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Now You Feel Like Number None [Bleach Arrancar Quest]

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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[X] Work with Szayel. In exchange you will ask for…
-[X] Healing your crippling injuries. With the Quinta as your mistress, there is no risk of him offending her by turning you into a freaky mutant, but letting Szayel play around with your insides might still have consequences, even - especially - if he believes he's helping you doing so. Then again, these consequences could be positive…
 
[X] Work with Szayel. In exchange you will ask for…
-[X] Nothing. By feigning pure scientific interest in his work and an eagerness to help him, you will please him greatly and make him less likely to scrutinize your work, putting you in a better position to make the Sacrophagus less inhumane, and perhaps giving you the opportunity to pilfer Szayel's notes on other subjects for your own use.

Voting for Nothing appeals to those who wish to make Yammi suffer less, but it also appeals to people who want to steal (and "steal", because honestly he's probably going to let us take some of the ones he wants us to look at when he pretends to look elsewhere) Szayel's notes. Like, it says it right there in the second bit, we'll pilfer his notes.

I want his notes.
 
[X] Work with Szayel. In exchange youwill ask for…
-[X] Nothing. By feigning pure scientific interest in his work and an eagerness to help him, you will please him greatly and make him less likely to scrutinize your work, putting you in a better position to make the Sacrophagus less inhumane, and perhaps giving you the opportunity to pilfer Szayel's notes on other subjects for your own use.
 
[X] Work with Szayel. In exchange you will ask for…
-[X] Healing your crippling injuries. With the Quinta as your mistress, there is no risk of him offending her by turning you into a freaky mutant, but letting Szayel play around with your insides might still have consequences, even - especially - if he believes he's helping you doing so. Then again, these consequences could be positive…
 
On one hand I want something that could give us interesting ideas or concepts for marana that we otherwise couldn't by just advancing into the next stage. On the other hand being crippled sucks so much ass and I want it to end as soon as possible.

Edit: I have decided I no longer wish to be cripples

[X] Work with Szayel. In exchange you will ask for…
-[X] Healing your crippling injuries. With the Quinta as your mistress, there is no risk of him offending her by turning you into a freaky mutant, but letting Szayel play around with your insides might still have consequences, even - especially - if he believes he's helping you doing so. Then again, these consequences could be positive…
 
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...So here's what I think.
Refusal is an option to keep an eye on Luppi in exchange for Szayel's annoyance.
Working for Nothing though, is the option I prefer, for a few reasons, though I'm unsure of which direction to go in.
Firstly between Cirru and Nemo, this will keep Szayel questioning, analyzing and learning instead of his typical stagnancy. It's possible that info on Nemo is how the guy comes up with the healing trick he imbues into his fractions.
Secondly, it allows us to alter the suit to be less horrific, and perhaps more effective, as much as Nemo may dislike that. Recall how Nemo kinda ignored the otherwise deadly wounds on her organs? The same might happen with Yammy getting used to the suit if it's all pain all the time as opposed to say, a pain toggle that Yammy activates via Resurreccion.
Third...Luppi. He loves getting a rise out of Nemo via his veiled insults and jokes at the expense of others...But being trusted drives him nuts. I'm thinking it might not be the worst notion to do this, since frankly...We're only but so able to purge his influence, given the story we're telling. Of course this also perhaps forms one of the best reasons to refuse Szayel...Though part of me want simply to put it off until after the Gala is done so we can, if not focus on the Gala, then perhaps try to clear our backlog of favors owed (Gran Rey Cero teachings!) Or perhaps some La Marena work in Nemo's downtime...
The more I think on it the more I think we should accept but ask for nothing, if only because giving Luppi some slack, while bad, probably won't actually be as bad as we think because that's Luppi for ya, and we have other concessions on our time that we'll be making. I'll wait a bit to actually vote lest the arguments presented change my mind.
 
[X] Work with Szayel. In exchange you will ask for…
-[X] Nothing. By feigning pure scientific interest in his work and an eagerness to help him, you will please him greatly and make him less likely to scrutinize your work, putting you in a better position to make the Sacrophagus less inhumane, and perhaps giving you the opportunity to pilfer Szayel's notes on other subjects for your own use.
 
TenfoldShields said:
I low-key love the idea of Grimmjow trying to change his outfit. That man would try to figure out a way to show more skin and by god that's the anime we need in our world.
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In both NN and Bleach canon, he actually has a pretty decent sense of style.
From NN:
Omicron said:
"Oh, it's the Sexta. A handsome man, boastful, and who used to have a good sense of style, but… He saw the Unmentionable. And as I feared it consumed his mind."
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From Bleach:
 
On the one hand, stealing from someone who's just shown the ability to see everything we are and we're doing with his instruments sounds like a bad idea. On the other hand accepting his offer of healing for a knowledgeable researcher at the risk of screwing with our body sounds a lot like the calling of the flame to the moth.

[X] Work with Szayel. In exchange you will ask for…
-[X] Healing your crippling injuries. With the Quinta as your mistress, there is no risk of him offending her by turning you into a freaky mutant, but letting Szayel play around with your insides might still have consequences, even - especially - if he believes he's helping you doing so. Then again, these consequences could be positive…

Yeah, there's no way I'm not choosing this.
 
[X] Work with Szayel. In exchange youwill ask for…
-[X] Nothing. By feigning pure scientific interest in his work and an eagerness to help him, you will please him greatly and make him less likely to scrutinize your work, putting you in a better position to make the Sacrophagus less inhumane, and perhaps giving you the opportunity to pilfer Szayel's notes on other subjects for your own use.
 
[X] Work with Szayel. In exchange you will ask for…
-[X] Healing your crippling injuries. With the Quinta as your mistress, there is no risk of him offending her by turning you into a freaky mutant, but letting Szayel play around with your insides might still have consequences, even - especially - if he believes he's helping you doing so. Then again, these consequences could be positive…


My reasoning: After the gala is a good time for an invasion to happen. I am worried that not getting healed will put us at a disadvantage when it happens.
 
[X] Work with Szayel. In exchange you will ask for…
-[X] Healing your crippling injuries. With the Quinta as your mistress, there is no risk of him offending her by turning you into a freaky mutant, but letting Szayel play around with your insides might still have consequences, even - especially - if he believes he's helping you doing so. Then again, these consequences could be positive…
 
[X] Work with Szayel. In exchange you will ask for…
-[X] Healing your crippling injuries. With the Quinta as your mistress, there is no risk of him offending her by turning you into a freaky mutant, but letting Szayel play around with your insides might still have consequences, even - especially - if he believes he's helping you doing so. Then again, these consequences could bepositive…
 

[X] Work with Szayel. In exchange you will ask for…
-[X] Nothing. By feigning pure scientific interest in his work and an eagerness to help him, you will please him greatly and make him less likely to scrutinize your work, putting you in a better position to make the Sacrophagus less inhumane, and perhaps giving you the opportunity to pilfer Szayel's notes on other subjects for your own use.

Voting for the option I think will have the most interesting results. I wonder what Cirucci will think when she discovers this, though. And how this will affect Luppi.

Either way, I want our Marana skills to be The Very Best
 
For those folks worried that Szayel will try to install a kill switch or something in Nemo, I want to point out that he really doesn't need to.

He's already demonstrated the ability to disable Nemo with one sharp finger poke to the chest. Which is something everybody can do, not just Dr. Creepy.

And in canon, when he shut down Renji and Uryu, he didn't need to operate on them, either. He just had to observe them for a few minutes, which he's already done for Nemo. He's staring at her internal organs right now.

Szayel has all the tools he needs to sabotage Nemo right now. Being healthy again is making her less vulnerable, not more.
 
I want to choose Healing Your Crippling Injuries, but Nothing is just too tempting to pass up. I want to know what will happen if we manage to swipe some of Szayelaporro's notes -- and whether or not we will acquire some sort of engineering skill -- not only because of its potential usefulness but.... because it could lead up to do something with the Artificial Soul Research notes that we stole from Urahara.

I don't know how that would work yet, but....

[X] Work with Szayel. In exchange you will ask for…
-[X] Nothing. By feigning pure scientific interest in his work and an eagerness to help him, you will please him greatly and make him less likely to scrutinize your work, putting you in a better position to make the Sacrophagus less inhumane, and perhaps giving you the opportunity to pilfer Szayel's notes on other subjects for your own use.
 
Phigment said:
Szayel has all the tools he needs to sabotage Nemo right now. Being healthy again is making her less vulnerable, not more.
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On the contrary, the only thing scarier than a Szayel trying to hurt you is a Szayel who earnestly thinks he's helping. And beyond him installing fun but dumb stuff like acid spit or cool combat claws or what have you the concern is that, like...he'll install things designed to not just kill people but hurt them, cripple them, take them apart. Hollows aren't exactly nice but Nemo pretty reliably tries to make things fast and relatively clean, she's not a sadist or a pursuit predator, she isn't interested in dredging things out on multiple levels and, iirc, is often unsettled at the emotional trauma her abilities can cause. Pairing those with abilities designed, first and foremost, to inflict physical trauma is only compounding the problem imo. And Nemo's forced into dire enough straights often enough that she'll be sorely tempted to use them and ngl I don't especially want to read an update where Nemo graphically dismembers a dude with her ravenous, corrosive, retractable mandibles or w/e.

She's worked really hard to get to the kind of spot, emotionally and...dunno spiritually? Where she is right now. Running the risk of backsliding 'cause she got monstery grafts doesn't exactly feel ideal.

Beyond that I'm not super fond of the set up and what it says. Nemo's passing by all these tools and technologies made to basically torture Arrancar and Hollows, to tear them apart and piece them together, to do, in a sense, what Aizen does just much more brutally and viscerally. She knows that the guy who runs this place uses them regularly, and she's deciding that she wants a piece of that. She's, on some level, agreeing with Szayel when he goes "yes, you need fucked up mad science to perfect your body and unlock your true potential". It's kind of callous in a way? And it's heavily emphasizing the fears of Nemo. The fear of being weak and being picked off. The fear of being useless. The fear of being hurt again.

The Nothing option feels much more like an emphasis and affirmation of her current path in contrast. Where she's still afraid yeah but she's not ruled by it. Where she's able to prioritize emotional and moral considerations over purely physical, immediate concerns. Where she's able to decide something's wrong and she's going to do something about it.

I don't really grok the "if you're making a deal with the devil just be as selfish as possible" argument frankly. It's kinda mercenary, cold and calculating and maximizing, and that's not something I really strongly associate with Nemo?

Edit: Also big ghost moth flying out into the night with yet another samurai-scientist's research notes is a fun thing really.
 
[X] Refuse. Nothing is worth the moral hazard of working on this project, or the dangers of Szayel's laboratory. You will offend the Espada, who might not even understand why you're letting go of such an opportunity, but Style will let you do so smoothly enough that he won't hold a grudge.

What good we can do by helping will be greatly outweighed by the perversions he'll make from our art.
 
[X] Work with Szayel. In exchange you will ask for…
-[X] Nothing. By feigning pure scientific interest in his work and an eagerness to help him, you will please him greatly and make him less likely to scrutinize your work, putting you in a better position to make the Sacrophagus less inhumane, and perhaps giving you the opportunity to pilfer Szayel's notes on other subjects for your own use.
 
Well, after being told we can stay awake and watch the procedure...

[X] Work with Szayel. In exchange you will ask for…
-[X] Healing your crippling injuries. With the Quinta as your mistress, there is no risk of him offending her by turning you into a freaky mutant, but letting Szayel play around with your insides might still have consequences, even - especially - if he believes he's helping you doing so. Then again, these consequences could be positive…
 
[X] Work with Szayel. In exchange you will ask for… -[X] Nothing. By feigning pure scientific interest in his work and an eagerness to help him, you will please him greatly and make him less likely to scrutinize your work, putting you in a better position to make the Sacrophagus less inhumane, and perhaps giving you the opportunity to pilfer Szayel's notes on other subjects for your own use.
 
[X] Refuse.

Nemo had a wonderful dream for the future. I don't think she'd be able to keep it after choosing to pervert her own art into an atrocity, no matter what her initial intentions might be. She's not a Wernher von Braun or Albert Speer-style amoral monster, and working with Szayelaporro would inevitably call upon her to betray her principles until either she breaks or they do.

As for Yammy, ultimately the greatest kindness we can give him is to make sure he dies as quickly as possible when the war kicks off. I don't see what we can do for him otherwise that won't be undone later, given that keeping him in pain and crushing his body into shape are the core parts of what the Sarcophagus is crafted to do.
 
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