Battle Action Harem Highschool Side Character Quest (No SV, you are the Waifu)

LightMage · Jul 16, 2015

Chronic said:
Anna isn't that unstable. She'd never hurt her comrades, and honestly? Her senses are so good that i don't think anything that happens in the simulators would set her berserk enough to either go out of control or forget herself and break the Simulater. Durga can see exactly that all that happens in there is jamming, and nothing more.

Cmon people, have a little trust. This univers isn't -5 where kicks to the feelz lurk behind every corner and plottwists are actively malicious.

... As this is a sim update, I'll go quote information for people who don't remember past events as well.
Massive quote box combo in spoilers

Flares of light announce incoming plasma and missiles. You analyse the attacks quickly, the plasma was far too low energy to weapon fire from a real Antagonist combat vehicle and the missile acceleration profiles were wrong. Durga marks the entire lot as decoys as you focus and try to find the real threat. You've never seen Antagonists go to such effort to construct elaborate fakes when they have always had the number to simply use actual units for any feint.

You are broken from your concentration when the low energy plasma bolts from the decoys rattle off your Impeller field. You eye the 'tanks' speculatively, shifting slightly to duck a 'missile' on instinct, those attacks were not anywhere near the real energy of an Antagonist tank cannon and anyone would have realised that by now, so why-

>1st Year Cadet Anna Sanchez hit by Antagonist Tank Battalions<
>Predicting negligible damage taken<

What- oh.

"Sanchez, if it takes too much concentration to maintain multiple weapon systems, dump some," calls out Shuri as she returns fire alongside Sandra, a glaringly bright white beam of high energy particles racing out to join Sandra's cannon fire and missiles.

"Sorry, I forgot this was a simulation," you say as your join in the returning fire, sending your own missiles soaring at the furthest tanks while shredding the closer ones with the hypervelocity cannon.

Durga flashes a notice to you as she detected tracking beams, again marking them as spoofing rather than actual rangefinders. You shake your head slightly and adjust your sensors to be less discriminatory. The lenses shift from the sullen red standby colour to the white blue of imminent discharge.

You'll Shift just before- wait no, you can't do that in the Simulation. Then you'll try use your Higgs engine for an emergency strafe- no actually you can't.

Hmm.

You scan the base, wondering if that was it, when Durga flashes an alert, her 'voice' sounding rather irritated. Pseudo Higgs engine reaction?

…What?

A Type 5 explodes out from a secondary shaft. Dark blue, flat and angular like a pre-Impact stealth bomber, a long segmented tail extended from its back and four limbs trailed outwards from under the main body. A brightly glowing sensor band on it's leading edge shone with amethyst light.

Ah. The simulator could not replicate the Higgs engine signatures output but it tried its best, which was apparently not up to Durga's standards.

The Type 5 turns away and immediately engages a pseudo- … it immediately engages its Higgs thrusters and burns towards the human lines, if it broke through to the incoming air transports, casualties would spike.

You raise your hand and every weapon you have speaks out to refute that possibility.

No important information. You dismiss the words and fire another scan, releasing a full spread of missiles down the tunnel simultaneously. The self guided projectiles angled towards the weapon emplacements further ahead, ahead even of the next flight up. Another sixty energy projectors erupt into fire and fragments, before the destroyed emplacements disappear without a trace from your sensors in a simply unnerving manner. You intensify your scanning for a moment before you remember that you were inside the simulator.

"Miss Sanchez, you will need to leave some targets to your flight mates and the Valkyries of the other flights. I would say leave most of them as you have no trouble at all with this exercise. If you always do so for them they won't learn to carry their own weight."

A private channel from the Instructor.

You almost instinctively refuse. You could protect your friends this time, this time, you will.

-teach them to take care of themselves-

You breath out a slightly shaky breath. No.

That wasn't right. You were not infallible. It would be cruel to force people to again depend on you as their only salvation.

Setsuna and Koujirou would eventually grow skilled enough to hold their own, your role was to accelerate their journey there. Doing too much for them would be counterproductive.

At this, you feel low intensity heat sources and other emissions sullenly flare up from all over the city. Instants later, a wall of jamming snarls your passive sensors before you get a clear picture of what was happening around you. You shake it off and your field cleans up as you adapt to the jamming patterns, the noise level was mild and there were no seeker signals hidden in it so you remain at normal alert. This was undirected jamming, used to cloak rather than attack, but habit ensures you condense your Impeller, widen your thruster ports, ready to dodge at a moments notice.

Several other cadets jerk in the air and look around, their engines revving up. A few tap at their helmets, hearing the jamming but apparently confused as to what it was and the majority seem completely oblivious to anything happening.

You hear active sensor pulses wash out from the sharper cadets and piggyback onto their signals to gain a clearer view of the surrounding environment.

"I see that some cadets have noticed that we are currently under jamming and have started Active Sweeping," says Instructor Meyer, "Squadron Four! Mark contacts on TACNET, verify as we fly. Everybody, double check IDs before confirming. The second circuit will be an automatically generated one through TACNET for a fire mission. The accuracy of the exercise will be marked as the entire squadron."

At the same time that Instructor Meyer explained the rules for the exercise, Instructor Leonhart sends you a private message, "Miss Sanchez, as with the exercises yesterday, I'm going to ask that you let the other Cadets hone their sensor capabilities. Would you keep your findings off TACNET and limit your emissions?"

"…Alright," you respond. It couldn't be helped you suppose, having another cadet fire upon a human position by accident would be a disaster and if they made such a mistake here, they could learn to avoid it on the actual battlefield.

"Anna, remember, this isn't real," the Instructor adds, before closing the channel.

…Right.

The Squadron sets off, somewhat raggedly at first, but quickly streamline into the flying wing practiced briefly yesterday.

As the Instructors asked, you maintain only passive sensors.

The cityscape was riddled with light combatants, AG Tanks and Infantry of various sorts scattered inside the ruined towers and on the partially flooded streets between them, facing against human infantry, small drones and scattered units of Tanks. The field of battle extended far beyond the center of the city and scattered elements clashed in the surrounding suburbs.

You watched from above as the battlefield played out and UN forces fought against the Antagonists.
Humans fought against Antagonist forces.
Humans fought against Antagonists.
Humans were under attack.

You hiss out a sharp breath as your weapons surge out of storage around you-

Small nudges brushed against your mind as the units you were watching were identified then marked friendly or otherwise on TACNET, reminding you that you were in class. In the simulator. Not out there.

You grit your teeth and hold fire, but keep your weapons extended however as you fly.

So she didn't even notice.

You response tersely.

>Sweeper 1: You would have hit humans.<
>Sweeper 4: What…? So?<

…
Your heavy particle projectors swing around and lock onto the threat-

So yeah Anna has to constantly remind herself and suppress her instincts to go 'Sim' she's gotten close to Vaping that one cadet if it wasn't for interruption by another one...

She's limited by the whole sim thing. And the thoughts of humans under attack by anything sets her into KILL THE THREAT MODE and then she has fight and go 'it's a sim'.

Anyway from what we've seen so far we don't need to show that it isn't a 'Game' the instructors have been doing a fairly good job at doing it so far... it's only been like 4 days in quest so far.

Camellia · Jul 16, 2015

[X] Randomly generated scenario
[X] Difficult
[X] Since there are two aces in the flight now, would you like Shuri and I to hold back further? Or should we stop for the next exercise and decide after that?

Cassiemouse · Jul 16, 2015

veekie said:
She's only one nudge from selfdestructing all the confidence and self assurance built up so far.

I don't think facing a Type Zero in a simulator would do that, but going berserk in training and hurting her friends is going to snap her HARD.

Perhaps, but as far as character relevance and drama is concerned, is that a bad thing?

dontpressenter · Jul 16, 2015

Before I go to sleep and get my thoughts in order, here's a wishlist of what I (and alternate me) wants to happen:

The next update to be interesting. With Avalanche writing, this is probably a given.
Believe it or not, I don't want it to be about Anna, adorawesome as she is. Narratively speaking, the first time we see all the main cast work together should be focused on how well they work together as a team. And not well they work together. In fact, team tension should be the biggest conflict of the episode.
Repeating point two: Don't wanna be about Anna. Everybody knows that best girl is never the one that undergoes their character arc first. Best girl undergoes their arc in the endgame and the finale.
It'd be sorta cool if we got world building through a historic scenario in a show, don't tell kind of way.
So, uh, I guess alt me would be pretty irritated with a plot that could have been avoided by simple communication. If we are going to hold back, I'd prefer we let a Flight leader know of our intentions.

LightMage · Jul 16, 2015

Cassiemouse said:
Perhaps, but as far as character relevance and drama is concerned, is that a bad thing?

Yes? I'm going to go with yes. Let's bring it up at a reasonable rate ya know? It's been going up like every third update or something already with a +1 to character importance.

Besides it's fairly clear as it has been at least 6 - 7 episodes that this isn't written by The Butcher. Throwing in TRAUMA now just wouldn't be right.

You either left hook Trauma in the first few episodes. Or you left hook Trauma in the last episode. Or you don't do it at all in a Harem Anime.

EternalLight · Jul 16, 2015

[X]Uralsk Massacre (Survival/Objective. First human attack on a Breach. Succeed.)
[X]Use everything. No mercy, no calculus, no hesitation. No risk to the others. All you need is kill.

Dark as Silver · Jul 16, 2015

Sasha said:
1) Inexperienced allies

You are understating it.
To put this in perspective, without looking up the true figures, our teams combined combat score is about 48 thousand, considering that 30 is a minimum on our skill. Shuri is about 14/15 and if we are generous Setsuna/Koji and Sandra averaging 1. Even if we assume that Yukari is 10 as the rank below Ace, we represent more than half the squads combat ability.

jacobk · Jul 16, 2015

veekie said:
She's only one nudge from selfdestructing all the confidence and self assurance built up so far.

I don't think facing a Type Zero in a simulator would do that, but going berserk in training and hurting her friends is going to snap her HARD.

Why would she be hurting her friends? There will be a bunch of antagonists trying to hurt her friends, and she'll be hurting the antagonists. Is she going to take a pot shot at one of her friends for being insufficiently careful about civilian casualties? If she starts anything with major splash damage the simulator safeties will kick in.

In D&D terms, the vote is not about whether to kill the party and take their stuff. The vote is about whether we hog the spotlight by soloing the encounter. It's not something you want to do every time but every now and then it's ok.

marids · Jul 16, 2015

LightMage said:
Anyway from what we've seen so far we don't need to show that it isn't a 'Game' the instructors have been doing a fairly good job at doing it so far... it's only been like 4 days in quest so far.

This. Regardless of how this combat sim is going to go, we'll probably be stepping up the training anyways, especially since Koujirou already stated on how much more he wants to train in comparison to before:

Avalanche said:
>Anna Sanchez: "Are you sure you can keep up the hours demanded by Shuri? It won't be easy."<
>Masaya Setsuna: "You better know what you're doing Koji"<

>Rokusabe Koujirou: "@Setsu oh I know what the ladies like"<

Setsuna splutters out a laugh, chuckling under her breath, "You're freaking incorrigible Koji."

You note her reaction with a little surprise. Setsuna seemed much calmer about Koujirou when Koujirou wasn't nearby.

>Rokusabe Koujirou: "@Anna nah talked to Sandra about it"<
>Rokusabe Koujirou: "lunch dinners, can prac at other times too when want"<

Only at lunch and at dinner now? That… shouldn't be out of the cadet's abilities. You hope.

At your side, Setsuna looks conflicted for a moment, before tapping out another message.

>Masaya Setsuna: "And? How many extra time periods are you planning to go to?"<

>Rokusabe Koujirou: "probs evening too til vanguard comp"<
>Rokusabe Koujirou: "would like to go breakfast too but not sure"<
>Rokusabe Koujirou: "you?"<

Setsuna glances sideways at you for a second, before tapping out a reply.

>Masaya Setsuna: "I'll probably do the same as you"<

This is a training schedule that Koujirou and Setsuna would agree to do, a training schedule that Shuri-train-all-day planned, and yet people still think that they need MORE motivation at this time, WHY?!?!

defenestrator · Jul 16, 2015

Cassiemouse said:
Perhaps, but as far as character relevance and drama is concerned, is that a bad thing?

If Anna was 'Put on a Bus' and straight into a psychiatric institution, a few hundred miles away from the MC? (Aka. Bad End)

Why, yes. That's bad.

Cassiemouse · Jul 16, 2015

LightMage said:
You either left hook Trauma in the first few episodes. Or you left hook Trauma in the last episode. Or you don't do it at all in a Harem Anime.

I think we are still in the first few episodes? I guess it depends on how long the season is. If this was a novel then we would be coming up on the end of the first act.

defenestrator said:
If Anna was 'Put on a Bus' and straight into a psychiatric institution, a few hundred miles away from the MC?

Why, yes. That's bad.

I admit that is an issue but I don't think it would happen straight off. Something like that would only happen if we pushed too hard.

Chronic · Jul 16, 2015

marids said:
This. Regardless of how this combat sim is going to go, we'll probably be stepping up the training anyways, especially since Koujirou already stated on how much more he wants to train in comparison to before:

This is a training schedule that Koujirou and Setsuna would agree to do, a training schedule that Shuri-train-all-day planned, and yet people still think that they need MORE motivation at this time, WHY?!?!

Because they said they wanted to reach Annas level. They will need more than just that level of dedication to get that. Its better we show them exactly how far they have to go, and that even if they succeed, the Antagonists will STILL be a major threat.

LightMage · Jul 16, 2015

And at any rate it seems a bit OOC to go for any of the Suicidal / PEOPLE WILL DIE ones between Anna, Shuri, and Sandra who all have some past issues with those kind of things. Considering they are 3/5ths of the flight... I just don't see them voting for one of the possible TRAUMA scenarios, you know?

Cassiemouse said:
I think we are still in the first few episodes? I guess it depends on how long the season is. If this was a novel then we would be coming up on the end of the first act.

Uh GM has an episode list for us. -> https://forums.sufficientvelocity.c...you-are-the-waifu.15335/page-100#post-3660489

It's in bold right under our character sheet. We're on episode 7/8 out of 24. We're still in the first 1/3rd of the season. First 4 days of the year. We're getting time skips at the end of the week IIRC.

marids said:
This. Regardless of how this combat sim is going to go, we'll probably be stepping up the training anyways, especially since Koujirou already stated on how much more he wants to train in comparison to before:

This is a training schedule that Koujirou and Setsuna would agree to do, a training schedule that Shuri-train-all-day planned, and yet people still think that they need MORE motivation at this time, WHY?!?!

^Also this. Guys 4 days and they're both already near / at the +1 Valk rank. I think we'll be training them at a good speed.

Chronic said:
Because they said they wanted to reach Annas level. They will need more than just that level of dedication to get that. Its better we show them exactly how far they have to go, and that even if they succeed, the Antagonists will STILL be a major threat.

Hey, if we want to show them what our level's like... we throw em in to an impossible / survival sim and say 'I could do it' and then wait outside the sim for them to come out 30 seconds later going 'OMG' and stuff.

Nagon · Jul 16, 2015

[X]Uralsk Massacre (Survival/Objective. First human attack on a Breach. Succeed.)
[X]Difficult
[X]Hold back. Allow the others to do most of the work, see if Sandra can put her money where her mouth is. You're still going to intervene if you see one of them in danger though.
[X]Since there are two aces in the flight now, would you like Shuri and I to hold back further? Or should we stop for the next exercise and decide after that?

marids · Jul 16, 2015

Chronic said:
Because they said they wanted to reach Annas level. They will need more than just that level of dedication to get that. Its better we show them exactly how far they have to go, and that even if they succeed, the Antagonists will STILL be a major threat.

W...T...F? I don't even... You know what, I could care less what levels of combat ability they get up to, because training is NOT priority number 1, at least for me in this quest. Character interactions and healing the PTSD damage that Anna has is always going to be objective number 1 for me. So I will always advocate for more teamwork and getting better relationships as more useful actions. As for the threats from the antagonists, I simply do NOT expect to fight levels of enemies that we aren't ready for, the military wouldn't be that stupid about it.

In the end, it's clear that different people in this quest have different objectives and desires, I guess then what's left is just voting and counting just what kind of story the majority of the people want.

defenestrator · Jul 16, 2015

Cassiemouse said:
I admit that is an issue but I don't think it would happen straight off. Something like that would only happen if we pushed too hard.

All right, then read the description for Vae Victus again.

Avalanche said:
>>[]Vae Victus (Humanity has lost. Earth burns. Protect the Major Arcologies as they lift off. Until at least one passes Lunar Orbit. Humanity will remember your sacrifice.)

Emphasis mine. What that means that in this scenarios, losing an Arcology (read: cities containing hundreds of thousands of civillians) is a forgone conclusion. Each time one of those gets shot down, Anna will be remembering Alaska.

Shuri would also be having flashbacks that killed her flight.

You could say that's a huge exaggeration since this is just a simulation... but remember back in one of the sim sessions? When one of the other Valks was callous about friendly fire? How Anna barely restrained herself from getting violent?

Vae Victus, while not an instant bad end, would be putting us just a few steps away from it.

Cassiemouse · Jul 16, 2015

LightMage said:
It's in bold right under our character sheet. We're on episode 7/8 out of 24. We're still in the first 1/3rd of the season. First 4 days of the year. We're getting time skips at the end of the week IIRC.

That is about one third of the way through the season then. That means we are approaching the end of the first act. Ending the first act with a big battle that the main cast loses is a pretty classic writing trick.

King_Rule · Jul 16, 2015

[X] Randomly generated scenario
[X] Difficult
[X] Since there are two aces in the flight now, would you like Shuri and I to hold back further? Or should we stop for the next exercise and decide after that?

wingstrike96 · Jul 16, 2015

Cassiemouse said:
Perhaps, but as far as character relevance and drama is concerned, is that a bad thing?

Yes.

It's how you turn a popular character into an unpopular one, when they have a badly timed breakdown. Unless you already have the plot focus, trying to steal the focus this way, loses you the plot.

CatOnTheWeb · Jul 16, 2015

[X] Randomly generated scenario
-[X] Difficult
[X] Hold back. Allow the others to do most of the work, see if Sandra can put her money where her mouth is. You're still going to intervene if you see one of them in danger though.
-[X] Since there are two aces in the flight now, would you like Shuri and I to hold back further? Or should we stop for the next exercise and decide after that?

Dark Abstraction · Jul 16, 2015

[X]Uralsk Massacre (Survival/Objective. First human attack on a Breach. Succeed.)
[X]Difficult
[X] Since there are two aces in the flight now, would you like Shuri and I to hold back further? Or should we stop for the next exercise and decide after that?

samdamandias · Jul 16, 2015

Avalanche said:
>Rokusabe Koujirou: "@Setsu oh I know what the ladies like"<

Koujirou: "But fresh chipotle peppers are very expensive, and the commissary is out of the good cocoa. Do you know if ladies like mutton?"

…Setsuna sure is popular. This is the second time you have seen her kissed.

New sidequest: Get Setsuna kissed by every member of the flight.

Setsuna only seems more agitated by that. She snatches away her hand and snaps, "You've got a foot up on me, but I'm not going to lose!"

Translating from Tsundere
...
...
"Get away from my husbando, bitch!"

>β+/β− NaN<

Man, at some point

-Help us please-

O hai Durga. *waves*

and that guy (Coke-Zero or something?)

We must now cause food-based nicknames for the other members of our flight so that the harem ship is called "Picnic"

"So what are we going to be doing today, Sandra?" asks Koujirou.

"The same thing we do every day Koujirou: ~~Try and take over the world~~ kill the antagonists."

People need heroes to rally around, something they can lean on when everything else looks bleak.

Anna: "Eight thousand, five hundred and three reasons why I don't feel like a hero."

She's actually a teddy bear, like, she'll bake you cookies and knit you clothes if you ask her, seriously no jokes I mean it.

She's also terrible at baking, but don't tell her that. She uses the fire suppression systems as an indicator of when things need to come out of the oven.

Salbazier said:
Also, we need a Sandra harem omake.

I thought this was the Sandra harem omake.

marids said:
OMG... is this is -5 world's primary mission in the end? Jesus...

No. The final mission in the -5 world (at least going by my omake) is to fight a rearguard guerrilla action that the Antagonists have to focus on instead of the fleeing ships. Stay behind. Make noise. Be such a pain in the ass that killing you, personally and individually, becomes the primary objectives of multiple breaches.

Olivebirdy · Jul 16, 2015

samdamandias said:
New sidequest: Get Setsuna kissed by every member of the flight.

Hell yes.

samdamandias said:
O hai Durga. *waves*

Memory.

skaianDestiny · Jul 16, 2015

samdamandias said:
O hai Durga. *waves*

That's not Durga, it's not bolded. -Dashes indicate memories-

It's the townspeople crowding around Anna asking her to help them.

LightMage · Jul 16, 2015

Cassiemouse said:
That is about one third of the way through the season then. That means we are approaching the end of the first act. Ending the first act with a big battle that the main cast loses is a pretty classic writing trick.

Just going to point out, this Anime seems to have avoided quite a few of the 'pretty classic writing tricks so far.'

We don't even have the full cast introduced yet, we're still missing the super soldier!

Battle Action Harem Highschool Side Character Quest (No SV, you are the Waifu)

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