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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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Under the Radar pt. 13
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    • "Mami?" you ask in concern, squeezing her hand. "Do you need a moment? Are you OK with doing this now, Mami? It's OK if we do it another day."

    "N-no, I... we should do it today," Mami says, looking at you.

    "Are you sure, Mami?" you say, your brow furrowed in worry. "Really, it's OK." Homura, across the table, gives you a minute frown.

    Mami takes a deep, shaking breath. "No. Let's do it now," she says.

    "Would you like to start?" you ask.

    Mami bites her lip, swallowing hard. Finally, she looks up at Madoka and Sayaka, who are looking increasingly worried as the silence stretches out.

    "Madoka, S-Sayaka," she starts, voice wavering. "I- we- you shouldn't become magical girls. K-Kyuubey-" Mami's voice chokes over, and she stops speaking.

    The two girls stare, confusion and worry written plainly on their face.

    You raise your left hand, bearing both your Soul Gem in ring form and that ring of Grief you never bothered to dissolve. A twist of your mind has your egg-shaped Soul Gem forming on your palm, and you set it down on the coffee table with a quiet clink that draws the attention of both Madoka and Sayaka.

    "This is my Soul Gem," you say deliberately. "Unfortunately, the name isn't an embellishment. Kyuubey takes the souls of magical girls and puts them into, well." You tap a finger against your Soul Gem. Mami's grip on your hand, under the table, becomes bone crushing in force as she shrinks in on herself, unable to meet anyone's eyes.

    There's a look of slowly dawning horror on Madoka's face, her gaze flicking from you, to Mami, to Homura, sitting beside her. Her eyes dart down to Homura's ring, and then back to her face, begging for an answer. Homura shakes her head slowly.

    Sayaka's face is just as horrified, and she swallows hard. "Ha. Y-you're joking, r-rig-" Her lips press together, unable to even finish the sentence.

    Tears well up in Madoka's pink eyes. "T-tha-t-that's terrible!" she wails, lunging at the time traveller and wrapping the girl in a hug. "Y-you- h-he-"

    Homura stiffens at the touch, before softening and letting Madoka clutch her.

    Madoka's reaction seems to be the catalyst for Mami beginning to cry. She blinks furiously, trying to suppress the tears, until you drag her into a tight hug. She buries her head against your shoulder, trying to muffle the sobs wracking her body.

    Another pair of arms wrapping around Mami from behind her - Madoka, herself starting to cry in earnest, tears leaking down her cheeks.

    Sayaka slams a fist against the coffee table, the plates and cups jumping in a cacophony of clatters drowned out by Madoka's crying. "Why? Why would he do that?"

    "So we can fight better," you say tonelessly, still holding Mami tightly as she shakes, your shoulder slowly dampening with tears. "We can fight on even if we lose every drop of blood, even if we lose our limbs, even if we get torn in two." You meet Sayaka's eyes. "But if you take it away? We... shut down."

    "Damn it," Sayaka snarls.

    A quiet rustle of cloth beside you. Homura, kneeling beside you as she touches a hand to Madoka's shoulder in silent support.

    "Damn it," Sayaka says softly, hurrying around the table to join the group hug.

    Slow, shaking sobs accompany the swiftly fading light of the evening.

    Mami draws back eventually, her eyes puffy and red from her sobs. Madoka's in a similar state as she sits back, while Sayaka looks exhausted, as if she bore the weight of the world on her shoulders. Homura's eyes are hooded, her head bowed, almost as if in supplication.

    "H-he's n-not-" Mami's voice is a cracked, lifeless thing, not even a shadow of her usual rich, warm timbre. She licks her lips, trying again. "H-he's not your friend. H-he-"

    "He didn't tell us," you say, taking your cue from Mami, and her hand between your own. You run your thumb over her knuckles, drawing the Grief from her Soul Gem with the barest fragment of concentration and will. "He doesn't tell us about the perils or the truth." You smile bitterly. "A liar by omission. He doesn't feel for us. He doesn't feel anything at all."

    You glance at Homura, twitching a hand slightly in a silent question. She shakes her head slightly.

    "T-that's a-awful," Madoka whispers.

    "I'm sorry," you say. "But you needed, deserved to know not to trust Kyuubey. It isn't your friend, it doesn't care what happens to you, and it'll do its best to trick you into contracting."

    Sayaka growls, guttural and throaty. "Damn it," she says again, hands clenched into fists in impotent rage and nostrils flaring wide.

    "Madoka," Homura whispers, amethyst eyes fixed on Madoka, pleading desperation in her eyes as she kneels in front of Madoka. "Please, promise me. That you won't make a contract with Kyuubey."

    "I w-won't," Madoka says, in fits and starts. "I w-won't do anything like t-that, Homura. B-besides," she offers a weak, shaky smile. "I-I'm too wimpy to do s-something like t-that."

    Sayaka looks at Homura. "I... I guess I owe you an apology, transfer student," she grits out from between clenched teeth.

    Homura nods silently.

    Mami's hand trembles weakly in yours. Golden eyes, still bloodshot and puffy from crying, search your face, and you give her a warm, reassuring smile.

    [] Write-in

    =====​

    Layer upon layer of contingency. Am I talking about me?
     
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    • Crasian01 said:
    Coding Humor
    Click to expand...
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    ...alright, I'm pretty sure that everything checks out and I know what this will do, all I need to do now is compile it and -
    *Segmentation Fault.*
    ... FFFFFFFFFFF-
    0 to WITCHOUT in two seconds flat. Trust me on this one.
    Cannongerbil said:
    Our greatest success, caused by random chance. I don't know exactly how that reflects on us, but it's certainly nothing glowing.
    Click to expand...
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    Don't be so down, gunrodent. Just remember, when things get bad and Kyouplomacy Sabrinaplomacy rears its head - our very biggest success of them all:

    Homura hasn't shot us yet! Oh, wait, that's not a good one. Hmmm....
    She knows hope again for the first time in years.
    We threatened a young girl with a fate worse than death to force her lover to bend to our will. Err, maybe not that one either...
    You showed mercy to your enemy and convinced her to stand with you against the darkness.
    We broke a powerful, intelligent, driven young girl into a catatonic state over the course of a single day?
    You liberated four desperate girls from a terrible fate and stopped a war without a single casualty.
    We ... dropped the Lichbomb on Rin and Mami - breaking the latter - and there's still worse truth yet to come to light.
    With patience and love, she will recover - and be all the stronger for the ordeal.
    ... wow. We're really not doing too well on the hero thing, are we?
    Sayaka. Kenji. Miho. Nagisa. Kyouko. Yuma. Oriko. Kirika. Masami. Hiroko. Mami. Rin. Chouko. Haru. Rei. Yuko. Akiko.
    Well. I suppose we'll just have to learn from our mistakes. Nothing for it but to try harder next time.
    "If someone says it's wrong to hope,I will tell them that they're wrong every time." and all that, right?
    Good luck, Sabrina. Do your best.
    Edit* Ha! Ninja'd by an update. The best kind of Ninja.
     
    Well, that went better than could be reasonably expected. Huzzah! It's rather telling that this is a small victory, isn't it?

    On the bright side, with a reaction like that, it's looking like Kyubey'll have to roll a natural 20 for Sayaka to limit herself to just chucking him out a window the next time she sees him. Even brighter, she apologized to Homura -- who knows, this might be the start of them actually getting along!

    And we might not even need to break out the shirt.
     
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    PhantomFractions said:
    ...alright, I'm pretty sure that everything checks out and I know what this will do, all I need to do now is compile it and -
    *Segmentation Fault.*
    ... FFFFFFFFFFF-
    0 to WITCHOUT in two seconds flat. Trust me on this one.

    Don't be so down, gunrodent. Just remember, when things get bad and Kyouplomacy Sabrinaplomacy rears its head - our very biggest success of them all:

    Homura hasn't shot us yet! Oh, wait, that's not a good one. Hmmm....
    She knows hope again for the first time in years.
    We threatened a young girl with a fate worse than death to force her lover to bend to our will. Err, maybe not that one either...
    You showed mercy to your enemy and convinced her to stand with you against the darkness.
    We broke a powerful, intelligent, driven young girl into a catatonic state over the course of a single day?
    You liberated four desperate girls from a terrible fate and stopped a war without a single casualty.
    We ... dropped the Lichbomb on Rin and Mami - breaking the latter - and there's still worse truth yet to come to light.
    With patience and love, she will recover - and be all the stronger for the ordeal.
    ... wow. We're really not doing too well on the hero thing, are we?
    Sayaka. Kenji. Miho. Nagisa. Kyouko. Yuma. Oriko. Kirika. Masami. Hiroko. Mami. Rin. Chouko. Haru. Rei. Yuko. Akiko.
    Well. I suppose we'll just have to learn from our mistakes. Nothing for it but to try harder next time.
    "If someone says it's wrong to hope,I will tell them that they're wrong every time." and all that, right?
    Good luck, Sabrina. Do your best.
    Edit* Ha! Ninja'd by an update. The best kind of Ninja.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    ...are you trying to be both Sabrina's Confidence and her Paranoia simultaneously? :p

    Also: Mumi has not been hugged enough yet.
     
    All things considered, it could've gone worse. To most of us here, dropping the lichbomb alone would've been greeted with a resounding "Meh", but it appears to have the intended effect on Madoka and Sayaka. But of course, we already knew that.

    Social engineering sure is easy when you have full knowledge of a person's thought process, isn't it? If only we had the same wealth of information to fall back on when dealing with Akiko....

    Anyway, on to happier stuff. Hugs for everyone, reinforce to Mami that just because your soul is in a rock now doesn't make her any less human, and probably a fresh serving of tea. And maybe try and push Sayaka and Homura onto friendlier terms. Maybe.
     
    Ugolino said:
    Maybe prod Madoka's "I'm too much of a coward complex"?
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    Let Homura handle it. We don't really have a stake in that issue, and for our purposes it's probably best that she continue to think that.

    Yes, I know how that sounds, but we aren't in the business of fixing everyone's character issues. As long as she doesn't contract, it's not something we need to butt our heads into.
     


    This is a first of the two videos and probably songs Sabrina could play when the mood is right. This one is representing the friendship and innocent love of Madoka for Homura...



    ... and this one is representing the deep desperate love Homura is feeling for Madoka. Both song are beautiful as expected from the soundtracks to the Rebellion and the pictures going with them are telling the story very well.
     
    Going by her reaction Sayaka shouldn't think of contracting anytime soon.
    And she even apologized to Homura...although she still won't call her by her name.

    Any ideas how we can let Sayaka and Madoka help us or at least make them feel like they are helping?

    Should we bring up healing Kyouske's hand today once everyoe calmed down a bit or wait until Sayaka is in a better mod.
    Offering to heal Kyouske while she does nothing might make her feel even more inadequate and reinforce the self-worth problems she has about her current living conditions.
     
    Re: Healboost gauntlet.

    It's not a total loss actually. We can still use it if we need to get an injured allied meguca up their feet in the middle of combat and there's no dedicated healer available. Using the healboost option means they can still go outside our range as long as they get back within it after a handful of minutes (was it 30 minutes before the healing reversed itself?). Once combat's done, they could then go to a dedicated healer meguca to get permanently healed.

    Re: Grief control range.
    I was thinking if we could try to create a magic blast/projectile using just our magic and none of our grief control, and see if that goes beyond 100m. If it does, we might be able to extend our range by creating a tight, low-power, non-destructive beam of magic to project our grief control.

    Re: Sayaka's issues.
    One possible way to address her feelings of indebtedness to Hitomi is to keep being her friend. While Sayaka can't repay her right now, she can gradually do it by being kind to Hitomi as often as she can, repaying one big act of compassion with dozens of small yet significant gestures.

    ...And if Hitomi does confess tp Kwijibo, Sayaka can't hate her for that after what Hitomi did for her family, can't she?... Is this what you planned, Oriko?

    Been reading the story's epub these days, and jotting down some obesrvations I didn't make the first time around. One of the highlights so far: Remember the 2nd bus interrupt? When we first met Kirika? When she caught up to us, we didn't get on the first bus heading for Kasamino. Funny thing was, if we did get in the bus and ignored Kirika, we would have arrived earlier and probably missed finding Yuma running towards the witch barrier, and we might have not saved Kyoko.
     
    Actually I think the heal gauntlet is still viable with a supplemental method. Say the gauntlet heals with a ratio of 70 % magic and 30 % grief, and grief will disappear at our command or out of range. We can extract the grief from a healed wound and then use the heal gauntlet again for an improved magic/grief ratio. Extract the grief again and just do normal healing to finish it off.

    Or just heal gauntlet once. Extract grief from the healed wound slowly and replace it with magic. It should work.
     
    Cannongerbil said:
    Let Homura handle it. We don't really have a stake in that issue, and for our purposes it's probably best that she continue to think that.

    Yes, I know how that sounds, but we aren't in the business of fixing everyone's character issues. As long as she doesn't contract, it's not something we need to butt our heads into.
    Click to expand...
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    I...really disagree. It's in our own best interests to make sure that Madoka doesn't equate being brave to contracting since for all of her self-confidence issues, she can and will go full self sacrificial if she equates being brave with contracting.

    And we are in the business of fixing everyone's character issues, or we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. :p

    []Hug Mami. Console Mami.
    []I'm...I'm sorry. For having to be the one to break it to you. And for making it look glamorous before.
    []Madoka, it's not about being brave. But making a contract wouldn't help. It'd only make another person in the system.

    Stray ideas.
     
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    Krecart said:
    Maybe we should have wished for super therapy powers instead of Grief control. :p
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    Arguably grief control could be super therapy powers.... :D

    Vote draft for now:

    []Hug Mami. Console Mami.
    []I'm sorry for not telling you sooner. And for making it look glamorous before.
    []Madoka, it's not about being brave. But making a needless contract wouldn't help anybody.
    []Talk to Madoka and Sayaka.
     
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    How would we test that? Wouldn't it fall under "mind control" or something and be forever banned as Most Unethical Thing?
     
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