Stardust — the very force that protects people from the hazards of space — also prevents them from inflicting any real harm on each other. This is good for you, but also makes it nearly impossible to kill any void-mad crazy hermits that may come after you. You basically have these options:

1) Run away somewhere they can’t find you.
2) Make sure they get lost, perhaps even permanently lost.
3) Trap them somewhere and hope they never escape.

Most experienced folks will recommend attempting them in that order.

Stunning, distracting, and disorienting your opponent is a great way to go. It buys you the valuable seconds you need to get far away and also prevents them from watching carefully so that they might follow your trail. Plus, if you disorient them significantly enough, they might even make the costly mistakes and misjudgments that results in them becoming very lost. If you see other travelers carrying weapons or other defensive equipment, it’s all there to create disorientation, not to hurt anyone.

All fancy maneuvers in “dance combat” are built using a standard stunt system. Specific characters will often standardize particular stunts, practicing them over and over to get better at them than they would if they just attempted them on the fly, but anyone can potentially attempt any kind of stunt at any time. Some well-known ones include distracting opponents with handfuls of dust (which create fast-moving clouds when thrown) or pebbles, reaching for stars behind one’s back or another screen, grabbing stars behind an opponent (which makes it harder for them to see your target), knocking your opponent head over heels, feinting at one star when really grabbing something else, etc.