>>150092828
>The last word, 'heel', is emphasized.
>"I guess the both of us know what it's like to be vampires," The Emperor's tone turns low and dark.
>"Though," His voice fills with spite, "my current state is far less unenviable than yours."
>Uzi's optic displays flinch.
>His psychically emitted voice cackles low.
>"You smelt it, therefore you dealt it--"
>"I GET IT, OKAY?!" Uzi howls on the verge of tears.
>"DO YOU, BITCH?!" The Emperor practically roars.
>Uzi's lip quivers.
>She fights the instinctive urge to flinch her fingers into the sign of the Absolute Solver.
>The Specters and Custodians gathered in the room are all aged, weary, and scarred men with dark eyes that have seen and done terrible things, and they are all ready to lay down their lives if only to distract the reborn Twilight of the gods should The Emperor not accept her.
>Just because you can't kill one of The Four without being either Twilight or The Anathema doesn't mean you can't inflict pain upon them, wound them, or maim them.
>"No," Uzi's visor displays shrink as her voice turns to a whisper, "I guess I don't."
>"Captain James Elliot, demonstrating humility?!" The Emperor laughs in a tone unamused and dry.
>"Truly, you are an agent of Change." The Emperor's voice fills with hate.
>"Maybe I should just kill you and let your Daddy do it all over to you again, Twilight?" Uzi's visor displays shoot wide open and her heart pounds in her chest.
>"We know now you come back, after all," The Emperor continues.
>His voice is filled with the bitterness only a betrayed friendship left to fester for literal millennia can produce, something that is at once somehow both beyond Humanity and utterly inhuman. "That actually sounds extremely amusing. You came this far, dared to show your face to me, and you get to play fetch with your Daddy again."
>The Emperor continues. "How do you know I haven't done that to you already? That this would be the first time I've done this exact thing to you, James?"
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