The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
...seriously, guys, what's with the silence?
Puella Magi Adfligo Systema
- Thread starter Firnagzen
- Start date
-
- Tags
- puella magi adfligo systema puella magi madoka magica be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist bad decisions dating mami tomoe (tomoe mami) diabolical laughter friendship is the best ship handholding identity crises microwaving tea gets you put in the bad place names are important the body is the fursona of the soul this is not the baked goods thread we don't talk about rionna what could possibly go wrong? who in the world is azure sanfrancisco?
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[x] The Narrator
@Redshirt Army, at the very least "If the name/description is unfamiliar, telepathy Homura and Mami to ask if they've ever heard of her" should be worth cannibalizing.
@Redshirt Army, at the very least "If the name/description is unfamiliar, telepathy Homura and Mami to ask if they've ever heard of her" should be worth cannibalizing.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
Sorry, haven't had time to properly devote to votecrafting here today. Stand by for maximum Frankenstein from my competitors, as is tradition.
Onmur
Archangel of Nutella.
So I had a thought about Tokyo.
I think there was one group who initially refused our offer (as passed on by Noa, at least).
So, why would this group have refused out of hand?
What seems most obvious to me, is that they're looking for the catch. Why do we want to go to a foreign city to help?
I was wondering whether we should throw a bone to any group thinking like so.
When we go make our case to the Tokyo council, after assuring them that our help is free, and that we intend to help meguca for the rest of our lives, forever if we can make it, should we ask for volunteers for Walpurgisnacht, then and there?
(And maybe bring up the idea of gathering meguca to face any and all Walpurgisnacht that might pop up in the future, wherever that may be?)
I think, if things go well, asking for help like that would assuage the fears of any meguca who might not believe we're there just to help.
Of course, this is only if the meeting goes very well.
I think there was one group who initially refused our offer (as passed on by Noa, at least).
So, why would this group have refused out of hand?
What seems most obvious to me, is that they're looking for the catch. Why do we want to go to a foreign city to help?
I was wondering whether we should throw a bone to any group thinking like so.
When we go make our case to the Tokyo council, after assuring them that our help is free, and that we intend to help meguca for the rest of our lives, forever if we can make it, should we ask for volunteers for Walpurgisnacht, then and there?
(And maybe bring up the idea of gathering meguca to face any and all Walpurgisnacht that might pop up in the future, wherever that may be?)
I think, if things go well, asking for help like that would assuage the fears of any meguca who might not believe we're there just to help.
Of course, this is only if the meeting goes very well.
DB_Explorer
Purveyor of alternate realities.
- Location
- San Diego, California
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Meditation on Sabrina's inner nature?
... Sabrina should mediate sometime and just examine in soul and inner self.
>Cue Sabrina being on a train car in the waning light of the day<
Sabrina: ... huh Hakone huh? *looking out a window*
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
According to Noa, it's all about politics:
It seems like most of the Council is fighting over who gets our services first (not realizing that there is no such thing as "first" because we can do everybody at once), fearing an upset of the balance of power. The Meiji group may be the local equivalent of Sendai and sitting on a stockpile of Seeds that they don't want to be devalued by the appearance of a cheap alternative. Sure it's suicidal, but so is trying to kill clean energy to keep the fossil fuel industry rich, and that hasn't stopped anybody.
Turns out it's full of BBCode.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
My original vote left uncoloured, Narrator's parts in green, Phoenixian's in orange, original edits in red.
[X] FULL QB-SPEECH PARANOIA ACTIVATE
[X] What's her name? Ask about her situation. Don't accept ambiguous responses; ask for specific details.
[x] Unless time is of the essence, agree to contact her later this week as long as KB helps you with some things. Ask for:
-[X] Details on Kuroki Matsuko, possibly other nearby meguca in need of Seeds. If given enough info to "find" Kuroki, break to voting.
-[X] Help with your next SCIENCE session. Offer to work on making your grief invisible as consolation.
[X] Telepathy Mami to ask what she's heard of the girl QB mentioned.
-[X] If Mami doesn't know of her, make a mental note to ask Homura the next time you're in a QB free zone.
[X] If nothing urgent comes up, continue to Warehouse-kun to engage in SCIENCE! as planned.
-[x] Start with experiments that can run in the background, i.e. effects of liquid grief, before doing ribbon science and, as agreed with QB, invisible grief.
-[x] Note QB's criticisms of your experimental protocol for later evaluation.
[X] FULL QB-SPEECH PARANOIA ACTIVATE
[X] What's her name? Ask about her situation. Don't accept ambiguous responses; ask for specific details.
[x] Unless time is of the essence, agree to contact her later this week as long as KB helps you with some things. Ask for:
-[X] Details on Kuroki Matsuko, possibly other nearby meguca in need of Seeds. If given enough info to "find" Kuroki, break to voting.
-[X] Help with your next SCIENCE session. Offer to work on making your grief invisible as consolation.
[X] Telepathy Mami to ask what she's heard of the girl QB mentioned.
-[X] If Mami doesn't know of her, make a mental note to ask Homura the next time you're in a QB free zone.
[X] If nothing urgent comes up, continue to Warehouse-kun to engage in SCIENCE! as planned.
-[x] Start with experiments that can run in the background, i.e. effects of liquid grief, before doing ribbon science and, as agreed with QB, invisible grief.
-[x] Note QB's criticisms of your experimental protocol for later evaluation.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
Note that according to Nadia, if it wasn't for her personally knowing Mami, rumors of a grief controller would have her running for the hills, since they apparently always, always end poorly.
Note also Homura's immediate and visceral reaction to being reminded of the grief controller in Osaka... which means she's active now, and that the Tokyo group is probably aware of her.
The Meiji group wanting nothing to do with us may be more because of the (absolutely deserved, if they're all Corbeau style...) terrible reputation supposed "grief controllers" have accumulated.
Heck, being sceptical of us is arguably the logical reaction, at this point. I'm hopeful we can make our case soon, though. With Ishinomaki, Sendai, Asunaro, and Mitakihara vouching for us, we can probably convince Tokyo - and at that point convincing other places becomes a lot easier.
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
I still don't think that there's any way to determine if time is of the essence without communicating with the girl herself. Kyubey is too unreliable a source of information.
What do we lose if we communicate with this girl? If she's hostile, then she'd learn that we exist. Except Kyubey could just tell her that we exist (if he hasn't already), and we asked Nadia to tell every girl she meets about us. Our existence isn't a secret. So why not speak with her to gauge the situation for ourselves?
Yeah, we're gonna have to put her on our to-do list.
Onmur
Archangel of Nutella.
Nah.
Sabrina puts down her tea.
Mami, sitting besides her at the low table, smiles at her.
The white haired girl can't help but to smile back.
"Hey, Mami?" she asks, causing said blonde to slightly tilt her head. "I'm going to take a few minutes to meditate, is that OK?"
The slightest frown marrs Mami's visage for a moment, "Will you go in trance...?" she half asks, half wonders.
Sabrina shakes her head, reaching to grab Mami's hand in hers.
"I'm just gonna meditate," she explains, "look into myself, that sort of thing."
"Ah," Mami nods, "I won't make a sound then," she makes a zipping motion over her mouth with her free hand.
Sabrina shakes her head once more, fondly. She squeezes Mami's hand for a moment before letting go.
After giving her companion one more smiles, she closes her eyes, the inviting image of Mami's living rooms vanishing from her mind.
Her thoughts turn inwards, feelings of warmth and comfort fading... alongside the sounds of traffic and pedestrian movement coming from the window.
Sabrina's brows furrow, turbulent feelings bubbling up, scratching at her gut, half formed thoughts and ignored ideas making themselves known.
Guilt.
A warm feeling cuts through, a feeling of a memory not minutes old, a familiar smile, a comforting touch bringing back peace, before it all goes away.
Warmth, fear, touch, Sabrina even forgets the feeling of air brushing against her skin.
She realizes her shoulders must have risen when the familiar, soothing aroma of tea and biscuits and Mami's home fills her thoughts, before leaving, leaving nothing without.
For a moment, there is Sabrina, surrounded by nothingness.
Then a spark flares, somewhere, out there.
Or from inside.
The smell of shampoo and tea floods back into her, Sabrina's eyes fly open, image and sound blasting her senses, the cool afternoon air assaulting her skin.
After a moment of disorientation, Sabrina finds herself sitting exactly as she was, where she was, even the half empty cup of tea being the same, she realizes as she picks it up.
"I guess that didn't work," she muses as she sips her still warm tea. "But I'm sure I felt something," she frowns, turning to Mami, "did you-"
The words die on her lips.
Her white crowned head turn this way and that, looking for her closest friend.
She is alone.
Just as before, she lays her cup down, thoughtful. She brings her palm close to her face, inspecting it, before turning to look around, carefully this time.
The glass table is the same, but as she traces her fingers its crazed surface, she realizes it's not.
The sounds of cars and horns she knows she should be hearing from outside are present... but somehow, she feels as if they were a memory, as if they were playing inside her head, rather than coming from without...
"Ah," she muses, "no train car for me, I guess?"
Sabrina leans back, resting her weight on her palms, and closes her eyes. She smiles to herself, pondering whether she should explore her inner sanctum, but somehow knowing she'd find everything completely as it should be.
She opens her eyes, tilting her head to stare...
"Nah," she murmurs, eyes falling closed once more, breathing slowing down, "it's much..."
Darkness.
Warmth.
"... better out there," she slurs, blinking out of her daze.
Yellow strands move in her field of vision. "Sabrina?" she can as much feel as she can hear the soft question, just as she can feel the beating of Mami's heart, her arms wrapped around her waist and shoulders...
Sabrina's arms wrap themselves around the blonde in turn, holding her in a tight hug before letting go, lifting her head from Mami's embrace as she lets go in kind.
A few seconds pass in silence. Sabrina takes her cup once more, sipping at it in contemplation.
"You were... meditating for a few minutes," says Mami, "did you find anything important?"
Sabrina smiles.
"No. Nothing at all."
Then a though crosses her head. She frowns down at her teacup, wondering if that counted as drinking the same tea twice.
"A refill?" asks Mami, grabbing the kettle.
"Please," nods Sabrina.
Last edited:
Onmur
Archangel of Nutella.
Phrasing!
Phrasing!!!
Regarding the council, I think an important part of the meeting will be how we can convince them we're not totally kicking them out of power by introducing Clean Seeds.
Which should tie nicely with getting their cooperation in organizing safe Witch Hunts and keeping meguca from going crazy with power. And more importantly, helping get Clean Seeds to every meguca out there.
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
What specifically Nadia said about previous grief controllers:
It's a bit ambiguous if she's talking about actual grief controllers exploiting people or hoax grief controllers exploiting people.
DB_Explorer
Purveyor of alternate realities.
- Location
- San Diego, California
- Pronouns
- He/Him
.... OK not expecting that when I made that comment
but I am not sad with this outcome.
Always Happening
We could have prevented this.
- Location
- On a train with no brakes
What's anomalous about Sabrina compared to other gem cleansers is that she has actual psychokinetic control of grief, allowing her to suspend it in real space without the use of a (soul gem/grief seed) medium and safely dispose of it into Kyubey. Others could, for instance, pull grief out of their gem, but not without it jumping into another gem or seed nearby, and vice-versa. Obviously, this pretty much invariably ends in tragedy.
Also, I imagine that in many/most cases, it wasn't about the cleanser exploiting others, it was about others exploiting the cleanser. Someone with the power to grant you (even partial) independence from hunting, or the power to act as an emergency battery in inter-group fights, is a goose that lays golden eggs. Every time one pops up, pretty much everyone who becomes aware of her is going to want to capture, exploit, or kill her, and they may have to resort to extreme measures to survive (which could lead to either forced witchouts or one climbing to the top of a protection racket)-- it's by virtue of us being obscure and a de-facto demigod that nobody's tried doing it to us.
This is why Tokyo is one of my main long-term concerns: Even if they're useless to us and a waste of time negotiating in the short term, mere knowledge of our existence could throw the city into intersectional conflict, or, worse, unify a power bloc in the city that decides it needs us to be a vassal or a corpse. If big-city factions aren't already sending spies to monitor us or wringing information about us out of Kyubey, I will be frankly shocked.
Karnewarrior
Leastmost of the Hanged Man Arcana
If Tokyo wants us dead they will be severely disappointed.
But yeah, it's a concern.
But yeah, it's a concern.
The Phoenixian
The Glacier Witch
- Location
- My own little world
Not strictly necessary at this point but I might as well switch my vote to-
[x] Redshirt Army
Thanks for hearing me out.
The Phoenixian
The Glacier Witch
- Location
- My own little world
Hmm... Fun thought. With EM radiation emission, we can basically cook food at any time. All we need is a box emitting microwaves into its insides. It can even be shaped appropriately.
The horrifying implication being, of course, that Sabrina could be microwaving tea at any moment.
...Naturally instead of saying "start", the keypad has "Luce Prima!" printed on it. With the exclamation point and everything.
The horrifying implication being, of course, that Sabrina could be microwaving tea at any moment.
...Naturally instead of saying "start", the keypad has "Luce Prima!" printed on it. With the exclamation point and everything.
Onmur
Archangel of Nutella.
Well, poor Mami's gonna have a heart attack now.
Considering there's no coffee at the Tomoe house...
The Narrator
Disembodied Voice
- Location
- Somewhere Offscreen
I can't imagine that trying to coerce a griefbender would ever end well. It seems like a quick way to end up witched out.
Script Mak3r
(Verified Sun God) (Verified Feathers)
- Location
- Hell of Blazing Fires
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There's a way to get an even higher concentration of caffeine: Run an extraction using dichloromethate!
Wikipedia said:
Karnewarrior
Leastmost of the Hanged Man Arcana
It's fine Homura, we all know you run off way harder shit than Caffiene anyway.
Magic. Not even once.
Magic. Not even once.
Higure
Witch of Faith
- Location
- The Golden Land
Yep, she runs on pure love, you know? Magic.The best medicine.
"We Don't Go To Asunaro..." pt. 2
What does Kyuubey want? The million dollar question, and one that leaves you scrambling for answers. You can construct easy scenarios in which Kyuubey wins. What if it expects you to deny the offer, and the girl in question Witches out for lack of Grief Seeds? It'd be an easy way to smear your name.
Or what if the girl is willing and ready and waiting to attack you? Any threat you can see or sense coming, you can overcome, but magical stealth strong enough to evade your Grief sense is one of the things that might threaten you. It'd be unprecedented, though, on many levels; that Kyuubey would set up such an ambush, and that something could evade your senses like that.
"What's her name?" you ask, tone guarded. "Would she happen to be Kuroki Matsuko, by any chance?"
"Kuroki Matsuko is too new a magical girl to have developed strong enchantment without guidance," Kyuubey's head tilts to the side as it speaks. "You are travelling to Asunaro, are you not?"
"I am," you agree. "Right, first of all, I'm going to come back to Kuroki, but before that, tell me more about this girl you want me to meet. What's her name, what is she like, what specifically does she do, is she low on Grief Seeds, where is she, that kind of thing."
"Her name is Hideyoshi Nao," Kyuubey says. "She isn't in any pressing need of Grief Seeds, though like most she'd be more comfortable with a larger buffer of Seeds. I believe you would consider her to be a pleasant, if shy girl."
Not in any need of Grief Seeds, so that defuses some of your paranoia: it'd have been well within what you imagine to be its remit to set you up for apparently rejecting a cry for help. You pull your phone from your pocket and check the time as you listen carefully, soaking in Kyuubey's words. Clock's a-ticking. You hold up a hand, and Kyuubey pauses obligingly, tail flicking.
"OK, so, I'm not done talking to you yet," you say, frowning at Kyuubey. "But I do have places to be. Would you like to follow me out to the industrial district? I'm going to experiment with my powers, and you can observe. If you help, I'll... work on making my Grief invisible."
You kind of assume that barring doing your experiments in an interdiction bubble, the Incubator will be watching, anyway.
"That's acceptable," Kyuubey says, standing and rearing up on its hind legs. You sigh, and pick it up by the scruff of its neck as you summon Grief to yourself. Undoubtedly, you could simply let it perch on your shoulder, but you don't like the little alien.
"Go on, about this Hideyoshi Nao?" you say as you spare a sliver of focus to build a Grief platform for yourself.
"She is in Kamaishi City," Kyuubey explains. "Further north along the coast. It would be a detour for you on the way to Asunaro, should you so choose."
"I see," you say as you hop onto the platform and sit down, putting Kyuubey down beside you. "Would she be in any trouble if I don't travel there within the day or so? I'm fairly busy today."
"She would not," Kyuubey says, turning a circle and tucking its tail up to form a fluffy little circle. "She is not involved in any particular conflict save against Witches, nor does she have any Grief Seed issues, as I already said."
"Hmm," you muse as you lift the platform off, vectoring eastward. You squint backwards at the mass of Grief following behind you, and experimentally send it upwards above you so that it's less visible from the ground. "Her powers?"
"Invisibility," Kyuubey answers. "She is able to make herself undetectable by any means utilising the electromagnetic spectrum, including radar and lidar."
"Huh," you say, switching to telepathy to be heard over the rushing wind. The air is cool and beautifully crisp this early in the morning, and you breathe deep. "Do lasers just pass right through her?"
"Yes, they do," Kyuubey confirms.
"That's cool," you say. "Would she have any reason to come into conflict with myself, or my friends?"
"Unless you deviate significantly from your behaviour to date, no," Kyuubey says.
"Right. That's good," you say, frowning out over the cityscape. The industrial district's coming up fast. "Will she have moved on to a different location or something that'd put her beyond my reach if I don't go today?"
"No," Kyuubey responds.
"So there are no time-critical issues that might occur?" you ask, tilting the platform forward a little as you dive for the warehouse.
"There are," Kyuubey says. "If you should delay for long enough, she may die of old age."
You give the alien a baleful stare. Is it joking? It can't be joking, it doesn't know how to joke. Then again, it might, if only from reading joke books. The mental image is disconcerting, to say the least.
"We are approaching the ground rather quickly," Kyuubey helpfully reminds you.
You sigh in annoyance and pull up, coasting to a smooth halt over Warehouse-kun. "I know."
Putting one hand on the side of your flight platform, you vault over and drop the few meters to the ground. Other hand holding your sling bag in place, you land on the sandy ground with a scrape.
Kyuubey leaps after you, limbs spread like a squirrel that forgot it wasn't a flying squirrel. In defiance of any good sense, it lands on its feet beside you, unblinking red eyes staring up at you.
"So I gotta ask," you say as you disassemble the platform with a wave of your hand, reclaiming the Grief and compressing it into spheres you bring down to eye level, an orbiting solar system of spheres. And more to come, as you draw the main bulk of your Grief towards yourself. "Were you trying to make a joke there?"
"Yes," Kyuubey responds. "Humour is useful for defusing tension."
You groan, palming your face.
"I'm aware that saying so frequently defeats the point of the joke," Kyuubey supplies. "But it had already failed, had it not?"
"I give up," you mutter, combing your hair back into some semblance of order with your fingers. "Now, first thing I want to test is the precise limits of my range. Are you capable of making precision distance measurements?"
"Certainly," Kyuubey says.
"Alrighty, then... let me see," you say, looking for something clean to sit down on. With the warehouse in the state it is, though, you can't see anything that isn't rusty or overgrown with weeds, so you instead craft a seat made out of Grief to perch on. Humming quietly to yourself, you detach your Soul Gem from your collar, and hold it at arm's length from yourself.
"Hokay. I'll be right here, and as you can see, I'm holding my Soul Gem out. I'd like to know whether my radius of control is centered on my body or my Soul Gem," you say. With a bit of Grief, you grab Kyuubey by the scruff of its neck, lifting it into the air. "Will you help me by making measurements?"
"Certainly," Kyuubey repeats, and with that, you send it rocketing out of sight, dangling from the Grief. It makes for a pleasantly comical sight, the little white alien fluffball simply zipping away as if on an invisible wire.
You halt your Grief right at the very edge of your sphere of influence. "Alright. That's the limit of my range, in the direction of my Soul Gem. I'm going to describe a circle now."
"Proceed," Kyuubey says. You do just that, swinging Kyuubey around in a wide circle. There are a few buildings away, and you guide the Incubator around the buildings - you are trying to get help from it, after all. Does no good to splatter it over the wall right this moment.
You complete the circle, and bring the Incubator back. "Well?"
"Your range is centerd on your Soul Gem," it says. "The deviations from circularity of the path I travelled were not significant on a nanometer scale, allowing for vertical motion."
"Huh," you say. "Right. Good to know. Not unexpected, but good to know. Right. Next test, I'm going to see how finely I can disperse my Grief. That should be good right? Because I might still have my wings or my platform, but at least I don't have that following me around." You gesture at the giant pile of basketball-sized spheres sitting at the corner of the warehouse where you'd stacked them.
"Yes, that would be good," Kyuubey agrees.
You nod, and exhale, focusing on the spheres. All you want to do is to... dissolve it. You don't want Grief gas. You want tiny, tiny nanoparticles of Grief, as small as you can make them, so small they're invisible to the naked eye, so small that you can turn it into an invisible fog spread out over the entire volume of your control radius.
The spheres crumble. Not all of them. You aren't so foolish as to forget about the items you've stored away in there, and especially not right in front of Kyuubey - but you break up everything else, dividing them again and again into finer and finer pieces. Centimeters, then millimeters, then micrometers... nanometers.
You shouldn't be surprised at how you're able to render the pile of Grief spheres into dense, smoky purple fog. And it's dense by definition - you haven't spread it out. You correct that with a wave of your hand, setting it all billowing into invisibility as you set it all flowing away.
And with the dispersal comes awareness in almost impossible fidelity. You'd always been able to sense Grief with absolute precision, and this is no different. But you can feel everything around you with a billion questing fingers, the walls, the roofs, the weeds, the movement of the wind, the cars disturbing your fog of Grief particles, the...
You blush, and pull the Grief away from the human beings you sense within your sphere of awareness - the few workers still in the area.
Well then.
You stand, looking around to see... nothing, really. You don't see anything out of the ordinary, though you can vaguely feel the Grief all round you with 'just' your puella magi senses, a vague sensation you can't pin down. About what you'd expected.
"Well then," you say, cocking a challenging eyebrow at Kyuubey. "How's that?"
"Helpful," Kyuubey states, tail lashing as it stares around it. "Reducing your aerial shadow to just yourself and your conveyance reduces the likelihood of your being sighted to approximately a quarter of its original probability."
"Great," you say, reaching into your pocket for the ribbon Mami had gifted you. "Now, I'm going to do one last test."
Kyuubeys gives you a look clearly meant to be inquisitive, but you don't deign to answer it - this is a test with Mami's powers. And it might be irrational, but you feel somehow possessive of that, whatever the result might be.
With a flick of your wrist, you unfurl the ribbon to its full length, and catch the free end with bits of Grief coalesced instantly out of seemingly thin air. You grin.
You could get used to having a utility fog.
You spend a moment to tie a small rock to the free end of the ribbon, before setting it sailing out and away from you. You don't need a continuous connection from yourself all the way out to extend your range, right? All you'd need, logically, is to have the ribbon extending out of the sphere of your control... which you accomplish with the rock as a counterweight and a quick swing.
There. Now you have the ribbon crossing the border of your zone of control, lying on the roof of what you suspect is a factory. And so all you have to do is to try and channel your magic into it, right?
You exhale, and you push. You visualize your magic flowing down the ribbon, brilliant fire connected by Mami's magic, and carefully, carefully, you slide a tiny marble of Grief along the ribbon until it exits your sphere of control, still intact. Still under control.
"Sabrina?" Mami's voice sounds inside your mind.
You jerk, reacting to the urgency in her tone, and you release the magic instantly. She sounds almost strangled, voice hitched. "Mami? What's wrong?"
"Are- did you do something? Something felt- really weird," Mami says.
Crap.
"Um, I did, I'm sorry, Mami," you say, glaring at Kyuubey. You know it's listening in. "Are you OK?"
"I'm- I'm fine," Mami says. "That just- felt really strange. Intrusive."
Voting opens
[] What do you say to Mami?
[] One more thing before you need to go to Kasamino
- [] Go to school and find Mami - maybe she could excuse herself to go to the nurse?
- [] Try again, this time with Mami fore-warned
[] Go to Kasamino early
- [] To do...
[] Write-in (word count limit: 150 words)
I'd say that was a productive session.
Or what if the girl is willing and ready and waiting to attack you? Any threat you can see or sense coming, you can overcome, but magical stealth strong enough to evade your Grief sense is one of the things that might threaten you. It'd be unprecedented, though, on many levels; that Kyuubey would set up such an ambush, and that something could evade your senses like that.
"What's her name?" you ask, tone guarded. "Would she happen to be Kuroki Matsuko, by any chance?"
"Kuroki Matsuko is too new a magical girl to have developed strong enchantment without guidance," Kyuubey's head tilts to the side as it speaks. "You are travelling to Asunaro, are you not?"
"I am," you agree. "Right, first of all, I'm going to come back to Kuroki, but before that, tell me more about this girl you want me to meet. What's her name, what is she like, what specifically does she do, is she low on Grief Seeds, where is she, that kind of thing."
"Her name is Hideyoshi Nao," Kyuubey says. "She isn't in any pressing need of Grief Seeds, though like most she'd be more comfortable with a larger buffer of Seeds. I believe you would consider her to be a pleasant, if shy girl."
Not in any need of Grief Seeds, so that defuses some of your paranoia: it'd have been well within what you imagine to be its remit to set you up for apparently rejecting a cry for help. You pull your phone from your pocket and check the time as you listen carefully, soaking in Kyuubey's words. Clock's a-ticking. You hold up a hand, and Kyuubey pauses obligingly, tail flicking.
"OK, so, I'm not done talking to you yet," you say, frowning at Kyuubey. "But I do have places to be. Would you like to follow me out to the industrial district? I'm going to experiment with my powers, and you can observe. If you help, I'll... work on making my Grief invisible."
You kind of assume that barring doing your experiments in an interdiction bubble, the Incubator will be watching, anyway.
"That's acceptable," Kyuubey says, standing and rearing up on its hind legs. You sigh, and pick it up by the scruff of its neck as you summon Grief to yourself. Undoubtedly, you could simply let it perch on your shoulder, but you don't like the little alien.
"Go on, about this Hideyoshi Nao?" you say as you spare a sliver of focus to build a Grief platform for yourself.
"She is in Kamaishi City," Kyuubey explains. "Further north along the coast. It would be a detour for you on the way to Asunaro, should you so choose."
"I see," you say as you hop onto the platform and sit down, putting Kyuubey down beside you. "Would she be in any trouble if I don't travel there within the day or so? I'm fairly busy today."
"She would not," Kyuubey says, turning a circle and tucking its tail up to form a fluffy little circle. "She is not involved in any particular conflict save against Witches, nor does she have any Grief Seed issues, as I already said."
"Hmm," you muse as you lift the platform off, vectoring eastward. You squint backwards at the mass of Grief following behind you, and experimentally send it upwards above you so that it's less visible from the ground. "Her powers?"
"Invisibility," Kyuubey answers. "She is able to make herself undetectable by any means utilising the electromagnetic spectrum, including radar and lidar."
"Huh," you say, switching to telepathy to be heard over the rushing wind. The air is cool and beautifully crisp this early in the morning, and you breathe deep. "Do lasers just pass right through her?"
"Yes, they do," Kyuubey confirms.
"That's cool," you say. "Would she have any reason to come into conflict with myself, or my friends?"
"Unless you deviate significantly from your behaviour to date, no," Kyuubey says.
"Right. That's good," you say, frowning out over the cityscape. The industrial district's coming up fast. "Will she have moved on to a different location or something that'd put her beyond my reach if I don't go today?"
"No," Kyuubey responds.
"So there are no time-critical issues that might occur?" you ask, tilting the platform forward a little as you dive for the warehouse.
"There are," Kyuubey says. "If you should delay for long enough, she may die of old age."
You give the alien a baleful stare. Is it joking? It can't be joking, it doesn't know how to joke. Then again, it might, if only from reading joke books. The mental image is disconcerting, to say the least.
"We are approaching the ground rather quickly," Kyuubey helpfully reminds you.
You sigh in annoyance and pull up, coasting to a smooth halt over Warehouse-kun. "I know."
Putting one hand on the side of your flight platform, you vault over and drop the few meters to the ground. Other hand holding your sling bag in place, you land on the sandy ground with a scrape.
Kyuubey leaps after you, limbs spread like a squirrel that forgot it wasn't a flying squirrel. In defiance of any good sense, it lands on its feet beside you, unblinking red eyes staring up at you.
"So I gotta ask," you say as you disassemble the platform with a wave of your hand, reclaiming the Grief and compressing it into spheres you bring down to eye level, an orbiting solar system of spheres. And more to come, as you draw the main bulk of your Grief towards yourself. "Were you trying to make a joke there?"
"Yes," Kyuubey responds. "Humour is useful for defusing tension."
You groan, palming your face.
"I'm aware that saying so frequently defeats the point of the joke," Kyuubey supplies. "But it had already failed, had it not?"
"I give up," you mutter, combing your hair back into some semblance of order with your fingers. "Now, first thing I want to test is the precise limits of my range. Are you capable of making precision distance measurements?"
"Certainly," Kyuubey says.
"Alrighty, then... let me see," you say, looking for something clean to sit down on. With the warehouse in the state it is, though, you can't see anything that isn't rusty or overgrown with weeds, so you instead craft a seat made out of Grief to perch on. Humming quietly to yourself, you detach your Soul Gem from your collar, and hold it at arm's length from yourself.
"Hokay. I'll be right here, and as you can see, I'm holding my Soul Gem out. I'd like to know whether my radius of control is centered on my body or my Soul Gem," you say. With a bit of Grief, you grab Kyuubey by the scruff of its neck, lifting it into the air. "Will you help me by making measurements?"
"Certainly," Kyuubey repeats, and with that, you send it rocketing out of sight, dangling from the Grief. It makes for a pleasantly comical sight, the little white alien fluffball simply zipping away as if on an invisible wire.
You halt your Grief right at the very edge of your sphere of influence. "Alright. That's the limit of my range, in the direction of my Soul Gem. I'm going to describe a circle now."
"Proceed," Kyuubey says. You do just that, swinging Kyuubey around in a wide circle. There are a few buildings away, and you guide the Incubator around the buildings - you are trying to get help from it, after all. Does no good to splatter it over the wall right this moment.
You complete the circle, and bring the Incubator back. "Well?"
"Your range is centerd on your Soul Gem," it says. "The deviations from circularity of the path I travelled were not significant on a nanometer scale, allowing for vertical motion."
"Huh," you say. "Right. Good to know. Not unexpected, but good to know. Right. Next test, I'm going to see how finely I can disperse my Grief. That should be good right? Because I might still have my wings or my platform, but at least I don't have that following me around." You gesture at the giant pile of basketball-sized spheres sitting at the corner of the warehouse where you'd stacked them.
"Yes, that would be good," Kyuubey agrees.
You nod, and exhale, focusing on the spheres. All you want to do is to... dissolve it. You don't want Grief gas. You want tiny, tiny nanoparticles of Grief, as small as you can make them, so small they're invisible to the naked eye, so small that you can turn it into an invisible fog spread out over the entire volume of your control radius.
The spheres crumble. Not all of them. You aren't so foolish as to forget about the items you've stored away in there, and especially not right in front of Kyuubey - but you break up everything else, dividing them again and again into finer and finer pieces. Centimeters, then millimeters, then micrometers... nanometers.
You shouldn't be surprised at how you're able to render the pile of Grief spheres into dense, smoky purple fog. And it's dense by definition - you haven't spread it out. You correct that with a wave of your hand, setting it all billowing into invisibility as you set it all flowing away.
And with the dispersal comes awareness in almost impossible fidelity. You'd always been able to sense Grief with absolute precision, and this is no different. But you can feel everything around you with a billion questing fingers, the walls, the roofs, the weeds, the movement of the wind, the cars disturbing your fog of Grief particles, the...
You blush, and pull the Grief away from the human beings you sense within your sphere of awareness - the few workers still in the area.
Well then.
You stand, looking around to see... nothing, really. You don't see anything out of the ordinary, though you can vaguely feel the Grief all round you with 'just' your puella magi senses, a vague sensation you can't pin down. About what you'd expected.
"Well then," you say, cocking a challenging eyebrow at Kyuubey. "How's that?"
"Helpful," Kyuubey states, tail lashing as it stares around it. "Reducing your aerial shadow to just yourself and your conveyance reduces the likelihood of your being sighted to approximately a quarter of its original probability."
"Great," you say, reaching into your pocket for the ribbon Mami had gifted you. "Now, I'm going to do one last test."
Kyuubeys gives you a look clearly meant to be inquisitive, but you don't deign to answer it - this is a test with Mami's powers. And it might be irrational, but you feel somehow possessive of that, whatever the result might be.
With a flick of your wrist, you unfurl the ribbon to its full length, and catch the free end with bits of Grief coalesced instantly out of seemingly thin air. You grin.
You could get used to having a utility fog.
You spend a moment to tie a small rock to the free end of the ribbon, before setting it sailing out and away from you. You don't need a continuous connection from yourself all the way out to extend your range, right? All you'd need, logically, is to have the ribbon extending out of the sphere of your control... which you accomplish with the rock as a counterweight and a quick swing.
There. Now you have the ribbon crossing the border of your zone of control, lying on the roof of what you suspect is a factory. And so all you have to do is to try and channel your magic into it, right?
You exhale, and you push. You visualize your magic flowing down the ribbon, brilliant fire connected by Mami's magic, and carefully, carefully, you slide a tiny marble of Grief along the ribbon until it exits your sphere of control, still intact. Still under control.
"Sabrina?" Mami's voice sounds inside your mind.
You jerk, reacting to the urgency in her tone, and you release the magic instantly. She sounds almost strangled, voice hitched. "Mami? What's wrong?"
"Are- did you do something? Something felt- really weird," Mami says.
Crap.
"Um, I did, I'm sorry, Mami," you say, glaring at Kyuubey. You know it's listening in. "Are you OK?"
"I'm- I'm fine," Mami says. "That just- felt really strange. Intrusive."
Voting opens
[] What do you say to Mami?
[] One more thing before you need to go to Kasamino
- [] Go to school and find Mami - maybe she could excuse herself to go to the nurse?
- [] Try again, this time with Mami fore-warned
[] Go to Kasamino early
- [] To do...
[] Write-in (word count limit: 150 words)
=====
I'd say that was a productive session.
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