Musician Of The Forest, Cranberry/Synopsis

## *Prior to Magical Girl Raising Project*

### Selection Gone Wrong

When she was nine years old, Cranberry was transformed into a Magical Girl by Fav and his master at the time. She was then pitted against other Magical Girls in a selection process to be allowed to remain a Magical Girl, per the Magical Kingdom rules.

However, the selection test went wrong when one of the Magical Girls used her magic "to summon anything", and accidentally summoned a Demon. The Demon then went on a rampage, killing the overseer and all the other participants until only Cranberry remained. Seeing that she was about to be killed, Cranberry, in a fit of shock and despair, charged at the Demon and successfully killed it. Having overcome death, Cranberry experienced a rush of adrenaline and joy that she had never felt before, starting her lust for fighting.

She was then called by Fav, who had survived the Demon's rampage. He was impressed that she was able to kill the Demon and offered to become her Mascot Character. Afterward, Fav explained to Cranberry on how selections usually work: The participants collect *Candies* by helping others with the one who has the lowest being eliminated until only one remained; the losers have their memories erased. Agreeing that this was boring, the two decided to cooperate to make selections more fun and for Cranberry to get to fight a death battle again.

### Archfiend Cram School

In order to accomplish their goal to make the selections more fun, Cranberry aimed to become a selection examiner. However, this position is only given to some of the most trusted people of the *Magical Girl Resources Department*. Fav thus concluded that the fastest way to reach their goal is for Cranberry to graduate from Archfiend Cram School.

While studying at Archfiend Cram School, Cranberry learned how to harness her magic. She once fought Marika Fukuroi, beating each other until their bones were broken. Both considered their fights "the time of their lives". However, while she enjoyed her period in Archfiend Cram School, her fellow students were different from her. They fought to test their physical limits and for entertainment, while Cranberry considered fighting the sole reason for her existence.

In order to graduate from Archfiend Cram School, Cranberry would have to land a hit on the headmistress Archfiend Pam. Cranberry thus challenged her to a fight. During the fight, Cranberry was completely outmatched and continuously beaten by Archfiend Pam. However, before the fight, she had Fav do research about Archfiend Pam and discovered that she was bad with technology. She thus used her magic "to manipulate sound-waves" to replicate the sound of Archfiend Pam's Magical Phone. This distracted her long enough to allow Cranberry to land a hit. Archfiend Pam then declared to her that she had graduated, as a severely wounded Cranberry lost consciousness.

Afterward, having successfully graduated, Cranberry and Fav could move on to the next phase of their plan. Cranberry, despite successfully meeting her goal, admitted she was going to miss attending Archfiend Cram School.

### Accomplices

Cranberry eventually met a Magical Girl named Melville, who greatly resembled her. Melville had somewhat of an inferiority complex, not considering her magic, "to change the color of any surface", to be a very useful power. Cranberry, however, disagreed and took her on as her student. Melville would end up becoming Cranberry's henchman, often helping her with her selections.

Cranberry eventually also gained several accomplices, who agreed with her belief that the current selection processes were obsolete. One of these accomplices was the head of the *Magical Girl Resources Department*, Pythie Frederica. Another one of her accomplices ordered a Magical Girl that she oversaw, named Nokko, to use her magic, "to manipulate the emotions of others", to help Cranberry make her selection exams far more intense. Cranberry would always call for Nokko if her selections were progressing slowly or not to her liking.

### Selection Exams

Cranberry was eventually accepted by the *Magical Girl Resources Department* as a selection process overseer. Unbeknownst to anyone, however, Cranberry and Fav were secretly putting Magical Girl candidates through death battles. During these battles, Cranberry would often fight herself among the participants, in search of a worthy opponent.

In order to keep their activities a secret, Fav would always send false reports to the Land of Magic. Cranberry would also make sure that there would also always be one survivor to make it seem that everything was going fine. Fav would then erase that survivor's memories of her selection.

Cranberry oversaw the selections of Magical Daisy, Clantail, Masked Wonder, Genopsyko Yumenoshima, Nonako Miyokata, Cherna Mouse, and Kokuri-chan.

Cranberry turned @Meow-Meow and her two friends into Magical Girls and put them through a selecting process, forcing the three to fight her. During the battle, Cranberry killed both of @Meow-Meow's friends. Despite them telling her to run with their last breaths, @Meow-Meow desperately fought Cranberry to avenge her friends. Cranberry ultimately defeated @Meow-Meow. However, she resolved to not kill her, and instead had Fav erase her memories.

Cranberry also turned Akane and her entire family into Magical Girls. She then put them through a death battle, which ended with Akane being the only survivor. Although Cranberry ordered Fav to erase Akane's memories, her trauma from losing her entire family prevented her from fully losing her memories.

At one point, Cranberry went as far as to gather one hundred Magical Girls and force them to fight each other, until only one remained. However, a Magical Girl named Pfle approached her and gave her a proposition. Cranberry would spare both her and her partner, Shadow Gale, and in return, Pfle would make this the best selection she'd ever seen. Pfle kept her word, manipulating the other Magical Girls into killing each other until only she and Shadow Gale remained. Afterward, Cranberry kept her word and spared both Pfle and Shadow Gale, delighted by the performance.

Not all of Cranberry's selections produced strong fighters, however. On one occasion, a Magical Girl named Detec Bell managed to deduce where the other participants lived. She planned to attack them while they were home, but her cowardice won over her own strength, resulting in Bell always hiding in walls. This caused the other participants to find out where the others lived, and successfully eliminate each other, until only Detec Bell remained. Although Cranberry was disappointed, she did not kill Detec Bell, and instead erased her memories with Fav.

Cranberry didn't only fight the Magical Girls in her selection processes. Occasionally, she also fought whomever she happened to run into. While Pechka and her best friend were exploring a forest, the two happened to cross paths with Cranberry. Transforming them both into Magical Girls, she then fought Pechka's friend and beat her to death right in front of Pechka's eyes. With her dying breath, she begged Pechka to run. However, Pechka stood by, scared and paralyzed. Cranberry then deemed her not worth fighting and had Fav erase her memories.

### Making a Social Game

At some point, Cranberry moved to N-City and took residence in an abandoned hut deep inside the mountain forests on the edge of the city.

Fav came up with the idea to create a free-to-play mobile game to recruit Magical Girl candidates. The idea was approved by the Magical Kingdom and the social game *Magical Girl Raising Project* was created.

As time passed, more and more people became Magical Girls by playing the social game. However, they were not told that they were actually only candidates. Cranberry helped by mentoring the Magical Girl Calamity Mary, but mostly stood alone and waited as the number of Magical Girls in N-City kept increasing.

### *Magical Illegal Girl*

Before officially starting her selection exam in N-City, Cranberry intervened when one of her candidates, Ripple, fought Rionetta, a Magical Girl from outside N-City. She appeared before Rionetta just as she had beaten Ripple unconscious and was about to finish her off. Rionetta, who did not yet have any memories of Cranberry, felt an overwhelming sense of fear and fled the scene under the orders of Cranberry.

## *Magical Girl Raising Project*

### The Elimination Game Begins

Cranberry was known to be the oldest Magical Girl in N-City. During the weekly chat between all the Magical Girls, she would always sit by and make music to accommodate the scenery.

During one weekly chat, Fav announced that the sixteenth Magical Girl had been chosen. However, Fav also announced that the developers of *Magical Girl Raising Project* had decided that there were too many Magical Girls in N-City and their numbers would thus be brought down to eight. To do so they would use the *Magical Candy* system. Every week going forward, during the weekly chat, the Magical Girl with the fewest *Candies* would be eliminated. In response to this, every Magical Girl began to rush to earn *Candies* to remain a Magical Girl.

In reality, however, the chaos was all planned out by Cranberry and Fav, who were secretly the developers of *Magical Girl Raising Project*.

During the following week, Cranberry and Fav secretly observed the other Magical Girls and their progress in collecting *Candies*. Cranberry also gathered *Candies* herself, not wanting to be outdone by her juniors.

Cranberry was present during the first weekly chat since the beginning of the elimination game where it was announced that Nemurin was to first to be eliminated. Afterward, Cranberry asked Fav what would happen if they were eliminated, to which he answered that they would die. Waiting for other Magical Girls to find the log, she left the conversation to be recorded in the history of the chatroom-- and was eventually found by the other Magical Girls, causing them to become aware that they were in a death game. As planned by Fav and Cranberry, they hoped this would cause them to begin fighting each other in order to survive.

## *Legacy*

Immediately after Cranberry's death, Tama threw up at the sight of her disfigured corpse. She then ran over to Swim Swim's side to help her, only for her to kill the former because she saw her human form.

Fav didn't seem to be fazed by Cranberry's death and immediately tried to make Swim Swim his new master. It is revealed Fav, although caring for Cranberry, did not actually care if she would die or not, even calling her reckless. However, after some time, Fav did begin to miss Cranberry, as Swim Swim did not care much about the selection.

The events of Cranberry's final selection had a huge emotional effect on the two surviving participants, Snow White and Ripple. After the death of her two partners and seeing just how far the other Magical Girls were willing to go to survive, the always optimistic Snow White became cynical and distant. She began to hunt down rogue Magical Girls similar to Cranberry as the *Magical Girl Hunter* to prevent anything similar to her selections from ever happening again. Meanwhile, Ripple, having lost her own partner, as well as her left eye and arm, resolved to instead help others and discontinue her violent tendencies.

When the Magical Kingdom received news that Cranberry, one of their best selection overseers, had been putting Magical Girl candidates through death battles, it fell into chaos. The *Magical Girl Resources Department* was held responsible and many were removed from their positions. Many of Cranberry's allies were either arrested or went on the run, though they had mostly been hunted down by Snow White in *Restart*. Magical Girls who previously survived Cranberry's selections also came to be known under the slur *Children of Cranberry*.

Some believed that Cranberry's tests produced superior Magical Girls and attempted to replicate them. Pythie Frederica tried to create an "Ideal Magical Girl" this way, but all the participants ended up killing each other instead. Keek also attempted to replicate Cranberry's tests, but using current *Children of Cranberry*, believing they were not "True Magical Girls" and needed to be retested. Towards the end of Keek's selection, the memory wipes on the participants became undone, causing them to remember what Cranberry put them through.

Melville, Cranberry's student, became extremely distraught at the news of her mentor's death. Melville only became more angered and aggressive upon realizing Cranberry was murdered by one of the weakest Magical Girls of her final selection, rather than a strong opponent she had wished for. Melville quickly slipped into denial, refusing to believe Cranberry was truly dead. In her mentor's memory, Melville would try to kill as many Magical Girls as possible during Keek's selection process, starting with the strongest; following the steps of Cranberry.

Cranberry's former acquaintances from Archfiend Cram School were shocked upon hearing of her actions. Even Archfiend Pam herself, while feeling loss upon learning of her student's death, could not condone her actions. Cranberry's actions also negatively impacted the school's reputation. The only one who still viewed her in a positive light was Marika, who continued to respect her as a fighter.

Pfle ended up blaming the Magical Kingdom for Cranberry being able to do all she did and get away with her actions for as long as she did. This ended up becoming part of her motivation to overthrow the Land of Magic's current, corrupt government and install a new one. But unfortanly, passed away

## *Magical Girl Raising Project: Black*

### Shadow Cranberry

During the incident where Umemizaki Middle School's homunculi went out of control and attacked the students, one of them took the from of Cranberry. She fought Ranyui and Diko Narakunoin and, despite them fighting to the best of their ability, overpowered and cornered them. As she was about to finish them off, however, Snow White arrived at the scene. Whereas the other homunculi appeared to be mindless, the shadow Cranberry showed signs of intelligence, as she expressed surprise and excitement upon seeing her former examinee. Snow White then charged at the imitation of her former examiner and decapitated her before she could react.