Mittens sits cross-legged on the Command Platform, looking out over the chess battlefield with a little pout stuck on her face. Her ears are permanently flattened against her skull, and her tail is pulled in tight against her body. Even her normally good posture has left her for slumpy grumpy kitty witty-- rrrrgh!

"What are you doing, you brat? Our left flank is exposed!"

"And [i]you're[/i] giving up like thirty chances to crush your pup, hag!"

"The battlefield is chaos! The only winning strategy is patience!"

"So, what, we just sit here until I'm as old as you?! Ugh, you don't know the first thing about conquest!"

"...Hey, you know I think we should try--"

"Be quiet, Cascade!"
"Shut up, kitten!"

...Murble. 

The worst part is not the constant arguments, or not being allowed to participate, [i]or[/i] having to watch their army slowly get swallowed up while their pieces awkwardly shuffle back and forth between aggressive and turtle positions. No, the worst part is the petting. Mittens am pat. She am pat lots. Azora showers her in attention every time she loses an argument, or a piece, or feels slighted, or gets bored, or... basically, it's constant.

And she has no idea how to treat a cat! Mittens has spent her entire life hanging out with Askaians so she is an expert at this, even if she shouldn't [i]need[/i] that information right now. And this? Is completely wrong! Why did fluffy Adila get all of the good rubs and Mittens had to put up with all of these skull crushing headpats? Bap! Bap! Bap! Right on top of her sensitive ears, smooshing them with what is possibly the least pleasant sensation she's ever experienced in her life. Mittens' throat is caught in a constant low growl. 

With a quiet whistle, Mittens shuffles around behind another shouting match before Azora can abuse her therapy kitten again and heads onto the board, where she can at least hear herself think. She's never been good at chess anyway. Just ask Helya! 

Though, that doesn't mean Mittens has no strategy. It's just... not the same as anybody else's. Thank goodness she has more than one game to work with. Mittens feels herself get plucked up into the air and set down seven spaces to her right. Princess to G-8; now she's guarding a rook. Yay? A moment later she gets shunted ahead to fight with a Grimalkin. Not so yay. 

The game itself doesn't matter. Even winning the title at the end of this is pretty unimportant, Mittens thinks to herself while she flips overtop of Euphie's weird little demon thing and kicks it down a hill. Right, anyway, where was she? Oh, right. No, it doesn't matter who wins. They're all just playing Eupheria's games right now. Win, lose, draw, she'll just keep looping everything until she gets bored. And then she'll think of a new game, and it'll start over again. No, she needs... what she [i]really[/i] needs is a chance to get her team to trust her. Yes, you heard that right. This entire thing is just a Princess Trust Exercise. 

Her true goal is as simple as it is impossible: she has three different matches to figure out how to trick Azora Howl and the immortal traveler Adila of the Watch into having fun with her. Everything starts with that. So what's the best way to--

"Oooooooh, penalty square!" Eupheria's singsong voice chirps out across the entire arena, "Dance of the Thousand Web Vipers!"

Hiss. Hisssss!

"EEEEUUUUUPHEEERRRIIIAAAAAAAA!"

[Game roll, Sense with Despair: [s]6[/s], 2, 2: [b]5[/b].]