02-23-2017, 03:57 AM
Quote:Channel 322,227 - The True Crime Channel - When the Magic Fades (Episode 223): My Magical Animal Companion Was A Pro-Globalization Anarchist. Narration in Italics!
Fade in. A grainy black and white image of an adorable creature half-way between a cat and a bunny - spotted fur and long fuzzy ears - two pairs, in fact. It's sitting on a speakers' podium with a microphone in front of its little pointed face, and one tiny furred fist in the air. There's a small bandanna tied around its forehead. In front of it, stormtroopers are struggling with a crowd of furious protesters dressed in rags, metal and leather. As the narration begins, the image slowly tilts, zooming closer on the little creature's face.
So how was it that Hopu-Hopu-chan made the journey from beloved magical totem, and hero for great justice, to bloodthirsty revolutionary?
The shot cuts to an image of a pretty young japanese woman with shoulder-length hair, dressed in an apron and a long-sleeve shirt. She's happily serving people plates of waffles in an open, cheery room with potted plants lining the walls and restaurant booths tucked away in the corners.
Nanako Yashida, his former owner and best friend, has some ideas.
Cut to Nanako, sitting on a stool in a kitchen, with row upon row of spotless chrome griddles, spatulas and stovetops gleaming in the background. Her hands are folded in her lap.
"Nanako Yashida - Owner of Waffles of Justice Happy Breakfast Emporium/Former 'Magical Girl'' Appears in the bottom left hand corner of the screen in plain white text.
"I think it started after we finally defeated the dark lord of destruction EbeneXer. I didn't really have any magical enemies left to fight after that, which left either going after the yakuza or beating up homeless people. Neither of those seemed like good uses for the power of the Dream Galaxy, so instead I finished high-school."
Nanako frowns, looking sad.
"Hopu-Hopu-chan had been enemies with EbeneXer for ten thousand years, though. He didn't know what to do, with no evil to fight, and he started spending a lot of time online. I probably should have paid more attention to him. He began going to rallies while I was at school, and I was making so many new friends since I didn't have to be out on patrol every night anymore. It got to a point where we almost only ever saw each-other at bed-time, and he mostly wanted to talk about really... odd... politics."
Cut to a color photograph of Hopu-Hopu-Chan, sitting on a park bench by himself. Tier-1 Coruscant's skyline rises in the background.
So even before arriving in the Omniverse, Hopu-Hopu-Chan was beginning to gravitate towards radical ideologies. But why, after coming here, with so much evil to fight, did he continue down that path? Rakendal Burzdun, professor of abnormal psychology at the Imperial University in Coruscant may have the answer.
Cut to an older gentleman in an ill-fitting sweater. He's bald, his skin is a severe shade of olive-green, and his eyeglasses are slightly too small. 'Rakendal Burzdun - Abnormal Psychologist' appears in the bottom left hand corner.
"The thing you need to understand about Primes who gravitate towards these seditious, hybrid ideologies, especially the one's that espouse a utopian view of decentralized interversal government, is that they are psychological addicts. By the time he arrived in the Omniverse, Hopu-Hopu-Chan was already hooked on a sensation of righteous persecution by a nebulous, sinister 'system'.
He makes quote marks with his fingers.
"Of course," the professor continues, "as the most powerful central authority in the Omniverse, it was only natural for such a damaged and obsessive mind to focus its neurosis on the Empire."
The shot cuts to black for a moment.
Coming up, After the break...
A picture of Hopu-Hopu-Chan glowing with power, his little red bandana flapping in an unseen breeze. Graffiti-covered buildings line the streets on either side, and a mob of angry people is at his back.
Cut to a man in prison grays and manacles, sitting in a cell. "You've gotta understand - Hopu-Hopu understood. He got it. That's what people responded to."
Cut to a stormtrooper with his helmet off, and his face blurred out. When he speaks, his voice is distorted. "Off the record? The fuzzy little bastard was really persuasive. Like, really, really persuasive."
Cut to an old man in a windbreaker and slacks leaning on the rail of a pier, looking out over the Vasty Deeps. He says to the camera "You wanna know about Hopu-Hopu? That lop-eared hellcat... if he'd had his way he'd have either saved the Omniverse or burned it to the -bleep- ground. And you know - I'm not entirely sure he'd have known the difference."
Cut to a grainy photograph of Hopu-Hopu-Chan looking freakin' adorable atop the chest of a dead stormtrooper. His little fist is in the air. An unknown voice says "Not since the battle of Coruscant have I seen that much blood (blood- blood-blood)"
Cut to black.
All this and more, when 'When the Magic Fades' returns.