Following that other one... [video]

[runs_on_batteries]

If there are any kids- both big and small- who don't want to be alone right now, I'm making hot chocolate and blanket forts in the dining room.

Also, bring a blanket.

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[deductiongeek]

He notices the grip on her mug and her other tells, but doesn't say anything as he follows her back.

"I'm not happy that they decided to take the punishment on themselves. The problem with vigilantism is that more often than not the punishment lands on the wrong person. I've seen far too many murders that could have been avoided if people had just talked to each other." He frowns darkly at certain memories. "We need to get some kind of justice process in place so that this doesn't happen again."

He frowns more as he notices her body language. "What's wrong?"

[mtsilver_conquor]

"We'll get one somehow, that much I can promise you." She means it, too, and she'd honestly say more on the topic, but the question catches her off guard. Enough that there's a flash of guilt across her face before it's gone and replaced by a more unreadable look and head tilt.

She seriously considers lying to him, playing it off as just the worry of a Leader, or a friend, of someone who wants to protect her teammates. It'd be easy. So, so easy. But he's a detective with his own secret that could see him killed if it gets out. More to the point, he knows she has her own secret she's been carrying for a decade... and more importantly: not from her world.

There's a glance around -she knows they're alone, but at the same time... she has to be sure- before she crouches and leans in close.

"I've been a traitor to humanity for the last ten years." Her voice is soft but unshamed. "Worse yet, I'm a willing one."

[deductiongeek]

And that was enough of a red flag that he immediately drops the other parts of the conversation.

It was a troubling confession, but he'd heard a lot of those. He knew better than to assume that that was all to it.

"I'm going to need some explanation on that."

[mtsilver_conquor]

"Sapient pokemon are disliked... and all are... dealt with... using extreme and final measures." In other words, they're hunted and killed. "To knowingly and willingly shelter one is to stand against humanity in ways worse than Traitor Doctors. A Traitor like me? I'm a criminal and the worst of them all."

She holds no illusions as to her fate should someone from home arrive and find out, yet at the same time, there's steel in the set of her jaw, the way she holds herself. As terrified as she is, Eva won't run away. "But, a sapient is a sapient and I will go to my death to keep her safe."

[deductiongeek]

"Sapient? Meaning human level intelligence?" But he could guess the answer to that from the context.

And he was actually a little offended. He was a detective, and he followed the law. But he had always been more in the favor of the justice in the spirit of the law, rather than enforcing the letter of the law.

"Did you really think I would judge you for something like that?

This wouldn't be the first time that he'd aided a criminal with good intentions.

[mtsilver_conquor]

Eva really, really cannot help it. Her laughter, low as it is, is bitter and jaded as the realist within surfaces and sets aside the optimist that wants to say she trusted that she wouldn't be executed on sight. That hopes he doesn't.

It's not a realistic view.

"People judge even if they don't mean to," Eva says with a small shrug. "But given you're not from Arkea, I can at least reason you probably won't execute me. If you wanted that, you'd have acted by now."

[deductiongeek]

"Obviously not." He was definitely offended now. "I hunt murderers and kidnappers and thieves. Obviously I don't know why your world considers that a crime, but I haven't heard anything yet that would make me think of you as a criminal."

[mtsilver_conquor]

"I am a criminal because I knowingly, willingly, freely shelter a sapient pokemon, which disturb the peace of the community; they incite conflict over limited resources just by existing. They threaten the very fabric of human society. Anyone who aids or shelters or knows of one and doesn't report it an active threat to society." Eva says, monotone and blank, as if it was the weather. It's not -it never will be, but it's a reality she's long accepted.

"When it's discovered, now or ten, twenty, thirty years in the future, I'll go to my death, but that's fine. Because I know she -Fluffy-'d get away." Fluffy and her boyfriend and they'd warn the few other mewtwo and their humans and they'd call go into hiding or flee to the Southern Island, but that is not her secret to tell or spill or even imply.

"But I'd do it all again and again because she deserves that chance just like any person." Criminals like her are not good people, but she'll stand by her actions and do the right thing at the time anyway, no matter what the law says or what other people thing.