You are beautiful.
You are the mercenary.
You are the One-Day Defender.
You are Mira of the Fisher Clan.
You are Whispered Promise.

She lets each accusation wash over her like the tides. Her watery eyes render her expression unreadable. Ears held effortlessly neutral, tail confidently aloft but with a crook at the tip that implies zero aggression. Her dress shifts enough just from the motion of her smooth and steady breathing that it obscures the absolute stillness of her body. Is she predator, prey, a lure? Posture: straight, but not rigid. Pheromones, either calm or smothered in floral smelling chemicals. She is in every language of Hybrasil completely silent. And into that absolute neutrality steps Valynia of the Red Band, at last to learn why this creature is called Mirror. The one name she forgot to lay at her feet.

"I am." she answers every charge at once with a polite tilt of her head. Her eyes flicker in something like pupil dilation, but the effect is... muted. 

She offers a bow, and waits with all the patience of an apex predator while the pirate speaks her wistful farewells to her captive. It is only when she turns around and offers another snatch of verse and a flash of her claws that Mirror smiles.

"Mistakes."

She holds up two fingers on her offhand and wiggles them with deliberate playfulness. In the same motion she lists the number of errors she believes Valynia has made and shows off the clipped, completely smooth claw tips that top the fingers on her hands. A mistake? An admission of a disadvantage? Perhaps raw arrogance. The language of cats is to try and say everything at once, which so often makes it feel as if they are saying nothing at all. Of course greatness and tragedy are written with the same marks. Of course they are.

"I stand before you. Might have stood next to you. A mercenary is for hire, O Pen of the Red Band. You did not... consider me. Hirable. Failure of imagination, cutie."

She lowers a finger and steps back into something more resembling a dueling posture in the same motion, though it's weird. Half of her seems ready to pounce and the other half ready to back away. She does not bare teeth or show claw, keeps her tail carefully tucked around her instead of letting it thrash, does not curl her back in a display of force. She holds her control spike the way a Terenian would one of their rapiers. This, then, is something special. She lets the second finger drop.

"[i]The treasure and the sunlight have the same mother, and sing the same song with different voices. She nourishes the songs who begs to hear them heard and longs inside her heart to hear a promise whispered in reply. The fish is not wrong to swim, nor the bird to fly. To devour them is an act of love."

Mirror spares the smallest of moments to turn her head toward Dolly and offer her a warm smile. That same moment starts the fight. Two cats rush headlong at each other with the towering aggression that denotes true huntresses to the stars, with none there to witness them. 

She fights from the back foot, or so it seems. Mirror does not attack with her control spike, her makeshift sword, but neither does she discard it. It stays in her hand and keeps her from using both of her arms, and so the only one here with a [i]real[/i] weapon is the one who gets to dictate the pace. For several breathless seconds, only Valynia makes any kind of assault. Even if Mirror dodges (and only just enough to get the Bander's hands to brush past her dress instead of through her skin), she has forfeited all power to dictate the terms of the engagement.

And then she moves. She moves in a real way. Not as a reflection, but with a force directed so far beyond this place that only one pair of eyes can even see the target. And in an instant the built up illusions shatter. It is not Mirror who lacks weapons. Valynia is the one who comes unarmed. 

Mirror's dress is a weapon. When she dodges, it dances, in ways that catch the eyes no matter how desperately they need to focus elsewhere. When she spins it whips against Valynia, and her skirts tangle in her legs when they cross back and forth between one another. She catches a slash with her wrapped up arm, and this synthweave bracelet too becomes a weapon. Contact with her becomes contact with a goddess. A flash of images: starlight, fire, chains writhing through chains rattling against more chains, a serpent that eats the stars themselves. Desperation. Longing. Power. [i]Power[/i]. Enough to steal away a breath. 

Her super-hot spike of a maintenance tool turned blade is, it turns out, an incredibly dangerous weapon. She never swings it, but she imposes it between herself and Valynia wherever the other manages to take a decent flank. It sits there, impossibly threatening, but only ever in potential. The threat of it turns unavoidable blows into meeker things that are easily turned aside, or not even worth the effort of doing so. All without every committing it in a way that might expose her. 

Every fresh advantage is its own weapon, and as they build up she unleashes her body in ways that reveal her to be the most terrifying, beautiful weapon of all. Low sweeps and flourishing high kicks, a brutal elbow to Valynia's side that pushes all the air from her lungs. Tail wrapped like a leash around her neck, a sudden lift and it's replaced by a leg that's the promise of death and a glimpse into paradise  at the same time. This, too, is a weapon.

Control. Control. Control. Absolute, smothering control. But it isn't control born out of caution or trickery, or barely even out of subtlety, but from terrifying and borderline suicidal aggression. Mirror controls every move of the fight because she [i]is[/i] the fight. And within that framework she reveals nothing that is not a crushing hit to one thing or another. When she reveals something, it is to show that something new has slipped beneath it. 

Always, a layer of defense. But never more than one. That is her rule and the blade that lifts Valynia's chin at the end of their long dance. She does not hold back in any way that counts, because doing so would ruin the beauty of the moment, and this brave poet deserves to be given beautiful things in compensation for the loss of her prize. The bruises she leaves behind are as plentiful as they are painful. But come the night, the warm waters of a bath would kiss them as a lover might, and oils would seep into her fur and leech away the pain, and when they did Valynia Bander would sigh and shudder with a release so blissful she might as well be allowed to claim she slept with the Whispered Promise instead of dueling her.

This is what it means to be overmatched. This is what it means to be food for Mirror of the Fisher Clan. Her eyes look far beyond this duel to one that only she can see. But it is not the same as looking past the duel she's in, as crass as taking it for granted. She is undefeatable in this moment because she is [i]already[/i] fighting that battle, and to disgrace herself now puts her on the backfoot twelve steps into the future. 

One day, she will be more than a defender.

But today, she offers her arm to Valynia, to help her exhausted body off the ground.

"The Goddess. Smokeless Jade Fires is... incautious. Magnanimous. One might say. Another client might have specified I crush you. But She asked only. For her treasure back. And so you. Are left to me. So I will say this. You are..."

The obvious next line is 'wasted on this provincial band of pirates.' Or some other mewling, fate praise that's really just damnation by some other name. An insult to the life she's chosen and the freedom she's earned by implying that all of it was a mistake just because she was not the literal greatest warrior in the galaxy. By definition there could be only one of those, and her name was already Solarel.

"...Exactly where you belong. I would make you. One of my treasures. But. I like you. As you are. You may seek. Glory. Redemption. Revenge. Or pleasure. As you see fit. I will have. Work for you. If your life ever changes course. Now, [i]you~[/i]"

She turns to Dolly, and slashes away at the restraints in a single clean motion. But not actually to free her, only to drop her from her hanging place, where she could dangle from Mirror's arms instead.

"Your Goddess. Neglected. To set terms for your release as well. So I? I will bring you to her thus. It will be. Nicer. For all of us this way. Squeal if you agree. Good girl."

(Mirror takes the XP and Defies Disaster with Daring and a [b]10[/b]. She may or may not discover new information, gain an opportunity, or take a string at Annie's discretion)