In an offensively pink bedroom, a young teenaged girl stared at a small television with sparkling eyes.

  "In the name of the moon, I will punish you!" declared a sailor-suited girl on the TV, pulling one of her trademark poses.

  The eye-sparkles grew stronger.

  The episode continued towards its inevitable conclusion, in which the monster of the day was defeated, innocents were saved and love and justice won the day, with the girl watching with silent, rapt attention.

  "Ah... I wish I could be a magical girl," she sighed as the end credits rolled. "Cool transformations, cooler attacks, beating up the bad-guys and getting to smooch the hero."

  "In that case, I have good news," came a voice from behind her.

  In an instant, the fluffy atmosphere burst like a balloon, the blissful cloud of two-dimensional hero worship dispelled by the sudden intrusion of the real world. In the real world, nothing good came from a voice speaking up directly behind a girl who knew her parents were out and the house was empty—a fact she'd double and triple checked, on top of keeping a careful ear out for the door, because liking magical girl shows at her age was embarrassing, so her parents could never be allowed to know.

  Yes, the voice had said something about good news, but what idiot would trust a stranger who'd just broken into their bedroom?

  The girl slowly turned around, doing her best not to tremble.

  A purple, winged kitten was sitting on her bed.

  It yawned.

  The girl blinked.

  The kitten lazily stretched out a leg.

  "You're purple," pointed out the girl, whose brief burst of terror was rapidly giving way to confusion.

  "Well spotted," agreed the kitten.

  "You can talk!"

  "Again, I am forced to marvel at your powers of observation."

  "But cats can't talk!"

  "You were literally just watching a TV show that contained a pair of talking cats."

  "But that's just a TV show! It's not real!"

  "Who says?"

  The girl blinked again.

  "Magical girls are real?"

  The winged kitten nodded.

  "And you want me to be one?"

  "Are you interested?"

  The girl gave that question the consideration it was due. Had it been a person in her bedroom, perhaps she'd have been more suspicious, but against all logic, an impossible purple kitten—obviously a magical girl mascot of some sort—seemed more trustworthy.

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  The consideration took approximately zero-point-two-three seconds.

  "Yes!"

  "So, you wish a world-threatening disaster down upon your planet? You want goodness knows how many people to die so that you can play dress-up?"

  "What?" asked the girl, as the topic was suddenly dragged sideways.

  "Well, that's what magical girls are for, isn't it? They battle some great evil that only they have the power to defeat? So when you wish to be a magical girl, you're implicitly also wishing for some great evil to attack your planet."

  "Well, yes, but the magical girls win," pointed out the girl with slow patience.

  "Who says? Don't you think it's more likely that some of them lose, but the resulting TV shows simply aren't marketed towards kids, or made at all? Or even if they do win, do you really think there'll be no injured bystanders or property damage?"

  The girl frowned.

  "If I become a magical girl, people will get hurt?"

  She considered the situation for a little longer.

  "Wait, that logic doesn't work. If you're looking for magical girls, then there must already be a great evil, so if I turn you down, it'll take over the world uncontested."

  A few more seconds of thought produced another small insight.

  "If any magical girls had lost, the world would be ruled by some sort of great evil, and I'd be a slave of darkness."

  "They might have been fighting to save other worlds? Besides, I'm fairly sure you are ruled by a great evil."

  "Well, yes. We're ruled by politicians. But I'm fairly sure that's a different sort of great evil to the type that magical girls battle. We're only enslaved by socioeconomic factors, and not any sort of magical mind control."

  The kitten nodded in a surprisingly human-like gesture. "Good. You pass."

  "Pass? Pass what?"

  "The test, silly! You have a decent head on your shoulders, when you choose to use it, along with a healthy dose of cynicism, but not enough common sense to be wary of a horrifically suspicious magical creature sneaking into your bedroom and offering you power without naming a price. You're just what I've been looking for. The name's Kyelli Magesmith, and I work for the magical kingdom of Fluffy-wuffy."

  "Fluffy-wuffy?"

  "Our queen is a bit of a weirdo."

  The girl once again paused to consider the new facts.

  "Fair enough," she agreed. "But are you telling me our world is being invaded? And you need me to fight them off?"

  "Ah, no. Sorry, I missed a bit from that explanation. Yes, I work for my queen, but I'm not a front-line magical girl mascot like you're thinking of. I work in the R&D division."

  "Huh?"

  "When you watch your magical girl shows, have you never wondered how the girls are provided with transformation items that suit them perfectly, work first time, and give them exactly the right amount of power to win?"

  "No? It's magic, so of course it works."

  "It's magic, she says," grumbled Kyelli. "Of course magic works, she says. Sheesh. You have no idea. You think you can just wave your paws, shout hocus-pocus and have magic happen? No, it takes decades of hard work to design and implement a new spell! It's my job to design transformation items, and I've reached the point in the development of my latest version that I need a beta tester to try it out."

  "So, what you're saying is that I get the cool costumes and powers, but there won't be anyone in actual danger?"

  "Pretty much. I'm afraid that means there's no hero to smooch, either, but I think that's a small trade-off. Are you interested?"

  The girl once again paused to consider, this time taking Kyelli's admonition about lack of common sense to heart and devoting very nearly half a second to her deliberations.

  "Yes!" she exclaimed before a sudden thought occurred to her.

  Kyelli had mentioned being a beta tester. Her dad had recently installed a beta version of an operating system onto his computer. It hadn't gone well.

  "I'm not going to turn green with yellow splotches and start making a horrible buzzing noise?"

  "No?"

  "Or freeze up so badly someone needs to turn me off and on again to get me going?"

  "No?"

  "Or explode into a million pieces, which all spontaneously catch on fire."

  "That's oddly specific," answered the kitten without saying no.

  "I need to check these things! Anyway, when do we start?"

  "Right now! Don't worry, with a spot of magical time dilation, I'll get you back home before anyone notices you're gone."

  The girl nodded enthusiastically, so Kyelli stretched out his wings, floated up into the air and unleashed a blast of glitter which coalesced into a white disk. The colour cleared up, revealing a grassy green landscape beyond.

  "Wow!" exclaimed the girl, stepping through.

  "Leaving her world without a second thought..." Kyelli muttered to himself as he floated in after her. "Yup, I found myself a perfect test subject."