Nai you were literally the one who turned yourself into a weapon for your own purposes.

Yes, he turned himself into a weapon for his own purposes!!! He didn't go and decide someone else was yet a third person's weapon!!!!

"Hmm. Maybe. Some ultra dramatic thing to draw him out... that could work."

"Maybe we should get Conrad here for psychoanalysing Legato."

...for doing what?

"—as in, he's also interacted with Legato a bunch and from a different angle so he might have a different perspective. I don't have as much of a read on the guy as I'd like but... he was trying to test you or something, right, and he was pretty pissed at me specifically. He called me 'Fallen One', he probably thinks I'm something like a dark antagonist figure in his cosmogony, I bet there's something there we could exploit. ...actually, did, uh, did I ever actually feature in your religious upbringing?"

Literally everything Nai hears about this guy makes him like him less and less. Nai was much happier just knowing he was a reasonably competent minion who didn't get in his way while rescuing plants for him.

Morgan does not particularly want to get into the details of that, thank you.

"Yes, you featured. I doubt Conrad could offer more than I already know. Speaking of, actually, can I kill him?"

Zash looks up at Nai.

Nai doesn't look up at Yvette, but he does ask: [can you take over his work?]

[... Probably. I doubt I could be as good at he is at immortalizing people and attaching them to gates, and I want him to write out all of his research first so we preserve as much as possible. Even if the ways it was discovered were irredeemable, it's there now and could be used for something good. On the other hand, I don't... particularly want to prolong his suffering.]

She despises him, but he is still a living being with an internal experience and a world of his own. She wants him not taking further actions to inflict horrors upon the world, not tortured.

Okay. Nai nods.

Zash looks back at Morgan. "We need to check whether his research is written up somewhere, but... yeah. After we've done that, yeah."

He's not happy about it, but... he's not really reluctant. It's not for others to choose whether anyone else lives or dies, but if someone doesn't want to live anymore then... by the same token... they are the only one who gets to make that decision.

"Sweet!" whoops Morgan, delighted. "I'll let him know to get his affairs in order, and get to crafting a fitting stage for our psycho missionary to deign to show up on, I guess?"

It is honestly kind of disturbing to see Morgan seem so happy about killing someone. It's more like a child who has been promised their favorite dessert than someone requesting to be executioner and having their request accepted. It's just... unnerving. Yvette is unnerved.

Zash honestly gets it; this man has caused her so much suffering. Not to mention how, at the end of everything, she is a child. She's in an adult's body and tries to act like an adult but she's a kid, really, forced to grow up far too quickly and do horrible things. Someday she may grow up into someone who is less... like that... but for right now, yeah.

"Sounds like a plan."

...it's kind of... something... to see the way Zash does the plant thing, of loving everyone. When their sisters love everyone, they sort of almost entirely focus on the positives, their feelings and happiness, their qualities; Zash does a different thing, and Nai doesn't really get the thing he does but it kind of does a much better job at making Nai understand the people Zash is being a plant at/about.

It's very uncomfortable is what it is.

Yeah. Yvette understands why she’s so happy about murder too, but intellectually. More viscerally this just... does not feel like a way the world should be working. Like things falling up. There might be a rational explanation present, but it still feels incorrect. Wrong.

On the other hand it is really nice to see Nai fit back with Zash and have them both have the holes in their hearts filled again. And, well, okay, she will take a brief break from being a workaholic for proper snuggles.

"Cool. I'll let you know when I need you." And off Morgan goes, to see about arranging two deaths, looking quite cheerful.

[do we trust her to be competent to find Legato and Elendira]

[I'm inclined to say yes but at least part of that is that I really don't want to be the one to do it.] This conversation got him to get some semblance of emotional stability back but he's not entirely sure that stability is, well, stable, and besides he still, um, is kind of enjoying the snuggles and the "not having to do things" part. Thinking about things is fine, doing them is enhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

[... War and fighting is admittedly most of what she knows, she's probably pretty good at it? And these are also people she knows better than we do. But we can check back in a couple of days and sort it out ourselves if it looks like it's not going anywhere? I admittedly also do not want to deal with it, and I am not particularly martially inclined. Or experienced.]

For the fighting part Morgan's right that they definitely need at minimum Zash's help, and with Nai's help it would be made trivial (though something tells him that it will not be as straightforward as all that). He thinks he can—no, he actually just can, there's no uncertainty there—he can pull himself together when they need him to. It'll be fine then.

But until then: snuggle time!

Snuggle time!

Meanwhile, Morgan goes and tracks down the doctor.

"Good news!" she says, brightly. "Get your affairs and research in order, 'cause you're allowed to die, and I'm allowed to kill you."