Haru goes home and looks up what's been posted about progress on charging the bird.

They're trying things. There were delays at first because the lab techs were a bit spooked and ended up asking it to hook things up itself, which it did politely while waxing philosophical on the nature of fear. Going by what Mori- It named itself- Says, the ticket is going to be seriously high DC voltage. It reported getting a trickle but not enough even for maintenance from a lab-bench high voltage power supply, the kind used for experiments rather than grid equipment. They're trying an electric car charger with some custom rigging next and if that doesn't work they'll look at, like, grid-scale equipment. Power grid type equipment is kind of... Expensive? But the benefits of a cooperative liberated monster are nebulously high enough to definitely be worth it and they're looking for one.

He'll cover its electric bill up to yea much and swing by to talk to it if it's amenable!

Mori says 'he' is fine, and he's amenable. Here's an address; It's a bit out of the way.

He's got a truck. Out he goes.

It's a dungeon-lab place he's probably vaguely heard of. There's security but they let him in with minimal fuss upon presentation of Esper ID.

Mori is in a side room, hooked up to a piece of boxy equipment with wires and reading... Faust, apparently, on a big display with his talons on a cheap plastic mouse.

"Hi, it's me again."

"The one who plucked me from the metaphorical peach. Greetings. I have named myself Mori."

"So I'm told! Any thoughts on what you want to do with yourself?"

"Art."

"Huh, what kind?"

"The wonderful thing about it is that I don't have an answer yet. There are so many kinds. Literature, painting, song and dance, games, poems, sculpture... I hardly have even the idea of what range exists. That a man long dispersed can still convey this message, tell this story... When my origin is gone for the crime of weakness..."

"I'm not sure I'd say your dungeon is gone for the crime of weakness."

"At its root, I believe, crime is things that society does not approve of. This is order. Society does not approve of dungeons. So perhaps instead the crime of being a dungeon- It would still be hated and feared if it had protected itself and retreated. Your society protects itself against a hostile agent- Promulgates its own endorsed and described ideals- With the threat and actuality of violence. You slew dozens who could have become me. This is justice."

"Society'd love dungeons, if they just - opened up somewhere, let people visit them and leave again unharmed, closed up without anybody in them. Dungeons kidnap and torture people and anyone we don't get out is gone forever. But yeah. I slew dozens who could have become you. I wouldn't say justice, I'd say war."

"Ah. Yes, war. Are not some wars described as just? The precise judgements and actions prescribed by justice changes over time, so what 'justice' is must be something else, something like a pattern that allows these other rules to emerge- I find it interesting to think about. In some past eras, those who risk children out of wedlock were punished, even put to death. It is not so now, is it?"

"Some wars are described as just, fair enough. It is indeed not so now most places."

"Is philosophy art?"

"I wouldn't call it art."

"Something that is not art that I am interested in, then. Though I understand the charge that sustains me does not come for no effort. The labors of necessity and of passion are not always in unity. I, however, know not what labors are valuable to your society in any great detail."

"The electricity's not free, and I don't know how good you are at art, but art specifically produced by an orphan monster is enough of a novelty that you might be able to make a living that way."

"I suppose we shall see."

He clicks to the next page of Faust.

"It was nice of whoever set you up with a book."

"It was. She is Tana Matsuri. I am only borrowing these things... I appear to have an unusual ability to read and carry a conversation at the same time."