Homura sighs, walking closer, but she hesitates, stopping short of the hug pile. Instead, she hesitantly reaches forward, fingers brushing against Madoka's arm - and she stops.
Progress is progress.
You can only hope to have a fraction of the simple wonder Kazumi brings to everything she does, irrepressibly optimistic and cheerful.
This is exactly how Homura feels looking at us, isn't it?
 
Excuse me. They're called Asunaro Almonds now.

:V
But 'Asunaro almond' is so long. We should definitely call their victims pseudowitches, though, so we don't have to reference the artifacts directly because Evil Nut is a dumb name.

I'd just call them nuts, for short, but for the fact that talking about 'Hijiri's nuts' could cause some... unfortunate misunderstandings. :V

EDIT: We should probably also address the issue of funposting always getting more attention, upboats, and replies than serious posting; we are in a crisis situation.
 
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Augh, bad time to take a weekend off the internet.

I think that I broadly agree with the idea of treating this as an opportunity to send a Message about fucking with Clear Seeds. Tailored response to the threat to underline our infowar advantages, maximum power and high aggression, and sufficiently rapid response and resolution to keep people from seeing it as a way to distract us. Ideally we'd use some of our new sensory capabilities (Sayaka eyesight, grief magic scanners, wide-area Mami ribbons) to go straight from event to timestop to fight to done, but I'm not sure I'll be able to convince people to attempt that.

As for response personnel, we're dealing with a high-power wide-area mindfucker, and that means we stack up advantages. Have Sayaka grab Homura and fly around two or three km up using the eyesight power binoculars for overwatch. Kirika, Mami, Sabrina, and Umika all build various defenses, probably a variety from pure conceptual sanctity-of-mind to broad magic resistance/immunity to personality-facade misdirections.
 
^ This actually brings up a really good point: If nobody else, we should consider bringing Umika with us because Niko and Hijiri have different memories. If we can't tell the real article apart from the doppelganger via their soul gems, we can definitely tell them apart with a mind-scan.

Speaking of which, I personally think we should take Umika up on her offer to see if she can dredge up our memories (assuming we have any to dredge) when we have some free time (har har).
 
After we metabomb and Witchbomb her, of course, but yeah. Umika is trustworthy enough of a Mindguca to let her in to see what she might find.

We just want her to be fully bombed beforehand in case she hits our metaknowledge and gets some very bad news.
 
I don't think that going back to sleep is an option. This is a situation that we need to respond to quickly, for several reasons:
  1. Kazumi and friends clearly don't consider this something that can wait until morning, or they wouldn't have rushed in here to wake us up. They're taking it quite seriously, so ignoring it will seem callous and dismissive of their concerns.
  2. The Saints who are here will almost certainly want to go to Asunaro to rejoin their teammates, and leaving the team split up will leave them vulnerable.
  3. Whether or not it was Hijiri that took the Clear Seed, all of the PMKM villains are Pants-On-Head crazy. There's no telling what sort of harm they could cause if left unattended with infinite magic.
  4. In our previous discussions regarding Clear Seed distribution, we've generally agreed that we need to be quite firm in our stance regarding Clear Seed theft. Tolerating any amount of it will result in hoarding, shortages and witchouts. Our response needs to be immediate and overwhelming. We might well end up hugging it out, but first we need to come down on them like the wrath of a vengeful god.
  5. Procrastinating hasn't worked out well for us. The longer we wait, the bigger the problem will become, the more new problems will arise to distract us from it, and the deeper we'll dig ourselves. We need to be proactive.
 
Regarding the password deal, we could just keep the telephatic connection with Niko up, and ask her for updates every once in a while, that way well know that she's fine and hasn't been replaced; the only way it could go wrong would be if Hijiri could hack into it and talk with us as if she were Niko (her wish was to connect to the Pleiades or something like that?), we could always ask kyubey if she's the real one, but that would make kyubey suspicious of us.
 
[X] Calm down Kazumi. Telepathy conference with Kazumi, Mami, Kaoru, Umika, and Niko.
-[X] Ask pointed questions: Is Niko hurt? Does she know what was stolen and broken? When could the robbery have happened, and has this happened before?
-[X] Ask everyone back at Asunaro to stick together at all times.
[X] Ask Niko and everyone else if they think this merits immediate action, or whether you should wait until morning.
-[X] Check Kazumi's, Kaoru's and Umika's Witch names.

Re-wording?

[X] Calm down Kazumi. Telepathy conference with Kazumi, Mami, Kaoru, Umika, and Niko.
-[X] Ask pointed questions: Is Niko hurt? Does she know what was stolen and broken? When did/could the robbery have happened, and has this happened before?

[X] Tell Niko we can be there within the hour. Get everyone's opinions.
-[X] Regardless, ask Niko to stick together with the rest of the Pleiades.


[X] Check Kazumi's, Kaoru's and Umika's Witch names.
 
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To start with:

[x] Serious time. First, this is basically meguca Pinnacle - Empty Quiver. Second, Friends are in trouble, and you don't fuck with Mitakihara.

Personnel and Capabiltiies:
  • Would Homura be willing to pull the Asunarians into timestop? Probably not. So we're not able to do the entire response in timestop. I think that we can ask Homura to timestop so we can build griefhax devices, however.
  • Sayaka is asleep in her apartment. She can get a clone out. Waking her up will piss her off, but not waking her up will piss her off more, so we wake her up. She can use the juggernaut power and meguca healing to deal with being awake at 4 AM.
Problems:
  • The Mikunis. If we don't take both of them, who do we leave behind to watch them? Sayaklone?
[x] Get everyone awake, alert, smooth, and focused. Mami can probably make with some enchanting and healing.

[x] Actions, descending priority:
-[x] Start gathering information: Niko status, lab status, timing, history, motives.
--[x] Loop people in as they come online.
--[x] Let Mami take over as you coordinate.
-[x] Telepathy Homura: Asunaro situation is heating up.
-[x] Telepathy Sayaka: Trouble in Asunaro. Leave a clone in bed, grab note-taking tools, stealth out, fly way high and head for Asunaro.
-[x] To all: You have reason to believe mindfuckery. Load up on protections, keep in contact at all times, Sayaka will stay out of range to handle passwords and overwatch using clones.
-[x] Grab everyone's Witch Names for identification.
-[x] Ask Homura for a private conversation.

Things that I'm uncertain about are marked in blue.

I'd like to assign Sayaka to be master-stranger overwatch, basically. Take down everyone's passwords, spawn clones and use the eagle-eye power to watch people, stay high enough that she can't be fucked with, generally act as our known uncompromised person. Only hiccup is that I don't know if she can strike from passenger-plane cruising altitude; maybe lightning? Additionally, I think that we still think that Sayaka is our most vulnerable meguca, and this keeps her out of trouble while playing to her unique competences (non-aerodynamic flight and super-stable levitation from juggernaut, clones, super eyesight). Big disadvantage is that we wouldn't be able to pull her into the timestop to share situation metaknowledge with her.

I'm not sure about revealing that we have something past what everyone else knows, specifically that there's a mindfuckery threat. I think that we should absolutely inform metabomb-aware team members, which is what the timestop request is for, but the Asunarians not so much. I'd also like to take that time to make with the griefhax to prepare tools and countermeasures.


edit: whoops, forgot to delete the other votes that I was using for ideas. deleted.
 
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By the way, since we should talk with everyone before going, do we include everyone when we do so?

Everyone present, Niko, Homura, Sayaka, Madoka, Hitomi, Oriko, Kirika...?

Maybe Madoka and Hitomi could be allowed to sleep on; same with Oriko and Kirika if we're not bringing them over. We could ask Sayaka if she wants to help.
 
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Whether or not it was Hijiri that took the Clear Seed, all of the PMKM villains are Pants-On-Head crazy. There's no telling what sort of harm they could cause if left unattended with infinite magic.
All of PMKM's villains are Hyades' proxies except for the Soujus*, and this attack doesn't fit their MO; they'd be interested in disabling Niko to steal her Gem first, then grabbing anything else shiny second, and they're plenty powerful enough to take her down mano-a-mano.

*or Grief spiral patients, but that isn't really applicable in this case. I can practically guarantee that the culprit's whoever was following Niko when we met up, whether it's a known, a rival clique casing her to get their hands on her shiny toys, or a desperate wildcard. Even if Niko's escort when we met was another Saint, we can't guarantee that it wasn't actually Hijiri, either, since she can shapeshift; she naturally assumes Niko's place after she dies because they're biologically the same person, but she does disguise herself as Kazumi in the manga to lure the others into a trap.
 
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Homura ocassionally sleeps, and she's had plenty of time to work out how to avoid sleeping if it was trivial to bypass as a meguca, so I'm leaning towards "yes, barring specialized magic".
Homura sleeps when we prod her to and/or when we're around to keep timestop running indefinitely. Meguca don't need to do anything to their bodies, because they aren't necessarily affected by their external zombie hardware breaking down, and magic can substitute for metabolism anyway. Sleep is optional, but humanizing; Homura views it as a luxury that she generally can't afford.
 
You know, considering the group hug scene in which Homu tried her best to join...

I'd really want Brina to give Homu a hug right now.

But we can't get on with the Homuhugs because we've got an emergency situation.

Hell! Our Mumihugs time is being interrupted! I'm pretty sure the only reason we still haven't checked whether we can function on magic instead of sleep is because of the Mumihugs!

Whoever attacked Niko must die!

For the hugs!
 
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