"Let them eat cake."
- Marie Antoinette
Sprawled in a heap sideways, chest out, or glutes-up covered in cake mix probably wasn't the most majestic position for a Love Angel to be in. Wedding Peach and her three well-whipped friends were lying in the soft, moist bread of a giant multi-tiered wedding cake and struggling to pull themselves out. Angel Lily, Angel Daisy, and Angel Salvia were spread in a colorful arrangement of cupid armor, frills, and creamy flesh on the cake's lesser tiers. Wedding Peach served as a living cake topper at the peak, squirming and panicking like she had woken up late in the morning and couldn't untangle the thick white velvet blankets around her body. The Love Angels had started off determined that the battle with today's monster was going to be a short order, until they found out all of their teamwork and all of their incredible magic was nothing compared to a mild mixture of flour, sugar, and water. Now they were being made into ingredients in an uncomfortably literal angel food cake.
Their opponent was named the Dowry Decliner. He was a recipe for disaster made up of one-half pastry chef and one-half bakery oven. He was the size of a small chapel with the imposing power of a Renaissance cathedral. His stout but gargantuan body was shaped like a furnace on two legs. His arms were made of long fat icing tubes. His head was a stone gargoyle's face sculpted with a constant scowling expression, jaws gaping open with a hollow space that acted as a chimney when steam built up in his bellows. His entire bulging stomach flapped open and shut on hinges like an oven door, functioning as his true mouth. The giant chef hat sitting on top of his gargoyle head was stylized as a belfry steeple. He was all about tolling the death knells for those pesky Love Angels.
The monster was accompanied to the kitchen of despair by thirteen human-sized and slender-figured assistants. They weightlessly floated around the cake where the Love Angels were captured in a chorus of high-pitched giggling. Unnatural creations made of pitch black primeval dough, their faces were completely blank aside from wide grinning mouths, while their bodies were sultry expanses of curves and smooth edges mimicking human female anatomy. They were a baker's dozen of raw templates for Love Devils, dark gingerbread fairies cut from a single cookie sheet and waiting to be sprinkled with their final toppings.
The coquettish shadow figures clustered in teams around the Dowry Decliner's icing tube arms, working together to steer the tubes in waving motions. Some of them worked on applying the last bit of icing to Momoko's and Yuri's armored cake patties, while Hinagiku and Scarlet diligently got their frilled buns trimmed by the others. The tastier the fairies made these brightly-colored treats, the more hungry the Dowry Decliner would become.
He ended up becoming so hungry that as soon as his helpers were done, he dove to the ground in a belly flop and pulled the entire human wedding cake into his oven in one gigantic bite. The instant the door slammed shut on their struggling forms, Momoko and her friends' lives as eligible bachelorettes were finished. He instantly made them his four wives in a fiery harem, baking them and devouring them in a single savage act. Their souls were delicious. Their extracted Love Angel powers left a pleasant aftertaste in his grill.
The Dowry Decliner stood back up as his chimney belched the fumes of incinerated sugar and heifer meat. His thirteen assistants began miming a stubborn argument over who deserved to inherit the Love Angels' energies now cooling in his oven. He broke up the fight by picking four of the abyss fairies at random and commanding them to assume the position.
The monster's left icing tube split into a giant "hand" with four nozzle "fingers" aiming straight down. The nozzles hovered over four naked shadow figures dancing on the ground and squirted sparkling, magically-concentrated icing over their heads.
The silhouette showered in lime green icing giggled as she gained the powers of the consumed Angel Daisy, transforming into a proper shade with Daisy's hair and a sleeker, blacker version of Daisy's costume. The silhouette in red icing took on the essence of the devoured Angel Salvia. The silhouette in blue icing took on the essence of the ingested Angel Lily. The silhouette in pink icing took on the essence of the defiled Wedding Peach.
The nine uncooked shadow beings merged together into a single void of nothingness and hopped into a sack of rolling pins and waffle irons on the Dowry Decliner's back, looking forward to being contestants on the next episode of Iron Chef. The four fully-realized Love Devil masterpieces stood at the foot of of their towering architect with their bright white teeth gleaming on their empty black faces. Their shapely outlines made them look like an eerie minimalist portrait of Wedding Peach's team.
The Dowry Decliner ominously pointed with his icing tube, signaling "Go." The Love Devils launched from their heeled shoes and boots like shadow ballerinas and swiftly glided off, ready to divorce the Earth from its eternal existence.
Author's note: This is what happens when I think about the art aesthetic for Utena and those Sailor Moon Crystal eyecatches for too long.