Giving Gaav a stricken look, he clutches at the raincoat's sleeve, so much like a black-and-white Hollywood damsel that you can almost see the breasts, and shakes his head violently. Melodramatic as he looks to people outside his own head, the distress is real, throbbing in his eyes and astral body. "Please don't think that!" he cries. "It was a failure, not a--we did everything we could, everything! After so long, we ran out of gambits, we even ran out of recycled gambits; there was nothing left to do!"
He nods earnestly, "Iyaa, I'm not asking you to! I know that Gaav-dono doesn't have much patience with semantics, but," he chuckles, "you and I both know how foolish it is to make a bargain with even half a mazoku even if you're not careful about the words, and if you want me for the kind of blind recklessness that others who serve you have, we're both going to be disappointed with this agreement, ne."
He pushes his glasses up his nose, going on in a businesslike tone, "I can agree to your oath if you can let go of the problematic word--yes, even the conscious inaction part. Now, you want me to include four people in those whose well-being I'm to be concerned with, including yourself. If it were two I'd ask for two, and if it were three I'd ask for three, but your fourth is someone I'm very angry with, Gaav-dono." His voice goes cold again briefly, but is back to normal as he continues, "Acting as though that person matters will be hard for me. I'll do it for you, Gaav-dono, but in return I want protection for five. That includes me and Iago-san, and one is someone who I don't think Dolphin-dono would want to hurt and who Val-kun is also very fond of and might even ask you to look after himself, when he thinks of it, so I think it's reasonable."
He laughs, not offended. He loved Rezo; he never had him on a pedestal. "Iyaa, iyaa, he takes after his mother, ne; Rezo was a pedantic stuffed shirt on a stick in the mud, but he had a sense of humor when he was himself, and he could listen to opposing viewpoints at least well enough to attack them properly."
Smiling, "Well, it probably annoyed any local bats when he killed off a good 80% of the town's insect population. But I haven't contacted him lately, Gaav-dono; you said not to do anything else."
"Well, I think science is with Dynast-dono on this one, but Dynast-dono does not have my regard and science has given us these automobile things that seed the clouds with acid, the rivers with poison, and make the air reek, so I don't care," he smiles with a little nod of decision.