Pariah #1: New Arrival: Perils of Azure City by Void Page B

been the final straw for Evelyn.
    So when she padded out of the shower, she marched up to Kamura as he sat maintaining his equipment on his bed and put him to the question.
    Why don’t you kill them.
    He studied her for a moment before turning his attention back to disassembling one of his gauntlets.
    ‘You are asking me why we didn’t execute them?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You would have killed those men?’
    ‘ Yes .’
    ‘Why?’
    She stared at him, incredulous. She prowled around him and sat down facing him on her bed, holding her towel around herself, ‘Because they deserved it.’
    Her reply hung in the air for a few moments. Kamura did not immediately respond, instead working methodically on cleaning his gear, filling the silence with the quiet sounds of his work. Eventually he looked up from his ministrations.
    ‘Is that what you think we do, Eve? Punish people? Perhaps you think we are avengers bringing retribution to the guilty? Or perhaps we are crusaders, hmm? Bringing the righteous wrath of God down on the ignoble. Like God, we judge them and decide what their life is worth; we decide what must be done to balance the scales, to make the world right again, and we act. There is no greater moral authority than what we feel people deserve, right?'
    ‘You’re making fun of me,’ she pouted.
    ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘But I am simply reflecting back what you are saying to me. You are making fun of yourself.’
    She growled, ‘I’m not saying we play at being Gods, you know that. But there are people that do deserve to be punished - surely you can see that?’
    Kamura gave a pained look as she spoke, visibly disappointed. ‘You have a lot to learn, Eve. You still look at the world in terms of punishment - like it might somehow improve the world if the man who does wrong is suitably damaged. When in reality punishment does nothing to fix the crime. The dead do not come back to life; the damage is never undone. Punishment only serves catharsis: The active desire to cause another distress in the belief that it will make the aggrieved feel better.’
    He gave a derisive snort, ‘It is foolery of the most dangerous kind. It is where wars are born, where feuds spiral, and where pain rules.’ He gave her a hard look, ‘You know what becomes of people when their lives are governed by pain.’
    Evelyn averted his gaze, feeling somehow shamed by how their conversation was going.
    ‘I…,’ she took a moment to formulate what she was trying to say, ‘I know it doesn’t undo their crimes… I just… I want to make them sorry, you know? They should be made to regret what they have done. I know that line of thinking is a shady road to go down but I can’t help it... Besides, why are we even hunting down all these people if we aren’t interested in punishing them? What the hell are we doing with them?’
    Kamura leaned forwards, seeing his chance to impart some meaningful values on to the troubled young woman. He had waited a long time for her to be open to a discussion like this – waiting for the day that she would want to examine it for herself.
    ‘We are stopping them, Eve. They do terrible things to their fellows and so we step in; we prevent them from doing any more harm. That is what we do.’
    She thought about that a moment, pondering what it meant.
    ‘If preventing them from doing more harm is our main goal,’ she said carefully, ‘Why not simply kill them? I’ve yet to hear of a criminal who committed a crime after his own death.’
    Kamura laughed out loud with genuine humour, ‘I actually know more than I’m comfortable admitting,’ he mused, ‘But you are making the equation too simple, Eve, as you often do. It would be wrong to kill them. Resorting to such measures is the act of a monster – it corrupts the soul to deal in death. You lessen yourself down to the levels of the people you seek to stop, and you set yourself on the road to playing God; judging who shall live and who shall die. We do