Where did the SIMP's existing debts go? I know there was at least one huge loan taken out to start the restaurant, but I haven't seen anything tracking how payments are going or how much of the original principal remains to be paid off. It looks like debt payments are being folded into the restaurant's income, but I'm not sure about that. It'd suck if the restaurant was lost to unfortunate circumstances and no one had any idea how much debt was left, or if the loan was finally paid off and the SIMP's accounting didn't reflect it.
So I read through this quest a while back, and I liked the world it built, kinda. It hit some other ideas in my head and those ideas have been bouncing around my head for a while and it turned out to result in this today. Not sure if this is even remotely compatible with the quest's canon, but the quest is what inspired me to write it, so....here it is. Hasn't been edited at all, so grammar is probably atrocious.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
"Oi, budge off the laptop."
Yumi looked up at Mikasa's irate glare, and then promptly went back to watching Pretty Cure. Her ignorance held water against the artillery fire of Mikasa's gaze for about a minute before she reached out and paused the video, looking up.
"The latest episode just came out, which means I get the laptop for watching it and doing preliminary notes, why do you want it now?"
Mikasa grunted and hefted a wooden box at her. "''gotta head out on patrol soon with Chihiro and her girls and I haven't taken readings yet."
Yumi looked at the ceiling with a sigh. "And if my thought process is interrupted now, I'll be left with half the episode and I'd be analyzing it with only half the material. Can it wait?"
"Nope. Only have 15 minutes before I need to leave. This'll take 10, it's fine." Her fingers tapped a staccato rhythm of impatience onto the box.
"And why, oh why, did you forget to do this earlier, instead of waiting until the last minute again?"
Mikasa reached into the pocket of her pants with one hand and rummaged around for a moment before pulling out a set of stone-and-wire bangles. "Had to finish these for Chihiro's girls. Took all day, didn't have the time."
Yumi opened her mouth to argue when another voice jammed it's foot into the door from the other room. "It's my laptop, Mikasa, let her use it. We can't let ourselves skip readings and your readers won't notice the difference in your analysis."
Mikasa rolled her eyes and with a flick of her fingers closed out the video and saved her notes. Double-checking that she wasn't forgetting anything, she handed the laptop over to Yomi, and flounced over into the kitchen.
"You just say that because you can keep a week of columns in advance, so skipping a day doesn't isn't bad, whereas if I skip a day everybody else gets their analysis up before me and I'm the latecomer."
Mizuki looked up from the pot of ramen she was mothering, and chuckled. "The less time spent writing, the more time I can spend looking cute and being awesome!" She struck a pose with a wink, her apron subtly sprouting a few frills and gaining a bit of flounce.
The display washed over Mikasa and was promptly ignored. "Please excuse me if I actually have to do critical analysis instead of just waffling on for a thousand words or so." Mizuki gave a light chuckle and turned back to the pot, stirring gently.
"Writing these things isn't a win or lose deal, Mikasa. It's not fighting Wraiths, if you mess up a little people will forget it. Nobody dies because they had a bad day writing."
Mikasa gave Mizuki's back a stare for a moment, before giving the next line in this debate. "It's all about my pride and wanting to do things right, not just well. You talk to your readers, I have to lay down logical facts and analysis."
"And you need to loosen up, try to do some writing for fun instead of doing this for work. Maybe you'll be able to write more freely then!"
"I'll ignore the implication that I'm not doing this because I like critical analysis and magical girl shows, thank you very much."
Silence fluttered back into the room, before Mizuki looked over her shoulder and stuck her tongue out at Mikasa for a moment. "Yeah, yeah, you always say that, don'tcha? Why don't you see if you can help Yumi-chan and speed it up so you can get back to your otaku ways."
Mikasa glared at her back, refusing to rise to her bait. She spun out the doorway back into the living room, wandering over to where Yumi had set up on the dingy floor. On one side of her was the laptop, open to a spreadsheet program. On the other side was what looked like a strange fusion of a circuit board, puzzle board, and wood-etched map. On top of this lay a digital meter that had clearly lost half of its internals to random wires sticking all over the place.
Yumi touched one of several wires sticking out of the meter to a metal pin welded onto the board, and reading the number that flickered up, recorded it in the spreadsheet. She repeated this on the next pin, and the next, carefully recording and double-checking the numbers as she went. Not wanting to interrupt her work-trance, Mikasa felt her eyes wandering over the map etched into the board.
Aokigahara - the Sea of Trees. One of the most notorious suicide locations in the world, and a Magical Girl's worst nightmare. To them, the entire forest was constantly shrouded in fog so thick that Mikasa would swear that she could sometimes cut off a piece and serve it like cake. The only location that she knew off in Japan that was anywhere near as bad was Tokyo, and even then Tokyo was perfectly livable - dangerous, but livable. Aokigahara offered no such protection - as soon as a Magical Girl tried to step in, they'd get swarmed by an all-but unending number of Wraiths, and while the ones you'd attract first on the outer edges were pretty standard fare, as soon as the bigger ones showed up….
She felt a shiver run down her spine. She'd only dived in there once, trying to pull out a Magical Girl who had been spiraling hard. The girl hadn't made it, and she very nearly hadn't either. If Yumi had been a minute later, or she'd slipped on leaves-
A pair of arms snaked around her waist, firmly derailing her thoughts in favor of the warm body behind her. "Hey sis."
She turned herself around, pulling the smaller girl into a hug as well. "Hey sis. How'd you sleep?"
Asahi yawned, and pulled one arm away to rub at her eyes. "Tokyo's weird."
Mikasa started to let Asahi go, but the other girl sleepily pulled her closer. "How's it weird? Strong wraiths this month, or something?"
She shook her head. "Weird. Not clear, just….fluctuations. Cleaning attempt, maybe." She yawned massively, and finally let Mikasa go, wandering around the still-focused Yumi before collapsing onto the couch. "Can't tell."
Mikasa mentally shrugged. Tokyo wasn't that far away from their beat, but if someone was trying to make a dent in the Wraith population there, she could only wish them luck. She almost wished she could be there - fighting on the front lines with battle singing in her veins, living on the mirror's edge. Battle was what she'd wished to be good at, and she knew she was wired for combat.
She couldn't, though. She wasn't leaving Asahi alone again, and she wasn't going to flake out on Mizuki and Yumi, not after the kindness they'd shown. And as bad as Tokyo was...Aokigahara could potentially be so much worse, if they didn't try to keep up with it.
She was once again pulled out of her thoughts by a hug, this time front the front. "Asa-chan-" she protested, before being cut off as the hug tightened and expelled the air from her lungs.
"Stop being sad." Asahi stared her in the eyes. "Don't want you sad. Sad Mika no fun."
Mikasa felt a smile pull her mouth up as she hid behind her hair to hide her light blush. "Alright, I'll stop brooding. After Yumi's done with the computer, we can watch the latest episode, how about that?"
"'kay!" Asahi chirped, giving Mikasa one last squeeze before wobbling off towards the kitchen to greet Mizuki. Mikasa watched her go, doing her best to school her expression back to normal. After a moment's wrestling, she glanced over her shoulder to where Yumi had put down her tools and was watching.
"What do you want?"
"Finished with the readings, so you can have the laptop back." She tapped the laptop's lid, where the desktop screen showed that nothing was running.
"Thanks for that. Anything interesting the data has to say?"
The tinker shrugged as she got up. "North East might be seeing a surge, but it's too early to tell. One shorted out, but it's right here so I'll just fix it up on patrol."
"Ah. Well, Chika's always accommodating if we need to go up there."
Yumi gave a nod of agreement as she broke the board down into its pieces and slotted them back into their box. She finished a moment later, and left the box on the small table, stretching her arms and legs as she walked to the window.
"Headed out to patrol!" She called out to the the rest of the apartment.
"Stay safe!" Mizuki's voice drifted out from the kitchen. "There'll be ramen when you get back!"
Asahi poked her head from around the door, swallowing a slice of peach. "Market'll be good hunting. Big one, lots of trees."
Accepting the info with a nod, Yumi unlocked the window and slid it open, poking her head out to look around. They unfortunately didn't have an apartment with a fire escape right outside, but the alley was pretty much deserted except the occasional teens wanting to hide somewhere and feel rebellious. Being on the third floor made getting back in a little tricky, but getting out was easy enough.
A shimmer of light, and Yumi's costume wrapped around her, all gears and strips of cloth that looked like junk metal. She hopped out the window, deftly shutting it behind her.
Mikasa turned around and gave Asahi a grin. "Pretty Cure time?"
The seer grinned back. "Pretty Cure!"
Mizuki (Tailor): Legal adult, leader of the group. Wished to be the best dressed girl in her school, got cloth magic out of it and a secondary social-fu sense. Does a daily column for a few online newspapers for some income to support the group. Bleeding heart, likes to play up her silly side.
Yumi (Tinker): Mizuki's protoge turned partner. Liked building and creating things from an early age. Wished to be really good at making magic things, got obscenely good artifice and enchanting magic out of it but isn't much for combat. A lot of her gadgets rely on tricks that result directly from her wish magic proficiency, and are very difficult for others to replicate, or she doesn't really know what she does, just that she does something and now it works. Basically close to bullshit sometimes with artifice and enchanting and mostly terrible at anything else magic-related. Tends to be to the point and doesn't really do small talk.
Mikasa (Soldier): Named after the ship. Asahi's older sister, protective of her. Wished to be able to defeat the strongest wraiths, gained really good fighting instincts as a result, and pretty much anything she uses as a weapon becomes amazingly deadly against Wraiths. Runs a blog that does critical analysis and commentary of magical girl anime as they air, gets a bit of income from ads for the group.
Asahi (Spy): Also named after a ship. Mikasa's younger sister. Wished to know all about Wraiths, gained prescience and seer abilities with regards to Wraith activity/movement, and an instinctive ability to analyze their abilities. Outside of a couple seconds of combat pre-cog, most usable information she can pull out is either too vague to be of use, or almost too specific. Acts younger than she actually is because the information overload from being a seer is messing with her head - got a lot of white noise from the information and thus can be very out of it.
Group basically patrols around Aokigahara, keeping an eye on the edges for when Wraiths occasionally spill out of it and into the surrounding territory, and work with the girls whose territories they actually are to rebuff the invasion. Yumi has a system of sensors that roughly measure the fog density around the edges, and keeps records to help them try and spot potential locations for a break out. They technically don't have territory of their own, though in practice the groups whose territory border Aokigahara allow them to stick to the ring around the forest as their unofficial territory because having a group dedicated to keeping on eye on the absurd deadliness that is Aokigahara is nice to have. They've got a small apartment that they crash in when not doing rounds - the leader (Chihiro) worked with Yumi when they were both new and is on pretty good terms with the group.
So yeah. Got this out of my system. Hope it's not too terrible.
Where did the SIMP's existing debts go? I know there was at least one huge loan taken out to start the restaurant, but I haven't seen anything tracking how payments are going or how much of the original principal remains to be paid off. It looks like debt payments are being folded into the restaurant's income, but I'm not sure about that. It'd suck if the restaurant was lost to unfortunate circumstances and no one had any idea how much debt was left, or if the loan was finally paid off and the SIMP's accounting didn't reflect it.
This was pretty interesting, also pretty confusing. It doesn't really fit my picture of the world, or at least it didn't initially. I could introduce something that would explain this phenomena with the already planned metaphysics, but it would probably be considered a difficulty spike.
I am so damn terrible about writing this quest. I keep trying and then I invent distractions because I'm blocked so bad. I keep saying I will and then I fail.
This was pretty interesting, also pretty confusing. It doesn't really fit my picture of the world, or at least it didn't initially. I could introduce something that would explain this phenomena with the already planned metaphysics, but it would probably be considered a difficulty spike.
Mmm, I didn't think it would, but it was inspired by this quest so I put it here. It doesn't do a lot of explaining, if only because it's sorta a SoL domestic scene and introducing the characters properly didn't fit in very well. The Aokigahara thing was more just that in my mind the sheer concentrated despair that the place has (whether caused by the witches/wraiths or if they're just attracted to it is a weird chicken-and-egg sorta thing) makes it home to absurdly deadly witches/wraiths (depending on the iterations of the universe in question). The whole "break out" thing is meant to be less of a catastrophic containment breach and more "oh a bunch of Wraiths wandered out of the forest kill them now". The watching is more inclined toward giving warning before this happens and if one of the super-wraiths is what wanders out making sure the response is proportionate to the threat.
They certainly aren't keeping the wraiths penned in the forest, if that was the impression you got? As I said, not really a lot of explanations in the piece, which is I guess a weakness of the snippet.
Any and all research efforts should be redirected to figuring out the mechanics of the interdiction device and possibly requesting assistance from Hiko for the work, so that we can make a variant that affects Serena's aura similarly, allowing us to get her significantly closer before spooking demons, and handily solving a lot of her living space and combat issues.
You don't have any active research crew this month to redirect to the subject, but Mami does manage to ask Hiko about it during the time she's spent in Kyoto training.
Hiko is rather straightforward when you ask her about producing an artifact to block Serena's aura. She asks you a few questions about how large an area if covers, how it spreads when Serena moves, and if there's any empty or weaker spots in the range. She'd have to do some experimentation with Serena to make any firm statements on the subject, but based off the basic information you have available, the interdiction device is nothing like what you'd need. She won't tell you how the artifact works, but the methodology she uses to prevent teleports simply wouldn't work on what is likely a normal-space effect.
While it might be possible for her to come up with something that could handle it, and she does have some ideas on that front; it would take a degree of time and experimentation with Serena's aura that she's not willing to commit to. She's not really interested in experiencing emotion magic again.
Serena is too great a threat for the remaining demons to even consider going near her. All that's left to do at this point is to follow the fishing plan, with the variant that Serena must be out of range of the interdiction bait area until the demon has been successfully trapped and engaged, at which point she can move forward to affect it and, should the demon survive long enough, assist in killing it. When the demons get wise to the fishing technique and learn to avoid it, we will move on to Interference.
The first attempt of this set to catch one of the youma goes well, the bait team draws one in and Kyouko is able to relatively easily draw its attention and stall things out while the support team teleports in and the area is interdicted. The following battle was relatively simple with the youma's ability to teleport dodge crippled and it obviously wasn't prepared for that. It was a relatively safe kill even.
The second run is where things get much more dangerous. Once again the plan proceeds and a drawn in youma is engaged by Kyouko for the few seconds necessary for the support team to teleport in and the interdiction field to be engaged. Unfortunately, at that point the snake-like demon begins firing off what many describe as hyperbeam. Splintering shields with disturbing speed. The amount of grief generated in the barrier girls from stopping it almost makes them call for dispersing. Luckily Serena's aura envelops the area at that point and the simultaneous weakening of its attacks and strengthening of the girls gives them the heart to stand their ground, and the battle is victorious. Though it does leave your girls a bit worried about the next day.
Interestingly though, the next day your team's attempt at fishing doesn't really get anywhere at all. They spend hours trying to attract attention but the best they get is one teleporting in and out before Kyouko can even engage it, much less anyone else.
Interference will be a sustained effort where one third of our entire combat force (and Serena's team/Mami) will push into Tokyo proper and aggressively pursue class 3 demons while they attempt to hunt for food I.E. local girls, supplying as many girls and groups as possible with cell phones to improve our response times. Interdiction will be sustained for the duration of these trips, which will last [some convoluted combination of times and rotations to prevent Serena addiction]. If more than two demons or the class 4 demon with any additional demons attempts to attack us while we're in Tokyo, we retreat outside the city proper to an area we will negotiate with Nagoya as a kill-zone and begin gearing up to go back in again.
Switching over to your interference plan doesn't really improve things either. The description you get is like leaves trying to fight each other. You move on them, and the individuals move in response. Your team manages to catch out and destroy two of the non-teleporting ones just by running them down essentially, but largely wherever you go the youma just go around.
Your forces aren't willing to spread out much and the demons' abilities to apparently sense the numbers and strength of magical girls in the same way you can sense demons works against you. You can essentially ensure that a bubble around your combat team, or perhaps just Serena is clear, but they seem to have quickly taken to circling around you easily. You may be disrupting their hunting to some degree, but it's impossible for you to really determine.
Your mobility is especially hampered by maintaining the interdiction field, which not only prevents you teleporting yourselves, but combined with a hundred kilo battery is unwieldy to jump with even with enhanced strength. It's not so much the weight as the momentum difference and the impact upon the surface is far heavier than normal.
You try this for a few days, but interactions with locals has gone poorly. Perhaps they reject the foreign warband moving through the areas on a regular basis. Maybe your girls make the wrong choices in words or make light of their sacrifices. Or they simply react with anger to Serena's aura as many people did in her homeland. She's experienced with people reacting with anger as defense mechanism in order to avoid liking it too much. It's hard for you to guess since you weren't there and your reports are colored by personalities and the sheer tribalism you've instilled in your group.
Hours of running around at high speed on foot and by rooftop is exhausting, and maintaining combat readiness while doing it is as well, though it's not actually that magically intense. You gained 36 GCU from the four demons you killed. But you've lost around 14 GCU so far this month from the bunker shields, sustained tandem stealth, mass teleports, general drain effects. This month it's mostly from sustaining tandem stealth fields for hours at a time.
Risa also tsks at your girls for the rough handling of the battery when she charges it at night. It was entirely expected though. When it was handled nicely she simply placed her hands upon it to recharge it, drawing from a pouch of grief cubes she brought to do so, but now that it's being bounced around all over the place she's opened it up for repairs. From what your girls have observed the insides are actually an array of dozens of crystals. Though Keiko can already tell you that a quartz crystal by itself holds magic no more easily than anything else of similar thermal properties.
The rough handling appears to damage the connections or even break loose individual crystals entirely. Risa has said that Hiko gave orders to allow you to observe, but not to say anything about how it works or anything related. She fiddles around with the insides and uses her magic, but basic magical senses are not refined enough to tell anything beyond that magic is used. Occasionally she replaces crystals entirely from a small box of replacements she also brought along.
Sorry for total and complete failure to provide timely updates. Been extra depressed and/or distracted. If it wasn't for continual reminders I'd probably have abandoned completely. I do have the main update almost completely filled out though, just a couple bits mostly dependent on this.
Have a bunch of thoughts about how I need to adjust a couple things and clarify a couple things in an officially update post.
For instance the fears that they're way more intelligent that humans. I am pegging class 4 around 90 IQ, and somehow people panicked into superhuman towering intellect. Evolution for demons appears fast, but it's actually cribbing notes from human thoughts/dreams/consciousness and so it's not really that good at advancing mentally beyond human average because humans aren't good at thinking of something more intelligent than themselves. They can know more intelligent people exist, but they can't imagine what that's like very well. Whereas something like laser breath and acid spines they can imagine very easily. When they imagine an ultimate schemer if you examine the plans a lot of times those plans could have fallen apart at a dozen places.
As to magic use, please bear in mind originally you were going to be charged 26 for the heavy magic use last time around, but I failed at math and had it at 16 for so long I didn't want to disrupt people by changing it, so this isn't any more cost than the previous time was supposed to be. (Actually considering the change to how you used magic, this may have been a heavier magic use plan.)
So it looks to me like running them down is the only reliable way to it it from now on. That or we start going in from the opposite side of tokyo. We have the money to fund the logistics of that now, IIRC.
Well that's not terrifying. We will need to come up with some sort of plan/standard mode of operation should we run into that one or anything like it again.
Ugh. Seems like Diplo always goes poorly without the Mami there to smooth things over. I think we need to put serious thought into an apprentice that we can train to take over when we are off somewhere.
Sorry for total and complete failure to provide timely updates. Been extra depressed and/or distracted. If it wasn't for continual reminders I'd probably have abandoned completely. I do have the main update almost completely filled out though, just a couple bits mostly dependent on this.
Have a bunch of thoughts about how I need to adjust a couple things and clarify a couple things in an officially update post.
For instance the fears that they're way more intelligent that humans. I am pegging class 4 around 90 IQ, and somehow people panicked into superhuman towering intellect. Evolution for demons appears fast, but it's actually cribbing notes from human thoughts/dreams/consciousness and so it's not really that good at advancing mentally beyond human average because humans aren't good at thinking of something more intelligent than themselves. They can know more intelligent people exist, but they can't imagine what that's like very well. Whereas something like laser breath and acid spines they can imagine very easily. When they imagine an ultimate schemer if you examine the plans a lot of times those plans could have fallen apart at a dozen places.
As to magic use, please bear in mind originally you were going to be charged 26 for the heavy magic use last time around, but I failed at math and had it at 16 for so long I didn't want to disrupt people by changing it, so this isn't any more cost than the previous time was supposed to be. (Actually considering the change to how you used magic, this may have been a heavier magic use plan.)
It's fine. Sometimes you slump in posting. I have a quest that I did that to but didn't come back to (my readers weren't as aggressive as yours I guess), so I understand the kind of exhaustion and blocked-ness you can get.
I was always of the opinion that even at their smartest, the class 4 would only be human average or slightly above. Animal cunning does not a mad genius make. Glad to see I was vindicated.
We had to do some basic experimentation. A little extra cost was worth it to kill so many Youma (we got five in one post! FIVE!).
Ugh. Seems like Diplo always goes poorly without the Mami there to smooth things over. I think we need to put serious thought into an apprentice that we can train to take over when we are off somewhere.
Mami was with them. Apparently it was just the aura reaction really throwing things down in quality.
---
I figure some modification to Interference is warranted, but it's difficult to go about doing it because of the class 4 interdicting blind teleports in-city. We might have to hunt it down to get rid of it, though that comes with the issue of it probably dragging all the Youma in (and we can't bring Serena with us or he'll tele out).
We're probably going to have to do heavy research on an anti-Serena device if we want to pull off any further big successes or catch the big fish. Till then, the best we can do is openly broadcast our patrol schedule and route so locals can cross our path to escape hunts in progress
Sorry for total and complete failure to provide timely updates. Been extra depressed and/or distracted. If it wasn't for continual reminders I'd probably have abandoned completely. I do have the main update almost completely filled out though, just a couple bits mostly dependent on this.
Hey it's fine inverted, no-one can blame you for slumping. I've had that same issue too, but it was far more numerous (and a bit more extreme) in my case. And it's also the main reason why I am unable to trust myself to do quests (Well doing quests solo) as I get very paranoid about criticism (I've been trying real, real, hard to fix that issue of mine, but with, unfortunately, little success).
Ugh. Seems like Diplo always goes poorly without the Mami there to smooth things over. I think we need to put serious thought into an apprentice that we can train to take over when we are off somewhere.
You guys botch diplomacy rolls more than anything else. It's ironic because Mami has a diplomacy bonus. Really it more feels like they go poorly when she's not there because her bonus is enough to make up for a lot.
In this case it was a major failure but not (quite) critical failure.
It would be a multiple month project even for Hiko. For you guys you can't expect to negate Serena's aura in a reasonable amount of time with your resources.
I figure some modification to Interference is warranted, but it's difficult to go about doing it because of the class 4 interdicting blind teleports in-city. We might have to hunt it down to get rid of it, though that comes with the issue of it probably dragging all the Youma in (and we can't bring Serena with us or he'll tele out).
You haven't actually tested that. Single class 3s will run away immediately, but doublets are less skittish to her, and a whole pack of them will even actively attack. So you can't assume that.
So it looks to me like running them down is the only reliable way to it it from now on. That or we start going in from the opposite side of tokyo. We have the money to fund the logistics of that now, IIRC.
We should be able to charter the same boat that Nagoya uses to get to Tokyo Bay; that's about the same distance as the distance between where Mitakihara is and Ibaraki Prefecture. Mount Tsukuba would make a decent staging area, once we've cleared the immediate surroundings starting from say Mt. Kunimi; it's about as far away from downtown Tokyo as Mt. Tanzawa is.
The major issue though is Serena and her retinue. They'd have to take a separate boat from the rest of the Serene, since there's no way that ~150-200 mile trip is going to take less than a few hours each way, so we'd need to charter two boats to Nagoya's one, and ensure that none of the Serene, other than Mami who can resist the effects, travel with her.
Hopefully Mami will have gotten the trick to powering the interdiction plate and we can get to slaughtering the Class 3s in a big way next month. We really need to hurry up in that regard; IIRC we were given a six month window before Tokyo death-spirals, and we'll be entering month 3 with only 35% of the Class 3s killed and no sightings of the eyeball yet. Is kyubey still helping us track the Class 3s and the eyeball?
We should be able to charter the same boat that Nagoya uses to get to Tokyo Bay; that's about the same distance as the distance between where Mitakihara is and Ibaraki Prefecture. Mount Tsukuba would make a decent staging area, once we've cleared the immediate surroundings starting from say Mt. Kunimi; it's about as far away from downtown Tokyo as Mt. Tanzawa is.
The major issue though is Serena and her retinue. They'd have to take a separate boat from the rest of the Serene, since there's no way that ~150-200 mile trip is going to take less than a few hours each way, so we'd need to charter two boats to Nagoya's one, and ensure that none of the Serene, other than Mami who can resist the effects, travel with her.
Hopefully Mami will have gotten the trick to powering the interdiction plate and we can get to slaughtering the Class 3s in a big way next month. We really need to hurry up in that regard; IIRC we were given a six month window before Tokyo death-spirals, and we'll be entering month 3 with only 35% of the Class 3s killed and no sightings of the eyeball yet. Is kyubey still helping us track the Class 3s and the eyeball?
Coming in from a different direction won't do anything. They can sense us and know how dangerous we are long before we're close enough to lock down their teleportation. Basically everything you've suggested is pointless, because now the Youma are deliberately avoiding us except when there's more than two of them at once, which is dangerous even with Serena around, and we can't teleport onto them because there's a risk the class 4 is nearby.
All we can do now is start taking actual risks, like we were told we would have to do by Helix several dozen times, like try to bait a large enough horde of Youma into the interdiction field and do a big engagement with them to thin their numbers more severely, or make a headlong no-holds-barred attack on the class 4 and hopefully eliminate it, allowing us to fight without having an entire arm of our combat tactics neutralized for the rest of the 3's.
Personally I think we might be able to manage a trapdoor spider approach, though it would be brutally costly in cubes. Stealth field a forward kill team somewhere in the city with the interdiction device, and physically walk Serena into range of it when we catch a demon in the trap.
The problem being that they know we exist and how we operate thanks to the rudimentary communications between them. They spot us and they're liable to back the hell off, even if we're using bait tactics.
We engaged Serena, and only teleporters who could escape the aura patrolled our area. We engaged Hiko, and the teleporters stopped attacking solo meguca in the area. We'll kill two, three Youma tops, for a significant amount of repositioning effort and cubes (we blew a lot of magic to get those last few straggling non-teleporters).
The only options left are long-term stealthed kill teams in the city, hoping that Serena can run fast enough to turn the tables on ambush-ees, or trying to hunt down the class 4 and kill it dead so we, and the other supporting factions, can start teleporting with impunity around the city to clear it out.
If we choose to do that, it'll have to be all the marbles. We'll have to get Nagoya's strike teams used to the aura for at least one prep month beforehand. The beholder will, in all likelihood, be capable of putting our veterans on the ropes in terms of despair miasma, so we need all the extra elites we can get our hands on, especially since we'll have to lose one, probably two elites ourselves for the fight (one to run our interdiction to keep youma out, and Seto because she can neither handle Serena's aura nor can she fight at all effectively without committing sudoku to the beholder's interdiction).
