Her first step is deliberate and confident. Bella saunters, perfectly at ease being here under Admiral Odoacer's orders. She walks toward the shuttle without so much as a backward glance. By her fourth step, her pace starts to quicken. Her feet pull closer together and her arms draw in around her stomach. She does not dare to look back, but her ears pivot behind her and strain for sounds of a Codexia who's figured out what game is actually being played right now. 

By the twelfth step, she's running. Just seven long strides that set her bells to singing, and she's inside the door. Her legs swing smoothly beside each other in a form that her father, if he knew she existed in the first place, would be proud of. Even inside, she hardly slows down at all, but vaults over a plush couch and lands on all fours as she lunges through the passenger section toward the controls. 

This is how she pays homage to Aphrodite and Athena both. 

Her hands hesitate in front of the flight stick. The charitable would call this mercy, or "giving her companions a chance to catch up and slam the door before she dashes off into space". The truth pounds against her chest with a rush of pure adrenaline. Her fingers tremble as she fumbles with unfamiliar switches and dials. 

She snarls and shivers at the same time, as all the prayers at her lips fall forgotten to the floor. Click. Click click. There's a pressure on the top of her hand as if someone was squeezing it. She resists the urge to turn her head; she needs her eyes right now. But she can't keep the rising blush off her cheeks as the pressure becomes a light shove that brings her fingers curling around the flight stick. She yanks it hard to her right. 

The air fills with the tortured sound of screaming metal. Odacer's personal cruiser tears itself away from the scaffolding like a falcon slicing through the glove of an unworthy handler. The catwalk falls to pieces and crushes the bar Mynx had been working just minutes ago. The shuttle swerves hard and then shudders as a stray beam that had been holding it in place smashes against the side where it gouges the sleek paint horribly and knocks several feathers out of the wings carved into one side. 

The scene descends into the kind of chaos that would call to mind the name of a particular god only the impious or truly foolish would dare name out loud, here least of all. Bella flies the way she runs, and is not the least bit shy about putting what armor the cruiser does have through its paces. Chandeliers go smashing down onto the ground where they explode with loud pops and the crack crack crack of shattering crystals. Walkways and wall paneling peel away from their fastenings and bounce against each other in a chain reaction of destruction. Whatever 'accident' befell the main hangar, she puts it to shame here. 

Now comes the hard part. Bella sniffles involuntarily in her seat as the cold unwelcome sight of space expands to fill her vision. In her wake lies a scene of destruction so thorough that nobody in their right mind will believe she didn't cause it on purpose.