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Erika notices (after far too long) that she is chewing on the tips of her hair. In her defense, it has no detectable flavor. The texture is oddly natural, and if her mind were otherwise engaged it would not be surprising at all to learn that it would feel natural enough not to call attention to itself. The good news is that her mind was engaged: she'd just collected a lot of very useful information, even enough to mark another line in her ledger and begin sketching an outline of Timtam's disguise, now that she knew it was a specifically relevant detail.

That cut the need off of... you could lose, you know. You could lose spectacularly. Don't you think? Wouldn't you rather? What does winning even get you? An answer or three? Respect? What good have those ever done anyone~? But losing, mmmmhmhmohohoho! They might blindfold you, peel you bare, but -- heeeee!! -- aren't you a detective? Be entertaining about it and you might be invited behind that veil? What secrets could you pry out of her tongue using yours instead of her stupid rules? Isn't this optimal, even? Won't there never be another chance like this? Isn't it worth the gamble, isn't it the only way to win? Don't you think that, when it gets right down to it, losing is just better than winning????

Erika notices her hair is in her mouth. Again. Hadn't she spit that out? Her cheeks flush as her elbow slips on the table and she almost plunges her face into the tea. She coughs twice, loudly, and hides her face behind her teacup.

"Mmm. Aha. Then. As the ante is paid in information here, am I correct in assuming there isn't much you can tell me about our fellow players? The game within the game would seem to be learning to read the tendencies of each member of the table the fastest. It would be, ah, crass. I would say. To have invited only a single new player?"
"Mmmmmmmaybe? I mean. I don't really know how to break this to you but... I don't, uh. I don't think everybody feels the same way about Mr. Gnomesworth that you do. Oh, is it ok if I named him? You just seemed super attached."

Katherine frowns. There's something about this situation teasing at the edges of her understanding, but she can't quite get to the bottom of what it is. She clicks her tongue once, twice. It's a sound she tells herself helps her think. Then she tilts her head to the left, and then to the right, trying to take in more information from her twitchy green ears. Or maybe in the vain hope that looking at things from a literal different angle will make it make more sense.

"Wait. Is this a Foxgirl Scheme? This sounds so much like Cy that-- Mr. Caster are you really sure about this? 'Cause I don't think you'd last ten minutes on Cutie Fox Island. No offense. I don't think I would either; that's why I'm tryin' so hard not to end up there. But this gnome angle? It only ends the one way. Here, just... here."

She grabs Caster (and his gnome) by the hand and leads him away from the stall. Berserker sits still and remains eating, but that's fine. They have a connection now, the two of them, and Katherine has no reason not to trust her Servant unattended. Not anymore, anyway. It's kind of like an apology for all those frantic orders and squirming fights while they were still getting to know each other, or so she tells herself.

She walks down the crowded street, going from one wonder to the next. Pausing, but never really stopping. She hopes the sights in their volume will be enough to make the point. They pass a wall of murals made by throwing colored sand and sugar onto cutting boards. They pass a little stand overflowing with handcarved flutes in the shapes of every animal Kat could care to name or wish to eat. They pass an author waiting to hand out manuscripts for a story she's been working on for a long time about a knight with silver hands, though it isn't going all that well. She has a bright smile on her face all the same, as she explains to anyone who will listen the dramatic potential of her iron willed softgirl protagonist and all the things she beats up with punching. They pass a booth where a hobbyist technomancer has set up a television and a special display for something called the Speedrun Gauntlet, which a little sign explains is a series of bite sized beginner challenges to help people get into and understand the art form.

Kat halves her pace while they cross that one. It is an act of iron will that she does not stop altogether, though her neck still cranes around behind her shoulder as she goes.

She stops. She spins on her heels and drags Caster back, double time. With an enormous grin on her face, she puts a controller in his hands.

"Ok so for this one the trick is that you want to switch to your special 'cause it does double damage to the dinosaur compared with your beam. And if you let him grab you in his claws after you've dealt lethal damage he'll actually explode faster? I think it's 30 hits so just keep track..."

She stands up on her tippy toes. And then she hops up and down when the excitement gets too much. Please. Please. Please try it. Please love it. Please see it, at long last. That a gnome in every pot is not the dream of the Terraced Lake. That there's nothing that needs fixing and nothing brutal that needs vanquishing and no victims that need saving.

That this world is already beautiful.
Kat can only giggle in response. The laughter takes over her entire being, if only for a moment, and the table can't quite hide the kicking of her feet. Nor the back of her hand her silly grin.

"What are you talking about? If you want it that badly just say so. That's the whole point of the festival!"

She watches Caster's reaction with a twitch of her ears and a quiver of her lips, still fighting off another wave of mirth. But this is a serious moment and it calls for a serious fox. She looks down at her plate (still less than half finished in spite of her heroic efforts) and very quietly pushes it in front of Berserker. Katherine's Servant is either far less picky than her Master or just lacks her aversion to certain soap-tasting herbs because she starts eating in a smooth unbroken motion and does not stop even to nod in thanks. Perhaps this was simply a knight's duty to her princess.

Kat hops out of her seat and wanders over to inspect a gnome up close. She gives one a sniff and lifts it off the ground for a moment, setting it back on the ground with a little pat on its bright little head.

"These're really cool though. How'd you get that buttery sunshine kinda lighting in the beard? It's, like deeper than I've ever seen on a statue before. Not that I'm a statueologist right? But y'know, I've been around. It's super duper impressive!"

The fishman's gaze turns to a place a thousand kilometers in the distance. His reply is indistinct, but Kat distinctly catches the word 'yellow' in a voice like an ancient raven's, and decides to let him get back to unpacking instead.

"Well I mean, nevermind. Anyway. Does this mean you were into shopkeeping, Caster? Hey neat! I wouldn't have guessed. Like I've never understood it as a hobby? But I don't really get baking either and that's never stopped me from eating cookies, if you know what I mean. Just don't, like, force it on anybody y'know? I'm sure your stuff is really fun, but it's not the end of the world if somebody else doesn't agree. Right? Like what's the big deal here?"
What did it feel like to be the Crystal Knight?

Bella sits in silence and watches the stars. The motes of pure white that pierce the blue, in all their vast complexity and their woven tapestry of stories written in the Skies to extol the virtues of civilization. True Civilization. Ancient constellations were vague shapes and inferences, but the Endless Azure Skies painted with a far defter brush. Here the stars formed visible lines to depict their greatest moments and the highest kings in their history, things that represented true and absolute beauty in such specific clarity that it was not possible to miss or misinterpret them. Even they had a mind to, they could even backfill the galaxy with nebulae to color in these paintings and render their history in living color.

And it's awe inspiring. It is artifice that the Empire of her childhood never dreamed of. What else could you call it besides total mastery of the universe? The vast tapestry of creation was nothing but a suggestion that had long been ignored. The only thing is, as soon as you stepped away from paradise the whole thing was nothing but gibberish. The stars didn't look like this from Beri. Or to the Portuguese, or to any other gods-damned people in the universe outside of Capitas. All of this work and it only made any sense if you lived here. Did anybody who'd come here on the Plousios even know the sky was meant to tell a story in the first place?

So the trash heap didn't know what it had been thrown away to accomplish. Sure, what the fuck ever. But the Crystal Knight was Azura. She'd even distinguished herself to the point of receiving an exalted title from those on high. Surely she'd known better. Surely she believed in the greatness of her empire and all of this shimmering blue horseshit. She knew, and then they shot her off to the bumblefuck quadrant to play with rocks on a scale that was completely useless to the grand work happening in the place where they actually exported all that entropy.

Then what did it feel like to be her? An Administrator Species member in good standing with her empire who knew that the sky she saw when she looked out from her palace ship was broken and wrong. Real beauty was somewhere, invisible to her eye. She must have known enough to miss it. Had they jettisoned her because she'd been a cruel lunatic tyrant, or did she just crack from the strain of being so far away from everything that was 'real?'

There had been a quiet desperation to her reign that Bella had missed before she killed her. All those projects, all of her tinkering... she'd been nothing more than another striving ghost, like all those people on Salib. Only whole enough to know that she'd been cracked. Who could possibly believe in all of this and not be driven insane by that kind of life?

"Oh fuck off." she says through a luxurious stretch.

Her ear twitches first. Her neck turns, and her eyes follow. Bella beholds a nervous sheep fighting valiantly to stand in place. She listens to the music of his determination, and sighs.

"I didn't do shit, Dolce. Like I could have killed that girl even if I wanted to. Do you even understand how many improvements they made on her compared to me? Trust me: not getting killed by her was impossible enough already. No, you don't owe me a fucking thing."

She laughs, though she can feel her ribs straining with every breath. She turns onto her side, away from the Skies and their condescending god and back onto the floor of her... of the ship. Her tail flicks above her head and her spine curls into a crescent as she stretches across the length of her couch.

Slowly, she rises. She walks over to Dolce and looms overtop of him in silence before she reaches down and flicks the bell hanging from his dapper blue uniform. She flashes him a smirk.

"This place pisses me off so much I can't stand it. Every new detail I notice makes me want to kill someone. But I think," she taps the bell again, "Revenge is gonna be a little harder to manage this time. It's not even the size of the place that's the problem, right? They're so fucking... vapid. All of this. Everything. All of us. For a stupid fucking color. To draw scribbles with the universe because they can't think of anything else to do with all their power. We could kill everyone in charge and I bet you the Skies wouldn't notice after a day or two."

She flexes her talons, watching the tips gleam in the light with an intensity to her face that could crack buildings. But when she moves again, it's only to toss her hair in a messy wave over her shoulder and down her back. She ought to return to her rest, but she holds her back straight and proud for the moment. Diminished in form though it is, the Regalia shines like a tiny star atop her head.

"But."

Her teeth are daggers in her grin.

"There is one thing we can do. This is where we're leaving the Summerkind. And the people of Beri, and every Pix or other person who isn't sure about our journey. Help me organize it, Dolce. Let's give them paradise, if they'll take it. I'm sure it'll be a pain in the ass to negotiate, but if I can make this place do one actually good thing before I turn my back on it I'll count it as a win.

"It's... all I can manage. Artemis has plans for me too, you know. I have to get ready her next gauntlet, if I have to hear her call me flabby again I'm going to kill myself out of spite."
Erika rolls her eyes.

This single moment of perfect, wordless acting might be enough to buy her doubt. Might be enough to sow the seeds of confusion as to whether or not she really is the person she says she is, or if she's Eclair Espoir after all. The tiny huff and the annoyed scoff are so very Mayzie, and so very not maid-knight, but above all so smooth and natural that she can see it register on an intellectual level. Good. That is well. She finishes by twirling the end of one of her pigtails in a display of aggrieved haughtiness.

"Maid-Knights," she spits, "I was only asking you a question! I've never been here before! How did you turn that into a referendum on whether or not I have a right to be here?"

Her notebook flips open and she plucks a pretty crystal pen from her things before she starts to scribble. Erika Fullbright does not take notes in the style of Eclair Espoir. It will cause the latter no end of consternation later during review, but the needs of the client come after the needs of the job. Rather than color coded speculations and notes, Erika mostly doodles. In this case she has recreated a shuffling deck of cards to the best of her ability, rendering Timtam's hands in the act of manipulating them. She makes a pair of tally columns just above it, marks one with a big X and the other with an O, and draws a line in the O column.

There is at minimum no more room to doubt that this is the woman herself. Card games were Timtam's signature escalation within the Manor and the Great Game, and while she might have played on that via a proxy, nobody could make a deck dance across the table the way that she does. She has such finite control she can alter the fate of every player with nothing but her fingertips even while using a fresh and unfamiliar pack of cards. This is how she strung up her opponents in the manor, luring them in with runs of "good luck" and sloppy play before miraculously betting big or playing aggressive (depending on the sort of game) and without mercy taking everything her opponent had on her (and sometimes also the opponent).

There have been attempts among the more creative members of the Manor to create card games, in particular strategy card games with simulated monster or heroine battles to combat her skill by making the game of choice complex enough that Timtam simply didn't understand it on a level that she could affect the outcome so certainly, but that edge only ever held up as long as it took her to find some obnoxious combination which she would mysteriously trigger a turn before losing every single time. In the arena of games of chance in general and card games specifically, Timtam was an unparalleled warrior. Nearly untouchable. It made sense that she would choose this as the means to accept the challenge Eclair had laid down for her.

But even still.

Erika plucks up the teapot herself and rather inelegantly pours a pair of cups. She sniffs at her own and adds five sugar cubes, and then sits there, staring and stirring with equal intensity.

"I'll play. Obviously. Wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't. But see normally in my line of work the way this goes is I just ask you questions and then you either answer them or find a way to refuse me without giving away what you think. That's the game of it, if there is one in the first place. Liar's Hand? Never heard of it. So since I'm early, how about you use those soft and precious lips for something useful and fill me in on the rules while we wait for the table to fill out? I promise you I'm a quick study."
"Hwbegh?!" said Kat while leaping two feet into the air and bringing her arms over her face in a defensive posture.

"Oh! Oh right. Right right right. Phew. Jeeeeeeeez. My heart! You've been so quiet I, uh. I mean. I thought you wandered off or something. Fsshhyaaa, my heart!"

She pats her chest as if to demonstrate and then very awkwardly clears her throat. Her other hand holds a plate piled high with Mystery Fried Rice, a small bread bun that had turned red during baking from all the spices stuffed inside of it, and exactly three (3) crab(?) rangoons(!).

She sniffs at the rice and makes A Face. But she sits down to eat it anyway with a shrug and a very tactical reach across the table for a can of cheap cola, aka the wine of the foxgirl world. A lot of foxgirls would tell you that wine is the wine of the foxgirl world, but Kat was simply not good enough at crime to get her hands on any, and thus the expression.

She watches Berserker eat for a moment and smiles at the odd combination of voracity and refinement that settles over her Servant. With her chin leaning on one hand and a set of chopsticks lazily floating between her own food and her mouth, she turns to regard Caster again.

"Sorry, what were you asking again? Recycling? I don't know her. What's she got to do with all've this? Like, I dunno what you mean by so little. Like if anything we've got the opposite problem? Have you never gone through that thing where you pick somethin' up all fulla good intentions and then it just sorta... sits there? And then it piles up and piles up and the next thing you know it your life is full of clutter and no longer sparks joy? No? I swear I... oh, mmmmgh, what did they put in th-- oh no is that cilantro? Blegh!"

Cough cough, spit spit, sip, sigh. Kat tries to sit up and carry herself with the slightest extra bit of decorum, to go back to feeling like she could maybe be some kind of princess or something. She doesn't push her plate away, though she does focus on the bread for a while before braving the rice again.

"I mean, I dunno. It's just good to get rid of stuff sometimes. Otherwise you get weighed down and stuff. Like, Cy always says that's dumb and you can't ever have enough stuff, especially gold and luxury goods, but um..."

She shifted her eyes nervously about the pavilion and waved Caster closer to her. Closer still, until she could lean in for a conspiratorial whisper.

"Don't tell her I said this? But I think she might be a sillyhead. Like I know she's a cool big sister type fox and all but her schemes always end up with us in bondage and skimpy outfits and stuff. Damn Fox is real busy on her 500 year plan to steal a bunch of fried tofu so she doesn't give a lot of advice but you'd trust a nine tail before a three, right? It's a bigger number! How'd you even get that many without bein' real good at foxin'?

"So anyway yeah? Like, yeah. It's just good to rid of stuff sometimes. Nice stuff, icky stuff, old stuff, new stuff. We just do it like this 'cause it makes it more fun. And if you make it fun then nobody has to feel guilty for letting it all pile up. And like, somebody's gonna want most of it, right? This is the best way to make sure it all gets to where it's gotta. Or to find out if it's got nowhere left to be after all. And it... eugh. Goshies. It'd be... it'd be rude not to finish this? Right? Dang it."

Katherine's chopsticks return to motion. Though her tails and ears droop to taste of soapy rice and over chewy bits of meat(??), she cleans her entire overladen plate like the good girl that she is. Gross as it might be for her, somebody worked hard on this. She doesn't want them to feel sad, like they failed the challenge set before them.
When she'd encountered the Azura for the first time in her life, the only emotion she could bring herself to feel was awe. The quiet of the city, ghosts flitting through ruins with a sense of unknowable purpose and a dignity that not even an Empress had been able to shoot out of them.

She had perched on the rooftops and watched a woman clean glass off the streets for hours. It had been the most beautiful thing she could remember seeing, until she'd come across the bakery. She'd seen true mastery, held in her hands and felt the grease between her fingers and the warm paper until she'd put it in her mouth and nearly come undone at the seams. She'd watched their ships in sometimes lazy, sometimes hypercoordinated and impossible seeming patterns as they drifted through the strange tinted skies in grand patterns she'd been happy to lose herself in trying contemplate their meaning and their beauty.

For all its seediness and artifice, even the office of Thellis Thist had been a wonder she could barely stand to comprehend. Every fake, cardboard cutout of a bookshelf and every stain and burn on her beautiful but absurdly uncomfortable couch felt purposeful, calculated, and deliberate. There was an art to how cheap she was, not just in hiding her ambitions under the guise of legitimacy but in hiding even another layer of desire beneath the disguise itself. She'd thought it honest thievery at the time. And then it had turned out that Thellis Thist was the Eater of the Dead, the woman who had killed and stolen the abilities of every Assassin in the Empire born before her generation.

Even their ugliness had been beautiful. Even their meanest had a kind of silent poise that had pulled unwilling awe across her face and silenced her many complaints about the world outside of Tellus. They were the true lords of the universe, she'd been certain of it. What could the heart of their empire look like if not the grandest possible version of the sight that had once brought an arrogant Praetor to her knees?

Bella plucks at the fabric of her dress with a scowl.

They'd turned everything that was gold into platinum. Everything black into various shades of blue, adjusted the cut to be a little more modest, a little bit tighter, and to less aggressively pool at her feet. The pattern in the skirt had changed into a stylized representation of a fish breaching the water, which as far as she could tell was the only reason they did not completely rewrite the base of her skirt. All of it in various impure shades or with a thought toward complimenting those, or to shift the way the light reflected off of her so that the fur on her limbs would tinge blue instead of its natural white.

"I made that myself. Stupid fucks." she snarls.

Even the Regalia hadn't escaped realignment. Its fundamental power belonged to Nero, this they either could not or did not see fit to alter. But no longer was it a harsh and impressive ornament resting on her head. Nothing sharp, nothing dark, nothing heavy. Nothing real. Now it was just a pretty little tiara glittering with diamonds, like a lattice of tiny stars adrift in the tarry ocean of her hair.

Bella leans forward on her couch, which is now sitting on a massive open deck on the new Plousios where she could enjoy the perfect atmosphere and limitless horizons of Capitas. The absurdly giant flock of birds with striking plumage (all of it blue) still fly with unhurried, practiced grace between the planets of this system, blanketing the sky and her vision on a scale she would not have thought possible.

She sees rolling clouds in twisting columns and vast swaths of glyphic complexity drifting all about her in the blue. The air is sweet, the way a cake that is flavored with roses might be sweet. The temperature here is cool and perfect, with breezes in highly controlled patterns of intensity and direction that she could spend days making a game of learning to predict as they tug on her hair and her dress and ease the feeling of heat welling up inside her skin.

"Stupid. Fucking stupid. This can't be it, can it?"

This cloying, saccharine perfection. This pompous, saturated, grand and arrogant ultimate work of the greatest civilization Bella has ever known. It feels exactly like drowning.
A mistake.

In a room, deep enough in cafe interior to render surprise escape impractical. Second floor, window too small to slip through without breaking something. Path of optimal retreat goes through large number of heavily muscled, likely hostile women. Furthermore a large room with very little natural defense. Easy for someone with authority to fill with 'company' as a demonstration of power. Obvious display of control. Admission before first words traded, only willing to let slip what is earned.

Even then at great cost. To trade performances in a duel of personae with a trained actress is a decision with only one outcome. This is a trap, and target has enough awareness of tendencies to be able to predict behavior to this point.

Conclusion: this is not a battle to remain masked. But uncovering as much of the truth as I can requires I fight to remain as such. This is a game and I will play it.

"Oh, uh, Erika," she chirps with a sort of nervous uncertainty.

She starts into a sort of sweeping bow, but jerks awkwardly back out of it. She tries to bounce back in a more fluid curtsy but abandons that nicety as well. Then she stands still and straight with her arms awkwardly flapping at her sides for eleven very long seconds before finally skipping across the room and sitting down with a concerted effort to reestablish her own sense of dignity and decorum. She sits up extra straight and only seems the more awkward and nervous for it.

"Erika Fullbright. I was asked to come here in place of someone who wanted to stay anonymous? She said it was too dangerous to take tea but she had an appointment, so, uh?"

Eclair Espoir is not an especially great actor. Her accent slips in and out, and not deliberately at that. She has to think hard enough about what she's doing that anyone who's really looking for signs of the person underneath can pick her out with a minimum of effort. But the character she has stepped into is an old invention of Mayzie's; the ace detective she and Eclair would take turns stepping into the shoes of for the sake of having someone to solve their grand mystery games. It's a role she knows and she will at the very least not get it wrong.

Opening gambit, commitment to the bit. She is unafraid of ambush or immediate displays of planning or power. She has come in disguise and is behaving according to that disguise to the best of her ability. In this way she hopes to force Timtam to make a move rather than simply tipping the board over.

Erika glances down at the cup in front of her on the table, and notes that it is empty.

"Sorry. I'm a bit flustered. You're very attractive and I kind of just... right. Is somebody supposed to pour this? Was I late? I thought the invitation implied..."
Katherine means to smile. She means to laugh and hop around with giddy joy and tell an anecdote about the way she used to chase off birds when she was an ordinary forest fox. She means to praise her Servant, and gush about how good she knows she'll be at the job she's just taken interest in. She means to duck her head a little bit and play it careful, just in case this is the time the Civil Servants notice how cool and awesome and pretty she is and push her into some kind of job she super meowmeow doesn't want to be doing. She even means to make a joke about how this must mean the world's not going to end.

So it surprises her when she hiccups, instead. It surprises her so much that it shakes a tear out of her eye. And once one rolls down her cheek, there's hardly any barrier at all between her and another. And another and another, and another, and another after that. It takes zero seconds for those tears to come dripping off her chin before she has to sniffle, and after that knocks her breathing off rhythm she is soon bawling like a kit whose birthday cake just fell on the ground.

She will never be able to explain herself. To articulate what it was that overwhelmed her would just send her over the edge of tears all over again. Did she even know what had convinced her that Berserker would take this chance to leave her? She who had wasted three Command Seals guarding crops without providing a useful alternative and on not kidnapping a very fluffy dog that definitely belonged to someone else and on breaking up a bar fight that Berserker hadn't even started (but she was sure going to finish). She who had scrambled around in a Fox Alliance and then committed Fox Treachery and Cutie Betrayal only to force her own Servant into a cooperative formation with someone she seemed to regard as her mortal enemy. And even took that other Servant's opinion over Berserkers.

Was it because she'd lost Berserker's respect by forcing her out of her castle? Or by being such a lousy, unpretty princess? Was it because she'd made such a mess of her first princess Duel (nobody told her there'd be so much math!)? Was it because she was just a silly two-tailed fox and not any kind of princess or handmaiden or even baroness to begin with, and thus ultimately unworthy of such a magnificent and beautiful armored knight's loyalty, let alone respect?

Whatever it was, it wasn't true. It hadn't happened. The pair of them were not crossing Breakup Bridge. Civil Servants were not rushing up to assign a new and better Master for anybody. Berserker hadn't even given away the water painting Kat had made for her during that long, boring stretch where they'd had to guard the electricity shrine so Cyanis could muck up her attempt at betraying Actia. She'd only taken something. Something beautiful. Something for later.

So there are many tears now, and choking, broken fox wails. Katherine flings herself against Berserker and hugs her tight. She doesn't care how hard that armor is, or how cold, or even how sharp. She is soft enough for both of them. She clings to her Servant's neck and squeezes her for all she's worth, nuzzling wet fox cheeks and delirious fox softness and tickling with fluffy fox tails and laughing and crying and coughing herself into a stupor all at once.

For the moment she doesn't even remember that she's supposed to be doing this to convince Caster not to blow up the planet.

"Hey come on," she manages after a very long while, "You wanna get something to eat? Not all the food here is great, but there's a lot of it."

And she giggles with delight.
Ever since she first learned it existed, the highest ambition of Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits has been to get dumped for the sake of stomping dramatically across Breakup Bridge. The drama, the passion, and the clean break at the end when two people turn their backs on each other and literally walk away from what once was and toward what could be. Perhaps a single furtive glance backward (unshared of course. Unless, just as one were to turn around again and resume walking...), but then with a final burst of resolve to finish the journey and speak to the crowd of people who would Get It.

It all sounded impossibly romantic. It sounded profound, and mature and very, very wise, and it sounded if it was possible just the slightest bit sexy? The lighting on that bridge was always immaculate for one, and some mystery of the bridge's construction or the engineering of its location within the city made it the perfect place to capture a dramatic gust of wind that always seemed to blow a person's hair or her dress exactly so, and there was nobody alive on the earth today who wouldn't look prettier robed in the perfection of Righteous Rebound Aura as they stepped away from a thing as supposedly immutable as love. But to not only give it away but think to look for it again? That really floofled Kat's fluffles, to borrow an expression from somewhere.

The trouble was, she'd never had a girlfriend to break up with. Or a boyfriend for that matter, but that whole concept felt so alien to her that she never seriously pursued it even in idle daydreaming. And it did seem somehow wrong to proposition someone for a relationship just for the sake of getting dumped. Even if that wasn't true she was certain the magic of that bridge wouldn't function if you faked it. It could be old, but it had to be real or it wouldn't count.

And then of course, once she found herself in a relationship (if she ever could), how could she get it to end? She didn't know. Maybe if she looked really hard she could find a girl who would slowly become overwhelmed by the idea of snuggles whenever she wanted them and fresh eggs and soup at the beginning of every morning. Maybe she could find an almost almost almost perfect someone who could give her four, maybe seven months of absolute magic but then turn out to have very particular opinions about tea and not be able to tolerate the presence of somebody still learning how to control the sugar levels in any drink. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But she was starting to think she didn't have it in her to offer her heart to anybody unless she thought they were The One.

And if she met The One then didn't she not actually want to be passed over like a stone in a burbling river bend? Wouldn't that be as bad as wishing for Yue and Hyra to break up so she could live vicariously through them? Or Chen and Rosepetal, or Princess Jessic and Countess Keron? If she could figure out a way to call it a duel she could maybe convince Qiu to do it with her, but in the first place she didn't want to lose at Breakup Bridge and in the second place she was so scared of Qiu right now that even the idea of meeting up for sandwiches sounded worse than the end of the world she was technically still trying to figure out how to stop.

Katherine finds her attention turning to Caster for a moment. He'd indulged her this far, maybe he'd be willing to give it a go? This was back to faking it more or less, but that counted for science at least, she thought. If they made a day of walking around the festival arm in arm only to part ways in dramatic fashion and cross the bridge as --

The thought fractures before she can even finish it. What would that even look like, to everyone else? Like a father indulging his daughter's silly fantasy maybe. Or like a wastrel fox running away from home. Not sexy at all. And then on top of that her whole plan was making the guy she was trying to get to settle down into an enemy? That did not seem like a sensible course of action to any of her scattered brain cells.

But so it went sometimes. Another year, another missed opportunity. She'd just have to let it go. With a last longing look at the bridge, Katherine did the only sensible thing: she broke up with Breakup Bridge. Maybe some other time. So it was that her feet carried her away from the crowd of ex and hopeful lovers in their very finest yukata and cheongsam (and other assorted fashions according to taste), and toward the dusty marketplace filled with unwanted things.

Her broken phone is in her hands, both halves of it that she'd saved after Saber and cleanly split it in two and prevented it from devouring her. Not much good to anybody anymore, least of all her. But maybe somebody would like it as an art piece? Or maybe they'd be interested in the challenge of trying to fix it. Or maybe there's some slightly less broken part inside of it that would help some third person with a project they were stuck on. That was the thing about junk, she'd found: there was simply no way to tell when it would turn out to be treasure.

With a quiet little smile, she kisses the fragments of Wolf Moon Phone and sets them on a blanket full of other electronics in various states of ruination. As she steps away, her minty green tails entwine with one another in a release of happiness. She takes a deep breath that pulls her arms out to either side and then squeezes them back down with a sigh like a bellows.

"Your turn, Berserker. Got anything you'd like to be rid of?"

She twists her foot into the street with just the slightest touch of nervousness.
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