[b]Redana![/b]

There is a very real limitation on how clever you can be after being punched in the face. For a long couple of minutes, Beautiful isn't being smart. She's not effortlessly dancing out of your reach, not analyzing, undermining, counterattacking. She's just lying there. In the state of having been punched. One hundred percent off her bullshit.

After a number of false starts at both sitting up and speaking she finally manages it. "You... don't need an assassin?" the question is hesitant, almost lost. The one thing that doesn't fit into the empty, all-encompassing mind of a Temple Assassin. "I mean... you know that I'm a [i]very [/i]good assassin, right? Just putting it out there, if there's anyone you want... no?"

She's at a loss. All that programmed instinct, all the mathematics in her brain, processed and primed to lead inevitably towards absolute death and destruction. A lifetime of training that lives in her bones, if not in her conscious memory. And now...

"So..." she said. "... what you're saying... is I can be anything?"

Fingers drum against the cold metal floor. Wide eyes close for a long moment. And then she sits up suddenly, eyes as wide as they go and brimming with excitement. "Journalist! Oh no - card shark! Do either of those jobs exist? Doesn't matter! I'll bring them back! Detective? No, I'd need a rival. Oh, maybe I can commit crimes then wipe my memory and leave them for myself to solve..."

She tries to get up but doesn't quite make it, slumping back onto her side again. She rotates around to face you. "How about I start with you? What brings a dame like you into my office?"

[b]Alexa![/b]

Everywhere you look you find evidence to support your dark hunch. Soldiers, sitting around the table, eating and laughing. Then choking, shaking, spills, chairs thrown back as they start to feel the poison. One soldier is not affected and turns on the others, the falling bodies slammed down into the floor with strength enough to fracture the metal. Some soldiers lunge for cover behind the upturned table. One has an esoteric weapon, something that makes metal run like water for an instant before solidifying. They fire a ragged volley with their pistols and land hits...

And then the claw marks appear. The assailant's size and weight increases, razor talons begin to score the deck. The Esoteric begins to fire and the Thunderbolt fires in response, cutting the table and the weapon in half, freezing the room in its half-liquid state. Then, it leaps, standing up atop the table before descending on its disoriented foes...

This much anyone might learn. This was not what was kept a secret.

And then it is alone in a room with a dozen bodies. Where did they go? How did it carry them?

The ship isn't empty any more. This is not an isolated component. There were witnesses in both directions who saw nothing. No vehicles or carriages came through here. A Lantern reports that despite the grim thought, bodies were not disassembled and fed down the communications tubes. Your mechanical hound can't pick up a scent in any of the maintenance corridors or vents. The Kaeri Evocatii is growing more and more panicked at the accumulated evidence of this black miracle. You are too but for the opposite reason. She doesn't see it, can't see it - she's a predator, after all. A warrior. She understands blood and death.

You, though? You're not a warrior any more, Alexa. You know to stop and smell the flowers. You know how to see the trees despite the forest.

You can see the faces trapped inside the wood.

Everyone else is walking right past the ornamental trees. Trees grow everywhere on the Plousios, beautiful garden groves that filter the air and add colour to grim metal corridors. Some part of your mind, for its own safety, has avoided thinking about them too hard since the Master of Assassins raised the rainforest of Sahar.

But that's Galnius there, amidst those trees. That one further on looks like a Kaeri. Their branches bloom with black dahlias.

[i]"The fool trims the leaves," the Master of Assassins said to you one fine day on Tellus, so many years ago. "A brute hacks the trunk. An expert pulls the roots. But a master..."

Hard and calloused hands ran through soft and loamy soil. 

"Gardening has a way of wearing down the soul," she said. "When life itself is your enemy then the battle becomes eternal. But if you want to be able to appreciate a garden into your old age you need a way to break the cycle. And that is why the master catches the seeds."[/i]