Once upon a time, in a far away land, there lived a tiny kingdom obscured by shadows. A small, ever-changing fight against the forest, stark against the evil that surrounded them, that land was called Gemma.

In Gemma, there was two halves of one people; the North and the South. The North Gemma and the South Gemma had never gotten along with one another for a very, very long time.

But one day the old queen fell and a new king rose, and this former prince called for a unification.

One by marriage.

Ash picked up her stun gun and shot it straight full of magic energy. Once the bar powered up enough that it began to heat up in her hands, she pulled it out of the socket recklessly. A faint spark lit up in the air and fizzled out.

She slid the gun into a strap on her thigh.

The recent coronation of the new king of the North Gemma had shook the entire land. The old queen had been in reign for such a long time... One would almost assume she would live and rule for the rest of eternity.

Ash picked up a handful of darts and slid them expertly into a sleeve. Then she picked up her favorite weapon, her long silver spear that was edged with blue diamond dust.

The door exploded as something heavy crashed into it.

Ash swung the spear around and pressed it up against the intruder's neck. But as the dust settled, Ash immediately regretted doing so.

Mira winced.

"Mira! Oh, for the love of-" Ash pulled back her sword. "Don't do that! What happened- My door!"

The princess of South Gemma half-smiled at Ash. At tiny cut appeared at her throat. "I'm sorry, I was distributing flowers and the cart kinda bumped into your door."

Ash's door hung off it's hinges and died on Ash's welcoming mat.

"... Kinda bumped into, eh?" Ash whispered.

"Yo, Sergeant Ash! You okay? It looks like your door quit on you!" A man yelled from the doorway.

Ash pointed her spear at him, and he raised both his hands up. "Get in here, Kit," Ash said.

He walked in casually and grinned at Ash. With a flick of his wrist he tossed her a bunch of flowers that spread themselves over her bed. "Good afternoon, partner. There's been another attack of Shadows at the west bridge, but the men have got it down. The ladies have also trashed the shadows that flew down over near the seaport."

Ash felt her heart skip a beat when Kit grinned at her with his stupid brown puppy eyes and stupid brown hair. "I know, I just came back from the west bridge, just charging up my gun."

Mira handed Ash a packet of cookies. "There's been a lot of injured soldiers, so I'm just going around giving out get-well packets." Mira smiled at Kit, tossing him a lollipop. Then she glanced at Ash's uncomfortable expression and giggled. "At least now I can finally get you some better design in your dusty old sergeant room! I think a mahogany wood layer over the edges, and some Kingwood base..."

The red-haired princess pondered on how to improve her friend's living quarters as she held up the edges of her pink dress, stepped over a packet of the maps of recent shadow attacks, and went out the door, leaving a faint scent of lilies.

"Isn't she beautiful," Kit commented. Ash couldn't tell if it was a question or a statement.

"Yes, yes she is," Ash said. She collected the bunch of daises that had scattered around her bed.

Kit looked over. "Hey, what are you doing?"

"Throwing these out."

"But they're from me! Your best-est best friend in the whole wide world! You have to keep them and treasure them forever-" Ash pushed Kit out of the room and pulled a curtain over the doorway. "Go tell the princess you love her," she said with a straight face. Even through the curtain she could see his face flush.

She waited until he walked away to chase after the green-eyed darling that was the red-haired apple of everyone's eyes. Then she picked up the flowers and tucked them tenderly and carefully into a beloved scrapbook and pressed down hard.

Her heart hurt.

Mira had heard the news.

She was going to get married.

The nobles were laughing at her again and the peasants were furious.

The redhead bastard princess born of a love affair between a king who later would die of shame and a prostitute who passed away during childbirth. Raised by commoners and the kitchen servants, the common loved her and the nobles detested her shameful bloodline.

Oh, who gives a single crack at what the nobles said!

A prince was going to rescue her and she would live a happily ever after! That's what the North King would do!

The old queen of the North was dead. Long live the New King, who said that due to the increasing amount of shadows, wanted to unify the kingdom to fight the otherworldly beings that scrambled out of the dark forest that completely surrounded Gemma since the beginning of time.

By marrying Mira.

Kita swung the door open and waved at Mira. She grinned at him, banishing away her broken expression. She should be happy to marry the North King. This would finally unite Gemma. "Kit! What are you doing here?"

"Ash told me to express my love for you," he said. "Here!" He expertly took out a gun and shot a packet of powder to her. Mira caught it, but fumbled once it was in her hands and then bag slipped open, covering her with blue paints powders.

Kit chortled, and Mira glared at him for a second, and then dropped her act and laughed. She tossed a handful at him.

Kit stepped backward to avoid it and stepped on the toes of... Sergeant Ash. Blue dust fluttered over Ash's black high-heel boots and she glanced down at the now-stained toes. Mira looked over Kit's shoulder and laughed. "Ash! Come play with us!"

"Mira, The new North King is here," Ash said carefully. Mira felt something lodge up in the back of the throat, and all her worries came back. "Oh."

Ash glanced at Kit, and said softly, "Out, now."

He left. There was no disobeying Ash when she used that voice.

Mira brushed the powder off her pink dress and stood up. She walked to her dresser and went behind a folding screen. She pulled off the tainted dress and searched for a new one.

Ash awkwardly stood at the door and looked around and fancily decorated and brightly-colored bedroom, completely different from her dusty, dark, and forbidding sergeants quarters.

"Do you wanna talk?" Ash said offhandedly as she brushed blue paint powder off her boots.

Mira grinned as she pulled on a blue corset. "Oh, Ella, you just never understand social conduct, now, do you?"

"What's wrong with asking if you would like to converse?" Ella Cinder muttered. "And don't call me Ella, call me Ash."

"Ella, Ella, Ella~!" Mira sang. "It's okay, I knew I'd have to marry some guy I don't know anything about anyways. I bet I'd hate him, and he'd cheat on me, whatever~! But, you, you have freedom to like anyone you can!"

Mira pulled on some fancy lace coverings over her corset. They sort of match. Yeah, that's good. "Hey, how's it going with Kit? Do anything nice~?"

Ash grinned crookedly. If only you knew Kit is head over heels with you. "I said we're only just friends."

"Oh, nonsense." Mira said as she finished off with a white shawl over a big blue dress. She walked out from behind the screen. "How do I look?"

"Beautiful," Ash said. "You would look beautiful in a barrel, Mira, so why ask when you're in a lovely dress?"

Mira grinned. She tossed Ash a pair of blue slippers. "Help me put those on, will you? I can't really reach over this huge, puffy thing they call a dress."

Ash reached down and tied the laces swiftly. "You had your hair done before, right?"

"Yeah, yeah," Mira retorted. "All the fancy fuss was done a long time ago. The servants are all downstairs. Fighting for a chance to see the royal dark King of the North. What was his name again, Fox or something? Oh, how scary~!"

Ash tied the other shoe on. Mira looked down at her, in her white-blue steel plated armor that covered every inch of her skin up to her neck. Her black gloves and black boots finished off any other skin that might have been revealed. "You know, you should really wear a pretty dress now and then. I bet you'd look stunning."

Ash smiled up at Mira. "Not today, miss, I have to protect you. Who knows what might come out of the forests today. If they do, we have to get every men out there as fast as possible and make sure your marriage doesn't start off at the wrong foot."

Mira set both her feet down and walked to the door. "One day, I swear to God, Ash, I will get you into a dress and push you to Kit. Name your babe after me, okay, Ash?"

Ash blushed. Mira chuckled.

"I knew it! There's something going on! There is, there is!" Mira laughed. Ash waved her hands. "No, no, it's-"

Mira turned serious. Her bright green eyes stared at Ash intensely.

"You two are my closest friends. What I want most in this world, since my chances of going out there and finding and choosing the one I love is nil, is for you two at least to be happy together."

Kit walked down to the courtyard. The North King was there. Hooray, long live the new reign. Those nobles. They made him sick. Why should this unknown man from a different land marry Mira, who didn't even know his name?!

Kit prepared his sniper gun. While Ash was top on close-range combat with a pear, Kit was the long-ranged killer. He would find the heart of any lingering shadow and take it out from where he stood to the top of the tallest tower in the castle.

He was standing on the tallest tower in the castle.

Okay, bad wording.

Kit glanced down at the courtyard. It was filling up. The nobles and their fancy trains, Ash with her ranks, and Mira. Her red hair can be seen from all the way up here. Red hair from her mother, green eyes from her father. If only the king had a child before Mira, then Mira would have been a regular girl. Then maybe Kit would have been able to-

The trumpets began to play.

Kit readied his gun and watched the horizon. Ash was relying on him to sound the alarm at the first notice. There was no time to wallow in self-pity about his unnoticed love.

Mira opened the giant doors to the North King's train.

"I welcome you, North King! I accept your marriage proposal!" Mira declared as her dreams of a prince died.

And just as suddenly, the dreams of a prince mended themselves.

The King stepped down from his horse, his long blue hair sliding over his shoulders. He stepped towards Mira, and she stumbled back for a mere second, and then regained herself.

He was tall. That was the first thing she liked.

And that he was muscular, and he had a sword hanging from his hips. He looked at her once with his chilly light blue eyes, with his eyelashes like snowflakes and she was caught.

She blushed, took his hand, and for the first time, truly believed in the magic of love at first sight.

Ash didn't like it.

The ceremony was over, but there was a bad scent in the air. She took one last look around the empty courtyard, nodded to the guards, and went inside. The servants were adjusting the North King to his new home. She ran up the stairs and into Mira's bedroom. But before she ran in, she pressed her ear up to it and listened. Kit was inside too.

Her heart throbbed.

Ash opened the door and walked in. Mira sat on her bed, her feet soaking in a tiny tub of water. Kit sat next to her, his face pain-filled, but his mouth curved in a forced smile.

Mira saw Ash and grinned. "Ash~! His name is Wolf!"

Ash smiled down at her naive little princess. "Yes, it is."

Kit grimaced. Ash ignored him and walked over to Mira. "So? It wasn't as bad as you thought it would be, right?"

Mira laughed. "Oh, I didn't think it would be that bad..."

Kit laughed bitterly in return. "Oh, please, you thought the guy was going to be fifty based on how old his mother was!"

"The old queen was his step-mother, who died a few weeks ago at 68," Ash said as she pinched Kit's arm and he shut his mouth to close off his sound of pain. "I saw him as he entered through the main doors. He was handsome, wasn't he?"

Mira blushed. "Oh, he was! And his voice was like chunks of caramel falling into cookie batter! He said that he thought I was an angel from the way my blue dress looked like a sky when I opened the door!"

Kit rolled his eyes. "Your white lace scarf would be your wings, then?"

Ash laughed, and as Mira sighed and fell more into love, and as Kit grumbled in his jealousy, Ash found solace in the fact she may catch Kit's heart if this marriage worked out and Mira was taken.

And then she saw something from outside the window that made her heart freeze.

Wolf tossed his packet of papers down on his new table. He stroked it. Nice wood.

He looked around at the darkly warm office, and at the giant bed that lay to the side. Clearly they expected him to work and sleep at the same place. This arrangement was fine. Wolf had a feeling that he's start hating this place with a passion soon once the paperwork started to come in.

He tossed off the cape and the scarf and the annoying damn jacket that his butler back in the North Castle had forced him into. Damn that Cura, pushing him to marry the South Queen, and then sending out the news without notifying Wolf.

It was a good arrangement, though. Unifying Gemma, marrying the cute red button that was the South Queen, the innocent Mira who was beloved by all. You had to wonder if she even knew what came after the marriage. Would their honeymoon be a white-laced tea party? By the looks of it...

He sat down in the chair. You would think a man who had just lost his only mother-like firgue would be more sad, but he wasn't. She had always been a distant figure. She was a mediocre ruler. Not loved, not hated. Not much at all to be written down in history.

Outside, an alarm began to ring. Wolf tilted his head and stood up. That was the shadow alarm.

He walked to the window and looked outside.

And a shadow looked right back at him.

"Whoa!" Wolf exclaimed and stumbled backward, reaching for the sword he had tossed down on the bed. How did it get up to his window so fast! Goddamn, the thing was huge!

"Watch out!" He heard, and out of reflex he rolled to the other side of his bed and to the door.

His window broke into a shards and the cold evening wind of August blew in. Wolf immediately ran around, fighting his desire to cowardly run out the door, and went back to fight the shadow, which was inching its way into his room. He raised his sword.

"I SAID MOVE!"

And in that moment it was as if time froze.

And a woman completely dressed in white armor edged in blue swung in from nowhere and drove a silver spear right through the shadow's heart, her long black hair tied into a long ponytail which fluttered behind her neck. Her bangs were long, and they accented her sharp eyes.

Her red eyes that were glittering with silver.

She was beautiful.

Wolf felt his heart skip a beat.

The shadow exploded, and time sped up, and the force of the explosion forced Wolf backwards and with a thump, he hit his head on the wooden frame of his bed. As he rubbed his head, his vision became fuzzy.

The woman glanced down at him once, and then lifted her foot back onto the windowsill and activated her spear's fast travel mode, and it expanded out wings. As she prepared to jump from his window, he lifted a hand.

"W-wait a minute... Stay! Don't-"

She glared down at him, irked. Wolf could tell she wanted to run to the battle. He sat up. "What's your name?!"

Outside, shouts of distress and electric explosions of the stun guns were heard. She looked out the window, and then at her new king. She had reached her decision. She put her other foot on the window.

"My men are dying. I couldn't care lass about whatever the fuck you want."

And the savior jumped out and her spear's wings carried her into the middle of the battle, and more stun gun explosions were heard.