Beautiful held out her hand and let the leaking rain trickle into it. She watched each water drop with absent curiosity, rotating her hand so she could watch as they merged and ran and parted across her palm.

"I remember..." she said. "I remember there was meant to be a chant. Wake up to the chant. Certain words. Certain truths. Certain facts about the universe nailed into my head every time I woke up over and over until the point where I can feel the holes those words are meant to go in. I remember things I was supposed to know, supposed to hate, supposed to lie about. It wasn't all dictionary reading and mission briefings, there were rituals encoded in those words. Things that made me hungry. Made me want to hunt. You asked about shadows and it's like... I have things that I can kind of [i]sense [/i]I'm supposed to be feeling, even if I don't feel them. I can see a power line and know that I am usually supposed to plant a breaker mine just in case I need to blow the ship up later. I can see a cute couple and know that I'm meant to destabilize their relationship just in case I need to get one or both of them to die for me. Set a magna-melta against the Kaeri cells to trigger a jailbreak on demand. I'm aware every second of ways to kill everyone, ways to be [b]ready [/b]to kill everyone, or any particular subgroup of everyone. How to make what's in my brain everyone's problem."

Her earlier monologue was hammy and over the top, but this melancholic thought - in this lighting, in these clothes - seems to genuinely fit the genre she indulged in. She ponders for a moment, looking at her hands.

"I know intellectually what a name like Beautiful is," she said. "I know it's a sword. They made us to be [i]smoking [/i]hot and not even a suit that fits like a trash bag and ongoing rain can change that. When I hear that name what I think is how to use it along with a sequence of correct decisions to ramp up the Imperial Princess' obvious inferiority complex until I can get her to commit the weight of empire against my target and complete the mission that way. But... I don't have a target. Don't have anything I need to use that weapon [i]for[/i]. So instead..."

She steps forwards suddenly. Her motion is liquid and unpredictable, sliding around Bella's reflexive claw grasp only leaving her with a handful of torn fabric. Gets to Redana. Hugs her tightly.

"You're not as small as you think," she said. "You're not an outsider here. This isn't a story about assassins you're along for the ride on. There are [i]five [/i]directions - north, south, east, west and [i]centre[/i]. My plan only works if you can be ours."