The Mermaid Queen looked at me for a moment, almost as if she had expected me to bring up something like this eventually. Even so, she still looked a little surprised that I had gone straight to the point instead of spending several minutes dancing around the subject first.
"You really went straight for that, huh? As expected," she said, giving me a look that was somewhere between amusement and mild disbelief. "I suppose cooperation is something I would naturally expect to hear about in a conversation like this, but I still do not see why I should agree to it. My Kingdom is more than capable of defending itself against those bastards from the surface who keep trying to take what belongs to us. Besides, I have no interest in becoming indebted to anyone, especially someone who comes from the surface."
I could understand where she was coming from, at least to some extent.
