Our fight trended upward, since neither of us particularly wanted to have our fight in the middle of a city- we were both pretty accustomed to killing people, but that didn't mean we wanted to kill a city full of people whose only crime was living in SoCal. Sure, that was a crime that should be punishable by death, but so far it wasn't, and I did swear to abide the dictates of the Galactic Senate.

"Thank you for condescending to indulge me, darling," Karasuba drawled, catching my lightsaber on her own- which did work to block my lightsaber because, when I was making this one, it occurred to me that a lightsaber that couldn't be blocked- while possible with the tools at hand- would be pretty unsporting, and thus a bad fit for today's duel. "It makes a silly little Sekirei like me so happy to have Master play with her as more than just a sex toy."

"Karasuba, you got bored and started executing people," I said, pulling back and attacking from a different angle. "I understand my phrasing was a bit dickish, but you literally have blood on your hands."

"You didn't stop me," Karasuba said simply. "All you said was that I was on my own, as though I needed your support to make an impact on the world."

"Okay, so maybe I did a bad job communicating that," I said. "Let me try again now that I understand the situation better: Hey Karasuba, I think that killing people when you don't have to is morally wrong, and while the people you killed were assholes who were making the world worse, I think there were better ways to handle the situation, that now we can't try because they're all dead."

"There, was that so hard to say?" Karasuba asked. "Now, I disagree with the idea that killing people is axiomatically bad. Look at how you handle people you should've just killed: you break their spirits, you lock them in cages, you brainwash them into being different people before you let them out. Maybe sometimes that's for the better, but ultimately? It's just another kind of murder that doesn't leave a corpse."

"The part where the person does not actually die is somewhat critical, I think," I said. "Among other things, what if we're wrong? What if we make a bad call? What if we misdiagnose the problem, and we think someone is dangerous when they're actually not? If we have death on the table as a solution, then we might've just killed an innocent man! Locking him in a cage with Sith Therapists might not be good, but at least we'll never have to show up to a gravestone begging a ghost for forgiveness!"

"You killed Thanaton," Karasuba said, sneaking through my guard and grabbing me by the collar of my costume. "You killed Vowrawn. You've killed so many Sith, as yourself, as Rose Corcoran, with full control of your faculties. What exactly makes you different from me?"

"Because when I was the Emperor, I didn't have other options!" I shouted. "I didn't have my Warehouse, I didn't have a way to strip my political enemies of their personal power and put them somewhere they couldn't hurt anyone besides murder! I'm not proud of what I did as Emperor Thanaton. I brought justice to the Sith Empire, and made so many people's lives better, but I killed so many people in the process, personally and otherwise. How many broken eggs does that omelette justify? Can any omelette justify itself to the eggshells? And yet, the eggs needed to break, because the omelette was that important." I shook my head. "We have other options now. We have a better way. We have such unfathomable power at our fingertips, and nobody in this fallen world can stop us from doing whatever we want. And if what you want is to kill people for your own emotional catharsis? We're going to have a problem."

Karasuba gritted her teeth, anger flashing behind those eyes.

"Just listen to yourself!" Karasuba yelled back. "Listen to your fucking god complex leaking through! You think that just because you've suddenly got power now, that makes you the ruler of all creation, capable of reordering reality to your whim! Well guess what, asshole, I've had power my whole life, and it doesn't work that way! The world hasn't become some big dollhouse for you to play with- it's still a world, full of people, and they all make their own choices, with every heartbeat! Yeah, I'm more powerful than the people I killed. They were more powerful than the people they killed. Do those victims not deserve justice? Should we let those assholes live because you think they're too weak for you to bother with?"

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"...I think I've pinpointed a key issue in your perception of the matter," I said quietly. "Whether or not you'll allow me, I'm about to correct that."

Power flared, and Karasuba's body simply... disintegrated, a cloud of monatomic dust dispersing into the atmosphere. Silence hung in the air, and then, flowing in reverse, the dust cloud that had been my wife's body re-integrated, reforming her body, gasping and choking in tremendous pain.

"You killed a whole bunch of people who didn't need to die," I said simply. "Not even just this year- your first twenty years of life as MBI's dog, killing people for Hiroto... If you'd met a woman just like you, in the time before she met someone like me, you would've killed her dead, for your own conception of justice. If you really did convince me of your position, then I would've killed you, and you would've stayed dead. And yet... You didn't convince me. You have not convinced me that you, Karasuba, are irredeemable, that the only good outcome for the world is for you to die."

"That would... feel a lot better... if I wasn't in so much pain," Karasuba rasped out, eyes screwed shut.

"Oh, I'm not doing this to make you feel better," I said simply. "In fact, I'm not done hurting you yet. Just in case you're wondering how my anecdote about how you could learn and grow and change applies to all the people you've killed, let me tell you this: You are not special. Your power does not make you more deserving of forgiveness. The fact that I love you doesn't make you more deserving of forgiveness. I've broken up with girlfriends before, Karasuba, I'm not afraid to do it again. You're not special. Everyone deserves the same gentle treatment and guided opportunities to do better as you do. And as it just so happens, we're in a position to give that to people, with very little personal effort. Doesn't that obligate us to at least try? Don't we owe our fellow man that much?"

Karasuba sighed.

"...I'm gonna need more therapy, aren't I?" she whispered. "You... You still think I'm a monster..."

"I was recently convinced of that, because you acted like a monster," I said dryly. "For most of our time together, I thought of you as a recovering monster- someone who'd done terrible things in the past, but was trying to be better, moving forward. But..." I shook my head. "Your love of fighting, your particular sense of justice, and the fact you still don't really consider human life to be valuable, those all combined to make you think that hunting people for sport was okay, just because those people did bad things. It isn't, Karasuba. You're not done learning and growing. None of us ever will be, but... you're below par, here."

"Maybe..." She sighed. "Maybe I am."

Silence hung for a long moment, as we processed what all had gotten discussed.

"You know," Karasuba said, quietly, "I'd known that, if we fought for real, you'd hurt me, but... I didn't know it'd be like this."

"I'm sorry this is what it came to," I said. "It didn't have to be this way."

"I think... at this point, I think I have to admit defeat," Karasuba said. "You've just proven that, despite everything... I can't match you in a fight."

"I hit up Eve for powers, is the thing," I said. "You could've done the same. Really, it's Eve who's effectively unbeatable for the both of us."

"And?" Karasuba asked. "What does that matter? We fought. You beat me into dust. I think... that's just about killed any urge to fight you I'll ever have again. That wasn't a close fight I lost, that wasn't an exhilarating, blood-pumping duel that I might have won if I'd just been a little bit better... You were toying with me. And... I guess, for the adrenaline and the endorphins, we're just gonna have to go back to rough sex."

"Eventually. Justice aside, I'm personally mad at you right now, so... you get to sleep on the couch for the next little while."

"Bitch."

"Would you rather sleep in a jail cell? Because after how many people you've killed this year, that can be arranged."

Karasuba sighed heavily.

"No, dear," she said.

"Good girl. We'll get you housebroken soon enough."