History
Long, long ago, before anything else existed, there was a mighty and powerful spirit. This spirit possessed a Power that could create entire worlds, interweaving them through different dimensions with only weak ties to hold them together. The Power of this spirit was deemed so great that once the universe had begun to form, another power was created to seal it away. But although the spirit itself was sealed, that Power was thrown somewhere into the distant future before it could be destroyed. It is said a variation of this legend exists in every universe in some form so that someday, should that Power ever be rediscovered, those who find it will knows of its danger and eliminate it. But not every world is full of good intentions, and just as there are those who hope to see that Power destroyed, there are those who wish to harness that Power for themselves...
Now, imagine the universe is like a bag of marbles. Each marble is another universe with an infinite numbers of worlds within. When two universes line up just right, they have an overlap. Overlaps can be as simple as two worlds that happen to use the same language, or as complex as entirely identical parallel universes co-existing and yet never interacting. This bag of marbles stretches on infinitely in every direction, with an infinite number of worlds and possibilities within. And at the very center of this bag of marbles, containing more overlaps than any other, is Kari's universe.
Kari comes from an Earth not too dissimilar from our own. History was more or less the same, up until the mid-1900s. In the summer of 1950, a mysterious calamity struck the world. Suddenly and without warning, over 50% of the world's forests spontaneously caught fire and burned to the ground. But just as suddenly as the fires came, they stopped, leaving a mysterious substance over the ground that made the affected areas dead and non-arable. However, one thing of note is that although the flames were rather hot, very little smoke was released into the atmosphere at the time of the burning. Historians have since dubbed the event "The Hellfire" and mark it as the turning point for humanity.
With almost all sources for wood and wood-based products annihilated, paper became a very expensive commodity. The world was forced to search for an alternative. That alternative would inevitably drive the world very quickly into the digital age. However, in order to prepare the world for the transition from pen-and-paper to computers and technology, a temporary source of paper needed to be found. In the early 1960s, a worldwide collaboration was put into place: books, essays, papers, boxes, and old wood were gathered up and broken down in order to fuel the world's need for the product. Entire libraries became empty in the people's haste to maintain order in society. Government propaganda became rampant, calling for those who dared to hoard books to be arrested for obstructing what could be humanity's last lifeline.
The lack of air-cleansing forests had a negative impact on the planet's temperature, affecting the climate of the planet for decades after. As it was feared toxins were present in the wastelands that had once been forests, many who lived in these areas were forced to abandon the dry, dead land in search of somewhere they could live. Cities quickly became overcrowded and pollution ran rampant. The world was struggling. But with the first spark of the digital age, new industries began to pop up. The world was able to hang on...
Fast-forward 100 years and we have the world in which Kari grew up. The most profitable agencies are all environmental. In Japan, the largest is the Japanese Environmental Rehabilitation Agency (JERA), which focuses solely on reclaiming the land that had been devastated by the Hellfire over 100 years ago. In today's age, it was discovered that while the ashes and waste on top of the land was unusable, the land beneath had been preserved and was very fertile. Thus, efforts were started to clear away the wasteland and replant the forests. Most high school students graduate with the assumption that they'll either go on to work in a field of information technology, or in the fields as a "planter".
When Kari was young, her family was fairly poor. Her mother raised her on her own, with their extended family living on the other side of the country after her mother relocated for work in one of the big cities. The big cities were cheaper to live in due to the pollution; during weeks without rain, the smog would reach such levels of toxicity that people were often advised not to leave the house. Kari never knew her father, but she knew what he was like: tall, strong, tan, and probably rather hairy. No different from the men her mother usually dated while she was growing up. At the time, her mother was working in the buildings nearest the fields, usually interacting with the planters.
Working long hours with a long commute, her mother wasn't home very often, leaving Kari home alone for most of the day. This would be a trend that would continue well on through middle school and high school. Kari grew used to the solitude. It was difficult to meet with friends during the summer due to the city smog that made going outdoors dangerous, and the streets were rarely safe to walk around late at night after school ended. To occupy her time, Kari read novels. Of course, novels aren't quite the same for Kari's world as they are here. Instead, novels are much more like our modern-day visual novels, where words are accompanied by images and the reader is often able to influence the storyline. When the real world became too dull, Kari knew she had her fictional worlds to keep her company. As the years went by, she withdrew more and more from the outside world.
But by the time she was old enough to attend high school, something changed. Her mother received a promotion to work as an assistant to one of the higher-ups in JERA's main headquarters, which meant she would finally be making enough money to move out of the city. JERA's headquarters was located in one of the nation's "Clean Cities". Composed almost entirely of buildings built after the Hellfire, the Clean Cities were notable for having large walls placed in strategic areas in order to minimize pollution. The walls were equipped with powerful fans that helped keep the air moving through the streets and prevented toxic smog from gathering during periods of little rain. Trees line every street and the only way to enter the city is through environmentally-sound mass transit. Kari and her mother moved to the nearest suburb on the outskirts of the city, so her mother would be closer to her new job and Kari could attend school within the clean city.
However, Kari's years of solitude formed a difficult habit to kick. Even after a year at her new school, Kari had few friends to speak of and rarely interacted with anyone if she didn't have to. She spent her days reading novels and occasionally taking walks around the city after school. It was during one of these walks that she discovered a small bazaar selling old antiques found among the ruins of towns that had been abandoned after the Hellfire, mostly due to their close proximity to the forest (it was believed living near the forest would be too dangerous in case the fire ever started up again). It was at these old bazaars that Kari discovered something she'd never seen before: a book. Sure, they still had photos of them on the internet and there were a few treasure libraries throughout the country where rare texts had been preserved, but this was just a plain, ordinary book. Kari became fascinated by it, and soon found herself checking the bazaar daily in search of newly arrived books. Though her collection stayed small, soon she had enough to fill an entire shelf.
It was also during one of these bazaar trips that she found a mysterious pendant. The front was tarnished and dirty, but the man selling it told her it came from a forest that was among the first to start burning during the Hellfire. With her mother's birthday coming up, Kari thought it might be a nice gift to give her after she cleaned it up a little. Her mother did work with the JERA, after all... and this locket had survived the flames of the hellfire! Clearly it was something precious. But when Kari took it home that night, she was surprised to see it looked far different than it had before. The tarnished metal had returned to a shining gold and the gems on the front seemed far too beautiful to be mere glass. She was compelled to try it on.
But when she pinned the brooch to the front of her uniform, the metal suddenly grew hot and burned through her uniform. Before she could drop it, spikes shot out from the back and stabbed through her chest.
A few hours later, she awoke to find herself covered in blood and the pendant now sealed to the front of her chest. Her attempts to tear it off caused such intense pain that she has to stop. Unbeknownst to her, the pendant was now coiled around her heart. She would die instantly if it were ever removed. However, Kari didn't get much time to consider this: only a few moments after waking up, a strange man in a dark cloak suddenly appeared in her room, demanding that she hand over the pendant. And so like, any girl suddenly faced by supernatural happenings... she kicked him in the nuts and ran downstairs to call the police about a burglar.
Naturally, by the time the police arrived, the man was gone, along with all traces of blood in her room. All that remained was her tattered school uniform (which she had quickly changed out of) and the pendant on her chest. And Kari, having grown up with the influence of visual novels and all the fantasy worlds within, only had to look over the pendant one last time before coming to the obvious conclusion: "I bet I can transform with this."
Of course, two weeks later and she still hadn't figured out how it worked. It wasn't until she was sitting outside on her balcony looking at the stars that she figured it out. In that moment, a star shot across the sky, prompting a wish: "I wish I knew how this thing worked." Suddenly, the brooch on her chest began to shimmer and glow as a small flickering light shone down from the sky. As she reached up to touch it, the light enveloped her body and she was transformed into what she knew to be a Magical Girl. In that moment, she suddenly understood. She was a Child of the Stars (Hoshi no Ko or Hoshiko in Japanese), destined to seek out an incredible Power and prevent it from falling into the wrong hands...
But that was it. Clearly this wasn't going to be as easy as it looked, especially when the only clues she had were vague. Naming herself "Hoshikyo" (because it sounded "cuter" than Hoshiko), it would take another week before she learned she had another power: the power to travel through worlds. However, initially she didn't really believe she was in another world; after all, the world in question looked just like something out of one of her favorite visual novels! In actuality, because Kari's world contains more "overlaps" with other worlds than any other, every single world exists in some form in her world. To put it simply, every single world in every single universe is represented, in some way, through fiction.
Of course, these overlaps aren't always completely accurate. Although the first world she visited looked very similar to the world she knew from the visual novel in her world, many of the "characters" weren't who they were "supposed" to be. The "powerful and much beloved queen" was actually the daughter of a poor farmer. The "brave young hero" was actually a spoiled nobleman. And the "rich and prosperous nation" was actually in the midst of a rather bloody civil war.
As Kari travels through various worlds, she begins to realize that there is more to her power than meets the eye. In every world she goes to, she's always brought to a place where someone needed her help. In that first world, she managed to rescue the farmer's daughter, who had been taken away by the spoiled nobleman to become his wife in exchange for her father's unpaid taxes. In another world, she helped reunite two lovers who had been cast into entirely different worlds by an evil sorceress. Although the things she needs to do aren't always of life-or-death importance, there is one common factor between them: in every world she visits, her name seems to pop up somehow. And not her actual name, but the name the pendant gave to her that first time she transformed. Hoshiko. One world even had a legend about a mysterious pendant! And so, in order to potentially learn more about her powers and how to control them, she continues to travel through worlds.
But there is a price to her magic. The power given off the pendant each time she transformed is like a beacon of light for dark forces in neighboring worlds. Just like the cloaked man who appeared the first night she transformed, so have other beings and creatures come to her world and disrupted her life in search of her power. You see, little does Kari know, her pendant is actually home to that same Spirit who had the power to create entire universes. It arrived in her world 100 years ago after being thrown into the distant future. The power unleashed by its landing is what started the Hellfire that nearly devastated her planet. Although Kari is not fully aware of this herself, she does know that keeping the pendant in her world is putting the people there in danger. Many of the forces who come in search of her pendant have heard of her exploits in other worlds. As such, they know she will appear if they cause mischief for the people living in her world.
Matters began to complicate even more when Kari returned to that first world a few months later only to find that the girl she saved, as well as her entire village, had been murdered by the spoiled nobleman, driven to insanity by Kari's appearance. He believed she was a Goddess sent to change the tide of the war, and immediately ordered that all of her "followers" be executed. Enraged by this knowledge, she unsuccessfully attempted to take the nobleman's life, only to wind up severely injured. When she returned to her own world, she barely had time to make it halfway to the hospital before her magic wore off and she collapsed in an alley.
Now, up until this point, whenever Kari found herself injured, she'd turn to the help of an upperclassman named Mitsune. Her mother was the chief of medicine at the largest hospital in the city and her siblings were all doctors, so it was generally accepted that Mitsune would also go on to study medicine. When she first met Kari, it was after Kari had just been injured by one of the creatures sent to steal her pendant. Kari, knowing it'd only put her identity at risk to go to the hospital, accepted Mitsune's offer to help treat her wounds. Mitsune, knowing that Kari was a transfer student from one of the rougher parts of the older cities, assumed Kari was involved with gangs. Rather than turn her in, however, Mitsune came up with the idea of trying to reform her so as to avoid tarnishing their school's reputation. Over time, what started out as a strange mutual hate-ship eventually turned into and even stranger mutual friendship.
It was Mitsune who discovered Kari in the alley, only moments after watching her suddenly appear and then de-transform. Deciding that Kari's life was more important than trying to figure out what she just saw, she carries Kari to the nearest hospital and basically saves her life. However, Kari's wounds were so severe that she had to stay in the hospital for a number of days. Although Mitsune was able to use her mother's influence to prevent the staff from asking any questions in regards to the strange "jewelry" imbedded on the front of Kari's chest, she couldn't stop them from calling Kari's mother. For the first time since Kari was a little girl, her mother left in the middle of a workday to see her daughter.
Much like Mitsune has suspected when they first met, the doctors also suspected that Kari's injuries were related to possible gang-involvement. They recommended she put under direct supervision after the recovered so prevent such things from happening again. Her mother was now torn between her daughter and the job that allowed her daughter to live a better life in the clean cities. However, just when it seemed like moving away would have been their only option, Mitsune approached Kari's mother and requested she be allowed to stay by Kari's side as her "personal tutor" (read: baby-sitter), staying with her at night until Kari's mother could return home. Her mother consented.
However, despite this new arrangement, Mitsune chose not to tell Kari she knew her secret. And so, Kari's life finally returned to normal... or rather, to whatever state of normalcy it had evolved into. She saved her world traveling for the times between classes and after Mistune went home, now trying harder than ever to find a way to remove the pendant from her chest without ending her own life. It's about a month after this last incident that, during a routine world visit, she somehow winds up in Luceti instead.
Now, imagine the universe is like a bag of marbles. Each marble is another universe with an infinite numbers of worlds within. When two universes line up just right, they have an overlap. Overlaps can be as simple as two worlds that happen to use the same language, or as complex as entirely identical parallel universes co-existing and yet never interacting. This bag of marbles stretches on infinitely in every direction, with an infinite number of worlds and possibilities within. And at the very center of this bag of marbles, containing more overlaps than any other, is Kari's universe.
Kari comes from an Earth not too dissimilar from our own. History was more or less the same, up until the mid-1900s. In the summer of 1950, a mysterious calamity struck the world. Suddenly and without warning, over 50% of the world's forests spontaneously caught fire and burned to the ground. But just as suddenly as the fires came, they stopped, leaving a mysterious substance over the ground that made the affected areas dead and non-arable. However, one thing of note is that although the flames were rather hot, very little smoke was released into the atmosphere at the time of the burning. Historians have since dubbed the event "The Hellfire" and mark it as the turning point for humanity.
With almost all sources for wood and wood-based products annihilated, paper became a very expensive commodity. The world was forced to search for an alternative. That alternative would inevitably drive the world very quickly into the digital age. However, in order to prepare the world for the transition from pen-and-paper to computers and technology, a temporary source of paper needed to be found. In the early 1960s, a worldwide collaboration was put into place: books, essays, papers, boxes, and old wood were gathered up and broken down in order to fuel the world's need for the product. Entire libraries became empty in the people's haste to maintain order in society. Government propaganda became rampant, calling for those who dared to hoard books to be arrested for obstructing what could be humanity's last lifeline.
The lack of air-cleansing forests had a negative impact on the planet's temperature, affecting the climate of the planet for decades after. As it was feared toxins were present in the wastelands that had once been forests, many who lived in these areas were forced to abandon the dry, dead land in search of somewhere they could live. Cities quickly became overcrowded and pollution ran rampant. The world was struggling. But with the first spark of the digital age, new industries began to pop up. The world was able to hang on...
Fast-forward 100 years and we have the world in which Kari grew up. The most profitable agencies are all environmental. In Japan, the largest is the Japanese Environmental Rehabilitation Agency (JERA), which focuses solely on reclaiming the land that had been devastated by the Hellfire over 100 years ago. In today's age, it was discovered that while the ashes and waste on top of the land was unusable, the land beneath had been preserved and was very fertile. Thus, efforts were started to clear away the wasteland and replant the forests. Most high school students graduate with the assumption that they'll either go on to work in a field of information technology, or in the fields as a "planter".
When Kari was young, her family was fairly poor. Her mother raised her on her own, with their extended family living on the other side of the country after her mother relocated for work in one of the big cities. The big cities were cheaper to live in due to the pollution; during weeks without rain, the smog would reach such levels of toxicity that people were often advised not to leave the house. Kari never knew her father, but she knew what he was like: tall, strong, tan, and probably rather hairy. No different from the men her mother usually dated while she was growing up. At the time, her mother was working in the buildings nearest the fields, usually interacting with the planters.
Working long hours with a long commute, her mother wasn't home very often, leaving Kari home alone for most of the day. This would be a trend that would continue well on through middle school and high school. Kari grew used to the solitude. It was difficult to meet with friends during the summer due to the city smog that made going outdoors dangerous, and the streets were rarely safe to walk around late at night after school ended. To occupy her time, Kari read novels. Of course, novels aren't quite the same for Kari's world as they are here. Instead, novels are much more like our modern-day visual novels, where words are accompanied by images and the reader is often able to influence the storyline. When the real world became too dull, Kari knew she had her fictional worlds to keep her company. As the years went by, she withdrew more and more from the outside world.
But by the time she was old enough to attend high school, something changed. Her mother received a promotion to work as an assistant to one of the higher-ups in JERA's main headquarters, which meant she would finally be making enough money to move out of the city. JERA's headquarters was located in one of the nation's "Clean Cities". Composed almost entirely of buildings built after the Hellfire, the Clean Cities were notable for having large walls placed in strategic areas in order to minimize pollution. The walls were equipped with powerful fans that helped keep the air moving through the streets and prevented toxic smog from gathering during periods of little rain. Trees line every street and the only way to enter the city is through environmentally-sound mass transit. Kari and her mother moved to the nearest suburb on the outskirts of the city, so her mother would be closer to her new job and Kari could attend school within the clean city.
However, Kari's years of solitude formed a difficult habit to kick. Even after a year at her new school, Kari had few friends to speak of and rarely interacted with anyone if she didn't have to. She spent her days reading novels and occasionally taking walks around the city after school. It was during one of these walks that she discovered a small bazaar selling old antiques found among the ruins of towns that had been abandoned after the Hellfire, mostly due to their close proximity to the forest (it was believed living near the forest would be too dangerous in case the fire ever started up again). It was at these old bazaars that Kari discovered something she'd never seen before: a book. Sure, they still had photos of them on the internet and there were a few treasure libraries throughout the country where rare texts had been preserved, but this was just a plain, ordinary book. Kari became fascinated by it, and soon found herself checking the bazaar daily in search of newly arrived books. Though her collection stayed small, soon she had enough to fill an entire shelf.
It was also during one of these bazaar trips that she found a mysterious pendant. The front was tarnished and dirty, but the man selling it told her it came from a forest that was among the first to start burning during the Hellfire. With her mother's birthday coming up, Kari thought it might be a nice gift to give her after she cleaned it up a little. Her mother did work with the JERA, after all... and this locket had survived the flames of the hellfire! Clearly it was something precious. But when Kari took it home that night, she was surprised to see it looked far different than it had before. The tarnished metal had returned to a shining gold and the gems on the front seemed far too beautiful to be mere glass. She was compelled to try it on.
But when she pinned the brooch to the front of her uniform, the metal suddenly grew hot and burned through her uniform. Before she could drop it, spikes shot out from the back and stabbed through her chest.
A few hours later, she awoke to find herself covered in blood and the pendant now sealed to the front of her chest. Her attempts to tear it off caused such intense pain that she has to stop. Unbeknownst to her, the pendant was now coiled around her heart. She would die instantly if it were ever removed. However, Kari didn't get much time to consider this: only a few moments after waking up, a strange man in a dark cloak suddenly appeared in her room, demanding that she hand over the pendant. And so like, any girl suddenly faced by supernatural happenings... she kicked him in the nuts and ran downstairs to call the police about a burglar.
Naturally, by the time the police arrived, the man was gone, along with all traces of blood in her room. All that remained was her tattered school uniform (which she had quickly changed out of) and the pendant on her chest. And Kari, having grown up with the influence of visual novels and all the fantasy worlds within, only had to look over the pendant one last time before coming to the obvious conclusion: "I bet I can transform with this."
Of course, two weeks later and she still hadn't figured out how it worked. It wasn't until she was sitting outside on her balcony looking at the stars that she figured it out. In that moment, a star shot across the sky, prompting a wish: "I wish I knew how this thing worked." Suddenly, the brooch on her chest began to shimmer and glow as a small flickering light shone down from the sky. As she reached up to touch it, the light enveloped her body and she was transformed into what she knew to be a Magical Girl. In that moment, she suddenly understood. She was a Child of the Stars (Hoshi no Ko or Hoshiko in Japanese), destined to seek out an incredible Power and prevent it from falling into the wrong hands...
But that was it. Clearly this wasn't going to be as easy as it looked, especially when the only clues she had were vague. Naming herself "Hoshikyo" (because it sounded "cuter" than Hoshiko), it would take another week before she learned she had another power: the power to travel through worlds. However, initially she didn't really believe she was in another world; after all, the world in question looked just like something out of one of her favorite visual novels! In actuality, because Kari's world contains more "overlaps" with other worlds than any other, every single world exists in some form in her world. To put it simply, every single world in every single universe is represented, in some way, through fiction.
Of course, these overlaps aren't always completely accurate. Although the first world she visited looked very similar to the world she knew from the visual novel in her world, many of the "characters" weren't who they were "supposed" to be. The "powerful and much beloved queen" was actually the daughter of a poor farmer. The "brave young hero" was actually a spoiled nobleman. And the "rich and prosperous nation" was actually in the midst of a rather bloody civil war.
As Kari travels through various worlds, she begins to realize that there is more to her power than meets the eye. In every world she goes to, she's always brought to a place where someone needed her help. In that first world, she managed to rescue the farmer's daughter, who had been taken away by the spoiled nobleman to become his wife in exchange for her father's unpaid taxes. In another world, she helped reunite two lovers who had been cast into entirely different worlds by an evil sorceress. Although the things she needs to do aren't always of life-or-death importance, there is one common factor between them: in every world she visits, her name seems to pop up somehow. And not her actual name, but the name the pendant gave to her that first time she transformed. Hoshiko. One world even had a legend about a mysterious pendant! And so, in order to potentially learn more about her powers and how to control them, she continues to travel through worlds.
But there is a price to her magic. The power given off the pendant each time she transformed is like a beacon of light for dark forces in neighboring worlds. Just like the cloaked man who appeared the first night she transformed, so have other beings and creatures come to her world and disrupted her life in search of her power. You see, little does Kari know, her pendant is actually home to that same Spirit who had the power to create entire universes. It arrived in her world 100 years ago after being thrown into the distant future. The power unleashed by its landing is what started the Hellfire that nearly devastated her planet. Although Kari is not fully aware of this herself, she does know that keeping the pendant in her world is putting the people there in danger. Many of the forces who come in search of her pendant have heard of her exploits in other worlds. As such, they know she will appear if they cause mischief for the people living in her world.
Matters began to complicate even more when Kari returned to that first world a few months later only to find that the girl she saved, as well as her entire village, had been murdered by the spoiled nobleman, driven to insanity by Kari's appearance. He believed she was a Goddess sent to change the tide of the war, and immediately ordered that all of her "followers" be executed. Enraged by this knowledge, she unsuccessfully attempted to take the nobleman's life, only to wind up severely injured. When she returned to her own world, she barely had time to make it halfway to the hospital before her magic wore off and she collapsed in an alley.
Now, up until this point, whenever Kari found herself injured, she'd turn to the help of an upperclassman named Mitsune. Her mother was the chief of medicine at the largest hospital in the city and her siblings were all doctors, so it was generally accepted that Mitsune would also go on to study medicine. When she first met Kari, it was after Kari had just been injured by one of the creatures sent to steal her pendant. Kari, knowing it'd only put her identity at risk to go to the hospital, accepted Mitsune's offer to help treat her wounds. Mitsune, knowing that Kari was a transfer student from one of the rougher parts of the older cities, assumed Kari was involved with gangs. Rather than turn her in, however, Mitsune came up with the idea of trying to reform her so as to avoid tarnishing their school's reputation. Over time, what started out as a strange mutual hate-ship eventually turned into and even stranger mutual friendship.
It was Mitsune who discovered Kari in the alley, only moments after watching her suddenly appear and then de-transform. Deciding that Kari's life was more important than trying to figure out what she just saw, she carries Kari to the nearest hospital and basically saves her life. However, Kari's wounds were so severe that she had to stay in the hospital for a number of days. Although Mitsune was able to use her mother's influence to prevent the staff from asking any questions in regards to the strange "jewelry" imbedded on the front of Kari's chest, she couldn't stop them from calling Kari's mother. For the first time since Kari was a little girl, her mother left in the middle of a workday to see her daughter.
Much like Mitsune has suspected when they first met, the doctors also suspected that Kari's injuries were related to possible gang-involvement. They recommended she put under direct supervision after the recovered so prevent such things from happening again. Her mother was now torn between her daughter and the job that allowed her daughter to live a better life in the clean cities. However, just when it seemed like moving away would have been their only option, Mitsune approached Kari's mother and requested she be allowed to stay by Kari's side as her "personal tutor" (read: baby-sitter), staying with her at night until Kari's mother could return home. Her mother consented.
However, despite this new arrangement, Mitsune chose not to tell Kari she knew her secret. And so, Kari's life finally returned to normal... or rather, to whatever state of normalcy it had evolved into. She saved her world traveling for the times between classes and after Mistune went home, now trying harder than ever to find a way to remove the pendant from her chest without ending her own life. It's about a month after this last incident that, during a routine world visit, she somehow winds up in Luceti instead.