The End Of The Beginning
By the year 2040, only a few battered-bastions remain on Earth. Within these bastions, microcosms barely holding a candle to what once was merely buy time waiting for the inevitable. Earth, if it could even be referred to as such, is merely a battered rock void of life outside of the aforementioned bastions. So impossibly battered in-fact, that it is slowly, yet surely, drifting apart into several separate fragments to never be joined again.
Each bastion, although self-sustaining, is suffering from the mere notion of dread. Once stubborn, vigorous, and willful humans are embracing the end and taking their own lives one by one. Ardent bastions now are serving as tombs - these tombs would continue to drift and drift on their respective gargantuan slabs of Earth for millions of eternities. Cruel and unremarkable is such a fate. All of the accomplishments of humanity - big and small, all erased by some peculiar fate.
Except, one bastion, one tomb, one girl, one beast, clung to hope until her body became nothing but primordial sludge contained within the womb of humanities apex predator. Sustained by an unholy symbiotic relationship between predator and prey - perpetrator and victim - her agony, tears, cries, and hope perpetuated for an infinite amount of time. How did she become the sole survivor? What predator sustains her? The kind of predator that wishes to torment, sustain, and perpetually violate the pure will of the untouched maiden: a gheist.
Humanity meddled in things above them and foolishly paid the price. Their intentions focused on the goodwill of humanity, yet flawed thinking they could control creatures whose very design is to systematically consume all life. The gheist, despite having a form, has no form in the mind of humans. Their grandeur and sheer superiority only allows the helpless onlooker to merely look through, rather than at, the all-consuming horror. One girl, of no name, somehow, someway, managed to stare at the gheist - directly, not through, not around, with a peculiar defiance that caught the attention of the most powerful gheist of all: A.S.H (ANNIHILATE - SUSTAIN - HERESY)
And for her stalwart gaze, she was rewarded with an eternity of cruel company. Initially, protected by A.S.H, eventually she too was swallowed, yet this time she ended up in the womb of the beast once all other forms of life, including other gheist, were consumed. A.S.H laid down on a drifting rock, serving as a bastion for humanities sole survivor, and as poor company. Probing the maiden's mind, learning humanities customs, nuances, and even tiny shameful abnormalities. Millions of eternities drifting through space, slowly rotting due to the cold void, allowed for A.S.H to finally succumb to the maiden's will. The maiden, or the sludge that remained of her, containing a tormented psychic echo that, through the gheist's sustained interest in the peculiar maiden, gestated both humanities last and first pregnancy.
What followed was a birth that manipulated time and space. A very raw energy came forth that played on the peculiar nature of existence, hinting that life may not be what it seems, and reality wound back to the year zero. Two eternal lifeforms exist - the predator and prey.
The prey would go on to use her own power and share it with other maidens, thus the Magical Girl was formed. Throughout history, many notable women displayed supernatural power, yet fell into obscurity.
The predator was in it for herself, but also wished to see a future where humanity survives. One shred of this desire is out of genuine compassion, understanding the beauty of life after millions of eternities to study it, yet therein lies an even more sinister purpose. If she can control the world, unite everyone under a common cause, destroy other gheists, then become the sole consumer of humanity - she would live forever while also pushing forward humanity beyond what they would ever accomplish.
Now, the year is 2028, the prey has appeared once again and is simply known as Pretty. She was the only magical girl for several months until the growing unrest in the world led to her bestowing her gift upon the fine maidens of humanity. To give power, is to give choice, and in choice is freedom. A number of magical girls, around 10 million or so, now exist with varied powers. All have their own agendas and freedom of choice. However will humanity cope with this sudden surge of girly energy?
The predator has a plan...
Duality
The predator, now known as Francesca Turner, owns a multinational corporation dabbling in a multitude of business fronts. Everything ranging from Turner Fashiom to Turner Entertainment - a step deeper into her corporation's history raises questions. Where did she come from? How did she command such charisma to topple competition in a merely a few years? Of-course, the sinister answer is one no-one except the most outlandish conspiracy theorist would dare propose. Ms. Turner is a gheist masquerading as a human - a super predator preying on humanity in a careful methodical way via using there own systems against them. She builds familiarity by fronting charities to help the third world, supporting the dismantling and reform of the second world, and supplying the commodities the first world relies on. This bubble of familiarity and support, careful lobbying of several organizations, the largest social media platform under her control, and an otherworldly charisma has the world slowly slipping into her hands bit by bit. It is not a matter of if Francesca Turner will see every border dissolved - it is simply a matter of when.
Despite being the highest form of a predator, Francesca's intentions are awfully low. She merely wants to control her food source and be the only consumer of said food source. Now, one might question why it has to be sentient still breathing life that the gheist must consume. Surely, she could simply masquerade as one of us and enjoy the benefits of control - consuming as we do. Yet, this is where the duel nature of the beast comes into play. An eternity of studying her prey developed a certain fondness for humanity, yet her existence very much demands her consumption of all life - why? This is merely the nature of the predator and nothing more; however, the mercy the predator provides is the elimination of all competition which, in-turn, will allow for a new era of humanity to become reality. The old, dying, inadequate, and adversaries of her regime will be consumed at a steady rate to satiate her hunger. This price is small in comparison to the platform for the advancement which will see humanity expand beyond the reach of Earth and beyond the boundaries of the solar system.
Of-course, the matter of when Francesca controls every square foot of Earth does not account for three foils to her plans.
1.) Her own hunger
The biomatter of a living thing is intoxicating to a gheist. By consuming the fleeing, crying, and begging thing - a certain thrill is achieved. That thrill is not sated by simply consuming the dead (which is what Ms. Turner mostly has to settle for in the current times) and increasing levels of consumption must be achieved. If all went to plan, Francesca Turner could very well see herself succumbing to the temptation of consuming what she fought to create. Not merely plucking off the tertiary offerings and going directly for the core of the people - consuming and consuming.
2.) Other gheist
They slumber somewhere beneath the Earth's surface - contained within tombs that exist somewhere between our world and some unfathomable reality. And they know, they all know Francesca Turner, the human designated A.S.H gheist, seeks to destroy all of them to be the sole consumer of humanity. Francesca Turner knows the intricacies to what will cause them to awaken and begin their consumption and seeks to keep that information to herself. Theoretically speaking, a sudden gheist emergence, staggered at a reasonable rate, could threaten the future she seeks. And god forbid they all emerge at once, there assault will be even more ruthless considering they have formidable opposition from both Francesca and...
3.) Magical Girls!
The consequences of her captivity of the prey. Eternities and eternities spent drifting, rotting, and musing generated a new insight into reality. Said insight, which eludes nearly all humanity, allowed for reality to be reset which brought along the distant cousin of the gheist, which was gestated inside a gheist: Magical Girls - or rather a single girl who has the capability to make more.
These anomalous individuals have seen a sudden surge in the year 2028 in an unregulated mass. Never before in history have they existed in numbers more than a couple dozen, and now, they even outnumber the populations of many small countries. Even existing for a few months, some forward-thinking girls have already begun to divide into sub-factions declaring autonomy. Fortunately, for humanity and gheist alike, many girls remain ditsy teens only using their new found magical form as a way to garner attention rather than overthrow governments. Although, it is only a matter of time before they realize that there power means they do not have to mind authority...
Anarchy Reigns
The original Magical Girl, now known as Pretty, has existed along-side humanity in many distinct time periods. Although, she was not always known as Pretty. She claims that she never was anyone of significance and stayed out of the history books, seeking to empower various young girls throughout history to great things.
Pretty emerged in the year 2026 seemingly out of nowhere and stopped a short lived global conflict stemming from a food shortage. With her seemingly mystical power, she renewed scorched soil, nuclear wastes, and healed the wounded. Some hailed her as a pint-sized goddess, while others feared her power. Coping with the sudden reality of such an unexpected and unfathomably ridiculous being sent the world into a frenzy - and it only got worse from there.
Pretty spent the year of 2027 drifting country to country, attempting to establish peace, further curing blighted land, and fighting injustice. She was only met with mixed success and her ceaseless optimism drove her into a deep depression. Despite being a literal miracle, her peace was offset by hysteria. It seemed humanity was not ready to understand that reality is not so predictable. What made everything all the more horrible was the reality that a peaceful entity had stirred up hysteria, so how would humanity cope with the gheist below them and the single one among them?
2028 came around and Pretty used as much of her power as she could spare to give the Earth the gift of the Magical Girl. Every magical Girl was given a vision of the future Pretty had endured and heard the pleading voice of Pretty: "Please - no one else can stop them. No one else is ready! You, all of you, must come together and destroy the gheist!" She has not been seen since...
Many Magical Girls collectively informed nations of the message, but constant probing, digging, and examination of the Earth yielded no evidence to suggest gheist exist. Many Magical Girl's settled for this conclusion and broke off to do as they please.
In an irony only time would reveal, the predator herself began to screen Magical Girl's for aptitude to serve as an anti-gheist force. This is where you, a young Magical Girl come into play - you have very little in the way of training, but you apparently have much potential according to Francesca Turner. She has invited you to abandon your old life for a new one under her employment. Everything you could ever want will be provided to you as payment and your heroics will serve humanity as a whole.
Of-course, to the average girl this is a dream come true - little do they know a predator lurks right next to them, one with quite the voracious appetite...
Mixtape Ghost N