"Words, woman. Or the leader of Exeter, a planet on the frontier, the vanguard of Bretonia.. Is a mewling quim that gets scared by a bully?" Her nostrils flared.
"Ready and waiting!", Elizabeth uttered the exclamation soldiers use before action. But she did not mean to abstain from an opportunity to break her word should it come.
The severity of her face broke and returned to the one that was someone nice, the very first image that Elizabeth had of her. "You jest." Shaking her head slightly, her hand moved impossibly fast and removed the data-pad from Elizabeth's hands, pulling her like she was a ragdoll. Landing face down on the floor in the middle of the floor, the sky came crashing on her head. As the stars started to dim and her mind to clear, all she heard in the middle of the darkness was: "Pitty. Guess I'll have to prop another one to your place."
The sound of footsteps got closer to her. "Too little. Too late. Something for the tombstone, I guess." As the feet stopped near her face, the next seconds of silence were actually deafening. "Maybe your sister will actually fight back."
It suddenly came to her mind: she realized what Agnes was after. Earlier that day, Elizabeth had sent the OSI a draft of a treaty which required them to send 50 million credits to her directly instead of to the government. The OSI must have informed the government and Agnes must have been the government's response, she thought. What Elizabeth said may have made sense to her, but less to Agnes: "Alright! The 50 million will go to the government!"
A sigh was heard. Long. "You are your father's daughter, alright." The cold metal hand grabbed her by the armpit and propped Elizabeth up. "And I'm the monster he released." The accent. The voice. The inflections. Elizabeth looked at her, the voice ringing a bell. She heard it, countless times. Squinting ever so slightly, Elizabeth's eyelid started to dance.
This was another instance when Elizabeth's brain became too shocked to control its outpour of words. She let her natural Leeds accent free: "Bleeden' hell! Nay! Yar supposed tae be dead!"
Throwing her head back, the laugh was clear, crystal and free. "Not bad for someone who thought was stronger than a Valor, yes? You should see how it is after our tête-à-tête." Her face looked at Elizabeth, the laughter turned into a smile and then to nothing. "Adrift, dead and broken. No chance on resurrection." The blue eyes locked upon Elizabeth. "As I said, Elizabeth, I have more. I know more. And you would do well to learn what I want to teach you. Your father reached immortality due to my actions. And you can do so much, ten times over. To be the forefront. A hero. A bloody icon. A legend to us all."
A Valor right there in front of her, instead of Agnes, Elizabeth imagined. It made her flinch a centimeter backward. But this Valor was destroyed and Dagon was not -- not entirely. Every alarm light turned on inside Elizabeth's mind. The prime threat for Bretonian control over Exeter, as Elizabeth saw her, was right there, on Exeter. And Elizabeth could do nothing to stop her. She had intended to call for another platoon to secure Chateau d'Or after Agnes would have left, then ban all arrivals and departures from the planet, and finally arrest her. She was trying to think of a soldier in her ranks, one large enough and with strong arms, to flog Agnes for severe insubordination in front of her other men as an act to establish firmer authority. The prospect of this sweet vengeance kept her spirit high. But Agnes was not Agnes. She was not a commander. This was an admiral in disguise, and an admiral outranked her. Elizabeth's father must have been even more of a terrible man that she had thought, for her to deserve this.
But Dagon seemed to misunderstand her. Elizabeth was not her father. The prime thing she strove to be was not to be like him. "Glory!?", she picked up the word with the same disgust as if she picked up a dead rat. "You think I am after... glory!?"
![[Image: 396AUfe.png]](https://i.imgur.com/396AUfe.png)