Shade of Gray
"Fine," sighed the woman. "He slaughtered his way through my family's staff and stole me while I was sleeping. He injected some red liquid into me that put me out cold, and then I woke up here. I imagine it was the same for you."
"Close enough," Fate replied.
"Did you go down fighting, at least?" Fate asked her. The metal on his back kicked up by about two degrees just then, a loud TICK echoing throughout the room as it did so. Not painful yet, and actually quite comfortable.
Where the Azure Anarchist's portrait had been on the glass, a timer and a thermometer appeared. It had been five minutes since this 'game' started, and currently, Fate was facing 82 degrees Fahrenheit.
Seri's face became colored by the feelings of guilt welling inside of her. "No. He used some kind of sound muffling technology or Imprint, so I didn't hear anything.
"It was only when he jabbed that needle into my neck that I woke up, the first and last thing I saw being the corpse of my butler.
"I should've been able to pick up on such unnatural silence, but I didn't. Now, the lives of at least ten people were snuffed because of my inadequacy."
"Don't beat yourself up too much," Fate said. "I tried fighting back. It felt like smacking my fists against a brick house. Either he had some armor on under all that blue, or he's a Personification."
The metal heated up again, stopping at 84 degrees. His scar started to ache, so he did the only thing he could to distract himself.
"Any idea what he wants with us? Well, I can guess you, but why me?" Fate asked.
"If his words are true, my family put him away for twelve years. The fool doesn't realize that he may have just given away his identity. There are only so many Personifications in our country, fewer that have been incarcerated at any point in time.
"Add in the fact that he escaped from prison, what's obviously the rare Destruction Manifestation, and his morbid fascination with blue, and tracking down this scum of the earth will be remarkably easy for my family, with or without my death.
"As for why he needed you… I don't know. He mentioned his motives as 'exposing the bad in all people,' so maybe you were snatched up by pure chance."
"That's some horrible luck if that's the case," Fate replied. "Although I do have the Light Manifestation. The public likes to make us Light wielders out to be saints and holy men, but that's a bunch of bullshit if you ask me. I'm sure even the Yangchat have some skeletons in their closets.
"Everyone has dirt they want to hide, a point in the past they want to bury. Even Light Embodiments. Even the Five."
The Yangchat Family was the most powerful of the Five, their members wielding Light and Dark. They governed the other four families and made the laws that ruled Crexya.
"If you said that to me on the street, I'd jail you for the insinuations," Seri said matter-of-factly. "But here, in this room, I'm inclined to agree.
"Even if we aren't perfect, this criminally insane serial killer is out and about because of my family's failure. Everything that happens here falls solely on our shoulders."
"You people from the Five sure do love taking on unnecessary responsibility," Fate chuckled. "You were probably a little kid when they put this guy away, and here you are acting like it's your fault."
"As a member of the Five, every member of each family is expected to act in the best interests of Crexya. The fact that this man is a wanted criminal who broke out of our prisons is new to me, as I'm sure it is to everyone else.
"That information should've been posted as soon as he broke out, and yet now he's killed over fifty people because of our own selfish needs. My mother would likely label it as 'protecting the peace' and 'preventing a panic,' but now I feel that it was just to protect the family's face."
"That still has nothing to do with you," Fate told her. "You didn't know. You couldn't have known. How would you think to even look for the problem if you didn't know it was there in the first place?
"The way I see it, every group has both good and bad people in it. The Five have more of the former than the latter, or else we would've overthrown them long ago, or died trying.
"The sins of the mother do not translate to the daughter. The sins of the family don't outweigh the good of the members. You had nothing to do with it, so you have no responsibility here."
"I refuse to believe that. I could've done something, anything, to fix this problem, but my own ignorance blinded me."
"Lady," Fate said exasperatedly. TICK. Another two degrees. "I'm literally tied up and about to go through horrible pain because of what someone in your family did. Notice how I'm not blaming you or your family as a whole?
"Nothing is ever so black and white. Everything is a massive shade of gray, and it's our job as people to distinguish those shades. If I die here today, I don't place any blame on you. If you get that through that thick skull of yours, you'll feel a lot less of that needless guilt."
The Vedavo girl didn't answer for a long while, enough for the heater against his back to progress to 86 degrees. Since the rest of the room was so chilly, it was still manageable, the cold from elsewhere helping to cool his exposed torso.
"What did you do for a living?" Seri asked, breaking the silence.
"I fabricate burgers," Fate replied.
"I find it hard to believe that someone with such beliefs would work in such a low-class job. Do you really not have a last name?"
"Not that I know of. My family hasn't had one for generations, ever since my great-great-great-great grandfather pissed in the tea of some Freften woman.
"I don't know what inspired him to take a leak in a cop's drink, but that got our last name stripped from us and all memory of what it used to be wiped. We've been without a surname ever since."
Another silence manifested as they tried to think about something to talk about. A TICK rang out in the interim, the heat oblivious to the mortal concerns that it threatened to destroy.