Bella can feel the fur on her arms and legs rising up. She plants her feet firmly into the ground, and she can feel her legs tense up until she could use them to reinforce the [i]Anemoi[/i], the muscles in her thighs visibly twitching under her pant legs. There's a breath caught in her throat that might be turning into a new headache and her heart seems to have missed a beat or two and now it's not sure what to do. Her nose pulls in all sorts of smells, which the Auspex labels helpfully, but her brain tells her are nonsense. 

She swallows, and pushes everything down until all that's left is a very raised eyebrow. Damn it all, these nutjobs [i]would[/i] put a shipmind in charge, wouldn't they?

"Her Majesty wishes nothing but good will upon the Order, Magos." 

She sniffs, catching sparks and whiffs of glass and silicone where she wants sweat and pheromones. Her lips curl up into a smile as her body dips into a graceful bow just to fill the room with any kind of expression and body language. Her fingers grip her half-skirt automatically and pull it into a perfect curtsy that's technically beneath her station, but she's so far past caring at this point it isn't funny. Go figure that [i]now's[/i] the time Mynx picks to act like everything is completely fine and normal. She rises to her full height and instantly crosses her arms underneath her chest.

"This is quite the party you're throwing," Mynx suddenly cuts across the conversation. Bella shoots her a glare, but there's no stopping her, "I assume this has to do with the experiment your Pilate told us about? He was, mmh, short on details, maybe you'd care to elaborate? Since you 'long for compliance' and all that."

Bella haughtily sniffs the air again. This is a mistake. Her nostrils catch a burst of raw Laser and it takes all of her willpower not to stop and stare. That dumb bitch is still wearing the exact same scent she was inside the Eater of Worlds. What did she do, bathe in it? Still parading herself about as a 'captain', for that matter. As if that was a title with any real distinction. They gave that role to Lorventi, for fuck's sake, how important could it really--

"Ok you're gonna have to break that one down a little more for me because that [i]sounds[/i] an awful lot like you blowing up one of Her Majesty's planets and expecting me to be cool with it."

Bella snarls. Somehow she'd turned into the bodyguard in this scene; her tail flicks with annoyance. She forces her eyes back toward the dais and twitches her ears to keep them from bending too far toward Alexa and the wolf princess. Would it kill this asshole to project a face? Gods, isn't it just like the machine freaks to worship something so far gone from the perfection of humanity that it can't even look her in the eyes. 

The Auspex pulses. The pain that ripples through her body feels almost annoyed. Its sight reaches far beyond anything a simple shipmind could conceive of, so stop condescending to her you useless fucking pile of spare parts. You only still exist by the wisdom of Empress Nero so stop giving her cause to question that decision! They all forget. How quickly everybody forgets out here in the sticks. Her Majesty should make annual pilgrimages to Tellus mandatory for the spacer classes so they would better understand their own significance and quit overreaching like the annoying little gnats they really are.

That's how you wind up with Ceronian 'princesses' in the first place. They really brought [i]her?[/i] They really took [i]her?![/i] A wolf's as good as a cat to someone who only ever wanted a pet, is that it? Her eyes wander briefly over to her replacement and glare daggers at the awkward way she moves. There's nothing those arms want to be doing besides holding her weird, stupid scythe. Belligerent posture. Bad attitude. Worse breeding. And yet, the way she's speaking to Alexa is so...

She marks the sheep, and she scowls. All of them here. All of them here, but not the brat. And that meant they were hiding something. That meant an opportunity. She smirks and clears her throat.

"You know what? Just send an intermediary with the relevant materials to my ship. I want to review your, ahem, 'proposal' in greater detail before I sanction any of this blasphemy. Buuut, if you'd rather all of this dancing not be necessary, you could go a long way to showing your loyalty to the Empire by telling me about the guests you've let on board."

Bella's smile widens, and her voice picks up volume.

"Magos, were you aware of the kind of trash you've invited to yourself? Looks to me like you're harboring a bunch of wanted criminals. If I didn't [i]know[/i] better, I'd almost think you tried to keep me penned up on your loading docks so that I wouldn't find out!"