Magical Girl Escalation Taylor (Worm/Nanoha)

[X] Chevalier
[X] Vista
[x] Dragon

Chevalier was very serious about protecting our secret identity when Epoch showed up. Why are people doubting him now?

Yeah, I really think that bringing this to his attention is the best course of action in a lot of ways both in and out of character.

Most importantly, of course, is the point @UberJJK raised: We/Taylor know Chevalier cares about this type of stuff. At the very least he'll take us seriously.
Also, if we ARE going to... *Ahem* Accidentally *Ahem* Lure Vista over to our team, having the PRT on the back foot over Coil might give us a better bargaining position.
(IDK if Taylor would/could know this) Chevalier's Thinker power thing means all it takes is him walking into a room with Calvert outs him as a parahuman... if nothing else, he might have noticed that Calvert seems to be avoiding him and be suspicious even before we bring our evidence to him.

Beyond that, and this is just a bit of meta-schadenfreude on my part which doesn't count, but, we also know

Above and beyond knowing that Alexandria and Legend will be... unhappy... with Coil pissing off their only point of contact TSAB and I happen to like the Alexandria interludes: The idea of Alexandria rolling disable plot device on the whole questline by grabbing Coil and dangling him by one leg high above the Pacific Ocean as she explains why she's upset with him is just... <dissolves into mad cackling> *Ahem* How high up do you have to fall from before hitting water is functionally identical to hitting concrete?

ANYWAY... Telling Chevalier specifically about Calvert, one of their own, bombing our civilian ID potentially paints Taylor choosing to sit a bit further away from him in that meeting in a slightly more serious light or at least gives @Silently Watches an opportunity for comedic misunderstandings if Chevalier were to read too much into it. Or, even funnier since we the readers know that

Also, as far as 'plans' for Coil, I only skimmed through the comments so stop me if anyone else mentioned these points already but...
  • Taylor knows the dimensional coordinates for an uninhabited Earth... we could just leave him there.
  • He started it. There's not much reason not to go after him in his Civilian ID at this point. Teleporting into his office, grabbing him, and then planeshifting out and dumping him in a deep pit blasted/melted into the above mentioned Alt!Earth for safe keeping while we bring the evidence to the PRT is an option. Or, again, we could just... leave him there.
Edit: ... This is technically a valid solution to any non-flier/teleporter cape fight (and even then it's not that we can't do it, but we might lose track of them afterwards :whistle:). Just leave them a dimension over until PRT is available to process them. I mean yeah... we could just teleport them into PRT jail cells but that's just so... plebeian.
 
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@Aetheron: I hadn't considered that viewpoint, and I'm changing my vote.
However, there is still the issue of how we are going to get both Vista and Chevalier involved.
Taking Miss Militia and Chevalier would make more sense.
 
Telling Chevalier specifically about Calvert, one of their own, bombing our civilian ID potentially paints Taylor choosing to sit a bit further away from him in that meeting in a slightly more serious light or at least gives Silently Watches an opportunity for comedic misunderstandings if Chevalier were to read too much into it.
This is honestly tempting.
But getting Chevalier along side Dragon and Vista involved in this feels like a weird match up. Mostly Vista cause she's a Ward and Chevalier is her Protectorate Leader. Maybe if we switch out Vista for Miss Militia?
This is why I wanted to make it more of a Girls Night with those who have connections with Taylor, not just Calamity Witch. Also now would actually be a decent reason for Vista and Cailleach to meet and to start bridging Taylor's social circle together.
 
But getting Chevalier along side Dragon and Vista involved in this feels like a weird match up.

That, I think, is a side effect of the way we're doing the votes. Taylor will wind up bringing the people who overlap on the most lists even if the resultant team isn't itself super plausible. Really, the more I think about this the more I think we're doing this backwards. I think we should be voting on the outline of Taylor's plan first and THEN picking teammates.

Edit: Or, at least, packaging it all together whereby voting for plan A implies voting for the three people listed as being part of that plan.

For instance:
If we're going to do this above board with lawyers and trials and whatnot then Dragon, MM, and Chevalier all make sense here (albeit there may be redundancy in contacting them all separately.) Villains would be counterproductive.
If we're doing a smash and kidnap afterwhich Calvert is never heard from again? Then we probably either want the folks with more experience in that kind thing like Circus, or maybe even reach out to TSAB in a "This guy blew up my house, can I borrow your ship's brig while I file the paperwork to have him properly arrested?" sort of way. Here, contacting the heroes in advance is probably counterproductive with the exception of Vista who's powers are useful here and would probably be willing to go on the lamb with us. (which in turn probably makes the other fallout worse)
Mix and Matching them doesn't really make sense unless we know about Coil's power in advance and need a Villain team to play distraction or something. Sadly, IIRC Taylor and Lisa did not cover that particular detail before things fell apart.

Edit: it also occurs to me that due to the nature of the PRT, it's entirely possible that us picking MM or Chevalier actually gets us the other one instead since it's not only plausible but should be expected that the one we talk to will talk to the other? Do we need to account for that in picking our three? I.E. Does calling Miss Militia for the purpose of having her call Chevalier or vice versa count as 2 picks? this really only matters more in the going forward sense since as our contact list grows it's likely going to spiderweb out rather than being a collection of people in a vacuum and making sure we avoid upsetting key players in the faction may become important if we wind up in a situation where we pick MM for help, but have pissed off her boss enough that she's ordered not to help us...
Seriously though, there's always a chance. Thanks to PS, Taylor is socialing based on Nanoha rules, so turning enemies (or at least opponents) into friends is not out of the question.

I'm probably as biased as they come since I'm sitting here with Kayleigh cheering that ship on... but... I don't think this is the mission to bond with Laura over. Dealing with Coil in a way that involves the villains is far more likely to see Taylor being the one to switch sides than it is Cailleach, if only in terms of perception and news coverage. This makes the other stuff we want to do more difficult and should probably be avoided.

Edit2:

Also, since I was only reading the threadmarked chapters up until this last one, someone stop me if I'm accidentally using necromancy on a well flogged horse here, but...

A thought on project(s) for Tim:

We have a mana generator running the radio. Linker cores condense mana for use. Have we explored the option of artificial linker cores at all?
I mean, the easy/obvious option being that since magitech starships exist then obviously its possible to make a Dragon suit with a mana-generator (or many of them) so that dragon can fire magic attacks at Endbringers, but what about something like a stripped down device (*cough* Magic Wand *Cough*) that acts as both a capacitor (we can charge it off the generator or just by Taylor dumping mana into it) and then have the wand done up like Dragon's teleporter pads where it has a pre-mathed spell ready to go. Maybe something like Frost Beam which Taylor finds so very draining? This would let Taylor charge it up slowly over time rather than dumping all the mana into the spell all at once and then getting woozy. (Also, we can give it to Vista)

In fact, if the ritual the Adepts cooked up is any indication, there's no reason I can recall we couldn't make Vista into a magitech/steampunk version of a magical girl via power armor with a lot these capacitors for her to draw on and (if necessary) either some analog to a device to assist her with the math or a series of magical doohickies with pre-mathed spells that she can pick from. This would naturally be explained to the PRT as 'prototype testing' the Mark M power armor for later PRT Trooper use even if we never actually mass produce the things.
 
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We have a mana generator running the radio. Linker cores condense mana for use. Have we explored the option of artificial linker cores at all?
I mean, the easy/obvious option being that since magitech starships exist then obviously its possible to make a Dragon suit with a mana-generator (or many of them) so that dragon can fire magic attacks at Endbringers, but what about something like a stripped down device (*cough* Magic Wand *Cough*) that acts as both a capacitor (we can charge it off the generator or just by Taylor dumping mana into it) and then have the wand done up like Dragon's teleporter pads where it has a pre-mathed spell ready to go. Maybe something like Frost Beam which Taylor finds so very draining? This would let Taylor charge it up slowly over time rather than dumping all the mana into the spell all at once and then getting woozy. (Also, we can give it to Vista)
Ay ay ay…

Yeah, we've been over this. It's even in the FAQ (Gadgeteer capabilities). The answer is a very strong "not a snowball's chance in hell".
 
With all that Taylor knows right now about Calvert's multiple times in and out of the PRT's good graces, with them already knowing quite a few bad deeds of his, and his already being brought out of exile/prison more than once.... would she really in the stated heat of the moment decide to grab the guy who just invited Calvert to lead an influx of troops into Philadelphia for this mission? All so that she can try to bring 'evidence' they largely already have (not sure the bombing-civvie-ID is exactly the worst Calvert has done... he's killed before and he's betrayed allies before, to their knowledge) and try putting him in prison again?

Not saying I have a plan or opinion atm for what she does do after the fact while talking it over with who she brings, but really, would she? And also invite both Chevalier (The guy keeping wards back from past several dangers, officially) and Vista (the Ward she wants to bring along to let her try out her new extensive combat modifications, possibly including plasma cannon) ? Seems like it risks him interfering with Vista, or distracting from the trouble by picking fight over her arm.

Everyone saying to not get Cailleach's help with this (when she first demasked to us over a Cape Code moment of honor, then offered to help us defend city against gangs after giving a warning, /then/ invited us to a meeting on the topic we hadn't yet heard about) ...... what are you going to say to her if she hears about it? "Oh sorry, we didn't want to invite a villain to go deal with this criminal who attacked us, it'd look bad" .... do that right after the big meeting where the Protectorate refused to work together with Winter Hill, while we were on board for the plan?
 
:facepalm: Considering all the other times I've said no to turning nonmages into pseudomages, what do you think my answer is gonna be?

I'm very sorry for accidentally setting this round of Picarding off.

I'd normally say that Taylor herself might still benefit from carrying around a mana battery or three to supplement her own mana when casting ice magic... but I kind of get the impression that Taylor might consider such a thing to be a rather small drop in a large bucket if her using IAE as her personal device is anything to go by so it may be more useful for such things to go to the Adepts, Tim, or Lacey.

That said, as an omake, interlude, or otherwise... it could be funny to see the moment where they discover that.
We know that Taylor has a rank S linker core because it's on her character sheet (Do S+'s or anything of that sort exist in Nahona?) and Cauldron correctly guessed that it was so, but I can't seem to recall if Taylor ever realized on screen that she's... atypical in power even among magi because it occurs to me that (especially early on) 'S-Class' to Taylor is likely a term she'd associate with things like Nilbog or The Nine.

Edit: Erm... can anyone point me at an explanation of where the term 'S-Class' comes from? I assume it stands for something like 'Special Case' but I've seen it in a lot of stories and things and I have no idea where it originated.
 
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Not saying I have a plan or opinion atm for what she does do after the fact while talking it over with who she brings, but really, would she?

This, I think, is the problem in my mind. Other than "We're doing this tonight! GO GO GO!" I don't know what the plan is that Taylor is recruiting help for. Did I miss that memo or is picking a plan somehow being subordinated to who we call and how they react (Presumably showing up or not showing up based on previous interactions?)
 
This, I think, is the problem in my mind. Other than "We're doing this tonight! GO GO GO!" I don't know what the plan is that Taylor is recruiting help for. Did I miss that memo or is picking a plan somehow being subordinated to who we call and how they react (Presumably showing up or not showing up based on previous interactions?)
There are three general (very general) courses of action, but who you bring along, what they can do, and what information they have access to ahead of time will determine the specific details of whichever course you choose. That particular decision will be made next time.
Edit: Erm... can anyone point me at an explanation of where the term 'S-Class' comes from? I assume it stands for something like 'Special Case' but I've seen it in a lot of stories and things and I have no idea where it originated.
Now this? I have no idea.
 
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