I've been wondering about this. From the Sanctioned base, QA's parahuman abilities (well, sort of, given the weirdness of the swap) include not only Friend-making and hat-based effects, but also some situational mindfuckery/countermindfuckery shard shenanigans and Form Control. Form Control hasn't had much focus due to QA's desire to fit in, but it's always there as an option. If she can actually come up with sufficient excuse, QA might in fact make use of it.
I do wonder about reception to Form Control. It's straight up
shapeshifting, and thus a bit harder to just handwave away as obviously something that isn't quite understood the way that the exhibited anomalous resiliency via hat power can. Yes, the resiliency without an observable Impeller signature is odd, but it just doesn't have the same kind of perceived impact as literally just rearranging the physical form into that of a dragon or something. The resiliency effect could be surmised to perhaps merely be an interaction with an Impeller field that actually is present and suspected stealth capabilities, if nothing else, but even if "reasonable" explanations can be imagined for the shapeshifting, it simply
seems something more significant. It might also be unnerving, too.
Hypothetically, nearly any Valkyrie probably
could change up their bodies quite extensively and very quickly if they just had the right preparation and perhaps some kind of contraption in storage, but if people learn that QA just up and morphs into a dragon when she feels like it, it's not some hypothetical consideration anymore, and that could carry additional implications. For one, if she can turn into something other than her "normal" form, then that she could perhaps take on
other human forms would be no great leap of logic, and such capacity would, incidentally, be eminently convenient for an infiltrator, particularly when coupled with her unrivaled communications and network subversion capability. Shapeshifting of such a profound degree would also simply be exceptionally unusual for a human, too, so a display of Form Control noticed by others might really get them to wonder about her in fact being some kind of Antagonist. Of course, the traumatised eldritch alien really does just want to fit in.
I think Big Sister might think over this bit hard in the coming days. This sounds the sort of thing to grant insight and suspicion upon actually forming the thought. Yeah, it really
shouldn't be discounted, and when the Anomalous Valkyrie Core that seems to have been damaged or incomplete is responsive in the way that normal Cores ostensibly should be without artificially induced cause, it kinda makes one wonder.
Wow. Monica is... a
bit off. Except not, actually. For all that she has wildly erroneous assumptions, there are similarities to the relationship between QA's fabricated backstory and the truth in it having absolutely nothing to do with the reality of the matter and yet none the less still fit the
results of which very neatly indeed. It's more an analogy than strictly just wrong, per se—one even close to the aforementioned backstory itself—and yet in Monica's case, no one is actually
trying to make her perceive so in the first place! That does not help her Core, however. Monica's connections are a
strange thing to consider.
Her perspective is insightful in more ways than one, too, come to think of it. Between her judgement of Setsuna and her own display, it's looking like this flight really is a sorry bunch just
rife with issues. I think Koujirou might actually be the odd one out for being comparatively normal. Monica's own mindset is
better than QA's, strictly speaking, but definitely not objectively good, and Setsuna makes Monica seem even more right than she actually knows, just hiding it better behind a bluster of tsundere-ness. The special Chosen One main character protagonist guy is the ordinary one. ...or does that make him unique when the norm is like this? Still a moron, though.
The purpose of therapists is to identify psychological qualities that can be exploited as vulnerabilities and proceed to encourage subjects to eliminate them or otherwise cope with their issues such that they do not impose negative effect. ...right?
Thus, the logical conclusion is to find a hat for which its very power is to
enable stacked hats to thus allow Friends to ride into battle with a tower of hats atop their heads. Naturally.
I dunno about that. This is an anime setting, so the moment that one prominent character who is a girl with a troubled past makes friends with another one who has blatant yuri flags, statistically, that has an appreciable chance of resulting in her becoming
awfully smitten.
