Nikki 💖* and Stellaura🌟 (my OC). The latter is trapped in a RGU-esque (revolutionary-girl-utena) school that's like a golden cage for any girl who wants to be a princess.
*i don't own nikki obvs. She's a canon character and a property of inf0ld and stuff. Just putting it out there.
I like to headcanon and oleplay that 𝘮𝘺 Nikki, the Nikki I'm dressing up to look like Stellaura, is their "fusion". They explore Miraland together as one body after escaping the school
OK LORE DUMP TIME!!
SO LIKE. Here's the basic lore about Stellaura first, then to as how they are fused.
About Stellaura
Stellaura is a Wishing Star demiangel that is, you guessed it, a fusion of a Wishing Star angel named Stella and a human named Laura. Thus, her name is Stellaura. BAM!
What's a Wishing Star angel? (I made that up) They are basically Faewish Sprites but humanoid and stronger. They are divine beings who serve under the Wishing One prior the birth of the Faewish Sprites and the Pieceys. Their powers are second to the god they serve but the War against the Dark erased every trace of them, a sacrifice made so that their god and his legacy will survive. Only Stella, a failure angel, survived by falling from the heavens onto a part of Miraland where she gets knocked unconscious and where it is untouched by the wars that would soon begin.
Stella finds Laura's wish "beautiful and noble": to become a princess and get strong enough to protect others (Laura basically read a book about magical girls who are also princesses). Stella fused with Laura to sort of "revive" her from her Dark-infected injury since they're in the aftermath of a War. Yanno?
Stella doesn't understand precisely what a Princess is or what they do. In a way, she has an alien understanding of humans, kinda like the gems in St/ven Universe before their charater development. Laura only understands that princesses are girls with all these kinds of virtues who also go on tea parties, have their own prince charming, sing really good, and other such silly things. What they do know is that, based on the book, a legendary outfit is what they'll need to become a Princess and save the world.
So Stellaura (essentially immortal) sets out on a journey to pursue that outfit. And she was found by someone (the big big bad) that would lead her to her answer: the RGU-esque school that I was talking about. In RGU, there's a popular theory that Ohtori Academy, the anime's setting, is sort of its own separate dimension divorced from the real world, with its own rules and flow of time logic. (I forgot the rest of the details. just!!! That.) Similarly, in this OC AU of mine, Cicia has a cursed ruins area where the said school used to be, the area's perimeter being a whole giant forest of Fairy Ring mushrooms. If you manage to survive and get into the center, you'll eventually see the ruins of a grand academy city. Stepping further beyond the innermost fairy ring transports you to an alternate dimension where the city was still alive. (It'd look like the kingdom city in Tangled and/or the one in Barbie: Princess & the Pauper). In this dimension, no one ages, no one "truly" dies. But time flows in a loop (except it's not rlly a loop but more like the collective memories of everyone there being refreshed. What was thought to be the past are fabricated memories and hearsays that are misplaced truths and halftruths.)
This RGU-esque school is a small city that has a whole castle as the academy building. And that is the Theater Styling Academy where the Whim generated by magical clothes and outfits are amplified with song, dance, and acting performance combined (kinda like the Sovereign battles but with musical-style vocal sing instead of just dance and theatrics). Theater is a big thing there, particularly and mostly, since it's within Heartcraft, fairytale themes. Most especially the typical fairytale of a prince slaying the dragon to rescue the princess. In that story lies the foundation upon whatever powers the dimension's weird rules. And yeah, if you put two and two together, somehow the thing that HELP MAINTAIN powering it all is...
Stellaura taking on and maintaining the role of the Muse Princess over and over again.
Huh? What? How? Let's digress: 1. How? 2. What is a Muse Princess?
1. How - Stellaura acting like lovey-dovey royalty with a stranger male prince feeds into the delusional happiness of the hetslop shipper goddess. That goddess, Audientia, was so burdened with listening to a millennia of sorrows from her believers that she needed constant fairytale nostalgia entertainment. (Audientia is a tragic character imma make a separate post for her and other characters (or not)). When things don't go her way, she punishes the deviator by manipulating the events around them that will lead to their "Bad End" or (usually) releasing Esseling hordes into the city.
2. What is a Muse Princess? OK, imagine a Student Council body. And the President and Vice President is being shipped together. No, not just shipped, they're actively ENDORSED by the admins. But rather than the school shipping the Pres and VP together cuz chemistry, the school ships them because they occupy precisely the Pres and VP positions (which is gendered and exclusively het) so it's a free-for-all ultimate love team thing but with royalty flavor. It's kinda like that with the Muse Princess and their partner, the Escort Prince. The Muse Princess' duty as MUSE is to represent and embody the ideal princess (role model of all girls in the school where almost all girls want to be princesses): femme, soft, graceful, calm under pressure, kind, prioritizing the happiness and mood of the prince and potential princes, not acting out of turn, not fighting back, speaking only when allowed by the higher-ups, being passive, being submissive, being a doormat...
It didn't seem out of the ordinary to her at first. Before she realized it, she had internalized all these things that were drilled into her in the guise of Princess training. Even though she had all the things like tea time parties and singing really good, she didn't enjoy most of the everyday parts of being a Muse Princess but persisted anyway until she just stopped questioning it and disassociated.
About the Fusing stuff
SO THAT'S IT FOR THE "GOLDEN CAGE" METAPHOR THINGY PART!!!
TLDR that Golden Cage is being in a trapped comphet where you are rewarded with "praise" and princess treatment for conforming, but punished socially and divinely otherwise.
Now onto the Nikki and Stellaura fusing thing lmao.
Nikki, while in Cicia, finds a peculiar girl who looks like her, introducing herself as Stellaura. They get to know each other, Styling Battle together, etc. After learning about her goal of acquiring Miracle Outfits Stellaura gives her an invitation to the Ever After Ball where the winner will be granted a Miracle Outfit.