View source for Hello Darkness, My New Friend (Miho Aiuchi)

{{Cutscene Header
|Date of Scene=2023/08/16
|Location=Penguin Park
|Synopsis=Miho has finally figured out how to channel the power in the old bangle. But that's not all.
|Cast of Characters=44
}}
Sometimes, Miho had fantasized about being a demon, or a catgirl. After all, if your assigned gender could be wrong, who was to say ''any'' of your birth designations were automatically correct, up to and including species? And on that note, who was to say that Light was automatically good and Darkness was automatically bad? The Darkness, and the idea of wielding The Power Of Darkness, were ''cool''.

... If Miho had considered the fact that these were baseless fantasies with no connection to the real world, or if she hadn't rushed into it as fast as she could, or, heck, if she'd had a complete and unfettered conversation with ''anyone'' who knew how magic worked instead of trying to do everything alone, the next several months might have gone very differently.

But this was not that story.

Miho sat in the cluster of trees in Penguin Park shortly before sunset, staring at the bangle on her left wrist, her bicycle on one side and her helmet on the other. There had been a ''lot'' of false starts, but she was pretty sure she knew how to channel the spirit now.

"Okay," she mumbled. "Time to, um ... to g-go ahead and, and do this thing!"

She took a deep breath, grasped the bangle with her right hand, and mentally reached into it. For a moment, there was a faint blue glow from her hand.

Mentally, Miho plunged into the dead spirit. It was cold and dark -- not physically, but in a way that chilled her very soul. More-or-less as she'd expected, of course; based on her experiences with Witches and Puella, it seemed to her that magic was just like that.

Miho's gut instincts were actually fairly good, and they were screaming at her that this was a bad idea. But here and now, once again, she chose to write them off as merely anxiety. Her fingers glowed more brightly as she drew on that darkness.

... Nothing happened.

Miho adjusted her glasses, and the glow faded. "Well ... ''obviously'' nothing's happened," she said to herself, in a chiding but confident tone she'd never heard coming out of herself before. "I'm not actually ''doing'' anything with it!" ... even if her voice ''did'' sound just as scratchy as ever, and still on the wrong side of androgynous. "Okay, that's ... cool and stuff," she said in her normal tone. "Um ..." Okay good, it looked like she was fully in control.

She smirked, and got to her feet. "Hello, this is the spirit of Noroima, the Fox-Witch of Darkness!" she said. "Hm. I suppose ''I'll'' take on that name, too, though I'm more of a cat-person. She was defeated by the magical girl Jade Witch Wonder -- ahh, Chika-chan. I ''do'' hope you found peace after the first Noroima died." Miho was startled at her own earnestness, and the vividness of the memory of a blue-haired magical girl ("magical girl"? Was that the correct term?) in white and jade-green, wearing a witch's hat. "And the first Noroima's civilian name was 'Midoriyama Norika.' Her goal was --"

Miho mentally came to a screeching halt as the memory surfaced.

She broke into a wide nervous grin. "Oh. Uh. Wow." She laughed. "That ... is a ''goal''. Uh. Sure, uh, let's do that!" She shook her head. "Oh ''man'' I can't believe it, I'm like ''speaking'' ... s-so well and stuff!" She laughed. "All right. Yeah. Time to, to get this show on the road!"

She grasped the bangle, and the blue glow returned. Slowly, it faded to a shade of jade green, then was joined by streaks of blackness. She ''tugged''.

A torrent of shadows erupted from the bangle, and she let out a scream, cut off as she vanished from the world.

She landed on her hands and knees, on a dusty arid ground. Her hands were more pale than they should have been. She was wearing black robes with jade-green trim, and she felt the weight of a hat.

She looked up, and found herself face to face with a fallen jade statue of a winged fox. She was surrounded by the ruins of an old Japanese castle, in a style from several hundred years ago when Norika had originally lived.

The landscape itself was cracked and dusty, with a dark sky. Crystals and bizarre plants jutted out of the ground. She could ''feel'' the darkness of the very world she'd been transported to, suffusing the very air.

And with the dark power now coursing through her, Miho found didn't mind the Dusk Zone. It was comfortable, really.

This, too, alarmed her. This, too, she set aside.

She stood up. Somehow, she felt taller. She knew, without looking into a mirror, that she now had the narrow face, close-set eyes, thin eyebrows, and high cheekbones which, in Japan, were traditionally collectively called "fox-faced."

The new Noroima smiled and rose off the ground. Her glasses gleamed, obscuring her eyes. "Wow," she said, in a clear and bright voice which sounded nothing like Miho. "I got your 'other path' right here, Kyubey-san!" She laughed out loud. "Goodness! ''I'' may not be a demon yet ..." Ghostly green horns appeared on her head, with a matching spade-tipped tail coming out behind her, clipping through her hair and clothing. "... but I ''did'' get my wish to 'transform into a girl'! And since I'm another, smaller 'Norika', if anyone asks, my name shall be Nori''ko''."

Miho paused. "Also, uh, I need to look more, like, catlike, kind of thing," she said, and took off her witch hat. "Let's see ..." A snap of her fingers, and a jade-green ribbon materialized around the base of the hat above the brim, with a cute bow resembling cat-ears.

And then she frowned. "Wait."

She looked down at the witch's hat. Then she looked over her robes. "Is ... i-i-is this a freakin' ... dark-shadowy version of ''Chika's'' henshin?" Miho said flatly. "Where did ''this'' come from!?" ''Wow'' her new voice sounded weird.

She peered at the bangle, still around her wrist, and examined it with Noroima's new magical senses.

Powerful sealing magic kept Norika's spirit inside it. It also held the Jade Blessing which Chika had used to transform. The seal also kept the two ''very separate''.

"Oh. Uh." Miho stared. "Yeah. That ... I-I-I am ''not'' gonna let those two mix, in any way shape or form. I would rather ... not ... explode."

Noroima put her hat back on. "''Right'', then," she said. "... Hm. How easy is it to get back home?"

Very easy, it seemed. With the power innate to most beings who could wield Dark Energy, she flung herself through dimensions, and into Miho's bedroom, hovering a foot or two above the ground.

She furrowed her brow. There was a pause, and then she heard footsteps approaching from Kurumi's room.

Noroima quickly flung herself ''back'' through dimensions to the ruins of the castle.

"Let's try that again," she said. "Back to ''where I was before''."

She Duskported back to the trees Penguin Park. "''There'' we go," she said. "Hahaha ... wait, can I change back?"

It was a simple flick of the mind. In a swirl of darkness, Noriko changed back into Miho.

She fell back to the ground and stumbled. "Ow!" She laughed. "Okay, like ... yeah. My ''real'' body's still kind of ... ''dysphoria'', but. Like. Yeah, I can work this! Yeah!"

She smirked. "Oh man," she said. "I'm gonna ''change the world!'' Heh. Heheheheh. Ahahahahah! ''HAHAhaHAhaHAHAHAHAHA!!'' ... ehhhhhhhhh."

Miho adjusted her glasses, grimacing. "Wow," she muttered. "Like. What ''have'' I gotten myself into? Light and Darkness, and stuff?" She shook her head. "Well. I mean, I, I guess I'm just doing ''this'' now!"

----

But that wasn't all.

A collection of artifacts, scattered to the four corners of the earth and previously thought to be inert, began to awaken. They were simple orbs of black jade, about twice the width of a baseball, each with a distinct image etched onto it.

In one of Obsidian's storage sites, one in which the image depicted a rat. It grew a dark aura, visible only if one was already touched by magic, and easily detected by the internal sensors.

At the bottom of Tokyo Bay, one in which the image depicted a goat. It, too, grew a dark aura.

In a mysterious curio shop hidden behind a bookstore, one with an image of a snake. Here, one depicting a dog. There, one depicting a pig. Elsewhere, one depicting a rabbit. Somewhere else, one depicting a horse.

Unbeknownst to Miho, the seven Shadow Jades, the only ones remaining from a set of twelve after the others were seemingly lost, had regained some of their power.

----

And deep in the Dusk Zone, far away from Castle Noroima, five black fires lit up.

A pair of giant jade-green fox-eyes opened. Jaws opened, which were huge enough to eat a person in a single bite.

Curse Devil Akunoroi, too, had begun to reawaken. It raised its gaze, as if trying to see something from across worlds.