Board Thread:Role Plays/@comment-25389303-20191221164519/@comment-5999656-20191229073446

"OK, hold on a second."

Zanipher reached forward, not to take the gun, but to firmly push it down. Decade had always been a dramatic person - just like her - but she was struck by the piercing feeling that they weren't talking on the same plane.

"Can we clarify some things, first? Before we play the 'offer the gun' game?" Zanipher stepped back with an irritated expression. Both of them straddled the edge of the rooftop, but unlike Diaboli, Zan seemed perfectly at ease with their lofty perch.

"First of all, I don't like your attitude. You bring up my family past, and then you tell me you're going to crush my allies, and then you try to make me choose my side on the spot. And you think after all this, I don't want to shoot you already?"

Zanipher turned around abruptly, taking a few steps down the roof's edge before stopping. She slowly raised both her hands in a clear gesture of surrender, and held it for a moment, staring stoically ahead.

"If you want me dead, Decade, pull the trigger. I won't see it coming."

Zanipher paused for a long moment.

"But if you do, the bullet will deflect off my Aura. That's the kind of person I am, and I don't think you're any different."

She turned around, eyes narrowed into ruby slits.

"That's why I don't like this gesture of yours. And now," Zan said, gesturing at Diaboli's feet as she slowly took a cross-legged seat on the warm concrete, "Let's forget that and discuss this honestly, as you wish."

"I don't want to fight you, Decade," Zan continued solemnly. "And I don't want to fight the Bluthardts either, which is why I extended to them an olive branch and not the end of a barrel. I  know they're dangerous, and crooked, and abusive, etcetera etcetera. But from the little work I've done with them, they have shown themselves to be capable of doing their job and holding their end of a bargain. And so far, there haven't been any issues with this little agreement of ours."

"But," she added quickly, "You absolutely despise them, and it sounds like you know them better than I do, much better. What did they do to you?" Zan pressed.

"What do you know about the Bluthardts that I don't?"