Used resulting free vets to train more girls in tandem casting.
2 stealth (remember the third is Kyouko, and she is busy hunting this month, it would cost 0.2.5 elite to train her)
2 clairvoyants (our other two clairs - including Taya who is .25 elite to train - are on dispatch duty)
2 teleporters
2 healers
6 barrier girls (since barrier seems the one we want trained up the fastest.)
Made adjustments to account for those who are otherwise assigned. Going with 2 stealth, 2 clairvoyants, 8 barriers (since I have 4 vets assigned instead of 3.5).
Changed my hunting plan over to the Seto-supported version. I think I was over-committing before, because the 0.5 vet reduction still leaves me at exactly 53/53 vets.
I was basing it on the memory that 0.5 Seto provides ~2 in Nomadic territory, her teleport powers giving her the ability to harvest in the nomadic areas far better than others.
Yeah, that's why I was thinking that the teleportation might give a larger-than-normal boost in nomadic territory. Possibly bring it back up to rural territory standards.
Well, the big gain is that I'm sort of sneaking in a bastardized contingent spell, something that isn't reliant on the meguca manually activating the barrier:
Enemy hits shield/armor.
Hit breaks through one "layer" of anchor insulation, causing spell to activate.
Barrier expands, takes the hit; other layers remain available for subsequent hits.
Layered single spells like this allow for multiple hits to be tanked like this, or for a single very strong hit to be tanked (like when the Class 3 busted through 6 vet-cast shields at once).
Well, the big gain is that I'm sort of sneaking in a bastardized contingent spell, something that isn't reliant on the meguca manually activating the barrier:
Enemy hits shield/armor.
Hit breaks through one "layer" of anchor insulation, causing spell to activate.
Barrier expands, takes the hit; other layers remain available for subsequent hits.
Layered single spells like this allow for multiple hits to be tanked like this, or for a single very strong hit to be tanked (like when the Class 3 busted through 6 vet-cast shields at once).
But it takes a few moments for enchantments to wear off, so even if you busted the insulation, the shield would trigger a few seconds later. Also, the polystyrene coating doesn't benefit from the increased durability enchantment (since durability enchantment is a property of steel and the coating's purpose is to insulate, not to protect), so the barrier would form in response to basically any hit.
Also, the polystyrene coating doesn't benefit from the increased durability enchantment (since durability enchantment is a property of steel and the coating's purpose is to insulate, not to protect), so the barrier would form in response to basically any hit.
I really doubt we'd end up using Styrofoam to coat our armor or shields; this is the big leagues, not the SCA. More likely we'd be using coatings of polyurethane (eg. thermoplastic, the sort of thing you see used for cheap plastic phone cases), or nitrocellulose (in other words, nail polish), both of which are intended to protect as much as insulate.
It was cheap. Really cheap. The light didn't reflect quite right on the fiberglass screen, the plastic casing was brittle, and turning it on took, well, she'd have sworn she'd been staring at the loading screen for the past minute. 'Slow' was putting it generously. It was the sort of phone you could take off the shelf without even having to unlock the display case.
But they'd just given it to her. For free.
She turned it around, letting the light from the loading screen play out against the darkened laminate wood floors. In the day it'd go back to looking as scratched and used as ever, but past the witching hour it was sublime, thick with shadows and dark corners and theirs.
The four of them had gone from breaking into houses and sleeping in ditches to having a roof over their heads. A basic human right, restored, and the Serene treated it like no big deal, something everyone deserved just for existing instead of a reward to be taken away at the first hint of defiance.
And the strange thing was, Manami honestly couldn't imagine what form that defiance would take.
She could tell. People were happy - maybe not ecstatically so, that would be creepy - but in a very normal, human way, but more than any meguca could reasonably expect. And no wonder, according to Tomoe-san, you didn't have to fight. So long as you contributed somehow, they'd help you. The idea made her head spin, made her almost giddy with a white-knuckled, guilty sort of relief whenever she thought about it.
She didn't have to fight anymore.
Surely it couldn't be that easy, surely there was a catch somewhere, but---!
She let her thoughts settle down as she continued to examine the room.
The room wasn't big, but wasn't that small either - four and a half mats for four girls - but this was just the living room. Long shadows fled her phone's light as she continued to let it wander past the clock, to the television, to the small coffee table, to the window with its improbable pot of yellow daffodils. A housewarming gift from the little girl named Yuma.
She flipped the phone back towards herself, and tried to keep the smile from breaking out across her face. It was all so unlikely, all so much. Despite what Urako had said about her naivety, she really did keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the punchline to the joke to rear its nasty head.
But then Tomoe-san had, very gently, but also very insistently, asked them if they wanted to go back to school and that was when Manami knew that if all this were a lie it was the sort of lie that Tomoe-san would die to make the truth.
The girl had a weakness. One so glaring and so unlikely that she doubted anyone had tried to take advantage of it yet.
Tomoe-san wanted them to have a real life. Wanted all of them to have a real life.
Every single one.
Tens of thousands of meguca, maybe all meguca, had that small, simple dream buried somewhere deep inside their hearts, but here and now, one of them was making it true with all her power.
Tokyo might still crush that dream, but in the meantime, in the meantime-!
She tapped the top of her phone to her forehead, trying not to tear up.
The world still had heroes.
It really was right to hope.
She wiped her eyes, then her nose. The screen had finally lit up. A cute mascot character of indeterminable animal origin danced across the screen.
It took a moment to remember the password for the wifi, fumbled it twice. The password to her old LINE account was even harder to remember but in the end she got there.
She couldn't have opened the phone up earlier. Not one of her little broken family had taken theirs out yet. They didn't understand. They thought Tomoe-san was dangerous. Either because she was an evil mastermind, or because she was a saint. All of them had left their phones in the boxes without even bothering to take them out.
She'd left it there too, but this late at night, she doubted anyone would notice.
All her contacts were grayed out, offline or busy. She carefully blocked every single one. A missing girl from Tokyo wasn't allowed to come back from the dead.
One though - one she really did want to talk to.
Even though she knew she'd never get an answer back.
-.-.-.-.-
User [MootoriM] started chatting with User [Yasuhiro-San].
Your contact is offline. They will receive your message when they sign-in.
Yasuhiro-sempai?
You were right.
There's always room for hope.
===============================
CoC: Mootori Manami Time: between Turns 28 and 29 Author's Notes: Despite how short this was, it took a lot of time! I kept scratching my head and re-writing which is usually a bad sign, but this time it felt constructive, like I was exploring various possible reactions and each option I crossed out was building up to something better, so I hope you like it all the same. :3
From left to right Yasuhiro Sae
Isozaki Kaiya
Motoori Manami
Segawa Urako
Yamakage Suzuko
Okay, also I have a bajillion ideas of where to go with spell research:
1. We should still see if Kyoukoclone can be turned into a one-use magical object. Best case scenario (that remains reasonable) is that only one Kyoukoclone can be active at a time which means anyone using the device will dispel the other Kyoukoclone.
But if you need a Kyoukoclone, shit has hit the fan and you need her now, and better you interrupt her than something else happen.
Also, I see this as something Kyouko would give Mami and Yuma and anyone else she cannot imagine dying and demand they keep it with them at all times.
2. We should look into the possibility of having the one-use portkey be keyed to another object rather than a single destination.
It works like this: there are two spelled objects. When one is used, the other objects immediately sets that as the destination and will bring you there. An even more interesting variation would be swapping or summoning: when one object is used, the other is automatically used and you 'trade places' with the meguca at the other end, or when the object is used it triggers the other item and teleports the meguca to that location.
There are a lot of possibilities here, the most potent being the ability to create specialized teams that can rapidly switch between various roles.
This will probably be especially efficient against Class 3 Demons when you can`t have too much puella nearby but still want to cycle through your available forces (a barrier user gets tired or injured and switches out with another barrier user, etc.).
3. How practical do you think giving away teleport crystals (or whatever we want to call them) will be? The idea is, you give them out during negotiations and tell whoever you're talking to that if they don't want them, they should give them back. But if they trust them at all, use it when they have no choice because it will save their life.
It will teleport them to a preset location and we'll probably need to assign a healer to that location, but it'll save lives.
4. I thought of this ages ago, but we really should open up the technology tree. I see two major reasons to do this:
1. If magic interferes with technology in a significant way, and we can filter out the difference between meguca magic and demon miasma, we have a demon-detecting object. This is more or less inspired by the radio thing that I understand detects demons in Silent Hill. Further research can probably unlock better and more sophisticated versions, but it'd probably be even more useful to have a cheap-o knock-off version of this because it's something to add to the pamphlets we're handing out because not every magical girl has access to a clairvoyant to help them scout.
You'd also, theoretically, be able to build a meguca detecting object using the same basic principles which is less awesome, but still useful.
If the magic is functionally identical, well, you have a magic detecting object, and so long as you no the baseline of yourself is X value, you'll be able to notice whenever something with magic is approaching.
2. We need to check and see if any other form of energy can be used by puella. Yes, I know, it's kind of silly to imagine megucas running on energizer bunny batteries, but it's something that should be looked at. Can meguca use non-magical in any form? Can they leech it or use it any way? I doubt it will be a complete bust, magic + electricity must have some sort of effect and whatever it is it will be interesting.
More later, I'm sure I lost more than a few while I was omake-ing.
I love it! Awesomely thematic, and really shows where the Tokyo girls are in headspace right now.
Funny thing about the cell phones: despite the fact that we're talking ~2013 here (2011 PMMM air date +2 years), that cell phone that Manami is so disdainful of is probably as good as or better than a high-end smartphone today. I mean, the personal tech you see the girls with in that show is better than our own, which you'd probably expect given that a disproportionate amount of tech development in that world is a result of preteens saying "I wish my cell phone was better."
That's one reason why, if we manage to expand the courier business next month, I definitely want to go for the "cheap netbook" option. In PMMM terms, a "cheap netbook" is probably one of these, but with the ability to easily sync to our excessively large TVs, and enough processing power to be a budget supercomputer. Our quant team will love us forever.
It would also really enhance our reputation for having an infinite supply of red-heads if we had red-head-in-a-can. Just picture us talking with Nagoya before they make their final push into Tokyo, we've offered them assistance, but do we call anyone over? No, we just open up a can and BAM! One red-head, ready to unleash a can of whoop-ass suspiciously similar to the can she just came out of. To enhance the illusion, have people refer to Kyouko as "Red 6" when talking to outsiders so they wonder where the other 5 are.
Well, to be absolutely fair, I deleted like three paragraphs of Manami going over how much the other Tokyo girls did not trust the Serene at all (like I said, this omake changed up a lot), but I thought that was something best delivered in a different omake by one of the other girls.
They're all supposed to contrast each other a bit. Manami's the one that still believes in other people. Urako doesn't at all, Kaiya honestly doesn't care, and Suzuko tries to stay pragmatic. There's obviously more to them than that, but that was the broad strokes of how I thought how outsiders would react when meeting up with Mami's group so I wanted all four of them in one group.
Hopefully it'll get clearer as I think of more omakes for the Tokyo Nomads.
And the cheap netbook thing sounds pretty great. o3o
It would also really enhance our reputation for having an infinite supply of red-heads if we had red-head-in-a-can. Just picture us talking with Nagoya before they make their final push into Tokyo, we've offered them assistance, but do we call anyone over? No, we just open up a can and BAM! One red-head, ready to unleash a can of whoop-ass suspiciously similar to the can she just came out of. To enhance the illusion, have people refer to Kyouko as "Red 6" when talking to outsiders so they wonder where the other 5 are.
Tokyo is home to ~1200 normal Meguca and 45 elites, who are said by Kyubey to be coordinating with each other. Kyubey still believes that they will eventually all be killed.
Yeah, but we have the advantage of not living in Tokyo. We can afford the luxury of snooping around the edges and picking off the Demons one at a time. The Tokyo girls are forced to confront the monsters who are invading their homes; and they don't have the luxury of being able to build up an armory to protect themselves.
Also, they fact that they are trying again and gathering materials says to me that they have tried this before and failed hard enough that they lost much of the equipment used in the attempt.
It may have only been minimally successful before, but only losing equipment (much of which was probably explosives) isn't that big of a deal. The fact that they're willing to try multiple times means that the meguca loss can't have been too bad.
This has been established since turn one, where it was noted that enchanted items lost strength quickly but not instantly. This has been the basis for our whole duration extending research line.
Also, if it wasn't true, then spell anchoring would be ridiculously unpredictable for the NM girls, because any item you took your hand off of would activate instantly, since they don't know about insulation.
Yeah, but we have the advantage of not living in Tokyo. We can afford the luxury of snooping around the edges and picking off the Demons one at a time. The Tokyo girls are forced to confront the monsters who are invading their homes; and they don't have the luxury of being able to build up an armory to protect themselves.
Consider that the class 3 demons of Tokyo have MG wish magic-like powers themselves. That means that any attempt to pick one off is going to have to contend with clairvoyants spotting them from across the city and ambushing them, teleporters arriving on top of them with uncomfortable suddenness and departing when surrounded or pressed, invisible demons that could be basically anywhere, and possibly demons capable of two or three of these things, or those with weird and unpredictable powers. Trying to isolate one safely could be a herculean task.
Tokyo is home to ~1200 normal Meguca and 45 elites, who are said by Kyubey to be coordinating with each other. Kyubey still believes that they will eventually all be killed.
Coordination and force concentration improved survival rate after initial losses. Currently there is an estimated 37 Class 3 demons in the region and 45 Grade 3 Contracted with 1200 total Contracted despite unusually aggressive recruitment. Remaining Contracted have switched to mostly guerrilla activity with few fixed concentrations.
IC we don't know Homura from Eve. We've never met her. In Character, we have no reason to suspect she would be more open to recruitment by the Serene's than other groups.
IC we don't know Homura from Eve. We've never met her. In Character, we have no reason to suspect she would be more open to recruitment by the Serene's than other groups.
At the very least she thinks Sayaka has died so we show her that she is still alive.
Also tell the scouts to look for a girl with flowing black hair and a red ribbon with a shield on her arm.
At the very least she thinks Sayaka has died so we show her that she is still alive.
Also tell the scouts to look for a girl with flowing black hair and a red ribbon with a shield on her arm.
What Aranfan is saying is that, after the Madokami retcon, Mami has no idea who Homura even is. OoC, we don't even know that she's in Japan; she could be living it up in Rio de Janeiro, or rolling African warlords for their lunch money, doing mercenary work in Siberia, going on a wine tasting tour of Europe, who the hell knows? A Legend-class magical girl who may still have her time specialty could be anywhere, doing anything, and then be somewhere else, on the other side if the globe, in the blink of an eye.
We aren't finding her unless she wants to be found, and right now she obviously doesn't want to be found.
What Aranfan is saying is that, after the Madokami retcon, Mami has no idea who Homura even is. OoC, we don't even know that she's in Japan; she could be living it up in Rio de Janeiro, or rolling African warlords for their lunch money, doing mercenary work in Siberia, going on a wine tasting tour of Europe, who the hell knows? A Legend-class magical girl who may still have her time specialty could be anywhere, doing anything, and then be somewhere else, on the other side if the globe, in the blink of an eye.
We aren't finding her unless she wants to be found, and right now she obviously doesn't want to be found.
Consider that the class 3 demons of Tokyo have MG wish magic-like powers themselves. That means that any attempt to pick one off is going to have to contend with clairvoyants spotting them from across the city and ambushing them, teleporters arriving on top of them with uncomfortable suddenness and departing when surrounded or pressed, invisible demons that could be basically anywhere, and possibly demons capable of two or three of these things, or those with weird and unpredictable powers. Trying to isolate one safely could be a herculean task.
It would be a challenge, sure, but we have 3 Veteran Clairvoyants and Taya who have years of experience with monitoring and predicting demons. Considering how poorly Nagoya had scouted us out, I suspect that they do not rely as heavily on clairvoyance as we do (we've put quite a bit of research and training into it and we have a higher-than-average number of clairvoyant specialists, to boot), so we have skills that are particularly valuable to offer in this area. Kyouclone working as an expendable harasser could also be very helpful.
I really doubt we'd end up using Styrofoam to coat our armor or shields; this is the big leagues, not the SCA. More likely we'd be using coatings of polyurethane (eg. thermoplastic, the sort of thing you see used for cheap plastic phone cases), or nitrocellulose (in other words, nail polish), both of which are intended to protect as much as insulate.
The easiest thing would probably be polyurethane varnish. Easy to buy, easy to apply, magically insulates, protects, waterproofs, and makes things shiny. Great stuff.
1. We should still see if Kyoukoclone can be turned into a one-use magical object. Best case scenario (that remains reasonable) is that only one Kyoukoclone can be active at a time which means anyone using the device will dispel the other Kyoukoclone.
I think inverted_helix already nixed this idea. We can create illusionary clones, but not real ones.
2. We should look into the possibility of having the one-use portkey be keyed to another object rather than a single destination.
It works like this: there are two spelled objects. When one is used, the other objects immediately sets that as the destination and will bring you there. An even more interesting variation would be swapping or summoning: when one object is used, the other is automatically used and you 'trade places' with the meguca at the other end, or when the object is used it triggers the other item and teleports the meguca to that location.
There are a lot of possibilities here, the most potent being the ability to create specialized teams that can rapidly switch between various roles.
This will probably be especially efficient against Class 3 Demons when you can`t have too much puella nearby but still want to cycle through your available forces (a barrier user gets tired or injured and switches out with another barrier user, etc.).
Instead of swapping places with another girl, how about swapping places with a bomb.
3. How practical do you think giving away teleport crystals (or whatever we want to call them) will be? The idea is, you give them out during negotiations and tell whoever you're talking to that if they don't want them, they should give them back. But if they trust them at all, use it when they have no choice because it will save their life.
It will teleport them to a preset location and we'll probably need to assign a healer to that location, but it'll save lives.
I doubt that most girls would trust the teleport until we've built up a significantly positive relationship with them. Healing items or barriers, on the other hand, would probably be quite welcome.
