To make people actually remember, here's it once for posterity: Minako is nonbinary and uses they/them. This message will be pinned so you people stop getting it wrong and pissing me off. If you get it wrong in the future I'm going to be much less nice, considering you have to scroll past it just to read the quest.
We may be putting the cart before the horse here. After all, we don't know yet whether Reika's actually interested in contracting, or even learning more about the crazy magical ecosystem she stumbled across. Not everyone's interested a protagonist lifestyle, after all.
[X] Discuss it with Reika. (DIFFICULTY 2)
-[X] Figure out whether she's interested learning more about the Magi world, or just wants to pretend it never happened.
-[X] If she does express interest in contracting, then you can hit her with the harsh truths: the painful battles, the scarcity wars over Grief Seeds...and the Witch issue.
[X] Discuss it with Reika. (DIFFICULTY 2)
-[X] Figure out whether she's interested learning more about the Magi world, or just wants to pretend it never happened.
-[X] If she does express interest in contracting, then you can hit her with the harsh truths: the painful battles, the scarcity wars over Grief Seeds...and the Witch issue.
[X] Discuss it with Reika. (DIFFICULTY 2)
-[X] Figure out whether she's interested learning more about the Magi world, or just wants to pretend it never happened.
-[X] If she does express interest in contracting, then you can hit her with the harsh truths: the painful battles, the scarcity wars over Grief Seeds...and the Witch issue.
[X] Discuss it with Reika. (DIFFICULTY 2)
-[X] Figure out whether she's interested learning more about the Magi world, or just wants to pretend it never happened.
-[X] If she does express interest in contracting, then you can hit her with the harsh truths: the painful battles, the scarcity wars over Grief Seeds...and the Witch issue.
'Yeah, I guess it is.' You look down your foot towards Reika on the floor. You bite your lip. You're hesitant. You really don't wanna talk about it with her.
You could just completely fuck it up.
You could completely fuck it up right here right now. Orrr...
You breathe in again. "Hey, Reika?"
Her head immediately whips back a bit too quickly for your taste. "Mina?"
"Have you been uh...thinking about the other day?" Probably not the best way to bring it up. You kick yourself mentally. "You know-"
"I don't wanna think about it," she says back. It's curt and quick and sharp. "I don't wanna think about it, no."
You look away. "Ah...right." You almost feel a little disappointed. Then you kick yourself for being disappointed that your friend doesn't want to know how hard you could die at any minute. A scan of her emotionscape and...well, it tells a different story.
It shows that tiny island with a telescope. It stretches, trying to peer through the swirling clouds in the tempest, through the edge of the world and out the side. Except the lens shatters, and then the actual metal tube bends and breaks and flies out into the wind.
You stare at her. She glances back at you to see if you're still staring at her. She frowns. "What?"
"I can tell when you're lying now."
She glances towards the ring around your finger. She narrows her eyes at you. "You...Mina, that's invasive as fuck."
You wince at that. "I'm sorry, I can't help it. It's just...okay I made a fuckup so it's just-" wait no you're on the defensive stop that "-it's just that I don't want you to do that."
"Do...what? Learn more about magi?" Reika finally turns around and puts her controller down. "Because yeah, I guess I do wanna know more. Because you're one, right?"
You blink. "How'd you gue...wait."
Reika gives you a smug grin.
You stick your tongue out at her. "Fuck you."
"Nah." She waves her hand at you. "But you're a magi now?"
"Yeah. I did it, uh, like the night afterwards. I don't...I just...ugh..." You bite your lip. "...I felt excluded, kinda? I guess? I just felt like everyone was leaving me out of everything and I was sick of it. Then I kinda fucked up and made a wish because I just...wanted to know better?"
Reika's eyes are half-lidded. "And now you do?"
You grimace. "...yyyeaaaah."
Reika laughs quietly. "Mina you absolute dumbass."
"Nnnnegh." You wiggle as Takane just flops herself over and wraps her arms around your waist.
Takane giggles. "That is incredibly cute. I hope you know that."
"Mnoh."
Reika waves her hand. "But...how does it work? I mean, I'm curious. How does being a magi work?"
As she asks, Takane's papa comes back in. "How does being a what work?"
"A magi," you say. "I'm uhh..."
"They're talking about an anime, papa." Takane says. "It's a show about magical people that fight monsters."
"Oohhh. So it's like a magical girl show."
"A..bit?" You shrug. "I mean it's not just girls."
"No, no! It's good! I just watched a lot of Sailor Moon as a kid." He laughs, before he does a dramatic pose. More specifically, he imitates Usagi's pose from the same show. Two fingers over his eyes, legs wide, hip turned out.
"Oh, oh my gosh, papa." Takane buries her face in her hands.
"I'm the one they call Saila Moon~! It was a pretty big show back in the states!" He sighs. "Tuxedo Mask was still my first crush."
You snicker. "Yeah, well, this show's uhhh..." Shit, now you gotta lie. "This show's about magical people. Basically in this world, uhhh, magical girls are just an offshoot of uh, magi. As in magical people, but they're just called 'magi'. 'Cause it's shorter n' shhhiii-" You look at Takane.
Takane's already moving her hand to her neck repeatedly.
"Stuff. Easier to say. But fights are...brutal. They're not majestic or cool they're just brutal. The witches don't take turns, they don't wait to attack, they just do. Magi fight with each other for uhh..."
"They're fighting over a scarce resource. And they rarely get along. Or if they do, the alliances are tenuous at best and fragile at worst. It's an...awful world they live in." Takane side-eyes you.
You nod back at her, then at Reika. "Kinda interesting."
"Sounds a bit grim for my tastes." Her papa shrugs. He's clearly oblivious. "I can't really keep up with too much anime anymore. I'm kinda busy with my own work, y'know."
Takane sticks out her tongue. "Papa, you write."
"Yeah, I do! Writing is tough!" He finally walks out of the room, up the stairway and to the master bedroom.
You glance back at Reika. "Yeah, it's not pretty. That thing that Takane fought? That was-"
"A witch. I can't forget that shit." Reika mutters. "And they drop that...needle-thing that looks like the monument?"
"They drop grief seeds, yes. Grief seeds are that resource. And magi need 'em to survive."
Reika nods. "So it's just a...nonstop fight for survival."
"It is. Witches will cause people to die. They...I mean they almost killed you."
Reika looks away. "Yeah...yeah."
You expect her to keep talking, to keep asking some questions. Except, well, that doesn't happen. What happens instead is that she turns back to her game. And you and Takane keep waiting for her to ask something else.
You fall asleep before that happens.
[=]
An hour later and you wake up. Takane is sleeping on your shoulder. Her papa must have turned off the lights when he came back downstairs to check on you. Reika is asleep too, wrapped in a sleeping bag on top of a futon. You keep yourself still; you don't want to wake Takane up. She doesn't need that right now.
You keep your eyes forward. Why are you awake? You turn your eyes to the side to see...
'Hello, Minako Miki-Sakura. It has been a few days.'
Your breath catches in your throat. You freeze as a tiny pink glow brightens the dark room. You stare at the creature and it simply stares right back. This tiny, cat-like creature that somehow made it inside.
'What the fuck do you want,' you hiss. 'You left out an important detail, you lying sack of shit.'
'Perhaps I did. But you were given far more information than most magi ever receive. Though perhaps that's because of your nature as the child of magi.'
'Fuck you. What do you even get out of it anyway?'
'Energy.' The creature says simply, with no hesitation. It's speaking like it's talking about what sandwich it had last night, or the lamb it sent to the slaughter. 'A witch is an enormous source of energy. Souls betray entropy and they ignore the nature of a deterministic universe. Most energy simply changes into a less useful form, but metaphysics do not follow the same rules.'
'What are you even talking about?' You narrow your eyes.
'Well, I could show you.' The creature stares at you. It flicks its tail and licks its paw. 'But that is up to you, Minako Miki-Sakura.'
In absolutely no way should they play along with Kyuubey. It wouldn't be here if it didn't think this would somehow hurt Minako and/or Minako's parents.
I always kind of wondered if the incubators were actually evil, or if they were just emotionlessly dedicated to utilitarian ethics. They say they're fighting against "entropy", implying that they're prolonging the lifespan of the universe. The universe is a big place, and apparently has aliens in it. Maybe the maths works out, and in their unfeeling way they determined that torturing and killing a teenage girl is ethically correct, because staving off the death of the universe and everyone in it for another 5 minutes was worth it. A trolley problem writ large. I'd kind of like to see a story or quest take that idea and run with it. Is it really right to make people suffer so other people benefit more? Does a small good spread out across massive numbers of people outweigh acute individual suffering? Should we walk away from Omelas?
Of course I'm pretty sure in this quest they're just sociopaths looking out for themselves and can't be trusted, so fuck Kyubey and his beady little eyes.
[X] Tell it to fuck off
I always kind of wondered if the incubators were actually evil, or if they were just emotionlessly dedicated to utilitarian ethics. They say they're fighting against "entropy", implying that they're prolonging the lifespan of the universe. The universe is a big place, and apparently has aliens in it. Maybe the maths works out, and in their unfeeling way they determined that torturing and killing a teenage girl, because staving off the death of the universe and everyone in it for another 5 minutes was worth it. A trolley problem writ large. I'd kind of like to see a story or quest take that idea and run with it.
Of course I'm pretty sure in this quest they're just sociopaths looking out for themselves and can't be trusted, so fuck Kyubey and his beady little eyes.
[X] Tell it to fuck off
I think its both canonically. The reason that Incubators don't do this to their own species is that the energy comes from emotions and their own species is emotionless.
They literally do not have the capacity for empathy to understand why humans find their practices horrific. And so they just brush it off as humans not really understanding the maths and logic behind it.
Probably going to be deeply unfun, but it could be valuable. Also? Being plugged into an incubator might actually give us some hints as to how we might hurt the little bastard. Going brain-to-brain with a witch messed it up pretty good, right?
are we about to see Mina's first QB frag?
