It was a seed that crashed upon Earth.
Originally designed as a plant to prevent famine, it terraformed the vibrant planet.
Encoded in the seed’s DNA was an inhibition to mimic, giving it the ability to analyze, alter, and duplicate its own genetic information in order to produce edible plant matter for the aliens who developed it.
The plant came in both male and female varieties, making it easily reproducible.
It was known as Theophile’s plant.
Its creator was an intelligent life-form born thousands of light-years from Earth. A distant planet on the brink of extinction.
He took Theophile’s seed from the female plant and traveled through space in search of an uninhabited planet. There, he planned to plant the seed, developing the primitive planet into a hospitable one.
With this in mind, he roamed the cold emptiness of space.
Misfortune arrived when his vessel collided with a meteor and crashed upon Earth.
The seed, too, fell along with it, transforming the planet in a way no one could have anticipated. It produced parasitic roots, affecting anything the tips of tendrils could touch. It devoured all matter, organic and inorganic alike.
Soon this plant’s creator developed a plan, realizing the plant was analyzing all of Earth’s genetic information and fulfilling its destiny as Theophile’s plant. He named the sunken city “Jail” and those who were mutated by the plant “Marchens.”
It was then he realized that another type of being had emerged as a result of the plant, one separate from Marchens.
It was human children, born of a pregnant mother who was corrupted into a Marchen.
These children were neither human nor Marchen. They were distinguished by their special abilities.
Not only could the seed mimic DNA information, but also emotions.
Among the children born from Marchens, there was a select breed whose powers were amplified by raw emotion.
For example, the first batch of seeds to fall upon Earth landed at a pre-school. There lived a young girl named Michiru, who spent her free time coloring her picture books.
Michiru immersed herself in stories about Alice in Wonderland, Little Red Riding Hood, and The Little Mermaid, drawing and rewriting them to her heart’s content.
It was in this pre-school where her imagination blossomed.
Then came the seed of Theophile’s plant crashing upon Earth.
In no time, it mimicked the emotions of Michiru’s imaginative drawings, as well as the emotions of other children at the school.
It emulated her lovingly-colored picture book.
The supporting cast who aided the fairy tale maidens, and the grim evils which awaited them on their adventures.
Each tale ended with its respective protagonist facing and overcoming strife.
The emotions Michiru imbued into her drawings were all absorbed and mimicked by the fastmoving plant.
Thus, children born from Marchens began to draw from this genetic information, resembling characters from fairy tales. But they had distinct traits among them, like supernatural abilities and eyes which turned pink from exposure to Marchen blood.
These children even knew their own names.
Alice. Red Riding Hood. Little Mermaid. Cinderella.
These girls came to be known as the Blood Maidens.
◯ The pre-school was located in a town which had sunk into the ground by the seed, but it was not alone in its corruption. Other seeds came down upon the surface in different cities and locations, but their effect on the surface was incomparable. Monsters resembling Marchens wandered Earth’s surface, and thus other beings much like the Blood Maidens were also coming to life.
Not all of them took the form of fairy tale protagonists like the girls underground, however. Magical girls from anime, sentai programs, and videogames were also mimicked by the parasitic plant, allowing the latter to replicate their outfits and abilities with ease.
On the surface, these girls became Massacre Pink.
Unlike how the Blood Maidens emerged as newborn babies, these girls were of adolescent age with a developed sense of self corrupted by the parasite, thus fusing them with the information mimicked by the plant.
Some retained their sense of identity and memories when they received these powers, which were heightened when exposed to Marchen blood much like the Blood Maidens.
However, with blessings came greed. Some of the girls became drunk in their power. It began a slow descent into madness, used by the Massacre Pink girls to subjugate people and creatures on the surface to satisfy their insatiable bloodlust. Mankind came to fear Massacre Pink. Some quietly admired them. Others worshipped and extolled them. ◯ One person in particular recognized their potential straight away.
Massacre Pink was powerful, but their power was not used solely for matters of justice.
When Theophile’s seed fell into a place known for its heroic protectors, it emulated the notion of heroism, giving rise to a Massacre Pink with noble attributes.
But then the noble batch of Massacre Pink members were open to the influence of mankind’s predominant traits, including arrogance and a sweeping desire for control. Heroism became a façade for superiority, permitting them to manipulate those they viewed beneath them.
However...
Some were born with the sole intention to kill mankind.
If the seeds could mimic the best of mankind, so too could they mimic its worst. Could Massacre Pink be molded somehow into a killing machine?
What if, for example, it mimicked execution tools like the guillotine?