Narrator-san, I'm going to steal your vote, nyu. Thank you!

I'm going to divvy this up into parts because really it's going to be a few distinct courses of action that I think will make some very different subsets of people feel different things. It's not really too different from Narrator's version, but there are a few important points.

[X] Lunch? Lunch.

(1): people are saying that we shouldn't wait for soulguca, that we should do something about Oriko now, that we need to do something about Oriko now. Personally, I view Oriko as an asset of such importance that losing her is intolerable. We have a sledgehammer to throw at her problem, let's do it.

[X] Lunch? Lunch.
[] Telepathy Oriko. Today was the day that she thought would be best for us to tell Sayaka about her. We know her condition is poor, but we think that this is actually going to be the optimal time.
-[X] Whatever the reply, before dropping the telepathy conversation, tell Oriko over telepathy that her condition is caused by a rejection of her wish. Whatever she believes about the fulfillment of her wish as-is, it's not right, and her magic is responding poorly to that.


(2): Let's focus on getting a lead on Kuroki. Frankly, at the moment, our problem is that we have no idea where she is. Let's sic whoever on that, and then depending on how strong what they find is we can either timestop over to a specific location or just let them keep digging.

[X] Talk to Mami. We had Kirika doing some research for us, and there's a magical girl named Kuroki who hasn't been seen the last few days. We don't have any good leads on her, and we're not in the greatest position to run off to do detective work, so we were thinking about hiring some of the magical girls we know from the surrounding areas to ask around and ideally to find her. Would Mami be okay with letting them pass through her territory to search?
-[X] If she's okay with that, telepathy Masami and Hiroko over in West Mitakihara. Knock first, metaphorically speaking -- they're a couple on the weekend, after all -- but then ask if they'd be willing to take on a bit of detective work in exchange for pay and a "refund" on any magic they spend on the issue.
-[X] If they're not interested, ask Kyouko.
--[X] You're offering ¥50,000 for a solid lead on her whereabouts, and another ¥75,000 on top of that if they can actually find her. You'll reimburse for time spent in any case -- ¥3,500 an hour a person.
--[X] Go higher if that seems like it's necessary.
---[X] This is time-sensitive, because she's already been missing. She might be high on grief and acting irrationally. If they find her you'd appreciate it if they'd telepathy you immediately and make sure that she uses a grief seed. Mami has okayed travel inside Mitakihara, so there's no worries on that end.
----[X] See if you can send a mental image of the info Kirika gave us over telepathy. Otherwise, if talking to Masami+Hiroko, send an image via your phone and the information via telepathy. If Kyouko, just give a description of Kuroki's appearance and the information via telepathy.

(3):

[X] Continue doing what you have been doing.
 
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Up till now, we have not discussed our plans for the Orikobomb outside of timestop or an interdiction field. This is intentional. If we discuss this over telepathy, there's a very real chance QB will pre-empt us on the reveal.

We should probably just not do that line then ig. Oriko doesn't really need the warning, I think -- this is Oriko, after all, even if she doesn't have access to her precog.
 
Up till now, we have not discussed our plans for the Orikobomb outside of timestop or an interdiction field. This is intentional. If we discuss this over telepathy, there's a very real chance QB will pre-empt us on the reveal.
We could just ask if she's OK for later still?

Whatever the reply, before dropping the telepathy conversation, tell Oriko that her condition is caused by a rejection of her wish. Whatever she believes about the fulfillment of her wish as-is, it's not right, and her magic is responding poorly to that.
Maybe there's better ways to handle this... like, face to face, ask her what her wish was (even if we already know), then ask her if she thinks she got what she wished for...

... Has Oriko told Sabrina what her Wish was, or is it known that Sabrina knows?
 
90% sure she told us / confirmed back when we were dicking around over the subject earlier?
Well...
Maybe you're correct. This... isn't the meaning of my life."

She takes a breath, jaw tightening. "Perhaps. But it's hard to see what it is when all I see is death and failure. And soon I won't even see that."

...

... There's something else I want to ask Oriko. It might or might not be a good idea, but I'd like for Kirika to... rectify her situation with her parents. Maybe even explain the meguca thing. Oriko... should meet her in-laws!
 
Well...


...

... There's something else I want to ask Oriko. It might or might not be a good idea, but I'd like for Kirika to... rectify her situation with her parents. Maybe even explain the meguca thing. Oriko... should meet her in-laws!

Shit I messed up bad

We already told Oriko what I'm saying we should tell her. What we didn't tell her was specifically that "alt-her" landed on Kirika as "it."
 
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Shit I messed up bad

We already told Oriko what I'm saying we should tell her. What we didn't tell her was specifically that "alt-her" landed on Kirika as "it."

Okay, so, we want to do something about Oriko, we have to either expose her to more Kirika stuff -- as Onmur says, making her meet the in-laws would be a good way to impress things on her; hopefully something like "they disapprove of her and she feels bad about it and then wonders why she feels bad about it and then realizes it's b/c Kirika" -- or we have to throw Kirika in her face as accurately as possible. I... believe that I know how to do the latter. It would be insanely awful, but I do think I know how to do it.

... That is to say, we could throw in her face that it was Kirika, not any "world-saving" issue that broke her when we put a gun to her head in a timestop.

I'd really rather not do that.

Inaccurately, or more to the point imprecisely, we could straight-up to her that "alt-her" found purpose in Kirika. Which, I dunno, there's a lot to debate about how effective that would be.

We could ask her to weigh the world against Kirika, but I suspect she would provide an unhelpful answer.

We could also take this problem to Mami, who might have insights into the matter, being good at social and that. Oriko said this update that she would "keep for a few days," so we should have time to do that. And there's nothing in that matter that we can't show her. Hell, we could ask her about it over baking if we're willing to tolerate a privacy device while doing that. If nothing else Mami would certainly be able to help us stay away from, well, e.g. last time when we just pissed Oriko off.
 
Inaccurately, or more to the point imprecisely, we could straight-up to her that "alt-her" found purpose in Kirika. Which, I dunno, there's a lot to debate about how effective that would be.
Haven't we already tried this? If we have, well, we wouldn't be having this conversation if it were enough.
 
Kind of makes me wonder if Meguca react to other people saying their witch names somehow. I get the (unfounded) impression they would hate the name and get some sort of chill or uncomfortable feeling from it.

Not that we can test that ourselves with Dellie. Or that there's much point in chasing that phenomenon beyond scientific curiosity.
 
Presumptuous. Masami and Hiroko appear to have actual income. This is something that might get in the way of that depending on what that source of income is.
It wouldn't hurt to ask, I think. We don't know where their income comes from. I'm pretty sure that they've dropped out of school, since they seem to sleep in on weekdays. Not a lot of jobs willing to employ a 14 year old, or to pay said 14 year old enough to live off of. Their parents don't seem to be in the picture, for whatever reason. Could be the old "working overseas" cliché. Could be using illusion magic to steal money and spoof the system.

I... am not sure we should simultaneously contact two different parties with this request. We have a small set of leads, and the result is that two simultaneous parties are likely to encounter one another. Kyouko in particular might not react well to such an encounter.
I did remember to include a "I'm hiring other people as well, try not to butt heads if you cross paths" warning. Although maybe we could ask Kyouko to search Kasamino while the Western Group searches Mitakihara. Can't dangle the "you get to hunt witches in Mitakihara" carrot if we do that, but there's still the money.

Really, hiring Kyouko is mostly an excuse to get Kyouko to accept money from us so that she doesn't need to steal and break into hotel rooms so much. Likewise for paying well, although it's not out of line for what one would pay a private investigator. (Not that any of them have the skills and resources of such.)

Honestly, I'm expecting the obvious leads to come up dry, otherwise the police would have found her. They're probably going to have to resort to a grid-pattern search of the city, in which case, sheer numbers will be required to cover more ground. (And I'm suspecting that we're probably too late and all they will find is a witch.)

We already told Oriko what I'm saying we should tell her. What we didn't tell her was specifically that "alt-her" landed on Kirika as "it."
Yeah, she remained stubbornly obtuse on the subject. Hence my vote trying to beat her over the head with the "Kirika needs you to live!" stuff.

Kind of makes me wonder if Meguca react to other people saying their witch names somehow. I get the (unfounded) impression they would hate the name and get some sort of chill or uncomfortable feeling from it.
In narration, we've been told that when Sabrina examines her soul gem and reads Dedelore's name, she gets a feeling like someone walking on her grave. That might be a unique case, however.
 
-[X] Find some way to send the search teams the info Kirika gave us. We can take a picture with our phone and e-mail it to Masami's team, but we'll probably have to take Kyouko a physical copy. Do they have Kinko's in Japan? Or does Mami's computer have a scanner and printer?

Or a fax machine. They love fax machines in Japan. (It's not just an office thing either - 59% of Japanese households have a fax machine at home)
 
[X] Onmur

500K words....Man, that was my second longest binge-read. You got some dedication, Firnagzen.​

I just got one question to my fellow voters: When, if ever, are we planning on dropping the witchbomb on Mami? All it would take is a sentence from someone and we'd be thrown into a pretty high-risk situation. Especially considering it's worse than the lichbomb.
 
[X] Onmur

500K words....Man, that was my second longest binge-read. You got some dedication, Firnagzen.​

I just got one question to my fellow voters: When, if ever, are we planning on dropping the witchbomb on Mami? All it would take is a sentence from someone and we'd be thrown into a pretty high-risk situation. Especially considering it's worse than the lichbomb.
We've got it pencilled in for "after the heat death of the universe" but we might push it later as needs be.
 
More seriously... Mami's whole identity is built in being the heroic magical girl, the champion of justice, the shining senpai that everyone looks up to. Learning that the monsters she was fighting were actually girls like her? Girls who were suffering? And who she was fighting and killing and possibly consigning to oblivion? And she and all the kouhais she brought in face the same fate? That would... That would not go down particularly well.

The one time Mami was witchbombed in canon, she took it as grounds for immediate murder-suicide. And, considering the whole gang was together, that seemed to be a timeline where everything was going as well as possible.

This time around, Mami is extremely emotionally vulnerable. She cannot afford a witchbomb. At least not until we have viable dewitching. (edit: at which point we're kinda forced to bomb her.)
 
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I'd like to make at least a token effort to help Kuroki. Even if it's hopeless, getting Kyouko to accept money from us to help someone (in a way that Mami would actually approve of) might be its own reward.

That said, people might have a point about not having her cross the river, lest it escalate things.

[X] Lunch? Lunch.
[X] Telepathy Oriko. Today was the day that she thought would be best for her to meet you-know-who. Does she feel up to having visitors again this evening?
-[X] Whatever happens, you have to hang on, Oriko. Not for the sake of the world, or for us, or even for yourself. For Kirika. I don't know if she can survive losing you. If you love her, then don't give up. You have to live for her.
[X] Talk to Mami. We had Kirika doing some research for us, and there's a magical girl named Kuroki who hasn't been seen the last few days. We don't have any good leads on her, and we're not in the greatest position to run off to do detective work, so we were thinking about hiring some of the magical girls we know from the surrounding areas to ask around and ideally to find her. Would Mami be okay with letting them pass through her territory to search, and hunting any witches they might encounter? It's not like we need the grief seeds.
-[X] If she's okay with that, telepathy Masami and Hiroko over in West Mitakihara. Ask if they're busy today, because we could use some help with something. Explain about the missing girl. We're willing to pay them for their time. Offer an appropriately generous per diem for each of them. And Ono too, if she feels like participating. With a bonus for everyone involved if the girl's actually found and saved.
--[X] This is time-sensitive, because she's already been missing. She might be high on grief and acting irrationally. If they find her you'd appreciate it if they'd telepathy you immediately and make sure that she uses a grief seed. Mami has okayed travel through her territory and hunting rights on any witches you find, so there's no worries on that end. We'll clean any seeds or soul gems as needed and cover any expenses.
----[X] It might be that we're too late and the girl's already dead in a witch's barrier, but we want to at least try.
-[X] Contact Kyouko with a similar offer to search Kasamino in case she wandered over there.
--[X] If bringing Yuma along on such a search is a sticking point, offer to have someone babysit.
-[X] E-mail or fax the info on Kuroki to Masami's group, if they accepted. If Kyouko accepts and we need to take her a copy and/or go pick up Yuma, break for voting so we can make sure Mami's okay with us going out.
[X] Hope for the best. Resume our picnic preparations.
 
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