"Spread out! Spread... scatter! Stop presenting a target or you're all gonna die!"

Bella's spine burns with the effort of Command. A good leader does not take the field when she doesn't need to. She does not. Her muscles are tenser than steel and her jaw is clenched so tightly that when she shouts out her orders it sends ripples of pain through her face and down her neck. Her bare foot-claws tear deep grooves into the floor. 

And even with all that effort, she nearly loses breakfast to the smell. It isn't just the rank stench coming off of this ridiculous plover, with its overpowering aura of cheap fried foods and a dozen different battles it's yet to be properly cleaned on the back end of, though that's bad enough. It's the bodies. Even the bloodless ones carry a chemical [i]fear[/i] that makes her stomach churn more fiercely than the boiling nebulae of space. 

There's so many of them. Bella raises a hand to her mouth and retches violently. Her cat's eye won't stop trembling and warbling and dripping hot liquids. The Auspex stays laser-focused on the enemy plover's power line, covered up as it is by the ridiculous oversized coat and the various other trinkets and baubles, there to cover up its weakness. She lifts her hand from her mouth to give a signal. A good leader does [i]not[/i] take the field. Her eye darts from corpse to corpse to corpse. Her people. Her army. [i]Her[/i] army. Hers! The plover's joints crack and whirr as it twists in an absurd flourish to point its artifact weapon at Jil's head. 

Bella's eye widens until the black iris absorbs the golden pool that normally surrounds it. Her nerves burn like starlight in her limbs, the crackling notes of electricity surging through her with a power that rivals the wine of Barassidar for pleasure. The rush of her blood sings with the grace of a choir in her ears. She snarls and leaps, and her body turns to liquid as she moves. All thoughts of command are left behind in the tears in the floor that mark her passage. She's a rushing waterfall or a bolt of lightning more than she's a person in this moment, drawn along the lines of those pulsating white threads as she spreads her claws and twists her spine in mid-air to put as much power as her body will let her into the blow. 

Her howl of fury echoes even off of the dampening walls of the [i]Anemoi[/i], roaring over the clatter of the plover's severed arm clattering uselessly to the floor. 

"You..."

Bella breathes in deeply through her nose. She holds the scent of her fallen warriors in her lungs, and then slowly lets them go with a steady hiss. As the air leaves her body it pulls her spine up, and up, and up, till she's standing straight and then beyond so that her shoulders roll and her back arches and her head lolls around to look behind her. Her limp hair falls every which way over her eye and her lips until she pushes it aside with another breath. 

She turns to face the pirate again and flicks bits of machine gore off her claws with casual disdain. She licks her lips

"What other little tricks do they teach you backwater hicks? This can't be everything! Come on, bring it out! I left your power connected for a reason, show me what makes you worth so many of my men!"