Tardiness. Tardiness had been something that Li Li had been raised to hate, to loathe. Running late had meant bad things happened to her family, bad things that dumped her straight into the lap of the Ethonian 'trade' administration. She was taken when her parents failed to produce payment for a loan and life as a slave certainly hadn't been kind. Years of further conditioning had taught her to hate such a simple thing even more. Every time the floor went unscrubbed it was a lashing. Too long in the shower? A lashing was the answer and her cries of pain were payment for the holder of the whip be it literal or proverbial. Of course, she was still a slave but now things were more complicated than they had been during her tumultuous formative years. No longer was the line between obligation and personal choice so very wide as it had been before. Li Li had been given the opportunity to throw her collar away, to have that blasted barcode at the base of her skull painlessly removed but she kept it all-- Cain was everything she wanted and serving her was truly what she desired. The position of armcandy, assistant and bodyguard of course had been far more kind to her than anything else she'd ever done in her life... and she got to spend every day with a woman who she recognized as the weilder of near preternatural charisma. Cain swung that charisma like it was a big, blunt hammer but the weight of her ego-swollen head sure gave that woman an undeniably sexy swagger.<br/><br/><br/><br/>It was a quarter past the hour when the 'indentured servant' made it into the Galaxy's Edge Bar. The determined 'click, clack, click' of her stiletto heels against the flooring was all that heralded her entrance but for a woman as breathtaking as her, it may as well have been a procession of banner-bearers or trumpeters. Immediately heads turned, barstools swiveled and more than once drunk managed to lose their close battle against gravity as she walked by. Li Li, as her name ( and the subtle olive coloring of her skin) suggested, was a woman of Asiatic heritage. Her mother had been Mandarin to be precise and her father, well, french and that had hardly stopped her from inheriting all the traits considered so ideal in her culture. Her face was soft and rounded with big, almond shaped eyes who irises were colored a peculiar shade of violet not uncommon to psionically gifted individuals. Makeup had been tastefully applied to define the curve of her cheeks and the lines of her eyes, thick black kohl drawn in elegant patterns around them. Unlike her mistress the woman's pert nose was unadorned but her lips were painted a subdued shade of purple to play off of the color of her eyes. Her features of course weren't the only thing capable of catching the eye, her sense of fashion tended to suffice just as well. Much like her owner Li Li apparently did not believe in keeping her hair in any fashion considered 'traditional' for a woman. The sides and the back of her head had been shaven clean to leave only that at her top remaining. The rest of her thick, black locks were pulled back into a loose topknot that ran down well past the curve of her lower back and the tresses themselves had a luster comparable to gems. Her dress matched the color of her hair perfectly, a thin and snugly fitting banner gown highlighting the svelte nature of her body that accentuated the curve of her ass more than anything else. Each step bared just a hint of lissome leg and lacy stocking and when she took the half-step that led up to her patron's seat at the bar the split at the hip of her dress pulled far enough back to even bring her modesty into question with a flash of her equally frilly undergarments.<br/><br/><br/><br/>She remained silent as she approached, her chin level and her violet eyes unblinking as she moved to take her rightful place by Cain's side in the smoky haze of the bar. Together it was clear just how small the woman was, even in her heels. Sitting down Cain was nearly as tall as Li Li in her stilleto's but the violet gaze fixed on the well-dressed woman close to her mistress showed the courage of a woman who may as well been an amazon-- the slave had a spine. “Good evening, Miss Cain.” The raven haired woman's cadence was slow and deliberate, her words carefully formed around the nasally tinge of the accent she'd inherited from her French father. A subtle flick of her eyes toward her 'employer' carried an unspoken apology before her gaze turned back toward the suited ambassador. “Is this woman bothering you? Surely she knows the rule if she has the courage to approach.”<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>