Jessamine Cascade has never been the type of princess to hesitate when she's figured out where she's needed. Sometimes, there's things that only you can do, and when the time comes for them you can't waste a second on silly things like arguments or volunteering. She hit him as hard as she knew how. It'd be ok to leave the rest to Lina and her friends. A princess is not a glory hound. 

She's off and running like a bolt of lightning. She doesn't have her sister's swift and effortless gait, but there's a raw power to her form that's special in it's own right. No one ever beat her in a sprint. Her feet pound across the cracked tile, right up to the edge and the drop down Argossa. The naginata still burns brightly in her hands. She waves it above her as she runs, then tosses it high into the air.

"Taking your horse, ok?!" she calls out over her shoulder.

She doesn't even waste the time to mount up. That's the kind of a thing a real princess would take care of on the way down. She jumps and twists in the air, bringing up two fingers to her mouth to blow a sharp whistle that cuts across the battlefield. After that, there's just enough time to grin. 

"I believe in you three! So don't screw this up, got that?"

And then she's gone.

***

[i]This was, quite possibly, the most beautiful night in the history of ever. The stars were brighter than usual, and the air was refreshingly crisp and cool after so many weeks of that stuffy Jedadi heat. Plus, best of all? The way the horse bounced beneath her filled her head with thoughts of Helyaaaaaaaaa~

Oh! She couldn't wait to tell this story! Maybe Hellie would finally, finally, [b]finally[/b] be so impressed she'd slip up and admit she couldn't have done this one on her own! Ooh, a breeze! And was that a comet just now? What a lucky night! What a perfect night! She tossed a gleeful smile at every hill and each bend in the road, at the river she could hear but not yet see, at the caravan laden with hard won prizes following along behind her. And, of course, to Eliza and Elisa Riparian, her most loyalest of loyal knights! Her most cleverest of clever bandits! Her trusty bodyguards and singing companions! In faaaaaact:

"And where the winding river runs
through every twist and bend~
I'll let it lead me safely home
back to the rainbows end!"

She turned and looked expectantly to Elisa (or was it Eliza? They might have been loyal, but that never stopped them from being identical), looking for the next verse of the song. But her knight only looked ahead with a curious expression on her face. Like she couldn't see her precious Princess at all!

"Your Highness, do you see that?" Oh, it was Eliza after all, "Have you ever seen a man look so sad before?"

In truth, she hadn't. The way he sat there like he'd been knocked straight into that hillside and become part of it. The way he barely seemed to move. The way his head hung low and his clothes were in such shoddy condition. All of it made her heart hurt. What could have happened to this poor old man? And who would do something so horrible to somebody who already seemed so helpless? She rode up to him in silence, all thought of singing forgotten. Then she hopped down to the ground with a handstand and a flourish, with a smile that told him to be at ease and a pose that told him to laugh. He did neither. She frowned.

"Hi there, friend! Are you alright?"

"..."

Alina tried smiling at him, but he only turned his head and clenched his fist. She was an awkward sort of pretty, the kind with legs that had outpaced the rest of her so that she was more than a little gangly despite her tiny stature, but even so everyone always told her they could see exactly what sort of beauty she was destined to become and she was not at all used to having no effect on people. Especially sad people. Even the King spent a surprising amount of time inventing excuses to check out Elsaria's butt while they ran the rooftops together!

It vexed her, truly. And if she'd known what the uneasy stirring inside her heart really was, maybe she would have hopped back on her horse then and there, and listened to the chiding of her knights the whole way home while being safe and free and happy. But a princess was always beautiful, and generous, and helpful, so instead of that she stretched her arms up to the sky (which stretched her shirt above her bellybutton) and yawned. 

"You know what I think, girls?"

"Yes, Your Highness?" they said, already nodding and unpacking supplies.

"I think... yes, I think this fine gentleman has the right of it. This is a perfect place to set up camp for the night! I know you were both looking forward to seeing home before the dawn, but what do you say? Will you indulge me? Just this oooonnnne time?" and you could tell she'd been hanging out around Rita a lot recently, because her smile was so falsely innocent it would have made a kitten blush.

"This one time." said Eliza.
"And every time thereafter, Your Highness." said Elisa.

"Excellent!" Alina clapped her hands and sat down cross-legged right where she'd been standing, "I am sorry for intruding, friend, it's just that the cool air has such an effect on my constitution. If you mind our presence, you need only say so."

He made a sound like a grunt. She lit up like summer fireworks (which incidentally, she'd be missing soon if she didn't get back home!). 

"Thank you for your generosity, kind sir. In exchange, please, let us share our bounty with you tonight. I'm afraid it's only travel fare, hardly fitting such a night, but it's warm and filling and sure to remind you of home. Unless you are Jedadi, sir, in which case maybe for your own sake I suggest you go without?"

Alina and her knights burst into fits of giggles as camp unpacked around them. The princess was, of course, quite useless, so she contented herself with telling jokes and singing silly songs about the lakes she swam in back home, and watching her honored guest for any signs that his heart was healing. Of course there were none, but she didn't let it trouble her. This old man was a tougher case than she thought, but she'd never met a person yet who didn't open up after a warm dinner on a beautiful night like this! Just look how bright the moon was!

And sure enough before she knew it, her knights were laying out lovely trays of baked fish still sitting in the fragrant leaves they'd been cooked in by the fire. Alina's mouth was watering, oh rivers, please excuse her! But as tempting as it was to dig in right then and there, a princess did not forget her manners. So she set down her fork and she pulled from her lights the most beautiful crystal decanter she owned, her favorite out of all the twenty-four she had for such occasions, and she swirled it about in the moonlight.

"Oh, of course! Guests first! Blessings be upon you, friend!" she tilted the decanter over his head, making sure to splash a little extra over his hair to account for how foul his mood seemed to be.

"Goodness, is this polite young woman really our princess?"
"Yes, you'd hardly suspect that she was really Elsaria the Dread!"

Once again the sound of girlish giggles filled the camp. This time, however, they were short lived. Alina and both of her knights startled to see the old man rise. Oh rivers, he was much taller than he seemed!

"Do..." he growled.

"Beg pardon, sir?"

"Not," Oberon Greymane swept his cloak aside and reached for his sword. It keened as it tasted the night air, "Mock me!"

She was so startled, she hadn't even considered what shape to twist her lights into. Red was halfway to a spear, and yellow one quarter of a shield when the saber came down and struck her! And... a-and, hahaha, w-wasn't it just the funniest thing? It felt like... it was almost as if, but that couldn't be true. She didn't understand. It was almost as if... it had actually pierced her?

Alina smiled as she looked down at herself, expecting maybe to see some new sort of funny joke. In fact she was halfway to laughing when it turned into a scream. Then her scream exploded, her scream, her scream! It exploded! It exploded and shattered just like the rest of her, because the only thing left in the world was pain!

The stars grew dim. The moon slipped behind blackened clouds. The air, her pleasantly cool kiss, got colder. And colder and colder and colder, passing winter. How it seared her! How it burned her! How it [b]filled[/b] her! Her heart beat stupidly inside her chest, and with every beat her body felt deeper and deeper chills, so cold she stopped having words to describe it. 

That's when things became truly horrible. No, then she had to watch Eliza and Elisa spring up to defend her, and she tried to scream out 'Don't!' but all the sound she had left in her was a whine and a hideous squeak that was not beautiful at all, but dark and selfish and fearful as anything. She watched them crumple as a pair to the ground on either side of her through tears that froze to burning frost on her cheeks. New agonies ripped through her insides, and how could this be, how could this be, how could this be allowed?

He sneered and snatched her half formed lights from her, and he... and he... a-a-a-a-a-and. He broke her. He broke her and shattered her and twisted her forever, because she was the rainbow and he said to her that she wasn't after all and that the rainbow was his now and he could think of a dozen better uses for these already, as he squeezed them in his palm and wore them to pin his cloak.

"P-please! I yield, pl-p-please!" she croaked, every syllable costing her her entire life, "T-take my treasures, they are yours! I-I'm the... the p-princess of Illumina! My Mo... Mommy will pay anything you want! Anything! Only please, please, don't hurt me anymore!"

Oberon wrenched the blade free of her chest and somehow its absence was worse than its presence. She curled inward on herself and was not pretty or brave or a beauty in the making in the least when she did nothing to stop him from wiping her own blood clean on her silks.

"You will go," he said with a voice a thousand times more terrible than his sword, "To your mother. You will tell her I am coming. Tell her the true King has come and you have dared disgrace him. Tell her you're a naughty little girl who's just cost her mother her pathetic little kingdom! Tell her!"

She had no idea how she did it, but Alina stood up. And she ran faster than she ever had in her life. She ran, and left her horses and her treasures and her precious knightly friends behind, because the only thing worse than the pain she felt inside her body was the wriggling, impossible terror that filled her up whenever she tried to look at his face.

She ran home to Mommy and she said everything she was told, and she did not fight to protect her home when she should have, but she ran again and was alone, was alone, was alone, she was a broken rainbow and alone...[/i]

***

She was supposed to be all done with the cold. The Caduceus had thawed her heart, hadn't it? Ourania had thawed her heart, hadn't she? She was healed and good and better now! But it was happening again, whiskers, rivers, [i]no[/i], it was happening again! She felt her heart freezing all over and she was a failure with no rainbow at all, and she was alone, alone, al--

"...na? Lina! LINA!"

Rita's screaming in her ear. Grasping her, licking her cheek, bonking her forehead against every part of her that she can reach, and squeezing her so tight. Alina gasps and blinks, and looks at disaster through her tears. 

"I'm here, ok? I'm here. I'm here! Lina, it's me! I'm here!"

"Ri...ta?"

"Yes, yes, yes, Lina, oh Lina, come on, we have to do something or Ourania's gonna die!"

"Can't do... can't... save... c-can't..."

"Yes you can! Alina Cascade, don't you run from this!"

"But I... I let him win! I'm weak and I..."

"That's right, you let him win. Once upon a time, my love, you let this giant dirtbag win. Don't you think you've paid enough for it? You don't have to let him win again! It's different this time, don't you see? You're [i]strong.[/i] You're brave and strong, my darling, and you've got me."

Alina turns her head. Her eyes are wide with wonder, and the biggest wonder of all is the way that her body feels warmer and warmer with every fresh detail of her perfect Rita that she takes in. But the time for kissing has come and gone, which is a shame because she could really use it again. She takes Rita's hand, instead. And with every ounce of energy, every tiny speck of courage she'd forgotten about inside of her, she nods. 

There's no time to figure out a plan. She's wasted so much already. She's let him win so, so many times. She let him hurt her knights, and then her mother, then her people, and in Feloria she let him hurt Diana. But she didn't let him spread the Slaugh in Askaia. She didn't let him have the other Queens. She didn't let him have the Caduceus. She, she, she. Always, because she chose to be in his way, with her friends... they always made him lose.

There is no time, but she spares it anyway to turn and smile a quivering, unpretty little smile at Kazelia and Adila. She squeezes Rita's hand tighter than ever. 

"D-don't worry about Ourania, yeah? I've got this. Just... make sure you handle the rest."

She swallows. This is it. This is it, this is it, this is it, this is... oh, she's already running. This is simpler than she'd thought. Her prancing water-deer stride carries her across the room with less than the pitter patter of raindrops on a windowsill, even quieter than Rita's soft padding beside her. Don't let him win, don't let him win, you don't have to let him win!

Her crown is empty, but it has tricks enough for this. There's a flash of golden light, and she curls her fingers around her elegant purple ribbon and the baton it's attached to. She lets go of Rita with a nod. From both sides, yes. There's another flash, and her frosted glass armor shines atop her bridesmaid's dress. This is the moment it's been saving itself for, all these years, and now...

Rita makes it first, and knees him in the stomach. Before he can retaliate she blurs into a haze and where his fist passes through the image of her face it finds nothing but the air and the laughter-like meows of a cat too far beneath it to care. He stomps, and though the floor shatters beneath him she's a girl again and above him, and Alina's there with her ribbon swirling beautifully and together with her heart she kicks him in the chest. 

Even touching him is cold. She feels it running through her body, but she ignores it, lets her heart beat bravely on so that she can throw her entire weight into this one last thing. Her armor groans just to feel his touch, and when he lashes out and knocks her away it's like he's stolen all the air from inside of her. For a single second, she's suspended in time again. Maybe Adila can appreciate this moment for what it truly is.

Her armor cracks. And then it shatters. Alina Cascade goes careening off the edge of Argossa anyway, falling after the body of High Queen Ourania. There is time enough to scream, if somebody would like. Alina has no voice for it. 

But Rita is standing defiantly at the edge. And wrapped around her wrist several times and clenched again in her shaking hand is a taut length of purple ribbon. And Rita? She's got lungs and breath and heart enough to scream for everybody there. She cries out, one third with fear, one third with effort, and a final third with love, and she pulls on that ribbon with everything she has. Did you know that cats were so very strong, after all? It takes agonizing seconds, but she pulls and...

There's an arm! A delicate, slender arm clinging desperately to the end of a baton! And after that a head of fluffy lavender hair, and after that the terrified green eyes of Alina Cascade! Up and up, further and further, her other arm straining like mad to stay clenched around Ourania's wrist. Rita pulls even as she scrambles closer, and then pulls some more when she can reach Alina's dress. It's impossible. But then again, perhaps it isn't.

Sobbing and shaking, Alina hugs the infected form of Ourania close against her. As if she were her own mother.

"It's ok, Your Majesty," she manages, even though it sounds like every word might be the last one she'll ever speak, "Don't worry. Don't worry. We're here."

[Rolling Finish with Grace (and Hope, thanks to her bonds and her friends being there for her): [s]3[/s], 4, 5 = [b]11[/b]. Damage that stat, gosh darn it. She pays her armor as the price for attacking him again]