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Opening the laptop, a small holo keyboard appeared and the mechanic sound imitating keystrokes was heard. Fast, professional. Adding a small device, the cloning process began. Silent minutes passed by until a small green light appeared in the device. Removing it from the laptop, the figure placed it in her jacket and started to peruse the laptop contents. Not even two minutes in, she walked back to Hall and made him look at a small pill.

"Hard or easy, love?"

Nodding, Hall opened his mouth, and the gloved hand placed the pill inside his mouth. Without a warning, she closed his mouth and covered his nose, making him swallow on purpose. Content with the result, she slowly caressed Hall's sweaty forehead and silently returned to the laptop. Panic filled him, was the end nigh? Death by poison?

The rhythmical keystroke sound filled the room, as file upon file was reviewed. Thirty minutes in absolute silence, and Hall was feeling better. The pill? What was the purpose of it? To extend his life for more pain and torture? He shuddered at the thought, with the pain from his hand slightly decreasing.

Finally, the laptop was closed. And the footsteps came closer to him. The fear increased with each step. Now, as his mind was clearer, fear was more solid. Had a bigger, deeper grip, akin to a deeper claw clinching to a prey's meaty body. He saw a small blade being produced from her jacket pocket. The end was here. He closed his eyes.

And the feeling of the restraints being cut off was what felt. His mind couldn't comprehend. Or believe. Opening one of his eyes in fear, her hands were working swiftly and diligently, yet without sympathy or compassion. He still did not believed it.
It had to be another trap. Or was the set up to disguise his death? The possibilities were jumping around in his mind.

When the last restraint was removed, she distanced herself and the sound of the mask being pulled away. He didn't dared to leave his position, but now his head could turn. And it turned. It turned to see the mask falling to the floor, and long black hair falling down, finally free, through the figure's back. She turned around and walked towards the light.

No. No. It cannot be. His mind was shattered once again.

"YOU!?"

The silence after it swayed its emptiness through the sweaty air. Hall was trying to deal with the fact that he had just been tortured and almost killed -- almost, for now -- by the very person whom he had given a life and a purpose along with it. The light glistened over the droplets of sweat that covered the face of Kaze Dagon. She was supposed to be half-dead, in the medical bay. She was obviously in pain, too, not much less than Hall, but her face was stoically calm.

The lamp light that illuminated Dagon's face elucidated everything. She must have seen the message.

"You think I'm a traitor, don't you?" After such a long time, Hall himself felt betrayed.

As Hall asked if he was a traitor, Kaze pulled a small paper towel and started to remove the red lipstick from her lips, without even acknowledging Hall's question. Silence once again filled the room, as if waiting for the her voice to fill it. She then kneeled and picked up Hall's bitten off finger, placing it in a small medical bag, that immediately froze the contents. Rising up, she finally looked at Hall, like a Queen looks at a traitorous soldier. There was no pitty. There was no sentiment. No anger. No rage. Nothing. Just a steely, marble like face, carved in titanium.

"You are." Her voice was her own once again. Accents, languages, all gone. Now her voice rang like truth. "According to the veritable amount of information inside that laptop, you even tried to assassinate a member of the Bretonian Armed Forces. An Admiral now, at that." She finally pulled a gun from her back, and trailed it at Hall. The sound of the energy being charged sounded like the final punctuation in her sentence.

"Once, I killed Reavers. Monsters for some, traitors to others. For that was my job." She closed into Hall, bionic arm ready to dish out damage as the other kept his head square in her sights. "To all of them I spoke the truths about what we were. And then I asked what were their final words." Kaze's face stood still as a testament that this was not an action bound by rage, disgust or any other foolish sentiment. It was bound by duty. "They never managed to speak them. For there are no final words. Only truths. And they were already spoken to them."

"Making money from the pain of Leeds." She pressed the energy level increase, the sound increasing in tone. "Feigning your own assassination so you could gather more power." The level increase was pressed once again, rising the tone. "Betraying your Queen, your people, your house." And that finger clicked to increase the sound of impending doom even further.

"Dealing with nomad infected. Dealing with Corsairs." She eyed Hall. "You are a veritable mess of rotten and tangled connections in and out of Bretonia." The barrel of the blaster crept even closer to Hall's head, the sound humming. "Do you have any last words?" Her voice was but a whisper.

Hall got what he deserved, one could think. He should bow down, be silent and wait for the bolt of energy to vapourize his brain and slam his soul under the ground, where it belongs. But something was not right, and Hall knew it. He might have been unjust to some other people, but he knew well what injustice was and now he felt it on his own skin. But it was also a propellant.

"I am NOT a traitor!", he screamed with his soul bared to the bone and only its basic skeleton remaining, like a child accused for a mischief they cannot prove to have not done. "I have dealt with rats, demons, devils and death, but I have NEVER betrayed Bretonia! I profited off of Leeds' misery, but only because I couldn't do anything else about it on my current position, because other people, incapable people, held the positions I needed. It was for Leeds that I tried to assassinate McIntire. O'Brien is useless and he is her lackey; it is only with me at our lead that we can achieve victory! My "traitorous" message to Gallia? It was just a trap. I had sent Lachance, some GRN girl we managed to capture, back to them, convinced that I was a veritable mess of rotten and tangled connections, so she would tell them so. And so they would fall into my trap. The Norfolk fleet wouldn't stay out: it would unexpectedly materialize RIGHT at the Gallic flank, and rout the naive frogs back where they belong! And I would be celebrated as the man of the day, and I would be set up as Fleet Admiral, spearheading our unstoppable advance all the way to Ile-de-France! Do you really think I would enjoy being a Gallic slave, even if King of Bretonia!? You don't understand anything... You can kill men, Reaver, but you are still just a girl. Much like O'Brien. A girl that thinks she's the centre of the universe and uses it as her playtoy. As I intended to trick them, I tricked you, and now you have RUINED it all... Because of you, your so beloved dear Bretonia, will fall. There is no hope for us any more... Please kill me, so I am not here when everything topples down like a roaring downpour of pathos. Have me:"

He leaned back and exposed her his throat.

The blaster barrel forced his head down, and trailed his forehead. "Bretonia." She said pushing the blaster against "Will." The energy hummed seriously against his skull. "Prevail." The closing chapter of a story. Of his story.

The hum slowly bowed to silence and the barrel stopped pressing against his forehead. For some seconds he thought death had come. "While it has monsters willing to do anything for it." He looked up and saw her for what she was. A Queen. A Monster. A Reaver. "And a monster knows very well his place." She holstered the gun and looked at him. "Your plans, you machinations were what brought you closer to the edge. For you like it. You enjoyed it." She turned her back and walked back to the harpsichord. She removed the glove from her bionic hand.

She again sat on the small stool and started to caress the keynotes. That bionic hand softly touched them, eerily human-like. And she once again started to play it. Now, a piece that Hall knew only those of royal blood could play from start to finish. And she played. The sound filled the room, mixed with sadness, madness and dark hope, the feelings were brought forth with which note.

A woman akin to his very own special piece of darkness was there, playing her heart, playing her very own soul. And she played on, without rest, in pain. All for the beauty that emanated from that harpsichord. Until it ended. She then turned around to Hall.

"I will kill you Hall. But not today. Today.. And tomorrow, you have use to Bretonia. You will do your best, strumming to the lines I write. You opened the Pandora Box and I was brought forth. No matter what you think, no matter what you do, the monster you released is bigger than you." She rose up from the seat and walked towards Hall, and tapped her temple. "I know you watched me all this time, through blood and death. Through the path I have cleaved. And now it is time for me to watch you." The bionic hand was scorched, a testament of what she went through in Leeds. "Slowly, you will remove yourself from power. For Bretonia only has space for one monster in the shadows. Two are too much, and they work against each other. For that is our nature. Deny it, and I will show you true torture. Accept, and you will live to see Bretonia free." The bionic hand balled into a fist. The titanium hammer of doom, with the individual rotors begging for release. "There and then, the girl you see before you will show you that she was never a girl. But Izanami." The demon was there, fiery, devoted, dedicated and uncompromising. To stand in her path is to court death. And death was inviting. And waiting.

Hell is defined as the most beautiful thing in existence, but just out of one's reach. Hall was let stay alive, but he was to live and not do what he lived for. And yet it was better than death. It left some doors open. Hall might have been defeated, but he was not destroyed. Now it was time to sign a peace treaty on unfavourable terms, but also hide vengeance and cherish it secretly, until there emerges a chance to unleash it in its full capacity and regain what has been lost. There was a good circumstance for Hall, too, and it was that Dagon needed him.

Hall grinned and giggled soundlessly. His finger gushed out a thin streak of blood, which splashed on the floor.

"This is the most unusual manner of blackmail I have ever seen! You want my position. And if I do not give it to you, you will hand that memory stick in your grip, with all my plans, to the police. If you do so, then I will go to prison, and you will never get what you want. But what prevents you from doing so once I do give you my position?"

Kaze's eyebrow rose. Maybe she broke him a little bit too much. Reality was needed to initiate the healing process. Like spinning in place, a normal mind could only reach an angle so far before it snapped. 180 degrees was the limit to many. Some, more. Others less. Only way to actually heal was to spin back to zero. "Information is power, true." Not that she would allow it. She grabbed his throat with her bionic hand, the cold metal against his sweaty skin, rising him up in the air effortlessly. He started to gasp for air, for support, grappling the cold metal. "But power is power."

She slammed him back into the divan, breaking it with the force exerted, transforming Hall into a hammer. But a hammer is made of lifeless steel. Hall's back was pretty much alive. And in pain. The cold hand released the grip, allowing air to flow unrestricted again. She turned her back and spun back to appreciate the sight. The broken divan with a breathless Hall, grasping for a direction. "Now, no one knows you better than I. Yet, I am now the one you have never known." She flicked an imaginary piece of dirt from her bionic hand. "I can give you back your body. But I cannot give you back your throne." Kaze walked near to the still dizzy man and kneeled. "It is quite simple. You are still of use to Bretonia. Controlled. Restricted. In check."

Her bionic hand slithered back to his throat and slightly closed. Fear flooded Hall's mind. "I do not need to blackmail you with the information. I am blackmailing you with your own life." Kaze slightly turned her hand to look at him. Eyes on eyes. "And even if it comes to that.. Well, I can do the roundabout way. I will cleave my way to the Admiralty through the bodies of our enemies. I will rise through the ashes of the burned down husks of their ships. Without politics. Without the very things that binds you and them."

The grip grew lax once again, but did not left his throat. "A true monster does not need politics. A true monster does not need deals. A true monster only needs is a jugular to sink its teeth in." Her face closed in to Hall. She smelled of blood, soot and death. And her lips parted to give way to her voice.

"Behave. And you will retain some respect. Fail to do so, I will shame your body. I will sully your name." She rose up and walked away. Stopping near the mask in the floor, she kicked it towards Hall. "And now you know a fraction of the extent that I am willing to go for Bretonia. I suggest you take that in account before opening your mouth to spit bile. Lest you choke on it." She crossed her arms, waiting for the broken man.

"Reaver..."

Hall was finishing his battle for air.

"Girl..."

He said proudly, laying down before Dagon.

"You are a monster, but a naive one... You think merit is everything in Bretonia?" Grinning released a slow leak of blood from his severed lip. "Connections are. Status is. Merit only helps you climb faster if you can climb already. You do need me. I will influence the Board to make you Commodore. A former Reaver would never become so without some internal support. You can do whatever you want with me after this war is over... But for now... will you at least help me rise, please?" He extended her a hand of peace. A temporary one, of course

She eyed him for some seconds, and he could swear he saw her lips forming a smile. Creepy, beyond no doubt, as that bionic eye glinted a mechanic green. Hot sweats invaded Hall's body, and he almost fainted. She extended her lifeless metal hand, and spoke. "You forgot. A Reaver is more, much more than a rotted tangle of connections."

He grabbed the cold hand, and she effortlessly helped him rise to his feet. "We're the monster that weaves it." A spider. How fitting, Hall thought. But this spider had fangs. Had metal sharp limbs. And it was relentless. This woman was in pain for hours from having a most dangerous landing and yet did not flinch through out the whole ordeal.

"Now. Let us get your finger fixed. It would be a shame for your tea sipping, yes?" There it was again, the insensitive, arrogant marbled face. "And after that.. We have much to do, Admiral. For Bretonia."

Hall rose very carefully. He expected a dagger in Dagon's other hand. He could not believe it when there was none. He nodded her slowly, almost trustfully, and said nothing. With Dagon nodding back, he proceeded and took the laptop to speak with someone. She looked at him suspiciously, victorious enough not to really care.

"This is Admiral Sir George Richard Hall on the line. Commander Knight?"
Commander Knight led the marine squad aboard the HMS Norfolk. The images of both Hall's and Knight's were transmitted together with their voice.
"Urr... Knight reporting for duty, Sir. Do you need help?"
The bloody scratches on Hall's face were visible.
"I need two marines to escort... Commodore Kaze Dagon back to the medical bay."
His face was also covered with smeared lipstick. That and suddenly raising Dagon's rank was enough to explain his injuries and the noise that had come from his quarters. Knight grinned, realizing that he did not know the admiral as well as he thought. He was also happy because he had a good story for the bar after his shift was over. This time it will not be about politics.
"Way to go, Sir! Two of my best men are on the way."
Politics was, however, the more important subject now. What will it look like with an ex-Reaver in the Admiralty? What does that tell about Bretonia? What will it bear, the treaty made between two monsters, in the dark and in silence? And will two ambiguous nods hold it together long enough?

Hall kissed Dagon's hand, the dead one, the one which was not her own, slightly smearing it with his blood. Then he bid her farewell and closed the metal door. The divan, his favourite resting place, was destroyed, but the picture of Queen Carina stood firmly, with a smile, as if approving of what had just happened.

The end. Of this story.

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