Story: Magical Girl Syndrome

Continues from here. This is something a little bit different. I see potential for deconstruction, and I like what I see. Option suggestions please if you have them!



The audience gasped as Sailor Princess let out a cutesy shriek upon realising that her breasts were uncovered by that last attack. “D-don’t look!” she cutely begged, crossing her arms over her chest in a manner that almost managed (if not for its complete and abject failure in the intended objective) to cover herself up. “Kya! This is so embarrassing! Please don’t look!”

But Audrey was not done yet. Her back arched and in the next moment she pounced with claws outstretched and fangs bared. Sailor Princess ducked underneath the airborne adversary, who sailed over and landed expertly on feet padded by the feline costume. In an instant she bounced back around and began to stalk the downed magical girl, relishing in the moment.

“N-now now, miss Audrey!” Sailor Princess pleaded, backing off on the ground - and incidentally flashing her panties once again to anyone so much as glancing in her direction - “Don’t let your hatred consume you like this! Do -Do you really want to be controlled by him like this? You can fight it! You can win!”

Audrey hissed. “That isss what I hate about you! You really are ssssuch a ssssilly little bimbo! Look at you! Flashing your panties and your breasts, pretending to be embarrasssssed! You make me ssssick!”

Suddenly, the bunny took centre stage. “Come on everyone! Sailor Princess needs your encouragement! Give her all your support, and she can overcome this latest threat!”

Asmodeus scooped up the bunny by the ears and casually, cruelly tossed him aside. Behind him, the magical girl and the catgirl stood frozen, in a manner somewhat akin to characters from a beat-em-up game waiting for the announcer to call for the start of the round.

“Feh! Foolish bunny! Can none of you see how trite this so called heroine is? She encourages brainless behaviour, perpetuates stupidity in girls as an admirable trait. Audrey is right to think she’s little more than an airheaded bimbo! I am not the villain and never have been! Sailor Princess is the true villain! Cheer for Audrey! Cheer for her with all your heart and soul!”

The audience began to boo rather loudly as Asmodeus left the stage with his head held high. Once he was out of sight, the boos rapidly transformed into loud cheers for Sailor Princess.

“You can do it!” one would cry out.

“Sailor Princess, save that poor girl!”

“Help my girlfriend!” Tim added. “Don’t let that - that monster use her feelings for evil purposes! Don’t let him twist someone’s honest opinion around to make them something they’re not!”

Audrey turned to hiss at the audience, while Sailor Princess stared at them with tears forming in her eyes. “You believe in me that much?” she whispered (though let’s not analyse how everyone in the room heard it loud and clear). “Then... Then I can’t give up so easily either!”

“Rowr! Give up, Bimbo Princess! I’m too quick and too powerful for you to beat!”

But the magical girl would not stand down. If anything, quite the opposite. She stood up with fierce determination in her eyes. “I’ll find a way to save you, Audrey. No matter how much of a - how much of a female dog you are! Which is weird, given you’re a cat, and stuff...”

“And how do you intend to do that?” Asmodeus chuckled. “You can’t use your friendship force if your hands are so occupied. Face it! For all your bravado, this is one enemy you cannot overcome!”

Sailor Princess stood her ground and a pink spotlight shone down upon her. The crowd fell hush in awe and wonder, knowing all too well what they were about to see. Wind picked up as if from nowhere, lifting and swirling Sailor Princess’ tiny, tiny skirt up around herself. Not that she noticed. Not that she would have cared if she had.

“In the name of love, in the name of courage, in the name of hope -”

“This is impossible!” Asmodeus screeched. “Impossible! She can’t do this! Attack her! Stop her! Kill her!”

But his new minion was rooted helplessly to the spot.

“I grant unto thee an eternal gift! Not given lightly! The bond beyond bonds, the strength beyond strength! I grant unto thee friendship everlasting!”

Sailor Princess brought her hands into a heart shaped gesture in front of herself, discretely pressing several buttons embedded into her gloves that caused a series of pink lasers to fire directly into Audrey’s forehead. The transformed girl slumped to the ground, her eyes closed.

“Audrey!” Tim gasped. Was she - was she alright?

“You’ll pay for this!” Asmodeus snarled. “I’ll get you next time! You hear me? Next time!”

Sailor Princess and her pet bunny watched the villain depart, then waited a few seconds before turning to the audience to deliver a cutesy curtsey and the simultaneous lines “Thank you for coming! I hope you enjoyed the show!”

The two then turned to one another as the lights dimmed. “That’s my line!” Sailor Princess whined.

“No, you idiot! You were supposed to tell them that love and friendship always triumphs over hate!”

“Wah! My pet bunny called me an idiot again!”

“St-stop crying already! Call yourself a hero?”

The audience chuckled, knowing that these two characters were always going to be like this. The closest of friends, and yet the two of them couldn’t stop arguing. This was what made them such a strong team, after all -

Ah, but not every member of the audience was thinking that. Tim was pushing his way towards the front, trying desperately to reach the stage to make sure his girlfriend was unharmed. The lights dimmed, and he froze in place in case he tripped and hurt himself, but when the lights came back on -

“Audrey? Audrey?! Where are you?!”

<hr>
“I think she’s coming to,” an unfamiliar voice said.

Whoever she was, she was right. Light was creeping in at the corner of her vision, and she rubbed away the sleep with an almighty yawn. This bed didn’t feel like hers. Come to think of it, the room she was in wasn’t a bedroom at all. As the colours and shapes came into focus, Audrey began to realise it looked much more like a -

“Why am I in a dressing room?” she asked, moments before her gaze fell upon four girls that she recognised to her own great shame. Four magical girls from different series that Tim was a fan of. She’d seen their poseable figures, seen their images on DVD covers and the like enough times to recognise those outfits. With a snort, she realised that she could have figured that out easily enough based on how ridiculous and skimpy their clothes were.

“You, um, fainted during the performance,” Sailor Princess said, squirming cutely in a repaired version of her sailor fuku. “S-so we brought you back here to recover, and -”

“And I’ve recovered. Thank you very much.” Audrey rubbed the side of her head as a sudden headache took hold. “The last thing I remember was that guy, Quasimodius -”

“Asmodeus,” Sailor Princess corrected.

“Yeah. Him. I remember him, then I wake up here. What are you talking about, what performance?”

Sailor Princess burst into tears and collapsed to the floor. One of the other magical girls rolled her eyes. while still another attempted to reassure Sailor Princess that she hadn’t done anything wrong, that she couldn’t help it, and some other nonsense that Audrey wasn’t particularly interested in at the moment.

“This would probably go a bit easier if we introduced ourselves,” the last of the girls said, casually inspecting her nails while reclining in a chair. “She doesn’t seem the sort to know who we are.”

All four girls nodded. Sailor Princess wiping tears from her eyes as she did so. “I’ll start! My name is Hinako Hayakawa! I used to be an airhead crybaby ditz without a friend in the world. But that all changed when I found my cute little pet bunny, who told me I was the reincarnated princess of an alien race! Now I spend my days making friends, and my nights battling evil with the power of friendship! All while dressed in an adorable sailor fuku! I am Sailor Princess!” she gave a curtsey. “Pleased to meet you, and I am so, so sorry for what I’ve done.”

“What you’ve done? What do you me-”

“We’ll deal with that later!” the tall one of the group interjected, stepping in front of Sailor Princess. “My name is Sakuko Higashiyama. I’m what you might call a delinquent. Always getting into fights, always up to my neck in hot water. Didn’t care for nothing or nobody. But that all changed when my gang got captured and turned into monsters by an evil interdimensional army. Cornered and scared outta my wits, I made a deal with one of their worst enemies, and took on her power when she died! Now I gotta fight ‘em off while dressed like a cheerleader! I’m High Kick, and I’m here to cheer you up! Whether either of us likes it or not.”

High Kick punctuated her name with, um, a high kick which almost seemed to occur by instinct whenever she said her name. Uh... huh... “High kick,” Audrey said. Everybody around the cheerleader ducked away. “High kick.” Again, but this time the cheerleader was shooting daggers with her eyes.

“Stop that. Really. Stop that.” If looks could kill...

“I’ll- I’ll go next! Ahem! M-my name is Joruri Sugihara, and -and my best friends are b-books. I love to st-study and prefer to be left alone! I dreamed of becoming a nurse or a doctor, anything in medicine... B-but one day all of my f-favorite characters came to life and- and started attacking people! I- I had to put them all back where they be-belonged, but had to-  had to fuse my soul with a  demon to ha-have the power to pull it off. Now I must pr-protect the boundaries between reality and fiction while dressed as a demonic nurse. I am Nurscubbus! D-Don’t let me take your temperature.”

The last of the girls let out a laugh and a sigh in the same breath before sliding off her seat. “Protect the boundaries between reality and fiction. How rich is that! Given how we all got mixed up in this mess in the first place.”
“F-fiction within fiction has h-happened before!” Nurscubbus insisted. “I just pro-protect the next layer down from this one. That’s all.”

“Fine, fine. Whatever. I guess it’s my turn now. My name is Eriko Kunikida, laziest girl you ever would meet. At least, until my parents were kidnapped by microbiological warlords with ideas magnitudes above their station and a dimensional alteration unit. Only with the assistance of my own future self was I able to awaken my hidden power that enables me alone to fight them off. I must battle them while dressed like a french maid. I am Heaven Maid! Can we get to the point now?”

Audrey gave the most sarcastic applause on record to all four of them.

“Can I go now?” she asked, continuing the applause.

“Nope!” High Kick said. “You know, maybe you shouldn’t feel so bad someone like her got roped into this.”

“Sakuko!” Sailor Princess gasped. “That’s a terrible thing to say! Nobody... deserves this! Nobody!”

“Deserves what?” Audrey asked. This wasn’t a good feeling she was having right now. What were they not telling her?

“Try introducing yourself,” Heaven Maid said. “That might help explain things a little.”

“...Okay. Fine. But after this, either you tell me what’s going on or I leave. My name is Audrey Meadows. I have a great boyfriend with weird interests, a dead end job and no real hopes for the future.” Audrey stopped for a second. She hadn’t meant to say that, or at least not that much about herself. “I’m often in a foul mood, particularly when it comes to my job or my boyfriend’s weird interests. In particular, I dislike the magical girl genre with a burning intensity. So imagine my shock to learn I was a magical girl!”

What.

“A rogue cat spirit possessed my body and tried to bend it to its will. It failed, but rather than being exorcised lingered on and gave me cat like powers to fight off other rogue spirits wherever I may find them! Though I hate what I have become, I fight for justice as Spirit Catty!”

What?!

High Kick laughed, Heaven Maid rolled her eyes, Sailor Princess cried a little and Nurscubbus sighed wearily.

“When certain people come into contact with a magical girl’s story, they often become magical girls themselves,” Heaven Maid explained.

“But... But magical girls aren’t real,” Audrey said, suddenly feeling very weak all over.

“W-We’re not ent-entirely sure about the mechanics,” Nurscubbus said. “Bu-but it seems that the less you want to be a magical girl, the more likely it is you b-become one.”

“I’m so sorry!” Sailor Princess sniffed. “Because of me... Because of me you’re stuck like the rest of us! You’re a magical girl now. I’m so sorry!”