#gotta practice

Anon Harlock, newly minted von Valancius, was assuredly running out of patience. She needed a Navigator and since the keeper had, admittedly unsurprisingly, revealed himself to be a traitorous idiot and the old man had decided to spontaneously die, that left her with the brat. Who just wouldn't stop crying.

After a few minutes of very grating waiting, the girl had just lost her home and despite some rumours she was not entirely without a heart, the Lord Captain had enough. She crossed her arms and glared down at the younger woman.

"Enough tears, you're coming with me now."

Despite her impatience and rough tone she truly hadn't meant it as a threat, it was a simple fact that they couldn't stay. Unfortunately it seemed that even the blood and guts splattered all over the walls and floor were not enough to spur the inexperienced heir of house Orsellio into wanting to leave her defiled home. The lighting flickered ominously as the mutant girl's head snapped up to stare at the stranger who had seemingly uprooted her life. Without meaning to, Anon's hand twitched to her rifle's handle. Wide, tear stained eyes staring up at her were hardly a new experience for the hardened pirate, but they were significantly more unsettling when they were a shimmering blood red without a pupil and coming from beneath a third eye that could rip her to shreds simply by opening.

"And if I refuse? What... What are you going to do to me?" Coming from another, Anon might have taken it for an invitation to start flirting, but despite robbing quite a few ships and occasionally planets in her time, she was not in the habit of robbing cradles. There were better ways to tie important children to her person. Particularly when they had been isolated from any and all reality like the young woman before her had clearly been. The three Fs had yet to fail her. Firm, frank, and funny.

"I shall give you the honour of a prolonged session of admiring my wonderful visage to this sour backdrop. We'll both be stuck here considering my lack of a Navigator and your lack of a..." She threw a pointed look around the gore decorated room, before raising her eyebrow at the young woman before her. "Well, anything."

The navigator girl hesitated, staring up at her in confusion. Well, at least she stopped crying. Small victories. Unfortunately the victory remained small and the only person who could get the Lord Captain's fancy new ship out of the dump of a system remained on her knees, fingers buried in viscera. Hopefully she'd wash her hands before touching the stirring stick. Did Navigators use those? Maybe she should have checked in more with the old geezer in her old crew...

Ah but of course all that still necessitated that the little princess got on her feet and came along. Preferably willingly, handing a desperate captive the controls to the entire ship during the extremely sensitive moments of warp jumps did not for a safe travelling experience make. Anon von Valancius, Rogue Trader of the Koronus Expanse and Lord Captain of the Reginatrix Universi sighed with annoyance, her dark blonde hair falling over her left eyes as she briefly lowered her head.

"Oh alright fine. Abelard, where's my booklet?" The ever diligent senechal stepped up beside her, making sure not to step on any corpse bits in process.

"I have it here, Lord Captain."

As he handed over a small but impressively thick little booklet, he glanced at the young Lady Cassia, kneeling on the ground and splattered with her guardians' blood, with a sympathetic frown. Huh, a thing to note. She already knew that Abelard Werserian, despite his claims to the contrary, was not first and foremost a navy officer, but a family man. A sentiment that was seemingly not limited to merely his own offspring. With a short blink Anon filed that piece of exploitable information away in her brain for later use. First, the navigator girl had to be convinced. If she wanted to play the spoiled little princess, Anon would just have to play along for a little while. At least marginally.

With fleet fingers she quickly rifled through her booklet. The smell of ink and fresh paper mingled in the air with the stench of rapidly cooling blood.

"Let's see, where is it... Ah yes." With some theatrics the Lord Captain cleared her throat, straightened her and back and audibly knocked the heels of her boots together. "Lady Cassia, I, Anon von Valancius, Rogue Trader of the Imperium of Mankind, offer you my protection and grant you shelter aboard my vessel." The speech ended with a dramatic bow, certainly much too deep for a Rogue Trader towards a crew member, however noble they may be. Still bent down, she looked at the girl in front of her, now at her actual eye level, and raised an eyebrow. "Happy now?"

The emotions rolling over the young woman's face were certainly entertaining, ranging from appreciation over outrage to girlish glee. In the end she settled on plain confusion. "Why... Do you have that?"

Anon straightened again, grinned, smoothed out her leather coat and waved the little booklet around. "This? It's useful to keep track of all the little details of etiquette, ceremony and all that. I am still somewhat new to the job and practicality has taken precedent over decorum for now." She resisted the urge to turn away and give her treasure another loving lookover. The first thing she'd done after Theodora's untimely and extremely convenient demise had been to dig through all documents on her new writing desk. In the process of vetting everything for interesting information she'd found the little booklet abandoned in a corner of the office together with other material Theodora had apparently not found worthy of her attention. It was of smooth, pearl white paper, with the distinct smell of cotton grown in the peculiar soil of Kolarrax Six, a world deep in the Winterscale protectorate, and bound in wonderfully soft, red grox leather. A beauty and a joy to write in. Using a datapad for her notes would have been an unforgivable waste.

"I see... " The young Navigator's eyes unfocused for a moment, as if she was looking somewhere beyond this reality. For a second Anon thought she might start crying again at the sight of the corpses strewn everywhere behind them, but instead something like resolve finally seemed to wash over the bone white, unsettling features. The young woman rose to her feet in a disturbingly fluid manner, as if reality itself had shifted rather than her body. With squared shoulders and lifted chin, hands crossed behind her, she finally gave an answer.

"I, Lady Cassia of house Orsellio, accept your most gracious offer." The following bow was elegant and deep, just as was appropriate for a Navigator to a Rogue Trader. The Lord Captain grinned.