[i]Once upon a time there was a little princess of a lonely planet named Tellus.

One night, she was wandering the halls of her subpalace complex, a village built for one inhabitant and her maids, who were secretly fearful assassins in the service of Artemis in disguise. But on such a night as this, she is alone, and she is the moon slipping from shadow to shadow.

And in such and such a room, one hung with tapestries and chandeliers and clockwork fencing automatons that always need a little too much winding to be useful, she happened across a very sad woman.

This woman was wearing a massive fur cloak over her shoulders, and black armor designed to keep a seal when fighting in the void, and held a helmet in her hands, and she was crying. So the little princess hopped up and took a seat next to her and asked: "Why are you crying, miss?"

"I'm descending into Tartarus," this woman said. She had very fuzzy ears like the little princess's favoritest favorite maid, and teeth like that maid, too. Her eyes were blue and green. "I have to sit here and watch my wife get broken and pieced back together by some tyrant who's turned her head like wine, and, and she's really into it, and every part of my biomantic upgrading makes me want to kneel and thank that awful, awful woman for doing that to Bella! What's gotten into her? Is she reacting strangely to the pheromones?"

The little princess nodded very intently. "Like the Hypno Baron of Axum Prime."

The woman, who was very wolfy, said: "Like the Hypno Baron of Axum Prime, exactly."

"Well," the little princess said, holding her forefinger and thumb up to her chin sagely, "in circumstances like that, trying to shock them out of it is the worstest of worst ideas. It'll scramble your wife's brain like eggs!"

"So, so, right, you were supposed to..."

"To stick with them and guide them out of the nefarious hypnotic wiles!"

"May I give you a hug?" And because this woman seemed very, very sad indeed, even with her tail starting to wag, the little princess gave her a very, very big hug, one proof against the very saddest of sad days.[/i]

[hr]

A click of the tongue. A shift in command scent. A step forward.

And half a dozen of the Silver Divers are surrounding their tutelary deity, Bella-Mosaic. In their front is Princess-Alpha Ember, one hand on her sword's hilt, shaking with the effort of keeping her spine straight and her knees unbent.

"Lead the way," she says, trying and failing to keep her fury completely under wraps, positioning herself right between her wife and the Shogun of Nemesis.

Because what you do is you stick with them.

You stick with her.

No matter what.