Miss Blacklight

Miss Blacklight is a character in Journal of Sociology.

Backstory:
When someone discovers something very dangerous it doesn't take much to hold them responsible.

Maria-Johanna Lord Cassadin Black was born to Lord Cassadin Benevolence Black and Arachnide Darjeeling, sorceress-spideress of Galgadine swamp.

When she took a wrong turn on magic avenue, Maria-Johanna Lord Cassadin Black discovered the cave where wishes die. The entire cave was lit up with tiny little luminous crystals and the walls smelled like honey, and curious little Maria-Johanna ended up seeing how deep down it went. The deeper she trod, the redder the walls got and the heavier her shoulders felt. There she found a brilliant black star. Crying, probably, because it made the twitches her rabbit did when she was five and Whiskers had to go on a trip. She took the little star with her (even if it felt like holding a really large ice cube) and asked him what was up with the psychedelic honeytrap disco cave.

The Cave Where Wishes Die, so she was told, was under the jurisdiction of Antimony Blacklight, but Miss Blacklight got bogged in a big intergalactic drug investigation and until Commisar-Commisar Commisar finishes his impertinent heckling of a Saint Desirée (and her shareholders and missions from the attorney embassy) she has been deemed unsuited to continue her job. As a result, most wishes are just lying around in the cave emitting that dreadful smell.

Maria-Johanna said it smelt rather sweet, actually. Blackstar said Jesus.

Former-Lord Former-Cassadin Benign-Every-Minute-Of-His-Life Emily Including-Where-He-Gave-His-Name-To-His-Beloved-Daughter Darjeeling-Black had taught Maria-Johanna to offer her aid wherever she might find a use for it, and this seemed about as good a time as any to offer. She asked if there was anything she could do for Blackstar.

This counted as a “yes” in Blackstar's book and could be construed as such in court. Maria-Johanna would, like it or not, become the new Saint Desirée.

Description:
As if on scene cue, the fog that had occupied the cave sprang out and wrapped around her, winds with tiny little thoughts and bearing tiny little hearts, danced around her body until they found a shape they stuck to and weaved themselves into a ball gown. Gems of all colors in the hem and in the seams. Her hair turned silvery and grew to the floor to hold the ribbons it had braided into it. Gems in the knots and in the tips.

All of these gems, she would soon find out, are the desires of ten people. Just ten. Miss Blacklight figured she'd need a bigger dress soon.

As of the moment, Miss Blacklight is wearing a slightly larger and slightly fancier ball gown, still crested with gems on every side or corner she could find, and wearing a shawl around her that clings to her like a ghost, while hardly ever actually touching her. The little thing extends seemingly into infinity, but mostly because it's pretty shy and it'll coil you a misleading way if you ever try following it all the way to its end. Because, like, who does that, pervert.

With the ball gown in the way, nobody knows if she's wearing shoes. Nobody knows if she even has feet.

Whether the Miss Blacklight that got entered into this battle is Maria-Johanna or Antimony is up for dispute, no one's heard much of them either way. The Saint Desirée is as spaceless as she is timeless, and as long as they never met there's a fair chance they are both still doing what they do. The transformation is more or less the same every time, with only subtle differences like waist size or glove colour, and the contestant Blacklights personality is those of bitter Antimony and gleeful Maria-Johanna meeting each other halfway.

Whatever the case, the two met each other halfway despite having never even talked. That's not to say, however, that they are incompetent at what they do. They could be called the one true pathomancers, despite there being two of them presently. They call their trade rather unispiredly 'desiry.' Their skill in handling the desires of people is unmatched in any place or way, so in case they couldn't persuade you personally they'll find the desire in you that they need and get that one to change right at the root.

However, having a thousand desires near you is like having a thousand people talking to you at once. So you can imagine how that gets with the amount Miss Blacklight has. Miss Blacklight often makes twitches with her mouth, the only perceived motion from her so called mini-chats with the wishes around her. They happen entirely instantly because spaceless timeless blah-blah-blah, but you might see her mouth move, or even change posture entirely in an instant if the conversation got her going.

Items/Abilities:
Miss Blacklight practices desiry the way you would practice fingery, or how a sugarmancer would go all Fantasia on everyone at every tea party he visits. This doesn't just include cursory mind-reading to find out what you want, but also extracting those very thoughts or embedding the ones she has on hand (quite a lot) and seeing as a man is just the sum of his desires, you can see how you wouldn't want this girl on your bad side.

Miss Blacklight knows exactly one distinction, what she calls nice desires. You wouldn't find a pattern if you had a list of every single one of them. Most commonly they're the desires people believe in the strongest, but with people being people, those are more of an exceptional encounter. She's personally less likely to tamper with those, so that works out well seeing as those are also the hardest to tamper with anyway.

Desires also function on their own a little. The closest simile would be a a big net of clockwork for every person. It's easy to take out a gear, melt it down and mold it into whatever new shape of gear you want. In theory, the different gear is gonna make the clock tick faster or slower, or backwards if you want to get fancy. But there's a fair chance that the new gear you made just won't fit, because it's too different from the others. The skill of desiry is making sure that you play with desires in such a right way that you can sneak them right into the clockwork of the soul.

And that's probably what makes Miss Blacklight the most dangerous person to have ever lived.