said, swallowing. “But I’m going to make sure you don’t have to run anymore. I’m not going to let them whisk you away. That’s not fair to you or to anyone else, really.”
“What do you mean?” He walked beside me, heading back for my house.
“Mygi shouldn’t be allowed to detain and experiment on whoever they want,” I said, crossing my arms. “The problem is, only certain species are protected. There’s no murder allowed, but there’s a lot supernaturals can get away with. If a werewolf kidnaps another werewolf, it’s handled by werewolves, internally without the Tribunal involved. Same for most species, which means if it’s kept quiet and no one makes a fuss…”
“It happens anyway,” he finished.
“Exactly. The point of the Tribunal isn’t to make us human, because we aren’t. It’s to stop wars that would expose us. To stop us from exposing ourselves. To keep us from driving each other to extinction. They don’t care much for petty things unless someone dies from it.”
“So, they wouldn’t notice if one human gets captured, and if they did, they might not care.”
“As long as it doesn’t expose us in the end.” I shrugged sadly, wishing I could help him more. “I’ve got someone trying to open a formal investigation. If we can prove they’re kidnapping humans off the streets, we might get a chance to take them down. If we can prove this is a multi-species conspiracy to potentially threaten and expose supernaturals who haven’t agreed to go public, we have a bigger case against them.”
“And it still might not work.”
“Yeah…Mygi is powerful. Not your run-of-the-mill criminal organization who was caught doing bad shit.”
“About your job,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “You are a Tribunal Executioner, but…do you only kill people?”
“No. I send them to prison too. Killing people is just more common. If they try to evade their sentence, which we know they’re doing, and they don’t surrender when we find them, we kill them. End of story. No debate, no oversight. If they go on the list, they either surrender to us, or we kill them on sight. Supernaturals who go to prison are generally caught beforehand, and depending on the species, different crimes have different punishments.”
“What? That doesn’t seem fair,” he said, his frown so severe I wondered if he was going to wrinkle right in front of me.
“It’s not, but every supernatural has their own rules to play by. That’s what makes the laws so damn complicated. On top of that, they really aren’t about protecting the weak or keeping a functional society. The supernatural world is like the wild west. There're rules…good luck getting anyone to follow them unless you’re willing to back it up with brute force. Therefore, Executioners.”
“Jesus,” he mumbled. “Where’s the prison you barely use?”
“Why? You want to make a visit?” I raised an eyebrow at him in confusion.
“No, just curious. I feel like I’ve been dumped into a movie, and there’s a lot I don’t know and should.”
“In my region, actually. We tucked it out in the middle of the desert about two hundred years ago. I’m the first line of defense against escapees.”
“Let me guess…if they escape from prison, it’s punishable by death,” he mumbled.
“Yup. You have a lot of hang ups about the killing thing I do,” I commented, seeing my house as we went over a hill.
“I think killing others is wrong,” he replied.
“I can’t say you’re wrong, but I think it’s naïve, and that’s not a bad thing. Everyone in my world is jaded. It’s refreshing to see someone who believes in right and wrong and not the grey in the middle. And there is grey, Raphael. Lots of it. Most of the time, there’s more grey in a situation than black and white.”
The sun was going down, and I picked up my walking pace. I wanted us inside when the rest of the world came out to play.
When we got inside my gym, I grabbed the wooden swords and we got to work, the conversation put aside for the moment. Thankfully, because I wasn’t really looking to discuss morality and shit.
We sparred, clashing as I pushed him to remember what we went over earlier. I wanted him to learn quickly. It would only help us both in the long run. After twenty minutes of pure sparring, letting him figure it out, we went into forms and patterns as I corrected his form and showed him what each movement could do for him in a