Elizabeth stared at the Breeder blankly for a while. She strained to hear each word of her proposal, and considered it for the best part of two seconds before shaking her head and wishing she didn't milliseconds afterwards. The pain coloured her voice with a new level of intimidation and menace. She passed the 'messing around' mark a fair while back, after she back-handed that Gligar. Now was not the time to be polite and diplomatically friendly - now was, most certainly, the time to boss people around.

"Right. No." she snapped, raising her arm to point to Rudy sprawled on the floor. "His Mime Jr. took one in the chest. My Misdreavus has around 4 in her. The order of this procedure will be Mime Jr, Misdreavus, the boy, and then me." she ordered sternly. It really was a miracle and true grit to keep trucking on like this, but she knew that her knees were moments away from buckling under her. In order to save herself from falling and causing a fuss which would cause her to be treated when clearly that Mime Jr. needed it more. If it was acting this badly on her shoulder, who knows what one right in the chest would do? And what about three in one go?

But, much more importantly, why did she put herself last? This had to be corrected quickly. "Scratch that. Put me before the boy. He just took-..." she started, before the inevitable occured. [i]How graceful,[/i] were the only words that crossed her mind as her knees gave way and she landed onto her behind, the dress blooming around her legs serenely against all the chaos of the fight's aftermath. She felt giddy, and sick. Her face was pale and shone with sweat. She was shaking hard now and she doubted that she had ever been in such pain in her entire lifetime, letting loose a pathetic whine. in this state, she was unable to speak without sounding like a crying child, so instead she let her own weakness do the talking - surely, by now, the breeder would have no argument against her going before Rudy. She just hoped that her disappointing display of emotion wouldn't cause the breeder to take pity and put her own needs before the Pokémon...if she wanted to be pampered, she would've brought her servants with her.

Whilst in a moment of weakness, she surveyed the distorted figure of Rudy through her ever-darkening vision with a detached curiosity. Since she never went to school with other children, Elizabeth considered herself significantly more intelligent than most of her like-minded kin, and Rudy was a prime example of...like-minded kin? Or an actual child? And what was a child, in sense? Elizabeth had some fun when she was younger, admittedly, but not with other people of her age. She didn't have that kind of experience, so she pondered over what Rudy's life was like. Did he ever eat things with gold leaf in them when he was little? Was he taught social mannerisms around age 8 as well?

Elizabeth deemed it appropriate to file Rudy under "Interesting Case" and "Panicking Buffoon" until she knew more about him. She wanted to comprehend why her protective instincts kicked in when Rudy was side-by-side with her in battle. Surely she didn't take pity on his inexperience, right? She wasn't that weak, right?

Left in a state of doubt, Elizabeth realised that she had effectively been glaring at Rudy for quite a while now and he probably found that as unnerving as Elizabeth found the thought of caring for another human her age, so she quickly looked away. She knew for a fact that she felt no romantic feelings for the boy, so it certainly wasn't that. And now was a difficult time to muse over emotions when most of her body was being overwhelmed by poison.