"Where is Leona! Have Leona take my communication at once!"
A Dragon-folk woman adjutant looked at the video window before her in some difficulty. "Your Highness Princess Blanche, I am not at Princess Leona's side at present…"
"What? Then where is Leona now! She cannot have gone over to the Owl Dragon Legion already!" Princess Blanche roared in shock.
She too had only just learned that her half-sister Princess Leona had, while consenting to pay the ransom, made one small demand besides.
To meet the Owl Dragon Legion's Commander-in-Chief in person!
And to go to a place of the other party's choosing at that!
This Leona had quite simply gone mad.
30,000 Dragon-folk interstellar warships taken prisoner by the man was not enough — she must trot happily up to his door and be a prisoner herself!
"That is…" The woman adjutant hemmed and hawed and said nothing.
Princess Blanche guessed at something, and asked with a darkened face, "It cannot be that Leona went alone, and not one of you went with her!"
The woman adjutant explained hurriedly, "It is not our fault; Princess Leona required it herself. She boarded a shuttle and went. Aboard the shuttle there is only one pilot and two crew… We asked to accompany her and were put off by Princess Leona outright."
Blanche covered her own face. She knew this elder sister's temper; a thing of this kind she was fully capable of doing.
And had blocked her own communications for the purpose besides.
"Think of something for me at once, this instant — I want to see—" Just as Blanche was speaking, the woman adjutant pointed excitedly beyond the hangar. "It is Her Highness's shuttle! Her Highness's shuttle has returned."
Hearing the woman adjutant's words, Blanche let out a breath of relief.
She said gravely, "Find Leona for me at once; I will speak with her this moment!"
"Yes… yes." The woman adjutant assented again and again.
These two pearls in the Dragon Emperor's palm were neither of them people she could afford to offend.
The woman adjutant watched that shuttle settle slowly into the hangar, and the heart hanging within her came to rest.
She had been anxious that some mishap might befall the princess over on the Owl Dragon Legion's side — in which case she would have been finished too.
The shuttle's hatch opened, and the first to come down was not the usual brisk and fiery Princess Leona, but a member of the ground crew.
"Where is Princess Leona?" the woman adjutant asked hurriedly.
The crewman pointed inside the shuttle's cabin with an odd expression. "In… in there."
Strange.
In the ordinary way Princess Leona was always the first to come running down.
Carrying her doubts with her, the woman adjutant boarded the shuttle.
She saw a strange object huddled upon a seat; and after looking carefully, she cried out, "Ah… what in the world is that…"
"Jehhie… ith… meee." (Jessie, it's me.) The figure sitting in the corner spoke.
"Princess… Leona?" The woman adjutant could not believe that this pig's-head face before her was Princess Leona!
The woman adjutant looked her up and down.
The whole head was swollen a size larger; the wings at her back showed fractures too; and the handsome white dragon-scales upon her were now broken here and shattered there.
The uniform upon her had become so much rag, with a glimpse of spring showing through.
For all the world as though she had suffered some rough handling.
"Ta' me' t' the innfirmry, cleah ev'ryone ouhside 'way, don' leh 'em thee th' thtate I'm in."
(Take me to the infirmary; clear everyone outside away; don't let them see the state I'm in.)
As Princess Leona spoke, the woman adjutant noticed besides that several of the dragon-teeth in her mouth had come out, so that her speech leaked air.
The woman adjutant forced down her curiosity and prepared to go out and send everyone away; but her steps reached the doorway and then came back, and she said with great care, "Princess Blanche wishes to contact you."
"I doh' wan' t' thee her." (I don't want to see her.) Leona said it at once.
Looking as she did now — if Blanche were to see it, that would be past bearing.
"I have seen it already."
A voice came through at this point.
Leona opened her swollen eyes wide, and only now discovered that behind her woman adjutant there was an open video window, and the person within it was precisely her sister Blanche.
"That… the two of you talk; I shall go and see to things." The woman adjutant walked straight off the shuttle, fleeing this awkward moment.
Though she was curious how Princess Leona had come by those injuries, at least the person was back; and severe as the injuries looked, with treatment they would be restored to their former state within a few days.
"What happened? How did you come by these injuries?" Blanche asked.
Leona shifted her gaze away and said in a small voice, "Nunnov y'r bithneth." (None of your business.)
"Does the Owl Dragon Legion not claim to be a body of principle? To use force upon an envoy! I shall use diplomatic channels this instant to condemn the Owl Dragon Legion's conduct in the strongest terms." Blanche said it with a show of anger.
That will not do!
If word of this got out, would not everyone know of her disgrace?
Leona said hurriedly, "I wath the one 'oo propothed the duel." (It was I who proposed the duel.)
Blanche looked at Leona in surprise. "So… you were defeated?"
That Leona should have proposed a duel did not surprise her; she had all but foreseen it.
Only she had not thought that Leona would actually lose!
She knew Leona's physical strength very well; within the whole Dragon-folk tribe, those who could defeat her by bodily ability alone could be counted on the fingers!
"Doh' wan' y'r bithneth." (None of your business.) With that, Leona closed the communication window outright.
Blanche looked at the darkened screen and heaved a long sigh.
This half-sister of hers was fine in every way but one: that temper truly wanted mending.
Though that someone over on the Owl Dragon Legion's side could defeat Leona — how on earth had it been done?
She would have to look into that properly hereafter.
Blanche had developed no little curiosity about the Owl Dragon Legion. She raised a hand and put out several images.
Those were several stills she had captured during the video with Leona a moment ago.
Looking at Leona opposite — she whose eyes were ordinarily fixed above everyone's heads — with her nose blue and her face swollen, for all the world like a pig-headed creature, Blanche came near to laughing aloud.
It was rare indeed to see Leona come off badly; these images must certainly be preserved.
...
Zhao Chen returned to the bridge and sat in the captain's chair with a look of thorough satisfaction.
While Chieftainess Hu Ya beside him regarded Zhao Chen with an odd look in her eyes, and sized his body up from head to foot besides.
That business of the duel in the cargo hold Chieftainess Hu Ya naturally knew of by now, and knew what the result had been.
That Princess Leona had been hauled up by the tail and slammed about like a sandbag by Commander-in-Chief Zhao Chen, until at the last she foamed at the mouth and fainted upon the spot.
Happily the medical staff on hand had administered an injection, which brought Princess Leona round; but her injuries went untreated, and she was thrown straight back into her shuttle.
And at the last the man reminded her not to forget to pay the 10 billion star coins.
It was hard to credit that this man before her had, upon bodily strength alone, defeated the Dragon-folk tribe!
"Prepare to begin receiving the other side's ransom. Remember that it is a ransom of 410 billion star coins." Zhao Chen added it with a smile.