There's no mirth or kindness when she laughs. But when she tosses her head back to hear it echoing off the cavernous walls, there's no stopping it either. It's cruel, mocking, and seemingly endless. Every time she seems about to run out of breath, or at least run the joke to the end of its course, Bella takes another look at the squid miserably clutching its finery and she doubles over all over again.

But can you blame her? Gods, can you really blame her? This is too perfect. If someone wrote it as a story to explain the exact curve of her life, they'd choke trying to find a better metaphor than this. Not only did Redana run away to a disaster cruise where she needed sea monsters to fill slots that should be staffed by a proper crew, she couldn't even get the right monsters! It'd be a mercy to kill this ship. It'd be a kindness to scuttle this entire voyage before the gods got bored and let them all fall into a star or something. It could only be a matter of time.

And yet, her tail is still. There's no itch filling her claws, no desperation to her breathing as her laughter finally quiets. Her blood doesn't quicken with the urgency of a hunt. There aren't any names left on her skin, so what was supposed to push her forward. She was the monster who hunted monsters, but these ones sniveled and begged for her help, in the name of her... of [I]the[/I] Lanterns. What was she supposed to do?

Bella's face turns serious as she watches the crabs shuffling about the tide pools. There's patterns to their movement: the sort of thing she could have spent weeks staring at as her life slowly crumbled around her. Not that things felt much better now. She means to huff, but winds up sighing instead. Around they go, in circles, into lines. Carrying treasures from the deep. Guiding and guarding. Not unlike phalanxes, if you just put shields in their claws. Again, so very like home.

"Don't call them 'mice'," she snaps, "Jil and her Lanterns are strong. Much stronger than your fish fry brigade could ever hope to be. All I did was recognize that. There's no magic in it. You're stuck hiding on the wall waiting for a miracle that's never going to come. You're pathetic. Worse than trash."

Bella stretches out her neck until it crunches, and rolls it around until she feels the tension finally leave her alone. She pinches her nose between two fingers, closes her eyes, and drinks deep of this soup of brine, toxic fear, and incompetence. She needs a new project, that's the only reason why. If she's not going to be dead, something has to take over for the useless arts and crafts now that she can't just steal an entire ship's worth of materials whenever she feels like it. Besides, one spare shaving out of this place and the whole fucking ship would probably collapse in on itself. So there wasn't anything left but this.

Her tail flicks with annoyance. Her eye glitters with amusement. Her lips part in a smile that's almost kindness. Not that she notices at all. It melts into a smirk before it can register.

"So you're demoted, starting now. If I'm stuck on this piece of shit tub I'm not going to have it running like it's trying to catch fire. Which, by the way, you're doing a great job of even with the salt bath you're running down here. This ship is carrying the Imperial Princess across the stars; you could have lived a hundred lifetimes inside that rotting filth you called home and not tasted honor even a tenth as sweet. So fucking act like it. If I find you hiding while there's work to be done again I'll kill you on the spot, and that's my last warning. Even Apollo loses his patience in time, and your god is much less forgiving."

Bella wades through the waters as crabs part around her. She meets the Assistant Secretary's one visible eye with the crimson glow of her Auspex, and flashes teeth when it flinches.

"I am [I]not[/I] accepting your offer, by the way. I'll do this until it gets boring, and then I'm ditching you. Better take notes. Now, run me through everything. Forms, function, capability, don't leave anything out."