One day, I was playing BbS, as Aqua, in the Castle of Dreams, and then I found some Red Hot Chilis in that pond place. And then I wondered what I looked like fighting them.

...Never in my life would I expect to use Prince Charming in a story.

Aqua walked over the red carpet in the Castle of Dreams, looking to see the prince after an encounter with Terra. On her way, she passed three women, one older than the others, which she paid no mind to. An image of two menacing, red eyes flashed in her mind, surely an omen. Aqua made a suspicious glance back, sensing darkness in those three. As well as the three ladies, she saw an tall old man wearing blue, running in the prince's direction with a glass slipper in one hand. Aqua assumed he was the Grand Duke of the castle.

The Duke passed her, and Aqua hurriedly took her chance to ask, "Who are those ladies?"

He stepped over, in no less of a hurry than he was before. "Oh, er, if I recall correctly, that is Lady Tremaine and those are her daughters." His speech sounded as dangerously clumsy as his steps, and Aqua feared he would trip over an evil stepmother's foot and drop the glass slipper he held.

Returning her gaze to the three ladies, she left behind her worry of the glass slipper. There was something very wrong about them, she thought. Their dresses and hair came to mind. Oh, and the darkness, too. Aqua guessed that the darkness caused both disasters.

"You came back!" The call snapped Aqua out of her thoughts. When Aqua turned to see the prince, his expression automatically changed to one of a man who had mistakened a blond woman in a puffy dress for a blue-haired woman in bizzare but functional fighting clothes. "Oh," he muttered softly. "My apologies. I was mistaken."

"Your Highness," the Duke said, "I found this on the castle stairs." Aqua deemed the conversation as none of her business, and looked back at the direction of the three ladies, who by this time were nowhere in sight.

"A glass slipper?" the Prince asked. Aqua looked a little harder before finally returning to the royal duo's conversation, seeing that the ladies were gone.

"One dropped by a lovely young lady," the Duke elaborated as Aqua stepped in to get a closer look, "and I'll search far and wide to find the maiden to whom this belongs." Now that she got a good look at it, the slipper radiated with light that Aqua only imagined in fairy tales.

"You will?" the Prince excitedly said.

"Of course, your highness," the Duke confirmed. "After all, you've finally found someone you wish to marry. Upon hearing that happy news, your father, the king, has decreed that a quest shall begin immediately throughout the kingdom. And I will start with the closest residence – that of Lady Tremaine." What a coincidence. The three ominous ladies that Aqua had found happened to live closest to the castle. She watched the Duke walk away in all his clumsiness, paying much attention to the slipper that seemed to teeter on the edge of the man's wobbly hand.

At nearly the same time, the prince walked away to his room, but Aqua had other things to think about. Lady Tremaine... I had better pay her a visit.

The Prince anxiously walked up to his room, hoping that the Duke would find the girl soon. As soon as he opened the door, he made a beeline for the armchair, and promptly collapsed on it in a manner that would surely make any high-class townsperson sneer in disgust.

"Son!"

The sound of his father's voice straightened him up immediately. "Father!"

The short, stocky king made a hearty laugh and put his hand on his son's shoulder. "Son, I am so happy that you found someone right for you," he said with his rich, baritone voice "And I know the Duke has already told you, but I don't care. I will repeat it as much as I want, because I just can't stress it enough."

The Prince chuckled. His father was very energetic for someone his old age, but for the sake of his life, he wouldn't say that to his face. "Thank you, father, but if you don't mind, I'd like to have some time to myself for a while."

"Hm?" The King raised a thick, bushy brow. "Why so?"

"I'm a little worried, that's all," the Prince quietly answered. "I just need to think."

The king's eyelids lowered in fatherly concern. "Listen, son, I told the Duke to search the entire kingdom for that girl. And I will not stop searching until she is found. If I have to, I'll look around the world, every country, every house, every soul, even those long gone, just to find her for you." He paused. "So don't worry about not finding her, are we clear?"

The prince smiled a little. He felt his father was exaggerating. "Alright."

"Good!" The King went back to his usual high-spirited self. "Now you can try getting to bed if you want to, or you could wait until the Duke finds her, but I wouldn't recommend that, considering the sheer size of the kingdom. Oh, the kingdom." He shivered. The Duke had some task ahead of him. The king made a mental note to reward him later on.

"I'll stay awake for a while longer, thank you." The Prince rose from his seat and looked out the window over the courtyard, finding something quite odd.

"I'll go ahead, then." The King made his way toward the door.

The Prince blinked. In the courtyard's pond, there was a girl. The one he'd met earlier. She was fighting... floating pots? With a giant key-shaped sword of some sort? "F-Father, come look at this!"

"Hm? What is it?"

"There's a girl in the pond outside! A-and she's fighting these floating pots with this giant key! Father, you have to come look!"

"Oh, come now, junior, that's preposterous!"

"I'm serious! She just electrocuted them with a ring of lightning! A-and now she's glowing! Her key is spinning without her touching it! I'm not imagining it, father!"

The King didn't know what made his son act like this. As far as he knew, true love didn't make someone see things like that.

"And now she's twirling around with this ribbon of light around her!"

"...Son, you should probably get to bed."