Luz opened her mouth, then shut it. She remembered all too well who was on the receiving end of the mercy kill and thinking about that was enough to give her pause.

"I think at this point, people are thinking about your reputation at Deerington. It can be hard to forgive someone, and even harder to shake off first impressions, especially if you happen to say things that reinforce what they were already thinking about you. I know with some people they expect a change that they can see that shows how different you are, and they don't realize something like that is just not going to happen."

Especially for someone who was never conditioned to think that way to begin with.

"I had a feeling that's the case. They know how to feel compassion and empathy: you were taught to never feel those things, and so you just don't. And that's just another one of those problems I've said we're all bound to run into: how completely different you are from the way they are. But maybe it'll help to try and see if there's a way to learn SOME empathy. You'd feel bad if, say, something happened to Reaper, or Usagi, right?"