Actia's Tail #2 twitches. You know without words that it's a very special tail - it was empowered by a very special Fox Wish, one that hasn't been activated for a very long time. It can sense a vulnerability here, and it starts to swish and swish with a rhythm that naturally puts you in tune with every one of the goddess' flailing counterattacks. That hammer spins away -

"Ecosystems don't work like that!" said the goddess of death. "The world - the universe - is a certain way. The Burrowers settled a thousand stars and built a golden road across the heavens, united under the ideals of capitalism, patriotism and worship. These ideals have survived ten thousand years. This little thing you have built here - it is a bubble. When it pops, [you will die/the universe will die] -"

She says both things at the same time. Goddesses can do stuff like that apparently! But Tail A2 twitches again - that one just slipped out of her. She's talking too fast. She's not declaring like before. She's scared, and she's getting more scared. She is looking at a cute little bunny rabbit and seeing mass extinction.

"And this isn't enough to sustainably replace it. It is fragile. It is naive. It is - it is cringe! It is an extremely silly way to organize a society, blind to the realities of power. It does not scale. It is a dream, and it puts at risk the much older, much stronger dreams that animate society. There are threats in the dark that cannot be dealt with using picnics. I am trying to help you prepare for them."

It's surprisingly easy to fight someone who's scared of you, if you've got the heart to do it. Even if they're technically stronger than you are. In a fight, see, the will to act is everything.

Katherine? With her beautiful blue planet at her back and a home to go back to? She's got it in spades. She's full of clever tricks and glitter sparkles and moves so cool I really don't know how to describe half of them. Though you might be wondering why I'm not making more of an effort to try anyway? It's... well.

Hm.

"Lady, if you believe even half of what you're sayin' then I'm a cat. Are we supposed to be a bubble or a death machine? Are you helpin' us or smashin' us to bits? You don't even know! You got spit out've a crab and now you're sayin' this and that and like... nyeh! You're cringe! How's about that?!"

She sticks her tongue out and everything. It is a testament to the power of fox magic in sufficient quantities that she manages to look cool and dignified doing it.

I don't like bullying, is the thing. And when someone's unarmed, flustered, and moving at one quarter their usual speed and surety then, like, even if they're some sort of awful intergalactic death goddess it doesn't feel good to just wallop her. Besides which, we all know where this is ending up.

Yin understood that there really were monsters in the dark. She knew how to handle them, too. The fact that she was so good at it is what got her in trouble, in the end. By comparison there's much more of Princessing in Kat. So much, in fact, that there's only one way that something that feels like a proper Princess Duel to her can end.

And beauty like this, trickery like this, swordplay like this, even banter like this... the secret weakness of the Sword of Validation is that you can't use it on something without a heart. But here we are, with a delightful smirk on Kat's face and her wooden blade tilted just so under the goddess' chin. That's how it's meant to go.

"Is that really all you have to say? Wouldn't surrender feel so much sweeter, darling?"

Not to betray my little Kat's trust like this, but she fished that line out of a book. I can't blame her. She's been wanting to do something like this since she had hands. Plus it's exactly what I'd do, too. The problem is, this isn't a Princess Duel.

...It's surprisingly hard to beat someone who's scared of you, even if you've got the heart to do it. Yin would not have made this mistake, but Kat never had a choice. She has no idea how else to do it: of every battle she's ever fought in, there's been somebody older and harder and with blood already on their hands who would swoop in and make the hard, nasty cut. Without Berserker or Saber or even Actia around to make the move for her, she goes for what in her heart should have settled all of this long ago.

But when you've backed someone into a corner, and taken away all of their tricks, shrugged off their rhetoric? Well I mean, that's just how animals are. This is when they bite you.

And now is when the real fight starts. Hang in there, Fluffybiscuits.

Katherine was right about one thing: the goddess was confused. Her thoughts from the beginning had been scattershot, wandering down multiple independent and contradictory pathways, seeing threat and opportunity, something to nurture and something to exterminate. She had been thinking of the how as much as the why and the what, and none of it had fit together. Somehow, none of her fit together. Had the Burrowers done something to her, before they had sent her here? It was almost as if there were two or more of her inside the same body...

But unfortunately, Katherine had gone and put her in a position where all the parts of her aligned. She glanced down. Did the math -

She stepped forward onto the wooden sword. It did not cut her neck, on account of it being wood, and just slid over her shoulder. Then she headbutted Fluffybiscuts hard enough to send her to the moon - if the Goddess hadn't gotten there first. She has the hammer in her hand as she almost seems to teleport behind her flying opponent in time to strike a massive downwards blow. She launches herself in rapid pursuit, hammer blows falling in a steady cadence, knocking Katherine left and right - less a fight and more a juggler's display. There was no more thought of defense in the Goddess' mind; she had committed entirely to the attack. She did this in the comfortable knowledge that a wooden blade could not harm her, and even if it could, her opponent would not.

So she attacked, and attacked, and attacked. She attacked like she was planning on hammering every one of those tails right off Katherine's butt. She did this with the grim confidence that even if she was scared of what Katherine represented, she was not scared of her as an enemy combatant.

"What th-OOUUGF!"

"How, GYAAAH!"

"Would y-ERGH!"

"I j-AAAAAAAAAAAAAH"

It's a war of attrition: not between Katherine and the goddess, but between the damage she is taking and the stubborn refusal of Fox Magic to suffer a wound. But I'm sorry to say that even with Kat's divine winds blunting the impact of that hammer, and with her parrying skills, and even when she catches an attack well enough to start rolling out of it, these are still the attacks of a very old-timey God. And what I mean is that they hurt.

This is fighting like you don't tend to see in Princess duels. Those are very dangerous, but they are in the main a consensual affair between two (or more!) skilled opponents who each agree to a set of expectations and are basically working toward the same sort of outcome. This is... not that. This ticks the 'skilled opponents' box but leaves every other assumption blank. That means that bones break. It means that joints get dislocated. It means a host of other nasty stuff I don't want to imagine, and then it means magic rushing into the wound to kiss it better, but Kat has to feel it going both ways.

She takes a shot in the back that bounces her off the surface of the moon; as she twists and tries to recover in mid-air another swing has already gone straight for her ribs that sends her spiraling between the rings of former suns. She's chased down and knocked around the bodies of those glittering rings like a ball through the fanciest miniature golf course of all time. Around and over and through that loop, smashed first up and then down, to the left and then down again, to the right and now diagonally to smack into a bit of old satellite, and when she opens her mouth to protest all of the words are driven out of her by a hammer right to the stomach, which also costs her any desire to indulge in a cup of tea when she gets home.

It costs her a great many things, being honest with you. In the first place it costs her a whole heaping help of mana. Foxgirls are first and foremost pampered little sweeties, remember? They're not made to suffer the pain of battle so especially with so many of these tails not even properly belonging to her there's no way to shut off the magic that's constantly healing her. Call it a passive effect I guess, those tails simply will not let her grit her teeth and struggle through. And every bit that goes into healing is something she can't use to turn the tables.

But it costs her a lot of other things too. Little things, mostly desires. Wishes, you might call them. The wish to have all of her friends see her like she is right now. The wish for me to take her out for celebratory ice cream. And bigger ones, like the wish for somebody to call her a hero, or the wish to please NOT get sent to Cutie Fox Island as a response to almost destroying the world. One by one they vanish as the costs for keeping her spotless until all that's left is the biggest wish she's got: to make it home again at all.

And then that gets knocked out of her, too. No more, then. This really is it, isn't it? She's going to get juggled forever until she runs out of meter, and then until she runs out of hp. She doesn't get another turn. She offered up her favorite kind of fun, her favorite kind of story, to someone who should be her worst enemy and what that monster did was spit right in her dream. She's being made fun of, all the way to death. Her home and everyone who believes in the kinds of things that she does, they're all being mocked and hurt right along with her. Chen, Rose, Hyra, Qiu, Jessic, Xiu, and... y'know, me. Yue. All of us gone. Not gone from her heart, but dead from her perspective, in all the ways that matter. Because she's never going to see us ever again.

What an incredibly stupid thing to have gone and done. Honestly, you'd think a goddess who's so concerned about ecosystems and natural orders would know better. When you think of a fox, what comes to mind? A sweet little flooferdoodle? Granted. A sillyhead, perhaps. Or a con artist. All fair and valid, but at the end of the day, a fox is a creature with teeth and claws. I was just saying this, wasn't I? If she'd just let up a little, just given Kat the tiniest bit of room to breathe and try out her own attacks in the middle of all of this, we might never have gotten here. This really could have gone on forever and it would have ended with the hammer-jerk's inevitable victory. But she didn't do that. She put an animal in a corner and kept beating her until there was no choice left.

You are, like, stupid stupid, lady. You really went in like this because you thought you couldn't get bit? Have you never had a pet before? Honestly. I'd be embarrassed for you, but you deserve this.

The most forceful swing of the hammer comes. The one meant to be the deathblow, to render Katherine into her constituent parts so the goddess could weave them into some new shape that fit her purposes, or whatever it is that goes on in the mind of a god. But it doesn't land. Kat grips the head of the weapon in her bare palm and snarls, so angry that she's almost spitting. Her whole body trembles. And more than that, it glows. If there's no going home, there's no need to save power for the trip back, you see.

"That's," she hisses (and I do mean hisses), "It."

After that she's too angry to say anymore. All attempts at language just come out as awful growling and snarling. Servants come to the people who call to them, you see. And whether you or they or anyone likes to admit it that means they tend to be very similar to their Masters at the end of the day. Kat wrenches the hammer toward her and spins around at the same time so she can kick the goddess full on in the face. She holds the hammer in a deathgrip and pulls it free from her opponent's grip, rushing after her so she can smash the horrible woman over the head with it again and again and again.

Then she throws it, not caring that it might get used against her again. As long as it hurts that woman first, she doesn't care. Her tails unfurl behind her once again in a glorious halo of fine fur and radiant light. The aura extends down into her blade. Sure its wood, but do you know what else that blade is? An S-tier spirit medium. Blue light and power thrums around it, creating a very real and very terrible edge. The kind that cuts more than just your dress or even your skin.

She doesn't return with an infinite combo of her own. There's plenty of opportunities for a riposte or a giant, slugging hit that knocks her into a new celestial body, and it happens with fair frequency as she goes on the assault. She just doesn't care anymore. All of the energy that had been going into trying to block or get out of the way instead get channeled into making sure that she gets hers, too. When her knee gets shattered it's only because she leaned so hard into her charge that it left her so open you could drive a truck through her stance. The trailing, blue slash she leaves behind as payment burns far worse than anything her fox magic is so stubbornly continuing to heal, anyway.

And the longer she goes the more vicious she gets. The less she trades and the more she overwhelms. And the more she overwhelms, even in her anger, the more beautiful her attack becomes. That's the response carved into her heart at the end of the day, y'know? So the bright, trailing energy in her slashes spills out more and more and more fox magic until the very void itself is full of wishing magic, so strong and so fierce and so furious that just to be near it crushes and burns and batters anything that's not fit to touch it. Colors follow her like paint, and like a painter she weaves them into a story.

And that story is home. She connects with a rising thrust under the goddess' chin and she flies up right after her with cut after cut after cut, lifting the pair of them higher on a gorgeous scene of raging waters and the rocks and the trees and the sky that call that water home. Since Kat can't do it, I'll even name every slash for you. That's how you'll know that this is a secret sword.

The Golden Falls. The Dragon's Breath. The Silver Mirror. The Devil's Finger. Lover's Lookout. Old Misty. Black Beauty. The Tomb of the Demon Swordswoman. This is nothing more or less than home, the cry of her heart for something that's being taken away from her. The desire to make it hurt this divinity as much as it hurts her to let it go. It's so beautiful that I think I'm going to cry whenever I remember this, for the rest of my life. I never knew how much any of it meant to her, but now that love is painted in the sky, and anyone who's looking up right now and wondering what's going to happen (even in Australia), can see it for themselves.

This is the first and final secret sword of the Crying Foxgirl style: A Tour of Waterfalls in the Terraced Lake.

If this is not the end, then it's at the beginning of it. From here there will not be another blade held under a chin. You can flee into the far dark corners of the galaxy, you stupid silly god, or you can drown in the waters we call home. At the end of the day, the only real way to deal with bullies is to beat them so senseless that nobody will ever think that maybe they had a point after all. And there are so, so many waterfalls left to paint, aren't there? Do you have time to watch them all?

It was not like fighting a princess. It was not like fighting a dragon, either. A dragon may be a monster, but it is one that comes with a promise: defeat me, and you shall gain my treasure. There is a treasure to be had in this victory too, but a much humbler one: The story is over. This terror from the ancient past and distant space is gone, torn apart into shreds of mana. You no longer need to care about what it thinks. You no longer need to entertain its confused cruelty. It breaks hard and its essence flees and the world is safe. Like taking out the trash, it was a chore, and chores are beneath the delicate hands and beautiful hearts of foxgirls - but every so often one has to be done anyway.

And just because the victory is humble does not mean it is not satisfying. To look at the world and think: clean. Safe. Nothing left to do. Just a huge stretch of luxurious nothingness lying ahead, weeks and months where nobody - not even your own mind - will ask you for anything.

But, while you're up here, of course the thought occurs: you could keep the tails. Nothing says you have to give them back! Well, obviously it'd be the right thing to do, but... it wouldn't be the wrong thing to do either. Actia and Cyanis would be mad and they'd swear vengeance and come after you, but they wouldn't be coming after you like you were a monster. They'd be coming after you like you were a dragon. They'd find a princess knight and convince her to fight you, and she'd be hesitant at first but you would use your new powers to take over a castle and kidnap a maiden and then she'd have no choice...

You should seriously consider it. After all, you worked really hard to bring a new power into the world. You should be free to appreciate it for a while, before it passes onto someone else. Because that's the difference, isn't it? In a dance, someone leads and someone retreats and power passes back and forth; the weak become strong and the strong become weak. That's just my suggestion, but I think you would have an amazing reign of terror <3

Y'know for what it's worth I agree. Kat'd make an incredible villain, because she knows how to have fun. Plus she's got experience being an evil army so it's not like it'd be entirely uncharted territory, right? Unfortunately it's just not meant to be. It's not even a question of contemplation, or choosing a path in the first place.

Kat is exhausted. Really that's putting it too lightly. Between all of its various phases she put more than everything she had into this fight. She ran deep enough into debt that even Actia and Cyanis can't pay it back for her, not that they would (being foxgirls and all). When anger seeps away into the quiet release of victory and a body who's been pushing and pushing and pushing gets to the spot where they're allowed to just look at the dawn breaking across the top of their very beautiful planet?

They do say the most difficult moment in any adventure is when you're finally allowed to rest. And so it is here. Kat's grip loosens on her sword. Just a teeny bit at first, only enough to make it shift down slightly. Then more, as her head nods once. Then more again, until it's trying to float free. She makes to grab for it and that's when she notices that her arm's not moving right. That's when she notices how much everything hurts despite all of the magical power she'd built up to make it not. That's when her view of the gorgeously lit up earth gets cloudy. And then dark.

And then all she can see are the backs of her eyelids. After that, one quick flash of something more precious than an unguarded can of tuna. And then nothing at all. The winds around her body die down to nothing, and she drifts limp and dangling just on the edge of outer space. Not even really seeming to breath, just drifting helplessly wherever gravity decides to take her.

"It's ok sweetie, I've got you. You did such an amazing job, you know that?"

She doesn't shrink in my arms, just like she didn't grow before. But she does diminish as I'm looking at her, all of those fancy tails dissolving off her form in a green and blue glitter to go back where they came from. I hold my brave warrior close to me and float quietly while balanced on the flat of my sword back to the one place we've got up here for standing. The space elevator. Space Elevator? I dunno. Another tail leaves her for its rightful owner, and that hard edged maturity falls back off her face. Sleeping like she is, she looks so innocent I'm reminded of the day I first found her alone in the woods not far from my little cottage.

I hop down off of my sword and whistle once. And then one more time because I screwed up. This is hard, ok? The third go around I hit the note right and the blade obeys me and floats back into its sheath as I plant my feet on solid ground. I guess Actia really schemes on another level. She got pushed into this whole thing and she pushed herself right back out of it, with an extra tail to...

I stop, and tilt my head to watch Kat a little more closely. She's not glowing anymore, and her body is flopped so awkwardly in my grip that if we were anywhere other than where we are she'd be worse to hold than a sack of potatoes. And I can tell right away that something happened. At first it seems awful, because she looks so much worse for wear with her fox magic so depleted and sent away. But I can feel them brushing up against my legs, just well enough to count them. One, two. But then three? And a fourth tail, too.

"Hmph. Is that all I managed? I must be going soft."

"Saber?!"

I turn on the spot and find her lying there in a pool of blood. That gorgeous wreck of a shark-toothed giant. She flashes me a grin and tosses her head back to laugh, though it pains her. Already her body is breaking down into Spiritron particles, just motes of golden light that mean that the ritual binding her is past over, and all her grudges and oaths that were keeping her pinned down have finally let her go. It'd be lovely if it weren't so sad. I really hate goodbyes, y'know?

"Hold on! Hold on hold on hold on, what'd you do? What have you done to my Kat?"

"I simply, nnnf, gave a reward to my vassal. Though I meant... for it to be bigger. Fox magic is known to me. It is a thing of raw Want. In this moment where their pact came to a close, it is a matter of, mm. Would you say it 'splitting the check?'"

"Uh, no, can't say I'm familiar with the expression. Is that a Viking thing?"

"No, it's... never mind. The three of them, their magic, it is a contest in the final moment to see who wants what the most. That is the power they use to grant wishes to themselves, after all. Little Fluffybiscuits is not good at wanting things. She is not good at being hungry. Left alone, those two useless rats would have tried to take even her original tails."

Yeah. I believe that. Actually maybe I don't believe that about Actia, because I think she's better about avoiding trouble where it's bigger than the gain. She'd only go for the greedy play if she thought she could get all ten of those tails to herself. But Cy? I can see Cy reaching just 'cause she can.

"And you, what, punished them for that?"

Saber grins at me, barely visible through the haze of golden light consuming her body.

"I am a King, demon swordswoman Yue. No one in this world seems to understand what that means anymore, but I can lust for things with far greater zeal than any silly foxgirl. And I do wish to punish them both, but not for being what they are."

"What, then?" I say it before I can stop myself, but it hits me before the words are even forming on my lips. Oh, I think, Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.

"My grudge may have been artificial to start, but I will not suffer to be used like that. My last unfulfilled oath. The pledge to harm Actia. When the pair of them come to you screeching about unfairness and vengeance, tell them. Tell them Ivar the Boneless took her price."

I laugh, in spite of everything. Because what else can I do? That's the single most fox-pilled argument I've ever heard! I'm gonna start calling sharks the foxes of the sea. They're not gonna get the joke, but so what? I will!

"Sure," I giggle, "I'll let 'em know. I owe you at least that much. For listening. And for keeping my Kat safe."

She turns her head, and brushes off the compliment. Her left arm has completely vanished by now, as have most of her legs and parts of her torso. There's little left to her beyond a face and a long, feminine braid.

"Hmph. Promise me this, demon swordswoman. If there is ever another time where we heroic spirits are needed... be sure to summon me yourself. I would... very much like... to try my hand at conquering your Princesses. And you are... the furthest thing I have met. From a monk."

With a laugh and a burst of light, she's gone, and I'm left with goodbye still unsaid. Ah, darn it. Darn it! It's always like this, isn't it? This adventure wasn't even mine, why does it sting so much to see it end?!

I have to control my breathing. I have to keep steady, 'cause if I start crying I'm going to wake up Kat and I'd rather not go answering her questions about what I'm doing here in the first place. I walk carefully to the controls, and fumble less carefully around with them until I feel the descent begin. I turn my head to take one last look at Berserker's mad fortress and the remains of what had been a factory of horrors and see it, too, fade into golden mist.

The doors close, and it's just me and my girl. Just like it was before any of this started. Tears fall down my cheeks, in spite of everything I told myself about how important it was not to feel this. But don't worry. I'm very steady. And I look down at Kat, still sleeping in my arms, and I flash a very wet, very small, and very grateful smile.

I shift my fingers so I can stroke her minty green hair off of her forehead.

"Next time, sillyhead? Let's go on an adventure together."

...I think, if I make it that far, I'd like to brew a pot of tea before she wakes up. Some Xue Yue, maybe. I think that'd be a funny way to say hi. And welcome home, my brave, wonderful little hero.

"She stole our tails!!"

Actia is playing a game. Every time Cyanis comes back to that she does one push up[1].

[1] A little fox magic and a high tensile elastic harness make that meaningful in zero G.

She expects to be able to fistfight Princess Qiu once her orbit sufficiently decays.

"I literally cannot believe it!" said Cyanis. "After everything we did! We saved the world! We literally saved it! Through the power of teamwork and friendship we defeated the giant enemy crab and she just ditched us up here!"
"Are you proud of her?" asked Actia.
"WHAT!?"
"She finally did a fox move," said Actia. "Surely that reflects on your training."
"I never trained her to do anything of the sort!" said Cyanis. "This came out of nowhere!"
"Didn't you say -"
"A corruption inherent to her soul!!"
"- never get more tails if she didn't -"
"And to victimize an innocent little angel like me!"
"- seminar on tax evasion -"
"She is literally worse than Emiya Shirou!"
"- that's going too far."
"No it is not!" said Cyanis. "And she abandoned us up here! We can't even get down! We're stuck up here for -"
"Three years based on current rates of orbital decay."
"LITERALLY FOREVER! You can't speed that up!?!"
"I could," said Actia. "But then I won't have the mana for the re-entry shield."
"NO FOX HAS EVER SUFFERED THIS BADLY," wailed Cyanis.
"I spent a thousand years sealed under a bridge," said Actia.
"Why do you have to make everything about you?" Cyanis accused.
"..."
"Why doesn't anyone ever think about me!?" said Cyanis. "It isn't fair! Why aren't there space shuttles coming up to rescue me? Why aren't crowds of cheering civilians chanting my name and sending me their spirit energy? Why do I never get a lucky break!? When is it going to be the Cyanis Route!?!?"
"Shh!" said Actia suddenly. Cyanis squeaked indignantly and blushed without dignity. "Do you feel that?"
"All I feel is the cold void of space," said Cyanis, even more annoyed at the brief duration of her silence.
"Look..." said Actia. "Over there. A ship?"
"Oh no!" said Cyanis. "The crabitalists are coming back! They're sending an invasion fleet! I'm sorry Katherine! I'm sorry I called you a Shirou! You are a good girl fox who will come up to rescue me, aren't you?!" she peaked the mike. "AREN'T YOU!?"
"It looks like it wants to land. I think I can boost us onto it," said Actia. "We can ride it down."
"Why is it always Mission Impossible shit with you Actie?" sighed Cyanis, slipping her tail around inside her spacesuit to wipe the spittle off the inside of her visor. "It's never, 'let us flag down the spaceship with our feminine wiles and hitch a lift', it's always 'let's do it in such a way that nobody sees us, hears us or begs to touch our fluffy tails'. Don't you know compliments are part of a growing fox's diet!?!?"
"And you have a lot of growing to do, two-tails~" said Actia on autopilot - she was concentrating on Cutie Math to figure out the proper trajectory to launch to intercept the coming starship.
"AND ANOTHER THING," said Cyanis. Actia did a push-up. "It is UNFAIR that losing a tail reduced my cup size! I have a signed affidavit from a psychologist that is very clear that I get dysmorphia when I don't have giant honking bazonkas! Fluffybiscuits stole my tits and I'll have her ass!"
"Hang on," said Actia. "If your cup size reduced when you lost mana, that means your breasts were illusionary."
"Of course they were," said Cyanis primly. "I am a delicate princess and am above the menial labour of carrying around actual breasts. I am a fox, not a cow."
"..."
"But people should still look at me and see enormous badonkadonks! That's who I am on the inside!"
"... So should I leave you up here, or -"
"Are you sure you cannot find a better spaceship?" said Cyanis. "This one is so... blue. It doesn't go with my fur at all."
"I could," said Actia. "Once again, at the expense of being able to generate the heat shield."
"Once again Fluffybiscuits stabs me in the back!" howls Cyanis.
"*Foxy pushup noises*," said Actia.
"Well, we have no choice," sighed Cyanis. "I've tried radioing them asking them nicely to pick us up but they're not answering. I will simply add this indignity to the heap of indignities that I bear, like Emiya Shirou bore the crucifix."
"... I thought they hanged him."
"The way he goes on about it it might as well have been a crucifixion," said Cyanis, making a jerkoff gesture.
"You met him?" said Actia.
"Of course," said Cyanis. "He was my first Servant - because I'm such a martyr and everything - but he annoyed me to the point where I Fox Wished for a different one."
"... You are having me on."
"It is Fluffybiscuits who had me on!" cried Cyanis to the sounds of pushing up. "Fine. I don't care. I will accept this latest indignity with grace and poise. Take us down, Actia, I will simply have to compensate for the unglamourous ride with my own vast charisma."

And with a puff of blue magic, the two foxes soared away to intercept the oncoming starship.

- TO BE CONTINUED -