Hijiri is having the same breakdown. The difference is that only one of them is beating the other one up while their friends look on and say "everything is under control". I understand that Niko is having her own problems, but Hijiri's right now are bigger.
Niko's problems are entirely unrelated to her self-image - Niko's stressed out and angry at Hijiri and cares only about Hijiri's apparent decision to throw away what Niko built for her. Telling Niko that she's making things worse will not serve to destabilize her or injure her.
Additionally, Niko's problems go away if Hijiri's do and that Niko's issues can't go away as long as Hijiri's are still around. Niko has trouble as long as Hijiri is not living a peaceful life. The first and only thing we need to do to address Niko's problem is to establish a peaceful life for Hijiri. We may have to convince Niko that she doesn't get to define "peaceful" down to the last pencil in Hijiri's bookbag, but that's trivial compared to getting it through her head that she's currently causing her own problem.
Talking to Saki is wasting time. She's going to argue and that's going to turn into its own fight that'll distract us from the real problem while it continues to get worse. Don't even bother engaging with her, just walk away.
With how high tensions are, huge visible effects will only set off a fight. I guarantee you that Hijiri's in full fight-or-flight mode right now, and you're proposing to drop a huge pilot of witchiness down behind her where she can't see it. And then Saki's on a hair-trigger too, and you haven't done anything about Kazumi, who could well interpret that as Hijiri trying to attack Niko.
You will further note that I am not going after either side. Once we get done condemning physical violence my vote is entirely dedicated to explaining each party's grievances to the other in a way that they can understand.
"Calm" won't work, not with the thread bleeding over with totally justified anger.
Not going to work, they're way too worked up to listen to a calm, polite request. They're screaming at each other so loudly that Sabrina, fifteen feet away, is not trying to talk over them.
Disbelief
What the actual fuck?
Okay.
I'm actually going to address this in reverse order.
You say that "calm" won't work. That's why we're dropping the, uh... minor lake of grief we have on the roof. We can let
that do the metaphorical shouting for us so that we don't need to raise our voice or stop being calm. Because if we aren't being calm, we can't deescalate this.
You say you're not going after either side. I'm not talking about you in particular, am I? No. I'm talking about the vote -- which is last I saw backed by fifteen people -- which,
in the wording, votes specifically to "Excoriate" Kanna Niko. Which stops being calm in order to chew out one side of what's going on in front of us. Which has us
push past Saki to chew out Niko.
Just -- just -- it's
not okay. That
cannot end well.
Everything about that is a terrible idea except the motivation behind it.
Saki is on a hair trigger, yes. And the existing vote... uses our powers to push past her and then ignores her while we separate Niko from Hijiri and then
chew out Niko in front of Saki. Do you understand why that is not acceptable?
"I haven't done anything about Kazumi." I don't even know what to say to that, because,
hello,
-[X] Calmly step in and assert that as you understand things, both sides are telling the truth and expressing valid statements, but neither is understanding anything the other is saying in the way it's meant to be understood.
--[X] Simultaneously, telepathy Saki, Umika, Kazumi, Mami, and Sayaka. Address Kazumi and convey your viewpoint -- these two are both in breakdowns and they're exploding at each other. You're going to deescalate this and get them started actually hearing what they're saying.
So, let me tell you what I wrote in my vote that you apparently missed. We're going to tell Kazumi what we're seeing, and what we're going to / are doing about it, with Saki on the line. We're going to get Kazumi to tell Saki to let us do what we're trying to do, because she's going to be more reasonable about it because she's actually had contact with us. And Mami is going to smooth that over.
"Huge visible effects will set off a fight." If somebody tries to start a fight in the middle of a lake of our grief, good luck to them with that. We won't hurt anyone with it, but we don't need to let any form of casual attack through it. A piercing spell would take enough time that we could react to it.
"Talking to Saki is wasting time." See above. I'm not talking to Saki.
[Stuff about Niko and Hijiri and how their problems mesh together]. I could care less about the specifics. I'm more interested in getting them talking to one another in a constructive and, if not calm, at least
less heated manner, with us filling in where it's needed.