tiffany and celestine are knights of the queendom of Kamuro, where many kitsune are employed as mages. kitsune shapeshifting typically extends only to themselves, but kitsune are capable of fusing with / possessing other beings, and some powerful kitsune are capable of budding off a new orb of foxfire / hoshi no tama from their own, allowing them to gift shapeshifting power to others, including fusing other beings together. still, binding their gift to mundane peoples requires an expensive ritual, which in Kamuro takes the form of a special kind of marriage in the military.

tiff and cel grew up in noble houses of middling stature and were friends as children: tiff, a rambunctious and adventurous girl, cel a shy and quiet, but thrillseeking, closeted lady, bonding over artistic passion and their shared alienation from gender norms. they struggled in military training, so by the time of their knighthood they initially found themselves posted to glorified office desks pushing paperwork for noble estates; frustrated, their parents shoved them into a state adventuring corps, where the two fell fully in love. their families resisted their marriage, but the queen's government - seeking fusions to bolster the army - gave them the okay, overriding the authority of their houses. tiff sees herself as cel's protector of sorts, but they both share an adventurous and subby streak and like getting into Situations...

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a fusion of two (or more) people results in a being of double their strength and then some, along with heightened magical proficiency in varying fields. as such, they are valued by the military, yet their desirability is held in tension by a few factors. for one, fusion only works between people who share an exceptionally strong bond, and for another, most eligible warriors are noble-born (both the nobles and the queen being reluctant to grant such power to mere peasants). both conditions are not entirely palatable to the aristocrats of the quarreling warrior-noble houses, who tend to be more interested in backstabbing and power-play than truly sharing their lives with another, and who would rather arrange strategic alliances through marrying off their children to unhappy homes than see them run off with the spawn of some house with whom they share no interests. this is all more than acceptable to the queen, though, who would sooner see the power of the houses diminished so she can get on with her ambitious conquest of the surrounding area and raids on the frontier of the Respublica Sylvia, a powerful empire on the mainland. so the policy of the armed forces officially promotes love in the ranks, and the royal government has established a couple of towns specifically geared to conducting the requisite rituals, like a little Manhattan Project for amorous supersoldiers.