"He didn't threaten to marry me," Serafin points out. "I could just leave. But I'm not gonna."

He grabs the mop and attacks the floor with it. Metaphorically speaking. This floor is sure getting cleaned.

"...OK," says the girl, who will just take another mop and, uh, clean this other part of the floor somewhat more calmly.

Time passes.

Not very much of it. A few seconds, maybe.

"I don't even mind the detention," he says, possibly more to himself than to her. "I wasn't paying attention, fine, fair enough. But I practice more than anyone else at this school! I don't need him telling me to practice every day!"

His mopping is getting steadily more aggressive.

"Wow," says the girl, thinking about how much some of the other students practice. "Um, maybe he just wasn't thinking about it?"

He snarls under his breath, glaring at nothing in particular.

"If he's not thinking about what he says to his students then what's the point of calling himself a teacher!"

"....I guess?" She doesn't seem entirely sure what to do with this.

The mop handle cracks apart in his hands. He throws the pieces on the floor with a hiss of rage.

"I'm gonna burn down his house," he announces, and strides out of the room as though intending to accomplish the deed this very minute.

The girl's pendant glows softly. 

"You're - hey, wait!"

She's not supposed to leave the room until she's done, but she feels like Mr. Cat will be even more upset if his house gets burnt down. Besides, Serafin has a heart shard.

She carefully deposits the broken mop in the closet, then follows him at what she thinks is a safe, relatively stealthy distance.

He's tall and moving pretty fast; she's going to have to hurry to keep up.

—But she doesn't keep falling behind forever; in his haste, he trips over a tree root, and immediately spins around and punches the tree.

Yeah, that's definitely a heart shard. Anger, maybe frustration? She doesn't want Mytho to be angry or frustrated - she was really hoping she'd be able to give him some nice feelings at some point - but she can't very well leave the heart shard where it is.

She'll just keep following until she's handed a suitably dramatic moment; she thinks maybe she can only turn into Tutu when it's dramatically appropriate.

Serafin is... honestly doing surprisingly well, in this fight he is having with this tree.

But the tree is still made of wood, and he is still made of flesh and bone, and so when the one goes crack the other goes crunch and Serafin hisses and cradles his broken hand.

....she has no idea whether that counts as a dramatically appropriate moment. Maybe it does? But maybe it won't work and she'll just end up being herself and then he'll know she was following him and he's kind of scary right now -

She'll just hide behind this other tree for a bit and see if he maybe calms down on his own?

Whatever language he's speaking, to himself in a furious undertone, it isn't German anymore.

Calm does not seem to be the direction in which he is headed.

"Now, now, now," says a voice from nowhere in particular, momentarily audible only to Duck. "That's hardly conduct befitting the heroine of this story, is it. If you're the heroine, you've got to be able to conquer your fears and throw yourself into danger without a thought for your own safety. Now, why don't you find out what's happening here, Princess Tutu!"

Aha! OK then.

The sun dims and is replaced with a spotlight on Serafin. A woman in a white dress and a golden tiara steps out of the forest.

"Hello, Serafin."

"What??????"

The woman seems unperturbed by his confusion. "The feeling you are experiencing is not your own. Will you dance with me?"

...He has... a lot of questions. Too many to even begin to articulate.

But Serafin is always ready to dance.

He reaches for her hand, touches his fingertips to hers—

—and spins away, leaping into the air, returning in an instant from confusion to rage.

The dance that expresses his feelings is fast, sharp, chaotic, intense. He never lingers in one place for more than the time it takes to spin or step or leap away, never takes a moment to reorient or catch his breath, never slows down. Flames blossom in his wake, trailing his limbs as they slash the air.

The forest around them lights on fire, as the flames he trails hit the trees around them. Princess Tutu watches his dance with something like sadness, even grief. She doesn't try to put out the fire; she needs to address its source. She answers with a dance of her own - this one is slow, graceful, gentle, open. Listening.

"Why are you in such pain, Serafin?"

"I—don't know—"

He dances faster, burns brighter.

"I hate that teacher! He's annoying and unfair and always getting on my case about paying attention just because I never make excuses when he catches me daydreaming! But why did I just try to fight a tree???"

"The pain you are experiencing is not your own," explains Tutu. "Someone else's anger has made its home in yours." 

"That's not a thing that should be able to happen!!!"

The fire roars with him, spinning into an inferno; it obscures him almost completely, reducing him to nothing but a dark shadow dancing with the flames.

This is strictly more terrifying than beating up the tree. But she isn't terrified; this is what she's here for.

"No," she agrees. "But it does, and so it must be fixed."

"I hate this town!" the shadow yells. "I hate all this weird magic nonsense! Ballet is the only good thing in the world and now that's magic too apparently!! I want to go home!"

—and on home, the fire freezes. He comes to an abrupt halt, panting slightly, poised atop a column of ice-sculpted flames. All the burning trees are frozen too, now, the wreckage suddenly calm and quiet and still and cold.

"Oh, how delightful," says the voice, to itself, in a different place where neither of them can hear it. "How will you go about solving this one, Princess Tutu, when you've only begun to understand this town yourself?"