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.
Was that the first Nat1 we've had, or am I forgetting a previous one?
That was... pretty brutal. All around.
Well, shit.
[X] Push back. (DIFFICULTY 1 - She's heavily injured, but this will prolong the fight.)
If I say it's unlikely that we'll get two Nat1s meaning that getting one now means the next roll won't be a Nat1, that's a fallacy.
However! It's still 1/20 odds of getting a Nat 1. Let us sacrifice some goats and let Kyouko kick this guca's ass. We need to know what Rin's magic does to adults.
[X] Push back. (DIFFICULTY 1 - She's heavily injured, but this will prolong the fight.)
You twist your body. Three arms are on her shoulder, two on her neck. You turn yourself around as fast as you can manage, heels tight against the ground before you yank. She tumbles across the ground as you take a step forward.
"This isn't fair." You give her a shrug. "Probably should've gone after me with more than just yourself!"
You twirl one spear over your head before plunging three downwards. She deflects one spearhead, but two still slam into her thigh. She screams in pain as the leg is severed, as she crawls backward on just one leg.
She tries to scream at you, but blood just dribbles down her chin as she scrambles away.
"Yeah, don't try it," you hiss. She brings another machete out of her chest and throws it at you, but you don't even flinch as you bat it out of the air. "Give it up. You're wasting both of our time. You ain't escaping, we're not letting you go back to Rin, and I ain't gonna kill you." You lean down. "Not if you cooperate."
She spits in your face. It drips down your cheek in a line of red, and you don't even bother to wipe it off before the red-hot air sears it off. "Yeah, well-"
Suddenly, the rat climbs out of the lava. The thing squeals and screams, looking less flesh and more bone as it tears across the surface. The tail whips across the molten earth, rushing underneath you with a woosh. You leap into the air while your mystery magi raises a new machete. The tail wraps around the weapon and drags her across the surface, then curls and spins to place her right back onto the rat's back.
She plunges her machete into its spine and the witch howls in pain before it stumbles and tumbles and threatens to throw her off, an effort that continues until she yanks the blade forward
Flame spews from the wound and its eyes glow with renewed purpose as it stumbles ahead, teeth gnashing and grinding and open wide to bite.
Except this time, you're prepared. She's injured. You're not doing great, but you still have twelve limbs at the ready.
She raises her machete and extends it into a hideously long blade. You duck to your left. The blade slices off three of your hands,before plunging itself deep into your real forearm. But you still have six spears.
And they all dive right into the rat's eye and explode out the other side in a rain of white-hot bone and tissue and lava.
The rat stumbles onto its side, momentum carrying it forwards as you let your spears go. It claws at nothing, trying to run as it tears itself apart, as bone turns to molten lava and skin boils away and the magi riding it tumbles across the ground.
She comes to a dead stop against a dumpster with the loud crash of her back against metal, the impact enough to dent it and send several metric tonnes' worth of trash rolling backwards.
You stand up to your full height, bloodied, beaten, bruised, and in desperate need of your wife's healing touch.
"Fucking hell."
You walk to the magi on the ground, whose uniform has transformed back into the sapphire and green that you saw her in before. She spits on the ground, less in disrespect and more to get some of the blood out of her mouth. She raises a knife weakly over her head and throws it.
It barely even clatters against the ground.
"Persistent. I know someone like that." You lean down. "Look, either you cooperate with me or I slice your arm off, and trust me, you're really not in a good enough state to be making demands."
She gives you a withering glare. You pause for a moment, then let her talk to you.
'I'm not stupid. I figured that much.'
"Heh." You cross your arms. "Also, witch control? Interesting. Didn't know that was possible."
'It's...potential-dependent. Rare.' She glares up at you.
"More talkative now that you're beat?"
She raises a hand, in which materializes her soul gem. She slowly begins to raise it to her mouth, her teeth wide open, just about to bite down it...and then you decide that's enough.
You impale her arm with a polearm that's as thick as her torso. The blade slices through flesh and bone like a hot knife through butter as she screams in pain, as both her arm and the soul gem hit the floor of the alleyway. You wince at that, but at the same time, your sympathy is running low.
"Sorry. We really can't have you doing that."
She keeps screaming, a scream that tells you she hasn't been injured much in the past. It's a scream that you haven't heard for a while. 'F-fuck you. You fucking whore.'
"I've been called worse." You roll your neck and squat down, one hand on your knee and three more holding spears over your shoulder. "And trust me, we're gonna get you fixed up. Just don't expect to leave easily."
You turn away, partially to focus yourself, partially to avoid looking at her. 'Hey. Saya. We got an adult magi over here. She's one of Rin's.'
[=]
Your name is Minako, and right now you're staring at the door as your mom says something behind it. You twiddle your thumbs.
Your mom is a cop. You wonder if she and your mama are going to do a good cop/bad cop thing, like you've seen in a lot of crime shows. But to be honest, those were all American crime shows. And America is nothing like Japan, let alone Mitakihara. You keep playing with your hands, wondering when she's going to come outside, probably with the soul gem in hand.
Finally she leaves, and as she does, she tosses the soul gem across the hallway. You follow it down, right into Tomo's open palm.
She catches it, and Sayaka gives her a nod. "I'll signal you if things go south. The second they do, bolt."
"Gotcha." Tomo nods, then walks towards the balcony. The carpet, a garish combination of greens and reds underneath your feet, looks a bit like vomit to your eye, and the cheap fluorescent lights make you feel like death. You can't imagine how anyone can live in this godforsaken apartment building, but you suppose when people are desperate for housing they'll live anywhere.
You pause. You wonder how Mami can live in this apartment complex.
You saw into her head. You saw the way she decorated her mental space. She would fit here like...something that doesn't fit well at all.
Like an old person and memes. But then again, your grandma managed just fine; she's a sixty-year-old meme goblin. You have no idea how she managed that.
So maybe that's not actually a good analogy. And this train of thought leads you to realize that the "Cursed Boomer Memes" twitter is now older than you are.
It's then that you notice your mom and your mama talking to each other down the hall. You cough into your fist, then you lean back and look up at the ceiling.
'Takaneeeeee...'
'Minako?'
'I'm bored and scared and nervous.'
A pause. Then an answer. 'Do you want to go anywhere? Maybe meet with Mami?'
'Meet...maybe? I'm still wondering how we'd do that.'
'Well, I'm with her. I could just ask.'
You freeze, then you cough into your fist. 'I'll uh...actually I'll think on that. But I do wanna go do something with you. Later. After talking to this...lady. Here.' You turn to the door. It's no bigger than any other door here, but it feels enormous. Like just pressing into it will send it falling right on top of you.
You turn your head back to your parents, and your mama immediately tilts her head towards you. Sayaka takes a deep, deep sigh. "Hey, Mina."
"Do you want me to...scan her?" you ask
She takes a deep, deep breath. "Adult magi are...rare. Incredibly rare. I have no idea how we'd get through to her, if that's even possible."
You almost ask if your mom could just interrogate this woman, but you immediately realize how stupid that would be. You look down to the floor.
Your mama moves quickly. "If you don't feel safe, we don't have to, okay, Mina?"
You scratch the back of your head. It's not about feeling safe, though you honestly find the idea of being in a room with a magi with way more experience than you to be absolutely fucking terrifying.
But at the same time? At the same time you also know that there's not a lot of ways for anyone to get through. You were able to deprogram those other magi quickly enough; they have rooms downstairs now, just underneath this floor. But this one?
...one particularly devious way to get at Minako would be to send someone in to deliberately sandbag a fight, so that Minako would come to them to reverse the brainwashing, followed by some extreme trump card.
I'm pretty sure you aren't THAT sadistic, Moid. At least, when you aren't rolling dice...
A/N: Apologies for the delay! Ring of Power is kind of intense!
[X] Go into the room. (DIFFICULTY ???)
"I'll do it," you finally say.
Your parents stare at one another, a million thoughts undoubtedly running through their minds. After a second or two, your mom turns to face you. "You sure?"
"No." You stand up. "But I'm gonna do it anyway. Fuck it."
You take a step towards the door. Towards that ominous, awful-looking brown door. You grip your hand around the doorknob, hard enough for it to creak under your grip.
Your mom puts her hand on yours. "Hey, don't damage it."
"Sorry," you whisper. You pull the door open slooooowly, agonizingly slowly. And there, sitting in the chair, is the woman. She has one hand on her elbow, the other through her hair. She's in a plain shirt and a big, blue coat, with a skirt around her knees and ankle warmers around her shoes. Her coat is open as she sits, glancing between your parents.
"A kid? You're bringing a kid in here? What's she-"
"They."
"What are they-" they hiss the word out, and ohh, oh you already hate this condescending bitch, "-here for? You really want to insult me by-"
You've heard enough. You close your eyes. Your chest gets a little bit tighter, and you're pretty sure it's not your binder as two eyes shimmer into existence over your chest and open wide.
You're in the woman's emotionscape. And what you see is a sea of concrete. Massive, brutalist towers of solid stone jut out, looking like basalt pillars as they slowly slide out of the ground towards the sky. The air is thick with dust and a faint glow from overhead...
A faint glow. You look up to the sky, and there you can see it. You can see the light of a halo, piercing the clouds.
With Mami it was blinding. With the younger magi, it's always a blistering, white-hot light that shines so brightly through the clouds that it dominates your vision, turns everything a combination of red.
But here?
Here it's nothing like that. Your figure in the emotionscape squints, and your third eye opens. The light shimmers as you become more solid, as you touch down in the grey and slowly wander through the sea of rock and fog.
"Ah, so that's why they brought you in."
You freeze in place. You turn around, ethereal hoodie hanging off your back as you try to spot the source of the voice.
"Clever. Thinking they could pry into my mind with a child that can sense emotion. And with anyone else it might have worked."
You keep searching around, your breath quickening, your eyes wide open as suddenly, you see it. You see a figure through the fog, a towering knight of copper, now turning green with age. The surface rattles as the monster wanders, as the basalt towers shudder, as the ground shakes and rattles and threatens to ruin your balance.
The head shudders and shakes, the pauldrons rattle and groan, the myriad blades that hang off its breastplate jingle and chatter as it stumbles into view. The witch is easily twenty meters tall; you can barely even tell what it looks like underneath the helmet. The limbs are too skinny, the legs too thin to support its weight, torso so deathly thin and gaunt and helmet so elongated and tall that no human head could fit inside.
"But this is my domain, little one," the witch rumbles. "And here you have-"
On instinct, you raise your hand. Your third eye opens wide. The basalt towers shatter and flicker, the ground turning into a glitchy, miscolored mess as the witch freezes into place. Suddenly, its chest is misplaced. The helm breaks as the arms shudder. A leg flashes before it is torn off of the witch, then replaced. An arm shakes before it too is replaced.
But most of all, the cape vanishes, as do the knives. The witch howls in pain, screeching in agony as it stumbles backwards.
And you, too, are knocked back into reality. You stumble backwards, hands shaking, eyes wide, breath heavy, legs like jelly. Your parents are immediately by your side, one hand on your shoulder, two on your back. You grip your hands tight, tight, tight, clenching them open and closed. You take a quick look up at the woman.
And she's staring right back, eyes just as wide, mouth hanging open. "What...w-what the hell did you do to me?! What did you do?!"
You shake your head as your mom glances between you and her, then you sigh. "I tried a thing." You take a look at her. "Rin's power doesn't hit adults as hard. But I'm thinking it doesn't need to, right?" You narrow your eyes as you try to pull yourself back to your feet. "Because you believe her fucking bullshit to the CORE!"
[=]
Your name is Mami Tomoe, and it's been a day since the hostile magi was brought upstairs. Ever since Minako scanned her emotional scape, she's been quiet, refusing service even though it's been readily available.
You know that it's too far for her to contact the Kasamino group; there are rarely Incubators on the bridge, and there is no reason for a magi to cross without cause. But Rin can't summon a new copy of her. She'll connect the dots and realize that she's stuck. Worse, Rin might send a strike team to retrieve her.
You don't know the inner workings of the Glow; of course you don't. You had only been there for but a week. But you know Rin.
You know Rin.
You press your hand into the door frame over your head. You take a step out, towards the hallway, when suddenly you slam into someone. Your face smacks into hers, sending you tumbling back and falling flat on your tailbone. You squeal, more on instinct than from any real pain, then pull yourself right back onto your feet.
You quickly regain your balance, brush your hair out of your face, and look for the person on the ground. "A-apologies! I did not mean to-"
"No, it's...it's fine." You're interrupted by the other girl, and you recognize that it's Kirika, the girl that lives just a few doors down from yours. You look her over in shock as she brushes her hair out of her face again. "I wasn't looking. It's fine."
Her face looks red. Her nose is bright, and her eyes even look a little bit puffy. Before you can ask anything else, she just runs past you to her room and slams her door.
Across the hallway, at the end, you see Tatsuya climbing the stairs, dressed in something that's shockingly conservative for him: just a t-shirt and a pair of short-shorts as he rolls his hand. "Kirika!"
"She has...she has already gone back to her room."
"Damn it!" He runs towards you, panting slightly as he keeps his hands on his knees. "I...ugh."
"What was the matter?" you ask.
"She...Rin sent a message." He sighs. "Old mail. It was a letter from Kirika's girlfriend."
"A letter...?" You take a second to process it. Then another. Then another.
You fail to realize that you've been grinding your teeth against one another. Of all the things that woman could do...
Tatsuya takes a breath. "She's not in danger of witching right now." He looks to the side. "Least, I hope not. But we have a building full of safeties."
"That...makes a certain amount of sense, yes. Though, I was about to leave. Perhaps get some..." you say as a blush begins to creep up on your face, "...tea."
"I thought you had tea at the apartment?"
"I do, but I wanted..." Another pause. You start to turn your face to the corner. Your tastes should be refined. You are an upstanding young woman, and you were a mentor to two younger magi. And yet..." ...a different kind of tea at the moment. My supplies are hardly adequate for that."
He pauses for a moment, tapping his cheek. Then realization crosses his face. "You wanted boba-"
"I wanted boba, yes!"
[=]
Three blocks from the apartment, and you have a jasmine milk tea in your hands. It's sweet, very sweet, far sweeter than the Irish tea you typically drink. It feels gross in your hands, as though you mock the gods of tea for your transgressions on this day. But it's impossible to ignore the fact that...
You really enjoy messing with those tapioca bubbles. You knock them around, playing with them like a child, before you take a sip.
Tatsuya finally gets his own drink and sits across from you, broad smile on his face as he puts down a warm, steaming hot cocoa. You wonder why he got that, and then a faint autumn chill brushes across you.
That's right, it's almost fall. You rarely get that cold anymore; with few exceptions, you're comfortable in nearly any kind of weather as a magi.
Tatsuya sips his drink and lets out a loud, satisfied sigh. "I should've brought Toji here," he mutters as he rests against his wrist.
You take your lips off of your drink to say "Thank you for paying," then dip right back down to sip some boba through the straw.
He grins. "Oh, it's hardly a problem. I'm just glad you can enjoy yourself for a little while."
Discuss... (pick 2)
[] Gay...osity? Gayness...? Being...notstraight? You're so new to the idea. Maybe you can get some answers out of someone more experienced with that sort of thing?
[] Madoka. What happened to her?
[] Minako. They're so strange to your mind; different from any magi you've met. You didn't even know men could contract up until now...you still find the concept all kinds of bizarre.
