Carnival Valerini

Carnival Smith was born with an unremarkable name and in an unremarkable male body, in the most unremarkable of all 50 states- Ohio. Everyone in Carnival’s family was a normal person, generally speaking. They got married and held stable jobs and had kids. This is normal to ninety percent of the population- but to a young Carnival, mediocrity was a death sentence. She tried her hand at every hobby she had access to, but ended up gravitating most to theater. She loved playing the heel, and acting gave her a good social circle. But besides that? Everything’s average. Carnival goes through elementary and middle school without getting bullied, she has friends, she gets average grades, she wears average clothes, her friends are average, average, average…

But that’s all set to change with a letter from Hope’s Peak Academy. Carnival’s not even sure what it could be for when she sees it. Maybe it’s for acting, sure, but maybe it’s for a talent she hadn’t even noticed she had!

But as she opens it, her face falls. She’s been accepted as… the Ultimate Lucky Student. All she did was win a lottery.

Carnival knows how this will go. No one cares about the lucky students, not even those Hope’s Peak fanblogs that catalog the new students. But… maybe that’s good, just this once. It’s a clean slate. A chance to start over in a new country, as a new person. One worth remembering. September can’t come soon enough.

Once she’s at Hope’s Peak, Carnival becomes fast friends with Diamond Bauge, the Ultimate Wedding Planner. Diamond’s from Ohio like Carnival, and just as disillusioned with her talent- the only reason she’s good at planning weddings is because she’s had to do it for her mom’s numerous marriages. Can you really say love is eternal if it’s less “til death do us part” and more “til five months and seventeen days do us part”? Carnival digs how emo she is, and the two of them skip classes to smoke outside the school.

With graduation fast-approaching, Carnival still hasn’t figured out what she actually wants to do with her life. It’d be nice if it involved Diamond, though. Unfortunately, Diamond’s mother is set to tear them apart the day after graduation thanks to the marriage she arranged between Diamond and some weird French guy. Diamond bemoans her fate to Carnival, who suggests the obvious solution- why not run away together? But that’s easier said than done, due to how well-guarded Diamond’s home is.

So, Carnival suggests the second-most obvious solution. Kidnapping.

Carnival scopes out the wedding venue, plans her disguises, and gives Diamond an early wedding gift- a lace umbrella. She promises to get her out of this. But come the day of the wedding, Carnival is nowhere to be found. Diamond sweats bullets as she walks down the aisle- but right before she says “I do” through gritted teeth, the glass ceiling of the church explodes into glitter. Diamond just barely has time to shield herself with Carnival’s umbrella.

A masked Carnival descends from the ceiling in a cloud of white smoke. They snatch up Diamond (as well as the more expensive wedding gifts), and leave the same way they came- through the ceiling. It feels amazing. This… has to be it. This is the feeling Carnival’s been searching for all of her life- purpose.

Diamond’s mother’s search for her daughter is all-reaching, and she and Carnival are quick to move and change their names to escape her. Diamond Bague becomes Jordan Rosenbloom, and Carnival Smith becomes… Carnival Valerini. Now that Jordan doesn’t have her mother’s money to mooch off of, they need a way to support themselves. They start to brainstorm, but they run into a quick problem- Jordan hates her profession, and the only thing Carnival is really good at is crashing ornate weddings and getting cast as the gay-coded villain in high school theater productions. But they work something out eventually. Jordan will continue to host weddings… and Carnival will continue crashing them. This satisfies Jordan’s hatred of love and matrimony while satiating Carnival’s need to be the heel and have all eyes on her. Carnival’s escapades get a lot of coverage, and no one ever expects she and Jordan are working together. It works great for a few years… until they get kidnapped.

…

Carnival wakes the Fantastical Forest- a glowing, cyan forest full of odd trees, strange magic… and other ultimates, just like herself. Including Jordan. Carnival is quick to announce herself as the Ultimate Party Crasher, still shameful of her lucky student title, and her and Jordan fall into their wedding planner/party crasher kayfabe. This continues even when a talking polar bear announces that they’ll all be killing each other. Marvelous.

Carnival keeps to herself most of the time. Whenever someone asks about her life, she’s quick to lie about growing up in Italy and her various escapades in crime. The Diamond kidnapping gets brought up after a missing poster for her is rolled in the gacha- but Jordan spins a story about Diamond being her stepsister that Carnival had cruelly kidnapped, and that she had never been found. When she’s questioned alone about it, Carnival makes it sound more romantic- in her retelling, she showed up outside of “Diamond’s” room the night before the wedding, and whisked her away from the horrible fate awaiting her.

Carnival and Jordan keep up their “rivalry” flawlessly- but behind the scenes, they’re scheming on how to get out of here alive. Their chance comes in Chapter 3, when, through their combined efforts, they kill both Silky Chase, the Ultimate Foley Artist, and Midoriko Yuusha, the Ultimate Tokusatsu Actor. Carnival is convinced they’ll both get out alive- but when people start pointing fingers at Jordan, she pins the blame on Carnival.

And just like that, it all falls apart. Jordan reveals everything- her identity as Diamond, Carnival’s involvement in her kidnapping, and every perfectly-tailored lie that Carnival had told about herself. The trial room descends into a brawl as Carnival’s execution is confirmed via a vote. But before she can be dragged away, she has one last move of defiance.

For years and years of her life, Carnival has all but served Jordan- or Diamond, or whatever you want to call her. Heeding to her every whim, molding her life around her, doing everything in her power to give her the life she felt she deserved. She really, truly loved her. And she knew Jordan didn’t feel the same… but she had truly underestimated how cold she could really be.

Carnival grabs Jordan by the front of her dress, dragging her kicking and screaming into the execution chamber with her.

…

Diamond sweats bullets as she walks down the aisle. The church around her is dense with fire and smoke, and the floor beneath her is covered in jagged shards of glass. As she reaches the altar, Carnival emerges from the broken frame of a stained glass window, bloodied and beaten. For once, Diamond begs. She pleads. “Carnival,” She whines, “Why would you do this to me? After all I’ve done for you, you’ve brought me here to suffer...”

“All that you’ve done for me?”

Carnival takes Diamond into her arms, holding her tight… before running her through with a familiar lace umbrella.

And she does it again, and again, and again, until the church starts to fall apart around her.

A loud crunching sound above Carnival knocks her out of her trance, and her head tilts upwards to find the source of the noise. The ceiling. Of course. There’s nowhere to hide from the building chunks that rain from the sky- all previously viable shelter was now engulfed in flames. This can’t be it. This isn’t how Carnival Valerini dies. She deserves more than this! She deserves going out in a blaze of glory, not a blaze of… whatever this is. Pity? Shame? Pure, unadulterated bitterness?

....She looks to the corpse of Diamond, umbrella still sticking upright out of her chest.

And with a sickening squelch, Carnival removes the umbrella for the last time and opens it up, holding it over herself and letting the blood flow down the handle onto her arm. It protected Diamond all those years ago, didn’t it?

Maybe she still has some luck in her after all.

But despite all of her efforts, the weight of the building is too much for a single umbrella to withstand. The building, its bones weakened by the flames, makes one final cry before collapsing on top of them, sealing them in their tomb to be united in unholy matrimony.