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Persona: HEAVEN (Persona/Sword Art Online/Isekai Multicross)

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I do hope that nobody takes things too personally— in the end this is fiction. If bad things happen in this quest it's no-one's fault (well, it's all my fault), and bad things will happen since this is ultimately a quest about clashing ideals.

The Pitohui fight was always going to end with the Orbital Laser, the entire purpose of the cash shop was to foreshadow the Pitohui fight and that item was added literally as a purchasable Chekov's gun explicitly for this fight. You'll note that some Persona abilities literally counter the orbital laser, it just so happens none of them are in the roster or were simply not chosen (for ex, Rainbow Body and Kalunga Line would hard counter the orbital laser).

A vote to actually use the DG on yourself was a surprise to me, but I did leave it open because it is always something you can do. It's also more of an issue because of earlier choices— if you encouraged LLENN to use the DG or decided to follow M's plan there wouldn't be much of a fuss for Hiyori to use the DG on herself. Lugh would probably even encourage it, whereas Sinon very much does not want you to use the DG as shown here.

My priority is to make sure that one way or another the outcome will be interesting and move character arcs along. Explicitly pulling the trigger won't lobotomize Hiyori or anything but it will move things along the Real/Ideal axis that I'm using as the thematic lynchpin of this entire quest.

Rossa is intended to be a mystery, so interactions with her, what she even is, and what she is capable of are intentionally left vague. This also applies to ETTEILLA/PHILEMON but by this point what these two entities want should be obvious. They are both written to be shady and not explicitly trustworthy but the intent of ETTEILLA/PHILEMON is to be clear representative extremes of the Ideal/Real axis.

theguynamedwafer said:
If we fail, we probably WILL trigger a hard failure state because Sinon and Gwen will die.

Note to self: always include a 'flashy' or 'big ticket' Persona in future rosters for every fight going forward. Die on that hill.
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Losing the roll will not kill Sinon and Gwen. Gwen is not in a NG, and neither is Sinon (she only used her NG during the BoB). They will just logout.

Based on current HP values the only people who will survive the Orbital Laser are Kuro and, ironically, M. You can imagine his response.

Hence losing the roll will inevitably lead to a hard failure state. But there will be an intervention if the roll is failed, and one of your game over tokens will be used up to give you another chance.
 
afreaknamedpete said:
I do hope that nobody takes things too personally— in the end this is fiction. If bad things happen in this quest it's no-one's fault (well, it's all my fault), and bad things will happen since this is ultimately a quest about clashing ideals.

The Pitohui fight was always going to end with the Orbital Laser, the entire purpose of the cash shop was to foreshadow the Pitohui fight and that item was added literally as a purchasable Chekov's gun explicitly for this fight. You'll note that some Persona abilities literally counter the orbital laser, it just so happens none of them are in the roster or were simply not chosen (for ex, Rainbow Body and Kalunga Line would hard counter the orbital laser).

A vote to actually use the DG on yourself was a surprise to me, but I did leave it open because it is always something you can do. It's also more of an issue because of earlier choices— if you encouraged LLENN to use the DG or decided to follow M's plan there wouldn't be much of a fuss for Hiyori to use the DG on herself. Lugh would probably even encourage it, whereas Sinon very much does not want you to use the DG as shown here.

My priority is to make sure that one way or another the outcome will be interesting and move character arcs along. Explicitly pulling the trigger won't lobotomize Hiyori or anything but it will move things along the Real/Ideal axis that I'm using as the thematic lynchpin of this entire quest.

Rossa is intended to be a mystery, so interactions with her, what she even is, and what she is capable of are intentionally left vague. This also applies to ETTEILLA/PHILEMON but by this point what these two entities want should be obvious. They are both written to be shady and not explicitly trustworthy but the intent of ETTEILLA/PHILEMON is to be clear representative extremes of the Ideal/Real axis.



Losing the roll will not kill Sinon and Gwen. Gwen is not in a NG, and neither is Sinon (she only used her NG during the BoB). They will just logout.

Based on current HP values the only people who will survive the Orbital Laser are Kuro and, ironically, M. You can imagine his response.

Hence losing the roll will inevitably lead to a hard failure state. But there will be an intervention if the roll is failed, and one of your game over tokens will be used up to give you another chance.
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For the sake of clarity, wouldn't Sinon always be angry if we used the DG? If we encouraged Llenn back then we'd be having this disagreement, just sooner (it'll be less volatile, sure)
 
Alcor said:
I tend to think narrative first then mechanics.
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So do I, which is why I was advocating for Shadow Convo, as that's the primary narrative responce I want to go from here. I also want to build Hiyori's relationship with Nyarly, so I'm fine invoking darkness.


theguynamedwafer said:
...this discussion seems to be getting...heated? We should probably chill out for a bit.
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I was a bit worried about this with my behavior last plan phase, I've wanted to apologize for a bit. Please accept this belated apology.

afreaknamedpete said:
This also applies to ETTEILLA/PHILEMON but by this point what these two entities want should be obvious. They are both written to be shady and not explicitly trustworthy but the intent of ETTEILLA/PHILEMON is to be clear representative extremes of the Ideal/Real axis.
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This is the underpinning of my ETTEILLA support aside from me liking his charisma. I'm decently heavy on the Real side of this Dichotomy. Same with my anti-Rossa stance, but we'll see how that develops in Movie Arc.

afreaknamedpete said:
I do hope that nobody takes things too personally— in the end this is fiction. If bad things happen in this quest it's no-one's fault (well, it's all my fault), and bad things will happen since this is ultimately a quest about clashing ideals.
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I'm enjoying the fiction, and to the stress (minor) that comes from that investment. I'm not upset at anyone as a person over their choices just passionate for the ones I believe in.
I'm happy the Death Gun was attempted to be used at some point because I wanted to see what you'd come up with for Hiyori, and I'm happy it was used here instead of somewhere else. Excited to see what happens next. :)
 
...I still think we should just try to DBZ clash the SOL beam.

Reasons Being:

1) The odds are in our favor, even if they're not as good as previously thought. Approx. 66% chance of success is still better than flipping a coin.

2) It'll be awesome if we can pull it off.

3) If we still fail, we have 3 safety tokens. 1 being burned will probably benefit us more than it allows ETTEILA/Nyarly to go 'off script', and we'll have the benefit of hindsight in this instance to take a PROPER answer to the SOL beam (see my proposed loadout plan for this fight).

I will accept some responsibility for not picking up on the cues even as I was the one to point out that GGO's RMT shop had been bought out. As well as for not making a plan for escape when the SOL beam was deployed. I honestly thought if we killed Erlkonig quickly enough, we'd able to finish it off before the SOL beam was used.

And again, see my note to self earlier.
 
Look, it may look awesome, but I am a firm believer of the following:

If it's not 100%, it's 50%.
 
Fuck it we ball

[X] Don't Pull the Trigger

Things always get a bit messy when things go off the rails, especially when the train lands on us.

but the best moments of quests when things get FUBAR and we gotta bullshit our way out of things.
 
There's also the fact that we keep going for cheap feelgood moments we didn't earn and it blows up in our face and then people act surprised.

First there was the ALO write-in, then we could have dealt with BLANK easily, and now this.
 
1) 66% is not much better than flipping a coin. People tend to be bad at estimating probably, but that aside 1/3rd of something is still quite a lot. This fails abit more than 1/3rd of the time.

2) This is a matter of taste. So aside from me not particularly finding the beam clash as cool in the first place, at this point I would kindof find the beam clash succeeding as narrativily dissatisfing at this point.

3) People keep referring to the summon Nyarly action as 'giving ETTEILLA power' or letting him 'go off script'. We've summoned Nephren-ka before, it is summoning Nyarly as a persona, it's not particularly giving Nyarly any more power than they otherwise have.
Setting aside that CHAOS is a social link we have, setting aside me leaning Nyarly. Use of a time token is explicitly in narrative giving Nyarly 1/4th of his missing power back. It is giving him more influence over the narrative. I continue to fail to see how, from the perspective of someone anti-ETTEILLA, calling on them now is somehow worse than giving them tangible power over reality.
 
SNPC said:
3) People keep referring to the summon Nyarly action as 'giving ETTEILLA power' or letting him 'go off script'. We've summoned Nephren-ka before, it is summoning Nyarly as a persona, it's not particularly giving Nyarly any more power than they otherwise have.
Setting aside that CHAOS is a social link we have, setting aside me leaning Nyarly. Use of a time token is explicitly in narrative giving Nyarly 1/4th of his missing power back. It is giving him more influence over the narrative. I continue to fail to see how, from the perspective of someone anti-ETTEILLA, calling on them now is somehow worse than giving them tangible power over reality.
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I don't think I've called it that at any point! If I had to rank our choices I'd probably put it second (but that says more about the other choices really.)

First off, you're assuming a failure here with the time token use here. It's definitely very possible (I play two gacha and a ton of Fire Emblem, I know very much how easily 66% can fail!) but it certainly isn't assured. Second, and more importantly though, as someone who is "anti-ETTEILLA" (but that isn't really the driving factor in my vote here) I'd say there's a big narrative difference in Hiyori's character between "willingly going to ETTEILLA for a bail out" and "Hiyori tries to overcome the trial with her own power, but fails and ETTEILLA steps in to bail her out." I actually think the latter is more interesting in many respects - though again, I don't want to fail this roll. If you're looknig at this from the standpoint of "how does ETTEILLA come out of this situation?" you're looking at it differently from me because I'm less concerned with that and more concerned with how Hiyori's character develops and the philosophies she adopts.

If anything, I think the best case for persuading me (in theory, I don't anticipate changing my vote this far into the vote, but from a "in my headspace" perspective) is to argue that the "Ask for Darkness" is "just" us expending DETERMINATION to temporarily expand our roster amount and use Nephren-Ka as if we took it into battle. As someone who has on several occasions (before my self-imposed ban on combat plans following... I forget what I did, I'm sure I had a good reason though lol!) made plans using Nephren-Ka and Ragnarok - if we had brought him into the fight as part of our normal roster I'd be totally fine with using him here. But maybe I'm just paranoid but the "???" consequence with the choice makes me feel like this is somehow a more significant action than just giving us a temporarily "Roster+1, equip Nephren-Ka and Release Recollection" thing. In which case, I'd rather see Hiyori try to be the hero she wanted to be. If she succeeds - cool, it's a big moment that concretely demonstrates she's taken one step further on that path. If she fails... well, like I said, I think that's interesting in its own right as she has to grapple with "how far have I really come anyway?" I also think running to ETTEILLA here is in contrast to us having just chosen to oppose masterminds/schemers. I've always been pretty forgiving and okay with Hiyori contradicting herself - people always do - but I get the impression others are frustrated that we're not always consistent and well...?

Now, if you mean this from a pure mechanics "Guys this is a 100% chance, you're literally choosing to give us a not insignificant failstate" then I totally get you. This is, mechanically speaking, the worst choice on the board - everything else gets us through this with the known penalties not being that bad (and some mystery boxes which might be worse, granted.) But like I said, I'm here more for the narrative implications and development. If the goal was just to optimize our success at all points we could just go all edgelord "hard decisions" and murderhobo or kidnap our way through a lot of our obstacles in the real world because we have sorta-black ops state sanctioning... but that is not a quest/turn of events I'd enjoy. I don't want to come off as difficult and would otherwise be open to compromising to an option that isn't necessarily my favorite in the interests of thread harmony if I was still okay with it but none of the other options are ones I'm super comfortable with - maybe I'm making more of the consequences than they'll end up being... but honestly I feel like my instinct has been relatively on point in this fight so far (not physically going to fake M's position, invoking Real Deal/Death Gun being a bad idea, etc.). Of course, I've been wildly wrong in other situations so maybe this is that.
 
Alcor said:
I don't think I've called it that at any point! If I had to rank our choices I'd probably put it second (but that says more about the other choices really.)

First off, you're assuming a failure here with the time token use here. It's definitely very possible (I play two gacha and a ton of Fire Emblem, I know very much how easily 66% can fail!) but it certainly isn't assured. Second, and more importantly though, as someone who is "anti-ETTEILLA" (but that isn't really the driving factor in my vote here) I'd say there's a big narrative difference in Hiyori's character between "willingly going to ETTEILLA for a bail out" and "Hiyori tries to overcome the trial with her own power, but fails and ETTEILLA steps in to bail her out." I actually think the latter is more interesting in many respects - though again, I don't want to fail this roll. If you're looknig at this from the standpoint of "how does ETTEILLA come out of this situation?" you're looking at it differently from me because I'm less concerned with that and more concerned with how Hiyori's character develops and the philosophies she adopts.
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My 3 points structure was mainly as a response to wafer's arguments so my quotations for the anti-ETTEILLA position so I'm quoting him there more than anyone else, but I appreciate the chance to talk over the narrative.

I'm arguing as if failure is guaranteed for 3 main reasons.
Firstly, because as a fellow Fire Emblem player I am absolutely looking at that 66% chance and seeing a reset. 66% isn't good odds and I don't like the gamble here.
Secondly, because the way the narrative is flowing it makes way more sense for us to fail here than succeed. If I read this as a story without the game mechanics with everything that's lead up to this and saw Hiyori go for the beam clash, I'm expecting her to lose.
Thirdly, because I find succeeding the check as less narratively satisfying to me than failing it does, and I find both of those less satisfying than the other choices.

As I said before, I'm personally fine with attempting to Invoke Death Gun given the information we got out of it. But my main objective was to get people to run from the cannon and not put us in this situation to begin with, which is why I presented a running away plan without Death Gun early on.

Alcor said:
But maybe I'm just paranoid but the "???" consequence with the choice makes me feel like this is somehow a more significant action than just giving us a temporarily "Roster+1, equip Nephren-Ka and Release Recollection" thing.
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I do view the 'Ask for Darkness' choice as being mainly "Roster+1, equip Nephren-Ka and Release Recollection", I think people are overblowing the ??? part of the genreally safer options by a significant degree. I think QM is generally on our side and I like most of the narrative consiquences available to us more than either the time warp or no consiquences at all.

I'm fine with Hiyori contradicting herself, I would just like to see it bringing us less in consort with our shadow. That seems like the correct narrative downside to these sorts of problems.

Alcor said:
This is, mechanically speaking, the worst choice on the board - everything else gets us through this with the known penalties not being that bad (and some mystery boxes which might be worse, granted.) But like I said, I'm here more for the narrative implications and development.
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But yeah, I think this is both the mechanically worst choice and the least satisfying narrative choice regardless of the outcome.
EDIT: ... except maybe the Rossa option given what feeding that implies, but that's less about it being a satisfying narrative and more about being against going down that path.

Ryumancer said:
It would be very inconvenient, which means our odds are far, far worse than 50%!
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All odds are either 100% or 0% if you look at the results. : )
Yeah the flow of the story leans to this feeling like the 0%.
 
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The Zog said:
There's also the fact that we keep going for cheap feelgood moments we didn't earn and it blows up in our face and then people act surprised.

First there was the ALO write-in, then we could have dealt with BLANK easily, and now this.
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I disagree with you on Blank as I'm pretty sure they would've came back to fuck with us later, but the sentiment is correct from my pov. It is how it is, let's just hope we hit the coin flip.

Alcor said:
If the goal was just to optimize our success at all points we could just go all edgelord "hard decisions" and murderhobo or kidnap our way through a lot of our obstacles in the real world because we have sorta-black ops state sanctioning...
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Could we do that? If the government can't beat DG despite having the same goals we do (at this point at least) and let's be real they are not above killing everyone in their path for something big as this, how could we? Our powers only exist in VR and all (unless you mean using Mudo and just killing everyone in our way, which just makes DG stronger- it's a path to be sure but not necessarily an easy one, honestly it seems pretty hard)
 
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nhehvnukl said:
I disagree with you on Blank as I'm pretty sure they would've came back to fuck with us later, but the sentiment is correct from my pov. It is how it is, let's just hope we hit the coin flip.
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IIRC, the QM description of the "kidnap Shiro" option was something like "Instantly/Automatically defeats BLANK" so, no, I believe it would have removed them from the arc (and probably the quest entirely.)

It also is one of the few vote choices we've had that probably crosses the line from "choices I would not like" to "choices that might trip a personal trigger" so I'm not exactly apologetic or regretful that we chose not to have Hiyori forcibly kidnap a young girl just because it would made things easier for us in the future.

nhehvnukl said:
Could we do that? If the government can't beat DG despite having the same goals we do (at this point at least) and let's be real they are not above killing everyone in their path for something big as this, how could we?
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Sure we could.

As mentioned above, we could have removed Blank as a threat entirely by "defeating" them in the real world by kidnapping Shiro. We had the vote option to do it. We non-lethally called the cops on Shouichi, but Kikuoka literally and explicitly told us he'd look the other way if Death Gun just "disappeared" so he's given us tacit approval that he/the government will look the other way on murder if we get the results he wants. With the exception of Blank's current whereabouts we've known the real world location of all our Death Gun opponents thus far - Sinon, Spiegel, and Pito. Theoretically speaking we could have taken action in the real world to deal with all 3 of them. I don't think it was presented as a vote option for Pito (the power of money and lawyers perhaps?) but pretty sure we had the option to report Shino and Kyouji to Kikuoka before things came to a head and we simply chose not to.

Now the remaining candidates are currently likely out of our real world reach due to lack of information (The relocated Blank, Itsuki, and Glowgen) but with Glowgen we also had the choice to either report them outright or lie about our loyalty (and presumably preserve the option to betray them to the authorities later.) Honestly, Itsuki may have been the one target we simply could not deal with this way - which fits with his depiction in Fatal Bullet - even after he revealed his intentions and was defeated by the MC + Kirito + Friends, Kirito notes that Itsuki covered his real world presence insanely well and not even Kikuoka could track him down.

If anything, I'd say the issue is the thread has been pretty evenly split on most of these choices (but which side is in favor of it differs depending on the character) and keeps coming down on not exercising this option - with the exception of Shouichi. Like I said, I was viscerally opposed to the option on Blank/Shiro but my idea of dealing with Kyouji would have been to investigate his background more before confronting him and probably report him - thereby avoiding that whole conflict. But we took the "unnecessary" option of trying to redeem Kyouji and once we had I switched gears to thinking it was a bad idea to turn him over to Kikuoka since regardless of my prior feelings we voted to befriend him more or less so I tried to treat him as such but "welp." But I guess it's only a "cheap, unearned feelgood moment" when it happens to certain characters idk.
 
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Alcor said:
IIRC, the QM description of the "kidnap Shiro" option was something like "Instantly/Automatically defeats BLANK" so, no, I believe it would have removed them from the arc (and probably the quest entirely.)

It also is one of the few vote choices we've had that probably crosses from "choices I would not like" to "choices that might trip a personal trigger" so I'm not exactly apologetic or regretful that we chose not to have Hiyori forcibly kidnap a young girl.


Sure we could.

As mentioned above, we could have removed Blank as a threat entirely by "defeating" them in the real world by kidnapping Shiro. We had the vote option to do it. We non-lethally called the cops on Shouichi, but Kikuoka literally and explicitly told us he'd look the other way if Death Gun just "disappeared" so he's given us tacit approval that he/the government will look the other way on murder if we get the results he wants. With the exception of Blank's current whereabouts we've known the real world location of all our Death Gun opponents thus far - Sinon, Spiegel, and Pito. Theoretically speaking we could have taken action in the real world to deal with all 3 of them. I don't think it was presented as a vote option for Pito (the power of money and lawyers perhaps?) but pretty sure we had the option to report Shino and Kyouji to Kikuoka before things came to a head and we simply chose not to.

Now the remaining candidates are currently likely out of our real world reach due to lack of information (The relocated Blank, Itsuki, and Glowgen) but with Glowgen we also had the choice to either report them outright or lie about our loyalty (and presumably preserve the option to betray them to the authorities later.) Honestly, Itsuki may have been the one target we simply could not deal with this way - which fits with his depiction in Fatal Bullet - even after he revealed his intentions and was defeated by the MC + Kirito + Friends, Kirito notes that Itsuki covered his real world presence insanely well and not even Kikuoka could track him down.

If anything, I'd say the issue is the thread has been pretty evenly split on most of these choices and keeps coming down on not exercising this option - with the exception of Shouichi. Like I said, I was viscerally opposed to the option on Blank/Shiro but my idea of dealing with Kyouji would have been to investigate his background more before confronting him and probably report him - thereby avoiding that whole conflict. But we took the "unnecessary" option of trying to redeem Kyouji and once we had I switched gears to thinking it was a bad idea to turn him over to Kikuoka but "welp." But I guess it's only a "cheap, unearned feelgood moment" when it happens to certain characters idk.
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I'll concede on Blank as I must have forgotten (though my original fear was them returning in arc 3/4 to fuck with us), but I disagree with Sinon and Spiegel. Sinon is a persona user, recruiting her is much smarter then killing her. She is simply more useful alive then dead if we're talking in that sense. Spiegel is a bit more gray but recruiting him has helped us defeat Xaxa without fighting him (which was the intended route btw) so it's still very much worthwhile. Also, Arlo can give us the info on where Blank live (did we do that already?) so we can still beat them that way if needed (on just call child protective services really).

So yeah, the only time we could've killed someone and it would have actually made things easier (from my pov at least, if you have something to add I'd like to hear it) is Blank, and irrc the only reason we we're there in the first place is because Kazuma was lazy. I don't think we had time to get a weapon even.
 
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Once Kyouji confessed his involvement we had the option of just walking away and then getting his location and having him arrested. It was even noted in one of the not-taken options that we could do that. Or, like with Lugh, we were also given the option of playing along or lying to get even more info out of him and his allies so we could have gotten Shouichi that way too probably.

Like I said, the way that whole thing went down wasn't the way I preferred and had been advocating for but I also don't really like to re-litigate our past choices if I can help it so I don't really want to get into a "well what we should have done is..." thing. And sure, recruiting Sinon was probably better than reporting her but we can make that same argument for Pito or Blank if their respective battles end with friendship. Both could be very useful allies. Pito is a P2W player who owns like every weapon and Blank would make a good tactician, like a Shiroe for GGO. Sure, it takes effort on our part to actually recruit them but it did for Sinon too so I don't really get the criticism. We had to fight her too!

I guess it's higher stakes than a lot of our ALO recruits since we met Shiroe through an investigative action, basically befriended Rain through talking (though Crowd Brain was needed to secure her loyalty for OBERON IIRC) and Cayna and Yuuki were basically a zero-stakes fight other than Hiyori having to have a PTSD episode for her first post-SAO VR death rather than GGO's "if you die in the game you die in real life" stakes but that makes sense now that it's a later arc in the story?
 
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Alcor said:
Once Kyouji confessed his involvement we had the option of just walking away and then getting his location and having him arrested. It was even noted in one of the not-taken options that we could do that. Or, like with Lugh, we were also given the option of playing along or lying to get even more info out of him and his allies so we could have gotten Shouichi that way too probably.

Like I said, the way that whole thing went down wasn't the way I preferred and had been advocating for but I also don't really like to re-litigate our past choices if I can help it so I don't really want to get into a "well what we should have done is..." thing. And sure, recruiting Sinon was probably better than reporting her but we can make that same argument for Pito or Blank if their respective battles end with friendship. Both could be very useful allies. Pito is a P2W player who owns like every weapon and Blank would make a good tactician, like a Shiroe for GGO. Sure, it takes effort on our part to actually recruit them but it did for Sinon too so I don't really get the criticism. We had to fight her too!

I guess it's higher stakes than a lot of our ALO recruits since we met Shiroe through an investigative action, basically befriended Rain through talking (though Crowd Brain was needed to secure her loyalty for OBERON IIRC) and Cayna and Yuuki were basically a zero-stakes fight other than Hiyori having to have a PTSD episode for her first post-SAO VR death rather than GGO's "if you die in the game you die in real life" stakes but that makes sense now that it's a later arc in the story?
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I really doubt we could've recruited Xaxa unless all the rumors are correct and he actually has a crush on Hiyori ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Unless you meant joining LC as a spy again, which is kind of a cool idea that, again, I haven't really thought of until now

I don't disagree that recruiting is good if possible, that's my point! My original "issue" if you can call it that is this-

Alcor said:
If the goal was just to optimize our success at all points we could just go all edgelord "hard decisions" and murderhobo or kidnap our way through a lot of our obstacles in the real world because we have sorta-black ops state sanctioning...
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Which I disagree with as turning people into allies is usually smarter long term then killing them. I don't really enjoy the whole "could have" shebang too but you said something interesting so I opened it haha

But honestly this is getting a bit too off topic
 
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Well, "killing" is probably a bit extreme - I guess I should say we could have called a SWAT team on all of them (minus Blank where it was kidnapping.) As shady as he is, I don't think Kikuoka would arm us in a way where we could do it personally.

And no, for Kyouji/Shouichi, what I'm saying is that we absolutely had the option to investigate them and report them rather than confronting and fighting Kyouji to get that outcome. IIRC, the investigation option was basically hitting up hospital employee lists to find a Shinkawa and working backwards from there - seems like a pretty trivial thing for the government to do, hell, Hiyori probably could/would have done it herself.

But since we did confront Kyouji when we did we went into that encounter with almost zero info on his situation so in theory we couldn't be sure that reporting Kyouji would nab Shouichi too (it should but who knows) and Shino didn't know his address. We were given several options - one of which was pretty explicitly "agree with Kyouji to pretend this never happened, but continue to investigate his real world location for an arrest" and two others that were essentially "agree to meet Kyouji's Death Gun compatriots" if we did the latter we could have gathered more info about said allies to turn over to Kikuoka. We wouldn't be a LC spy again, we'd be a government spy infiltrating Shouichi's cell. Granted, there may have been a choice there to genuinely become a LC spy again but that's beyond the scope of this discussion (and a bad idea besides, I think.)

All I'm saying is that - and I'm pretty sure Word of Pete confirmed this at one point - that there was a "Real World" solution to almost every Death Gun candidate besides Itsuki, it's just that we have continually chosen to pass those options and turn them into GGO fights. I'm only a little irritated here because I feel like only some of those decisions are being put down and re-litigated (like Blank) while ignoring we've done the exact same thing for other characters (like Kyouji.) Past votes (that I happened to be on) being continually brought up here and there and attacked well after they've happened gets a bit old after a while and while I've generally brushed it off and ignored it so far there is a point where my patience starts to run out and I feel compelled to respond to some of it.
 
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