She’s smiling. She never smiles.
That’s not quite true. It’s just that when Counselor Dakós smiles, nobody else ever laughs.
The room is still. Conversation has stopped, and every last pair of eyes in the room is trained on the woman who just waltzed in without an invitation.
You don’t invite a Counselor to your gala.
You certainly don’t invite a dead woman.
Neither of those things seem to be stopping her right now.
"Oh, how lovely to see you all again! How long has it been?"
"Ｓｅｖｅｎｔｅｅｎ ｈｏｕｒｓ ｆｏｒｔｙ-ｔｈｒｅｅ ｍｉｎｕｔｅｓ ｅｉｇｈｔ ｓｅｃｏｎｄｓ" comes a mechanical reply. Of course she brought drones. They stand well back, but it’s clear nobody is going to be leaving through the front door tonight.
"Thank you, Charlotte. It’s funny how easy it is to forget the little things. After all, it feels like a lifetime ago."
There’s a horrible, ugly scar on her left wrist; little wonder she always wears gloves. There’s no sign of the unpleasantness last night; third-degree burns aren’t typically the sort of thing you sleep off.
"The rain, the chase, the screams in a dark alley. It was all so terribly cinematic. I hope that someone else got it on camera; the lighting from my vantage point was a bit blown out after that trick with the kerosene."
Her expression and cadence never change. Where is all that confidence coming from? There are at least a hundred people here, and any of them would love to be the one who took down Counselor Dakós. Several of them were quite certain they had, last night. Yet she’s walked right in with nothing more than two drones and an unbelievably low-cut dress.
"So many lovely familiar faces here tonight! I’m so pleased to see you all again, though I must admit I’m pleasantly surprised at how many of you have never graced my radar up until now. It’s going to be a wonderful night, getting to meet so many new people."
A whispery noise of fabric against fabric, followed by the cacophonous mechanical click of firearms being readied. With the practiced ease and intense focus you only get from deep subliminal conditioning, half the room suddenly has their sights trained on the other half. They stand, motionless, waiting for another silent command.
They only hesitate because Ms Dakós wants you alive.

The result of a few offhand statements not long ago:

[4/5/2016 11:39:38 AM] Kraken!: I keep looking back at those awesome sketches Mei did and jealously mulling how I can do something so elegantly relaxed-looking.
[4/5/2016 12:10:12 PM] Kraken!: They just made me (via my known omnipresent impulse to go BUT WHAT IF THERE WAS RCG'S ON THAT) imagine things like the Counselor dressed up for the (very rare) gala soiree (probably arriving uninvited and at great shock to somebody-or-other later on), or being quietly pampered by the drones in an equally rare few moments of downtime.
[...]
[4/8/2016 1:39:58 AM] Kraken!: My mind happened again on the idea of the Counselor in some kind of very Korps-y dress for a fancy soiree. And my mind was immediately like "come on, realistically, what kind of soiree would she really show up for"
[4/8/2016 1:40:18 AM] Kraken!: ... immediately realized the best answer is "when she's crashing someone else's gala"
[4/8/2016 1:42:20 AM] Kraken!: Everyone thinking she's dead, she strides in far more elegantly than she ever normally allows, the conversation in the room going stone dead at her appearance, coming in wearing a designer strapless dress arguably more intimidating than the pair of drones following her in.

Art: Mei5683