Fanfic / Subsumption

You have become a giant magic book monster. This is not ideal.

Subsumption is a Puella Magi Madoka Magica fanfic by Flairina. The story is hosted on Sufficient Velocity, and mirrored on Spacebattles.

The story begins with what would usually be the end, as an unknown magical girl succumbs to her despair and transforms into a witch. However, upon the completion of the transformation, she's surprised to find herself still perfectly sapient (albeit missing more than a few of her memories). Confused, but determined to not let this be the end of her, the newly renamed Ashtaroth flees from both her killer and hometown... only to wind up in Mitakihara instead.

As canon is quickly derailed and events begin rapidly spiraling out of control, Ashtaroth does her best to keep a handle on things while also searching for other sapient members of her species, looking for a way back to humanity, and trying not to eat anyone as she gradually adjusts to life as a witch. Now if she could just manage to get a handle on those pesky intrusive thoughts she keeps having...

Interestingly, though the story is not technically a quest (being explicitly labeled a "Faux-Quest"), it is written in quest format, using second-person narration almost exclusively, and containing at least one choose your own adventure style choice at the end of each section. Though these choices are primarily used as a way to show Ashtaroth's thought process rather than dictating the story's flow, the author has been known to occasionally be swayed by particular votes enough to affect the story in at least tertiary ways.

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This story has assimilated the following tropes:

• Absurdly Cool City: Mitakihara. Having architecture almost entirely based on various famous world landmarks, the city looks so strange and interesting from an outsider's perspective that Ashtaroth actually takes the time to go sightseeing the morning after she first gets there, despite that having nothing to do with why she went to said city.
• Accidental Kidnapping: One of Ashtaroth's familiars, Shemesh, ends up grabbing Hitomi off the street and dragging her into the barrier. This ends up causing problems when other people, including Sayaka and Mami, find out.
• Acid Attack: On top of being able to control it, Cecil's blood is apparently highly acidic.

• An Arm and a Leg: Sayaka cuts off two of Ashtaroth's arms the morning after she manages to regain use of them. Thankfully, subsumption tends to come with a free healing.

• Alien Sky: Pretty much every part of Ashtaroth's barrier, in different ways for each specific section she picks up. Ashtaroth's original outer barrier for example has an aquamarine sky, with what looks like veins of light stretching throughout it, while Saar's section starts as an eternal night cast in shadowy shades of green, before progressing to a massive, ever-swirling storm.
• All Your Powers Combined: Every time Ashtaroth subsumes a magical girl or witch, she gets one of their abilities in the process.
• Art Initiates Life: The primary ability of Tira Narumi, who is capable of creating three-dimensional paintings that she can bring to life and direct.
• Assimilation Plot: Ashtaroth's witch-mind seems to consider anyone that she's subsumed as part of/no different from her, and appears to be quite keen on subsuming ever more.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Ashtaroth starts off at the size of a small house, and only gets larger every time she subsumes a witch or magical girl.
• Baby Planet: Shemesh, who regularly changes to look like different variations of these. There is apparently some sort of meaning to these shifts that can roughly approximate his "thought process", but no one has yet figured it out.
• Berserk Button: Ashtaroth (or at least a certain part of her) gets extremely angry when her grief is taken from her.
• Bigger on the Inside: It's not clear exactly how big Ashtaroth's barrier is on the outside, but the inside is definitely much, much larger.
• Bizarre Alien Limbs: As tends to be standard for witches.
  • Ashtaroth has a quartet of ribbons for arms, and a giant book instead of legs.
  • Saar also has four "arms" in the form of her blades, which she can make sharper and harder at will.
  • Cecil has a single, relatively normal human foot... except that it's covered with a separate sheathe of flesh molded into the shape of a thigh-high boot, with bones sticking out of it to imitate lacing.
• The Blank: Ashtaroth's head is a collection of curved lines rotating around a central point, with no facial features to speak of.
• Blow You Away: Saar's "Tearful Storm" magic sends out a miniature, many-colored twister at her opponent. Ashtaroth ends up acquiring this skill upon subsuming her.
• Cannibalism Superpower: By sucking them into her smaller book, Ashtaroth can subsume other witches and magical girls, acquiring some aspect of their magic in the process. Though she does like having more powers to use, she would prefer to avoid "eating" people.
• Combo Platter Powers: Ashtaroth's base magic includes the ability to conjure solid strings of runes that shatter when hit, the creation of illusions, and the absorption (subsumption) of other magical entities. As she obtains abilities from said entities as well, her collection is only bound to grow more eclectic as time goes on.
• Combat Medic: The Polina are nurse-like familiars that will go after their enemy with whatever medical tool happens to be on hand, including scalpels, surgical scissors, oversized needles, etc.
• Combat Tentacles: Cecil can form her corrosive blood into these, allowing her to attack from a much greater distance.
• Creative Sterility: Due to her wish, Tira is unable to create anything that is not a reproduction of an already existing piece of art.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Mami versus the Ummashtart. The former doesn't even take a hit, while the latter end up utterly decimated.
  • Immediately after this, Homura lays waste to Ashtaroth, with Ashtaroth and Sayaka able to do virtually nothing but flee from and try to distract her. The only reason she doesn't immediately kill Ashtaroth outright is because she's sure she'll be seeing this witch on a future loop, and wants to get a handle on its abilities before doing so.
• Cute Monster: Charlotte, who looks like a small plushie, and doesn't really act like a witch so much as a sort of clingy pet. At least until Tira and Mami end up in the barrier, and Charlotte proceeds to ambush and eat Tira.
  • Also Candeloro, who is even tinier than Charlotte, and looks vaguely like a fancy, floating toy doll.
• Deadly Book: Ashtaroth's main weapon is a book that she names Novella, from which she can create solid words to attack with, or subsume her foes.
• Despair Speech: Ashtaroth gives a brief one before becoming a witch.
• Detachable Blades: Sayaka's swords feature the ability to eject the blade with the push of a button, sending it flying at high speed towards whatever it's pointed at... and exploding.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Ashtaroth, in most of her interactions with others. Also happens more literally in the case of Candeloro, who, upon noticing Sayaka and Tira stroll into her cottage, proceeds to sit them down at a dining table and serve them tea and cake.
• Downer Beginning: The story begins just after the magical girl that Ashtaroth once was overflowed on grief and turned into a witch.
• The Dreaded: From Ashtaroth's point of view, Mami. As a magical girl with a very powerful reputation, dominion over an entire city, and a completely unforgiving stance against witches, Ashtaroth explicitly goes out of her way to try and avoid encountering her. It lasts for all of two days.
• Enemy Within: Ashtaroth's instincts tempt her to subsume all magical girls within reach. Her attempts to resist are not always successful.
• Energy Absorption: Upon touching Charlotte's half-hatched grief seed, the majority of Ashtaroth's grief is forcibly torn from her and drawn into it, allowing Charlotte to fully hatch.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: A key trait of Candeloro's barrier, which has solid rainbow bridges stretching between large tea platters, allowing one to cross the lake of blood they float upon.
• Eye Scream: One of the Polina manages to stab out one of Sayaka's eyes. Luckily, healing powers let her fix this without too much issue.
• Exact Words: Kyubey is an expert at using these.
• Expanded Universe: Though they have yet to significantly impact the plot, the cities Ashtaroth lists as possibilities for her to travel to (besides Mitakihara and Kazamino) are all from different Madoka Magica side stories, including Asunaro (Puella Magi Kazumi Magica), Hohzuki (Puella Magi Suzune Magica), and Kamihama (Magia Record).
• False Reassurance: Kyubey claims that an intelligent witch "would be rather fascinating to behold", and "in all likelihood" does not exist. Though the rhetoric technically makes perfect sense, Tira remains skeptical.
• Faster Than They Look: Cecil only has a single leg to move with, yet is somehow more agile than most other witches, able to slip away from attacks and close in to strike in an instant.
• Feathered Fiend: Tira tends towards using paintings of small black birds for her attacks, which use their sharp silver beaks to jab and tear at their target. Some of the Ummashtart also count, having remarkably similar forms to Tira's creations besides being made out of paper.
• Feel No Pain: Subverted. Despite her body having nothing that should be even remotely analogous to nerve endings, Ashtaroth is still fully capable of feeling pain when injured.
  • Averted for Sayaka, who doesn't yet know that magical girls can block pain.
• For Want Of A Nail: If Ashtaroth hadn't accidentally interfered, apparently the initial timeline we see would have been Homura's final one, meaning that by showing up in Mitakihara, Ashtaroth utterly derailed the intended "end" of canon.
• Freak Out: Sayaka, upon realizing that not only are soul gems actually souls, but because Ashtaroth subsumed hers, she can't get more than 100 meters away from her. Ever.
• Ghost Amnesia: For some reason, Ashtaroth cannot remember anything about her life prior to making a wish and becoming a magical girl. She's not terribly pleased by this.
• Giant Equals Invincible: Zig zagged. Ashtaroth is multiple stories tall, but with the exception of Tome's cover, she possesses virtually no resistance to damage. However, this doesn't hold true with Saar, whose "Tilting the Scales" magic causes her to grow tougher as she grows in size.
• Gilligan Cut: Ashtaroth's defiance of Sayaka's common sense.
  "The witch isn't going to just sit back and let you explain!"
  You sit back and let Hitomi explain as she begins rapidly recapping the events of the last few hours.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Sayaka has (at varying points) had to heal from having her eye stabbed out, her knee crippled, and her hands shot through. These injuries all took place within roughly 24 hours of each other.
• Goomba Stomp: Ashtaroth combines this with Shield Bash to fall on Saar from hundreds of feet up, cracking her in two with Tome's weight. Apparently also a staple of Ashtaroth's repertoire when she was a magical girl.
• Green Thumb: Both figuratively and literally in the case of the Faas, small flying familiars that look like green human hands with propellers attached at the wrist, and use vines that grow from their fingertips to attack.
• Grenade Launcher: Homura apparently keeps a handheld one in her shield.
• Guns Akimbo: Homura pulls this at one point while chasing after Ashtaroth.
• Guns Are Worthless: For all of Ashtaroth's panic while facing Mami and Homura, their bullets seem to be more painful to her than they are actually damaging. Justified, as Ashtaroth's sheer size and Bizarre Alien Biology makes guns somewhat less effective against her than, say, cutting weapons.
• Harsh Word Impact: Averted. Shatterwords are physically harmful, but that has nothing to do with the language used.
• Healing Factor: Sayaka, to a greater extent than most other magical girls due to her wish.
• Healing Hands: Also Sayaka, this trope literally being one of the chapter titles.
• Heroic BSoD: Sayaka suffers one after learning that she's doomed to live with a witch. Ashtaroth manages to snap her out of it, but fails to actually cheer her up.
  • Mami has one after Charlotte eats Tira, shortly before turning into a witch.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Shemesh places himself in the way of Homura's Grenade Launcher to shield Ashtaroth from the shot, and is blown to bits as a result.
• High-Altitude Battle: Ashtaroth uses an illusion to make Sayaka think she's suddenly thousands of feet off the ground, forcing her to jump from floating platform to floating platform (which also aren't real) to keep from falling.
• Horrifying Hero: Ashtaroth is a multi-story tall despair monster whose primary feature is an intangible vortex where her face should be. She's doing her best not to let this get in the way of being a decent person, however.
• Horror Hunger: There's an argument to be made that Ashtaroth's subsumption ability isn't exactly "eating", but it's still pretty horrifying to her that she's drawn to do it to most any magical girl she encounters.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: Ashtaroth is primarily seeking out other witches to figure out if there are any other still-sapient ones like her, but if they prove non-sapient and hostile, she's certainly willing to put them down.
• Hunter of Monsters: Though most magical girls qualify, Mami takes this to next level, with her life largely revolving around hunting down witches to the exclusion of nearly everything else.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Shemesh to Ashtaroth, arguably, though his presence is not one to be counted on.
• I Am a Monster: As in canon, after finding out what soul gems really are, Sayaka starts calling herself a "zombie" and saying she's no longer human. Ashtaroth finds this stance on the matter rather ridiculous, and tells Sayaka as much.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Tira's interlude briefly focuses on how much she wishes she'd never become a magical girl. She can't focus on it for very long however, lest her soul gem become further corrupted.
• In the Dreaming Stage of Grief: Sayaka takes this to its extreme during her Freak Out, attempting to stab herself with her own sword to wake herself up, which Ashtaroth barely manages to stop in time.
• Invisible Writing: Ashtaroth's instincts/"witch self" will occasionally make herself known through this. It can be seen by highlighting the text, or with an invisitext revealer.
• It Can Think: Pretty much everyone the first time they meet Ashtaroth. Tira also encountered a witch that gave signs of such previously (Cecil), and has been fretting over it ever since.
• Jade-Colored Glasses: Sayaka puts hers on after her Heroic BSoD.
• Kill It with Fire: Homura ends up setting Ashtaroth on fire at one point, which, for a witch made mostly of paper, is a very bad thing. Luckily, Sayaka's Healing Hands manage to fix this before Ashtaroth turns into kindling.
• Knee Capping: One of the first things Homura does upon entering Ashtaroth’s barrier is shoot Sayaka in the knee to prevent her from interfering. She does this to Sayaka's hands shortly after, when the aforementioned injury proves not to be crippling enough.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Ashtaroth's episodic/autobiographical memory beyond her past month of magical girling is gone, but everything else seems to be relatively intact. Besides her name, at least.
• Level Ate: Charlotte, as the Witch of Sweets, naturally has a barrier like this to match... at least, in the later parts. The earlier parts, however....
• Living Structure Monster: The Witch of the Netherlands, Saar, is a living windmill.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Tome's cover has thus far proved to be virtually impenetrable to attack, making it an extremely good means of protection for Ashtaroth... assuming she can get it in front of her in time.
• MacGyvering: Downplayed. Ashtaroth attempts to make a bed out of a old hospital gurney, long grass, some large flower petals, and a sponge cake. The end result is just rather silly-looking, but since she can cover up how it looks with something better, it ends up working out alright.
• Made of Magic: Witches are composed entirely of grief. Or magic. It's not entirely clear there's really that much of a difference between the two.
• Magically Regenerating Clothing: Quite literally, as a magical girl's body and outfit seem to be restored in full upon being subsumed.
• Maid Corps: The Du Polignac, who also qualify as combat maids, being able to summon the weapons of the magical girls that they resemble.
• Master of Illusion: Ashtaroth, though given her issues with using illusions outside of the void she started out in, it's a stretch to really call her a "master".
• Meet My Good Friends Lefty and Righty: Ashtaroth doesn't want to just call the two books that are now part of her "lower book" and "upper book", and so ends up dubbing them "Tome" and "Novella", respectively.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Ashtaroth is the Witch of Subsumption, with all the instincts that come with it. Aside from causing her to crave the magic/soul of any magical girl she sees, they can even go so far as to outright take her over at times.
• Monster Compendium: Novella creates a short profile for all subsumed witches, magical girls, and familiars within itself.
• Name Amnesia: Ashtaroth literally cannot remember what her human name was, and so ends up just going by her witch alias when needed. Possibly also a case of Take Away Their Name, due to this memory loss occurring during the witching process.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Ashtaroth kills Mami.
  • Sayaka starts the conflict with Ashtaroth. It does not end well.
• Not Always Evil: Witches, apparently. Charlotte isn't hostile to her guests unless attacked, and Ashtaroth prefers to avoid causing trouble for others when possible.
  • Downplayed. Witches still seem to be compelled to spread their curses, no matter how good their intentions are.
• Obsessed with Food: Cecil seems to be more-than-slightly focused on the idea of food and eating in general, rather fittingly given that she's the witch of taste. Unfortunately, given her apparent normal diet...
• O.C. Stand-in: The first other witch Ashtaroth runs into is the Witch of the Netherlands, who actually existed in canon, but was only ever seen as a grief seed. Tira has also been heavily implied to be the magical girl who would become the Artist Witch, Izabel.
• One-Word Vocabulary: Though she may be able to write, the only sound Cecil has shown herself to be capable of thus far is various permutations of the cry "FU GEE!".
• Outside-Context Problem: Ashtaroth becomes a big one for Homura by randomly getting involved in one timeline. Though Homura inevitably encounters unknown witches on occasion, she was particularly unprepared for a witch that had the powers and smarts to successfully trick and almost eat her.
• Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Cecil is only about the size of a person, but has enough blood inside of her to stretch multiple large tentacles of it simultaneously across a room, and still not fully empty herself.
• The Pen Is Mightier: Tira's magic weapon is a combination pen and paintbrush.
• Paper People: The Ummashtart are a group of familiars collectively made of different types of paper. While most of them are three-dimensional to at least some extent, there are at least a few that are completely flat.
• People Puppets: Subsuming a magical girl allows Ashtaroth to do this with them.
• Perspective Flip: The story is told through the lens of a witch, generally the antagonists of the franchise at large, and the various things she goes through as a result of being what she is. There are also occasional one-chapter interludes that focus around characters other than Ashtaroth, which help to make their actions and thought processes more understandable later down the line.
• Playing Possum: Ashtaroth pretends that Homura's bombs killed her, and creates an illusion of her barrier dispersing to fool Homura into letting down her guard.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: Candeloro, who is so desperate for friends that once someone comes into her cottage, she won't let them leave... ever.
• Power Makes Your Hair Grow: Ashtaroth's incomplete subsumption of Homura results in her galaxy lines changing from their rough spiral configuration into a much more humanoid, head-like shape, complete with lengthy (and constantly moving) hair.
• Psychic Link: Ashtaroth can establish this with a magical girl by subsuming and then extracting them, allowing the two to speak telepathically. It cuts the magical girl in question off from Kyubey's telepathy network, however.
• Prehensile Hair: Cecil can control her ragged twintails, the strands of which are sharp enough to cut through flesh.
• Rainbow Speak: Usually used in telepathy, but also shows when Ashtaroth's mind is colored by curses.
• Reality Is Out to Lunch: Ashtaroth's barrier even from the start contains a seemingly endless void, patchworked roads that twist through the air like enormous tentacles, and ruined pillars that look like they're on the verge of glitching out of reality. This only grows more true as the barrier expands and gains such things as a cavern that's far larger on the inside than it is on the outside, and contains within it doors leading to other doors that pay no attention whatsoever to where they should physically lead.
• Rock of Limitless Water: The Brandy, who are capable of producing endless amounts of rose-tinted water. Also Tira's pen/paintbrush weapon, though with ink and paint instead.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: The Pyotr seem to generally be about as large as a medium-sized dog.
• Rivers of Blood: Candeloro's barrier features a lake of this, upon which everything else (save the apple trees) is floating.
• Run the Gauntlet: Ashtaroth ends up in a fight with both Mami and Tira after negotiations fall through, then has to flee from Homura immediately after, only for Hirako to show up a few minutes later.
• Sapient All Along: This is Ashtaroth's primary concern about other witches - after all, if she stayed sapient after becoming a witch, who's to say the same doesn't apply to all the ones she hunted down in the past?
  • Tira has similar concerns after her encounter with Cecil, and thoroughly questions Kyubey about the possibility.
• Second-Person Narration: "You" are Ashtaroth, according to the narration.
• Sheathe Your Sword: Referenced in one of the threadmark titles ("Sheathe Your Softback"), referring to Ashtaroth choosing to stand down against Charlotte.
• Small, Secluded World: Ashtaroth's witch barrier, which she can steer around and see the outside of, but can't actually leave. It doesn't stay small for very long though, as any other barrier she approaches merges with hers, expanding the space inside in the process.
• Soft Glass: Though not actually glass, this effectively describes Ashtaroth's shatterwords, which break and fragment with the application of nearly any force or impact.
• Solo Duet: Cecil does this mentally by virtue of her split personality.
• The Speechless: Due to having no mouth, Ashtaroth cannot speak. She's able to find various alternative methods of communication however, including rearranging witch runes into normal writing, creating illusory script, and limited telepathy - though, funnily, even her mental voice typically has no actual "sound" to it.
• Spider People: At least one of the Ummashtart has the form of an arachne, based off of one of the shapeshifted forms Ashtaroth used when she was still a magical girl.
• Spider-Sense: Sayaka's different-to-canon wish gave her the passive ability to sense danger... but for people she cares about, rather than herself.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: A skill of many magical girls, and the one Sayaka uses to summon swords en masse.
• Stages of Monster Grief: The third threadmark's title is "Skip to Step Five", wherein Ashtaroth just decides to skip the first few stages of this and go right to acceptance, though she later decides that doesn't mean she can't still try to find a way to become human again.
• Storm of Blades: When Ashtaroth blocks off her vision, Sayaka chooses to create dozens upon dozens of swords and throw them in all directions, figuring that at least some of them will probably hit.
• Sudden Downer Ending: A "what-if" style alternate ending will sometimes be linked to an option, showing a potential bad end to the story.
• Suicide by Cop: Possibly. Saar's profile summary, along with some comments made by the author, give the impression that she may have deliberately provoked Ashtaroth into killing her.
• Swarm of Rats: The Pyotr will group up with each other to chase after an enemy, and there are a LOT of them.
• Taking the Bullet: Shemesh shows up from what seems like nowhere just in time to shield Ashtaroth from Sayaka's final attack.
• Talking to Themself: Cecil seems to have two separate trains of thought going at all times. While they don't specifically speak with each other, they occasionally follow after and complete the other's thought process.
  • This also applies to many of Ashtaroth's conversations, depending on how much you agree with her witchstincts that anything she's subsumed now qualifies as her as well.
• Teleport Spam: What Ashtaroth thinks Homura is doing when she attacks, as without directly knowing about her Time Stands Still powers, this is what Homura's magic appears to be.
• Theme Naming: The name "Ashtaroth" is usually used to refer to a demon, but as she has a familiar called Shemesh, and others called Ummashtart (a name meaning "My mother is Ashtarout"), it's more likely that she's named after the goddess Ishtar.
• Throwing Off the Disability: Ashtaroth regains the use of her formerly-trapped arms after her battle with Saar. This does not seem to help her as much as she might like.
• Time Travel Escape: Homura uses her "Groundhog Day" Loop magic to reset the timeline, thus escaping from Ashtaroth's attempt to subsume her. It mostly works.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Upon being subsumed and re-extracted from Novella, Sayaka mistakenly believes for a short while that she was just so pathetic that Ashtaroth decided she wasn't worth eating. This continues to depress her until she realizes, to her horror, she wasn't entirely regurgitated.
• Tragic Monster: Mami/Candeloro. Technically Ashtaroth herself as well, though she mostly manages to keep the "monster" part of herself contained.
• Unconventional Formatting: All over the place. Ashtaroth's words have different quotation styles depending on what way she's communicating: shatterwords use 「Japanese quotes」, illusion words use ~tildes~, and telepathy uses <chevrons>. Regardless of the method, her words are always written in Book Antiqua font. Telepathy is color-coded to the magical girl in question's voice, though this can still get confusing given Ashtaroth's own abilities. When Ashtaroth's witch side starts heavily influencing her, the text will become bolded, change to Book Antiqua font (even while she's not speaking), gradually start growing larger, and eventually begin alternating between black and white lettering.
• Uniformity Exception: While most of the Du Polignac are based on Kyoko and Sayaka, there is a single one that is instead based on Tira. Aside from having unique looks, it's missing both the serving platter and the ribbons that all the others have. The latter in particular turns out to be important, as it means Candeloro can't just immediately tie the familiar up with them to stop it from escaping her cottage.
• Unnaturally Looping Location: Ashtaroth's barrier seems to just double back on itself if you try to find an edge.
• Unsafe Haven: You'd think that Ashtaroth's barrier would get invaded slightly less given that she tends to keep it fairly high off the ground, but pretty much every magical girl who's made a determined effort at getting inside thus far has somehow managed it anyways.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Shemesh misinterprets what Ashtaroth wants from him, and ends up grabbing Hitomi off the sidewalk. The chain of events this kicks off ends up leading to Sayaka and Tira getting subsumed, Mami turning into a witch, and the timeline that should have been Homura's final one getting discarded just like all the rest.
• The Victim Must Be Confused: When Ashtaroth explains that kidnapping Hitomi was a complete accident, Hitomi readily agrees. Sayaka, however, does not.
• Voice Changeling: Ashtaroth has no voice of her own, making her normal telepathy feel extremely weird, but she can use the mental voice of any girl she's subsumed. Talking to someone while using their own voice is not really any less creepy, unfortunately.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Ashtaroth purportedly had such powers as a magical girl. As a witch, she has familiars called Ummashtart that are based on different forms she took on during that time.
• Was Once a Man: In traditional PMMM fashion, Ashtaroth is a former magical girl turned witch after corruption fully overcame her soul gem.
• Water-Geyser Volley: Ashtaroth deliberately places herself on top of one of Saar's summoned geysers in order to blast herself upwards into the sky.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Played with. Though magical girls are changed when they become witches, all of the witches shown in the story so far do at least think and feel in some capacity and can be placated, so anyone paying attention will notice that they are people in their own right and not just mindless murder monsters. However, it is unclear how much humanity they have lost; because they tend to communicate poorly and behave erratically, witches have trouble evoking sympathy or making themselves understood. Consequently, magical girls often can't be bothered to talk to witches while they pose a very real threat, let alone console or befriend them. Meanwhile, Kyubey cannot comprehend what motivates witches to act as oddly as they do, so supposedly he distrusts any signs of sapience and sees absolutely no point in trying to understand or communicate with witches... not that he cares much how they think and feel.
• Willfully Weak: Saar's profile implies that were she not constantly forcing herself to hold back the storm that looms above her, she would be significantly more powerful.
• With My Hands Tied: During the fight against Saar, Ashtaroth's arms are still trapped inside of Tome's pages, leaving her unable to make use of them. Thankfully her arms are not particularly critical to her abilities, so she still manages to win. And her arms are freed once she subsumes Saar anyways.
• The Worf Barrage: Mami, known by Ashtaroth as a dangerously skilled magical girl to be avoided if possible, utterly fails to defeat Ashtaroth and Charlotte in combat.
• You Are Who You Eat: Subsuming a magical girl allows Ashtaroth to use their body at her discretion, effectively "becoming" them to anyone not in the know.

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