There is a brief flash of pink as the little Countess licks her lips daintily.<br/><br/>"You are a working woman, a woman of business.  A merchant of sorts.  One who appreciates the direct and blunt truth to the circumlocutions of the rarified and aristocratic circles of nigh-fossilized courtiers."<br/><br/>Her Number One coughs politely, which seems to startle her.  She glances up at him for a moment, then laughs girlishly and rubs the back of her head in an embarrassed sort of way.<br/><br/>"Right!  Uhm.  TESLA is up to something.  They've been raiding some old ruins around here.  We think they may have found something...bad.  Very bad.  Court, of course, would blather on<em>forever</em>about how this isn't this and that isn't that and why we can't just start nuking them from orbit."  She makes a face.  "Instead they saw fit to send me to patrol the frontier and give them a reason to go somewhere else."<br/><br/>"What Her Grace means to say," Number One interjects, "is that she has been given the solemn duty of securing the integrity of this region, including enforcement of customs protocol."<br/><br/>Her Grace, meanwhile, returns her gaze to Kaylee...and Sera's hand on the nekomimi's shoulder.<br/><br/>"May I ask an indelicate personal question of you," she says, more or less to Kaylee.  Or maybe Sera.  "A matter of intellectual curiosity, you understand."<br/><br/>Number One blanches and starts shaking his head wildly, as if hoping to signal that answering her in the affirmative would be a Bad Idea.<br/><br/><em>What do you do?</em>