Violent Streak

That horrible, vacant stare in her eyes...

Elma doesn't mean it lightly when she talks of fostering positive relations and harmony with all those who may inhabit Mira, for any length of time. She would not harbor ill will against the Ganglions had they not committed all those atrocities both here and back on Earth.

So, she feels more than guilty making a visual judgement on Goetia's merits, or lack thereof. But guilt is, in some ways, all the conscion she has left. And so, she must wrestle with it as the only fiber available and willing to gird her spine.

"So calm, Elma. So dignified," Goetia purrs into her ear. "It's almost like you're not one of those humans you disgrace yourself to protect."

Humans are the not the most noble of all possible races, federations, civilizations. Their casual xenophobia leaches out of the residential district like miasma, pooling into cracks where unassuming Ma-non step, leap, and are swallowed.

But humans are, at least in some not-insignificant share, a determined and truth-seeking people with an eye toward survival over supremacy. Those in NLA that speak slurs and aggression against the Tree Clan refugees do so because they have been made to associate Prone with destruction, via the closest of personal connections to tragedy, and because the Prone's hulking appearance bears various attributes of traditional Earth hostility coded into the fight-or-flight mechanisms of millennia, but particularly the institutionalized international jingoistic age, centering the terran global south, of the Americas.

To Elma's knowledge, the Ganglion have no such founded or unfounded excuse. If she could reason it out, she would have.

So Elma tries not to spit in calculated consternation when she replies. "Disgrace? What disgrace? You know my planet was wiped out just the same. I'm sure I'm not righteous."

Not the Ganglion ideal of righteousness, for such a primate as she purportedly is, but she will remain calm and dignified, no matter how much Goetia derides her for it. If composure is the only thing she has, it is still a blessing.

For this reason, Elma has not drawn her weapons; her tensed muscles holster the rest of her body to the spot. She needs Goetia where she can see her, after all.

Three tentacles. Two clefts of an asymmetrical headpiece. One sickening simper.

And zero motive. What Elma almost thinks is: zero reason for me not to throttle her right now, but she thinks of what the Commander might say, and she holds off.

She wants to say, to hell with reason this, reason that, because how can Elma's patience remain so infinite when every step forward toward a piece of the Lifehold is two steps back?

As if the progress toward home on Mira is nothing. As if humanity isn't so galvanized it could clank.

Elma's forehead burns, itches, stings, and then she blinks and there's a tentacle caressing her cheek.

If Elma had a gag reflex, she would vomit Lin's gourmet dinner then and there. Instead, she tries to calm herself, avoiding Goetia's malevolent gaze, and think what would happen if she brushed the offending appendage away.

It probably wouldn't go. It floats there, airy and innocent, impossibly impregnable.

So Elma wraps her Grenada Survival Tecta fingers around the throbbing mass and yanks, hard enough to pull a human of Goetia's size, and then a little heavier, to the ground. But not only does Goetia not stumble, her smile has the vile audacity to widen.

"Is that all the resolve you've got?"

It's now that Elma realizes why Goetia had lured her here for clandestine parley. Not intergalactic political capital, not intelligence on future reclamation missions, not even intimidation.

She just wants to toy with Elma and the idea of Elma toying with her, and then she will destroy Elma like so many venerated bastions of humanity's transplanted survival and expatriated confidence.

So now Elma starts looking for an opening. Now Elma will weaponize her hot-veined ice-blooded calm, and shoot to kill.