Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)

[Kinematics]

Working from the root of the problem:

1) Decimal entry error in the damage cost. Change the reported damages from $10k to $1k. That reduces the impetus to believe that something really major happened at the house, which reduces it to an after-the-fact domestic disturbance report, easily filed away.

At most, this might require a minor adjustment to the contractor's accountant, and then have them report to the police that they made a mistake in the info they gave them. We could conceivably even do that without Kyuubey, just sneaking into the office and making the appropriate phone call to the police. Might need to change the invoice value, though, which could be a little tricky depending on their system.

2) Mindwipe info on kevlar. It's too difficult to explain away.

3) With that information gone, the idea that the mafia accusation has any credibility pops like a soap bubble.

4) Use the shields in LARP activities with foam swords in a public sports day event. This affirms the validity of the shields, the talks of fighting, and the supposed 'code' (like adults would understand the latest kids' slang, anyway...).


At that point... there's almost literally nothing else left for the police to even be suspicious about. Some girl somewhere claimed another girl in another city entirely is some kind of mafia princess? Really?

I have a friend who works at a newspaper, and they have to deal with some truly batshit crazy people calling in with nutcase conspiracies. I can only imagine what it must be like for the police. If we can give them a reason to believe that it's not their problem, they'll definitely jump on it.

 

[Diomedea]

Planning by numbers

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I approve of this line of thinking.

 

[inverted_helix]

I was very happy when I found out that I could use them. It's just that now I can't because they're short. I can't write long things. So it's like you're saying, "well, you could use them, but now I'm saying your omakes don't count".

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I can let them count as parts to a whole (.5 value for the short ones). So they aren't totally worthless. I'm just trying to keep a handle on things. I know some players like it when you break the quest difficulty over your knee like a twig, but I'm not going to let omake do that here. I'm sure there's other ways I could handle it, but this just seems the most reasonable I can think of for now.

Does this seem okay to you?

@inverted_helix If we divided the territory into 27 and 28 sized pieces. With one of those chunks including all of Kyouko's territory (say divided North and South)

What would the Demon Strength be in each of those territories?

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+1.0 in the 27, and -1.3 in the 28 territory. I'm going to start measuring demon strength vaguely to a decimal place. It won't have much direct impact on play, and I'll still be using d100s (and just do a secondary roll if you roll on the mark, which I kind of doubt will ever come up). This will allow a finer gradation and less having to deal with precise selection of harvesting. I'll also measure Grief Cubes to a decimal point as well.

The math is only a tiny bit more complex, but it should eliminate the need for caps and rounding selection by players. Ultimately the complexity me rounding to whole values imposed on the players hunting plans is what made me think this a better method. Though I'm still open to changing it, particularly the rural territory is a bit nasty if you can't rely on it rounding up to 2.

 

[Elder Haman]

Working from the root of the problem:

1) Decimal entry error in the damage cost. Change the reported damages from $10k to $1k. That reduces the impetus to believe that something really major happened at the house, which reduces it to an after-the-fact domestic disturbance report, easily filed away.

At most, this might require a minor adjustment to the contractor's accountant, and then have them report to the police that they made a mistake in the info they gave them. We could conceivably even do that without Kyuubey, just sneaking into the office and making the appropriate phone call to the police. Might need to change the invoice value, though, which could be a little tricky depending on their system.

2) Mindwipe info on kevlar. It's too difficult to explain away.

3) With that information gone, the idea that the mafia accusation has any credibility pops like a soap bubble.

4) Use the shields in LARP activities with foam swords in a public sports day event. This affirms the validity of the shields, the talks of fighting, and the supposed 'code' (like adults would understand the latest kids' slang, anyway...).


At that point... there's almost literally nothing else left for the police to even be suspicious about. Some girl somewhere claimed another girl in another city entirely is some kind of mafia princess? Really?

I have a friend who works at a newspaper, and they have to deal with some truly batshit crazy people calling in with nutcase conspiracies. I can only imagine what it must be like for the police. If we can give them a reason to believe that it's not their problem, they'll definitely jump on it.

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That's an interesting way to approach it. I guess we'd need to sneak some girls into the contractors office to figure this out. Need a stealth specialist... and probably Taura again. Get passwords and find out where the invoice is and how their records are kept.

So a minimum of 1 Vet (0.5 Stealth, and 0.5 Taura).

@inverted_helix How much to just wipe out the Kevlar purchase info?

 

[Aranfan]

I can let them count as parts to a whole (.5 value for the short ones). So they aren't totally worthless. I'm just trying to keep a handle on things. I know some players like it when you break the quest difficulty over your knee like a twig, but I'm not going to let omake do that here. I'm sure there's other ways I could handle it, but this just seems the most reasonable I can think of for now.

Does this seem okay to you?

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I get you. I actually expected you to say no when I asked about using omakes to lower the fine and was surprised when you said yes.

Letting me put multiple of my page longs together for a full bonus is plenty generous, thank you.

I would like to cash in gossip alone to have Kyoko and Sayaka start dating. Is this okay since it has no mechanical impact?

 

[Kinematics]

Conversation to be had:

(Fake) Accountant: I'm terribly sorry, officer. We're required to report any repair damages over XX thousand dollars to the police, so when this invoice came in I went ahead and made the call like normal. However it was written up by a guy on one of our repair crews who's normally very good with numbers, so I didn't double-check his math before phoning it in. It was only when we were doing our end-of-month reports that it set off a flag in the system. Turns out he messed up entering the totals, and it was off by a decimal place.

The actual repair costs were only about $1000. Someone threw something and knocked a hole in the wall, and there was some minor paint damage. Sounds like maybe a couple kids got in a fight or something. Still, I apologize. I realize things like this can take up valuable time for you, and I am terribly sorry for the error. I've asked that a small gift basket be sent over to the precinct office for the poor officers who've had to deal with my mistake.

Thank you so much for your understanding!

Also: Buy a nice large gift basket and have one of our couriers deliver it to the police. From the contractor, of course.

 

[Elder Haman]

I get you. I actually expected you to say no when I asked about using omakes to lower the fine and was surprised when you said yes.

Letting me put multiple of my page longs together for a full bonus is plenty generous, thank you.

I would like to cash in gossip alone to have Kyoko and Sayaka start dating. Is this okay since it has no mechanical impact?

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Uhh... young teenage girls... dating... I know there's no evil intent here, but considering what happened to a few quests lets avoid any dating until the girls are over 18?

+1.0 in the 27, and -1.3 in the 28 territory. I'm going to start measuring demon strength vaguely to a decimal place. It won't have much direct impact on play, and I'll still be using d100s (and just do a secondary roll if you roll on the mark, which I kind of doubt will ever come up). This will allow a finer gradation and less having to deal with precise selection of harvesting. I'll also measure Grief Cubes to a decimal point as well.

The math is only a tiny bit more complex, but it should eliminate the need for caps and rounding selection by players. Ultimately the complexity me rounding to whole values imposed on the players hunting plans is what made me think this a better method. Though I'm still open to changing it, particularly the rural territory is a bit nasty if you can't rely on it rounding up to 2.

Click to shrink...

Caps and rounding selection will not go away. Just become more complicated.

Still, with these numbers we can hunt using 12 Vets Pair hunting in the 28 territory w/ full kevlar for 47.5 cubes, which puts us just under +9 demon strength for an ending strength of +8ish.

And hunt with 6.5 vets pair hunting (no kevlar) in area 27 for 25.7 cubes which gives us -0.9 Demon strength resulting in 0.1 Demon strength in that area.

Total of 73.2 cubes which is 14 more then the 59 expected the other way.

 

[Aranfan]

Uhh... young teenage girls... dating... I know there's no evil intent here, but considering what happened to a few quests lets avoid any dating until the girls are over 18?

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This is an empire quest, the resolution is not fine enough for anything objectionable to be mentioned. "Canon couple has become couple" shouldn't bring the mods down.

 

[inverted_helix]

The organized crime connection is only due to an anonymous, unsubstantiated report. Without any other supporting evidence, it would go in the circular bin.

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At that point... there's almost literally nothing else left for the police to even be suspicious about. Some girl somewhere claimed another girl in another city entirely is some kind of mafia princess? Really?

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In the absence of other evidence you're right, but this isn't in the absence of other evidence so I think it made sense for them to weigh it in.

Unusual house damage... well, it's a bunch of girls living together. The police may think it's some sort of organized cult, but that's very much not the case if tempers can flare up against each other that badly. Also, note that there were no injuries; no one taken to the hospital or anything like that. Even if there were concerns about the fight itself and the damage it caused, no one was hurt.

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Flaring tempers between teenage girls generally don't result in the level of damage that was seen.

1) Decimal entry error in the damage cost. Change the reported damages from $10k to $1k. That reduces the impetus to believe that something really major happened at the house, which reduces it to an after-the-fact domestic disturbance report, easily filed away.

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Also remember the neighbors reported the fight too.

Conversation to be had:

(Fake) Accountant

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Not sure here, are you implying you're going to make the call claiming to be the accountant for the contractor?

@inverted_helix How much to just wipe out the Kevlar purchase info?

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Just 15 cubes, a bargain rate. (It is still quite a large thing to erase, since that is one of the core 2 details that sparked the investigation.)

Caps and rounding selection will not go away. Just become more complicated.

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Not sure I really follow. Shouldn't it reduce the effect of caps and rounding by a factor of 10 and thereby render them not very useful?

This is an empire quest, the resolution is not fine enough for anything objectionable to be mentioned. "Canon couple has become couple" shouldn't bring the mods down.

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I'd lean towards thinking that myself, but SV/SB mods can be kind of peculiar at times.

 

[Aranfan]

I'd lean towards thinking that myself, but SV/SB mods can be kind of peculiar at times.

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Well, PM a mod and ask if it's acceptable to throw in a "Kyoko and Sayaka are now dating" line. If they say it's kosher, then it's kosher, if they say it isn't then I'll save Gossip for bundling with Madokami for a morale bonus.

 

[Kinematics]

In the absence of other evidence you're right, but this isn't in the absence of other evidence so I think it made sense for them to weigh it in.

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Not arguing that. Saying that if we can get the evidence down the point where there doesn't appear to be any other supporting evidence, it goes poof again.

Flaring tempers between teenage girls generally don't result in the level of damage that was seen.

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True, but I was focusing more on the supporting aspect of that: no injuries. If there were injuries, that's something major, but without injuries it's 'unusual'.

Also remember the neighbors reported the fight too.

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Hmmm. May need to start sweet-talking the neighbors, too.

Not sure here, are you implying you're going to make the call claiming to be the accountant for the contractor?

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Right. If we go for cleaning this up on our own, that's the conversation I'd expect to happen, from one of the girls impersonating the head of the accounting department (who's the one I'd normally expect to handle details like that). It may need tweaks depending on whether someone else within the company made the report, and whether the report included actual damage details.

 

[Aranfan]

Right.

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I'm against doing an impersonation. Too may ways it can backfire.

 

[Aranfan]

Total of 73.2 cubes which is 14 more then the 59 expected the other way.

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Is 73ish cubes a sustainable number?

 

[Kinematics]

I'm against doing an impersonation. Too may ways it can backfire.

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You'd prefer to flag the system so that she takes notice, and makes the call herself (or tell the right person to do so)? I could see that, too. A shame; I liked the gift basket.

 

[Aranfan]

You'd prefer to flag the system so that she takes notice, and makes the call herself (or tell the right person to do so)? I could see that, too. A shame; I liked the gift basket.

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Yes frankly.

 

[Kinematics]

Tentative layout:

[] Dealing with the police investigation
-[] Kevlar
--[] Request Kyuubey do a mindwipe to remove evidence of the kevlar purchases.
--[] 15 grief cubes
-[] Contractor
--[] Stealth in and collect login information for accounting.
--[] Modify the invoice charge amount and the paid amount to remove one decimal place, putting it at $1000.
--[] Flag it to come to the attention of the head of accounting.
---[] Alternatively, have someone in pseudo-stealth drop the invoice off in her office (paper printout), telling her that the invoice was flagged as having an error. Include invoice and statement that a police report was filed on it.
--[] 0.5 vet infiltration team (?? for stealth, taura for passwords, ?? for computers)
-[] Neighbors
--[] Increase friendliness and contact with the neighbors. Have Mami deliver home-baked cakes. Apologize for any disturbances.
-[] Sports Day
--[] Specifically include a LARP activity. Construct foam swords for everyone, and let them use their normal shields.
--[] 1.0 vet

 

[notgreat]

Caps and rounding selection will not go away. Just become more complicated.

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The effects decrease by an order of magnitude. Caps may exist for small territories, but for larger ones we can now safely skip over them (particularly since we will want to not go to the very limit thanks to the potential poachers) Going to 2 or 3 decimal places would be even better, but the rounding errors are small enough to generally be safely ignored.

Also, we probably want to overhunt the higher territory, since then we can safely solo harvest the lower territory for only a few less cubes but a significant meguca reduction.

Note that I'm assuming there will be some slight overharvest on the part of the meguca, so I'm removing the caps and going slightly lower than the true maximum allowed for rotating tactics.
Full Plan:
Urban from 47 to 28 (+1)
Kyouko from 8 to 27(-1.4)
[X] Urban - Hunting Pairs (6 vets, 23.76 cubes) + Hunting Solo (3 elite, 19.8 cubes)+ Rotating Tactics = 43.56 cubes of 28
-Demon strength from +1 to +8.3 (maximum safe +5, avg=4.65)
[X] Kyouko's - Hunting Solo (5.5 vets, 27.225 cubes of 27)
-Demon strength from -1.4 to -1.3 (maximum safe 0, avg=-1.35)
[X] Hunting Pairs, Rural (.5 vet .5 green, 1.98 cubes, cap at 2)
-Demon strength from 0 to 0
Total harvest: 72.8 cubes
Used: 12 vets, 3 elites, .5 green
[x] Demon Forecasting

[x] Upkeep: 11 Veteran, 6 Green (-3k/turn from removing all standard jobs)
[x] Police work: 1 vet (preassigned)
[X] Start your own business, restaurant:
-[x] 550k debt, 4 cubes, 2 vet+(1 associate+2 green+1 vet), ~9k/turn after startup, 60+10% success
remaining: 1 elite+8 vet+0.5 green

[x] Rising Stars (train vets to elite)
-[x] 1 Mami, 1 vet (Kaoru), -1 cube

[x] Operations Manual project
-[x] 0.5 green (splits time between this and rural hunting)

[x] Enchanting, Duration
-2 months of: 2 Vets, 2 Cubes, $1000

-[x] Low intensity recruitment: Rural (3,4,5)
-[x] 3 vets

[x] Open Formal Relations (Urban area 9)
-[x] 1 vet

[x] Sports Day
-[x] 1 vet

Total cubes: 72.8 harvested-1 forecast+43 stored-47 upkeep-1 elite training-2 research-4 restaurant-10 QB
=50.8 cubes at end

[X] Buy 3x Leather Jacket and Pants (equip to Solo hunters in Kyouko's territory who don't have Kevlar Clothes) @ $250/ea
Money: ~39k remaining (10k/turn debt, but restaurant income scales to 19k/turn)

Unfortunately, the elites are stuck hunting because otherwise we don't have enough kevlar to cover the Kyouko's solo hunting, and I'm pretty sure that's worth doing since it saves us a veteran. Unfortunately, we'd need demon strength to be at -2 to safely harvest with only with -2% equipment, which means they need enough -4% equipment for everyone. If you'd rather have 3 elites than 5ish veterans, you can swap Kyouko's solo hunting to pair hunting.
The elites need -2% equipment when they're solo harvesting with rotating tactics up to +6 average.
edit: wait frak, elites actually need -4% equipment too to get to +5. This means that 2.5 of our Kyouko harvesters will be at 0.45% injury each after removing half a hunter. This can be removed by buying 3x $250 leather -2% items.

@inverted_helix how much extra would it cost to buy things anonymously? (eg through bitcoin(properly anonymized/tumbled)+alternative shipping addresses)

 

[Elder Haman]

Is 73ish cubes a sustainable number?

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Yes. Close enough anyway. Resulting Demon strength is 0 and +8. The numbers will be slightly less next turn when we over hunt the smaller territory. Figure at least 70 is sustainable.

However, we don't have 6.5 vets available this turn.

I may have to do more adjustments. I'm thinking about going to bed and working on this in the morning after sleeping on it.

EDIT: It will also depend on how many resources we need to spend on the fake out police action. I'll check back in the morning to see if we have a consensus and rewrite the hunting plan accordingly.

I'm also worried that adjusting the invoice is not going to be enough to wipe that attention out.

Although granted... removing the kevlar is the key piece.

EDIT: We want to make sure we get our own copy of the fake invoice. That way if parents get called in we can just point to the invoice and say there was a small dispute between four girls, but that it was resolved and that the girls have all apologized to each other. Any claims by police that it was more then $1,000 is simply not true.

 

[Kinematics]

If we can go with something like my above plan, and defer to three monthly payments, that's only -5 cubes per month. At that point, I wouldn't bother making any changes to the remaining plans, except where we need to drop meguca. It would leave us with a reserve of 40 cubes this month, and since next month would have given us a surplus of at least 15 anyway, we could pay and end up with a reserve of about 50.

Is 73ish cubes a sustainable number?

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Yes. Resulting Demon strength is 0 and +8. The numbers will be slightly less next turn when we over hunt the smaller territory.

Click to shrink...

Er, not quite. Once RT are in place, sustainable is about 64 per turn. 73 cubes is solely because we're doing the RT initiation turn. If we'd just hunted to 0 this turn, next turn would have yielded 72 cubes. If we hunt 75 this turn, next turn will be back in the 60's.

 

[notgreat]

@inverted_helix
If we were to make a restaurant, would our associate count as a worker?
Can we get a $550,000 loan as a buffer against initial failure? (and to pay off our current debt)
Does having a magic cook increase the income of the restaurant, or only the initial chance of success?
How much would it be to erase everything except for the single call about possible mafia connections? To erase their microphone usage? For all the other details? (An itemized list would be preferable, since then we can actually do cost/benefit analysis)
If we buy some armor now will it be erased with the rest of the stuff?

Also, please confirm if the pre-scout cost us 1 vet or 0.5 vet.

edit: Is QB willing to 'create' money for us in exchange for grief cubes? If so, what's the exchange rate?

 

[Kinematics]

On the contractor and accountant:

If we just flag the invoice and send it to the accountant, she's likely to check with the work crew to verify things. They will of course tell her that they did indeed do $10k worth of work. That torpedoes that plan. We'd have to make sure it looked like an internal error, not an external one, and that even if it was a $10k job, they still wouldn't want to cop to that.

The best way to ensure that is to make sure that the invoice that was billed and paid was $1000, and that the original estimate was the same value. If they only billed us for $1000, and they told us it was $1000, and then they sent the police after us saying they did $10k worth of work, that could seriously come back to bite them. Better to admit a math error than have a customer complaining about false charges or being lied to. That could ruin business, and easily cost them far more than $10k.

We might even leave the original work order at $10k, as that would be what they used to file the report with the police for. Ideally make it so that there actually is a math error on it, so that it 'should' only be $1000.

So we need to edit the values on the original cost estimate, the billing invoice, and the payment recieved. Probably swap the payment received (check number and such) with a different invoice so that the account numbers still add up, and if they check the check number with the bank the right value comes up.

What are the thoughts on the viability of this plan, its risks, and ways to ensure it can succeed?


Update on overall proposal:

[] Dealing with the police investigation
-[] Kevlar
--[] Request Kyuubey do a mindwipe to remove evidence of the kevlar purchases.
--[] 15 grief cubes [pay 5 this month]
-[] Contractor
--[] Stealth in and collect login information for accounting. Night 1: Infiltrate.
--[] Modify the cost estimate, the billing invoice, and the paid amount to remove one decimal place, putting it at $1000.
--[] Modify the work order so that there's an error that leaves it at $10k, but that correctly adding everything up would total $1000.
--[] Swap the check number information with a different one of an appropriate amount.
--[] Day 2: Have someone in pseudo-stealth (the "she works here but isn't interesting" type) drop a printout of the work order, the invoice, and the police report off in the office of the head of accounting, telling her that the invoice was flagged as having an error.
--[] Monitor to ensure she (or her supervisor) does actually contact the police to correct the 'error'.
--[] If the ploy doesn't work, fall back to Kyuubey mindwipe.
--[] 0.5 vet infiltration team (?? for stealth, taura for passwords, ?? for computers)
-[] Neighbors
--[] Increase friendliness and contact with the neighbors. Have Mami deliver home-baked cakes. Apologize for any disturbances.
--[] 0.5 Mami
-[] Sports Day
--[] Specifically include a LARP activity. Construct foam swords for everyone, and let them use their normal shields.
--[] 1.0 vet

 

[Kinematics]

The above plan requires (at least) an extra 0.5 vet for the contractor infiltration, and uses Mami for making friends with the neighbors (+20% diplomacy, plus food and cake) to calm down their worries about their rowdy neighbors. If the police talk to them about what was going on again, they should be far more likely to brush it off as 'youthful enthusiasm', or some such.

Dropping 0.5 Mami means either dropping the elite training entirely (if we want to be sure that Mami is the full instructor), or requires putting 0.5 Kyouko in there and pulling her from one of the other projects. Easiest would probably be to drop the area X scouting to free up 0.5 Kyouko and 0.5 Kyouko/Taya.

If we drop area X, that also leaves a 0.5 unit of Kyouko/Taya pair. If we move that into hunting, that frees up another 0.5 vet, which would pay for the infiltration team.

That would keep all other projects (diplomacy and research) and cube harvest stable with our expectations. We just lose an extra 5 cubes to Kyuubey.

 

[inverted_helix]

If we just flag the invoice and send it to the accountant, she's likely to check with the work crew to verify things. They will of course tell her that they did indeed do $10k worth of work. That torpedoes that plan. We'd have to make sure it looked like an internal error, not an external one, and that even if it was a $10k job, they still wouldn't want to cop to that.

The best way to ensure that is to make sure that the invoice that was billed and paid was $1000, and that the original estimate was the same value. If they only billed us for $1000, and they told us it was $1000, and then they sent the police after us saying they did $10k worth of work, that could seriously come back to bite them. Better to admit a math error than have a customer complaining about false charges or being lied to. That could ruin business, and easily cost them far more than $10k.

Click to shrink...

I keep trying to parse this but I don't see how one differs from the other. I don't understand how this changes the work crew knowing what work they did.

 

[FixerUpper]

Cost of Doing Business

"Thirty cubes?" Kyouko demanded, her hand slamming into the wall. A small crater, and spiderweb of lines crawled out from around the impact point.

Mami's lips were pressed into a thin, unhappy line.

"I'm afraid so," she said quietly, staring into her tea.

"That little-" Kyouko snarled, before visibly composing herself. Her right hand was opening and closing, fingers pressing forward, each joint distended, as if incapable of controlling themselves. The redhead closed her eyes, took a deep breath in, then let it out. "No. That's - that's unacceptable. Thirty? Absolutely not."

"If we don't-" Mami began.

"Then what. Huh? So what if the police find out? We've been saving their asses. We deserve a godsforsaken medal. Not this - this shit."

"There are rules," Mami said.

"Screw his rules! If the police are so interested we should just show them. It's not like they'll die from the revelation. Magic exists, as do magic girls," she threw her hands up. "Surprise!"

"...you know we can't do that."

"I'm not seeing a real compelling reason as to why not," Kyouko retorted. "If the bastards know what's good for them they'll back off; if they don't, they'll try to help and that's more warm bodies to throw in front of demons. Not really seeing the big downside with this plan."

"To convince them we'd have to show them a demon, and that would be im-"

"-unacceptable," a different, cutesy voice interrupted smoothly, reverb at a minimum. Mami blinked as Kyuubey sauntered into the room, leaping in front its perch at the window before climbing up onto the table. It sat on its haunches. "The rules I set down were clear, Sakura Kyouko. The world at large must remain unaware of demon activity and magical girls. This is not a request."

"Why?"

It swished its tail. "We have our reasons."

"And if I decided I didn't like those reasons?" Her voice was edging into a grating, aggressive harshness. "What then?"

Kyuubey smiled. "Nothing."

That stumped her. Mami too, whose eyes widened fractionally. "Aha?"

Kyuubey got up, smoothly leapt from the table to the chair, then onto the windowsill. "However, I would not recommend it. I understand the others who tried experienced rather unfortunate ends." It shrugged its ears. "Pity."

Then it was gone.

 

[Aranfan]

They will of course tell her that they did indeed do $10k worth of work. That torpedoes that plan.

Click to shrink...

So the plan just costs more than 15 cubes to have kyuubey mindwhammy them too. This is not an insurmountable problem.

Edit: Likewise, we are more likely to succeed on the neighbors if we have kyuubey apply mindwhammy than if we just have Mami do mundane diplomacy.