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Fate/Lunar Song (Nasuverse/Symphogear)

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Right. Sorry about that. In a future set fanfic, AU butterflies in the past are fine for building some degree of suspense and tension. In a future set quest? It was just very infuriating that we as the players had to take everything we've learned about Symphogear's world, stop ourselves, and think very carefully about EXACTLY where we learned each fact about it, so as to ignore certain bits so as to keep to your interpretation- it's a burden anyone playing along with you seriously has to deal with. Dropping GX was simple, but I saw the OVAs ages ago and internalized their worldbuilding data. I got testy. My bad.

SO! Questions. Stuff Hibiki should know about before she died, discounting GX, the OVAs, and everything I learned from them!

What is up with the Moon? Like, beyond what was revealed in the TV show timelines, I'm sure they made at least a little more progress on understanding it before she died. That information is key, especially if what she knows is different than what the citizens of the moon think- information control from the public is one of the repeating themes in Symphogear, after all.

Did this Miku ever use a Gear again before Hibiki died?

Did Hibiki die with Gungnir in her, or was it purified away? It's quite possible for her to be summoned in a state from long before she died, at the 'height' of her legend and power.

What other gears were discovered before Hibiki passed on? Did she ever have any more team mates, did her organization ever reach international status (like the S3 SONG)? I assume she became famous worldwide somehow to have become a Heroic Spirit. Anything else that might be used as clues to trace the present incarnation of her old department?

Her Master knows about the Noise, and even as a Magus is freaked out by them. You said you were retconning Miku's disposal of Solomon's Key. Did it remain on Earth, in play? Or was it still somehow tossed into the Treasury before it was locked, making any future Noise appearances anomalies?

What happened with Maria, Kirika, and Shirabe? Did something happen to allow the development of more LiNKER, allowing them to be recruited? Or were they retired?

Chris settled down with Miku and Hibiki, what happened to Tsubasa?

I know your Hibiki died before any of them, so she's nowhere near as traumatized as she could be. That's good. Was Genjuurou still rocking by the time she died, or did he meet his match and fall before she did? I doubt he'd want to outlive his student, in any case.

Finally, how much about her Gear did Hibiki learn? She's not the brightest crayon, but I am sure she at least internalized a few principles after using the thing for so long. Some of the stuff about phonic-gain related science should have stuck, at least in terms of "I can grab it" and "I can not grab it." She should be aware of her limits, I'd think. Like, what she can accomplish given the ambient phonic gain and the cost/strain on her body. Is that correct? I'm assuming she died heroically after smashing through her limits one last time in a blaze of glory- there's really no other appropriate way for her to go, based on the tag line of S1.

As I said before, I have enjoyed what you're written so far. Don't be discouraged by the previous discussion; just keep in mind what you're asking of your players before snapping at us. We currently have to do some extra mental work to think in terms of your version of the world. As you haven't even seen some content, you can't even remind us what facts you're tossing out from those bits; we just have to keep it all straight ourselves or risk your ire.

Anyways, looking forward to how this quest grows. Good luck on your first thread, and don't give up!
 
Golden Lark said:
Dropping GX was simple, but I saw the OVAs ages ago and internalized their worldbuilding data. I got testy. My bad.
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Appreciate the apology, and sorry for any confusion :)

Golden Lark said:
What is up with the Moon? Like, beyond what was revealed in the TV show timelines, I'm sure they made at least a little more progress on understanding it before she died. That information is key, especially if what she knows is different than what the citizens of the moon think- information control from the public is one of the repeating themes in Symphogear, after all.
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Well, the moon is known or believed (to world governments) to be some sort of artificial construction. Or... maybe not the whole thing is a construction, but they know for sure that if you go down deep enough you will find mechanisms and so on; they saw part of it glow when Nastassja turned it on, after all.

Hibiki has been here in the past, long before actual settlement happened; the first team of scientists went silent shortly after landing to explore the crater region. The details of that... well, those will have to wait 'till they become story-relevant.

Golden Lark said:
Did this Miku ever use a Gear again before Hibiki died?
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No, due in large part to Hibiki and Chris' objections (and the fact that Miku never made a strong enough case for Genjurou to be urged to overrule Chris, who was pretty necessary for that whole actually-tuning-a-Gear process, as chief science person). Miku wanted to help as much as she could, but they didn't want her in direct combat, and they generally didn't need more Gear users. Three (or, when the Americans lent a hand, six) was enough to solve pretty much all of their problems.

So in the end she settled into a role more like the bridge bunnies, analyzing and parsing data and generally doing those important behind-the-scenes support work. Miku never really minded Hibiki having the spotlight, anyway, she just couldn't handle not helping.

Golden Lark said:
Did Hibiki die with Gungnir in her, or was it purified away? It's quite possible for her to be summoned in a state from long before she died, at the 'height' of her legend and power.
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She's in a bit of a time paradox state; she was summoned from the end of her life, at 22, but Gungnir was purified out of her back when she was 16. So she was never quite like this, in life, but that happens from time to time with even normal summonings.

Golden Lark said:
What other gears were discovered before Hibiki passed on? Did she ever have any more team mates, did her organization ever reach international status (like the S3 SONG)? I assume she became famous worldwide somehow to have become a Heroic Spirit. Anything else that might be used as clues to trace the present incarnation of her old department?
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She didn't actually become famous as-such, which is honestly me just bending the Heroic Spirit rules. Her existence was fairly well known among the relevant upper tiers of people, and the things she did were known (even with information control, the fact that something big happened was never really hide-able), but her specific existence was not.

I'm treating that as 'close enough,' so as to make the crossover work in general (though certainly no one would know how to summon her, were they to try to do so deliberately). Making her well-known would cause Masquerade breach issues, and I didn't want to cascade out a whole crazy but-magic-is-real world. The Counter Guardian proper idea occurred to me only after I started the quest, but even if it had before it would have been a much grimmer tone than I really want to strike with this quest (though you can probably expect more AU snippets along those lines).

The organization did reach international prominence, but was never properly placed under direct UN control. There was a lot of politicking on the matter, but in the end the US backed Japan (they wanted their own Gear users as well), and in the end UN involvement was more restricted to oversight and request than command and control.

As far as researching progression through time, she remembers their aliases and members well enough to get started on such a project. She's Hibiki, so she's kinda bad at it, but she could certainly give it a whirl.

Additional Gears they were able to make were, at minimum, Svalinn and Laevatein, and up to two more, and they never did find another Complete Relic.

Golden Lark said:
Her Master knows about the Noise, and even as a Magus is freaked out by them. You said you were retconning Miku's disposal of Solomon's Key. Did it remain on Earth, in play? Or was it still somehow tossed into the Treasury before it was locked, making any future Noise appearances anomalies?
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I was only retconning the abrupt insanely superhuman nature of Miku (Nasu humans can be pretty crazy-awesome even without magic -- Riesbyfe, for instance -- but they don't generally just spontaneously develop those abilities), not the sequence in general.

Someone tossed it in (maybe Genjurou, maybe one of the girls, the person in question isn't important)... but it did show its face again; as it turns out the Treasury of Babylonia wasn't occupied only by nonsentient Noise. I haven't charted that out in detail because the details don't matter; honestly I just snagged one of my original ideas for what a third season of Symphogear might have been about and slotted it into a 'Hibiki's continuing adventures' slot.

In the end they disabled or destroyed Solomon's Cane, rendering Noise accidental oddities again, but magi know about them and have difficulties affecting them with most magic. It can be done, but you generally need to be hitting them with a curse or conceptual effect to do much, because they're so weird and alien. Prana 'tuned' the right way will work too, but only a few magi ever found out the trick to that.

Golden Lark said:
What happened with Maria, Kirika, and Shirabe? Did something happen to allow the development of more LiNKER, allowing them to be recruited? Or were they retired?
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Maria, Kirika, and Shirabe were reclaimed by the US and provided a boatload of therapy (unlike the main three; different cultural attitudes toward therapy and all) before settling into a similar role as Hibiki, Miku, and Tsubasa. They did end up figuring out how to produce LiNKER again, but the process was inefficient and expensive, so the former FIS girls were less active.

Golden Lark said:
Chris settled down with Miku and Hibiki, what happened to Tsubasa?
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Tsubasa was single for a while, but eventually set out to find someone new; she had a handful of quick relationships, some good and some bad, but nothing stable in the long term had presented itself by the time Hibiki died. She was fairly positive about the whole process by that time, though, so presumably she found someone eventually.

Golden Lark said:
I know your Hibiki died before any of them, so she's nowhere near as traumatized as she could be. That's good. Was Genjuurou still rocking by the time she died, or did he meet his match and fall before she did? I doubt he'd want to outlive his student, in any case.
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Genjurou was still kicking, but very injured when she last saw him; things played out in some ways similarly to the end of the first season, there, where he made a great showing against their ultimate foe but in the end couldn't carry it on his own. She has no reason to believe he wouldn't have pulled through, though.

Golden Lark said:
Finally, how much about her Gear did Hibiki learn? She's not the brightest crayon, but I am sure she at least internalized a few principles after using the thing for so long. Some of the stuff about phonic-gain related science should have stuck, at least in terms of "I can grab it" and "I can not grab it." She should be aware of her limits, I'd think. Like, what she can accomplish given the ambient phonic gain and the cost/strain on her body. Is that correct?
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Yeah, though her understanding of it is more intuitive than learned. The difference between someone who's good at a game because they've just played it for ages, and someone who's good because they've studied the meta and the theorycrafting and so on.

She certainly knew enough to explain it to Jordan, even if her delivery left something to be desired.

Golden Lark said:
I'm assuming she died heroically after smashing through her limits one last time in a blaze of glory- there's really no other appropriate way for her to go, based on the tag line of S1.
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More or less, yeah. Hibiki has issues with it because she's seen the pain losing people can inflict, and feels guilty about not being able to come back to them and spare them that... but if she were asked to make that choice again she wouldn't change a thing.

One could characterize it as the brightest she's ever shone, for sure.

Golden Lark said:
As I said before, I have enjoyed what you're written so far. Don't be discouraged by the previous discussion; just keep in mind what you're asking of your players before snapping at us. We currently have to do some extra mental work to think in terms of your version of the world. As you haven't even seen some content, you can't even remind us what facts you're tossing out from those bits; we just have to keep it all straight ourselves or risk your ire.
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That's fair, and I'll keep that in mind. I got a bit testy myself too >.> Sorry
 
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A Dream of Failure (Jordan), pt. 2
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    • For the slowness of this update you can blame illness and Heroes of the Storm binges (don't listen to the haters, Artanis is awesome).

    Also, fair warning: this one is pretty dark, in comparison to what's come before.



    "Hmm, well… we've killed all his meaningful servants, and he should still be inside. We need to make sure he doesn't find a way to slip out… split up and search, maybe?"

    Rhea frowns ever so slightly -- you feel a sudden surge of doubt -- and then nods. "Sure."

    "Ah, but don't try to take him down alone!" It was never easy to get great data on Dead Apostles, but sources agreed that Hilex Stere was a dangerous opponent even on Earth; on the moon, you or Rhea would probably be lucky to survive a straight fight, much less win one. Together, though, it would be doable. "Just engage him and keep him from running."

    "Alright, your call." She reaches into her pockets, presumably checking how many keys she has left. "I'll take the left side, you take the right?"

    She doesn't wait for a response before going through the first door to the left. You stare after her, pensively. Was that disapproval? I mean, she said it was my turn to call the shots this hunt, but… you shake your head. You can't get distracted now; you can talk it over afterwards. You take the door to your right, and begin the search.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

    You sweep the books off of another bookshelf, peering behind them. Nope, no entrances to secret passages here. Dead Apostles could be so spectacularly clichéd it made you grit your teeth… but you can't help but wish this one would be a bit more so. A secret passageway into the basement or something would shorten this search considera-

    Was that a crashing sound? You cock your head, listening. It's faint, but you catch a hint of splintering wood. She must have found him!

    Reinforcement lends you speed, and you're off. You stop in the atrium for a moment, listening for more sound. Sounds like… upstairs. With a single leap you clear the balcony railing, and follow the noise to its source: a second-story ballroom.

    You kick the door open -- well, down, but that's open too -- and sweep your gaze around the room, assessing the situation. Oppressive darkness fills the room, shadows more menacing, deeper somehow, than normal. A vampire, just shy of six feet tall, short black hair and a suit. Rhea, blood staining her midsection and left leg, hands filled with Black Keys. She throws again as he advances on her, and he pauses to bat them aside… and the shadows around her writhe, tendrils of darkness reaching up to wrap around her.

    "Look out!" Both of them pause, gazes flicking over to you. You dart forward… and are abruptly brought up short, prana-infused shadows wrapping themselves around your limbs. At least Rhea seems to have gotten your warning; she leaps aside, cutting a trailing shadow in half with a Black Key. You shape your od and mutter under your breath in Russian, and light blooms from your cuffs. It isn't enough to dissipate the shadows entirely -- you don't know enough about whatever effect Hilex Stere is using to counter it outright -- but their grip weakens immediately, and you wrench yourself free. Good; it's actual shadow-based thaumaturgy, and not some strange effect that only looks like a shadow.

    With that handled, you charge to support Rhea. Stere turns to meet you, and ducks under your projected punch, leg scything along the floor in a sweep. The move catches you by surprise, and you start to fall, but he doesn't have time to take advantage of it -- Rhea saves you with a flurry of Black Keys. He dodges aside, none of the blades finding their mark… though you hear the telltale sound of ripping cloth, and one of them trails droplets of blood.

    His gaze snaps to Rhea, expression shifting from calm arrogance to affronted anger, and he vanishes in a blur of movement. You follow, desperately trying to head him off. He lashes out, hand shaped to a claw, but she just isn't fast enough to save herself. His strike lands, and blood sprays… and he snarls with frustration. She may not be fast enough, but you are.

    Your right arm screams with pain, and you spare an instant to glance down at it. Moderate depth, no arteries hit… thankfully. Serious blood loss in the middle of a fight was bad news, but this you could handle… in a little bit. You grimace, doing your best to push aside the pain. No time for a spell to deaden that; you're just going to have to bear with it.

    Hilex Stere stares at you, eyes swirling strangely… and you smirk, pushing aside the effects of his Mystic Eyes with a simple flood of prana. "Did you really think that was going to work?" you ask, voice mostly even despite the pain.

    His stare turns to a glare, cold fury building. "I suppose I will have to resort to… cruder methods, to teach you your place."

    He slaps aside a thrown Black Key without looking. "Don't worry," he tells Rhea without looking away from you, "your turn comes next." A flicker of hostile intent is all the warning you get; you throw yourself back, hot pain scoring itself across your collarbone as you barely get free. You turn the leap backwards into a somersault, landing on your feet just in time to block his wrist with your left forearm. It hurts, despite all the Reinforcement you're running through your body, but that's not an issue; you knee him, projected blow taking him in the gut, and he staggers.

    He doesn't fall, though, and your attempt to follow up with a punch from your good arm is arrested by the sudden interference of those shadow tendrils, slowing you just enough to spoil your strike. He grabs your arm, yanks you off-balance, and drives his foot into your kneecap. Your leg explodes with pain, and you fall, held up by his hand on your arm. He smirks… and then there's a rush of air and he spins, striking aside the volley of Black Keys. He doesn't quite succeed -- one buries itself in his arm.

    He grunts with pain, turns, and throws you at Rhea. Something in your elbow pops as he does, but you're too busy flying to take stock beyond the pain. She almost manages to dodge you, but your useless leg, flailing wildly, clips her. Your vision whites out, you hear a scream of pain, and tumble to the floor.

    When your vision clears, he's standing in front of you, holding Rhea up by the throat, left-handed. "Oh, good," he says, gaze flicking down to you. "You're still conscious. You humans are so fragile, I wasn't sure." He glances back to Rhea, and your gaze follows -- this time, you see, her arms are held by shadows. "Now. See, Executor, you are only human. Prey does not stand in the way of the predator."

    His right hand flexes, fingers turning to claws, and you cry out, wordlessly. You try to struggle to your feet, but your leg screams in protest, and pain overwhelms you. You open your eyes again, your scream fading from your ears, and… you close them immediately. Even with your eyes closed, though, the silhouette of his hand buried in her chest doesn't leave you, and you scream, again.

    A heavy thud, right in front of you. Dreading what you will see, but needing to see regardless, you open your eyes. Mercifully, perhaps, he dropped her facing away from you. "And that, Executor, is what happens to prey." Your gaze tracks up to him, barely seeing the two Black Keys buried in his stomach. "She was impressive, for a human. You, however… young, inexperienced, and no real danger to me. So, for your temerity in attempting to deny me..." he smirks. "I will grant you the favor of living, knowing that all you had was not enough to save her."

    You try to struggle to your feet, to protest, to do something, but pain and grief steal your voice away. Your eyes blur with tears, falling freely, and despite your attempts to speak all you hear are his receding footsteps.

    This… if I hadn't had us split up, if we'd fought him together, then maybe…

    Something warm and wet touches your hand, and you look down to find a sea of red spreading across the floor from her. You grit your teeth and drag yourself across the floor with your less-injured arm, barely enduring the waves of pain, and turn her over. Maybe you can… maybe if you put all you have into your healing, then…

    Chants spill from your lips, and prana flows, but when you've tried everything you know, everything you can, she lies still and cold on the floor, unmoving.

    You fall, then, unable to hold yourself up anymore; unable to do anything but cling to your friend and wail your grief.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

    Blinking, you try to fight away the stinging in your eyes. Had you been crying? What was… was that… another dream of… Oh no. If that was Jordan's past, then…

    Wait.

    Jordan.

    If I'm still here, then…

    You open your eyes, to find… a ceiling. The same one you slept under last night. You look down. You're tucked into bed. Jordan's bed.

    "H-Hibiki?" You turn your head, to find Jordan, eyes wet with tears. You offer her a reassuring smile.

    "Hey," you manage lamely.

    "You- you're okay!" And then she's on the bed, hugging you as tightly as she can through the covers. "I- I thought I'd lost you," she manages, barely holding back tears. "I couldn't… I couldn't bear losing you." And then the floodgates crack, and she's clinging to you like a lifeboat, sobbing.

    [ ] Reassure her. You're okay, you'll be fine.
    [ ] Reassure her. It's okay, it wasn't her fault.
    [ ] Reassure her. It's okay, you're here, you'll keep her safe.     (Starts at 1 vote)
    [ ] Let her cry it out. She needs this.
    [ ] Something else? Write in.
     
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    • Keep in mind the wrong reassurance could backfire.

    [ ] Reassure her. You're okay, you'll be fine.

    Assumes her concerns are with our injuries.
    If mistaken, will follow with a royal chewing out. Or if correct for the matter.

    [ ] Reassure her. It's okay, it wasn't her fault.

    Assumes that she considers this her mistake. Big backfire if mistaken.

    [ ] Reassure her. It's okay, you're here, you'll keep her safe. (Starts at 1 vote)

    Assumes that she was worried for herself and needs protection.
    ...she makes a living punching vampires to death. This is definitely wrong.
     
    veekie said:
    Keep in mind the wrong reassurance could backfire.

    [ ] Reassure her. You're okay, you'll be fine.

    Assumes her concerns are with our injuries.
    If mistaken, will follow with a royal chewing out. Or if correct for the matter.

    [ ] Reassure her. It's okay, it wasn't her fault.

    Assumes that she considers this her mistake. Big backfire if mistaken.

    [ ] Reassure her. It's okay, you're here, you'll keep her safe. (Starts at 1 vote)

    Assumes that she was worried for herself and needs protection.
    ...she makes a living punching vampires to death. This is definitely wrong.
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    Heiki hetchara says that everything is fine, talking about the entire situation, not a specific person :V

    Also probably leads to Hibiki sharing more info about herself, which is a good thing.

    Being Hibiki's canon catchphrase in every season makes it a rather obvious IC choice though.
     
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    [X] Reassure her. You're okay, you'll be fine.

    notthepenguins said:
    "You- you're okay!" And then she's on the bed, hugging you as tightly as she can through the covers. "I- I thought I'd lost you," she manages, barely holding back tears. "I couldn't… I couldn't bear losing you." And then the floodgates crack, and she's clinging to you like a lifeboat, sobbing.
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    Pretty obvious what she thinkgs
     
    [x] Reassure her. You're okay, you'll be fine.

    By this point, if it hadn't happened already, Jordan is now explicitly aware of "Humanity Slipping Away" and its implications. Her mental character sheet on Hibiki has WiseUpped.
     
    justinkal said:
    Well, more like it was past 1 AM here, so I was too lazy to look up what the proper translation was. Also, leaving it untranslated makes it easier for other voters to understand the intent :V
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    If you don't want to use the catch phrase, don't put it in the vote; instead give a brief English summary of how you want to reassure her like in the examples.
     
    notthepenguins said:
    If you don't want to use the catch phrase, don't put it in the vote; instead give a brief English summary of how you want to reassure her like in the examples.
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    Intent was to use the catchphrase and let the apparent autotranslate feature of the grail kick in.

    The grail has to do SOMETHING to let Masters and Servants communicate, since I highly doubt that King Arthur and Alexander the Great were fluent in Japanese and modern English :V

    Since the thing with the grail giving Servants knowledge about the modern world seems to be theoretical knowledge rather than practical knowledge (as evidenced by many of Iskandar's activities), I've always assumed that the language thing is a separate feature, similar to the Babel Fish from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
     
    justinkal said:
    Intent was to use the catchphrase and let the apparent autotranslate feature of the grail kick in.
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    I'm treating it less as autotranslate and more as "Hibiki also speaks flawless English (and other relevant languages) now." What language she speaks in is a choice.

    As for asking for specificity, I do that because I can't really use a write in that boils down to "Catchphrase and figure it out from there." If you're trying to calm her down, I need a more clear angle of approach.
     
    I believe her catchphrase boils down to something like "it's alright; everything will be fine."
     
    justinkal said:
    Yeah, it's something along those lines, but I'm not completely sure of the exact translation.

    That's definitely the general idea of what it means though.
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    Something along those fuzzy and uncertain lines, yes.

    A write in, on the other hand, should be clear and unambiguous. This is both so I don't need to play the guessing game of figuring out what in particular you want, and so that other voters can read your write in, understand its meaning clearly, and go "Hey I want to vote for this."
     
    notthepenguins said:
    Something along those fuzzy and uncertain lines, yes.

    A write in, on the other hand, should be clear and unambiguous. This is both so I don't need to play the guessing game of figuring out what in particular you want, and so that other voters can read your write in, understand its meaning clearly, and go "Hey I want to vote for this."
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    When I'm not on a phone I can look up a proper translation. I'll modify it accordingly at that time.
     
    Ok, here it is using the same translation of Hibiki's catchphrase as the most accurate of the fansubs, the (slow) ones made by the guy who translates all the supplemental materials on the show's website.

    [x] Reassure her. Everything's okay, totally fine.
     
    [x] Reassure her. Everything's okay, totally fine.
     
    Vote currently tied,

    ##### NetTally 1.1.21
    [x] Let her cry it out. She needs this.
    No. of Votes: 3
    veekie
    Happerry
    Trooper1023
    [X] Reassure her. You're okay, you'll be fine.
    No. of Votes: 3
    [x] Reassure her. Everything's okay, totally fine.
    No. of Votes: 2
    justinkal
    C-RO

    Total No. of Voters: 8

    As such, can't close the vote just yet.
     
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