This is a shorter update than I'd intended due to not quite having the time to write out more. Next time this one wins, I'll do the rest of the girls.
Of course it should go without saying that the other girls in their test group would not be going through the same scenarios. No, no, that wouldn't do at all. One of the unique aspects of any Magical Girl show is the backstory, the way that they became a hero for justice (or whatever) in the first place. Besides! They all had such disparate personalities, goals and outlooks that the same method would hardly work for each of them.
For the time being Asmodeus would content himself by peeking in on them to see how they were getting on. It really was fun toying with ordinary human hearts like this. Ah, how wonderful and joyous it was to spread the wonder and joy of Magical Girls to those who tried to deny them! Was this how humans felt when giving gifts at Christmas time to those they adore and cherish? Perhaps! If so, then that holiday was more twisted up than he had assumed.
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Dani had taken about three steps out of the changing room when everything went straight to hell. At first she'd thought the guy approaching her was in a costume for a show. It sure looked the part. A dumb black oversized hoody, with the hood up, covering a plain white mask covering their dumb face. What else was she supposed to think? Didn't give him a second thought, right up until he walked up to her, pulled his hand out of his pocket and stuck a nasty looking knife in her face.
"You'll do nicely," he rasped, grabbing her wrist while she stared at the pointy end of the knife. It's funny. She'd always criticised tv shows and movies where a bad guy grabs a woman's wrist and she becomes totally helpless. Truth was, she had half a mind to kick this guy in the shins and judo toss him to the floor. Trick was, that knife was really, really sharp looking and the other half of her mind was insisting on several scenarios where, for example, that knife found its way into her kidney. "Back inside! Now!"
"Hey, what the hell are you -" Dani began to protest, but that knife got a little bit closer to the end of her nose. You know, it wouldn't take much for one of those serrated edges to nick an artery. She backed up, going into the dressing room again nice and quiet, though inside she was imagining the very nasty things she'd do to this lunatic the second she got the chance.
"Handcuff yourself to a chair," the maniac ordered, pulling out a pair of handcuffs from his other pocket. "Hey, don't give me that look. I'm not touching filth like you unless I have to. Got it?"
"Filth like me?!" Dani yelled. "Last I checked, I -"
Ohh, that was a nasty, nasty knife. Tsk! Dani sat her ass down, held her hands behind her back and slipped on the handcuffs, hearing them click behind her. The guy probably had the only key. They were pretty sturdy as well. This entire situation was beyond ridiculous.
At the very least the guy wasn't paying her much attention anymore. He was searching the room for something. Forcing open drawers, checking behind mirrors, tossing the costumes all over the place, even going so far as to cut them open.
"Stupid," the mystery figure groused. "Dumb! Girly! Mind numbing! Urgh, this stuff makes me sick! You make me sick! You magical girl performers, pandering and cloy, sickeningly sweet. Jerkoff material for boys, and awful role models for girls."
"Oh, and here was me thinking this was about money or something," Dani said. "You got a hate boner for magical girls, huh?" Not that she could disagree with his sentiment. "So, what the hell are you trying to pull anyway? You gonna hold me hostage? Kill me? For what? Fame? Money?"
"To make them admit what they're up to!" the stranger yelled. "Guh! No sign of it here. I know they're using enchanted props to cast their magic spell, but it's not here!"
Conspiracy theorist central, you let one of your nuttier members loose. "So, let me get this clear. You think there's some sort of weird conspiracy going on around here? Well, yeah, buddy! It's the same as every other conspiracy! It's called capitalism. Companies ain't evil, they're amoral. They go where the money is. If leaning right wing makes 'em cash, they'll go that way. If leaning left makes 'em richer, they'll go that way instead. The only control they want over you is to separate you from your dough."
As much as Dani didn't care for magical girls, she could at least feel like her dislike was believable. This guy though, he was taking that dislike way too far. Where she was seeing this as a marketing powerhouse being used to make rich assholes richer, he was apparently putting a deeper meaning behind it all.
"You don't even see it," the guy continued, laughing a little. "You're playing to a stereotype, and you're totally blinded by what's going on right in front of you. The subliminal messages, the enchantment they're putting on people to make them compliant, that's not the bullshit you think it is. The bullshit is the act that dumb sluts like you put on, pandering to the masses - Hell, I bet you even wish that magic was real, huh?"
"At this very moment in time, I would very much like it if magic were real," Dani admitted. Once again, her attention was drawn to that nasty looking knife.
Ugh! What a total creep! She wasn't much caring for the way he was fiddling with that knife while staring at her, either. It felt like he was about to step forward at a moment's notice. If he couldn't find whatever the hell he was looking for here, then he might start taking more drastic measures. Try to get her to talk. Or maybe cut her up like he'd cut up those costumes, imagining he might find it inside her.
You can't negotiate with someone like that. You can't reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into. She could feel the gears turning in his head. Turning in the direction that she was worried about. Stepping closer, and closer, and -
And then she noticed his shadow was moving strangely. In a way quite incongruent with the light.
"I get it... They don't keep it in the costumes or the props like we thought," he said. Then stepped closer with the knife. "They keep it in the wanton sluts calling themselves actresses. The spark. The lifespark that lets them work their magic, weaving their web of control over society."
Dani wasn't staring at the knife anymore. She blinked, and turned her head just slightly, watching the shadow dance behind him. His shadow sort of... Made a shush motion. You know. Putting its finger to where its mouth probably was.
"Let's cut you open and see what you're made -" the lunatic began - but then strands of darkness shot out, grabbing his raised arm before the knife could descend. His own shadow began to wrestle with him for control of the knife. "Wh-what the hell?! What is - Hey!"
Dani watched in disbelief as her own shadow then reachd out, into the man's pocket and pulled out a key. The key to the handcuff. It zipped back, crawling across the floor, then went behind her and unlocked it. The handcuff fell to the floor with a satisfying clunk sound, and at the same instant the lunatic managed to pull his knife out of his shadow's grasp and stabbed it in the chest. It fell to the ground much the same way a person would As if it had been really damaged, and - And for some reason Dani felt really annoyed to watch it die like that, when it had saved her life.
And so, she did what she should have done from the word go. She decked this asshole right in the jaw, then with a gesture sent out the shadows of the room to grab him, hold him down to the ground. Then words fell from her lips. Words that surprised her in how good it felt to say them out loud.
"Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternal darknesses! That's why I, Artificial Shadow, will work tirelessly to fight for those who remain oblivious to the injustice that preys upon them! Don't be afraid of the dark!"
She aimed her finger at this conspiracy theorist, and tugged on something ethereal - and then darkness flowed out of his body. Thick, syrupy darkness. It wasn't like the shadows of the room, it was more like metaphorical darkness, the sort that dwells within the human heart. Dani stared at it. Taking a deep, deep breath. This was... jealousy. Misplaced lust. This person was aroused by the magical girl programming, but had a background that was insanely religious. When his little sister had expressed an interest in magical girls, and he'd found out about it, something inside him broke. From there, he was spurred on by similar minded lunatics online. Pushed, and pushed, and pushed until the echoes bouncing off the walls had led him here, today, with a knife, intending to find evidence of - Something or other. It was too murky for her to see further.
Fine by her. She grabbed his knife and stabbed that darkness, letting out a scream of "Nyctophobia!" as the knife was engulfed in its own shadow, piercing that darkness and dispelling it. A strange shudder went through Dani - No, Artificial Shadow's body. She didn't quite grasp how she'd acquired this power, but... hell, maybe she could use it to right a few wrongs in the world by eliminating wicked darkness that hid within the light, one piece of it at a time.
<hr>
Asmodeus applauded. "Bravo, bravo!" he said. "A truly splendid scenario, allowing Dani to understand that Magical Girls don't have to be cute and cloy, and sweet to the point it makes you sick. You don't need friendship speeches and their ilk to be a successful magical girl, so long as you have potent theming and interesting personalities. Excellent work on the villain, by the way. Contrasting him against her own dislike of Magical Girls was an inspired touch."
"Errrr?" Agnes muttered to herself. "I, uh, didn't actually do that. You said you didn't need my help with the others, remember?"
Asmodeus stopped for a moment and stared hard at the youth. "You mean he was a real nutjob that broke into the studio?" he asked. Agnes nodded. "Oh dear. How terrible. We'd better call the police."
"Wouldn't you rather eat his soul?" Agnes asked.
"Nah, she removed the tasty part already. Besides, it's best to keep things as mundane as possible where we can. Human police will be more capable of tracking down any accomplices to this little <i>mundane</i> crime, and mete out appropriate punishment. Oh well! At least you timed giving her those shadow powers at a good moment."
"I didn't do that either," Agnes said.
Both of them stared at each other for a moment. That entire thing had happened outside of their control. Oh well! It had worked out perfectly so... great?
"Now, let's see, who should we look at next...?"
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