Monica does not know about Hell's Hand, that Valkyries are actually calling the prior night a "Vision of Hell,"
That said, the convergent thinking is noteworthy. People are independently arriving at related ideas about QA's little redecoration display.
I feel like it's a bit of a stretch to go from "Taylor might be eldritch royalty" to apparently absolute certainty that Taylor is a princess of Hell.
I think it's less absolute certainty and more a combination of several compounding factors leading to her just sort of going along with a conclusion seemingly reasonable enough to a mind very much not thinking entirely rationally.
Notably, QA explicitly declared herself Queen Administrator, for one, and in freaky shardspeech no less, so by her word she is at least
some kind of royalty, and she's definitely pretty eldritch. The eldritch factor itself was kind of mind-breaking for Monica, too; in the passages of her reaction to the improved security, Monica had something of a panic attack and dissociative episode for it being too surreal for her to come to terms with it, and it happened when she had already been kept up until "insomnia-oh-thirty" lying there in bed stewing in protracted general
terror over her circumstances as a freshman Valkyrie cadet, struggling to force herself to simply breathe normally for several consecutive hours. Additionally, too, that other girl Jennifer from the
Dating Advice and Matchmaking Shipping Club also completely independently came to the conclusion that QA did a
really good job of rocking the Princess of Darkness theme with her general behaviour and honour guard of disproportionately eerie definitely-spawn-of-the-abyss, as well, so I think Monica is kind of just in a bit of a daze and trying not to think about it too hard with a numb acceptance building on preconceptions, and just grateful that her roommate is nice at least. Nothing really makes sense anymore, and she isn't going to
try to make sense of it right now.
Going to guess Anna is busy exchanging high-band info with Silver, possibly regarding Taylor, Rose, or maybe just tech in general.
Seems likely. Monica herself was simultaneously trying to fly, browse the internet, brood (well, she was
trying to "reflect"), and hold a conversation all at once, and she and Anna are on complete opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of ability. I'd be willing to wager an imaginary cookie that Anna was similarly preoccupied there, just in her own way. There's certainly a lot
to discuss, the way how the monumental revelations just keep piling up. Too, Anna is pretty keen on the tech discussion in any case, both professionally and seemingly as something of a hobby, and Silver can be of
considerable help there for the boosted brainstorming ability.
On a related note, that also makes me wonder if we might see some deviation from canon were the Wave Force is concerned. At the least, Silver's assistance may help Anna analyse the UN's equation sooner, better, and that has plenty of potential for follow-on consequences.
Nyx has been so encouraging to Monica, it's a shame she's not got the processing to understand Nyx's communications yet.
I'm curious if communications might improve once Anna gets her own exotic setup finalised and finetuned. Even without such a clear understanding, though, the idea of power armour Friend barding might do further good for the involved interaction, and it might have some interesting results on the intended front too. The Friends themselves are largely just outright incomprehensible, but equippable additions can be a different matter entirely, and may be a useful intermediate step much more understandable to the Crafting Club members and others for sort of just indirectly altering their Friends. That may allow Valkyries to actually take their Friends into battle despite them not being suited for it in their own right, and QA might see regard such a goal quite favourably.
So... I think what happened here is that QA's Friends with their hat powers have kinda majorly twigged some Valkyries' PTSD buttons by being way too similar to Antagonists.
Yeah, that's what it sounds like. The exchange seems as though at least Stella
really didn't take getting Stranger'd well, and that it involved a Friend may have made it even worse for multiple compounding reasons, between the Antagonist similarities and the fact that she was ostensibly supposed to trust and cherish her precious Diedre. I think the notion of Kaiti hurrying QA along may be quite accurate, especially with Tamara's perception taken into account.
Fwiw, Setsuna shouldn't have any combat lasers integrated in her Frame at the beginning of canon. Communication and guidance lasers, sure, but nothing powerful enough to use as direct fire weapons.
I suppose that might be a divergence, perhaps. Setsuna got a need for stark improvement shoved in her face, so she may have done something about it, perhaps. Given the laser displays thus far and the simple fact that they are indeed useful equipment, she might have been inspired to acquire such armament earlier. Actual integration might be an issue with such an idea, but on the other hand, if she was rushed, the lasers might not have been actually very impressive kit that thus allowed for quick integration.
Studying the hat-powers will inevitably drive the Crafting Club (even more) towards madness, but I don't see this triggering any sort of scrutiny or suspicion. The pegacorn-Friends are already indistinguishable from magic, so what's a few more blatantly magical abilities? Just throw them on the pile.
At the very least, they're a curiosity. More than that, though, they don't need to necessarily trigger
rational scrutiny or suspicion. I think Stella may be pretty paranoid over her own Friend now, at least.
Can QA even hear the. Cores or any of the others
I think it would depend on whether or not the Cores are actually broadcasting their commentary or not. Anna's remark about picking up everything even when not actively trying to do so carries the implication that QA's even more advanced shard communications suite could be reasonably expected to receive and interpret any Core communications if they are there to receive, but the Cores may be just thinking to themselves or perhaps engaging in more direct communication with their synchronised partners. If they
can be heard, though, that might have interesting consequences where Anna is concerned.
