Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]
- Thread starter Baughn
- Start date
- Crossover
Nero200
High Priest of Eito, Part Time Nyar.
Miki herself doesn't know if she can go back to Chara form.
No? The idea is to check the house for the Scavengers or hostiles. The range part of the plan is just to be as far as possible from the house when doing so, not to invade every mind in range. Passive empathy if it ping, sure, but not actively invading anyone not on the property / suspicious vans parked outside. That is why I want Amu to ask Midori permission to read her, so she can have that empathic sense online as an adhoc danger sense.
I'm fine with this plan as well, for the record. To be honest, I was leaving transport and where exactly they check from up to Amu/Utau/Midori rather than specifying, so my plan already has the potential to basically be this if they can do the scan from range in a car.
This part of why so much of my vote is "Characters will know their limits and abilities", I don't want to be micromanaging position and transport, they are smart characters. Mine just has a lot of my reasoning behind certain picks in it because it was easier to write that way than explain it all at the bottom.
Can we add disguises for Utau and Midori to this though? Or illusions to do the same.
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- Location
- Laniakea
I'll edit mine, but everybody else would have to do it independently on their end. Since that wasn't actually a "voteplan" vote, just 3 independent votes.
I always got the impression we wanted to know if Manticore were there and how many.
In practice, the specifics can (and will under this cut-down approach) be left up to Amu and Utau - but I suspect Amu would zero-in on the house first and if it she finds it empty (or finds Scavengers begging to be saved) immediately start trying to radar all the hostiles in the area too. Or it might be left to an interrupt to vote on doing so, but I'd expect that's the logical next step to take anyway.
- Pronouns
- He
[X][Party] Amu, Midori, Utau
-[X] Suggest that Midori and Utau don disguises, or at least permit an Illusion to disguise their faces when going out.
[X][Approach] Psychic Wardriving: Pile into the family car. Use psionic abilities to check the house and surroundings while driving past. Tell Utau to try and put up Illusions to change the numberplate and color of the car.
[X] Bring Hikaru's ward stone.
-[X] Suggest that Midori and Utau don disguises, or at least permit an Illusion to disguise their faces when going out.
[X][Approach] Psychic Wardriving: Pile into the family car. Use psionic abilities to check the house and surroundings while driving past. Tell Utau to try and put up Illusions to change the numberplate and color of the car.
[X] Bring Hikaru's ward stone.
That may not necessarily require a wide-area scan. For example, if the initial probe reveals that the Scavengers are in the house and they don't think Manticore is around, I think Nero would probably vote to take their word for it instead of performing a wide-area privacy-invading mental scan.
Midori has repeatedly emphasized the importance of giving people their privacy in recent updates, and Amu herself has expressed concerns with mind reading. Amu thinking about the ethics of a wide-area scan isn't that unlikely.
[X][Party] Amu, Midori, Utau
-[X] Suggest that Midori and Utau don disguises, or at least permit an Illusion to disguise their faces when going out.
[X][Approach] Psychic Wardriving: Pile into the family car. Use psionic abilities to check the house and surroundings while driving past. Tell Utau to try and put up Illusions to change the numberplate and color of the car.
[X] Bring Hikaru's ward stone.
-[X] Suggest that Midori and Utau don disguises, or at least permit an Illusion to disguise their faces when going out.
[X][Approach] Psychic Wardriving: Pile into the family car. Use psionic abilities to check the house and surroundings while driving past. Tell Utau to try and put up Illusions to change the numberplate and color of the car.
[X] Bring Hikaru's ward stone.
- Location
- Laniakea
Yeah, that's why I said "if" the house were empty or the Scavengers were begging for help (i.e. because they're being besieged by Manticore). If she found them there safe, I agree Amu probably wouldn't give it too much thought to scan further.
Even though she really should, given that Manticore might already know where they live and be watching the house (i.e. her gut feeling was really a countdown to them storming the property in a sudden ambush).
If the Scavengers were in trouble or not there, Amu would panic. I don't see it likely that she'd give much thought to the ethics of mind reading people if she were panicking. She might, were she in a scenario where she was calm and zen enough to remember what her mother has said all of once to her so far.
Or if we voted for her to remember what her mother said and restrain herself.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
No, she just isn't disguised right now. Though I see how it could be read that way.
- Location
- Laniakea
If this is the case (that Midori would try and disguise herself when coming along anyway), there's really only one way to interpret what you said - that it's being in disguise which is going to cause problems.
From this, I infer that we are not going to find either Kana or Aoi at the house since they would be able to sense Amu through the disguise.
It's either going to be Naomi, Yui or Mimi. Most likely not Naomi, she's met Amu in person and would still be able to recognize her voice. Yui, too, would likely recognize her by voice.
I predict we're either going to find Mimi holed up alone in the house, the lone survivor of a mission gone wrong, with Manticore agents closing in. Or else no Manticore, but Mimi is going to sense Amu's approach and not know she's friendly and either attack or flee or both.
......Well, unless Amu's house is being watched so heavily at present that even being in disguise won't stop reporters from realizing it's them when they try and drive away. And then start asking questions about why Amu was in disguise.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Sometimes I just mention things because I happen to think of them. Sometimes I fail to consider the likely reading because I'm typing it out while neck deep in a server I need to fix… It isn't necessarily part of some detective-story type puzzle.
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- Location
- Laniakea
I know, I just like playing detective.
There are definitely assumptions there, yeah. Really they're in all the debates going on here.
Truthfully there are even entire scenario types not considered even in any shape or form. For instance no one has considered that are reality fracture bane could impact the scavengers as well, or perhaps that the dreamwalker could have gone to out of control and dragged everyone in to the dream world or some other problematic option. And there are some more completely different options out there.
Another thing to note for one of the plans is, Japan has a lot of very narrow streets, as in so narrow it's better to walk then drive down them. I don't know if the scavengers house is on one of them, but if it is then wardriving would be literally worse then walking past the house. You'd stand out more, you'd actually have less evasive ability and be more easily entrapped. So I don't think one should be to fixed on a particular transport mode here.
Yet another matter that is completely overlooked is that JP is a government branch, a government branch that has 'psychics' working for it. That means any other government branch has to be at least a little wary to not stomp on government sanctioned psychics. In Amu's case she is for one now famous and also got taken in by JP for treatment, which arguably places her in the sanctioned list already. But worse beyond that is that if they tried to entrap her she can truthfully say she is JP aligned and demand to know why they are blocking her way. (And she kind of is, she's friends with Lulu after all, and indirectly has clout to make JP to move at times as such)
If Manticore is a government org it really shouldn't want to step on that tail, especially if you just outright state it. Getting in to a fight with a highly powerful sanctioned government org is a good way to get destroyed after all. As such, the danger to Amu is probably being highly over rated. This can also be confirmed already in that Manticore obviously isn't chasing down every publicly known psychic, else Amu's friends would be in a lot of trouble already. Clearly they do not want to step on this particular tail.
In the end truthfully I kind of liked the idea her dad brought up the most for the matter, for them to just have a walk by the area. Just a normal walk as a parent and child might have. It's all one really needed, and would minimize how many people to hide from overly nosy journalists. Though even here you can flip the thinking, why hide at all? If the journalists are following you to that place, then who can do anything to you at all? Who would interrupt some one visiting a friends house?
[] Visit the house with Tsugumi and Amu.
Is anything else really needed?
- Location
- Laniakea
If it's better to run than drive, we can just abandon our vehicle.
On the other hand, we can't just "suddenly find a vehicle" on quick notice if it turns out driving is better, especially if we have extra bodies like injured Scavengers, etc. to lug around.
Especially if Manticore is there and we could capture one alive - we are not going to be able to lug him away on foot. We ideally want a vehicle with a closed boot nobody can peek into for that.
Not psychics of the Chara-using type. Demon summoners and sorcerers, maybe Persona-users.
Hotsuin made it clear he didn't know what a Chara was.
EDIT: My current suspicion is that Manticore isn't kidnapping psychics. They are engineering them, using drugs, surgery and conditioning. Taking non-psychic orphans or human trafficking victims and then subjecting them to experimental procedures that turn them into psychics (like Strega from P3). Leaving them reliant on the drugs and devoid of memories prior to the procedures. This would also explain why Kana assumed Amu was on the run from Manticore.
She thought ALL psychics in existence were engineered by them.
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[X][Party] Amu, Midori, Utau
[X][Approach] Psychic Wardriving: Pile into the family car. Use psionic abilities to check the house and surroundings while driving past. Tell Utau to try and put up Illusions to change the numberplate and color of the car.
[X] Bring Hikaru's ward stone.
[X][Approach] Psychic Wardriving: Pile into the family car. Use psionic abilities to check the house and surroundings while driving past. Tell Utau to try and put up Illusions to change the numberplate and color of the car.
[X] Bring Hikaru's ward stone.
Bringing attention to Manticore would be great. Bringing attention to our friends' house... not so much, at least for now. They don't want that kind of attention.
It depends on the particular Japanese street, in some of them a car could be a literal liability, including trying to get out quickly. Obviously Amu would know if that's the case or not, but thus presumably she'd have the best knowledge on how to go about it. Though I will note if she only had one person along she could just take that person in her arms and hop over the walls and houses and get away rather easily, something that isn't possible as you add more people. Well I suppose Utau could do the same as well probably...? Not sure how she does in the strength and telekinetic area.
Also as I already noted, I don't think Manticore would do as you suggest with Amu around, especially if she dragged various journalists along as well. It's just a pretty poor idea and does not match how they seem to operate in actual reality. They seem to target the defenseless, not the protected and strong.
I do understand you're very concerned about this particular Manticore scenario though. And yes if it all line up exactly as you imagined and they had no care for secrecy or stepping on JP toes, etc etc, that could happen. But in practise it is just one of many possible scenarios and personally I don't think it's an all that likely one as such, as you really do need to assume a series of extra things for it. And as I demonstrated there are plenty of other scenario which it could be with equal if not better probabilities, and those I brought up would clearly have far more reason to be pretty time sensitive compared to the Manticore one.
In the end there has been a lot of effort going in to mitigating worry about this one particular scenario, and due to this all other scenarios have been left with out consideration or were not even thought of at all.
The only way that would happen is if they were in trouble and needed help right that second. Else it's possible to just walk by or double back in disguise a bit later.
- Location
- Laniakea
Dragging journalists to the Scavengers' house is a bad idea and the whole reason why we had Amu dress up in disguise. Pretty sure it was agreed the fewer people notice Amu visiting them, the better.
I focus on the "Manticore scenario", because it is the one where Amu's party gets exposed to the most risk. I mean, I say "Manticore", but as you pointed out, it might not be Manticore specifically, could be demons, demon-summoning mercenaries or some other organization than Manticore.
The point is the same, scenarios that involve fighting an open battle on the streets carry the most risk and biggest consequences. Plan for the worst, don't just hope for the best.
If a vehicle is a liability, it can be abandoned at any time (or even used as a disposable weapon by setting the fuel on fire). There's no drawback in bringing a vehicle. But if we need one and we didn't bring it, we won't be able to just suddenly get one since nobody in the party has any levels in Larceny or knows how to steal a car. No risk, all benefit.
When that idea was thought up of, it was when Amu was going on her own and wasn't planning to break her promise. None of the original reasons are in play anymore, so the original plan is now no longer based on anything but the inertia of it being the plan everyone had in mind at start. I'm not even convinced dragging in journalists is actually the worst idea for the scavengers, it might actually help them out in certain scenarios.
Also if one wanted the safest plan, then one should just have Amu and Utau go by themselves. That's way safer then dragging in non-psychics. Both of them are far more able to get away and far more able to take hits, it also eliminates the need to have to keep others safe, which is a substantial liability in all such scenarios.
Also you keep saying ditch the car, when I already noted some of the streets are so narrow that isn't so easy anymore. I don't know if that is the case for this street, but if it were, then you're stuck to only being able to exit the car more slowly.
But in the end I think the combat situations are greatly overestimated in danger levels and being over-optimized for. There are plenty of situations where walking and being able to char with people along the way or at destination could be far better.
- Location
- Laniakea
If I were trying to fully optimize for combat, I would be insisting on bringing weapons. Not just a boombox that could be improvised into a sound cannon, but actual knives or a packet of steel nails, which are likely to be Amu's best mundane weapons given her Thrown and Telekinesis specialties. Which I would have pushed for bringing, given the possibility of enemies with psychic defenses in the worst case.
Bringing a vehicle was not actually meant to be a combat optimization (and the likelihood that there would be physical difficulty in abandoning the vehicle when Amu can psionically smash the windows or even roof apart is, to put it mildly, slim), just a generally useful piece of equipment for a wide range of circumstances, both that directly involve fights and otherwise, like just carrying sick/injured passengers.
You're right in that dragging reporters there is not the worst idea - that would probably be some variant of calling mundane police to their house, in a flashy way to have them accompanied by reporters.
What exactly is it that you think dragging reporters there would achieve anyway, aside from pissing off any Scavengers who may still be there and getting in Amu's way when she tries to visit regardless of whether the house is occupied?
Bringing a vehicle was not actually meant to be a combat optimization (and the likelihood that there would be physical difficulty in abandoning the vehicle when Amu can psionically smash the windows or even roof apart is, to put it mildly, slim), just a generally useful piece of equipment for a wide range of circumstances, both that directly involve fights and otherwise, like just carrying sick/injured passengers.
You're right in that dragging reporters there is not the worst idea - that would probably be some variant of calling mundane police to their house, in a flashy way to have them accompanied by reporters.
What exactly is it that you think dragging reporters there would achieve anyway, aside from pissing off any Scavengers who may still be there and getting in Amu's way when she tries to visit regardless of whether the house is occupied?
As I answered before, if you're just walking past it doesn't matter at all because that house would not stand out any more then any other. It's only relevant if something actually happened. In which case publicity can have its uses at times. But otherwise one could double back a bit later on in disguise or so.
But it's not like I'm fixated on that particular idea, it's more a comment that one could go about it in a very different way as well. And one could optimize that one to work better for ones purposes if one wanted as well. Each of the methods have their pros and cons really.
For instance the car might be a drawback if its a narrow street, also it gives you little time, might stand out more and gives you far less chance to interact with the environment.
Walking obviously means you might be more limited in some ways to leave and potentially more vulnerable to a few situation, though you could leave in different directions then the road then, which might more then offset it.
Publicity means there are more people around, so if it were demons there might be more people that could be harmed, but you'd in part trade it off with larger and quicker responses to any problems that might happen.
In the end it's a good part also thus about what kind of Amu are we going for, what makes for an interesting story. So Amu going out with her dad who invited her to do so, rather then her mother certainly appeals to me to an extent. That's a good bonding moment and truthfully he should be pretty observant of some details and some what fit with his experience in photography. It's a sensible follow up from where we left off and seems to cut out many of the unnecessary risks. Kind of feel a bit sorry for Tsugumu suggestion just being pushed aside when he gave Amu an opportunity to walk by like that.
If we need knives, we should probably just pull them out of thin air. Kitchen knives are in-theme for Su.
- Location
- Laniakea
My paranoid self assumes that any anti-psychic defenses may include anti-Illusion defenses as well. Such that not only do mental effects not work, conjured items may also disappear when encountering their defensive techniques.
Like, not just mundane soldiers with mental barriers here, but psychic hitmen with specifically counter-psychic abilities.
That kind of opposition isn't something we try to fight. That's well past the "GTFO and call JP's" point. Either quietly, if they haven't detected us, or as noisily as possible, if they have. Having a real knife isn't going to help.
Immediately after Tsumugu made that suggestion, Midori counter-suggested that she should be the one to go, and gave Tsumugu a meaningful look:
They both want to go, and I think they both want to keep the other out of danger. The family outing suggestion seems to be a compromise.
- Location
- Laniakea
I dunno.
Suzushina Yuriko may not be a thing, but Imagine if it were a certain black-haired young man with a right arm able to Break any psychic effect or construct upon contact.
Would be rotten luck to run into, or so you'd think. Until you realize this guy is also hyper-specialized and doesn't do so well when actual weapons are involved. There are only 2 things he's really any good at - breaking psychic stuff and preaching. Incidentally, Micchan would also love him and have a huge crush him.
But I think we could take that guy.