Chen gives Yue a warm smile, of the kind only available to close friends who can understand each other, quickly. It says that she might well have done the same, if Yue hadn’t effectively given her advance notice. “I gathered something was weird from how your duel appeared.” She widens that smile into an almost impish grin. “But that just makes this something new and exciting, right? We’ll figure it out!”

Then, she gathers her dress and carefully waddles her way over to Bella, whom she stares up at for a moment from her shoulder level height. There is not much in this dainty movement that would scream world’s top duelist at you. But then, if you are looking closely, she still has that control over her body that comes only from the muscle memory built over years of training. You can see that, Bella, as it mirrors many of your own movements.

Chen looks Bella up and down. Glances at her arms, lingers on her legs and the set of her feet. “Bella, it’s a pleasure to really meet you.” She curtsies. “I say really because you just asked an Important question to you, right? I can tell that much, and so I’m really meeting you now. But I’m not sure why it’s so important to you. And I need to know to answer you right.” 

She thinks for a moment, puts one finger on her chin, then digs down into her bag and pulls out a small canvas, a brush, and some ink, which she sets up next to Bella, plopping down onto her knees to work on it. 

“Like, okay. Let me kind of set this up. In terms of training and skill with a sword, I don’t think I’m bragging when I say I’m top three on this continent, and Yue’s like…I dunno, maybe in the top one-fifty. She’s got a lot of flash and she’s been practicing really really hard, but she’s like a decade behind some of the people that have trained since they were little kids. You can’t just make that up overnight with a big heart.” Chen dips her brush and draws a small diagram of something like a little bracket with the character for sword next to it, putting her name and Yue’s name on it with Chen’s near the top and Yue’s further down. 

“But like…Yue’d beat a lot of the folks ranked higher than her because she puts her whole heart into every duel she does. Dueling is a lot about heart and lots of people don’t always put their whole heart into it when they’re fighting.” She makes a few marks on the bracket showing Yue advancing up a couple rows, despite being the underdog in each matchup.

“And then, I might lose to someone if the duel isn’t just about who’s the best trained. If they’ve got a style or a secret sword that’s really good against me, or if my heart isn’t in it, then I’m in trouble.” Chen stops and considers for a moment, she doesn’t paint herself falling down the bracket, but instead takes a separate sheet of paper and makes a little sketch of herself running up a halberd. You can see from the stance that she’s losing her balance at the key moment. “You’re new here, but I famously lost a huge duel to someone ranked way lower than me a while ago because my heart was extremely not in it at the time. And what you should know about me is that my secret swords aren’t really about fighting. My Princess domain is making a kingdom where you can safely and freely have your body and your clothes reflect your heart and that’s how I use my sunshard.” She gestures to herself and her outfit, and caresses her own thick fluffy tail, even giving it a little nibble before lowering it. “I didn’t look like a snow leopard until I got my sunshard, and I didn’t dress like this until I got really comfy with my girlfriend and my other friends. Now I defend a little domain where everybody who lives there gets to run through the same self-expression, and I have some powers to make your heart express itself, especially if it’s repressed.” She turns and gives Yue a special little smile.

“So, if I were defending my domain, or if there’s some prize I really want and I set my whole heart and will to getting it, I’ve got good odds of beating just about everybody.” She smiles and paints herself moving to the top of the bracket that she labels with the character for heart above the one for sword. 

Then she stands up and gestures at Bella with her brush, up and down again. “You have the body and carriage of someone who has trained her poise and balance for her entire life. By every right you ought to be one of the greatest duelists I’ve ever met. But for some reason, you have no qi that I can sense at all and you’re holding every muscle in your body with extreme tension and more than a few tells that you’re compensating for major injuries.” She comes right up to Bella and for just an instant there’s a glow from her forehead like a star come down between you. “And despite all that, you already wear exactly the form your heart desires. It almost feels to me like you don’t believe you’re allowed to want anything more than what you have. Is that it maybe?” 

Chen paints a little outline of Bella beside the brackets with a question mark. Then she stands and picks up her paintbrush, with just a bit of ink at the tip. “No, but then this question mattered to you, so you want something, even if it's about keeping what you already have. Here, it might be faster if I give you a lesson. I’ll duel you with this.” 

Chen holds up the paintbrush with a smile. Unlike Yue, she doesn’t magically teleport away from where she’s supposed to be or anything of that sort. Chen has taught the sword to Yue and to several princesses at this point, so she’s a bit better at gauging her opponent and determining what they need to learn. She runs up, quickly but still flouncing in her dress, and swipes the paintbrush at Bella, who nimbly leaps out of the way. And then Chen lightly steps to where Bella is landing and draws a little line of ink across the fur at her chest with a whisk of her brush. It is eminently visible, and indeed Bella might feel like she could have dodged it, only she did not.

“The ink is water soluble, by the by, so it will wash off, in case you’re worried.” Chen offers another small curtsy. “That dodge was way faster than me, but you committed to the motion in a way that offered you no ability to adjust anything you were doing once you’d done it, and with a very stiff body too. So when I wanted to hit you with a follow up hit, I could.”

Chen comes up from her curtsy into Bella’s charging follow up and takes one step back with her long tail waving behind her, causing her dress to twirl up and offering the onlookers a glimpse of pastel beneath before it slides back down with Bella’s claws. With the hit, there’s no more than a rustle of fabric. “And there too. At the moment that you pounce, you commit completely to the blow. So if I don’t want to get hit, I adjust and I don’t get hit.”

The next blow is parried by the paintbrush with the lightest of movement, sailing over Chen’s head and leaving a dot of ink on Bella’s forearm. “The way you fight is entirely about reaction time. You want to move faster than me so that you can hit me, but that’s relying on injured, tense muscles. Qi is about will. You need the will to hit me more than I want to avoid being hit, not just the muscle strength to strike quickly.”

Chen pivots on her foot, using her tail as balance to follow as Bella sails past and rushes straight at Bella’s exposed back. Bella dodges of course, and Chen corrects for the dodge without moving her feet at all, though slowly enough that Redana and Bella can see it. It looks sort of like Chen floats a bit to the side so that as Bella moves to avoid, the paintbrush moves with her and connects in the small of her back for another dot of ink. 

“That’s dueling with qi. You’ve seen me fly on a sword, so why shouldn’t I be able to move in the air to adjust my attack? Now, just to be clear, this doesn’t get rid of the need for good footwork. Fundamentals are crucial so you’re not wasting time, energy, and focus. But adding qi on top of that means that I can move to dodge you. And, since this is about will and intention, I will dodge you because I don’t want to be hit more effectively than you want to hit me.”

Chen gives her impish little grin suddenly. “You’ll forgive me for showing off, but I do want you to understand what this looks like when it’s done faster than Yue can do it, maybe make sure you believe me about how good I am with a sword.” Bella, there is now a line of ink across your neck. Chen is next to you, her puffy clothes flaring in a sudden cold wind that blows across both of you. Her brush is held in a follow through motion with her arm extended behind her, perfectly still. There was no flash or blink, she was just there. Yue, this one was a little fast even for you, like Chen trying for real to hit someone as fast as she could, which she does only very rarely in training. 

But also, here’s the thing. Chen intentionally left herself completely open. This is the kind of quickdraw attack that’s supposed to utterly defeat an opponent in one blow (primarily meant for demons or for an opposing princess you knew was good enough that you wouldn’t actually hurt them by accident if you used a sword instead of a brush). Yue can see clearly that Chen could easily be hit right now. And indeed, Bella, you can just barely see it too. That glimpse as she recovers her stance as the momentum wears off. You’re too stiff to do anything decisive, but you’re able to at least hip check her so that she falls and goes rolling and tumbling in all her ruffles and frills.

And…she’s giggling as she curls her tail around herself and rights herself out of the roll and onto her feet. “There, there, that’s it! Whatever you’ve got going on, you clearly want to learn, at least. That’s something, that’s a beautiful spark of qi in your heart. That’s what you need if you want to be a good duelist here. I had my most embarrassing defeats after I got very good at the sword because I didn’t want to duel anymore. I hated how people only saw me for my skill at the sword. I could have given it up entirely to be a painter, but I also didn’t want to stop playing with my friends or doing something I was really good at. I had to relearn why I should love it, why it was fun so I could make it something that didn’t make me feel sick. I was able to make the sword something I was skilled at and that I wanted to do.”

She stops giggling, puts her paintbrush away and signals the end of the duel, brushing off her petticoats and immediately wetting a cloth and beginning  to clean the ink off Bella like a good maid. “You’re fighting like your life depends on it, like you have to push through every pain and injury and you hate every second of it. But you also want to learn something better and you’ve got some of the best poise and reflexes I’ve ever seen. I’d rate you as a novice with tremendous potential. I’d offer you more lessons, but I also don’t think you should ever try to fight again until you’ve found a path to heal first.”