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.
"Okay, now, just block all of these!" You begin to just throw everything that you can grab. A rubber ball. Yet another fucking furby. The pieces of a plush toy. Plastic cars. A Star Wars action figure. Is that a Neil Breen toy? A bootleg game console.
Ugh, can we just forget I ever posted to this thread. It's what happens when I don't take my meds for three days and take it out on strangers on the internet.
Oh well, I used to do it every few weeks, and now I'm down to every few months. Progress.
[X] Keep training here. Have them spar Takane again.
You clamber over to the hole in the Tunnel O' Love to see Minako transforming and de-transforming. They shake their hands as though they're still covered in filth.
"Fucking A." They shake their head.
Takane glances between both you and Minako, as though she's expecting you to chastise your child for bad language.
"Yeah, you took that punch hard. Good thing she went for a concussive shot." You walk over. "You okay?"
"No!" They stumble out of the hole. "O-h-h-howwowoww!" They spit on the ground before slowly drifting their hand away from their stomach. "Okay, I could have sworn that hurt way more a second ago."
"Yeah, that's another quirk." You raise your hand towards your kid and pull them through the hole. "You can ignore most injuries just fine; magi bodies can heal from most minor wounds without effort."
Takane walks over. "Are you okay, Mina?"
"I'm good!" They stumble out. The eye on their chest turns bright green. They blink, then whip their head towards Takane. The mouth on their mask turns shocked before it broadens into another gigantic smile.
Takane blushes back, then she relaxes and moves forward. "I'm just glad you weren't hurt too badly."
"I know." Minako pulls their mask down and sticks their lips out, and Takane quickly pecks them right back.
You nod. "Alright, so another spar, preferably with less concussive blasts." You look them both over. "Okay so, Takane, mind giving a rundown of Minako's magi progress?"
"O-oh! Right." Takane clears her throat. "You didn't last very long. I rushed in, you blocked, but that left you open. I twisted your arms and you didn't have a counter for the cross-up, and you didn't even manage to let go of the bat before I shot you in the stomach." She scratches her cheek. "You basically, uh...you did everything wrong."
Minako sighs. "Okay, shit."
"N-no! It's not that bad! You still had fast enough reflexes to block my initial attack! But being a magi is a bit more than reflexes."
You lean over. "It's planning. Anyone can be the fastest magi. Anyone can hit real hard. Anyone can beat the shit out of you. But what it comes down to is knowing your toolset, knowing your opponent's toolset, and countering the fuck outta them. Like, you've uh..." you twist your hands around "...you've played Samurai Shodown 7, right?"
"Oh? Ooooh!" Minako claps their hands. "So like how a fighting game has characters and how tournaments are set up with people who know all the characters?"
"Yeah! Like that!" You nod. "But the thing is that fighting other magi, and even other witches, is a buncha unknowns. And it's impossible to plan for all of them. What you can do is make a good guess." You glance to Takane. "Or be like your girlfriend."
Takane nods. She presses her hand to her chest. "I'm a planner. My wish was to 'Help my friend plan ahead'."
Minako's chest flashes green. They wince, their eyes go shut, and they take a deep breath.
Takane pauses. She bites her lip, then shakes her head and moves on. "My entire skillset is based around getting a feel for a person's skillset and abilities, then planning around those. My powers give me a large amount of versatility in a fight and allow me to fill different roles depending on my loadout."
You nod. "Now, not every magi is like Takane. Your mom is way more specialized around healing and tanking. I'm about hitting hard. Akane is about locking down a zone and turning certain parts of the battlefield into death zones. The fighting game analogy isn't perfect, 'cause, I mean, we aren't locked down by some fucking moves list, but it's a good way of thinking of being a magi."
Minako nods. "Hrm...I mean, makes kinda sense. So what do you think I am?"
"Dunno," you say. "But I think we oughta spar a little more. Maybe once or twice more?"
Minako winces. "I...right. Okay."
"Look, we can go for ice cream right afterwards. My treat."
Minako shrugs. "I...hm."
Takane clutches their shoulders. "Look at this way. This is to help you learn a little. I won't hit you as hard this time, and I'll make sure not to injure you. Okay?" She kisses their cheek. "I'll be careful, Mina."
Minako clutches Takane's hand, then grabs her cheek and pulls her lips to their mask, which now looks like a pair of kissing lips.
"Then you owe me a date." Mina smiles before jumping back and forming a brand-new bat.
Takane flexes her arms and reloads her gauntlets. "We were already going to date tonight, silly!"
You take a few quick steps backwards. Minako still has a long way to go. But hey, they still have you and Sayaka to help them out.
Your name is Sayaka, and you're currently in the industrial district at the edge of town. More specifically, you're in an empty part of one of the refineries; the place is closed off because of a ruined walkway (you think this is where Kyouko fought Uriko a few days ago), and because of that, this particular smokestack was shut off. Nobody could maintain it or inspect it, and Mitakihara laws dictate that a lack of inspection or supervision means that part of the refinery must be shut down.
That makes it a perfect scouting spot.
Work let you go out early, especially after your Chief Inspector noticed that you're not doing particularly great. And given that you hadn't missed work or a patrol until this point, she gave you the week off. Like, the entire week.
So now you're sitting in a longcoat. The weather suddenly got colder after last night, from 20-degree weather to 15. It was sudden and you're definitely chilly now.
Your wife told you that she was taking your kid to train. She didn't say where. You wonder if that old park is still around. You thought that place was torn down. Apparently not.
But that's a side note. What's important is that you can get a report on the goings-on across the bay. Which is why you're overlooking the bridge between Kasamino and Mitakihara, leaning against a smokestack with a click of your tongue and a foot against the railing.
You don't normally do what Kyouko does. But you don't feel great. And you're fighting down the urge to bite your tongue off and rip the railing off of the walkway and smash the smokestack with how much of a fucking failure you are.
You breathe in through your nose. You breathe in deep, deep through your nose. Minako could probably feel that if you were close to them.
Suddenly, you see four dots jumping from the bridge. They leap over the wires, slide across the railing, and jump over the lampposts. Erika, Suzu, Ume, and Takara land on the railing next to you, then all pull out their phones. They're all wearing nondescript jeans and turtlenecks, each color-coded to match their magi outfits.
You whip out your own phone and tap it against theirs
"This everything?" you ask. The data transfer takes less than a second per phone.
"Everything we could write down." Erika sighs. "They're definitely planning something. But what that is, we don't know what. None of us got spotted yet, and I didn't even need to transform while I was over there." She pulls her platinum blond hair behind her ear. "Suzu didn't sense anything, Ume was able to get a good look at stuff, Takara didn't even need to pull the panic button."
"It was clean," Takara says. "Shockingly clean. Can't believe it."
"Mm." Suzu nods. "It...nothing. I got nothing while over there. Didn't even have threats."
"I'm not sure if they're incompetent or arrogant or both." Ume scratches the back of her head. "But I don't know if it'll stay that way, either."
"So, what did you get? Just give me a quick rundown."
"Okay, so!" Erika raises her phone to your face, her own screen on the back side. "I managed to get a few photographs from where my senses warned me about. One of the girls is 'Yuri;' said she was experimenting with the upper limits of her timeline-manipulation abilities."
"Do you mean time travel, or...?"
"It doesn't seem like time travel, no. When they discussed it, they said they were talking about 'names.' Namely, how to find targets. I didn't know if it meant scouting the timeline or predicting the future."
"Time travel's just a dangerous power in general. If they fuck with the timeline-"
"That's not a problem," Erika says before nodding to Ume.
Ume continues. "Timelines don't get altered. They split. What happens instead of a timeline rewrite or some butterfly effect nonsense is a timeline split. Different realities split off from a diverging point."
You frown. You wonder how many alternative paths Homura left in her wake. You shake your head. "But did you get anything else?"
"Well, it seems like it was successful. When I scouted the meeting room, though, they were already in the process of erasing whatever 'it' was." Ume scratches the back of her head. "But they're organized. Organized enough to rent out meeting rooms."
"Any reason they wouldn't have closed the blinds?" you ask.
"Supposedly because they weren't expecting anyone to actually know what they were talking about." Suzu shrugs. "That or it's a trap."
"Wouldn't you have sensed it if it were a trap?"
"Yeah I would've. Unless they have some kind of masking power." She turns to Takara.
Takara nods and turns to you. "No jamming. They did attempt to look for intruders. Didn't sense us. Didn't find us either. Probably arrogant."
"I think we could continue to find out more if we're allowed another search." Erika says. "We found enough to interest you and there's more on those files that we gave you. But even then, I suspect there's more going on there. And you're right; timeline manipulation has the potential for danger and it's setting alarm bells off for me."
[] Send them back. (NEUTRAL - They know each other well enough that a new trip with the same team will probably go more smoothly than last time.
[] Swap out members. (DIFFICULTY 1 - Swapping out members will let you find someone who might understand timeline manipulation a bit more; temporal powersets are rare, but there is one other Mitakihara magi that understands how timelines operate)
[] Change the team comp completely. (DIFFICULTY 2 - This gets a different team to go in, and it prevents the possibility of Rin finding counters to your spy group. But this also means they won't work as smoothly as this team.)
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do"
Welp, that's horrifying.
[X] Swap out members. (DIFFICULTY 1 - Swapping out members will let you find someone who might understand timeline manipulation a bit more; temporal powersets are rare, but there is one other Mitakihara magi that understands how timelines operate)
"I'm good!" They stumble out. The eye on their chest turns bright green. They blink, then whip their head towards Takane. The mouth on their mask turns shocked before it broadens into another gigantic smile.
Hm, what was going on here? Mina got blindsided by pure love and affection after being exposed primarily to everyone's negative emotions?
[X] Swap out members. (DIFFICULTY 1 - Swapping out members will let you find someone who might understand timeline manipulation a bit more; temporal powersets are rare, but there is one other Mitakihara magi that understands how timelines operate)
Kyubes doesn't have nearly the right smile.
