"Hm?" hms Actia, as something bright and shiny and very full of hope tumbles clumsily past her view.

"What the h*ck is that?" says Cyanis. 

"Hmmm." hms Actia again, but more hmmmily this time.

Kat's got no eyes for any of it, though. No ears either. Hers are only turned toward the... ooh, could we call her the Foreign G-- actually no, we'd better not. I don't wanna define anybody like that. It sounds so cool though, is the thing. Well. Anyway. Katherine can only watch her. Can only hear her. Can only stare through tears at the surface of her distant home as it ripples and changes and, well... dies. She hiccups and she sniffles, and she briefly entertains the idea of throwing her sword at the back of the god's head because at least that would be doing [i]something[/i], but for whatever reason she can't quite bring herself to commit to the motion. 

She gets as far as lifting it. And that's when she feels the tap on the back of her shoulder. She turns, for the first time, and remembers she has friends.

"Sheesh, finally! I was starting to think you got swallowed by some kind of evil Viking curse or whatever! You ready to join the talk at the Big Girl's Table or what?"

"Cy, I..."

"You what? You're sorry you only fought a giant crab monster to a standstill for like three hours? You didn't know a horrible death woman would pop out of it? You're upset that your little two-tailed butt didn't discover an instakill move and knock her out straight away? Oh puh-leeze. I swear you are the least foxy fox that ever didn't fox a fox. How'd you even get a second tail, anyway?"

"You, um. You were there, Cy. Damn Fox gave it to me. So I could... y'know, get revenge on you. And stuff."

"And great job on that front," Cyanis beamed while patting Katherine's head, "I'm good and revenged now. But we're setting all that aside because we've found a Super Special Rainbow bomb thingy and we're gonna kick it at that monster and blow it and all of our problems up forever. Pretty cool, huh?"

"Mm, no," said Actia, "That would be a complete waste of its potential."

"WHAT?! Oh come on you scheming little minx, which part of your ultra special secret plan are we still following? The bit where we all almost die? [i]Again?[/i] Or the part where we go to Double Cutie Jail and they don't even hand out the good panty gags? Nuh uh, no thank you. We're doing this MY way and that means we kick the bomb over there and watch it fix everything while we sip mocktails on the lunar beach. The moon's got beaches, right? C'mon let's go!"

"A bomb won't work. What we need is a greater fox. One with more tails than any of us."

"Erm," said Kat, "I don't... is that actually going to work either? I mean, I guess we could call Damn Fox, but I'm full of weird fighting instinct stuff and junk and I can tell just by looking over there that even she can't win. A Ninetail isn't enough, and that's the biggest number there is!"

"You think so?" said Actia through an extremely cool blue-painted smirk, "I count ten tails right here."

Two jaws drop. Kat and Cyanis stare at each other mutely, deeply impressed and intimidated once again by Actia's higher level understanding of math. Kat tries to check this by counting, which is difficult because the tails are all so fluffy and they keep waving around. But as luck would have it the number on display is exactly as many as she has fingers, so in the end she gets there.

Her eyes light up with the fire of someone who's been given renewed hope. A warrior getting a second wind, if you will, or just a hopeless girl seeing a little sparkle of rainbow light and remembering how to smile. Little magic, the kind that makes bigger miracles possible. It makes sense, doesn't it? This is exactly how they started this ritual in the first place. The lot of them, together, made one Ninetail. This same power had accepted that logic. But now Actia was one tail richer. And that meant...

"W-we could... oh goshies, we could do [i]anything![/i]"

"Well. ONE of us could do anything. It's a little different casting one spell versus preparing for a battle. Two of us will need to channel our power into the other. Which means, we'll need to..."

"Yes yes, of course," huffed Cyanis with a level of drama that did not match the canary-eating smile on her face [i]at all[/i], "It's oooooooobvious what you're getting at, Actie. And yes, it's true. I [i]am[/i] the prettiest of us all, with the biggest mommy milkers and [i]also[/i] the cutest butt! Plus the prettiest smile? Oh do go on, flatterer! But even though my policy is to never do hero stuff even if I can't help it, just this one time I'll make the sacrifice and let you both give all your power to me~"

"There is not a chance in hell we're using you, Cyanis."

"What? How come??? Is it [i]you[/i] then? Just because you've got more tails than the rest of us already doesn't mean--"

Actia glares so sharply that the rest of Cyanis' retort dies down to a whimper. 

"We're going to use Katherine."

Two jaws drop again. Two younger foxes stare at their rival/mentor/friend/coolest person ever (well, according to one of them anyway) and try to work out how the math maths out to the girl with fewer tails than anybody around. Well, anybody they're aware of at least.

"I don't trust you as far as I could throw you, Cyanis. I doubt you feel any differently about me. What would you even do with the power of a ten-tailed fox?"

"Well obviously I'd do whatever I felt like! And so would anybody! Like, c'mon! It's [i]fox magic??[/i] That's what it's [i]for?[/i] So since it doesn't matter which of us gets it since we'd all do the same thing the only [i]logical[/i] is to give it to me 'cause I want it! A lot! Which is the same as deserving it, so nyeh!"

"Katherine, let me ask you a question."

"Um?"

"I'll take that as a yes. Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits, who has traveled with the anime Yue. Now that you've come this far and seen the depths of foxing, do you trust us?"

That one takes a second. Seconds she doesn't really have anymore, what with the impending doom of everything she loves riding on her getting the answer to a pop quiz right. Oh goshies, why didn't she study? Did anybody have a notebook she could borrow? The foxy answer here would be to, uh... lie? Lie and say yes? No wait, say no! She needs to make the case that she needs assurances and stuff, right? Because without that, the others wouldn't give her back her tail and she'd have to go back to being a pouch-riding narrator! Which was fun, come to think of it, but no! Nyo! She can't do that! She's gotta stake her claim! And, like, um, um, um?

...Giggle?

Yup, there she goes. Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits smiles like the sunrise at her friends. At her [i]friends.[/i]

"Yeah, I do. I think you're both good girls and--" 

"Stop stop stop stop STOOOOOOOOOP!" screams a blushing and flustered Cyanis, "Enough! Enough! Ok ok ok! D-don't say the g-word, please! I can't take it! You win, you win, we'll let the puppy be Queen Dork. But when this is over you're gonna give me the bestest foot massage in history! Got that?"

"I know a good spa out by Ys, does that count? C'mon, sillyheads, let's do this before we run out of parlors to lounge in. I know I want ice cream!"

Kat is a good girl. Some would say the best girl. But that's not entirely why Actia placed her faith in her. Sometimes a fragile will gets tempered by heat it never asked to feel. And when that happens, if it doesn't break? The lazy little pet can turn out to be the most iron hearted champion of all. Foxes instinctively fear the beings they call 'animes', which I think means the sort who'd go out and do the stuff you always see the pink-haired girls doin' in the stories and whatnot.

And if that's how it is, how else can you define our Kat? You could say she's a failure of a foxgirl, but only in service to becoming something much, much scarier to their kind. Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits, the only Master who could ever have dared to fight [i]alongside[/i] Berserker. The only one who held onto a blade, even in the face of absolute terror and death. No, Actia picked her because she was scared not to. And that's the truth, no matter who's willing to admit it or not.

Three slender hands join overtop of a Spiritron Accelerator. One face maintains aloof indifference, while one does a cute grumbly pout, and the third smiles enraptured not just at the idea of being trusted by her original heroes, but at the realization that she's still got one last chance to fix the mistake she made all that long while ago. She can make it all right. She can be, if not the hero that saved the world, then at least the fang that blunted the doom of all she loves.

And that's not a bad thing to be at all. She closes her eyes, and feels a true fox miracle rushing over her.