Ranbu Escalation (PMMM/Gaim)

But which Zangetsu killed us, remember Homura knows about energy lockseeds so Zangetsu Shin was active during the time and is possibly our killer and is not that imposible for Micchy to kill Madoka even if we are with Yggdrasil or Ryoma when he defects, the other reasonable reason to not trust Ryoma is that I'm pretty sure he will use us as guinea pigs just see what happened in the Zakuro and Dragon energy lockseeds incidents.

This is roughly my problem with going the Micchy path. Micchy had an in through both being ruthless and smart enough to hold his own and the fact that the boss was his brother (nepotism works sometimes). They'd have worked with Kouta because Kouta did a very good job of wrecking their shit and they wanted him to stop, and Takatora was down with following Kouta's path of "maybe let's try and make peace first?". Fuck, Kouta actually made some decent-ish results with that approach given that it's basically why he got the Kiwami Lockseed.

We don't have any of that. We're a 14 year old girl who barely knows how to fight, barely knows what she's getting into, and as of yet hasn't shown herself to actually be worth as anything other than maybe a test subject. The best-case scenario here is....what, we hold out until someone who can actually enact change does so and hope Ryouma doesn't kill Homura in the meantime? Fuck, when he's done with Homura he might just let her die and be done with it - we have what he did with Mai, the Apple Lockseed girl, and probably someone else who slips my mind as examples of what he does when he no longer has any interest in something. Him letting Madoka take Homura when he's done is a best case scenario, not a realistic one.

And even if they do humor us......the cast of Gaim is young adults who are at least generally responsible and the kind of people who can hold down their own lifestyles (Kouta's semi-constant job hunt nonwithstanding). Madoka is a 14 year old girl who is shackled by societal obligations and chains that are on a girl of that age - go to school, be with your parents, etc. We have less free time, and less ability to do what we want with that free time as literally any other Rider in the cast. Beyond satisfying their basic curiosity, we have nothing of value to offer them.

If we wanted to actually do something? If we wanted to actually having a chance in hell of rescuing Homura and changing things in a way we desire? We leave, and as much as I hate the phrase, we git gud. We find people to help us, get better at fighting, and maybe pick up another Lockseed or two for variety along the way. You want options? Baron thinks we're weak, but would probably be fine with teaming up in an "Fuck Yggdrasil" alliance. Hell, get him to beat the shit out of us a lot as combat practice and he might respect the dedication thereof. I personally don't like Oren, but the man's a damn good choice to team up with - he's willing to go out of his way to help kids, he's got a good head on his shoulders, and the guy who teamed up with him in canon came out of Gaim both alive and a productive member of society with long-term employment. Teaming up with Oren when/if he gets a Driver would be a fantastic move.

And even beyond these sorts of considerations......as I said, it's the Micchy path. If we try to shack up with Yggdrasil, we're going to be following the Micchy train except that we're orders of magnitude less capable of following through with what that would entail than he was. We'd be following his path, and you can literally watch how well that path goes. He sets out to...what, protect the girl he has a crush on? Keep Kouta happy? Protect humanity? He literally fucks up every single one of those things, and loses 90% of everything he had by the end of the show. Not only does he end up leaving Mai with the guy who murders her for what's inside of her, her fate to be involved is something that couldn't be avoided in the first place. Kouta was never going to sit back in ignorance and his attempts to manipulate Kouta lead to Micchy almost murdering himself with the Hell Fruit Arms trying to kill Kouta - his best friend. He literally goes quisling with the Overlords because he thinks that they can be appeased and won't eventually get bored and kill humanity, and in the process rapidly speeds up the timetable from "soon" to "right the fuck now" on the end of the world. Fuck, he can't even kill anyone successfully - the only reason he doesn't lose to Takatora is because Takatora pulled his blow, and Kouta was an Overlord by that point so killing him would have been...hard.

And now all you fucks are going "BUT IT"S THE BEST ODDS OF SAVING HOMURA" and literally setting out to make the same mistakes that Micchy did - protect the waifu and compromise everything about yourself to do so without actually having a plan.

You want to throw away any real chance of having people trust us in exchange for trying to work with people who will gladly dispose of us as soon as we're not useful anymore.

You want to throw away the chance to actually have the power to stand on our own and fight for what we want in exchange for sneaking around in the shadows and grabbing at the scraps other people drop.

You want to focus on the goal directly in front of you while ignoring how it's going to affect the dozens of other goals farther out.

What boggles me is that anyone with any knowledge of Gaim would willingly pick to be Micchy. What the actual fuck, you guys. I've seen Micchy described as being basically what SV's questing base looks like as a character so I can't be surprised, and I shouldn't be disappointed, but somehow you've made me feel both.

I almost hope we take the Micchy path so I can fucking laugh when it blows up in our faces. You're all going to ignore this, I just know it and it'll be great.