— Set up some quick and dirty tests on the effect of Serena's aura. We at least need some guidelines on how long we can consider the effect 'trivial'.
— Get a ton of tandem charms prepped. Probably lots of basic charms too, for common distribution.
I think we can depend on Serena's experience at first, as our high morale should make that well within the safe range.
What this suggests to me is that we need to avoid exposure of our girls expect in critical situations.
So the typical plan is for Serena to be fighting using her own girls, and any local girls that join the fight. The two exceptions I am seeing is the initial battle, and if that Beholder demon shows up.
We should be prepared to reinforce her with our girls in those two situations.
Seto is the only one who can safely teleport Serena around repeatedly, as she's the one with the ability to teleport large groups quickly and without waiting for a charge up to teleport. I think that means we cannot put Seto on combat duty. She must limit the length of time in Serena's aura because she's going to have to be in and out of it a lot.
Assuming that we have 4 non-Seto teleporters available, that means we can have 4 groups of emergency reinforcements.
Let's give each group 2 barrier girls (for layering, and even possible Tandem Casting), for a total of 8 barrier girls. And then at least 1 healer per a group, for 4 more girls. That puts us at 16 girls, add 4 more to round it out at 20, and then 1 clairvoyant (to work with Taya) and we are at 21 vets.
Although I suppose that if we expect the great battle to take place in the first instance we could almost double the number of non-teleporters with the idea that they will be switched back off of reinforcement patrol after the big battle.
We probably want the teleporters to stay back out of the combat zone, as the beholder is murder on them and negates all their advantages and makes their instincts bad.
So after the teleporters drop them off the teleporters retreat.
Assuming we almost double the number of girls on the first couple days, that could be 4x 2 barrier girls, 2 healers, 4 additional girls. So four packs of 8 girls (plus the teleporter that dropped them off and then retreated). That ought to be enough to handle any class 3 demon while under the influence of Serena's aura.
So... that suggests that we can handle a maximum of five class 3 demons at a time.
We probably want all four of our clairvoyants on this the first day or two, their job will be to look for demons approaching to reinforce the demon side of the battle. They should be kept far back from the battle zone.
We will want to bribe Kyubey to give us data on the demons patrolling the Yokohama border, and also some extra data on this beholder type demon. We'll want to start figuring out their patrols, probably ought to send Taya over to Area 15/16 this month to gather data on their routines. Maybe we pay Kyubey to track this beholder demon, and plan our attack when it is on the other side of the city?
Try and break up the dangerous fights into two?
— If we want to get Nagoya on board, discuss our intent with them.
Misc
— It's conceivably possible to win this on our own, but it would be high risk, and diplomatically poor taste. I'm strongly in favor of working with Nagoya on this, despite the diplomatic risks associated with it.
I'm leery of directly involving Nagoya. I think it greatly weakens our position, and I'm also unsure of Nagoya's reaction. As I thought you were too, since it seems a little contradictory to avoid flying Serena into Nagoya, and then invite them to come along on a battle with her.
Part of the problem is that if Nagoya is there, and things go sideways, we don't really have the power to control Nagoya's actions. Seems like a medium gain, high risk tactic to involve them, since we can't predict their reaction.
I'd suggest instead that we inform Nagoya that we have decided to handle the Tokyo problem by killing all the class 3 demons this month. That doing this will involve exposing girls in range to an aura that can prove addictive and deadly to magical girls. "We didn't want to do this, but with the fall of their last fortified Tokyo location, we feel that the risk of the exposure to the Tokyo girls is less than what they face from the demons." We plan to try and manage the exposure levels and keep them to safe levels. Still, if they send anyone to Tokyo this month, we cannot guarantee their safety.
Suggest they take a break from Tokyo this month, and at the end of the month we will be sure to inform them how our mission went.
— We can travel out north of Mt. Fuji, through Kofu's territory of Fujiyoshida. Get a Safe Passage agreement going with them? Do we need the full 2 vet allocation for that? It's somewhat of an emergency issue.
— Alternatively, pass through 15/16. Problem there is that if we come running back (which they'll certainly be concerned about), we can end up leading a bunch of class 3's right into them. I don't think they'd be willing to risk that.
I think attacking from Area 15/16 would make more sense, but we ought to get more data from Kyubey on this before deciding.
We can probably lighten Area 15/16 fears by having them spend the day in Mitakihara during the initial assault.
Precautions
— Tandem clairvoyant warning system. Do we want Taya as part of it? Probably.
— Concern: Can we even identify any specific demons while they're inside their miasmas?
— Set up protocols to warn all teleporters immediately if the beholder comes within range.
— Distribute charms, with steady resupply.
Like I said, if we can get Kyubey to track this beholder demon, maybe we can move to attack when it is far away?
We probably should have a rule that if more than 5 active demons show up we are retreating.
We should probably practice beforehand on how to run at high speeds (also forget the masquerade protocols).
Locals
— We need to make contact with as many of the locals as possible, as quickly as possible.
— If they're near morale 0, letting them near Serena is a high risk issue. Resistance to her aura is tied to morale. However they shouldn't be terminally depressed if they're still fighting for their lives, so there should be a modest safety margin when passing through.
— Information dispersal. We need to let them know what's going on, details of what they can get on short notice (charms, cubes, etc).
— We need to get the elites that are present on board to support a potential action against a class 4. Hoping for 20 total elites (Incubators recommend 15 for a class 4), but Serena may make it winnable with far less.
— Evacuation plans. Weaker meguca need to be cleared out, yet at the same time we can't let them form into groups that are likely to attract attention. Wait for evacuation til after the teleporter/clairvoyants have been taken care of.
I don't think this will work. Trying to get the locals organized is going to be hard. I'd propose having Kyubey distribute cellphones to the Elites, and then call them up as we pass into their areas and invite them to come join the fight. For the rest, it will basically be anyone we see and calling them to come join the fight. I don't think we will have time in the middle of a battle to differentiate between vet and green.
Not to mention the important morale effect of taking part in the fight to save your home city. Even if it's a small contribution, I think it will make a big difference to the Tokyo girls.
Once an area has been cleared, and Serena can move on, then we have Serene girls come in behind, distribute the grief cubes that dropped during the battle, and start making contacts and setting a meeting in a few days, so we can pull the Bavarian Fire Drill on them.
The exceptions of course are the first initial battle with all the demon teleporters coming in, and the beholder fight, whenever that happens. Although I think the only difference there is that our girls are involved in the fight, and just stick around when Serena moves on afterwards.
Strategies
— Select a basic target, and start drawing in the teleporter/clairvoyant class 3's. They're attracted by the fighting, but will end up dropping into the trap of Serena's aura. Kill them as quickly as possible.
— Once the teleporter/clairvoyants are cleared out, it should be safe to work on evacuation protocols for at least the greens.
— What sort of teams are we using?
— How are we integrating with Serena's team? To what degree will our units be fighting, vs covering the area for locals? How much and where is Nagoya's team fighting?
Initial fight, we be ready for the teleporter/clairvoyant class 3 demons, so our team is going to fight right beside Serena. Hopefully that combat should be much less than 8 hours.
Other than that I think Serena is handling it with her girls, and the local Tokyo girls, with our girls focusing on the cleared areas, prepping them for hunting next month, and our girls being on emergency reinforcement duty in case the beholder shows up.
Exit strategy
— What qualifies as a required order to pull out?
— What sort of retreat plan?
If the number of demons in the initial fight goes above five. If combat has been ongoing for more than 4 hours in exposure to Serena's aura. Retreat plan is to run 6 kilometers, and then be met by teleporter transport. Support the retreat by a burst of illusion charms?
Interesting dichotomy. I remember
@Elder Haman talking about how greens and loners would actually like her stopping by, as it means an hour or more of stress-free hunting, but this implies a lot more downside risk than you'd think.
Actually that was Powermind. I was on the opposite side of that argument.
Nope. That's one of the reasons everyone lives in apartments, and populations can become so much denser than here in suburb-happy USA. Buying a house isn't considered to be something like a basic right, something that everyone is expected to eventually do, like it is here. That's one reason that there are 8.2 million abandoned properties in rural Japan: "the American dream" is not one of the things that transferred over to Japan.
Uh... that's a very... overly simplified explanation for Japan housing. The Japanese do have a dream of buying a house, but it's more of the thing that you do once a generation, and you have to save most of your life for. They don't have "starter homes." Probably because credit is harder to get.
Additionally, Japan has some of the loosest housing regulations in the world in large cities. This means that it is easier (in terms of government regulations) to build a house in Tokyo then it is in most American cities. Also, there is no rent control, so Tokyo actually has one of the best cost of housing in major cities per density then almost any other city in the world.
It's probably why Tokyo is able to get so dense in the first place, and why Japanese are not moving to the suburbs.
Also, houses actually do cost less to rent per the square footage (I checked). It's more that a lot of Japanese have small families or are single and so an apartment makes more sense than a house.
