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Puella Magi Imperatrix Mundi, or: Wherein Half Of Japan Tries To Kill You

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Ch. 3: Light the Path Whenever It's Dark (47)
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    • Evening - Tuesday, January 18th, 2011​

    You force yourself to take a calming breath. You are not afraid. This is not your fear. Another breath.

    The living doll flinches sharply, then looks at you with wide eyes. "Why d-do you...? Ah, no!" she reaches out and grabs the monster, apparently stopping it from attacking the man it came from as he walks away, seemingly oblivious to the situation.

    You take another breath. The fear doesn't really recede, as such, but you're at least able to think a bit more clearly. You... you need to get out of here for now. Maiko was right. You need to grab her and leave. And Kyubey, too? You may not trust the thing, but you don't want to just leave it. Where did it go, anyway?

    You reach out to at least grab Maiko, but your quick, jerky movement seems to startle the doll and she ducks behind the monster, peering at you from behind its chain arms.

    You tug Maiko along with you as you back away slowly, still looking around for Kyubey. The doll girl hesitates for a moment, watching you with a hurt expression, before giving a watery smile and then bowing deeply. "I am s-sorry you met s-someone as unlikable as me," she says, then turns and flees, the monster loping after her on its stilts.

    The fear fades rapidly as she leaves, and--

    Yui! Minami shouts. Yui, listen to me!

    I... what? I am? you reply, feeling yourself beginning to shake as the adrenaline wears off.

    You weren't! she says. You and Maiko just... froze up and wouldn't respond.

    Oh. I... sorry, it's just... you take a calming breath. Beside you, Maiko has her eyes closed and is taking slow, careful breaths, so you leave her be for now. Did you see what I ran into?

    You mean the short girl in the oversized hoodie?

    That wasn't a girl. Well no, maybe, I mean... not a human girl, at any rate. Some kind of living doll made of magic, you say. I don't know where she came from, but just being near her was like... having sheer terror pumped into my brain. You wrap your arms around yourself. Even when I realized it was artificial, I've still never been so frightened in my life. Maiko froze up, and even Kyubey freaked out.

    Are you okay? Minami asks. Your Soul Gem looks fine, at least?

    Yeah, I'm... okay, I guess, you say. It faded quickly once she left. She--

    Maiko suddenly shudders. "What," she breathes, "the fuck. Was that."

    "Um. Scary?"

    Maiko gives you a look of sheer disbelief. You respond by pulling her into the brainmail conversation.

    Okay, so! What did we learn? you say. First of all, that monster she pulled out of the guy? Other than not hiding in a secret crazyland dimension, it seemed basically just like a familiar. Maiko, where exactly do familiars normally come from?

    They're... fragments. Shards of a Witch's soul. Usually representing some particular aspect of her barrier's internal logic.

    And these un-familiars are basically shards of a regular person's soul, right? So it's kinda the same thing?

    It... yes, in a sense. I'm not sure, Maiko says. There should be more to it, but perhaps that's the doll creature's doing. She pauses, then looks around. The victim. I should speak with him. Minami, did you...

    To your left, one block and then around the corner. A different direction than the doll thing went, fortunately.

    Thank you, Maiko says, then strides off quickly.

    You blink a couple times as she leaves, then shrug. By the way, Minami, did you see where Kyubey got to? I was gonna bail the fuzzball out too since I dragged it along and once the fear aura got really bad Kyubey looked... not good.

    Um, Minami says, hesitantly. Under the bush behind you. Sort of. It, uh...

    You peer underneath and find... a smear of rubbery red mush with bits of white fur scattered everywhere, and immediately recoil in surprise. Wh-what?!

    Um, you know there's more than one Kyubey, right? Minami says. I guess this one, uh... really, really couldn't handle being afraid.

    You're... not sure how to feel about that.

    Right. Okay, then. You take a deep breath again. You were so very not ready for any of this, ugh. Can you track the doll girl now that you've seen her?

    I... yes, she says, reluctantly.

    Don't worry! I'm not going after her, you say. Not now, at least. Maiko probably has some way to make us immune, or can invent one if she has to. Then we can try again.

    That makes sense, Minami says.

    He doesn't remember anything, Maiko cuts in. He saw us there, and the doll girl, but his memories of the incident seem fuzzy beyond that. He also seems completely unable to recall the existence of the monster--

    Unfamiliar, you interject.

    Maiko sighs. Unfamiliar, right, she continues. Furthermore and unfortunately, my suspicions were correct and he seems unable to comprehend fear, panic, or other related emotional states. I'd imagine he can no longer experience them, either, though for obvious reasons I elected not to test that point empirically.

    Right. Do you think you can find either the unfamiliar or the doll girl in your spookybook?

    Gotta go, Minami cuts in. One of our targets started moving and Yumi and I will catch up to her in a moment. You feel her presence vanish from the mental connection, and then let it drop entirely.

    "Not easily, at least at the moment," Maiko admits. "Did you learn anything useful about the doll creature?"

    You tap your chin. "She's made of magic, like a familiar, but more... sophisticated? Complex? Dunno how to phrase it. It feels like she used to have a really strong connection to something, but was torn away roughly enough that loose scraps of the connection still exist. No direct connection to the unfamiliars, though. Also, she had a lot of magic? Like, as much as some of the wimpier Witches we've seen, or some of the Itabashi Ward girls."

    Maiko nods thoughtfully, then suddenly frowns. "Could you see anything about how she created the unfamiliar?"

    You shrug. "I was too freaked out to pay close attention, but her magic was definitely, uh, doing lots of magical things."

    "And she didn't seem particularly quick about her work. So," Maiko says with a sigh, "what can we conclude from the fact that there were two near-simultaneous incidents yesterday?"

    "...there's two of her," you say. "Or another something like her, at least. She feels... unique? Individual? Something like that. Distinct in a way that magical girls and Witches are, but regular familiars and the unfamiliars aren't."

    "Two or more," Maiko says, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "There's also... hm." She pulls out her grimoire and begins flipping through it rapidly. A moment later the book snaps open and Maiko's eyes flick rapidly over the page.

    She groans. "Kyoufu," she reads. "The Forsaken Terror. Her duty is to bring comfort to the blameless fears that wicked humans bury within their hearts. Those she touches are foolish and unworthy, for she knows in her own heart the truth that one who has hidden away their fears will never know love."

    You turn that over in your head. "Isn't that the kinda stuff your book says about Witches?"

    "Her name is not that of a Witch," Maiko says. "Among other details. I can't say much more, because her page is also fragmented, even worse than the two victims I've spoken with."

    "Everything about her seems to focus on fear in some fashion," you say. "If there's another out there like her, I'm... guessing it focuses on anger?"

    "Most likely, yes," Maiko says. "There may also be others. I'm beginning to suspect that the sample obtained from mundane sources is heavily skewed. Kyoufu prevented the unfamiliar from attacking its source. If that's instinctive, I'm guessing the 'anger' counterpart is a lot more... willingly confrontational.

    "This is... weird. And kinda horrifying," you say. "Also, I have some official orders from your tiny and adorable leader: Find some way to block the emotion thingie. Please."

    Maiko nods. "I've encountered emotional projection magic before," she says. "I could temporarily protect myself right now, but I'll need a few hours tonight to prepare something that will work well for others."

    You nod vigorously. "Good. Let's stay away from those things until you do that, then."

    Maiko frowns. "I'm fairly certain the unfamiliars don't possess the emotional projection, or any of Kyoufu's other unusual traits," she says. "But I don't think there's anything we could do with those other than destroy them, which might provoke their creators."


    [] Head back to where the three unfamiliars were
    - [] Just to scout, see if there's anything distinctive about them
    - [] Destroy them, then run for it if your magic sense spots Kyoufu or anything like her approaching.
    - [] (write-in?)
    [] Investigate more
    - [] Have Maiko interview some more victims and see if she finds anything interesting about them
    - [] Use your magic sense to try and spot more unfamiliars
    - [] Use your magic sense to spot anything else like Kyoufu--don't approach, just see if you can verify they exist
    - [] (write-in?)
    [] Split up for now
    - [] Have Maiko...
    -- [] Go talk to more victims
    -- [] Go home and start working on an anti-emotion-magic-stuff-thingie
    -- [] Have her expand her search for potential victims, look for reports of people behaving strangely
    -- [] (write-in?)
    - [] Have Yui...
    -- [] Go meet up with Minami and Yumi. You can't do much else on this issue for tonight, might as well go meet the new kids
    -- [] Go back to Momoko's house and see what Asami is even doing there anyway. Rearranging furniture?
    -- [] (write-in?)
    [] Do something else entirely
    - [] Hunt Witches
    - [] Do some very visible scouting to the south, try to draw out any invaders that may already be showing up.
    - [] (write-in?)


    The incubator unit had unfortunately become defective, and as such self-terminated.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Ooooh. I'm leaning toward the living doll being a magical girl power. Kyubey self-destructing is...hilarious, honestly. And interesting—losing a body like that is a waste of resources, especially since the fear effect isn't permanent, so it seems that the self-destruct was intentional. But if it was intentional, then I'm thinking that either the Incubator body has enough personality to choose death rather than feeling that intense emotion, or that feeling an emotion like that affects the Incubator/Incubator collective negatively in a potentially permanent fashion.

    For our course of action, I'm thinking that we go meet the new girls since Minami can keep her eye on this area far better than us, and have Maiko go home and immediately begin working on this issue. We don't want to let this thing grow in our absence, I think.

    Man, I hope we can befriend the living doll or something. It doesn't seem innately hostile, at least, and if Maiko can talk with Witches then even if this doll is unable to comprehend our perspective due to its nature or something hopefully Maiko can work something out with it.
     
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    Well then. That's informative.

    So something part of a whole, that was broken off quickly, and possibly violently. It...really sounds like something made from either a wish or wish magic whose girl, source or creator, was either killed or witched out. I feel like I'm really close but I'm missing something.
     
    [x] Head back to where the three unfamiliars were
    - [x] Destroy them, then run for it if your magic sense spots Kyoufu or anything like her approaching.

    We'll regret leaving a threat on the streets if we could have taken care of it.
     
    Ambrosine said:
    Kyubey self-destructing is...hilarious, honestly. And interesting—losing a body like that is a waste of resources, especially since the fear effect isn't permanent, so it seems that the self-destruct was intentional. But if it was intentional, then I'm thinking that either the Incubator body has enough personality to choose death rather than feeling that intense emotion, or that feeling an emotion like that affects the Incubator/Incubator collective negatively in a potentially permanent fashion.
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    The effect was temporary, but the memories are forever. And the bunnycats have very, very good memories.

    It'll never be relevant to the story, so: Basically, that Incubator considered itself "compromised" and while the collective is capable of isolating any influence from such units and does have methods for applying anti-emotional mental conditioning, the resources involved are significantly higher than the cost of a single bunnycat. So, self-termination.

    I mean, yeah, while the Incubators may be an instance of "simplistic utilitarianism naively overapplied leading to questionable moral choices," at least they're even-handed in applying that principle, right?

    Ambrosine said:
    Man, I hope we can befriend the living doll or something. It doesn't seem innately hostile, at least, and if Maiko can talk with Witches then even if this doll is unable to comprehend our perspective due to its nature or something hopefully Maiko can work something out with it.
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    Witches are normally unable to communicate only because human language use is one of the portions of their mind that doesn't really make the transition. Instead, they can only communicate via some sort of "True Language of Reality" which is tied directly into magic and generally can't be interpreted by humans without an absurd amount of effort. (This is represented, for the audience's benefit, as the witch runes from the anime. In-character, what Yui sees is emphatically not "German, but with a funny alphabet".) Maiko's grimoire is written in this language, and her ability to speak it is part of her wish magic.

    Obviously, Kyoufu speaks fluent Japanese. She does show some signs of Witch-like psychology, but she can communicate just fine.
     
    Ambrosine said:
    For our course of action, I'm thinking that we go meet the new girls since Minami can keep her eye on this area far better than us, and have Maiko go home and immediately begin working on this issue. We don't want to let this thing grow in our absence, I think.
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    Solid reasoning, I think, though it's late so maybe I'm missing something. I'll probably revisit this in the morning, but until then...

    [X] Split up for now
    - [X] Have Maiko...
    -- [X] Go home and start working on an anti-emotion-magic-stuff-thingie
    - [X] Have Yui...
    -- [X] Go meet up with Minami and Yumi. You can't do much else on this issue for tonight, might as well go meet the new kids
     
    I feel a little bad that we didn't say something to the Clara doll since it seemed hurt by us just leaving, but speaking to it would probably have meant an even harder roll or check to get away. We'll just be more polite the next time it comes around. It might give answers willing if we're just nice about it all.
     
    Echo said:
    It's been a while since I watched Rebellion, but if memory serves me they mostly just kind of run around being weird in the background and then join the fight against the meguca once Homulilly starts her funeral procession. I also recall them being disguised as being more human-like before Homulilly appears, so I think that video is them revealing themselves as familiars and then joining the fight?
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    They've actually been running around in the background, if better disguised, throughout the movie.
    They're also the ones luring in people Homura knows and I think playing the role of the 'NPCs' in the movie, the faceless dummies for people not actually in there.
    Echo said:
    Alexandria, the Witch of Conquest.

    Recall how I've mentioned that in central Tokyo, powerful Witches have displaced meguca from the magic "ecosystem" and hunt weaker Witches instead of mundane humans? Yui's Witch would be a... quasi-benevolent version of that. Specifically, she'd hunt down and subsume the barriers of other Witches using an amped-up version of her existing wish magic, then mindfuck the actual Witch into something sorta-kinda vaguely resembling a human mindset if you squint a bit, before cramming the Witch's soul into a flesh puppet vaguely resembling the Witch's original body and setting the resulting witch girl loose inside the barrier, which would grow and expand with each Witch she subjugated. The end result, assuming she survived for a decade or two, would be a veritable city of half-lucid humanoid quasi-Witches inside a multi-hundred-square-mile barrier, drifting around Japan slurping up Witches as it passes and only fighting meguca in self-defense.
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    Mass Produced Kazumis?!

    Echo said:
    Bunnycat would actually be thrilled. Witching out is the big payoff, so the quasi-Witches are a minor loss at most while taking Witches out of circulation means more meguca witching out in the surrounding area.
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    Kyubey would rather like it I think, he doesn't even need to try to keep magical girls capable of hunting down Witches anymore in her area, and can just trust the Witch to hoover them up without impacting the human population. It'd increase local yields maybe twenty times over. Just contract anyone at an emotionally vulnerable juncture(so pretty much young crushes)

    Meanwhile WitchYui(being Yui with her sense of shame killed off) has an ever-growing harem
    Win-win until a regional coalition of magical girls try to hunt her down because her Barrier is a HUGE trove of Grief Seeds and there is literally nothing else to hunt.
    Echo said:
    Meanwhile Homura's Witch has a bunch of familiars that hang around mocking her while she marches off to be executed. And then revives and does it again, because apparently dying just once isn't punishment enough.
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    It has a bit to do with Homura's own wish-influenced mentality after all. She does it over and over again and it doesn't even matter whether she succeeds or fails, because its futile now that Madoka has ascended. Only suffering. That said I recall Homura has THREE Witch forms, theres one design for pre-madoascension, one for Rebellion and one for Homucifer.

    As for interrupting Madokami ascension, I'm not sure we WANT to. Yui would actually like the after-verse,
    Echo said:
    Basically, she'd still have the monomaniacal focus, static mindset, and tendency toward unfiltered associative thinking common to all Witches, but she'd at least be capable of rational thought within the scope of her monomania. Anything irrelevant to the context of her fixation she'd either ignore or have trouble comprehending. Basically, witching out from rapid magic exhaustion produces a Witch fixated on a particular action or goal rather than a Witch mired in an emotional extreme. In Yui's case, by far the most likely scenario is her overdoing it in combat, which means she'd likely be fixated on protecting her friends and allies, which results in her drive to "fix" Witches and attain peace through subjugation.

    The less focused on a specific task the girl is when she exhausts her magic, the more mentally flexible the resulting Witch is. The gimmick Witch I mentioned above is actually one of the most dramatic cases of such, in that she barely even noticed when she witched out and other than being unable to communicate with or understand the perspective of magical girls in her barrier, her mental abilities remain mostly unchanged from before.
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    Hmm, so same as Kriemhild Gretchen? She was thinking of saving everyone when she made her wish and then the resulting surge of corruption witched her out to become the Witch of Salvation.
    Ambrosine said:
    And interesting—losing a body like that is a waste of resources, especially since the fear effect isn't permanent, so it seems that the self-destruct was intentional. But if it was intentional, then I'm thinking that either the Incubator body has enough personality to choose death rather than feeling that intense emotion, or that feeling an emotion like that affects the Incubator/Incubator collective negatively in a potentially permanent fashion.
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    Remember they can recycle the materials. A Kyubey probably ate it shortly after
    Echo said:
    It'll never be relevant to the story, so: Basically, that Incubator considered itself "compromised" and while the collective is capable of isolating any influence from such units and does have methods for applying anti-emotional mental conditioning, the resources involved are significantly higher than the cost of a single bunnycat. So, self-termination.

    I mean, yeah, while the Incubators may be an instance of "simplistic utilitarianism naively overapplied leading to questionable moral choices," at least they're even-handed in applying that principle, right?
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    Its like how your body deals with cancerous or virus infected cells anyway. Terminate the defective unit before it propagates.
     
    HymnOfRagnarok said:
    I feel a little bad that we didn't say something to the Clara doll since it seemed hurt by us just leaving, but speaking to it would probably have meant an even harder roll or check to get away. We'll just be more polite the next time it comes around. It might give answers willing if we're just nice about it all.
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    Yeah, you weren't really in any condition to speak at that point. Next time around you'll probably have a chance at talking to Kyoufu and/or one of the presumed others.

    veekie said:
    Mass Produced Kazumis?!
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    Kazumi wasn't actually Michiru though, was she? Just a cloned body that's otherwise her own person? But otherwise yeah, kinda.

    veekie said:
    Kyubey would rather like it I think, he doesn't even need to try to keep magical girls capable of hunting down Witches anymore in her area, and can just trust the Witch to hoover them up without impacting the human population. It'd increase local yields maybe twenty times over. Just contract anyone at an emotionally vulnerable juncture(so pretty much young crushes)
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    Yep, and as the size of the barrier expands with each new "recruit", the area she can cover when absorbing new Witches increases...

    veekie said:
    Hmm, so same as Kriemhild Gretchen? She was thinking of saving everyone when she made her wish and then the resulting surge of corruption witched her out to become the Witch of Salvation.
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    Protagonists gonna protag, what can ya do? I think it's all the pink, that's what causes it.

    veekie said:
    Its like how your body deals with cancerous or virus infected cells anyway. Terminate the defective unit before it propagates.
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    Of course, as far as I know human body cells aren't individually sapient, but otherwise it's totally the same thing!
     
    [x] Head back to where the three unfamiliars were
    - [x] Destroy them, then run for it if your magic sense spots Kyoufu or anything like her approaching.

    The more we leave them around, the more problems they'll cause, especially if they're just spawning these things from people at random. If their creator is making them without fully knowing what they do then this should be able to draw said creator out to talk and come to a resolution. If their creator is insane or doing this deliberately, then we need to draw them out so we can take them down.
     
    Echo said:
    Kazumi wasn't actually Michiru though, was she? Just a cloned body that's otherwise her own person? But otherwise yeah, kinda.
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    Neither would the mashed into human-like simulacra of Witches be the original person.
    Kazumi(or at least the proto-Kazumis) were made from Michiru's witch.

    Echo said:
    Of course, as far as I know human body cells aren't individually sapient, but otherwise it's totally the same thing!
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    For a hivemind its academic really.
     
    veekie said:
    Neither would the mashed into human-like simulacra of Witches be the original person.
    Kazumi(or at least the proto-Kazumis) were made from Michiru's witch.
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    Yeah, but in Yui's case it'd be the same soul in a roughly similar imitation body, rather than a presumably different soul in an identical, cloned body. Or was Michiru's Grief Seed implanted into the clones somehow? I haven't actually read more than the first couple chapters of Kazumi Magica.

    In any case, it'd probably be most accurate to call Yui's familiars imperfect reincarnations of the original meguca, with fragmented memories of their past life and roughly the same personality skewed slightly by the Witch form's tendencies.
     
    [X] Talk to Maiko about whether she thinks killing the unfamiliar will return the man to how he used to be.
    -[X] Talk to Maiko about the ethics of killing an aware thinking being, such as Kyoufu, and the ethics of returning the man to how he used to be.
    [X] Talk to other victims of Kyoufu or her sister(s ?) Some of them had their quality of life improved, you want to make sure that you're doing what they'd want if you put them back how they were.

    I'm quite interested in Maiko's perspective on this one. I want to talk to Shinobu about it too. It'd be a chance for her to talk about what she did to her parents, and if we found that victims were sometimes happier, we could point that out

    I can't imagine Yui being happy with dropping someone back into a constant state of terror. I'd like to know what the effects are, what they'd actually wanted.
     
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    Olivebirdy said:
    -[X] Talk to Maiko about the ethics of killing an aware thinking being, such as Kyofumi, and the ethics of returning the man to how he used to be.
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    Yui already has plenty of reason to believe that Witches are aware, thinking beings; on the other hand, knowing that Grief Seeds can "rehatch," she also has enough information to conclude that defeating a Witch doesn't actually kill it.
     
    Echo said:
    Yui already has plenty of reason to believe that Witches are aware, thinking beings; on the other hand, knowing that Grief Seeds can "rehatch," she also has enough information to conclude that defeating a Witch doesn't actually kill it.
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    But everything here seemed to be a familiar of some sort, those might not respawn like a witch does.
     
    Olivebirdy said:
    But everything here seemed to be a familiar of some sort, those might not respawn like a witch does.
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    Well, she's destroyed plenty of familiars, too? Just saying, while Kyoufu feels a lot more like a person than other stuff Yui's fought, bringing up the topic is gonna make Yui stop and consider again just what kind of things it is she fights.
     
    Interesting, I prefer Yui go after her by herself, I know, I know its reckless but I feel its in her character to stop and help and for her character development as she try to understand the Kyofumi and limit its effect and gain info about the others fast as they can.
    I prefer she does it without Maiko helping her all the time, an sense of danger and success on her own effort.
     
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    [X] Split up for now
    - [X] Have Maiko...
    -- [X] Go home and start working on an anti-emotion-magic-stuff-thingie
    - [X] Have Yui...
    -- [X] Go meet up with Minami and Yumi. You can't do much else on this issue for tonight, might as well go meet the new kids

    The situation can't be reliably continued until we both know more about what we're up against and have some kind of anti-mind control capability. Thus, giving Maiko time to accomplish the latter and possibly the former makes perfect sense, in the meantime Yui can personally handle diplomancing more recruits.
     
    Jrin said:
    Interesting, I prefer Yui go after her by herself, I know, I know its reckless but I feel its in her character to stop and help and for her character development as she try to understand the Kyofumi and limit its effect and gain info about the others fast as they can.
    I prefer she does it without Maiko helping her all the time, an sense of danger and success on her own effort.
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    Well. She wished for the power to be the hero who never has to compromise her ideals. Doesn't get much more heroic than going after a person who's clearly distraught in order to talk to them and stop them from doing something ill-advised despite having to expose yourself to an aura of mindless terror to do so, so odds are good we can on-the-spot learn some magic to give us 'power over our own mind' and let us 'power through the fear'. So it might actually not be quite as reckless as it seems at first.

    @Echo, do we have any kind of instinctual knowledge on if we can do the above?
     
    Oh, by the way--in case it isn't obvious, assume that whatever you vote to do at this point will probably be the last major activity for the day before you need to head home. There may be another break for a vote depending on what you decide to do, but if there's anything you absolutely want to get done today, you should probably do it now.

    Gnarker said:
    @Echo, do we have any kind of instinctual knowledge on if we can do the above?
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    Yui doesn't currently have reason to believe she can do anything like that preemptively. It may or may not be possible, she's not sure. Once the effect is active her previously established ability to hijack or disrupt certain kinds of magic use would suffice, but she may not have enough ability to focus at that point. She's reasonably confident that if she hung back a ways she could shield someone else, though possibly at an annoyingly high corruption cost.
     
    [x] Head back to where the three unfamiliars were
    - [x] Destroy them, then run for it if your magic sense spots Kyoufu or anything like her approaching.
     
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