Once upon a time a little mouse had made the decision to save the world. 

People would ask her 'from what?' as if heroism was about waiting for opportunity to come knocking on your door. She'd always thought it should be the opposite. Evil [i]hid[/i], after all. It filled pits and archives and dark places, swarming and multiplying until it burst the seawalls and its creatures stalked the streets of Grand Jelt. They're fearsome enough while they're up here, how terrible must they be when they're down there?

But that was a lack of vision. The fingers are far more terrible than the Heart. She determined she was going to slip by them and plunge her golden sword into evil's core. Everything else, including becoming Evil's own avatar, was mere stratagem. Her deception would need to be perfect to fool the emerald eyes of King Dragon, the eyes that she herself wore. Be proud, Ailee. Be wrothful and judgemental and wasteful and curious. The fire alone is not burned.

[i]"I'd like to let you in on a little secret to these formal events. Always ask for your glass to be topped up every three sips, make sure you always have something to nibble on with it, and nobody can tell how much you're really having. Well. For a while, anyway."[/i]

And at first Lucien had seemed like just what she'd needed. A ruthless, thuggish mind wrapped in a smiling face and hideous shirt, no different from the rest of his government. Here, she had thought, is a henchman - exactly the kind of person I won't have to mourn when he dies within the Heart. Exactly the sort of person whose life I can spend wastefully at some critical moment to prove to King Dragon that I am his creature and slide the celestial sword one step closer towards the Heart. 

And that's exactly what happened - or close enough to the plan that she can run when she has to. She'd known that when the moment came she couldn't afford to hesitate or let regret - or Regret for that matter - slow her down. She'd known she'd step over the bodies of all her friends before the end, and here she was doing just that. She'd allowed herself all those dark and melancholy moods on the promise that when the time came she'd have done her crying in advance.

But now the Sword of Heroism was no longer a blade from a fairytale in her hand. Now it was a six-shot revolver. A hidden weapon, one she could conceal within the folds of her shirt until the time came to shoot evil itself in the spine. He'd gotten there first but she'd bring down the bigger game.