Question: what kind of magic do you put into a cider? More importantly, what kind of veteran guca would spend magic on a friggin drink? And why are we so "awfully suspicious" of it?
The usual joke has been that she's drinking "spirits", but it seems to me that no-one in their right mind would infuse a drink with magic unless it produced some form of useful effect, and moreover that they would just cast that effect with their damn magic unless, for some reason, they were using the drink as a "storage" of sorts to take the effect to other places without needing to use their magic for it... which makes a lot of sense if Rionna spends less magic at home than away.
Bennouna mentions her drinking pretty constantly, or at least gave that impression, I think. What effect do you keep up semi-permanently as a veteran guca?
The obvious answer, I think, is a mental one. The quest also tracks along the posts that Rionna is drinking, is drinking... is eventually out of cider.
...
Oh, dear.
That is a very nasty hypothetical, which fits with "keep being nice" quite perfectly, while preserving all the horrifying stuff Rionna has done, accounting for "I'm a veteran meguca constantly drinking a magical substance," explaining why Rionna is unwilling to accept help, keeping her redeemable, and playing exactly the line Firn wrote:
So, newest theory from the catgirl engine: Rionna is mindwhammying herself to one degree or another on a consistent basis with the cider. She's already laid out that she's more/less terrified of becoming a witch, and we think she's trying to accomplish unspecified something up in Edinburgh. The veterans here will understand the concept of a guca mindwhammying themselves to prevent grief accumulation; for everybody else, the general idea would be "If I don't do something to prevent myself from despairing over this shit, I'll witch and I won't be able to fix the problem(s). Time to start fucking with my own head." Hell, it might not even have been intentional: Rionna is the soulguca; this would be well within her purview to accomplish, but she could just as well have been looking for "slow my grief accumulation" and ended up with a mindwhammy. By now it could easily be self-perpetuating, what with the fucking atrocities we understand that she's committed.
If you need to be perpetually hopped up on some mind-whammying substance, you don't take any less than what you'll need for the entire trip when you go somewhere. I believe then, that the cider isn't something she needs in order to function, or on a normal basis.
I would like to suggest that the reason she drinks is because of talking with other magical girls. She was drinking it in Edinburgh when Nadia met her, and she's drinking it now. The common theme is that that there was a magical girl there that she might have to fight. Therefore, I think it's a buff. She didn't expect to need the buff for very long, just long enough to meet us, determine we're an evil fake, give us a massive beatdown, and take our soul. Perhaps a little extra time if we had a group.
It's likely that Riona's powers lend themselves to one hit kills, which means that the best buff for her would be something that increases her reaction time, and gives her increased sensory powers. Therefore, the drink probably gives a buff that increases those, to prevent ambushes and give her an edge when talks break down and she needs to kill a grief-bender.
This also partially explains her attitude. She may be impatient normally, but with her buffs going she's waaaaaaay more impatient, because everyone feels like they're talking so slowly, due to the enhanced reflexes.
Now, you're probably wondering why in the world she would offer something like that to someone she might have to fight. It's possible that the buff is so strong that anyone who isn't used to it feels overwhelmed, as if they were under the influence of drugs. This would be a pretty effective debuff, I think, making it even easier to take out anyone under its effects.
Now imagine that you're Riona. You've been drinking this stuff since you stepped off the plane, in preparation for fighting another evil grief bender. You meet the target, and then find out that she actually has true grief bending. Wut. She also seems to have an annoying concept of morals, so you tell her what you can do, since if you're going to fight her you need to provoke her into fighting you soon, before your buffs run out. But she doesn't attack.
Things are getting pretty tense, and you aren't exactly the best at social even in the best of times. So you keep drinking, since it's become sort of a nervous habit around potentially hostile megucas. The fact that you are stuck inside this 'privacy sphere' thing, unable to call upon your wraiths, isn't helping matters. You're in close quarters with a potentially hostile meguca, half your power is sealed away, and you don't actually know whether you can exit this thing without her consent. Also, you maaaaaaaybe just antagonized her a bit. Oops?
So you keep sipping at your drink, drawing courage from the fact that at least you can probably soul-yank her before she can finish attacking if things go south. Wait, where's the liquid? You hold your flask upside down, and confirm that you just ran out. Weeeeeell crap. You now have maybe a few minutes before your buffs run out, and with them even more of your advantage in a fight against her.
You start glancing around, looking for a way out. Okay, blondy's over in that direction, right? So you want to find a way to escape that puts you on the other side as her, then summon your main combat wraiths before things can finish going pear-shaped. Now, how to get out?????
More talking occurs. Slow, slow talking. And your buffs are nearly out. You need to escape. You tell the grief bender a little about your motivations to catch her off guard, and immediately follow up with using your magic for a compulsion.
"
Let me go."
And... nothing happens. Great.
