[b]Yue![/b]

Isn't it wonderful to have a [i]story[/i] in moments like this?

The conversation is one of gushing - questions and explanations tumbling out one after another. Did you see - yes! But when I was there... There's no way! - I promise, it was like this... It's trying to compress months of time and life-changing experiences into the most concentrated form possible, and even the failures are wonderful. [i]Wait, go back, who is Cyanis? - The Celestial Observatory? But then I needed to build a cage around the sun -[/i] Each time you each fail to fit the story into words, each time you need to go back further, and further, and set up more characters and explain more emotions and recollect more wonders the bigger the adventure seems to become. It would take a team of best friends over a [i]year[/i] of dedicated effort to even write down all the things that happened to you, and here you are trying to fit the water of the Terraced Lake through a swizzle straw. She's trying to do the same from the other direction. The resulting disaster of tangled words makes it feel like the stories are running together; that these parallel narratives somehow symbolically echoed, that everything was leading to this from the beginning.

[i]Most valuable thing in the Terraced Lake? Well, from a purely demonic-financial perspective, we're technically the heirs to all the wealth of the Old World...[/i]

She'd meant to go to the city for the summer vacation, earn enough to buy a proper tractor, come back and start eggplant farming. Then, like you, she'd been pursued by demons and she [i]hadn't[/i] been rescued by a mysterious wolfgirl from the moon - instead she'd been drawn into the underworld and set up as a bizarre and terrible queen. Ancient demons and machines had swarmed all around her, putting her at the centre of a dangerous court that sought nothing less than domination of the surface world - and it had taken a [i]long[/i] time for her to figure out how to navigate that safely and teach the Kings of Hell that there were things more important than money. She'd had to keep you a secret to protect you and she was sorry she hadn't written but the post office here was a twenty floor monstrosity of pipes surveilled by 4.8 million data-daemons, but it turned out that the Postmistress was really really something! And that was a [i]girlfriend[/i] you said you had!?

"Well, that means that Princess Chen should fear you," giggled Xiu. "Because you just beat me!"

And then her eyes narrow in the kind of kung-fu way that makes the entire world go quiet as snake-drums play. "Or did you? Because I just used [i]my[/i] ultimate technique: The Sword of Sisterly Love, and you're just as helpless against it as ever."

[b]Chen and Rose![/b]

Princess Jessic slams down into the ground in a blaze of crackling electricity. She opens her mouth, lightning bolts course up her spinal spikes, and with a deafening CRACK fifteen foxgirls collapse in twitching heaps. With an exaltant roar she lunges into battle with tail and wings, sending panicking foxes fleeing back on board the ship. "[i]Bring me Princess Chen![/i]" she shouts, audible over even the rushing tide of chaos foxes. 

Now, the average fox might not be much for thinkies, but even she knows that when a dragon demands a Princess tribute it had better be done promptly, with the Princess properly bound and gagged for the occasion. And so the kitsune turn on you yet again, Chen and Rose.