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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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[X] Higure

Remember that SCIENCE is also useful socialization: it's "oh look, Sabrina's being wonky again," it's something we can do with them without making Mami feel useless (except insofar as she looks upon Sabrina's works and is confused by her brain damage.)
 
[X] Cannongerbil

To make the vote count a tad bit neater.

CornyBones said:
Come on guys! Science is never bad.
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Firnagzen said:
Things as they could have been, had you wished to have the ability to fix things.
This is also a warning.
You'd've gotten what was basically localized reality warping in a 5 meter radius, with the limitation that the more magical something is, the harder it is to affect. And had you been a little careless with your power... Well, I'd had this written up in anticipation.
You reach past the glittering clouds of probability, and find the particle-waves. There is beauty in the whirling clouds on their endless dance, and it distracts you for a moment. But then you push on, bearing down with your will, and the particles waver.

Anticipation stretches your face into a feral grin, and you clench your hand.

The particles flip.

Too late, you see your mistake.

You overreached.

Millions, billions, trillions, are chump change compared to what you do. What you can do.

Antimatter blooms out of thin air, out of the fabric of the pavement, of the surroundings at your command. Nearly a kilogram, all told, none of which takes kindly to finding itself surrounded by ordinary matter. There is a brief moment of conflict at the subatomic level, to the mutual demise of both matter and antimatter.

Just over half the energy is wasted as proton and antiproton annihilation creates charged pions which evaporate harmlessly into muons and neutrinos. Mass-energy equivalence is a harsh mistress, however, and half of forty megatons of TNT equivalent is still a lot of energy. Waves of gamma rays and other, more exotic particles sleet out, more than enough to superheat the air past the temperature of the sun.

You are, briefly, at the center of a nuclear fireball that rockets up to millions of degrees Kelvin in a split second, before magically toughened flesh is stripped from bone and the bone ablates to dust. By some quirk of magic, your Soul Gem lasts a little longer before it melts to slag.

Not much longer, really.

Not even a microsecond.

The blast wave ripples out at over ten times the speed of sound, hammering buildings and unfortunate people out in the street with impunity. Glass, concrete, and steel fare poorly, and skyscrapers crumble.

There's a moment for Homura to flinch at the sudden, unbearably bright light that sears her back and ignites her hair before the blast wave hits. Her magically enhanced body is tough enough not to be immediately pulped, but her impact against the wall is enough.

Madoka happens to be unlucky enough to be looking in the direction of the old industrial district. Her eyeballs burn out in the titanic flash of light, but it's hardly a concern when the school building collapses, entombing her, Mami and Sayaka besides.

Minutes later, a small, white alien manifests a hardened body, and observes the mushroom cloud rising over the ruins of Mitakihara. Crashes and rumbles reach its auditory organs as buildings continue to crumble in the aftermath. Perched on a piece of steel barely identifiable as the warped and melted remains of an I-beam, it tilts its head in a learned behaviour and considers the situation. Insofar as it can be said to have emotions, it is surprised, or rather, one of the anomalies that had been plaguing it had decisively resolved itself, along with two others, in a way that had been considered to have a low probability of occurring.

The Incubator hops off the I-beam and vanishes. The repercussions of this event will reverberate around the world, leaving it and its ilk with plenty to do in the coming months and years.

I had more than a few meta and in story reasons to have done this... Some of them still apply, even.
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Responsible science is never bad.

We've turned down numerous opportunities for detailed interaction with Witches and their barriers. Now we've got the backup to responsibly dissect one, with a pair of assistants, and want to ignore it because....because we don't want to? It seems more proactive to do this now, rather than resolve to do it later. When are we going to have a better opportunity to do this?
 
CornyBones said:
Responsible science is never bad.

We've turned down numerous opportunities for detailed interaction with Witches and their barriers. Now we've got the backup to responsibly dissect one, with a pair of assistants, and want to ignore it because....because we don't want to? It seems more proactive to do this now, rather than resolve to do it later. When are we going to have a better opportunity to do this?
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I've said it before and I'll say it again, wrong time, wrong place. Any science we are doing should be incidental to the witch hunt, and we certainly shouldn't be spending an hour in the barrier ripping a familiar to shreds when the whole point of the witch hunt in the first place is to get Mami's spirits up after we blew it to pieces scant hours before. Like, my familiar analysis is already pushing things as it is.
 
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TheSlayers said:
I'd much rather we study things than needlessly show off. Showing off in combat, or in anything with significant danger... I don't like.
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Gadjo said:
In all seriousness, though, "showing off" in this instance basically means "show off your awesome grief weaponry". It's not really all that risky, and there's a line right in there saying "if things go wrong stop screwing around and rip it to pieces".
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Cannongerbil said:
Still, we are a hard counter to witches, unlike Mami, and showing off in this case means breaking out the big fancy guns and going to town, not prance around like a ballerina with guns. There is practically no difference in risk between showing off and not showing off, so I fail to see how it being "risky" is a legitimate objection.
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Gadjo said:
Well, there is a difference between showing off and not showing off, but if we weren't showing off, we wouldn't be getting any fighting in at all: we'd just use our powers to rip it to pieces. Either way, we kind of want to let Mami and Homura work as well, so there's no point in going all "serious business" here, and we haven't used any of our grief weapons on an actual opponent yet, so let's try that out.
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ಠ_ಠ
 
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Mmmmmm

Its not like I object to studying this more. It just feels like the wrong way. And the wrong time to play around with creating stuff, which could definitely take a while and excludes our two friends.

[X] Cannongerbil
 
Doing science and taking care of our oujo are not a either/or exclusive.

I get that we're concerned about Mami's emotional state after the talk with others, but is a Witch hunt is going to be the thing that makes her feel better? She came on the hunt because she was concerned about letting Homura hunt alone, out of worry about her well-being. We could argue that performing science helps reinforce the idea that we can control the situation and its dangers, better protecting others.

Let's at least ask them if they are okay with us doing some rigorous examinations, and go from there. I don't want to passively let another chance to examine Witches pass us by.
 
There's also the fact that, again, doing Science with people is an honest, heartfelt thing we do because it's fun, and therefore lets us honestly, heartfeltedly bond with people as equals.

Even if they're rolling their eyes at us, that's still treating us as a normal friend, which we need to do much more of.
 
Vote tally:
##### 3.21
[x] Yeah, lets go.
-[x] Ask Mami and Homura to hold back for a bit. You want to try something.
-[x] Examine a familiar using both magic and grief sense. See what it's made of, what lets it act independently, and if there's anything resembling the core you found inside a grief seed.
-[x] If possible, try and wrench control of the familiar from the witch.
[x] As usual, abort and go into full blender mode if things start looking risky.
[X] Take turns showing off a bit when dealing with the witch. Create a large flaming blade or bombard it with disintegration rays, that sort of thing.
No. of votes: 1
landcollector

[x] Yeah, lets go.
-[x] Ask Mami and Homura to hold back for abit. You want to try something.
-[x] Examine a familiar using both magic and grief sense. See what it's made of, what lets it act independently, and if there's anything resembling the core you found inside a grief seed.
-[x] If possible, try and wrench control of the familiar from the witch.
[x] Encourage Mami and Homura to experiment with their powers. Anything they've never tried because of the cost or because they've fought alone without someone to watch their backs. In particular, encourage Homura to practice with her magic attacks.
[x] As usual, abort and go into full blender mode if things start looking risky.
[x] Feel free to show off together with Mami when dealing with the witch. Create a large flaming blade or bombard it with disintegration rays, that sort of thing.
No. of votes: 14
Cannongerbil, Guilop, Ugolino, Kinematics, Gadjo, aeqnai, EtchedSteel, Muramasa, Onmur, Dirtnap, theauthor, UberJJK, defenestrator, SynchronizedWritersBlock

[x] Higure, since he's gonna fix his vote. Also Familiar Science.
No. of votes: 1
AuraTwilight

[X] 1 sec...I need to look at something.
[X] Stop...there's more to do here.
-[X] Examine the interaction of the magic and grief. See if it's doing anything we haven't seen before.
--[X]If we do see something new, ask Mami and Homura what they make of it....what do the magical aspects look like to them? Even if can clearly see what's happening, maybe they'll recognize some detail that we might miss.
-[X] Try replicating the barrier's properties on a very small scale...use it as a model to work from, until you can get it right.
[X] Create an atomic clock from grief, leave it outside.
[X] Once we're inside...
-[X] Create another atomic clock.
-[X] Try altering the nature of elements of the Barrier, like we do with our own Witch-Grief.
-[X] Step inside the barrier, but don't go too far...just grab a familiar. Lock it in a grief cage to keep it from fighting back, but don't directly alter it.
--[X] Have Homura Time Stop if things are looking dangerous.
--[X] Begin dissection. Start by analyzing its general structure...
---[X] Does this thing have a core? A soul fragment, or something like it, that controls the rest?
---[X] Is this pure Grief, or is their Magic involved, too?
----[X]If they're both there...what purpose does each seem to serve?
--[X] Try to find whatever gives it intelligence. Whether that's a core, or something else.
----[X] See if you can figure out how it's behavior is dictated...if you can make sense of it, try modifying its programming so that it will obey and/or help us, rather than the Witch.
--[X] If you have any luck with this, try making one of your own...use this familiar as a template, but use your own Grief and/or Magic. Make sure it's loyal to us and obedient.
No. of votes: 9
Higure, noahgab1133, boonerunner, 'Lement, Krecart, CornyBones, cmwatford, linkhyrule5, moonstne

[x] Our Great and powerful Overlord, Higure.
No. of votes: 1
AnonymousRabbit
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