Wet, warm, deligtfuly soft. Mizuho dreams...
She dreams, at first, of white pennants, bursting in the wind beneath velvet cloudcover, white pennants atop scarlet sails, protruding from the tranquil sea like a sunburst of blood. She dreams of rivulets of water, tricklng through the rocks to join with a babbling creek. Then the water turns to blood, thick and warm.
She dreams of Arild Bard, and the insurrection on Destiny where she first truly questioned her own abilities. She dreams of the hands of her Nepleslian assailaints, questing too joyfully for her breasts, her nethers. The rough handling, her own inability to defend herself, her broken mental processes. She dreams of the off-kilter negotiations with the Nepleslian leader, far more refined than most of his kind. Mizuho recalls, at once, that she has no love for Nepleslians. And her dreams shift.
She again sees Arild, her secretly beloved, whom she has not heard from since leaving Confidence. Confidence. She is aboard Confidence, arms crossed, eyes broken, greeting a newcomer. Welcome to the Confidence, where we have none.
Then, her vision goes blank. She hears a voice, memory identifies it as that of Israfil. Confused, the darkness clearing, Mizuho sees a final dream...
"You are coming quietly, infidel?"
Mizuho crossed her arms delicately. "Yes, Israfil. So long as you remember our terms."
"Your crew will not be harmed if they don't resist us."
Mizuho spent a moment to size up the Patrician, then gave a quiet nod to Hina, still at sensors. "...go with them. No need to waste our lives."
Israfil's grin was wicked as a pair of Plebeians set to binding Mizuho's wrists quickly. She made no move to resist. Overpowering a Plebeian was not terribly difficult, but the lives of her crew held in her mind. And Israfil, she knew, would be a very formiddable foe if she tried to fight.
"You have no idea how much this means to me, little girl. God truly smiles upon me, to catch such a prize cat."
WIth a gasp for breath, Mizuho awakened, immersed in hemosynthetic fluid, eyes wide. A scream escaped, nearly soundless into the thick fluids about her.