Remove ads

Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

Reader mode
Remove ads
Direct Intervention pt. 9
  • Threadmarks
    • You scowl at the note. Would it be better to read it, or just leave it be? You're almost certain Oriko left that note- it's utterly pristine save for the traceries of beautifully done calligraphy. Your gaze shifts over to the other two again to make sure they aren't looking -Homura's pointing off into the distance, now-, before you stoop and pick up the note.

    The note is short, and written in flowing, picture-perfect Hiragana penmanship of the sort someone who's taken lessons for half her life would have. It says, simply, 'This was, and remains, necessary.'

    A tug on the corner of the note and it bends as though it caught on something.

    Too late, you see the thread delicately glued to the corner.

    Too late, you see the tiny black box the note had been sitting on top of.

    Despite your enhanced reflexes, you're halfway through a panicked jump away when the box detonates, blossoming out in a spray of fire and shrapnel. White-hot agony shoots up your spine as metal shards tear their way through your right leg and hip. Some corner of your brain recognizes that the mine can't have been a military one- those have deadly radii in the tens of meters.

    You crash down facefirst as a bleeding heap next to one of the vents on the roof. Your right leg, extended from the jump and caught in the brunt of the blast, is little more than a mangled mess of flesh, shredded tatters hanging from the bone.

    It's probably a good thing you don't actually need all the blood that's pooling around your leg.

    You clench your teeth, grinding them against each other hard enough to creak.

    Mind over matter.

    Pain is optional.

    You don't need to feel the pain.

    You can almost feel something click inside your brain, and the pain fades away to a dull ache.

    "Sabrina!" Mami's instantly by your side, eyes wide and panicked. Homura's a step behind her.

    [] Write-in

    =====

    ​

    Remember that I have, to date, fiated Oriko's actions once.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Okay, so, I can't call credit for calling this exact thing.

    But I definitely did call regretting reading the note.

    So, uh.

    Told you so. :p

    (Yeah, okay, my statement was more based on "Blackmail" and less on "Traps," but the general statement of "if we don't read her notes she can't hurt us with them" stands.)
     
    linkhyrule5 said:
    Okay, so, I can't call credit for calling this exact thing.

    But I definitely did call regretting reading the note.

    So, uh.

    Told you so. :p

    (Yeah, okay, my statement was more based on "Blackmail" and less on "Traps," but the general statement of "if we don't read her notes she can't hurt us with them" stands.)
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Destroying the note would have also triggered the mine. Any action on it would have freed it from the time stop.

    Honestly several people predicted specifically that it was trapped, not including you. That's why several votes called for looking it over for traps first.
     
    inverted_helix said:
    Destroying the note would have also triggered the mine. Any action on it would have freed it from the time stop.

    Honestly several people predicted specifically that it was trapped, not including you. That's why several votes called for looking it over for traps first.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Actually, no. It could only go off because it was touching the wire, which was touching the note, which was touching us. If we had destroyed it with grief or burned we'd be fine.

    Well, okay, it'd go off as soon as the time stop ended, probably, but we'd still probably be fine.
     
    Remove ads
    On the nature of prescience again
  • Informational
    • Something I'd rather like to address - Oriko doesn't have perfect precog.

    Perfect precog is, by definition, unbeatable. And as I've said,
    Firnagzen said:
    Precog seems to be an insurmountable obstacle for you guys to plan, no? But I'll say this outright: It is not insurmountable. There is a reason for that, and if you guys can figure it out, great!

    If Oriko's precog were infallible, I might as well be writing a story by myself. But I'm running a Quest.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
     
  • Informational
    • linkhyrule5 said:
    Actually, no. It could only go off because it was touching the wire, which was touching the note, which was touching us. If we had destroyed it with grief or burned we'd be fine.

    Well, okay, it'd go off as soon as the time stop ended, probably, but we'd still probably be fine.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    If she designed the trap properly it would have been triggered by destroying the note just as easily. It would have been designed properly.

    It's really not that difficult to make a mine trigger from something being cut.

    The fact that the line being pulled was able to trigger the mine despite the fact that the line would have to interface with the trigger mechanism shows that the timestop effect is sufficiently free that a conventional spring loaded tripwire built into the paper of the note designed to trigger on destruction of the note would have worked fine.
     
    Last edited:
    inverted_helix said:
    If she designed the trap properly it would have been triggered by destroying the note just as easily. It would have been designed properly.

    It's really not that difficult to make a mine trigger from something being cut.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    It doesn't matter - we're in time stop, and it's not time-stop-enabled unless it's touching something that's touching Homura (that's not the ground or the air, somewhat arbitrarily.)

    Firnagzen said:
    Something I'd rather like to address - Oriko doesn't have perfect precog.

    Perfect precog is, by definition, unbeatable. And as I've said,
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Which would explain why the note would be there even if we destroyed it without reading it. I see.
     
    linkhyrule5 said:
    It doesn't matter - we're in time stop, and it's not time-stop-enabled unless it's touching something that's touching Homura (that's not the ground or the air, somewhat arbitrarily.)


    Which would explain why the note would be there even if we destroyed it without reading it. I see.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    But it would have been acted on by us acting on it with grief or fire or what have you. Same way that Homura can fire bullets and them not stop in mid air the moment they leave the barrel. Things acted on by someone in the timestop continue to propagate normally. A tripwire rigged to a note we destroyed would have triggered by the same mechanism as Homura's weapons continuing to function once they move beyond her touch.

    It also means if there was a hostage threat she would have still applied the kill if we hadn't read it so your whole argument collapses on that anyways.
     
    Last edited:
    inverted_helix said:
    But it would have been acted on by us acting on it with grief or fire or what have you. Same way that Homura can fire bullets and them not stop in mid air the moment they leave the barrel.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Bullets in general stop when they hit something, and don't cause damage until the timestop ends.

    In this case, pulling on the string means that all parts of the mine were connected to Homura until the moment of explosion. That wouldn't be true of a destruction-triggered bomb, where the mine would be completely disconnected to us... uh, in general. In fact, there's no reason to believe the note would even be destroyed until after the timestop ends, just like bullets don't hit their targets until after Homura releases her shield.
     
    Last edited:
    You get one time link.

    [] Stay calm.
    [] Talk to Homura and Mami
    -[] Yuma, the recently contracted girl in Kasamino is a top rate healer. She is however in Kyoko's care. If Mami would like to stay we can understand that but other wise it will take too long to heal this.

    Yes it was a mistake but nothing we can do about it now. This is a protovote, subject to change.
     
    linkhyrule5 said:
    Bullets in general stop when they hit something, and don't cause damage until the timestop ends.

    In this case, pulling on the string means that all parts of the mine were connecting to Homura until the moment of explosion. That wouldn't be true of a destruction-triggered bomb, where the mine would be completely disconnected to us... uh, in general. In fact, there's no reason to believe the note would even be destroyed until after the timestop ends, just like bullets don't hit their targets until after Homura releases her shield.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    There's also the possibility of making the note itself out of explosive. If it was thermite for instance destroying it would have incinerated us.

    Also you kind of defy your own point there. The bullets couldn't damage the target unless the target was in the timestop. Ergo we would have been utterly unable to damage the note without bringing it into the timestop, rendering us vulnerable to the trap regardless.
     
    inverted_helix said:
    There's also the possibility of making the note itself out of explosive. If it was thermite for instance destroying it would have incinerated us.

    Also you kind of defy your own point there. The bullets couldn't damage the target unless the target was in the timestop. Ergo we would have been utterly unable to damage the note without bringing it into the timestop, rendering us vulnerable to the trap regardless.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    ...

    We throw grief-shards at it and leave them there. The shards keep their momentum, and the moment the timestop ends tear the note to shreds. The mine then goes off, but nobody cares except whatever poor guy owns this roof.

    Which, uh, was pretty self-explanatory from "destroy it with grief."
     
    Firnagzen said:
    The note is short, and written in flowing, picture-perfect Hiragana penmanship of the sort someone who's taken lessons for half her life would have. It says, simply, 'This was, and remains, necessary.'
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Yeah. I'd kill her just for this bullshit.

    A tug on the corner of the note and it bends as though it caught on something.

    Too late, you see the thread delicately glued to the corner.

    Too late, you see the tiny black box the note had been sitting on top of.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    This, this is just a bonus.
     
    Do we need to specify in the future to try and read notes without touching them and checking for traps?
    :I Because for some reason I was thinking we'd just read the note without touching it.

    Ah well. Proper crazy paranoia from now on. (FRIEND COMPUTER)

    Anyway with infinite magic we can be healed, this is a mere annoyance to us thanks to our power.
     
    linkhyrule5 said:
    ...

    We throw grief-shards at it and leave them there. The shards keep their momentum, and the moment the timestop ends tear the note to shreds. The mine then goes off, but nobody cares except whatever poor guy owns this roof.

    Which, uh, was pretty self-explanatory from "destroy it with grief."
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    No no it really isn't. You're once again bullshitting out your ass. "Destroy it with grief" is self explanatory as destroying it now, not leaving grief around it to destroy it later which incidentally wouldn't work. The grief has to be under our active control or it disperses. Our grief control is not like bullets that will just keep up their flight pattern. The time stop would end and if we weren't around the grief would disperse harmlessly like it always does outside our field of control, even assuming that it didn't disperse during the timestop once we moved on. You meant to destroy it now, you didn't specify set it up to be destroyed later. Plus our grief manipulation like that would have drawn Mami and Homura to look at our shiny porcupine of death and ask uncomfortable questions.

    And now I am at the point of insulting you because your ideas are stupid.
     
    Last edited:
    Alright guys time to manipulate all the grief we have so far to make a body double of ourself to puppet about and investigate with to avoid any more traps.

    Time to try and coat everything around ourself with grief so we can get a bit of 360 viewing power.

    Its time to step it up a notch.
     
    ...Honestly? I call this a win for us.

    That did no long term damage and is making us more wary of touching things while in time stop.

    So, let's lay down some future time stop ground rules here:

    1. Don't touch things.
    2. If we have to touch things, cover the area in grief, so that we can feel out the shape of what we're about to touch and sense if it's unusual in any way or has wires connected to it.
    3. See if we can levitate everyone on platforms of grief and have a grief sphere around the group when we're moving. That way tripwires and the like can't get us, because we'll sense them as obstructions to the grief.

    That covers everything, right? Anything I missed?
     
    inverted_helix said:
    No no it really isn't. You're once again bullshitting out your ass. "Destroy it with grief" is self explanatory as destroying it now, not leaving grief around it to destroy it later which incidentally wouldn't work. The grief has to be under our active control or it disperses. Our grief control is not like bullets that will just keep up their flight pattern. The time stop would end and if we weren't around the grief would disperse harmlessly like it always does outside our field of control, even assuming that it didn't disperse during the timestop once we moved on. You meant to destroy it now, you didn't specify set it up to be destroyed later. Plus our grief manipulation like that would have drawn Mami and Homura to look at our shiny porcupine of death and ask uncomfortable questions.

    And now I am at the point of insulting you because your ideas are stupid.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    It's an automatic function of the timestop. If we're not exerting control over it it shouldn't have time to disperse.

    Admittedly, I don't know that, and I could've been wrong. But at no point did I say anything vaguely resembling "tear to shreds," say, or anything else that resembles "destroy it in a way that requires touching it."
    Firnagzen said:

    How sure are you? (That last wheel in particular.)
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Well, at any rate they certainly don't hit their targets before the timestop ends. If we threw something at the note it wouldn't have hit before the end of the timestop, is the point.
     
    Wander said:
    ...Honestly? I call this a win for us.

    That did no long term damage and is making us more wary of touching things while in time stop.

    So, let's lay down some future time stop ground rules here:

    1. Don't touch things.
    2. If we have to touch things, cover the area in grief, so that we can feel out the shape of what we're about to touch and sense if it's unusual in any way or has wires connected to it.
    3. See if we can levitate everyone on platforms of grief and have a grief sphere around the group when we're moving. That way tripwires and the like can't get us, because we'll sense them as obstructions to the grief.

    That covers everything, right? Anything I missed?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    I'm sure you did, but I can't think of it, so let's go with this to start.
     
    linkhyrule5 said:
    It's an automatic function of the timestop. If we're not exerting control over it it shouldn't have time to disperse.

    Admittedly, I don't know that, and I could've been wrong. But at no point did I say anything vaguely resembling "tear to shreds," say, or anything else that resembles "destroy it in a way that requires touching it."
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    You originally derived your argument around the fact that she wanted us to read it to fall into a blackmail scenario. Therefore you wanted to destroy it and not let Mami or Homura read it. Setting up means of destruction around it would have only highlighted it to them. Thus you'd have had to destroy it right then to avoid them coming over and reading it anyways.

    The Grief would disperse instantly when we left control radius. We're actively controlling it and it's independent of the time stop because we're the ones controlling it. Momentum isn't conserved because it has no independent momentum. Outside our control radius grief isn't tangible enough to interact with normal matter, not in the quantities we deploy at any rate.
     
    So when Firnagzen says Oriko doesn't have perfect precog, I can't help but get the mental image of Oriko reading the quest and seeing what leading options Firnagzen gives us at the end of every update. Write-ins are our only hope... :V

    Edit: Also, let's just make a mental note to grab Homura later and test what effects our grief manipulation has in timestop. It's better than trying to figure out the interactions by just arguing the theory.
     
    Last edited:
    Oh, uh also, Sabrina's kind of bleeding out right now, and while that's not the biggest issue per say, it might give Mami a bit of a freak out considering how worried she is about potentially losing us. So...



    [X] Encase the wounded areas in grief to prevent blood loss.
    -[X] Tell Mami that we're okay and ask her to heal us.
    --[X] Make sure you're keeping everyone's gems clean, we don't want any freak outs.
    ---[X] Bring up aforementioned time stop safety ground rules.
     
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top