Chapter 1: Heart of Darkness
The story begins with a Cryptic Conversation between Luna, Kero, and Kyubey, in which Kyubey tells the other two that despite all they have done to preserve it, The Multiverse is dying and cannot be saved...
Cut to the last moments of the final battle of Smile Pretty Cure!, with one crucial difference as the Point of Divergence: Joker's consciousness remains alive and aware inside of Pierrot's body, able to see and feel but helpless to do anything as the Cures' Miracle Rainbow Burst purifies the master whom he gave everything to resurrect.
Joker awakens in the afterlife, shattered by the pointless of his existence, his faith in Pierrot gone. He is greeted by Chaos, the Sentient Cosmic Force which serves as the origin of every servant of evil and darkness in the multiverse. And after getting an answer as to just how many magical girls Chaos's various incarnations fight in every version of reality, a change comes over Joker...
Chaos intends to absorb Joker's essence back into itself and continue the endless cycle of rebellion and defeat that has persisted for the entirety of creation, but Joker's defiance gives it pause, and it offers to listen to the harlequin's idea: perhaps there is a way to end the cycle for good...
Tropes That Appear in this Chapter:
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: As he's having his Chaos Seed removed and being unmade, Joker screams that Chaos is just as much a coward as Pierrot for simply accepting the cycle as it is. His sheer audacity makes Chaos pause and listen to more of what Joker has to say.
- Eternal Recurrence: Such is Chaos's fate for eternity, in every incarnated form in every timeline in every universe: fight against the forces of light, inevitably lose, and fight again.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Joker learns that Chaos is the Greater-Scope Villain to every villain, including all of the previous Precure Big Bads.
- Sentient Cosmic Force: Chaos isn't merely a powerful being, it's the Abstract Apotheosis of the abscence of being, a sapient force of nature that has reincarnated itself in countless faces over countless instances of the Eternal Recurrence.
- Screw Destiny: Joker's offer to Chaos in a nutshell: if it's Chaos's destiny to fight the light, lose, and try again forever and ever, then the cycle itself is flawed and needs to be broken.
