- Location
- Voidbetweenstars
Does this mean that if we keep attacking say The Earth we can end up killing it?
CMGQ: Parallel
- Thread starter LostDeviljho
- Start date
LostDeviljho
Flame Dragon Princess
- Location
- The glorious Pacific Northwest
- Pronouns
- Any
Focused Godlight doesn't bypass Morality Barriers.
- Location
- Voidbetweenstars
I thought morality barriers are based on the max size of attack, aka area of effect, and planet means we would simply reach continental breaking in order to do so right?
Unless we are persistent enough that the raw damage becomes high enough to cause continental change
Also requires finding a target that can withstand that much damage long enough for the splash damage to actually hurt the planet.
Someone or something would interrupt us long before that happens though.
Last edited:
- Location
- Voidbetweenstars
Focused Godlight
-Every consecutive attack on a single target from the Godlight Starbow is 50% stronger than the previous.
We don't need to hurt the planet, the attacks don't matter if it does nothing the effect still takes place, so we can just target the planet
I want to meet people.
No, we can't. Take a look at the wording of the Morality Barrier abilities.We don't need to hurt the planet, the attacks don't matter if it does nothing the effect still takes place, so we can just target the planet
They aren't Damage immunity. They are targeting immunity.
Focused Godlight only triggers if we keep attacking the same target over and over. It doesn't work against things that we outright can't target.
- Location
- Voidbetweenstars
Humanity then?
(technically all humans are part of the greater whole right?)
I was using this:
which is not at all the thing you just said. But it's been changed/clarified anyway, so it doesn't matter.
I don't care about this enough to go through all of the canon sheets, but I did go through all of the (posted) ones made by Crystalwatcher or LostDeviljho. There were a number of cases where I couldn't identify a controller for Health or Resilience, but of the ones I could, I found the following exceptions to the rule:
Truth's Spells (early design)
Goddess Grey's Trump Card (early design)
Candy Heart's Magic Modifier (early design)
Arc Mastermind's Flash Forge's MM (probably 1 + Level, and small numbers are kind of a special case anyway)
Nightmare of Crimson's Damage and Soul Eater (not an MG, so doesn't level the same way)
Mr. Moores' Fist (not an MG, doesn't level the same way)
Good Hunter's MM (I have no explanation)
Wild Heart's MM (I have no explanation)
Grey Champion's Let's Start a Riot!'s MM (small number special case)
I also found these, which aren't strictly incompatible with the rule but seemed a little odd:
Atlantis Flame's Fire Dance's MM (2 per level? What's the point?)
Singing Knight's Damage & MM (base of 10 & 20 respectively, but she's Story—unless they aren't controlled by her weapon?)
White Soul's Health (6666=2*3*11*101, so to have normal Legend starting HP she'd need a Level 22 or 33 Health-controller, or slightly high and Level 11. But she's funny on the durability front anyway, so eh)
Goddess White's base Health is absurdly high. 75,000 at Level 1.
Also noticed the new Health & Resilience controllers. Was surprised by some of the new Abilities they're attached to—Pitch Black, Sakura Saber, and Prisma Drake in particular.
Such as Goddess White, Brilliant Key, Red Rose with a regen buff, Rose Encore with a defensive buff or regen, Echo Dervish, Cannon Fodder, and several others.
The harder part is finding somewhere safe to stand while we're doing this. I suggest we do a practice run first by blowing up the Moon. There's no lunar Divine Being, so no trouble with Morality Barriers, the shots take
Though hitting the Moon is pretty hard, since we'd need to account for orbital motion and the Earth's rotation so we'd have to aim at some random patch of sky instead of the visible Moon. We could go for the Sun instead, but that wouldn't help and we actually can't hit it—the Earth has too much orbital velocity.
Please don't underestimate exponential growth. The 28th shot will have a Base Damage of 142,015,855, more than enough to kill Gaia (shot #80 exceeds Cosmos' Health). We have three APT, which means 28 shots takes a minute and a half (pending revision of speed rules).
LostDeviljho
Flame Dragon Princess
- Location
- The glorious Pacific Northwest
- Pronouns
- Any
For the record, you will never achieve high enough numbers on the Starbow to bypass a World level Morality barrier off raw-numbers collateral, and it would take some very inventive shooting to manage a Continental, which is about as low as I'm aware of them going. Arrows are built to penetrate what they hit, not fuck up stuff near what they hit. For that you want a howitzer or something.
A fair number of them have the notes in invisitext.
It's her pistol, actually.
Thaaaat was a typo that I never caught. Should have been 10 per level.
Derp, that's me getting confused by the way you worded your post.
In that case, damage of the Xth attack without any further modifiers down the road would have been TotalDamage(X) = BaseDamage + TotalDamage(X - 1) + Dice.
The thing about having the linear growth be at a rate that's different from the starting stats is something we've been told can happen, but I'm not sure if its ever actually been put on a sheet.
- Location
- Elsewhere
Since it's apparently ok to post this:
A Promise to Keep: Champion of War
Level 2
-All enemies on the battlefield take 2% of their Max health in damage per action taken.
We know almost nothing about this abilities more complex workings. The most important issues:
Much less likely issues:
Issues we know the answer to:
I would write something similar for her other abilities, but none have anything near so important or interesting intricacies. So some general War Chaser questions instead:
Finally, a discussion of future XP allocation:
So, a basic XP Plan:
LDJ is still working on the update, so wish him luck.
A Promise to Keep: Champion of War
Level 2
-All enemies on the battlefield take 2% of their Max health in damage per action taken.
We know almost nothing about this abilities more complex workings. The most important issues:
- Is it a Damage over Time effect? (Prevented by several defensive abilities.)
- Is it reduced by % damage reductions?
- Is it prevented by damage threshold negations? (I.E. Armor of the Time lord, INDESTRUCTABLE CORE)
- Sidenote: does it trigger To Stand Amongst Gods?
- Is it reduced by Fractional damage reducers? (I.E. to Defy the Gods)
- Is it a Presence effect? (Prevented by specific abilities and possibly Overwhelming Presence.)
- What affinity is it tied to? (I.E. what affinity kill/slayer might be able to negate it)
- Would a slayer ability prevent it from triggering against that action?
- Can it by negated by abilities like Scream for Me, Power Negation, and Men Kill Heroes?
- How does it work when the enemy's current health is higher than their Base health? (I.E. Grey Champion, Segarite Core)
- How does it work if the enemy has Damage Barrier spell active? (Damage Barrier text says "Final end damage", update does not for A Promise to Keep, so…)
- Does it take effect on actions used for Skilled negations?
Much less likely issues:
- Is it a status effect, body modifier, or mental effect?
Issues we know the answer to:
- It is not reduced by Resilience. (Cite: demon in first update)
- It does not count as spell damage. (Cite: demon in first update)
- It takes place after the action - no killing them before they act.
I would write something similar for her other abilities, but none have anything near so important or interesting intricacies. So some general War Chaser questions instead:
- What promise is A Promise to Keep about?
- What is her actual relationship to [War]? She is clearly not a fragment, but she has some association with it. Maybe [War]'s mind recovering faster (as [Peace]'s body/power recovered faster, IIRC) let it arrange events so their drives would have an ally while they're weak?
Finally, a discussion of future XP allocation:
- We'll want at least a few levels in each defense. We currently have no defensive abilities, and we need some soon.
- We also probably want 2 or 3 levels in the Starbow, Maybe taking it to 5 for the milestone. I doubt we need more than that for a while unless our abilities scale around it.
- Dreams in Amber can probably be left alone for now. We'll want a level or two when they are comparatively cheap, but it already has a lot of raw damage - new abilities mostly take precedence.
- A Promise to Keep is amazing in potential, but it doesn't really help much for now. We should put points there when we can and feel safe, but it's not very useful until lvl 10 or so. Eventually, we'll probably stop levelling it for a while at 25. However, our lack of info on it's functions, our opponents, and our future shop options mean this could easily change.
- The new abilities in the shop we have no idea about, but they also give us further XP options that could be better than upgrading existing things.
So, a basic XP Plan:
- Everything to lvl 2. This is cheap, doubles our effectiveness, and means we don't have to decide much yet. Taking them to 3 is also possible, but more likely to miss something for a while.
- We theoretically risk collateral from a weapon at 20k damage, which we risk on the third hit from a level 3 weapon, but LDJ indicated that the arrow-like form of our weapon means it won't do much splash from raw damage. We probably shouldn't level it too crazedly, but it's unlikely to have Nepgear's problem unless we do.
- Pick up the new abilities in the shop.
- Revise our plan. Future goals are likely to include:
- Get everything to level 5
- Keep survivability up and buy new abilities. Update damage when needed.
- Get A Promise to Keep to level 25
LDJ is still working on the update, so wish him luck.
Crystalwatcher
(Verified GM)
- Location
- Limbo
Keep in mind even if it doesn't get splash damage, you might want to keep an eye on penetration.
Don't want to snipe the demon just to accidentally blow off his hostage's head because of a bad angle.
Don't want to snipe the demon just to accidentally blow off his hostage's head because of a bad angle.
Presumably the same way that Scale To Target spells that specify Max Health rather than Current Health do. Which means it scales with their Max Health, even if their Current Health is higher than their Max Health.
- Location
- Elsewhere
Probably, but I feel like the term for that should be "Base Health"
Maximum is fine.
It's your natural max, but magic is temporarily raising you above it.
A term like "Base Health" would be appropriate if buffs that increase your Max Health existed.
LostDeviljho
Flame Dragon Princess
- Location
- The glorious Pacific Northwest
- Pronouns
- Any
I think I can answer these without spoilers:
No.
How about this one.
Is it a Mechanical Ability or a Conceptual Ability?
"Yes" is not a valid answer.
LostDeviljho
Flame Dragon Princess
- Location
- The glorious Pacific Northwest
- Pronouns
- Any
Last edited:
I saw that answer of "Conceptual" that you gave before you edited to troll my edit
Chase Corruption
LostDeviljho
Flame Dragon Princess
- Location
- The glorious Pacific Northwest
- Pronouns
- Any
"Plutia disappeared first," you say after a moment's deliberation, "so she needs locating the most urgently. Plus, Penny is supposed to be following her, so maybe we'll run into her along the way."
Blanc nods. "Alright, I'll grab my bags, we can go after you're done eating."
You sit on your bike and stare bemusedly at Blanc while she fusses over the twins. Twenty minutes ago she was raring to go, but every time it seemed like you were ready, she would remember something else she needed to check on.
"—And you know where the first aid kit is if you need it, right?"
"Yes, we know where the first aid kit is," Argentée says, rolling her eyes. "Honestly, you're just finding excuses to procrastinate at this point. Papa's due back home in a day or two anyway, we'll be fine until then."
Blanc frowns and opens her mouth to say something but Perle cuts in before she can. "Argentée's right, Sis. We'll be fine, and you should go. It's important, and Mary needs your help, right?"
Blanc is silent for a moment, before she steps forward and pulls her sisters into a tight hug, which they return. They stay that way long enough for you to start wondering if you should look away and give them some space, but then Blanc breaks the embrace and straightens up, turning to you.
"You ready?"
"Yeah, let's go."
You nod and start the engine as Blanc climbs onto the bike behind you and fastens on her helmet, then the pair of you pull out down the driveway, leaving the twins' waving and wishes of good luck behind.
The ride back down to the States is mostly spent in silence, save for when Blanc needs to give you directions so you don't get lost.
Eventually, you pull into your driveway and kill the engine, twisting around to look at Blanc as she clambers stiffly off the bike. "Alright, we're here. You're the magic expert, what do we do now?"
Blanc grunts and stretches. "Hmm. Probably best to do the initial setup somewhere she spends a lot of time, make it easier to get a lock on her signature."
"Would her bedroom work?"
"Yeah, probably…" She trails off and squints at you suspiciously. "Do I want to know why that was the first thing you thought of?"
You snort and dismount from your bike, strolling across the driveway to the other side of the duplex you live in. "Girl sleeps more than a cat. If she's at home, the chances are pretty high she's in bed. That or eating, but she usually eats dinner at my place because I'm the only person she knows who can cook anything more complex than Hot Pockets."
" 'Your place'?" Blanc says, trailing after you as you grab the spare key from its little nook on the underside of the porch railing. "It's the same building."
"Yeah, well, not all of us have rich parents who can afford to whisk us away to a fancy mansion in the countryside."
"Don't Plutie's parents spend most of their time on a yacht in the Caribbean?"
"While shipping their daughter off to private school on the other side of a continent, yes. Anyway"—you swing open the door to the master bedroom and gesture grandly at the excessively plush decor—"here we are, Casa de la Venetia."
Blanc slips by you into the room and kneels on the aggressively fuchsia colored carpet, digging about in her bag. A moment later she withdraws a large book, wide and flat with thick pages that look almost cardlike in texture, and plops it down on the floor. She flips through until she finds a blank page, then unfolds it, effectively doubling its size.
Then she unfolds it again. And again. And again.
Eventually she stops, satisfied with the surface area of the now expanded page, and dips once more into her bag. You choke when you see what she has in her hand when she pulls it back, and the sound makes her shoot you a questioning look. "What?"
"Nothing, nothing. Just…" you pause to stifle a laugh, then gesture at her hand, "is that a crayon?"
She looks at the stick of colored wax she's holding and shrugs. "Technically?"
You lean against the doorframe and watch as the other girl turns back to her book and begins marking out a complex array of lines and shapes and symbols. "It's just not exactly what I expected your go-to magic calligraphy tool to be. Doesn't seem… fancy enough."
"Wax marker is better at heavy lines than a pencil or ballpoint, and doesn't take half an hour to dry like a fountain pen or brush set would." She marks a small semicircle about a third of the way down the page, the stops and turns back to you. "Okay, so what are her affinities again? It'll make it easier to lock on to her trail if I can narrow it down from the start."
"I uh… Don't actually know for sure."
"You don— Why do you not know each-other's affinities?" She narrows her eyes at you. "Did you… not go in for testing?"
You say nothing, studiously examining the fluffy kitten poster hanging on Plutie's wall (it's one of those cliché ones with the tree branch and "hang in there" slogan), and resist the urge to whistle innocently.
"You didn't, did you?" she accuses. "Don't tell me you're still on that paranoia kick from a while ago."
"It's not paranoia!" you snap back at her. After a moment, you cross your arms and shuffle a bit. "Okay, maybe it's paranoia, but it's justified paranoia."
"Justified my ass," she scowls at you. "Do you honestly think that—"
"Blanc," you cut her off sharply, "we are at war. We are at war with all the Things That Go Bump In The Night. We are at war with literal demons from actual hell. We are at war with a species that can best be described as 'what you get when raw magic and the platonic ideal of malevolence have lots of really, really energetic hate sex'. At least two of those factions have access to shapeshifters, and I'm not about to put money on the Dark Star not having something similar up their weird abstract sleeves.
"We didn't go get our affinities tested because when you go get tested it goes on record, and once it's on record people can read it, because that's what records are for. The more info there is on us the higher the chance that the Unified Darkness gets their hands on it at some point, and if that happens it's only a matter of time before they do what they did with the last set of Drives and drop a human blender on us."
You close your eyes and sigh heavily, before opening them and meeting Blanc's gaze. "I can take a lot of things, Blanc, but last I checked none of the Goddesses were on that list."
Blanc huffs. "I… guess that's fair. It's still really inconvenient though. I don't have anything to narrow the search criteria with, so there's gonna be a ton of white noise interfering with the spell."
You scratch the back of your neck. "I said I didn't know for sure, not that I didn't have any idea at all," you say, which prompts a quizzical look from the other girl.
"I spent some time being introspective and meditating and stuff, and at this point I'm pretty sure that two of my affinities are Justice and Conquest. Plutia did the same thing and came up with Corruption."
Blanc makes a strangled noise. "That is the most imprecise and unreliable method I've ever… You might as well throw darts or draw scrabble tiles out of a bag! I—" She visibly stops herself and takes a long, deep breath before letting it out slowly. "Okay. Okay. It's better than nothing."
She twirls the crayon between her fingers as she turns back to the complex array of shapes lying on the ground. "Corruption though… Interesting…"
You raise an eyebrow. "What's interesting?"
"Nothing, really. It's just that Corruption is one of my affinities as well. Which means that this should be unexpectedly simple if I can sync up the patterning…"
You nod. "Alright then. If you don't need me for anything else, I'm gonna go make sure the car is ready.
Blanc hums in acknowledgement, before stopping and blinking. "Wait…" She spins around and shouts after you as you retreat down the hall, "You have a car?!"
"If you had a car, why didn't you bring that when you came to my house instead of that bike?" Blanc demands a few minutes later, stomping out of the house with her book under one arm and bag under the other.
You stare at her like she just asked whether the sky was blue, and gesture illustratively at the vehicle in question. "Because it's a hatchback."
"…So?" Blanc says, clearly not getting it.
"So it's about as exciting to drive as a farm tractor but with none of the novelty value. Also it makes me look like a soccer mom."
"You, a mom. There's a scary thought."
You scowl at her. "Just get in the car."
She rolls her eyes, but hops into the shotgun position while you lock the house and stow the key back in its nook.
When you slide into the driver's seat and start the engine, Blanc has already placed her book open on the dashboard, the page folded up into a single large square once more, and is rummaging around in her bag again.
"Do you need the car still to do whatever you're doing, or can we go?"
"Give me…" she purses her lips in thought, before grinning triumphantly and withdrawing a large disc-shaped compass, "thirty seconds!"
She slaps the compass down on an equally sized circle in the center of the page, then presses both her thumbs against two symbols near the corners.
"Seek."
The web of lines and symbols briefly fluoresces blue-white, and the compass needle spins wildly for a few seconds before stopping on a direction that you're pretty sure isn't North.
"Okay, now we can go," Blanc says in a satisfied tone.
"You gonna have to recast that if the compass slides around while we're driving?"
She waves a hand dismissively. "No, it's stuck to the page as long as the spell is running."
"What about the book?"
"That isn't stuck to anything, but as long as you don't burn rubber out the driveway or something it should be fine."
You shrug, switch the car into gear, and pull out of the driveway. A couple minutes later, you're out of your neighborhood and on a decently sized road that should take you in roughly the same direction the needle on the compass is pointing.
"So how does that thing work, anyway?" you ask, gesturing at the compass as you change lanes. "Does it track her magic scent trail or something?"
Blanc looks at you weirdly from the corner of her eye. "No, that would be stupid. It's a compass, it only points in one direction. You can't follow a potentially curved path like that."
"So what does it do?"
"It scans for traces of the magical signature it's tuned to, and points toward the freshest, strongest source it can detect, which should obviously be the person with that magical signature."
You frown. "What if she's out of range?"
"It's a big range."
"How big?"
She cocks her head and purses her lips, calculating. "A little more than global? Wouldn't really trust it out past lunar orbit, but unless she can breathe in space…"
"…That's a big range," you say after a moment of stunned silence.
"Tracking spell wouldn't be very useful if it had a bunch of blind spots, now would it?"
"I suppose not."
Conversation trails off after that, and you simply drive in silence for a while. You turn the radio on for a while, then off again once you're out of broadcast range of your usual station. At some point, Blanc fishes a smartphone out of her bag and starts twiddling with some game or other to distract herself.
Eventually you pass a road sign declaring that you are "now leaving Civilization", which prompts you to frown and shoot a glance at the sun hanging low on the horizon, before speaking up and breaking the silence that had filled the last few hours. "Hey, Blanc?"
She blinks and glances up from game of… what looks like Tetris. "Yeah?"
"What time is it?"
"Uhh… Around six PM?"
"And we left a bit before two, so we've been driving for four hours."
"Sounds about right, yeah," she says, returning to her phone.
"We've been driving for four hours at highway speeds, Blanc. We've travelled roughly two hundred miles. Where is she going?"
"I have no idea," she says before trailing off. A moment later she seems to think of something and looks up at the road ahead of you. "It's not impossible she's not going anywhere, other than 'away'."
"But why?"
"I don't know. I guess we'll just have to find her and ask."
You sigh wearily. "I guess so."
The sun is long set when you finally pull over at the side of an empty desert highway and stare grumpily at the compass pointing toward where Plutie is supposed to be. Which, apparently, is to your left and behind you slightly. "Well, I guess we're walking."
Blanc looks at the window skeptically. "Isn't it a bit dark to be wandering around on foot?"
"Car isn't built for off-roading," you say as you undo your seatbelt, "and if you look outside you'll see a distinct lack of road in the direction we need to go."
"Well I might if I could see anything out there, but it's black as pitch outside the beam of the headlights."
You mentally chant your transformation phrase, assuming your magical girl form with a brief burst of radiance, and give Blanc a flat look. "We glow."
She blinks and frowns. "You know, it never occured to me use my fantastical magic super form as a flashlight. Not sure how to feel about that."
"Slow," you quip, opening the door and stepping out of the car. Blanc scowls and sticks her tongue out at you, but starts undoing her own seatbelt all the same.
You grab the book and compass off the dashboard while Blanc grabs her bag and circles around the car to join you. You raise an eyebrow when she passes you the aforementioned bag, but accept it wordlessly.
Moving a few steps away, she closes her eyes and shivers slightly in the cold night air, before taking a deep breath, and declaring, "From the Engine, I attain! I am Magical Girl Victory Drive!"
A pillar of light erupts where she stands, and for the briefest instant you think you catch her silhouette dissolving and reforming, but then the moment is past, and she stands before you in the full regalia of a magical girl.
Blanc's magical girl form is… well the first words that comes to mind are "clean" and "streamlined". Lots of white with some light blues as accents, and bright red eyes for that bit of contrast. No frills though, which is a minus.
You give her a thumbs-up. "Eight out of ten!"
"I… what?" she asks, taken aback.
"Your transformation phrase has a good amount of gravitas, the lightshow is decently flashy, and your transformed aesthetics are solid, if a bit lacking in spots. You need to work on your delivery if you're going for dramatics, though. Maybe throw in a grand gesture or two?"
"What are you on about? How is any of that relevant?"
You blink and shrug. "I suppose it isn't really. Force of habit from all the practice Penny ropes me into."
She sighs and rolls her eyes, rectangular panes of light springing from her back like wings as she lifts off the ground and floats closer to you. "Just give me my bag back and let's go."
Once you pass her her Sack-O-Stuff and lock the car, the pair of you set off following the compass. You watch the needle intently as you go, which is why you notice immediately when, about a hundred yards from the road, the needle abruptly jerks 40 degrees to the right and begins vibrating intensely. You stop, looking up and around at the absolutely nothing nearby, then carefully reorient yourself toward its new heading and begin to pace forward. You make it about ten steps before the needle spins fully around twice and freezes pointing 90 degrees to your left.
"Hey, uh, Blanc?" you call out, staring at the compass in befuddlement.
The other girls drifts down from where she was hovering for a better vantage point. "What?"
"I think it's broken?"
"What? That's stupid, it can't be bro—" she cuts off and stares when you flip the book around and hold it up so she can see the compass needle ticking like a clock.
"…It's not supposed to do that."
"I kinda figured."
Blanc drops to the ground and gently but firmly takes the book from you, unfolding the page to scan across the magic squiggles that make the spell work. "I have no idea what's causing this. It's like the spell is trying to follow the signature in a direction it can't comprehend."
"So she's… above or below us?"
She shakes her head. "No, that's just up and down. Compass might have a little trouble conveying three-dimensional stuff, but the spell should comprehend it just fine. This is more like… I don't know what this is like."
Well that's more than a little worrying. "So what do we do then?"
Blanc shrugs helplessly. "I could try to put something together to try and find out what happened in this area recently? Not something I could manage in the dark though, so we'd have to camp in the van or go find a motel."
The mention of a motel sparks a memory and you perk up. "There's a town a few miles from here, isn't there? We passed it while driving. Maybe someone there will know what happened, or at least have seen her pass through."
Another shrug. "One's about as likely to work as the other, it's up to you."
[] Head back to town, acquire a hotel room for the night, and ask around to see if anyone knows anything.
[] Camp in the van and start trying to put together a better tracking spell once the sun comes up.
+100xp Still not your first rodeo.
+10xp Witnessed Victory Drive's transformation sequence (and provided constructive criticism).
+5xp What is dead may never die.
115 EXP Gained = 181 EXP Total!
[] EXP Plan?
[] Save your EXP
A/N: I am… not satisfied with this chapter. However it's been entirely too long since the last update, so here you go. On the off chance this still has some readers after that awful gap between updates, be sure to thank @Mellithae for helping me get past that last bit of writer's block and actually finish the update.
Blanc nods. "Alright, I'll grab my bags, we can go after you're done eating."
——/LINEBREAK IDENTIFIED\——
You sit on your bike and stare bemusedly at Blanc while she fusses over the twins. Twenty minutes ago she was raring to go, but every time it seemed like you were ready, she would remember something else she needed to check on.
"—And you know where the first aid kit is if you need it, right?"
"Yes, we know where the first aid kit is," Argentée says, rolling her eyes. "Honestly, you're just finding excuses to procrastinate at this point. Papa's due back home in a day or two anyway, we'll be fine until then."
Blanc frowns and opens her mouth to say something but Perle cuts in before she can. "Argentée's right, Sis. We'll be fine, and you should go. It's important, and Mary needs your help, right?"
Blanc is silent for a moment, before she steps forward and pulls her sisters into a tight hug, which they return. They stay that way long enough for you to start wondering if you should look away and give them some space, but then Blanc breaks the embrace and straightens up, turning to you.
"You ready?"
"Yeah, let's go."
You nod and start the engine as Blanc climbs onto the bike behind you and fastens on her helmet, then the pair of you pull out down the driveway, leaving the twins' waving and wishes of good luck behind.
The ride back down to the States is mostly spent in silence, save for when Blanc needs to give you directions so you don't get lost.
Eventually, you pull into your driveway and kill the engine, twisting around to look at Blanc as she clambers stiffly off the bike. "Alright, we're here. You're the magic expert, what do we do now?"
Blanc grunts and stretches. "Hmm. Probably best to do the initial setup somewhere she spends a lot of time, make it easier to get a lock on her signature."
"Would her bedroom work?"
"Yeah, probably…" She trails off and squints at you suspiciously. "Do I want to know why that was the first thing you thought of?"
You snort and dismount from your bike, strolling across the driveway to the other side of the duplex you live in. "Girl sleeps more than a cat. If she's at home, the chances are pretty high she's in bed. That or eating, but she usually eats dinner at my place because I'm the only person she knows who can cook anything more complex than Hot Pockets."
" 'Your place'?" Blanc says, trailing after you as you grab the spare key from its little nook on the underside of the porch railing. "It's the same building."
"Yeah, well, not all of us have rich parents who can afford to whisk us away to a fancy mansion in the countryside."
"Don't Plutie's parents spend most of their time on a yacht in the Caribbean?"
"While shipping their daughter off to private school on the other side of a continent, yes. Anyway"—you swing open the door to the master bedroom and gesture grandly at the excessively plush decor—"here we are, Casa de la Venetia."
Blanc slips by you into the room and kneels on the aggressively fuchsia colored carpet, digging about in her bag. A moment later she withdraws a large book, wide and flat with thick pages that look almost cardlike in texture, and plops it down on the floor. She flips through until she finds a blank page, then unfolds it, effectively doubling its size.
Then she unfolds it again. And again. And again.
Eventually she stops, satisfied with the surface area of the now expanded page, and dips once more into her bag. You choke when you see what she has in her hand when she pulls it back, and the sound makes her shoot you a questioning look. "What?"
"Nothing, nothing. Just…" you pause to stifle a laugh, then gesture at her hand, "is that a crayon?"
She looks at the stick of colored wax she's holding and shrugs. "Technically?"
You lean against the doorframe and watch as the other girl turns back to her book and begins marking out a complex array of lines and shapes and symbols. "It's just not exactly what I expected your go-to magic calligraphy tool to be. Doesn't seem… fancy enough."
"Wax marker is better at heavy lines than a pencil or ballpoint, and doesn't take half an hour to dry like a fountain pen or brush set would." She marks a small semicircle about a third of the way down the page, the stops and turns back to you. "Okay, so what are her affinities again? It'll make it easier to lock on to her trail if I can narrow it down from the start."
"I uh… Don't actually know for sure."
"You don— Why do you not know each-other's affinities?" She narrows her eyes at you. "Did you… not go in for testing?"
You say nothing, studiously examining the fluffy kitten poster hanging on Plutie's wall (it's one of those cliché ones with the tree branch and "hang in there" slogan), and resist the urge to whistle innocently.
"You didn't, did you?" she accuses. "Don't tell me you're still on that paranoia kick from a while ago."
"It's not paranoia!" you snap back at her. After a moment, you cross your arms and shuffle a bit. "Okay, maybe it's paranoia, but it's justified paranoia."
"Justified my ass," she scowls at you. "Do you honestly think that—"
"Blanc," you cut her off sharply, "we are at war. We are at war with all the Things That Go Bump In The Night. We are at war with literal demons from actual hell. We are at war with a species that can best be described as 'what you get when raw magic and the platonic ideal of malevolence have lots of really, really energetic hate sex'. At least two of those factions have access to shapeshifters, and I'm not about to put money on the Dark Star not having something similar up their weird abstract sleeves.
"We didn't go get our affinities tested because when you go get tested it goes on record, and once it's on record people can read it, because that's what records are for. The more info there is on us the higher the chance that the Unified Darkness gets their hands on it at some point, and if that happens it's only a matter of time before they do what they did with the last set of Drives and drop a human blender on us."
You close your eyes and sigh heavily, before opening them and meeting Blanc's gaze. "I can take a lot of things, Blanc, but last I checked none of the Goddesses were on that list."
Blanc huffs. "I… guess that's fair. It's still really inconvenient though. I don't have anything to narrow the search criteria with, so there's gonna be a ton of white noise interfering with the spell."
You scratch the back of your neck. "I said I didn't know for sure, not that I didn't have any idea at all," you say, which prompts a quizzical look from the other girl.
"I spent some time being introspective and meditating and stuff, and at this point I'm pretty sure that two of my affinities are Justice and Conquest. Plutia did the same thing and came up with Corruption."
Blanc makes a strangled noise. "That is the most imprecise and unreliable method I've ever… You might as well throw darts or draw scrabble tiles out of a bag! I—" She visibly stops herself and takes a long, deep breath before letting it out slowly. "Okay. Okay. It's better than nothing."
She twirls the crayon between her fingers as she turns back to the complex array of shapes lying on the ground. "Corruption though… Interesting…"
You raise an eyebrow. "What's interesting?"
"Nothing, really. It's just that Corruption is one of my affinities as well. Which means that this should be unexpectedly simple if I can sync up the patterning…"
You nod. "Alright then. If you don't need me for anything else, I'm gonna go make sure the car is ready.
Blanc hums in acknowledgement, before stopping and blinking. "Wait…" She spins around and shouts after you as you retreat down the hall, "You have a car?!"
——/LINEBREAK IDENTIFIED\——
"If you had a car, why didn't you bring that when you came to my house instead of that bike?" Blanc demands a few minutes later, stomping out of the house with her book under one arm and bag under the other.
You stare at her like she just asked whether the sky was blue, and gesture illustratively at the vehicle in question. "Because it's a hatchback."
"…So?" Blanc says, clearly not getting it.
"So it's about as exciting to drive as a farm tractor but with none of the novelty value. Also it makes me look like a soccer mom."
"You, a mom. There's a scary thought."
You scowl at her. "Just get in the car."
She rolls her eyes, but hops into the shotgun position while you lock the house and stow the key back in its nook.
When you slide into the driver's seat and start the engine, Blanc has already placed her book open on the dashboard, the page folded up into a single large square once more, and is rummaging around in her bag again.
"Do you need the car still to do whatever you're doing, or can we go?"
"Give me…" she purses her lips in thought, before grinning triumphantly and withdrawing a large disc-shaped compass, "thirty seconds!"
She slaps the compass down on an equally sized circle in the center of the page, then presses both her thumbs against two symbols near the corners.
"Seek."
The web of lines and symbols briefly fluoresces blue-white, and the compass needle spins wildly for a few seconds before stopping on a direction that you're pretty sure isn't North.
"Okay, now we can go," Blanc says in a satisfied tone.
"You gonna have to recast that if the compass slides around while we're driving?"
She waves a hand dismissively. "No, it's stuck to the page as long as the spell is running."
"What about the book?"
"That isn't stuck to anything, but as long as you don't burn rubber out the driveway or something it should be fine."
You shrug, switch the car into gear, and pull out of the driveway. A couple minutes later, you're out of your neighborhood and on a decently sized road that should take you in roughly the same direction the needle on the compass is pointing.
"So how does that thing work, anyway?" you ask, gesturing at the compass as you change lanes. "Does it track her magic scent trail or something?"
Blanc looks at you weirdly from the corner of her eye. "No, that would be stupid. It's a compass, it only points in one direction. You can't follow a potentially curved path like that."
"So what does it do?"
"It scans for traces of the magical signature it's tuned to, and points toward the freshest, strongest source it can detect, which should obviously be the person with that magical signature."
You frown. "What if she's out of range?"
"It's a big range."
"How big?"
She cocks her head and purses her lips, calculating. "A little more than global? Wouldn't really trust it out past lunar orbit, but unless she can breathe in space…"
"…That's a big range," you say after a moment of stunned silence.
"Tracking spell wouldn't be very useful if it had a bunch of blind spots, now would it?"
"I suppose not."
Conversation trails off after that, and you simply drive in silence for a while. You turn the radio on for a while, then off again once you're out of broadcast range of your usual station. At some point, Blanc fishes a smartphone out of her bag and starts twiddling with some game or other to distract herself.
Eventually you pass a road sign declaring that you are "now leaving Civilization", which prompts you to frown and shoot a glance at the sun hanging low on the horizon, before speaking up and breaking the silence that had filled the last few hours. "Hey, Blanc?"
She blinks and glances up from game of… what looks like Tetris. "Yeah?"
"What time is it?"
"Uhh… Around six PM?"
"And we left a bit before two, so we've been driving for four hours."
"Sounds about right, yeah," she says, returning to her phone.
"We've been driving for four hours at highway speeds, Blanc. We've travelled roughly two hundred miles. Where is she going?"
"I have no idea," she says before trailing off. A moment later she seems to think of something and looks up at the road ahead of you. "It's not impossible she's not going anywhere, other than 'away'."
"But why?"
"I don't know. I guess we'll just have to find her and ask."
You sigh wearily. "I guess so."
——/LINEBREAK IDENTIFIED\——
The sun is long set when you finally pull over at the side of an empty desert highway and stare grumpily at the compass pointing toward where Plutie is supposed to be. Which, apparently, is to your left and behind you slightly. "Well, I guess we're walking."
Blanc looks at the window skeptically. "Isn't it a bit dark to be wandering around on foot?"
"Car isn't built for off-roading," you say as you undo your seatbelt, "and if you look outside you'll see a distinct lack of road in the direction we need to go."
"Well I might if I could see anything out there, but it's black as pitch outside the beam of the headlights."
You mentally chant your transformation phrase, assuming your magical girl form with a brief burst of radiance, and give Blanc a flat look. "We glow."
She blinks and frowns. "You know, it never occured to me use my fantastical magic super form as a flashlight. Not sure how to feel about that."
"Slow," you quip, opening the door and stepping out of the car. Blanc scowls and sticks her tongue out at you, but starts undoing her own seatbelt all the same.
You grab the book and compass off the dashboard while Blanc grabs her bag and circles around the car to join you. You raise an eyebrow when she passes you the aforementioned bag, but accept it wordlessly.
Moving a few steps away, she closes her eyes and shivers slightly in the cold night air, before taking a deep breath, and declaring, "From the Engine, I attain! I am Magical Girl Victory Drive!"
A pillar of light erupts where she stands, and for the briefest instant you think you catch her silhouette dissolving and reforming, but then the moment is past, and she stands before you in the full regalia of a magical girl.
Blanc's magical girl form is… well the first words that comes to mind are "clean" and "streamlined". Lots of white with some light blues as accents, and bright red eyes for that bit of contrast. No frills though, which is a minus.
You give her a thumbs-up. "Eight out of ten!"
"I… what?" she asks, taken aback.
"Your transformation phrase has a good amount of gravitas, the lightshow is decently flashy, and your transformed aesthetics are solid, if a bit lacking in spots. You need to work on your delivery if you're going for dramatics, though. Maybe throw in a grand gesture or two?"
"What are you on about? How is any of that relevant?"
You blink and shrug. "I suppose it isn't really. Force of habit from all the practice Penny ropes me into."
She sighs and rolls her eyes, rectangular panes of light springing from her back like wings as she lifts off the ground and floats closer to you. "Just give me my bag back and let's go."
Once you pass her her Sack-O-Stuff and lock the car, the pair of you set off following the compass. You watch the needle intently as you go, which is why you notice immediately when, about a hundred yards from the road, the needle abruptly jerks 40 degrees to the right and begins vibrating intensely. You stop, looking up and around at the absolutely nothing nearby, then carefully reorient yourself toward its new heading and begin to pace forward. You make it about ten steps before the needle spins fully around twice and freezes pointing 90 degrees to your left.
"Hey, uh, Blanc?" you call out, staring at the compass in befuddlement.
The other girls drifts down from where she was hovering for a better vantage point. "What?"
"I think it's broken?"
"What? That's stupid, it can't be bro—" she cuts off and stares when you flip the book around and hold it up so she can see the compass needle ticking like a clock.
"…It's not supposed to do that."
"I kinda figured."
Blanc drops to the ground and gently but firmly takes the book from you, unfolding the page to scan across the magic squiggles that make the spell work. "I have no idea what's causing this. It's like the spell is trying to follow the signature in a direction it can't comprehend."
"So she's… above or below us?"
She shakes her head. "No, that's just up and down. Compass might have a little trouble conveying three-dimensional stuff, but the spell should comprehend it just fine. This is more like… I don't know what this is like."
Well that's more than a little worrying. "So what do we do then?"
Blanc shrugs helplessly. "I could try to put something together to try and find out what happened in this area recently? Not something I could manage in the dark though, so we'd have to camp in the van or go find a motel."
The mention of a motel sparks a memory and you perk up. "There's a town a few miles from here, isn't there? We passed it while driving. Maybe someone there will know what happened, or at least have seen her pass through."
Another shrug. "One's about as likely to work as the other, it's up to you."
[] Head back to town, acquire a hotel room for the night, and ask around to see if anyone knows anything.
[] Camp in the van and start trying to put together a better tracking spell once the sun comes up.
+100xp Still not your first rodeo.
+10xp Witnessed Victory Drive's transformation sequence (and provided constructive criticism).
+5xp What is dead may never die.
115 EXP Gained = 181 EXP Total!
[] EXP Plan?
[] Save your EXP
A/N: I am… not satisfied with this chapter. However it's been entirely too long since the last update, so here you go. On the off chance this still has some readers after that awful gap between updates, be sure to thank @Mellithae for helping me get past that last bit of writer's block and actually finish the update.
Last edited:
...She lives in a world where inter-dimensional travel is a fact of life, and she doesn't consider that?
- Location
- Ekaterinburg, Russia
There's also the ominous "Now leaving Civilization" signpost, since older communities can serve as anchors for anti-incursion wards. Chances of "kidnapped by demons" rising...
Decim
On again, off again lurker.
- Location
- St. Louis, MO
Is Blanc sure that the spell isn't targeting her? And another thing to try is triangulation. Take a bearing, drive half an hour, take another bearing and do some math wizardry to get an approximate distance they need to go. Of course, if the spell is fucked, it might not matter anyways.