I still don't know why I am the way I am. I dunno what I even mean by that, bein' honest with you. I dunno why my clothes are so different just 'cause I cut my way in here; I don't think Qiu wore different stuff when she did this? Maybe I did it wrong after all. Or different. This is all... anyway. I dunno why I've suddenly got a dozen weapons on me when the most you could ever say I had before was one and a half. I dunno if I'm supposed to be me from another, like, story? If that makes any sense? Or am I meant to be Kikil's ideal opponent? Am I here to grant her wish? Or mine? I dunno.

Why am I me? Hoo gosh, that's a question. And, y'know? I guess it doesn't really matter. It's enough that it's true. I know why I wanted to come here, even though I've got no idea where 'here' is. And I know why I know how to use all've these weapons so nice, even though I haven't practiced with any of 'em. It's 'cause I'm Yue. Just... Yue. And what I really wanna know is if that means anything.

I'm smilin'. Grinnin', really. I just had the best idea.

I crouch down so I can jump off the ground as high as I can go in a hop. Can't tell you how high that is, 'cept that it puts me at even height with a swooping laser robo-hawk. So, y'know, high but not... ok look this is not the important part, ok? Follow along or you're gonna get left behind. I reach for my back and grab the giant sword secured there; it's big enough that it'll do for this. Really, this must be what it's for. I pull it free, and kick my foot out to start my body spinning, and that's when I feel the jetpack kick in. I feel my body rotate once, twice, and at the end of the third spin I let the sword fly.

My body drops back to earth like a stone off a cliff, but I stomp the landin' and I'm already runnin' off after the sword as it flies through the air. I kick up again, feel the rush of motion as the jetpack flares up again, and plant my feet on the widest part of the blade. Chen told me that sometimes in Sourcefall, they'd duel on snowboards. This is my little tribute, hope she likes it. Oh shoot, she's not gonna... oh well!

The wind whips my ponytail like crazy as I tear through the air. Bombs fall and lasers burst around me, but on instinct or luck or I don't even care what it is, I bend out of the way before I get cut in half, and the sword's so stupendously huge I can actually ride the burst of the explosions like a bunch of, uh, I dunno what you call 'em. Little hills, but... snowy, I guess? I can even twirl if I stomp my foot with the right timing!

Spin, spin! There's a karate bot flying up at me with a perfect side kick. I lean into my rotation and cut 'em down as we cross in the air. Spin, spin! I can't keep the laughs from spilling out of me, throwing knife after knife into the crowd as I pass. I run out pretty quick, but when my hands reach around to the back of my belt they find a pair of pistols strapped there, waitin'. And I mean, under normal circumstances? I'd call this cheatin'. And I don't really know how to shoot to begin with. But Kikil's got so many machines that I can't miss. And honestly the robots started it first. I hold them out to either side and squeeze the trigger as I flip-fly through the sky above them.

The flashes of light that burst from the tip with every shot are really pretty.

But sooner or later, this kinda nonsense has to come to an end. I'm gettin' dizzy and the sword's startin' to slow down, besides. I ride another burst toward the ground and crash down into the pavement and a big tank-bot's armor plates with a shower of sparks, and grind to an almost-halt. It's an almost halt 'cause I don't let it end there. I run to the tip of the sword and kick it down behind me so it flips into the air, and catch it on my back again. Each one of these things is an extension of who I am, got it? More'n that, it's a connection to someone I met and a style I learned from. I may not get to keep any of this when I go back home, but bet your butt I'm not leavin' a one of these things behind by choice.

I dash through the sea of machines until the burst of the pistols quiets down to clicks. Nice work, friends! I give them both an appreciative twirl and stick them back into their holders, all careful-like. My sword leaps into my empty hand, and I guess it's eager to prove it's still my best and favorite weapon. Don't worry girl, we've been together ever since Hyra taught my how to handle the weight of a real sword. I lift it above my head to let the edge glint in the neon lights of the city-park, and the glittering moon, and the caged sun.

Ok Yue, come on. This time get it right.

"Se-Secret Sword: The Reverse Side of the Page! Homage technique, Wolf Dancing In the Moonlight!"

Hey. Hey. Ya wanna know a secret? I made that up just now, there's no technique like that. It's not a secret sword either, at least not the way the stories would accept one. But Hyra always says, if you're watching the show then you're looking in the wrong place, right? If I shout and seem all cool, and if I bounce the light off my sword so that it seems like I'm about to do somethin' earth shatterin' and powerful, then nobody's watching my hand fumble through my pouches.

And definitely nobody's looking at the handful of sun beads I pull out. Not till I scatter them all across the ground around me. The glass cracks and lets a year's worth of collected sunlight spill out all at once. These machines, however they see, they've gotta be used to the dark, kinda dank aesthetic this place has goin' on. Whereas me, I've been chasing this light for years and years. Plus I've got these awesome goggles. In the dazzle of the sudden sunrise, it's a snap to bring my sword down for realsies and cut a hole through the top of the circle of machines that was closing around me. And then I'm off before they can figure out what happened.

I'm runnin' as fast as I can toward the tower. I know the window I need to reach, so I'm not gonna bother with silly things like using the door when I can just climb the side, instead. But there's a little ways before I make it, what's important is that I'm on my way. Every one of these machines in this army is a new technique from Princess Kikil, right? She's amazin', I'll give her that. This might be the funnest duel I've ever had.

But if all that's true, then it means that every foot I put down that gets me closer to where she's sittin' is a stroke I haven't bothered to block. You see it yet? I'm slippin' under that guard, and before you know it, it'll be my sword under her chin. I've got so many to choose from, just now. Haha, hahahaha!

She's gonna be so mad when she notices where I am. I can't wait to meet her next counterpunch <3

If you were ever in doubt, Petal, it vanishes the moment you touch your Chen's shoulders and you feel her tension melt into you along with her weight. She's always going to be a mix, your little Chen. She obviously loves being in charge of you, but she loves being held so much and there's no way you can ever get tired of how good it feels to wrap her all up and feel the way she nestles into you.

It makes her stronger, too. You can feel that in the way she breathes, just taking in your body, your scent, her nose close against your skin, and her breaths become stronger and calmer. She looks up and grins. "No you're right, six thousand foxes on this boat, and not a one of them could tie me up and pamper me as well as you can, Petal. Not with every fox wish in the world because I'd just wish for you to do it." She smiles and kisses your arm without turning around, her teeth nibbling playfully. "And besides, what good would my promise be if I stopped the second we got out of port just because it turned out that every fox in the Nine Kingdoms is Cyanis?"

Chen turns properly now and gives Petal a kiss on the lips and stands all the way up on her tippy toes so she can whisper "Love you, Petal" and be heard over the yells of foxes aboard the ship. Then, she draws her new crystal sword (finally replaced from the Sky Castle) and raises it up towards the sky so that the sunlight above the water glitters and glistens as though Chen were holding a bar of molten gold up to the sky. "Listen!" she shouts and brings the sword down with a crash upon the deck, sending out a wave of radiating magic that booms across the deck of the ship, from the prow where she's standing with Rose all the way to the stern, giving the foxes pause.

She grins then, in the way she always seems to grin when she's making demands, like it's all fun but also like she's going to eat you. Her tail flicks behind her eagerly and she starts to speak like she's the ship's captain. "You're all going to calm down and be good girls until we reach the shore. The far shore, where we'll let you off to go make the world a little more chaotic and happy. Won't that be fun? Also, anyone who doesn't behave will be bound, gagged, and tossed in the pool."

Chen's ears twitch, and she twirls and sends Cyanis (who was climbing at them from the outside rail of the ship for an ambush) flying across the deck with a swipe of her sword, flying after her to demonstrate her point with a rope that she trails over the completely innocent fox as quick as she can, pulling her hands tight and then quickly gagging her before she can talk her way out of it and, with a bit of effort given her size, rolling the poor fox into the swimming pool.

"I mean it!"

Before she goes into full on fox whapping mode, however, Chen has a glance back to her Rosepetal. Well more than a glance, something like a long soulful gaze with a warm smile. Because she wants you to know, Petal, that she's getting all this strength from you, and she wants you to know too that she's always paying attention to you and wants to make sure you're having fun on this trip too (also her eyes are devouring you, one piece swimsuit and all. It's very clear that there is no place she'd rather be looking).

[Chen will accept Rose's comfort and support, taking an XP and +1 forward. She will spend that +1 on enticing the foxes:
2+3+3+1=9. Either she gets a string on them, or they pick from the options. She also gets an XP for accepting Rose's faith in her.]

“She must be punished,” Vanimasé howls, digging her nails into Rosepetal’s biceps as she scrambles back onto the deck. “That was deliberate! Meibelle acted with malice aforethought! I have witnesses! You saw it! If not for my quick wit and indefatigable spirit, that brazen assassination attempt would have succeeded! Oh! Oh!! Jail! Jail for Meibelle! Jail for Meibelle for one thousand years!”

“Mmmhm,” Rosepetal replies, wrapping the thick emergency towel around Vanimasé, ostensibly to help dry off her fluffy tails and avoid the risk of serious illness from Wet Tail Shock Syndrome. Pinning her grabby nails to her sides is certainly just a side effect. There, cinch it all just above her fluffy tails with a thick knot.

Then she notices Chen giving her a Look, and all of Vanimasé’s complaints turn into white noise and static from a dead Burrower channel.

It gets her every time. She’s not used to being looked at like that when she’s not trying. Don’t get her wrong: she’s a knockout. Chen’s not a helpless, blushing innocent, effortlessly disarmed, but her Rosepetal still knows how to make her want to melt. But she’s just over here, handling a fussy fox, and Chen’s making a face like her Rosepetal’s over on the sidelines shaking pompoms and more than pompoms. Like she’s about to point, and someone’s going to swing a spotlight, and then she’ll go: and I’m dedicating all of this to my girlfriend!

Blossoms snap open all up and down Rosepetal’s hair, soft and delicate pink against her thick curls, and then one lets out a burst of pollen.

“Now let’s get you back over to somewhere comfortable where you can sit and get all eaten off—— dried out,” Rose says, squishing Vanimasé to her chest, cutting her off mid-war declaration, while simultaneously trying to pat down her treacherous hair and wave away the pollen, succeeding at neither. “How’s the poolside sound that’s great glad you like it too!!”

Yue!

The tower seems to go on forever upwards, but with carefully timed jetpack bursts followed by wall-running you're making amazing progress. So amazing that Princess Kikil has to bust out a special enemy just for you.

Two innocuously small drones soar out into the air above and in front of you, and then with a flare they burst into pink and violet flames that immediately shapes itself into the form of two enormous hands. From the tips of these hands drop strings - and on the end of those strings, a machine, held like a puppet. It is tall, refined, strong, feminine, made of a deep black metal that reflects like chrome and shifts like water. It flexes into a stance, a short spear held in one hand and a long whip held in the other. And then it launches backwards because you're still going up the tower together. This is part fight and part race.

The biggest problem here is that you're not quite sure what you're fighting. Are you fighting the hands or the puppet? Is the goal to cut the strings or the drones right in the centre? How are you supposed to deal with the whip? Nobody's ever fought you with a whip before - eeek!

Something about it reminds you of Rose, though. It reminds you of your relationship with her. Everything about this technique from Princess Kikil is too complex, too alien, too incongruous with the rest of this place's aesthetic to seem like it came entirely from her own heart. This is something that she learned from one of her friends. What a marvelous person they must be!

Rose and Chen!

Oh, Chen. Oh, Rose. You do understand what you have become, don't you?

You have become tyrants. Cutie gaolers. The cruel authorities whose unjust demands and threats have instantly created an entire organized fox underground. It is time for fox magic to conjure the finest suits, dresses, and jazz music of the Prohibition era. It is time for foxes to develop fox-speakeasies where revolution might be plotted against their evil mistresses. And within these hotbeds of fox crime it is swiftly agreed: that what Chen really wants is to be tied up so that obviously correct foxes can take over captainship of the ship, and the only one preventing her from embracing that fate is the heartless fox-brutalizer Rosepetal, peer only to Meibelle for her cruelty and heartlessness.

It is time for every righteous fox to join la resistance.

The practical result of this is that for the first time ever things go quiet. They go way too fucking quiet. Nary a bushy tail to be seen. Only half-glimpses of shadowy foxes glimpsing out from around corners or behind doorways. Ten minutes ago they seemed to occupy every available space on this ship but now they are working to prepare a greater act of mischief than they ever could alone.

And about this point you hear thunder in the distance and see a storm rolling in.

This part is not unexpected. Some branch of the Heavenly Bureaucracy was assigned to overseeing the imprisonment of the foxes. In the distance, from a spyglass, you can see martial war gods assembling in the clouds, and on the seaside cliffs below you can see human monks, eyes closed in meditation, a wall of waiting martial artists. These are the legitimate cutie tyrants, the forces of monasticism and order who imprisoned the foxes in the first place and have amassed now to ensure their breakout ends before it begins.

And you are caught in the political centre. Too orderly to be embraced by the cutie radicals, too chaotic to be accepted by the cutie reactionaries.

All right, well this is -- oh gosh! Um. I mean. Eeek! This is! Eep eep eep yikes! This is an experience! A new experience! That I'm having! A -- meep! -- lone!

"Would you knock it off with that whip for a second?! I'm trying to concentrate! I dunno if you knew this, but this is my first sideways vertical building race whip duel, ok? It's hard!"

Goshies. Where was I? Oh right, this is new. I've fought... actually no, 'fought' is the wrong word there. But I've dealt with snakes from time to time so I've had my share of chances to see something that moves like this puppet-robot-cutie's weapons do. All that wiggly power suddenly, WHATCHA! Right in my face and there's not a whole lot I can do about it besides rely on instinct to keep my nose un-nipped. 'Cept with snakes the deal is they're real good at warnin' you off and you can avoid the whole thing just by lettin' 'em know you don't mean harm and backin' off all slow and stuff. I mean, maybe that'd work here too but it's kinda not in the cards, soooooo...

I can feel my lungs getting ready to start a revolution inside me. Sorry girls, just consider it a workout day, ok? I promise I'll give you a big, long day off as soon as I get done with this adventure, ok? You too, legs. And just, look. Yes ok I promise! Nothing but lying still and whining until Hyra feeds me. A whole day! So just hold it together, jerks!

Not that I can really blame my body for this. Wall running's a pretty underdeveloped skill in my tree, let's be kind and say, and jetpack running's barely just been opened. This is a... hoo. This is a big tower. All of this and I'm not even halfway up it! But I won't give up. I'm having waaaaay too much fun to turn around now! But still, it's all I can do to keep pace and continue running up instead of slipping and falling and tumbling all the way back to the ground, where I assume a bed of robots waits for me.

It's especially hard because the Whip-Cutie is very free with her Cutie-Whip. Running straight up like this I can't afford to tumble and roll the way I'd like to, so I'm constantly interrupting my flow with big flippy jumps 'cause that's the only thing my brain can think of to dodge the business end of that almost-snake. I really wish I could've practiced this before doing the real thing. But still. But still. I just have to figure out a way. It almost doesn't matter that I can't figure out what to attack because, honestly, I can't attack at all. So much of my time is caught up in dodging, and squeaking, and almost-dodging and then scrambling into a jetpack burst to keep myself from dropping back that there's actually just no chance for me to hit back.

Every move I can think to try is useless. Can't throw any of my weapons, they'll get tangled up in the strings or the whip, and it'll be too hard to catch 'em again after that. And besides I can't throw a one of 'em for beans, at least without costing myself so much momentum that I'm guaranteed to lose the race to the top. That's important, y'know. If I'm still fightin' when I reach Kikil's window, I'm a dead girl. Metaphorically. Probably. I mean I'm sure she'd just kidnap me or whatever, she seems nice enough honestly, but in my brain it doesn't work that way. It's win or die. But none of my weapons can reach, and I'm out of bullets. Or out of ways to check my outfit for more. Same difference. If I leap, she leaps back in time, and then I get a whip to the butt for my troubles. Which I don't mind telling you, hurts a lot.

...Gosh, I'd love to have gotten to meet whoever inspired this outta Kikil. They must be an amazin' person. And maybe if it were here and me on flat ground without a timer, I'd be able to learn a thing or two about how to handle Whip-and-Spear Style. Whoever she is, she is exactly like Rosie. Tellin' you, some girls cheat just by existing. Love her.

We dance. It's beautiful and fun, but I can't shake the sense that I'm runnin' out of time. Even well before I'm out've tower, I'm out've time. If I don't find a way past this latest flourish soon, she'll add another one and if I have to race two of her inspirations at once, well I... I mean, there's just only so much I can do. I try to cut the whip with a flash draw technique but it dances past my arc. I try to thrust the spear out've her hand with my rapier but I just can't lunge with any kinda speed while I'm runnin' like this. It's too hard. Goin' up, it's too hard.

Oh, this reminds me of something else, actually. When I was on my way home with Hyra, we stopped and talked about a lotta stuff. Did a lot more than just talkin, too, but that's for her and me to know about and no one else. But anyway she was tellin' me a story about a game she was playin' once, some kind of... video thingy that had this big boss characters you had to fight on a snowboard. And I mean obviously this was just a game, and a story of a game at that, but it feels so much like this I can't help but compare 'em. See, Hyra tried all the attacks the game let her do, and none of 'em helped at all. The boss character was just as fast as she was, and it was ahead of her besides. Attackin' was no good. She didn't win by learnin' a new technique, either. She won by focusin' on boosters. When she got faster than the boss character was goin', suddenly she didn't need any attacks at all to win.

Oh. I get it now! It's not about what target I'm aiming for at all. It's not even about dodging that whip! No, this is just about if I can be faster than she is, just for long enough to make contact. The rest'll take care of itself.

I draw my saber and hold it close to my forehead as I run. I even give the blade a little kiss, for luck. Slash, spin, slash! I let the jetpack burst for a full three seconds to get me good and movin', and strike out with my sword as cleanly as I can manage. Of course it doesn't hit anything, even if I do get a little closer than normal. But that's fine, I'm really waiting for the whip. All this time, I've been tryin' not to get hit at all, but that's been what slowed me down the whole time. Speed. It's all about speed, y'know. Which means sometimes, you just gotta know when to take your whipping like a good girl. Um. Erm. M-meep!

The lash flicks straight at my face, and I can't help but notice how beautiful it looks in motion. The coils, suddenly bursting straight and strong and free. It almost catches me on the cheek, and I squeak like when I was six and I had to sleep in Sis' bed to make it through a thunderstorm. I can even here the boom, right in my ears. But I drop back half a step at the last second. And that's when I feel the whip wrap around my sword.

Gotcha!

I pull when she does, and burn the jetpack a second time. Suddenly, her strength, her speed, and the rockets she's usin' to fly backward up that tower are my speed too. One of us is movin' much faster than the other. And now's when I've gotta strike. When it comes to this sort've a move you really only get one crack at it, y'know?

So I don't use any of my swords. I roll forward, through the air, like I've been wantin' to this whole time, and I throw my shoulder into the main body of the robot with what I hope was a battle cry but was probably more've an "oof" or an "eep". That sounds a bit more like me, anyway. The collision sends a big, owie shiver all down my arm and into my back, and it knocks me off balance till I fall back and have to catch myself in the glass on a pair of daggers to keep from droppin' all the way back into the danger zone of death and, uh... danger?

But it does the trick. She's flyin' backward too, y'know? And I just gave her all've my speed to add to hers, and a single shoulder check is all she needed to go spiralin', shootin' straight back into those puppet strings. And wouldn't y'know it? She rolls up in 'em like she's caught in a trap. It pulls the drones to close to one another, and then? WHATCHA! KRAKOOM! They blow up!

And now it's strings and a beautiful puppet with no hands to hold her up fallin' straight down the tip I can't afford to take. And even though I'm runnin' up, up, up, I feel my heart sink. It's not fair that she should need to fall all that way. This beautiful person doesn't deserve that much, even if she is just a memory. Or a, uh, robot of a memory, or... shut up! I'm runnin' out of time here!

It's hard to swing my sword-board at these speeds, but nothin' else is heavy enough to do the job I need it to. I step into it as best I can, and sell out hard on the swing to smash a window into pieces, just above me. I manage it in the nick of time, and now it's down to luck. The puppet girl tumbles past me. I reach down behind, and catch her by the wrist. One more thrust of the jetpack, which I notice is starting to burn a little weird. I'm gonna have to be more careful from now on. But right now, it's worth it. I twirl us both around, and let her go so that she tumbles safely through the broken window as I pass by it. There. Good and safe. Good and safe and loved.

"You were beautiful!" I shout behind me, even though it's pointless. So I shake my head and shout it up ahead instead, "You're beautiful, y'know that?"

My lungs whine at me some more. What am I thinkin', using them to shout stuff when they're already workin' so hard? But it's important, ok? It's worth every bit of sting and pain. I wanna win, yeah. I wanna feel that feeling that all my friends know but me. But I can't get there without telling my opponent how I feel. I can never win without loving the girl I'm fighting.

I don't want to.

The thing to understand about the monks of the Nine Kingdoms is that there is no centralized authority, and as such, there are many authorities: as many as can be followed. Monks move like water: some, like Rose from the River, are quick-moving streams, pilgrims who move where the Way directs them, impositions on what it means to be a monk on the rest of the world, while others congregate in the pools of monasteries, under the insight and spiritual leadership of a monk with an Idea. There is no church, there is no Arch-Abbot, there is only the transcendent search for what is right and good.

Which means, in practical terms, that one of the old monks got wind of Chen’s plan to release the foxes and disliked it. Foxes are impious creatures who cause mischief and tempt people away from austerity, towards possessions, and above all, towards desire. Desire is a trap, a beautiful golden trap, and Rosepetal is so deep in it that she doesn’t want to come out.

And so this monk went to the groupchat with her old friends, and her old rivals, and informed them that the young heiress to the twin shards, you know the one, she’s going to break all of the foxes out of cutie jail, where they’re quarantined for everyone’s good. I’m going to see about correcting her error as kindly as she lets me. And enough of them nodded and got their good traveling clothes on and told the gods to come and join them if they liked, but they’re going anyway.

(Again, there is no central authority: the fashion of the monks is austere but diverse. Some wear the traditional saffron robes, but others, like Rose from the River once did, wear simple black workout clothes, all tank tops and sensible pants and staves. Some drape themselves in dark shrouds to drown out the world’s temptations all around them, so they can hear the Way’s quiet urgings all the better, and carry canes to tap along their path. Yin’s former cult wear unitards with heavy glass plates sewn on, to reflect the world back at itself, and carry swords in honor of the one they thought the Bodhisattva. There’s Mina the Computer in her heavy jacket, each stud an old plastic key, carrying a club wrapped in cables, counting her way to eudaemonia. And, yes, there’s Aoi the Pilgrim Mendicant, wearing a thriftstore babydoll tee and worn-out Burrows sneakers, thoughtfully hefting what was once an umbrella.)

And most of them have come here to pass judgment. They’re here because they think what Chen is doing is wrong. Not all of them; some are here because they’re friends with someone who does, or because they owe someone a favor. Lalisa of the Black Wind might be here just because she wants a rematch with Rose from the River, actually. But the wall of judgment she’s getting from them is still difficult to bear.

Rose from the River could have managed it. She could have air-jumped into the midst of them and told them that she’s honor-bound to see the foxes reach shore safely, and while they can hunt foxes as much as they like once they arrive, anyone who wanted to stop Chen would have to fight their way through her. She would have been a figure of terrible strength, beating down people she looked up to as clever thinkers, kind aunties, or just annoyingly persistent duelists, inspiring sullen envy in everyone she beat down.

Assuming, of course, that she was not leading the pack. Dueling Chen, disarming her and getting her in a headlock with affected casualness, letting her fellow monks sweep through the decks and shut up the foxes in their cabins, turning the ship around and taking them all back to cutie jail where they belonged. And maybe she’d leave Chen with them, too, to learn a lesson about trusting foxes. The thought makes her palms sweaty and her body off-kilter, like it’s not fitting into the space apportioned to it correctly.

She takes one more look back up at those cliffs. Then she turns, walks back into the ship. The deck is cleared. The ship is a ghost, for a moment, cutting smoothly through the water.

She comes back out with a mop, a bucket with a prickly yellow rope tied to its handle, and a custodial apron, her braids tied up in a bun. She sits in the lotus position, mop across her lap, bucket by her side, apron old and stained. She drapes herself in a different sort of humility and waits. She will not go out and challenge them, bombastic and grinning, but she will not let them stop her Chen. So come, then. Try, if you dare.

The Princess’s maid is waiting to see if you are worthy to even face her.

Chen takes a breath and is still.

The initial run of foxes had been fun. Lots of twirling and dancing, some tail twisting and flinging, and a bit of pool tossing. Chen loved the way she and Petal worked together, strength and motion and mixing as they danced in time. It never got old either. Sometimes one or the other could lead, and Petal could change her cadence so well, shifting her size and her coordination so that Chen might have to step in different ways. That was one of the things Chen really loved about swordplay and dancing. You got to mix training and instinct in all these amazing ways. All the work with feet and core balance gave you the kind of knowledge to understand how your body could move, it opened up possibilities. Then on top of that, you got to make the actual choices about what felt right, what felt strong or weak, agile or slow, what made your heart beat fast and your face grow hot. That was special. So, even though foxes didn't put up much of a fight, rounding them all up and just vibing with Petal made it incredibly special.

Then it had gone quiet and she had started to really understand what Keron's life must have been like. Tails flitting down the end of corridors. Whispered giggles, always distant. Locked doors and empty hallways. Never peaceful though because everything was on her and Petal to be ready to respond, to not let their guard down. She started to understand why Keron might have trained an entire castle worth of handmaidens and really spent that time working with them. If she hit just that right spot where she was molding them to her own vision but at the same time molding them the way they wanted to be molded, they'd be loyal and see into all the places she couldn't be. That was really smart. Also something that Chen did not have time for right now.

Then she strolls out onto the deck and her moment of delight at being near enough to the shore to make out distant figures is instantly quashed when she realizes that they're a giant monastic order there to stop her. Or well...orders. She can see a whole mixture of outfits and colors, only a handful wear the same uniforms, a lot are just in casual clothes. So, her plan must have gotten out. She wondered who the leak was (Cyanis), who could possibly have revealed all of this (Cyanis) just to make things harder and more fun (Cyanis did it).

So, as Rose settled herself on the deck in a waiting maid's pose, Chen simply watched and took a breath. Then, she settles her sunglasses over her eyes to reduce the glare of staring into the sunset, walks a few steps behind Rose to one of the top deck refreshment booths, and grabs an already prepared drink in a pineapple, which she begins to sip in one hand as she flips her phone out in her other hand, tail swishing as she leans back and begins typing.

Princess Connect
Chen (kitty): hey
Chen (kitty): can anyone get me up to speed on how to do a big sunshard thing in like five minutes?
Chen (kitty): like, a really big mobile magic zone centered on a cruise ship in the waters near cutie fox island
Chen (kitty): asking for a friend

Yue!

You know that there are different kinds of glass. Hyra explained it to you during an evening of cuddling conversation where the topic had wandered to embarrassing secrets. Some glass was like in the movies that you could just go through in a spectacular rain of shards, but some glass you'd just face-first slam into like an incautious bird. No quicker way to undermine a dramatic entrance.

With her example in mind you think to make a quick little knock on the glass window to Princess Kikil's room and are pleased to note the sound and the thinness of it. Good. Princess Kikil is, evidently, a professional.

And then with a massive two-legged kick powered by your jetpack you go crashing into her office.

She's sitting behind a massive desk, enormous oval-shaped blue and teal Burrower mask reaching down to her waist, gloved fingers steepled in front of her like a mastermind out of cinema. The second you come through she stands suddenly, flipping the table forwards in a way that at first indicates massive strength but from the surprisingly light crash of the wood perhaps indicates that the table is hollow instead and designed to be overturned in this way. Using the table as cover she fires at you one handed with a laser pistol while drawing a glowing neon-green gladius in her offhand.

It's a prepared technique, and executed well but... oh, this is interesting! She's not actually perfect. Qiu had that kind of deep confidence in her technique, Chen just seems to flow through everything instinctively and Rose is aware of her own power even when she's forgoing it. Princess Kikil has evidently thought about what she's doing so a lot, even practiced it, but she's very clearly in your league. She's keeping her stance strong but she's not, like, using perfect footwork to kite you around the room any time you advance. She's got a clever move where she can raise her sword up high and shoot a laser bolt into it, making it reflect like a mirror, letting her angle her shots around corners but not reliably enough to land immediate hits.

But at the same time she's striving to impress. She's doing stuff she never practiced or trained for as an attempt to push herself to live up to the standard you're setting. Angling shots off the shattered glass isn't something she's prepared to do but it's her doing her best because you deserve that from her.

*

Chen and Rose!

Jessic: Oh no! Chen has been captured by foxes!
Princess Kyoo: you've gotta talk to your sun
Jessic: I'm on my way to rescue you!
Princess Kyoo: ok so
Princess Kyoo: the suns are sleeping, really. sunshard effects are like their dreams.
Princess Kyoo: you can do stuff to influence those dreams. read books to them, show them movies, sleep on top of them and use oneiromancy to influence the dreams directly. lots of setup and even then the shard will bring its own ideas and perception.
Princess Kyoo: you want to do it fast, tho, you'll need to wake it up a bit.
Princess Kyoo: its not too dangerous though it will get hot as shit and the sun will be v impressionistic based on your descriptions

*

It is Master Omets who is the first to approach you, Handmaiden Rose. He is an ancient sage with a long and wispy beard and a robe of embroidered silk. He is so sedate in his calm that it is difficult to register that he just leapt over a mile to land before you on the deck of the boat.

Then he produces his pipe, taps it empty atop the deck, and reaches for a cup of tea while bumping and spilling another. A seemingly simple technique but one of deadly threat - not only is he splitting a diligent maid's attention between cleaning the deck of his tobacco ash, cleaning the spill, and serving him the tea he is reaching for without knowing his preference, his body position and his leg are subtly and cunningly placed to entangle a frantic maid's motions and, potentially, cause him to go tumbling into the pool.

How does the true handmaiden deal with such a complex arrangement of duty?

This is surprising. Actually, this might the most surprised I've ever been. I dunno. I just, oh this is weird. When did my life become so full of princesses? But when I think about them all, and the ones I think about like princesses even though they're technically not, each and every one of them is incredible in a way that seems impossible to copy. Chen has this effortless understanding of swordfights so that it looks like she's fought through the whole duel before you've even challenged her to it, even when you try things you've never done before against her. Rose is strong enough to fight the entire world, feels like, when she wants to be. Not to mention the whole shapeshifting thing, which I've never seen anywhere else even a little bit. And then Yin had her whole Supermax Intensity thing with the chanting and the witchcraft and the glittering secretly-a-bunch-of-tigers knights. Jessic's a dragon! And Hyra's plots are so detailed that she beat both of them with her brain at least as much as her hands. And I didn't even say a word about Qiu or Keron!

And then there's, y'know, me. If you asked me to pick a thing I've got that I thought could stack against all those amazing girls, I guess I'd maybe say... enthusiasm? I love doing this. I love practicing and training and all the little gritty parts of being on an adventure, and most days I really don't mind losing a fight when I think a lot of other people might. I guess 'cause everybody I fight is already so amazing it'd be silly to feel bad about getting beat by 'em. And, like, I'd like to think I've gotten a lot better than when I was starting and I needed Hyra to teach me how to hold a sword, but I...

I'm nothing special. Y'know? Everything I do is full of silly mistakes, and even when it's not I make it look harder than anybody else. I need five cuts to manage what Chen can do in one. And even on the way up this tower I think I must've almost dropped these poor swords of mine at least a dozen times. That's all I've got. I can work hard to catch up a little bitty bit but I always bobble it at the end. The things I've done, I don't think they could shock anybody unless you count the fact that it's me doing them. And y'know, like, when your best quality relies on you being kind of a loser, that. Um. I guess it makes me a loser. I mean, somebody's gotta be. Right? It's not like it's a terrible thing to be. But when that clicked the first time it still hurt, because I thought it meant I could never really make it on the level of all these princesses no matter how hard I tried to, and I just couldn't shut my heart off in time. I still wanted it. I still want it, even now.

And so I... when I came through that glass? I thought that. No, wait. Hold on. I'm about to say something really tricky, and I don't want anybody getting it crossed up. You would have to be the world's biggest dummy to think that Princess Kikil wasn't on the level of the rest of the princesses. I dare you to say that she's not amazingly amazing. Try it. Do. I'll find you. Just look at her world! All those machines, the dance she made them do. The things she made me do. I could never. Not in a million years with a million books explaining how would I get close.

But.

She's a princess. And like I said, every princess or princess-like person I've ever met have all been sword demons. So I just assumed that everything that happened down on the streets was building up to an impossible to handle closing act. And she might still have an ultimate move that's gonna rock me in the end. Probably does, actually. But even still. I never thought I'd meet a princess who wasn't the best at swords. I didn't think I'd meet one, let alone duel one, and have her style look like she's trying as hard as I am. I can see the practice and the study in every move she makes. I didn't know princesses actually had to practice, bein' honest with you. She's trying so very hard and I can see it and. This is so silly. But. But I think she's trying so hard because of me. I think I, I made her do this. I'm making her try. If, no I can't, I can't, I can't ask her about it. But if, if, if! If! Maybe she's shooting me with a laser gun because I made dueling like this look fun to her. Maybe the reason she's not crushing me with a secret super-robot army hidden in the wall panels is 'cause something I did made her think it'd be fun to try it too. Is it even possible she's trying to impress me?

I smile. I absolutely can't help myself. But then I have to duck and find cover in an awful hurry, because as hard as I've been trying to I haven't figured out a good way to block lasers. Eeep! Eeeeeeeeep! Oh gosh, hup! I tilt my head just before I hit the floor and feel my shoulder thump against the wood panel flooring, and I roll up and over onto my feet right into a dive to the safety of that desk she flipped over earlier. Well, the sorta safety. That gun's got so much punch she could shoot right through this thing, or just bounce a shot across her sword and a bit of broken glass and fry my butt where it sits, but at least behind here it's a lot harder for her to see what she's doing. Plus after the window I think she believes in the sacred power of the heroine behind cover in a gunfight. I watch power blast after power blast sail over the desk and splash harmlessly against the wall behind me, and I know for sure. Goshies, what a pro.

Oh, man! If she's trying this hard, that means I gotta step up my game too! I can't get her this riled up just to disappoint her at the end!

Hokay. This is a moment of truth. If this desk is as heavy as it looks, then Kikil's hiding the strength of a goddess under that mask and I was wrong to think any of the stuff I just did. But if I'm right and we're a bit closer to equals, at least in the field of swordfighting, then this desk will do what I want it to, too. I close my eyes and take a deep breath as I work the massive sword off my back. Then I forget to let that breath go, I'm so nervous. The blade shivers in my hands for reasons that have nothing to do with how heavy it is. But it's time to try. I pop up onto my feet and slam the tip of my sword into the floor, catching it on the edge of the table. And it's a miracle! It flips up into the air to cover me!!

...I'm so grateful for these goggles, you've got no idea. If it weren't for them, Kikil'd know for sure just how much I've started crying. And that'd spoil everything. With a big ol' sniff, I whip around as hard as I can in a full circle and draw the katana at the tail end of the motion, slicing the table in half so cleanly it forgets to split apart. My hands move to my pistols, I guess on instinct, and I find they've got spare clips I didn't notice in a couple of my leg pouches. I give them both a good twirl and shoot them both across my chest, crisscross style as I empty them into the table so that the blasts blow the two ends clear across the room from each other.

Hokay, Yue! Lightning quick now, you've only got a second to get this right! Flash, fwip, slip... click! I remember that guns have safeties at the last possible microsecond before they return to their sheaths. Erm. Holsters. Holders? N-nevermind, I don't have time! I pluck my katana back off the ground (because of course I dropped it, but nobody saw probably maybe so I'm still valid) and sheathe it, too. I jump up in the air and kick my monster blade, wrenching it back up out of the floor as I flip up and over it. And grab it as I run. It goes back onto my back.

I think this is what Kat would call my first Hyra Moment. Because she's a sillyhead, this isn't my first by a long shot, but it might be my first that properly lives up to her standard. None of those flashy moves helped me buy the moment I need to close distance, and if they did then I wasted them putting my weapons back in order. But it did draw Kikil's eyes. You can tell because her mask turns a little when she's watching something. And that's an opportunity to do something unexpected. Rapier in one hand, and my trusty saber in the other, I fly across the room like a wolf pouncing on a deer at a watering hole. Swift and sure and vicious, that's me. Just this once. I swing my sword with every once of strength in my body...

So that it clashes with a shower of sparks against her gladius. I hold my rapier steady to control her gun arm. I even switched sword arms, to keep it fair. My precious silver blade grinds against her neon green one, as we two struggle in the bladelock, that oldest and most beautiful of duel forms. A true stalemate. Like she deserves. C'mon, if I tried for the finisher now I'd be history's greatest jerkface. This is my chance at redemption, dummy, I'm not wasting it on something as pointless as winning. No, I'm gonna draw out her best and final technique, and then we'll see if I'm up to it at last. And if not? Hey, at least I'm used to losing. That's how I made all my best friends.

My smile lights up my entire face. The tears that slipped under the goggles glisten against my cheeks.

"So, hey. Hi! Hello! Fancy meeting you here, am I right?"

A challenge. Thrust and counter-thrust. He asks: what is Chen’s hospitality? And moreover, he asks: is this labor worthy of you, Rose? Or are you uselessly flailing at a skill you have not mastered?

Rose cedes a small victory to deny him a grander one: she moves slowly, attending to one thing at a time, so that at least she can say she’s handled one thing. The mop dips into the bucket and she attends first to the tea, lest it stain. Her movements are deliberate, controlled, her chin raised as she wipes the deck clean.

But she is not perfect. She does not do everything with a bounce and a nimble flourish of her apron. If he continued, he could lead her from task to task, if he wanted. Walk her into a trap. Or just make her say something she shouldn’t.

Her shoulders rise and fall as she mops up the ash with the patience of a glacier. She steps over one carelessly askew leg and snorts through her nose. Let him speak, then. Or play some mischief on her. She refuses to be goaded so easily.

Such is the patience of both a maid and a monk.

[Rosepetal rolls a beautiful 2 on Figuring Omets Out. Do as you will.]

Chen (kitty):@Princess Kyoo oh that's perfect! @Jessic, no no no, not kidnapped. I'm freeing the foxes! =D
Chen (kitty):it's gonna be great, there will be so many fox wishes and so much to do! also I promised Cyanis I'd do it don't tell Keron till later!
Chen (kitty):the monks and gods think it's not the best though and there's like a thousand of them all waiting on shore
Chen (kitty):oh and one just backflipped onto the ship and he's giving Petal a maid challenge!
Chen (kitty):omg, this is so good, let me take a picture
Chen (kitty):[maidchallenge.jpg]

Okay, look this was all very distracting, but Chen also needed to talk to her sun and rouse it a little. She figured that was sort of a personal thing. Like how her ancestors got to know the wind or the way it had all happened when she was dueling Hyra. Like, she could just start talking out loud to her circlet gemstone and that would kinda do something, but she understood in the way she understood sword dueling and maid contests that you had to live it, not just say it. If you wanted to rouse a Big Spirit you had to put your whole self into it. That meant different things for different people. Like maybe for Qiu it was all about the big dramatics, like why she'd done the organ on a pyramid and the helicopter chase when she was on top of her game. And for Jessic it was the training and the joy of flight, that feeling of a body whose power was not only innate but intensely built up through skill and practice so hard that you could feel it just by being near her.

So for Chen, that was flow. It wasn't always the same flow, but it was some kind of flow. The dance, the duel, the act, it was always something. And actually, talking to it wasn't a bad start if she needed to find that here. "Hey" she said, phone still in one hand, the other tapping her circlet. "So like, you're in there sleeping huh? One of the suns in the sky. You got me these ears and this tail cuz of how right it felt to be this when Hyra and I were living out our dreams there. That was like super cool."

Chen looks up at the sky, vast and distant, full of faint twinkling stars set on purple velvet, washing along in their own rivers of light. "This world, it's too beautiful for all these folks to be cooped up and running along just one route. I mean, you know not just running, but flipping and squirming and dashing and getting tied up, but like it can't all be one big precept of The Way like that. It can be a way, just like everyone can have a wish but there isn't just one wish. I want them all to get to feel that. Like what happened with me, kind of like the foxes do but softer, more personal, more lasting. Not that sort of helpless coercion (e-even if some people want that) but more like getting to see what's in their own heart and make it real. That's what I want from a sun, is for each of them to get to be a little bit more of what they want than they could on their own. To have the body they want, the clothes they want, to show people the heart and soul and beautiful little light shining from inside of them just like all those stars up there. So...think you could do something like that?"

And you know, come to think of it, Chen hadn't painted anything in a while. And of course she shouldn't really be painting right now. She was going to get kidnapped by foxes any second despite what she'd told Jessic. Or beset by monks now that Petal was occupied. Maybe both, which sounded exciting! But sometimes the time was now and you just had to do something. She was in the eye of the hurricane after all, best not waste it. So, she ducked into a cabin and got out her art supplies (because this time she'd brought stuff since they had a whole ship!) and she pulled out a little canvas that would be easy to move around, just like the size of a big book. And she started mixing a little color. Some purple mixed with just a bit of white to lighten it up and get that purple velvet sky, lighter at the edges where the one shy sun loved to hang out and watch the world peeking over a counter. It didn't matter if she finished right now, or what happened next, it just mattered that she started. Everything else would flow from there.

Yue!

"Oh my gosh, I know, right?" Princess Kikil said in a voice that sounded at once distorted by some sort of machinery in her mask... and also, beneath that filter, somehow familiar. "I can't believe how you move - what you're capable of! Who did you learn all this from!? I mean -"

She puts a burst of strength into her sword and forces you back. She raises her gladius, determined. "Don't you dare hold back! Don't think that I don't see you! You just want to see my ultimate move, don't you think I don't know what you're up to! Well, I'm wearing a mask - and if you know anything about duels you'll know that counts as a whole second life! When you get the upper hand you'll get to cut my mask off and you'll be so surprised at what you see underneath that I'll get a chance to turn the tables - and that's when I'll use my ultimate technique!" She stomped her foot in a show of determination, but her voice was thick with emotion. "And not one moment before! So don't hold back! If you don't show me how wonderful you are I'll never forgive you!"

She sets her stance again and flips a setting on her laser pistol. It hums as the power cell starts to shine radiant and glistening, infused with the direct energy of a Sunshard. Now when it fires it's raw dreamstuff, sheer potential. It's still dangerous but now it's a kind of danger that's reactive with your own dreams; if you dream of wolves then wolves will sweep by your legs and try to trip you - perilous at first, but also giving you all the materials you need to build your own technique if you can tame and redirect them.

*

Rose!

You take your eyes off Omets for but a moment. It doesn't even occur to you that you did; in this challenge constant eye contact is not a necessity. You fight a duel against a master monk, forgetting that you are still aboard a shipful of foxes.

Master Omets' challenge changes tempo; no longer a polite and restrained test but an increasingly aggressive sequence of motions. He drops a teacup, requires his scarf to be straightened, steps past you slightly and then back again, and despite all your efforts to take things slow and steady you find your balance slipping more and more. You're still holding on right up until the point where someone tackles you in the small of the back and you find yourself falling face-first into the deck as no less than three kitsune sit on top of you.

You blink and the illusion falls away - master Omets has a fourth kitsune, an orange and white vixen, cornered with her hands up at the point of her staff. "Wait!" said the kitsune. "Look! We've captured Rosepetal for you. Look, here's the deal - you let us four free, and we'll give you her and all the other Kitsune on the ship to send back to cutie jail. What could be fairer than that?" she flashes her biggest grin and offers her hand to shake.

You, Rosepetal, are being Betrayed.

Chen!

You can feel warmth rise up inside of you. It's a gradual thing, but falling into a flow state always is. It's the sort of thing that takes time and at the end renders time nonexistent.

The Sun in the Shard is not dead or alive, not asleep nor awake. It is not a living thing, nor spirit, nor demon. It is a source. It is an entropy-defying marvel through which new matter and energy can enter the cosmos. It is matter so condensed that physical laws stop applying and you can pull forth a kingdom from inside without reducing its mass in any way. But then there's something more to it than that, something that you can't see with your eyes. Something you can only see when you paint, when you're able to view a light-emitting object without light.

There's an arrow running right into its core. And that arrow is what hears you. It's not forged of steel, for what steel could cut a star? It is forged of love, the love of the first Princess. This arrow cut into the heart of this dumb font of raw power and gave it a mind by which it could dream.

And so you speak to it and that love vibrates outwards. You can feel the love rising and shaping the power that emanates, no longer raw heat and light but something more beautiful. Wow!, she seems to think. I love your dream!

And then you snap out of it because your dress is on fire. Your painting is on fire. A fair bit of the ship around you is on fire, actually - you're in the centre of a glittering radiance of Solar magic, but also a shipfull of kitsune who are screaming and fainting and being of absolutely zero help whatsoever when it comes to the rapidly spreading blaze.

The knee lands between her shoulders when she tries to push herself up off the deck. She hits the deck with plenty of padding, but the wind’s still knocked out of her long enough for the three to get to work. The lithe one, Prim, grabs her ankles and folds them back, lashing them crossed over each other before securing her legs again and again: shins, knees, thighs, making it impossible for her to so much as think about squirming free. With her feet like this, she can’t even hop; she’ll have to be carried. Quick Ji wrenches her wrists into the small of her back and cinches them securely together, before wrapping more rope around her arms, over and under her chest, forcing her shoulders back and emphasizing her heavenly mounds.

Blackleaf just waits. She sits and waits for Rose’s head to jerk up. “You! Ungrateful, wicked—“ That’s all Rosepetal gets to spit out. Then she’s got lace crammed in her mouth, and satin, and silk, and the strong taste of foxes. The pairs pulled over her head add the smell of foxes, too, and she’s mewling and struggling and trying to speak, to be heard, even as Blackleaf pulls the first of many scarves over her well-packed mouth. She doesn’t get to speak. She doesn’t have to. All she has to do is whine uselessly and give pleading, humiliated looks upwards.

And then they’ll bring Chen out, hopping so cutely, her ears perky and her tail twitching, and Chen will get to see her like this, and they’ll be tied back-to-back, or with Chen’s limbs wrapped around her Rosepetal so that Chen can get a front-row seat to her Rosepetal’s humiliation, helplessness, and objectification. Desirable, owned, used as a bargaining chip. Teased by four victorious foxes, forced to watch as Chen’s plan falls apart, as they rub it in that she could have stopped it, tear her top open, show off to everyone what a big girl Rosepetal is, as Chen does her best to tell the foxes off and mmmphs indignantly on her behalf and gives her reassuring looks papering over her own dismay, because even in the midst of failure she wants to keep her girlfriend’s heart safe…

Rosepetal stands up, and foxes tumble, and somehow end up in her arms. (Even if she had to catch Prim in the crook of one leg and then kick her up like the football.) “Girls,” she says, calmly, even though they can feel her heart racing, it’s impossible for her to hide it from them, the foxes have always known what she wants better than she does, “you can betray me afterwards. I promise. I’ll even give you suggestions.” Now she can tell she’s got their ears perking, their squirming more perfunctory. “But for now…”

All three scream as they go flying into the pool, hitting the water flailing and shrieking and vowing vengeance upon treacherous maidservants. And Rosepetal is all squirming and melting inside over the thought of four vindictive foxes taking her up on her offer, especially if Chen will have to come save her, but she still knows her part in this play.

“Honored guest,” she says to Omets, sternly, “we will be docking at our destination shortly. I must ask that you retire below decks to meet with the captain, as we are clearing the deck for our entry.”

No fight. No opening for the other monks. No simpering or wringing her apron. Rosepetal lets just a flash of her old demeanor through, a reminder that she has chosen to be just a maid. She is tall, and she is in command of her space, and she has just flung three foxes like they were even lighter and fluffier than regular foxes. Do not think you can brush her aside so easily!

[Rosepetal hammers her Defy Disaster with a 10. The foxes will have to wait their turn like good girls.]

I can feel the heat rising in my cheeks. My eyes open a bit wider than usual without me telling them to, and I can feel my jaw start to clench in that way it always does just before I wind up gasping. Which, of course, I do right after. I must be pinker than a rose finch right now; I've never been so embarrassed in my entire life.

"I! Well, I! Um! S-s... Sorry. I d-didn't, didn't know!"

It's true, y'know. I had no idea about masks in duels. And it's not that it's embarrassing to not know something, but like, now that she's said it this feels like the sorta thing I shoulda been able to put together on my own without being told first. Wasn't that just the way Yin's knights worked? Sure it was a suit of armor and not a mask but... yeah. Take off the costume, and then the fight changes instead of ending. I'm so silly. I'm just a big... sillyhead!

I feel Princess Kikil's arm tense up and her gladius, and when she swings to push me away from her I lean into the energy and let her toss me clear across the room with the prettiest flip I can manage, by way of making up for my blunder. Just a little bit, at least. I dunno why I'm so flustered by the idea of disappointing this girl. I just met her, even if she is a princess. But I, y'know, I just do. Disappointing her feels like a knife in my stomach would. I guess it's 'cause she went to all this effort for me, so we could do this dance together. And here I am screwing it up for both of us. Gosh, how would I have felt if I noticed Chen was taking it easy on me?

Straight away all I want to do is jump in and fix my mistake. All I've gotta do is rush back into her zone and knock away that mask! Then I'll learn who she is and see her smile! And I'll smile back and no matter what face I see I promise I'll act the most surprised anybody's ever seen. She's right. 'Course she's right. You have to earn people's ultimate moves. And I can do this! I, I could do this. I proved it once already. But now her guard's back up. Now that gun's trained on me with a pro's steady aim and I'm out of tables to boot. Her zone's enormous, and I'm reduced to tumbling. Backwards, even.

Ah. That's always my problem, isn't it? My form is solid. My technique's sharp. My instincts are plenty decent, I guess, and I'm quick enough to catch Kat at bath time. I've got an ultimate technique, same as her. As good as Qiu's, please and thank you very much. Lemme have this. But I don't have what I need the most. That's why I always lose. That's why I hurt Princess Kikil's feelings just now. That's why I'm starting to tremble like a leaf in the autumn breeze. I'm about to disappoint her. I'm about to show her that I'm not wonderful at all, once you get right down to it.

I don't have a finishing move.

I get to this part of a fight and I just, like, run out of ideas. Y'know? Even now my brain is just flailing around trying to come up with something cool enough to fit. A straight thrust? Who's gonna wanna get hit by that? Qiu had a bajillion of these but I'll be darned if I can remember any of 'em. All I really remember about that part of that duel is scrambling like mad to not get turned into a pancake. Kinda the same as now, actually.

But I guess it doesn't matter. Kikil's not leaving openings for anything like a finishing move. She blasts the room with shot after shot from her gun and it's all I can do to keep pace with cartwheels and rolls and the occasional flip kick, which I hate doing because I always lose track of where I am in the air and I look like a dork flailing about to find my balance before I eat it and fall on my butt. Which would be the end of me and make me wish it was at the same time. But I make the effort anyway. For her.

Even though I'm sure I haven't been hit by any of these lasers, I'm taking all the damage anyway. The way she shoots, and what she's shooting, all that really matters is that I'm here. And that I dream. And I do dream of wolves. Silver wolves with piercing red eyes and hearts full of flashy tricks, miracles, and love.

I dream of hawks soaring through the clouds. I dream of endless fields of flowers. I dream of the wide desert and the impossible City of Cities stacked up to the skies at the end of it. I dream of balloons and I dream of waterfalls pouring in layers and layers and layers down the grandest and most beautiful shrine in the entire world. I mean, I guess she did ask. And before I know it, my entire adventure is in the room with us. Attacking me.

Wolves circle me and nip at my ankles. They run between my legs to bowl me over. Birds scream in my ears and divebomb my head to drive me down onto my knees, or even my stomach where I'll be easy food for the wolves. Waterfalls crash down on my head and sweep me away into clumsy duels with the ghost of a ghost, like I'm learning how to hold a sword for the first time all over again.

At first, I fight it all. I swing sword after sword at the animals attacking me to scare them away. I step outside the proper patterns of the duel, and I slash the waterfalls with fear and silly aggression as if I could muscle through them. But I'm not strong enough or fast enough or skilled enough to do any of that. I get bit, and clawed, and battered, knocked around. I think the room must be filled with the sound of my 'eeps' and 'oofs'. But every time, I take my feet. I try again. 'Cause that's my thing, right? The one good thing you can definitely say about me: I get up again.

It takes a good minute for me to realize I might have figured out my finishing move after all. Gosh I hope this works. I don't think I can handle another health bar if it takes me much more than this. I pop back onto my feet and flash what I hope is a brave smile and what I'm sure is a very toothy one. Sword by sword, I flourish and I pose. A little show with no point to it, except that I hope it makes Princess Kikil smile back at me. When I knock off that mask, I mean. That thing is a master class in hiding your identity, she could be sticking her tongue out at me this entire fight and I'd have no idea. Goshies, I really... I want to see her. I wanna know who she is! I feel my heart flutter all excited when I think about it!

"Well! You see!" I stomp my foot and crouch down a bit to start running, "When it started, I got kidnapped by a wolf!"

I am bounding through a field of flowers, silvers wolves leaping and baying at my sides. They twist around me, but playfully. We are a pack. Hyra, and me. Two's a pack when you're in love, ok? We howl together, and the birds scatter to the sky. I hold my saber, and thrust it straight at Kikil. At the space between us, I mean. There's so much distance between her and I, how could I possibly finish things right at the beginning? Silly. Water surges all around me, and my beautiful wolf and I float up all the way to the ceiling.

"She saved me from the river demons, but her princess was so mad! I was supposed to be a prize, you see! The most valuable one in the entire Terraced Lake! Can you believe that? I couldn't!"

We come crashing back down to the floor, and I let myself land hard. I go sprawling and skidding and sliding, head over butt over feet, until I land at the hem of the dress of the Demon Swordswoman. I flip my saber over in my wrist, and present it to her. A dagger and a rapier will have to do for me for this. And so we dance. Like this! And like this! Then like this! Finishing like this! Again!

"I thought she was so beautiful. So I just had to watch her, y'know? What do I know about ghosts anyway? All I could think to do that could make her feel as special as she deserved was to learn as much as I could. I've been trying ever since to absorb all she had to teach me. And, I think?"

Step step step, twirl parry slash! I hold the point of my sword above the bust of the dress, no higher than that silly, where the chin should be, and with a flick of my dagger I disarm the ghost. I lean in to kiss her, then with a smile I leap overtop of her, sheath my weapons, and catch my saber in my off hand. I even manage it after just one quick bobble. A personal best!

"I think I'm finally starting to do her proud! And then! And then! And then? And after that we! Oh, but there's so much to tell."

I run through my dreams, not fighting them anymore. I've got my story to tell, I have to explain it all to Kikil so she'll see. I may not be wonderful or special on my own, but my story is the kind of miracle that could light up the sky if somebody taught it how to. I retrace every step, up over hills and down into valleys and through river after river without even worrying about the demons that live there. I dance with Rose and Chen and even Cyanis, who all flicker like specters a little less real than the rest of it. It's 'cause they've all got important places to be right now, new stories to tell. I don't mind. I'll catch them all up on this later.

In my dream, I meet Princess Qiu for the first time. I'm so close now. I talk with her. I bake her cookies with her own oven. I gasp in shock, and eat the first one by myself. Wowies, these are spicier than I remember! But I'm almost there. The moment I've been waiting for. I stomp out of the room, and that's when the spectral helicopter rises out of the floor.

I grin. My whole body is sweating and... bein' real with you, there's nothing more I'd love than to stop and ask for a nice, long bath. My hair is so sticky you have no idea. But I promised, the second I cut my way in to wherever the heck this is... or well. When Princess Kikil introduced herself to me with her grand army of machines, that's when the promise started. That even if it got hard, and even if my heart started to waver and doubt myself again, I wouldn't drop the ball this time. I promised I'd show her everything I am, if she'd do the same for me. And that means! This time? Excuse my language but gosh darn it I'm going to win!

I don't run screaming from the helicopter. I've got plans for it, y'see. It fires volley after volley of ghost-missiles at me, but this time I've got stuff I didn't have before. This time I've got a jetpack, and this amazing two-handed sword! I fly up to a missile and land on top of it just before it explodes, tucking my sword under my feet so the blast sends me sky high instead of, like, probably killing me? And I'm laughing the whole time, 'cause this is so ridiculous and scary that if I do anything else I'm gonna start crying like a frightened child instead. flip between volleys, riding them higher and higher. My voice surprises me with how clear and strong it sounds.

"My darling little Kat has a name for all of this! She calls this, The Wandering Tales of Yue the Sun Farmer! Here I go!"

I fall. It's kinda funny, now that I think about it. All this effort and nonsense, and in the end all I could come up with is a variation on the same thing I tried on Tianic in my very first for-realsies duel. I don't even add a spin to it or anything, I'm just moving faster than I was then and I'm not a wolf this time. But simple suits me best, I think. I do the rest 'cause it's fun. If you wanna see me takin stuff serious? Then I'm the girl who wakes up before dawn 'cause it's the only way to make the trip in time to harvest silver needle when it reaches its peak. I'm just a girl, y'know? I learned how to bottle sunshine, and then all I could think to use it for was a bunch of home remedies.

And that's who comes crashing down on top of Princess Kikil. Yue, just... still after everything I've been through, still just Yue. But Yue, or maybe her Wandering Tales at least, is enough to strike her big scary mask dead on. I hear the crack. I feel the impact rattle through my bones. And that's when I realize I didn't stop to consider the landing at all. I smash into the floor hard enough that all the pads and protective bits on my outfit shatter into pieces on the spot. I have to dig my sword into the ground with a scream and a frantic flail to keep my head from smashing face first and joining all that stuff.

I feel woozy just the same. Gonna need.... hoooooo goshies. Yeah. A minute before I can stand again. Maybe more before I can fight. But I make the effort to turn and face her. I don't want to miss the moment when it happens. I want to see her. I have to know if she's smiling.

Stop, drop, and roll! Chen clutches the painting to her chest and flings herself on the ship deck around her, landing hard on her shoulder and rolling about like a big cylinder with her prize clutched against her protected by her tightly wrapped arms. In a momen when she's done putting out the fire and protecting what she can of the painting, she breathes again and tries to let her brain catch up to her intinct.

Chen begins taking a look around, the sun on her head still blazing brightly. Okay, half the ship is an inferno. Well, she did take her eyes off all the monks and foxes for who knows how long so she can't really say this result was unexpected. Did she help start it as part of waking her sun up, or was the fox conspiracy as ready with arson as they were with kidnapping? Not that it mattered all that much, as the shrieking of foxes and the crackling roar of the blaze merge together into a general bedlam.

One would be forgiven for thinking that Chen might be panicking at this point. Her very large on-loan cruise ship is significantly more on fire than a few moments ago and everything is in chaos. But no. Chen's grinning. This is, well, it's a problem she can try and tackle by racing about like the wind, and working with Rose. She might not fix it all, sure, but it's just so absolutely physical in nature that she can just go at it the best she can and if that's not enough then that's okay too, they'll pull the foxes out of the water in life rafts for the last leg, just you watch her!

As she takes in the scene, Chen also sees Rose coming around the ship deck, gesturing for the old monk who had landed with her to go indoors. And mmm, she looks so good with her scarf and her bare muscles doing that maid's polite gesture for him to go ahead. Chen wants to linger there and just take in the sight, and gosh wouldn't it be nice to let Rose handle everything? But she figures Rose is imagining the same thing and besides she can't just pull up a beach chair by the pool full of foxes, pull her sunglasses down, and tan to the roaring fire, now can she?

All of that took only a few seconds once she was off the ground, and then a few more for the admiring gaze of Rose. Then, Chen's off like a bolt, blasting across the ship deck at top speed as she flings herself to the main building wall of the ship where there's emergency fire suppression equipment. She slows enough to rest the painting against a wall that's not on fire. She doesn't want it to burn down, but it's fine if the foxes or the monks steal it, so as long as it's not destroyed she's good. Then she lowers her sunglasses (eye protection always important, even in a pinch!), grabs her sword hilt and smashes the glass open, pulling out a huge hose and cranking on the water. The big thing is nearly as big as she is, and as she hefts it over her shoulder, she looks rather like a scaled up version of a little girl trying to heft a garden hose to water some flowers. But this is the whole ship deck and Chen's got magic on her side. She hefts the hose more firmly over her shoulder and takes off into the air riding atop her sword as the water starts rushing through the hose. Surfing on the sword blade, Chen begins spraying across the deck, dousing wood and foxes alike as though a geyser has sprung into being in midair ten feet above the ship deck. She starts working across the deck systemically, first putting out the small fires to contain it, and then working her way towards the core of the blaze.

All the while she's not speaking, but there's a grin on her face and as she goes, she starts laughing and giggling like a madwoman as she hose scours the surface of the ship! All the while, the shard upon her head is glowing and pulsing, gaining strength.

[Chen will defy disaster. She was putting the ship at risk if she didn't do a good enough job, but with showing off her legendary skill as the chosen, the result is a 10 (6+1+2+1).]

Yue the Sun Farmer!

The mask of Princess Kikil is wood and stone and electricity. It is slashed with blue and dusted with orange, bordered with swirling patterns in white. It is a meter tall, coming down below her chest and raising high in the air; painted crazed eyes and enormous lips and eyebrows made of exposed circuitry. It is a thing of beauty - or at least, is descended from one - but it too is a thing of monstrous power. The relief is stronger than the regret of breaking such a thing when the crack runs all the way down its centre and the heavy mask slides free and clatters to the floor.

And beneath you see a mirror.

You see exhaustion. You see elation. You see a heart that's filled to the brim with pride and wonder. You don't have to wonder what that emotion is like, that starstruck awe, because it's filled you a hundred times in a hundred ways as you saw all the beautiful people on your adventure. But now you're on the other side of it for the first time and it makes you realize two different things.

The first thing is that it makes you see just how special you are. You made a blade out of love, as keen as the First Princess' arrows. You overcame someone who was trying her best in a way that took her mask and her heart all at once. You left an impression so deep that this Princess will never, ever, forget it and will work her hardest over months of quiet future practice to try and incorporate into herself. You did something amazing, Yue.

The second thing is that it makes you see just how special you are. This expression? This shock and joy and love and awe? This is an expression that every maiden in the game of Princesses seeks. This is what they were all fighting for, the blow that they sought to land with each turn of their sword. They all practiced as hard as you do, Yue, spending weeks and months perfecting their art so that someone could look at them like that. Like this. And you gave that to them. You can see now that each time you looked out with love you made someone's day, you filled their hearts with pride, you made everything seem worth it. Now, finally, you understand just how happy you made so many people.

You stand atop a mountain in this moment. And though the climb was steep, when you glance back at the trail behind you, you see you planted a thousand flowers in your wake.

The mirror's tear-blurred edges resolve slightly. The hair is longer, the face is older, there is a new and unbearably cool scar that bisects the left eyebrow - still your face, but not quite. And her eyes are filled with tears too. "Ah - you dummy," she sniffles, "you cut all the way through my mask to my heart in one blow. D-don't you know you're not supposed to do that?"

And then Xiu throws her arms around you in the biggest hug she knows how to give.

*

Daily Affirmation Of The Way <3

You are kind of a big deal. For some reason.

You are by no means the most senior monk. No means the wisest. Definitely not the strongest - you washed out of the dojo at the brown belt level because that was the transition point from 'punchy yoga' to 'punchy other people'. These days you mostly procrastinate about weeding the garden and invent new and exciting bean-bag chair postures to lie in as you browse the internet. And now, here you are, with the entire martial/religious establishment of the Nine Kingdoms looking to you for guidance.

You spent a while wondering if it was because you were, somehow, the most enlightened out of any of them. Enlightenment was a tricky thing to measure, but maybe the other monks could see that you were the best at it. But then, why couldn't you see it in yourself? That had been an insight worthy of a status update: "A ladder leads to heaven and a stairway leads to hell. But who is the king of those who lie down to rest?" Everyone had read it, nodded quietly, and just as quietly assumed that that king was, in fact, you.

There are five hundred year old grandmasters, with eyebrows descending to their knees. There are young and fierce dominants on their quest to turn hell into heaven. There are rice farmers and there are ninja, there are hackers in striped stockings and there is a sushi chef who whistles as he cooks. Warriors in saffron robes ready to do righteous violence to those who break the laws of heaven, and dispossessed celestial bureaucrats who write the laws of heaven sitting on golden nimbus clouds and battle with ennui. They all watch the burning cruise ship and listen to the screams of foxes, and then they all turn their heads. They all watch you.

But who are you to watch? In the absence of any better answer, you watch Rosepetal and Princess Chen. You watch fire and water dance together and you see a strange sort of harmony there. It's no different from what anyone else sees, but still you feel the itch. You feel a calling, a tension in your brain. Something you have to do. And so you pull out your laptop, sit down on the cliffside, and type out a post.

It takes you a few tries. You start by trying to make it short and pithy, then you go into a rambling koan about harmony and chaos. None of it works. Some part of you feels the pressure of other eyes, but it's not them that compels you - it's trying to find the shape in the words themselves. Eventually you just write:

Daily Affirmation Of The Way <3:
Harmony creates harmony.

Finally, you look up.

Every one of the assembled monks produces their phones - some have laptops, some have digital watches, some look over other's shoulders, some read it out to those around them. The words ripple out through the crowd and they nod quietly and consider. They look at Rose and Chen together 'midst the fire and water and none of them can deny that it is harmony they see there.

And so they lower their nunchucks and fox nets and quietly stand down as the cruise ship full of cutie chaos continues on its way.

And then, finally it occurs to you.

It's not that you are the wisest. Not that you are the smartest. It's that you are the one who wrote.

Harmony creates harmony.

Rose can’t help but smile when she catches today’s Daily Affirmation on Omets’s phone screen, before he stows the phone back in his robe so that he can accept the plate with biscuits and a strawberry dipping sauce. Everything is coming together. Everything is right, here and now. That’s what it means to live under one lonely sun in the long and beautiful twilight, in the shadows of the elevators.

Below, foxes are exploding out of the ship, which has navigated smoothly next to a little fishing jetty. The ship’s boarding ramp hasn’t been dropped, but they don’t need it: they swing down on ropes, float down on umbrellas, push each other into the shallow water, dash madly onto the grass, roll around shamelessly while scream-laughing, scamper up into trees to yell at their rivals, and scheme about what comes next. There’s rivalries to avenge, cuties to help, mischief to be done.

She sets down another plate next to Chen’s cup and curtsies. “Here you are, my Princess,” she says, almost formally enough to hide the fondness in her eyes, the pride swelling up inside her at how wonderfully her little Chen has done. In the light of the sunshard, her dark skin is vibrant, rich, shining. In the light of the sunshard, you can almost see the string wrapped around her little finger, leading to Chen’s delicate hand. In the light of the sunshard, she is simply Rosepetal, the Princess’s girlfriend, competent in her own way but not the kind of monster that could be used to shake heaven and send the gods rattling from their thrones.

Inside, her whole body is dreaming while awake. She inhabits it, she feels it, she knows it. It’s her finest creation, and her blood sings a song of love, of freedom, of finding a place to rest her head and stay. The world is big and has many problems, but how wonderful that she is allowed to be more than a tool in a toolbox for fixing them. How wonderful that she is allowed to be the love interest in this story, rather than the wandering ronin. How wonderful that she is loved, and wanted, and herself.

There’s a thump from outside the observation cabin, like one fox falling off the shoulders of another onto a third. Rosepetal notices, and she notices that Chen notices, too.

“If that’s everything, your radiance,” she says, eyes hidden under fluttering lashes, “may I return to my quarters to change?”

They’ll let her get that far, now that she’s brought it up, just so they can raid her closet in the process. She knows it, Chen knows it, Omets probably knows it, and only Prim, Quick Ji and Blackleaf think nobody knows. And only Chen knows how Rosepetal’s strong heart is beating hard, carrying her joy out to circulate through her limbs and her face, how she knows that she can walk into an obvious fox trap because someone will always, always come for her.

She proved it. And now Rosepetal never needs to worry again about being forgotten, about being abandoned, about falling back into the dark. Not with her own little sunshard shining her light through her life, every day, every night, filling her up.

“I’ll be some time,” she adds, demurely. Take your time, Chen. “Unless there is any other need you have of me?”

I'm falling. Or at least, I should be. I really, really oughta be. I can't, I can't, sheesh. I can't stand up anymore. My legs won't hold me. But. But. But here I am on my feet. 'Cause I'm being held up by the strongest, softest, most loving arms in the whole wide world.

I can't breathe. Oh gosh. Oh no. I can't. I can't stop crying. I can't. I'm. The sounds I'm making are so ugly it hurts. I can't tell if I'm gonna throw up or if that's just what my voice sounds like forever now. It's so bad I'm starting to hiccup. I can't move except to bury my face in her shoulder and just, just, stay there forever. It's as warm as I remember. She's just like I remember, except for that scar. How did I not notice?! I woulda done everything so different if I knew! Sis! Sis! Sis, Sis, Sis, Sis!!

"Wh-wh-who's a dummy, dummy?! You're the! You're so! So!" I pound her back with my fist and I wouldn't care if it hurt her or not except I'm shaking so hard I can't put anything into it, and I'm still hugging her anyway so I don't know if she even notices, "You jerk. I wanted to see it! Where's the second health bar you promised me? You're such a liar. You're... you..."

I'm cut off by another wave of sobbing, only this time I feel her shaking while she's holding me and I know it's got her too. And that's why I can't be mad. I couldn't even if I hadn't seen that look on her face when the mask came off, 'cause this crying's the proof that she still loves me. She left when I was getting good and grown up and we haven't seen or heard from each other hardly in years, but she loves me. I love her. You don't cry if you don't care, remember? Of course you, I, uh. Um. Y-yeah. Yeah. Snnnffffrrrrrrk.

I have to pull away now. I have to stop hugging her. I have to even though it's impossible 'cause if I don't she can't see how much I'm smiling. And besides, I wanna, I wanna, I have to see her too! It's been so long, how'm I supposed to make do with only looking at her sleeve and the bit where it meets her neck? Nuh uh! Nuh uh, I say! That's my big sister! My big sister's a princess! My big sister's a princess!

...My big sister's a princess?!?

Suddenly she's not enough to hold me up anymore. Suddenly I'm dragging her down to the floor. Suddenly we're both on our knees, and laughing until we choke, like we used to when one of us would tell a stupid joke over tea. Like we did when we were kids. Like we did when we were together. Oh my gosh, my big sister. Who loves the city more than anything, and always knows the words to every song. Who tried her best to teach me so much, even though I never could seem to keep up.

"Oh gosh darn it, excuse me," I manage through fresh titters and a new wave of blushing, "No wonder I look so amazing. It's you, isn't it? You picked out my clothes for me again!"

Sis looks at me and laughs, and it's as much a melody as I remember it from before. She's got a way about her that always makes her seem like she's about to burst into song, even though she almost never does. It's how she carries herself, I guess. Those careful little breaths she always makes, like she needs to disguise it so you won't hear her on a stage or whatever. The way she moves, 'cause there's such a rhythm to it I always think there's some secret beat that only she can hear following her around everywhere. And maybe there is. Or maybe it's more like this. Maybe all this time I missed how much she practices everything, and the stuff I thought was Big Sis Magic was really her workin' her butt off so she could keep bein' the center of somebody's world.

Do you have a sister, too? There's so much about you I don't know, come to think. Big or little, doesn't matter. A brother's fine too. It's just, there's a special thing that happens when your family loves you, and in especial the part of your family that you grew up with, and that grew up with you. Adults who were always adults to you don't have it, and people who only turned special in your life later on have to get lucky to find it. There's a, a, a thing when you hug a sister where your entire world turns into this thing of candlelight, soft blankets, and memories that come rushin' in from every corner of your life.

It's, like, for me it feels the most like sneakin' outta the house late late late at night to watch the moon somewhere we could watch her dance and sing songs to her loud enough for her to hear them without wakin' Gran Gran. A warm, muggy summer night with cicadas chirpin' their hellos and a basket full've breads and dumplings and popcorn that was only mostly burned. And, 'cause all the songs a girl could sing to the moon were about drinkin', we had our own special 'wine'. Nobody'd sell somethin' that rare and sophisti-grown up to a pair of giggly sillyheads, but if you stirred warm cola into grape juice it seemed about the same. We were pretty sure, anyway.

It's that. It's all of that. It's more than I've got words to tell you. When I'm in her arms, when she's in mine, the world shrinks all the way back to the paths and steps we walked together. I can taste it on my fingertips, if you catch my meanin'. I can't bring myself to ask her why she left. I can't bring myself to ask if all've this around us here was worth not havin' me around. I can't bring myself to ask her if she worried about me, and if she did then why didn't she come visit? I can't bring myself to ask her why it took me cutting my own heartache with a sword to put us in the same room again.

I can't, 'cause I don't care. I've got my answers in the feeling of char on my lips. The soreness of my arms and legs. The warmth of her body and the strength she still uses to hold me close. The smell of sweat and the little zap of electricity that's all around us. She's here. She's here. I'm here too. We're together, and it's like no time's passed between us at all.

We pull apart at long last. Every hug has an ending, sad as it is to say. My smile's giddy and foxy-mischief silly all at once. Ahhh, I just wanna flop over and take a nap. But if I close my eyes, I'll miss Hyra's picnic. I'll miss all the little things I was runnin' away from, though now that I'm here I can't really remember what was so scary about 'em to begin with. Besides, what kind of a good-for-nothing frizzy-brained sillymuffin would I be if I didn't stay awake long enough to take my sister to meet my g i r l f r i e n d ? ? ?

"Hey," I say for no reason but to talk, "Did you know that Princess Chen is scared of you? You're, like, the only one she doesn't know how to handle. How's that make you feel, Sis?"

A warm glow suffuses outward from Chen as she reaches out a hand and slowly curls it around the handle of the teacup, smiling at her Rosepetal. She takes her time, lifting the cup daintily, blowing on the steam and letting the warmth of the tea flow into the warmth coming off her face, and only then taking a delicate little sip. Her excited wiggling ears give the game away though, and it's obvious to all involved that she simply wants to stretch out the time that her Petal is held before her like this so that she can take her all in. The way that he skin shimmers under the light of the shard is something special, and not the sort of thing that Chen can get anytime she wants. She grins as she imagines ordering Petal to pose for her the entire time they're entertaining until she can salvage the rest of her paints. But of course she wouldn't deny her or Prim, Quick Ji and Blackleaf from their promised fun.

So, instead she finishes her sip of tea, sighs in contentment, and smiles again. "Of course Petal, take your time, I'll come get you later. But not for a while."

As for the light of that shard. Well, originally she had imagined that she'd do some kind of big shardsplosion. Like, the boat would pull up near the shore, and a thousand monks would all double backflip three sixty on the deck like Master Omets had done initially, and there'd be all this chaos as the foxes tried to throw each other in harms way to make their escape, and then Chen would do a pose and there'd be a big light explosion and suddenly, well she didn't know what exactly, but she thought maybe some of the monks would grow ears and a tail like her, or some of them would suddenly find themselves in different clothes or slightly different bodies maybe. Maybe some of them would just have something new suddenly in their hands, or they'd decide that they had better things to do. While meanwhile all the foxes would go chasing after their thousand and one beautiful dreams and be too busy doing that to hurt each other as they raced off the boat. It wasn't a perfect plan, she was sure some of the monks really wanted to be monks and some of the foxes really wanted to be maniacal fox girls, but she had figured that it would shake things up so much that the ship could dock and they'd get everybody off and running for the hills.

But instead it hadn't gone like that. Chen was still rather fuzzy on the details actually, but she and Rose had raced about the ship putting out fires and addressing cackling foxes and somehow the monks had just all checked their phones and decided that actually this was fine. Chen hadn't seen Master Omet's phone like Rose had, but she got that something had been shared among them all and they were in agreement.

So, that left Chen with all this built up sunshard energy and instead of being a sunsplosion, it had become something more like a suffusion. Gentle rays of golden light were pouring off the tiara on her brow, casting everything in an angelic glow. It was most intense right with her, but even there it wasn't burningly bright. It was a happy, gentle yellow-orange that gave off a friendly pulse every few seconds and warmed everything nearby. It had started with just the ship, but had spread all across it, below decks, and even to the surface. It didn't really seem to be doing anything drastic either. The best Chen could say is that the shrieking, screaming, scampering foxes seem to have managed a more effective departure from the ship than might have been expected despite all the scampering and screaming in the process. But, it did make the tea taste good. Spicy, like she was drinking chai with cinnamon, cardamom, and a little brown sugar, even though there hadn't been time to properly boil those sorts of ingredients.

So, that leaves her sipping her inexplicable chai across from Master Omets, simultaneously completely certain about the place she's made for herself in the world and entirely uncertain about what comes next. "So..." she manages, then fidgets into a different position. "So, it's done then. I um, kept my promise to Cyanis and it was a lot of fun. And I, um, kind of expected thousands of monks to assault the ship, but you didn't, which was really nice. So, Master um, Omets. What now?"

Yue!

Isn't it wonderful to have a story in moments like this?

The conversation is one of gushing - questions and explanations tumbling out one after another. Did you see - yes! But when I was there... There's no way! - I promise, it was like this... It's trying to compress months of time and life-changing experiences into the most concentrated form possible, and even the failures are wonderful. Wait, go back, who is Cyanis? - The Celestial Observatory? But then I needed to build a cage around the sun - Each time you each fail to fit the story into words, each time you need to go back further, and further, and set up more characters and explain more emotions and recollect more wonders the bigger the adventure seems to become. It would take a team of best friends over a year of dedicated effort to even write down all the things that happened to you, and here you are trying to fit the water of the Terraced Lake through a swizzle straw. She's trying to do the same from the other direction. The resulting disaster of tangled words makes it feel like the stories are running together; that these parallel narratives somehow symbolically echoed, that everything was leading to this from the beginning.

Most valuable thing in the Terraced Lake? Well, from a purely demonic-financial perspective, we're technically the heirs to all the wealth of the Old World...

She'd meant to go to the city for the summer vacation, earn enough to buy a proper tractor, come back and start eggplant farming. Then, like you, she'd been pursued by demons and she hadn't been rescued by a mysterious wolfgirl from the moon - instead she'd been drawn into the underworld and set up as a bizarre and terrible queen. Ancient demons and machines had swarmed all around her, putting her at the centre of a dangerous court that sought nothing less than domination of the surface world - and it had taken a long time for her to figure out how to navigate that safely and teach the Kings of Hell that there were things more important than money. She'd had to keep you a secret to protect you and she was sorry she hadn't written but the post office here was a twenty floor monstrosity of pipes surveilled by 4.8 million data-daemons, but it turned out that the Postmistress was really really something! And that was a girlfriend you said you had!?

"Well, that means that Princess Chen should fear you," giggled Xiu. "Because you just beat me!"

And then her eyes narrow in the kind of kung-fu way that makes the entire world go quiet as snake-drums play. "Or did you? Because I just used my ultimate technique: The Sword of Sisterly Love, and you're just as helpless against it as ever."

Chen and Rose!

Princess Jessic slams down into the ground in a blaze of crackling electricity. She opens her mouth, lightning bolts course up her spinal spikes, and with a deafening CRACK fifteen foxgirls collapse in twitching heaps. With an exaltant roar she lunges into battle with tail and wings, sending panicking foxes fleeing back on board the ship. "Bring me Princess Chen!" she shouts, audible over even the rushing tide of chaos foxes.

Now, the average fox might not be much for thinkies, but even she knows that when a dragon demands a Princess tribute it had better be done promptly, with the Princess properly bound and gagged for the occasion. And so the kitsune turn on you yet again, Chen and Rose.