...Fine. 

If that's how it is, fine. Everything was pointless from the beginning. That's just what she got for hardly ever praying. Of course a Ceronian pack would augur them. She should have seen the ambush coming before she'd even come out of her first restaurant. Fuck, she should have seen it coming before she made planetfall. That'll be the plovers gone for sure, then. Bunch of assholes. 

Fine. Whatever, fine. All she'd wanted to do is see a fucking museum. It was a stupid idea in the first place, wanting to learn enough to make her own conclusions about a people she still intended to abandon to their own horrible deaths. Better not to know. Then she could sit inside a star and cook herself stupid lamenting the color vision shrimps like a normal person. Too late now; the Star Kings were simply too far ahead of her.

The air has turned sharp enough to sting her nose, as if it sensed a storm and had begun to fill with electricity and anticipation of rain. Bella snorts, and reaches over to pluck a sword from out of a nearby Silver Diver's (don't ask her which one) bandoleer. She twists it in her hand, and watches the crowd of psuedowolves pack ever closer without quite coming in range. She can taste the saccharine bite of excitement dripping off the lot of them, but underneath it are the familiar sour notes of nerves and even a bit of deeper vinegar soaked fears.

Bella smiles. 

"Figures."

She lifts the claw on her right index finger and presses it down on the blade. She glances up with an air of casual disinterest and shrugs at nothing in particular. A handful of her sharpest companions catch the hint and their ears flatten slightly as they dull their senses in anticipation of a noise they absolutely do not want to hear. She watches the response roll through the pack in a small wave. 

"Feeling good about having ears and eyes now, guys? Wonder how well they trained you after they finished jabbing you with the needle."

There are noises you can create only if you have a proper understanding of the materials in front of you. To read the molecular structure and see the pattern in your head of exactly what types of pressure and what amount of damage will create specific levels of friction and breakdown, and how to elongate the moment of contact precisely to cause maximum pain. It's a form of torture Bella knows well. 

She slides her claw along the tang of the blade. Up and down in soft, loving strokes. The sound the shivering metal makes is a death wail that no living thing should ever have to hear. A keening tinnitus that slips above the range of the unenlightened and into frequencies that only proper ears can channel. It's a vibration that can be felt in the skull. A headache so insistent it erases the memory of ever not hurting. After that comes the scream. It shatters glass. Bella's own ears trickle blood.

She snaps the sword in half, and tosses it on the ground. Her back stays turned to the tower. This will not be the worst of it for any who have come here to revel in their sense of artificial purpose and their newfound sense of invincibility. That will happen when Ember's pack begin smashing shields and shining lights brighter than the star above this planet. It'll bring the first circle to their knees, and that's if they're lucky. 

After that? Well, whatever. It's really none of her business. She told herself she wouldn't fight down here on this world of wet paper. If the children wanted to throw themselves at her, she'd deal with it. But until then it's not her fucking problem. She closes her eyes, and feels the response in the pavement beneath her instead.