep last night~"

"I can tell." Zai leans really down to this guardian of his life, catching the acrid tang of smoke and sulfur. "It sounds like you had a productive evening yesterday?"

The Crown Prince of Tianci already knows, tasting the scent of gunpowder from her body along with the stench of burnt thermite on her clothes.

"Oh, well—that Ceramic Doll and I had a bit of a late night date in town." That Guardian complains, this book removed from her face by her master; eyes adjusting to the light streaming in from the roof of the living room. "That thing's a terrible date, let me tell you. Made me run around so much."

Zai ignores that statement, continuing his line of questioning. "What happened last night, Guardsman?"

It's an answer that's so obvious, but yet an answer that must be hidden from him. Mori, in her slight grogginess, speaks with a level of carelessness. "I'm certain you can get some more details from that Ceramic Demon, if you really want to know how well it performed last night~"

He interrupts her dirty joke with a cold, unmoving report. "I've already received enough details from Red-99, and the staff that bothered to show up this morning. What you did was…" The Prince needs to find the words from his vocabulary, one appropriate enough to somehow encapsulate this monstrous execution of his wife's mumbled orders. He takes a deep breath. "What you did last night was… unacceptable."

"Unacceptable?" Mori taps her lap innocently. "Oh my, I was just following her request. You can't fault a servant of the Temple for following…"

"Don't bring her into this." He growls, a harsh tone under his breath as he tries to keep this conversation quiet in the midst of what was a semi-occupied living room of staff members sweeping the floors and cleaning the cabinets. "You went into town after you 'took care' of those enforcers. What did you do?!"

Stolen novel; please report.

"What did I do?" There's a slice of girlish innocence in this guardian's answer. "Oh you know, the usual things people do in town. Had a bit of fun, the Doll and I enjoyed ourselves quite a…"

Zai knows, and he doesn't hide it. Interrupting her with that cold tone, eying out the room before he says it first. "The Mayor-Prefect is dead, Mori."

"Oh dear." She almost acts surprised. "What happened?"

"Don't play with me, Guardsman."

Mori yawns. "People die all the time. It's not like buildings don't burn down with people in them."

The Crown Prince wants to speak up, to catch her in that lie but she beats him to it. A finger over her lips, the sly smile on her face darker than the abyss of night. "It's not like there's going to be an autopsy… or autopsies. Given the state of the Constabulary in town, of course. Plus, when the fire gets that hot I hear the bullets start melting too~"

Zai tries to hide the rage in his heart. "You burned that place down too?"

Mori still lies on the sofa, stretching. "If someone sends nine uniformed assassins after you it's my duty to…" There's a slight bit of hesitation as she needs to find the diplomatic word. "... make sure they get the message."

"That was a message?" Zai whispers to her, those staff members completing the cabinets and now moving to the western wing of the home.

They're alone now.

Guardsman Fushimi brings herself up to sit, stretching atop the overtly padded furniture. "Well less of a message, more of a… retaliation. Actually, given how she gave that little threat, maybe it's more of a 'prophetic act.'"

The Prince falls onto his knees, onto the soft standing carpet at the foot of this sofa. He whispers these words under his trembling breath, trying to keep his own composure. "Unacceptable…"

"What, now you're suddenly against this?" The Guardsman tries to stare into the eyes of her charge, trying to read him. "Come on Zai, you gotta be consistent…"

"Mori…" Zai tries to beg her. "This isn't Landfall. We can't bring that here. These people… this town doesn't deserve it."

And she tells him the truth, cutting him down from that lofty title and throne into the mud and blood and ruin and death. She gives him the truth of this place, of this nation. "Zai, these townspeople tried to kill you. This is just like Landfall. This is Tianci. What am I supposed to do?"

"I don't know." Zai adverts his gaze to the ground, away from her. "But it shouldn't be like this."

It never should be like this.

Never should be about the blood, about the knives, about the death…

It's on his face, read upon his empty eyes.

"What's happened to you, Sire?" Guardsman Mori Fushimi uses a voice completely foreign against her, almost a sense of care upon her lips. Almost. "You would've never flinched for a… necessity such as this."

"We're hard compromised aren't we?" Zai tells her this nearly unrelated sentence trying to find some semblance of humanity.

Mori sighs. "We are."

And they remain like this for a long time, waiting for the world to come to them; to give someone the voice to speak out.

But the world, from its earth to its house, from the ceaseless waves of the Adranic to the constant blue glow of Unudo, from the ancient empires buried beneath the soil to the standing Dominion, from this Guardsman to this Crown Prince; say nothing.

And they remain as they are for the longing minutes of silence.

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