Yeah, no, armor isn't worth changing the vote/possibly upsetting Mami over. The fewer reminders of reason 45673 for Mami not to let Sabrina out of sight (she might get herself killed doing barrier science) the better.
 
Change of plans. :p

Need to keep Madoka's circle of friends not-filled with meguca, so she feels less pressure to contract.
Better yet, convince her completely that its essential for the extended survival/sanity of magical girls to have some close mundane friends............but doing that would require Mami to have previously survived the witchbomb, which is NOT something we want to try.
 
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Better yet, convince her completely that its essential for the extended survival/sanity of magical girls to have some close mundane friends............but doing that would require Mami to have previously survived the witchbomb, which is NOT something we want to try.
We really need to have that heart to heart with Madoka.

At the same time, I don't have a clue what we would talk about. But that's nothing new.
 
Better yet, convince her completely that its essential for the extended survival/sanity of magical girls to have some close mundane friends............but doing that would require Mami to have previously survived the witchbomb, which is NOT something we want to try.
She already thinks she'll die if she lets her gem go black.

Beyond that, though, she wants friends. We don't have to convince her that friends are good.
 
Heeeeey... When we talk with Madoka, it might be nice to remember she's helped us out more than she knows at times. By speaking up for Homura/Sabrina when we first met
Mami's hand tightens for a moment on your shoulder. "Sabrina-"

You half turn, and smile at her. "Thank you Mami, but I'll be alri- I'll be careful. I'll shout if I need help, ok?"

Neither Mami nor Sayaka look happy with this decision, Sayaka in particular looking like she's bitten into a lemon. Madoka, by contrast, seems to have shrunken in on herself even more. Her gaze darts between you, Mami and Homura, while wringing her hand anxiously. "I- I'm sure Homura won't do anything to you, Sabrina."

Out of the corner of your eye, you can see Homura soften for a moment, her almost-smile becoming more natural.

"Hmph," is Sayaka's contribution, along with a continued glare at Homura. "I don't like it."

Mami's gentle smile looks strained, but she nods in acceptance. "Stay safe, Sabrina."
, helping prod Sayaka into talking about her problems... She's got that kindness that lets people around her connect with each other.
You blow out a breath. "Madoka, not contracting needlessly isn't cowardice, it's wisdom." You meet and hold her eyes. "There are other ways to help. You're braver than you give yourself credit for, Madoka," you say with a thin, ironic smile. "Believe me. But you're also smarter than that. The cost is too high. Not just for you, but for everyone who cares about you."

"I-I don't u-understand," Madoka says.
Can pull a mean Kyubey, though. :p
 
Yeah, no, armor isn't worth changing the vote/possibly upsetting Mami over. The fewer reminders of reason 45673 for Mami not to let Sabrina out of sight (she might get herself killed doing barrier science) the better.
The fewer dead Mamis/Sabrinas/Homuras we have the better off we are. And if you don't think feathers is dangerous...I'll have to ask why?

Besides? We have turtled up with Mami before, in Sendai. This isn't new.

And it is not like she'll magically not notice that we are in dangerous, unusual situation if we don't - only way would be to use mind-controlling grief devices to make her think that.
 
We had half of one. It was okay, got to create our barrier and chat with Masami :)
Hey, we did have a day off, during which we did little else than hang around the shopping center. We had Homura over for dinner and she even slept over, too.
Morning after that said:
Homura wanders into the kitchen, while the two of you are bustling about, sleepily rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand, before realizing where she was and snapping back to her usual rigid mask, which she ruins with a wide, jaw-cracking yawn that makes your own ache in sympathy.
After dinner we had a Witch hunt, too, so it was pretty much an idyllic day for Mami.
Firnagzen said:
If Mumi had her way, PMAS would be a happy slice of life interspersed with a few light Witch hunts.

... Of course, then she had ruin it by waking us up crying at night, the selfish girl. Geez.

Mumi please.

Word wise, it was the shortest day yet.
 
Our Benefactor pt. 28
You lower your hand, thinking furiously. Mami's staring up at you, half in hope and half in fear, and... she has a point. You don't know for sure that it's safe. Should you be testing it with Sayaka as your guinea pig?

You swallow. "It's probably safe," you say, grimacing. And you don't... Mami's exposure to the results of your experiments has been fraught, to say the least. You don't want to push her even more on this. "But... no. You're right, Mami, I can't say for sure."

"T-then..." Mami says, trailing off.

"We'll kill the Witch," you say, nodding. "Take it out, and Sayaka should be fine, right?" You give Mami and Homura an inquiring look. Mami nods in agreement, her worried expression fades a little. She gives you a wavering smile. You return it, trying to give her some reassurance. Her smile strengthens a little, still a touch sickly.

Homura nods sharply, turning to look up at the Barrier, far above on the exposed girder.

You pull Mami into a quick hug as Homura stalks off towards the hulk of the half finished building. "Though, um. Mami?" you say. "Could you make sure Sayaka doesn't hurt herself?"

She nods. "Of course."

Mami walks towards Sayaka, holding her hand out towards the bleunette. A ribbon lashes out, as if spooling from some invisible reel, and snaps around Sayaka's waist.

Vibrant colour blossoms across Sayaka, leeching back into her in waves, and she sways, almost slipping from the ribbon. She struggles weakly, fists swinging blindly before golden ribbons loop around her wrists, yanking them to her sides and binding her securely in a cocoon.

Mami smoothly steps forward, catching Sayaka and easing her to the ground by the side of the building as the girl wiggles fruitlessly against the bindings. "It'll be alright, Sayaka," Mami says softly, twisting her hand and breaking the ribbon. She looks up at you, eyes worried.

"It will, Mami," you agree, holding out your hand to her. She takes it, and you pull her to her feet.

"This way." You look up to see Homura standing at the doorway of the building, watching the two of you silently. You nod, and walk over, following Homura as you step into the building.

The three of you make your way up the stairs, footsteps thudding dully against the bare concrete. The noise is sucked away, swallowed by the yawning silence of the timestop as you travel up the building, finally reaching the unfinished portion. Without hesitation, Homura steps out onto the exposed girder, balancing surely on the I-beam that's no thicker than a few handspans. Homura pauses in front of the Barrier, glowing faintly even in the colour drained hues of the timestop, glancing back at you before stepping into the Barrier.

You follow, plunging through the glowing opening.

The familiar miasma of a Witch's Barrier hammers in on your senses, and you take a moment to center yourself.

You, Mami, and Homura are three splashes of colour, dull in the spidery shadows of the starkly monochrome landscape you'd expected. Homura's timestop leached what little bright white there was to a dead grey, lending the already eerie Barrier an entirely unsettling ambiance.

Faint shatterlines web across the dead, leaden sky, and abyssal black paints a wide stripe beneath your feet - a long, straightforward path to a distant, spiked monstrance of brilliant crimson, faded to a muted vermilion. A faint whispering seems to resonate from the ground, distant and nearly inaudible.
Who are you?
Homura frowns at the ground for a moment before withdrawing an assault rifle, blocky and matte black with a shrouded barrel, from her shield. The clicks draw your attention, and Mami nods sharply, removing her hat from her head and pulling out a musket. She inhales, closing her eyes, and when she lets the breath out, her hands are steady on the weapon.

You draw a hammer over your shoulder, silvery motes of light coalescing into the familiar, comforting weight. Grief spheres melt and run, flashing into gleaming blades of deep purple that are nearly invisible against the stark black of the Barrier. They swing out in a virtual sandstorm of razor sharp blades, hunting through the twilight shadows of the Barrier.

Homura glances back at you, amethyst eyes scanning you and Mami both before looking ahead. She prowls forward, assault rifle held at a low guard. Abruptly, she snaps it up, and fires a single shot. The bullet tears away into the Barrier, trail of vapour streaking through the air before freezing in front of a spindly, snake-ish thing that rises above your head level. A Familiar. More shots roar out, Homura's aim shifting a hair as she shifts to a fast trot.

Mami only takes a moment to consider the frozen, nightmare tangles of Familiars, dozens of Medusa heads captured mid writhe by Homura's timestop. Just a quick moment, as she speeds after Homura. A deft flick tosses her musket into the air, spinning, and she spreads her hands out, an array of muskets spinning out of ribbons. They fire as one, the balls slashing through the air in a fan of smoky trails to join the chattering shots of Homura's assault rifle.

She darts forward, catching the first rifle as it plummets from the sky, and flourishes it boldly before discharging it into another Familiar.

Shots hammer through the air like demented hornets, intricate geometrical patterns sketched of straight lines unfurling and fanning out through the leaden air in delicately beautiful, deadly arcs.

You trail along behind the two, trying to stay out of the way of the storm.

"This is... an odd way of fighting," Mami says, almost conversationally even as she kicks another musket from the ground and into her waiting hands with a deft flick of her foot.

Homura grunts in response, deftly replacing the magazine in her rifle with a fresh one pulled from her shield. The motions are brisk and almost instinctual, born of long practice. "It's safer," she allows, voice flat.

"It is," Mami agrees.

Your progress up the path is... methodical. A single bullet apiece for each Familiar, calm and businesslike, with none of the usual frenetic storm of battle. The pace picks up, the three of you moving at a brisk jog. Nothing even comes close to you -nothing can- come close to you, and you content yourself with dissolving the few of the Familiars that are out of the immediate line of fire.

It's almost boring.

You force yourself to keep alert, even as your blades whicker through the air in lazy orbits. Just in case, you keep enough Grief nearby to instantly throw up a defensive Barrier if need be. Your senses scan deeply, watching for any possible tricks Elsa Maria might have.

You have no idea where that Feather came from, and that worries you. Might things have changed?

You don't know. And that terrifies you.

Looming overhead is the faded vermilion starburst of the monstrance, drawing ever closer. Your footsteps pound on the only blackness of the Barrier, hard on the heels of Mami and Homura. Behind you, a lethal flowerburst has blossomed, each and every Familiar marked for death.

And ahead of you, just a little further, is the hunched figure of Elsa Maria. A small humanoid thing, barely larger than an adult, bent over in prayer, with its back to you. You know very well that given half the chance, it'd sprout a massive, writhing forest of tendrils, spearlike and razor sharp, to tear into unwary intruders.

But here and now...

"Homura?" Mami calls, piouretting as she slams home a last few shots. "Is it safe to attack the Witch?"

"Yes," Homura says. A dark ovoid drops into her hand, and with a practice motion, Homura pulls the pin from the grenade. She hefts it in her hand for a few seconds before tossing it, arcing it high over Elsa Maria before it freezes midair.

Mami blinks at the tumbling explosive, before bracing herself and spreading her hands. A mass of ribbons explodes out and winds into her signature cannon. "TIRO! FINALE!" she calls out, and the cannon booms out its shot, the huge ball stopping just short of the Witch.

The cannon blast is sucked up by the empty silence of the timestop, and any echoes swallowed up by the gaping void. Mami's hands drop limply to her side, the cannon dissolving, and she eyes the frozen cannonball oddly.

[] Write-in

=====​

Timestop curbstomp~
 
Well, at least we aren't in the middle of a grief spiral. And aren't dealing with armor-ignoring attacks.
 
Mami asking Homura for advice is a good thing, I think?

[x]Grief platform for the three of us.
[x]Ask Homura to drop timestop. Grief rend it as the attacks hit, just to go for ludicrous overkill and in case it lashes out.
[X] Ask Homura and Mami if you can keep the seed.
[x]Stay alert. Go check on Sayaka. Ask her how she's feeling. Make a grief couch if she's still out of it.
-[x]Once she feels better, ask her what the last thing she remembers is.
-[x]If she doesn't know, gently let her know that a Witch kissed her. Oriko warned us in time, and we killed it.
[x]Her parents are asleep. Is that normal and does she want us to drop her off back at her house?
 
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Brace for impact~

No but seriously, that went way too smoothly. I suspect shenanigans.

Also, @Ugolino , my experience is that you should ask questions that surround the thing you're trying to question someone on. You get more accurate answers that way.
 
Don't make the call unless you have invisitext highlighted.
Faint shatterlines web across the dead, leaden sky, and abyssal black paints a wide stripe beneath your feet - a long, straightforward path to a distant, spiked monstrance of brilliant crimson, faded to a muted vermilion. A faint whispering seems to resonate from the ground, distant and nearly inaudible.
Who are you?
Homura frowns at the ground for a moment before withdrawing an assault rifle, blocky and matte black with a shrouded barrel, from her shield. The clicks draw your attention, and Mami nods sharply, removing her hat from her head and pulling out a musket. She inhales, closing her eyes, and when she lets the breath out, her hands are steady on the weapon.
 
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