She doesn't have it in her to laugh this time. It's the same joke on repeat out here, too soon to be funny again. She doesn't have it in her to keep shouting, either. Not to a half broken, twitching sheep that half looks like he's about to fling himself sobbing onto the floor, where he'll need someone to pick him up again after. Bella's shoulders roll. Her muscles twitch all along her arms. Her anger, her irritation, her scorn, her amusement, and her fear: all of them have nowhere to go. No correct expression, so they push out of her all at once in a single disbelieving huff. Not half a chuckle, all of it breath. That's all she's left with. 

Bella shakes her head. Her smile is wry and toothy.

"...I was such an idiot back then," she sighs, "If I'd had any sense in me at all I would have let you dipshits capture me the first time I laid eyes on you. I would have had the Princess back on Tellus before Her Majesty's bathwater even cooled."

There's tension in that thought. Desire, even. Bella's face turns hard, and she covers her face with one hand and its outstretched, squeezing fingers. From in between the knuckles of her index and middle fingers, the baleful red glow of the Auspex fixes its unblinking gaze on Dolce. Cold and ruthless. She watches him watch it for several seconds until the good Captain summons up the power and the courage to look directly at it. She blinks a moment later, and lets the moment drop with a casual toss of her hair.

"It's really you? They put [i]you[/i] in ch-- no, of course they did. Who else is there? Fine then if you're in charge then use your f-- just actually think about it for ten seconds, would you? You put the manifestation of a leviathan's terror after Odoacer put a damn ship through its brain in charge of Zeus knows what and then... what? Took it at its word? Let it be, as long as it kept the crabs pointed basically where you wanted them?"

Bella's teeth are grinding. She reaches up and scratches at her face with enough force that the only reason she doesn't tear her face half open is that the fingers she's using have had their claws torn out. She quickly realizes what the gesture is showing and folds her fingers into her palms faster than blinking. She folds her arms across her chest and tries to lean on her back leg, but apparently that's still too exposed because she puts her hands behind her back entirely a moment later, only to swing them free again and dip into what can only be described as history's rudest curtsey. 

"Gods, why did it have to be you? I need this like I need another round of 'Beautification' procedures. But fine. Since you asked so [i]nicely[/i], I'll tell you exactly what's going on. Your so-called Assistant Secretary of Fear and Doubt has built himself a tiny empire of paranoia and death. He needs more nodes to handle the functions he's lacking, so of course he's spawned them. But they're all of them a threat in his eyes, so he pushes them about through his waves of bureaucracy. He pits them against one another, coaxes the fresh ones into killing the older ones, and shuffles them about through an endless chain of pointless bullshit, the only real point of which is to keep him safe and in power. Which of course he's done. What the fuck else would he do? This took me ten minutes of looking to find out. Fuck, first thing he did was beg me to be in charge. It's obvious to anyone with eyes the Tides as they are miserable and don't trust the systems around here, and apparently I come [i]highly[/i] recommended. Or maybe that's just because I'm the first one to go visit their brine soaked hellhole.

"...Look, I don't want to turn this into a whole thing. Like I said, I don't want to be here and I know you don't want me anyway. I've given you your report, so let me out of here and we'll both be happier. Right? Right."