Another Teaser from Chapter Four

[classicdrogn]

You pretty much just have to hope that by the time you get to the point of asking a recruit to swear to one, you've taught them the intended moral frame of reference and gotten a good enough read on their character to know they mean the same thing by it as you do -- if the actual words aren't basically a formality for the sake of tradition and ceremony by the time they're spoken, you've got a bigger problem than the legal document it would take to list all the clauses and conditions to close such loopholes. There was a HP fic that put it into words well; that the main obstacle to using magically-enforced oaths for everything they should logically be usable for is that they depend on the intent of the person swearing them and on their own perception of what constitutes fulfilling or breaking them. For those without the same fiat backed force, all the more so.

"Aren't I doing that already?" is Usagi once more cutting past all the speechifying and elegant wordsmithing to get to the heart of the matter: A heroine of love and justice isn't a thing she does when she transforms in a cloud of sparklies and tosses over-powered energy blasts around in the shape of pink hearts, it's what she is all the time because she follows her own.