[b]Yue![/b]

"Oh my gosh, I know, right?" Princess Kikil said in a voice that sounded at once distorted by some sort of machinery in her mask... and also, beneath that filter, somehow familiar. "I can't believe how you move - what you're capable of! Who did you learn all this from!? I mean -"

She puts a burst of strength into her sword and forces you back. She raises her gladius, determined. "Don't you [i]dare[/i] hold back! Don't think that I don't see you! You just want to see my ultimate move, don't you think I don't know what you're up to! Well, I'm wearing a mask - and if you know anything about duels you'll know that counts as a whole second life! When you get the upper hand you'll get to cut my mask off and you'll be so surprised at what you see underneath that I'll get a chance to turn the tables - and [i]that's[/i] when I'll use my ultimate technique!" She stomped her foot in a show of determination, but her voice was thick with emotion. "And not one moment before! So don't hold back! If you don't show me how wonderful you are I'll never forgive you!"

She sets her stance again and flips a setting on her laser pistol. It hums as the power cell starts to shine radiant and glistening, infused with the direct energy of a Sunshard. Now when it fires it's raw dreamstuff, sheer potential. It's still dangerous but now it's a kind of danger that's reactive with your own dreams; if you dream of wolves then wolves will sweep by your legs and try to trip you - perilous at first, but also giving you all the materials you need to build your own technique if you can tame and redirect them.

*

[b]Rose![/b]

You take your eyes off Omets for but a moment. It doesn't even occur to you that you did; in this challenge constant eye contact is not a necessity. You fight a duel against a master monk, forgetting that you are still aboard a shipful of foxes.

Master Omets' challenge changes tempo; no longer a polite and restrained test but an increasingly aggressive sequence of motions. He drops a teacup, requires his scarf to be straightened, steps past you slightly and then back again, and despite all your efforts to take things slow and steady you find your balance slipping more and more. You're still holding on right up until the point where someone tackles you in the small of the back and you find yourself falling face-first into the deck as no less than three kitsune sit on top of you.

You blink and the illusion falls away - master Omets has a fourth kitsune, an orange and white vixen, cornered with her hands up at the point of her staff. "Wait!" said the kitsune. "Look! We've captured Rosepetal for you. Look, here's the deal - you let us four free, and we'll give you her and all the other Kitsune on the ship to send back to cutie jail. What could be fairer than that?" she flashes her biggest grin and offers her hand to shake.

You, Rosepetal, are being Betrayed.

[b]Chen![/b]

You can feel warmth rise up inside of you. It's a gradual thing, but falling into a flow state always is. It's the sort of thing that takes time and at the end renders time nonexistent.

The Sun in the Shard is not dead or alive, not asleep nor awake. It is not a living thing, nor spirit, nor demon. It is a source. It is an entropy-defying marvel through which new matter and energy can enter the cosmos. It is matter so condensed that physical laws stop applying and you can pull forth a kingdom from inside without reducing its mass in any way. But then there's something more to it than that, something that you can't see with your eyes. Something you can only see when you paint, when you're able to view a light-emitting object without light.

There's an arrow running right into its core. And that arrow is what hears you. It's not forged of steel, for what steel could cut a star? It is forged of love, the love of the first Princess. This arrow cut into the heart of this dumb font of raw power and gave it a mind by which it could dream. 

And so you speak to it and that love vibrates outwards. You can feel the love rising and shaping the power that emanates, no longer raw heat and light but something more beautiful. [i]Wow![/i], she seems to think. [i]I love your dream![/i]

And then you snap out of it because your dress is on fire. Your painting is on fire. A fair bit of the ship around you is on fire, actually - you're in the centre of a glittering radiance of Solar magic, but also a shipfull of kitsune who are screaming and fainting and being of absolutely zero help whatsoever when it comes to the rapidly spreading blaze.