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Rylafein Del'Armgo, last survivor of Planet Pyrrhus, once called Son of Murder, did not sulk. At least, not if you asked him. He brooded, perhaps, but he did not sulk.

So, of course, even if he might be perceived as sulking over his oatmeal the morning after his argument with Imnolu about their various methods, he was nor doing that. Because he didn't sulk. No matter how sulky he looked stirring his breakfast.

It wasn't that he regretted what he'd said, or anything he'd done. No, not by far. He knew he was right, and he knew he'd made the right choice.

It was just....he had so few people left. Feuding with one of them, especially his cousin, was...unpleasant.

Also, they lived together, and that would likely make things awkward at some point. Briefly, Ryla contemplated retreating to his room with his breakfast. Maybe that would save him an unpleasant conversation.

Imnolu woke slowly that morning, groaning when he realized he was, in fact, awake, and that he wouldn't be getting any more sleep today. Last night had been awful. Sleep reused to bless him with its presence, and then when his body finally gave up, nightmares plagued him. Watching Rylafein kill that man right in front of him had conjured up more and more maddening scenarios until he woke.

Sighing, he crawled out of the bed and dressed in the modified lounge clothing he had for being at the house in his natural, alien form. Ugh, his tail felt gross. And so did the rest of him. He needed to bathe.

His stomach growled.

Right. Breakfast first, then. At least he didn't smell.

He shuffled into the kitchen, stiffening when he realized Ryla was in there. And Lianli. So it'd be one of those mornings, then. He nodded to Lianli and completely ignored Ryla as he moved towards the cabinets where the instant oatmeal mix he liked was.

....Even ignoring Rylafein for all of twenty seconds crushed his heart too much, tail slowly sliding between his legs.

"Good morning," he finally said quietly, turning around to give them both an awkward smile that felt more like a grimace.

Things were looking up-adjacent, Liánlí thought, when Ryla started tentatively accepting the offer of eggy, savory crepes. Then, Imnolu wandered in, looking utterly miserable. It could’ve been that he just didn’t sleep very well, but seeing him stiffen at the sight of Ryla made Liánlí purse his lips. The discomfort did not ease, seeing the way that Imnolu initially ignored Rylafein (which??? did not make sense??? they were family who actually liked each other, right??? they had certainly seemed that way since Ryla and Heibing had brought Imnolu home???), nor the way that he was clearly forcing a smile.

“No, wait,” Liánlí said before he could stop himself. Whatever was going on here, he didn’t know the first thing, but would space really help? When the problem, at least right now, certainly seemed to involve not talking to each other. “Ryla, it’s okay. Imnolu’s okay, right?” Liánlí looked to Imnolu and hoped that he would agree. Didn’t really know what he would do if Imnolu didn’t agree, honestly. “It’s—I was gonna make some more substantial breakfast than the instant oatmeal, if you wanted some, Imnolu?”

There. Food brought people together and solved problems, right?

"It...." Ryla stopped. Gods, he hated this. And now there was someone else in the middle of whatever was happening with him and Imnolu.

But he was also sort of outnumbered, and if he upset Lianli too much, he'd probably annoy Huanxi, and that wan't on his to-do list, so he dropped back in his chair.

"I can hang around until you're done cooking and then get out of everyone's way," he said, which seemed like a reasonable compromise. "Imnolu probably doesn't want to hang around me right now."

Was that sort of a shot? Yes. But he was also fairly certain it was true.

Ryla's comment felt like an arrow to the chest. His jaw shook. Yes, they'd had a horrible fight, but... He squeezed his eyes shut briefly to fight back the tears. Ryla was his cousin. He didn't have anyone else besides Heibing left from the old days. Ryla's husband was gone. His own husband and son were gone. What the hell was he even doing?

"Meat's fine, thanks," he said softly to Lianli as he sat down across from Ryla.

"...We had a bad fight last night That's all." He inhaled slowly. "I, uh..."

He didn't know what to say. He just... didn't. What he wanted was to forget last night had happened and give Ryla a hug and wag his tail. But no. Not today. Or any day, if this kept up like this.

The awkwardness was still hanging around the kitchen, but as Imnolu took a seat, Liánlí held hope in his heart that things would start looking up now. The cousins were sitting together, and Liánlí was making food, and everyone would eat it and be happy, because they would remember how much they loved each other.……and then, as he worked on mixing up the batter for the jian bing, the truth came out.

Liánlí winced sympathetically over Imnolu admitting to the fight. And he let out a hiss as Ryla admitted to what the fight was about.

“Well……that explains the awkwardness, yeah,” Liánlí agreed, then took a deep breath and looked for where he’d set down the cooking oil that he needed. “It’s kind of a complicated situation, isn’t it? Like, a lot of the people around here who’ve been infected with Chaos, they are unrepentant and pretty happy that way?” Or, well, maybe not always happy, but at the very least, they didn’t want to change.…… Not that Liánlí was thinking very specifically of any particular exceptionally flaming General-Sovereigns who did not, in his opinion, appreciate how much one of Liánlí’s friends cared about them.

“And honestly, I can understand why the ‘kill the problem before it becomes a bigger problem’ sort of approach worked during the Silver Millennium,” he said, and glanced over one shoulder at Imnolu, with an apologetic expression. “Not that I have all the information or anything? But those of us who are, uh, reincarnationally challenged or whatever? We can access memories from our past lives when we go to our homeworlds or Wonders, as in my case. And one of the first ones I got back from Xingyi was of him having to kill someone. Another group like the one you guys and Heibing had, his cousins ran with them and they didn’t take care of a problem. Not until one of their friends was on death’s door, and the options were letting her die slowly and painfully……or taking her to the Saturn Knight they had an in with, and asking him to give her a peaceful death. Sometimes, it is a situation where there isn’t a good choice.

“However,” he added, looking over the other shoulder at Ryla, “there are options for handling the people infected with Chaos, these days. I know you and Heibing have met Murikabushi, and he used to be with one of the Chaos options, the Dark Mirror Court. If you’ve seen Kerberos around North End Park—long blue hair, kinda dancery vibe, asphodels growing all around him and he’s got the glowy marks that say he Transcended? I don’t know his whole story, but Muri says he was with the Negaverse before he got out. It’s called purification, and……well. Muri also says it’s apparently very dramatic for Dark Mirror senshi, but?”

Liánlí shrugged, turning back to his work. He had a pan to get oiled up and heated. “I don’t know how much of that drama is on the process being kind of a lot and how much is on Murikabushi just being kind of a dramatic person in general, y’know? Like, maybe it’s easier for other senshi who leave the Dark Mirror Court, but he made his process a whole production because that’s how he is? Either way, we’ve got a lot of Princesses in town who can help save somebody who wants to leave Chaos behind, so……y’know. Killing might be justified sometimes, but we do have other options worth considering, too.”

Well. That was new information. Ryla tilted his head to the side, resting his cheek on his chin and stirring his spoon in the still-barely-touched bowl of oatmeal.

"The Nameless, they called themselves, right?" Ryla clicked his tongue, and smiled wryly. "We had some run-ins, once upon a time. Same line of work, you can imagine how it went." He shrugged. "Anyway, these are really the first people infected with Chaos I've ever seen. If there's a way to fix it, great."

He shook his head, a little.

"But there's never been many Royal Senshi. You can't tell me they're all accessible all the time. And I'm not going to apologize for taking the straightforward solution to people who clearly don't value life." He huffed, and turned his attention to his breakfast. "People like you and Imnolu are better suited to that saving people thing than I am, anyway."

Imnolu's tail didn't cease wagging. It slowed, sure, but it didn't stop.

"Okay, so it'll be tough, but! As long as we can try, that's really important," he said with stubborn cheeriness. "I knew it couldn't just be that depressing."

He grinned cheekily at Ryla, scooting his chair closer to his cousin. "Sooo, can we agree that sometimes you're right and sometimes I'm right?" he asked as he slung his arm over Ryla's shoulders. "Maybe we should keep patrolling together to balance ourselves out, huh?"

The idea of killing still made him queasy. He didn't think he'd be able to do it, in the same way Ryla clearly didn't think he could save someone, or decide someone was worth the try. Maybe they could figure it out together. He'd just... have to get comfortable with the killing.