[] She's not going to believe this, but all Niko ever wanted for Hijiri was a peaceful life. Not some experiment.
[] Tell Hijiri that we went after her because she helped attack them and steal things, and then attacked us. Self-fulfilling prophecy. The Pleiades' reactions to someone invading their home were predictable. Yuuri manipulated her. We want to stop her from messing with others.

Added 3 words to first line I think it helps...

Perhaps some denial we were specifically coming after her? We were going after a thief that invaded the Pleides home, attacked Nico and stole the memory device and clear seed. We didn't know Hijiri was involved until we chased down the girl that was firing at us.
 
Mmm... Soif we start answering Hijiri's 'peaceful life' line, there's two things to draw from there: Besides the fact that was precisely Niko's intention, we need to explain Grief Seeds to Hijiri... and how we can help.

But that part should be left for the end, right? We need to focus on Hijiri-Niko first.

[ ] "That's what Niko wanted for you, you know? Her one Wish. You're not an experiment."
-[ ] Ask that she talk with Niko; promise to help if she does.
-[ ] Niko cares, and is as conflicted as Hijiri is scared right now, because they don't understand each other.

[ ] Reassure Hijiri. She doesn't need to be afraid. Yuuri is at fault here.
-[ ] Hijiri is one of Yuri's victims here, too.

[ ] If she wants a peaceful life, the Magical Girl girl life is anything but peaceful. But we can help. We'd love to help after this mess is sorted out.
 
Yes we have reason to believe that OoC. That doesn't change a single thing I've said. We have no proof. It opens questions we can't answer and it's just a theory anyway.
Gravity is also just a theory.

Even if our physical body is "just" a girl that hit her head, even if the precise mechanisms make it look like a Culture Mind had babies with the Simurgh, Madoka's Wish is absolutely and unquestionably the root cause of the instantiation of this thread in a totally-amnesiac girl's head right as Madoka and Sayaka find her. It doesn't matter who the body belonged to beforehand, it doesn't matter how it ended up that way - Sabrina, the person that woke up in that alley, was created at that moment.

And why discount OOC knowledge? This entire quest is about leveraging "out of character" knowledge.
 
Now that I think about it, Hijiri probably has the same vulnerability to antimagic that Sabrina does.
The fuck are you talking about? o_O Sabrina doesn't have any negative reaction to being hit with antimagic except losing the use of her powers. She was hit repeatedly by Kirika's antimagic during their fight and it didn't do anything to her, or even keep her from beating Kirika senseless.
 
The fuck are you talking about? o_O Sabrina doesn't have any negative reaction to being hit with antimagic except losing the use of her powers. She was hit repeatedly by Kirika's antimagic during their fight and it didn't do anything to her, or even keep her from beating Kirika senseless.
Dude, Sabrina's got a really bad reaction to antimagic, far stronger than other megucas'.

Perhaps some denial we were specifically coming after her? We were going after a thief that invaded the Pleides home, attacked Nico and stole the memory device and clear seed. We didn't know Hijiri was involved until we chased down the girl that was firing at us.
I say we lay the blame (as) entirely (as we can) at Yuuri's feet.
 
Gravity is also just a theory.

Even if our physical body is "just" a girl that hit her head, even if the precise mechanisms make it look like a Culture Mind had babies with the Simurgh, Madoka's Wish is absolutely and unquestionably the root cause of the instantiation of this thread in a totally-amnesiac girl's head right as Madoka and Sayaka find her. It doesn't matter who the body belonged to beforehand, it doesn't matter how it ended up that way - Sabrina, the person that woke up in that alley, was created at that moment.

And why discount OOC knowledge? This entire quest is about leveraging "out of character" knowledge.

Gravity is a proven theory that can be observed first hand. Not the same thing.

I discount the ooc knowledge because the knowledge itself can't be substantiated by anything. It's just an implausible claim that we can't prove on any level and the sort of thing that even Mami and Sayaka would be looking at Sabrina worriedly about.

Metaknowledge is useful when we can base it on something. Here we don't have that. Not IC anyway.
 

Sabrina having a really bad reaction to antimagic before actually being reached by the pulse of antimagic.

The pulse then reaches Mami, Homura, and Sabrina. Mami and Homura don't physically react to the pulse.
You can feel the pulse emanating from Kirika with your other senses, a zone of deadness that screams wrong wrong wrong. You stagger to the side, planting your warhammer against the metal of the tower to stay standing with an enormous clang. Tears sting your eyes.

Mami's ribbons go limp, losing their animation.

Oriko seizes one of the ribbons as her bindings fall away.

Kirika's hand slips fully from Oriko's grasp, and the seer gasps in shock, hands flailing futilely as she tries to hang on.

The pulse from Kirika reaches the three of you. Mami winces as it hits her, but seems otherwise unaffected.

A shriek of clashing gears and flying sparks from Homura's shield.

Time restarts, colour spinning back into the world as Homura looks at her shield in shock. Even through the tears in your eyes, you can see some of the gears glowing red hot and the shield vibrating madly on her arm.

The pulse tears the control of the Grief cloud away from you, and the cloud dissipates.

More, a few paragraphs down:
Fighting through the screaming sense of wrongness, you toss yourself over the edge, diving after Mami. No time to suffer, not when Mami needs you.

The antimagic dissipates as you fall like a thunderbolt, arms by your side in as streamlined a position as you can achieve, and you can feel another tidal wave of disruption gathering on Kirika's position. Without pause, you pull another hammer from the aether and spin in midair in stark defiance of the laws of physics. You whip your already existing hammer in a circle, and let it fly at Oriko, head first.

She's already sidestepping the hammer throw, but you can see her face contort in pain as the movement jolts her broken arm.

A pulse of magic below and to your left - Mami rights herself, regaining control of her graceless tumble. You can see that none of the spheres seem to have actually broken skin, but not more than that from this distance. She finally snatches a muskets out of midair and fires it at Oriko.

Oriko starts to shift aside, but it's already too late - the shot clips her side, sending a spray of blood splattering across the ground. She remains standing, though, and summons another swarm of spheres she fires at Mami. This time, the blonde manages to evade it, twisting adroitly in mid air with a burst of magic.

"Oriko!" Kirika screams.

The nauseating pulse of antimagic ripples out from Kirika, bearing down on you again, and you let out a scream - of rage, of fear, of defiance.
 
Yeah, I was just reading through it myself.

There's mostly mentions of a sense of wrongness, with some mentions of being nauseating. It does say a couple times that it seems to sting enough to bring tears to her eyes, which I didn't recall. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any indication that it was any worse for Sabrina than it was for the others.

The pulse then reaches Mami, Homura, and Sabrina. Mami and Homura don't physically react to the pulse.
Not true! Mami winces when it hits her...
Mami winces as it hits her, but seems otherwise unaffected.
Yeah, her reaction isn't very dramatic, but from the outside, neither is Sabrina's. After the surprise of the first hit it didn't really slow Sabrina down at all.
 
Sabrina having a really bad reaction to antimagic before actually being reached by the pulse of antimagic.

The pulse then reaches Mami, Homura, and Sabrina. Mami and Homura don't physically react to the pulse.


More, a few paragraphs down:
It's quite likely that this reaction has more to do with Sabrina's grief senses rather than her artificial nature. Similar to how she reacts so violently to witch barriers compared the everyone else.
 
Yeah, I was just reading through it myself.

There's mostly mentions of a sense of wrongness, with some mentions of being nauseating. It does say a couple times that it seems to sting enough to bring tears to her eyes, which I didn't recall. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any indication that it was any worse for Sabrina than it was for the others.


Not true! Mami winces when it hits her...

Yeah, her reaction isn't very dramatic, but from the outside, neither is Sabrina's. After the surprise of the first hit it didn't really slow Sabrina down at all.
Uh, Sabrina's initial reaction is very much more visible than Mami's for that particular strike.

You can feel the pulse emanating from Kirika with your other senses, a zone of deadness that screams wrong wrong wrong. You stagger to the side, planting your warhammer against the metal of the tower to stay standing with an enormous clang. Tears sting your eyes.

Sabrina physically staggers and has to use her hammer as a support.
 
Yeah, I was just reading through it myself.

There's mostly mentions of a sense of wrongness, with some mentions of being nauseating. It does say a couple times that it seems to sting enough to bring tears to her eyes, which I didn't recall. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any indication that it was any worse for Sabrina than it was for the others.


Not true! Mami winces when it hits her...

Yeah, her reaction isn't very dramatic, but from the outside, neither is Sabrina's. After the surprise of the first hit it didn't really slow Sabrina down at all.

You stagger to the side, planting your warhammer against the metal of the tower to stay standing with an enormous clang. Tears sting your eyes.

I guess wincing is just as bad as tearing up and needing support to stay standing now.

The nauseating pulse of antimagic ripples out from Kirika, bearing down on you again, and you let out a scream - of rage, of fear, of defiance.
And I guess literally screaming doesn't mean anything. :|

 
I guess wincing is just as bad as tearing up and needing support to stay standing now.


And I guess literally screaming doesn't mean anything. :|
Point. Although it says it's a scream of rage and defiance, not pain.

If Sabrina's reaction was stronger than others, I don't think it has anything to do with her origins as an artificial person. It's because she's usually using her magic senses constantly.
 
"That's her!" Hijiri says, suddenly eager to please. "She- we broke into her lab, and she let me have the memory device when I figured out what it was."

"... you don't have the Clear Seed, do you," you say, absently emptying out the Grief Seed. Just to a refreshed state, not to Clear Seed status.

"She took it. The special Grief Seed," Hijiri says. "It- I don't think it was what she was looking for, but she took it."
Sorry, but the Princess is in another castle Clear Seed is with another 'Guca!.

"Wouldn't you?" Hijiri asks, and laughs bitterly. She waves down at herself, cocooned in paper and Grief. "She wasn't even wrong. You hunted me down, didn't you?"
It seems Yuuri was technically correct (the best kind of correct).
 
Point. Although it says it's a scream of rage and defiance, not pain.

If Sabrina's reaction was stronger than others, I don't think it has anything to do with her origins as an artificial person. It's because she's usually using her magic senses constantly.
Honestly between that and a few other places, I figure it was because Sabrina healed when she got her powers by closing her initial wounds with her grief power using the same rules as the grief based healing enchantment she later showed to Oriko. (So when her powers go on the fritz in any way, her old wounds reopen for a moment.)
 
[x] Keep Kazumi and Niko in the loop. The hunt for the second culprit needs to go on. Defer to Kazumi.

[x] Clarify that Hijiri wasn't personally targeted. Someone hurt one of Kazumi's friends after breaking in, so naturally our teams went looking for whoever the culprit was. Yuuri manipulated her.
-[x] None of this was necessary. Niko spent her one and only wish on Hijiri - she certainly isn't just a "science experiment", and no-one should think she's less of a person just because of her origins.

[x] A peaceful life is exactly something we're trying to offer Magical Girls. It's what the Clear Seeds are for. If she runs away, a peaceful life is the last thing she'll have, simply by being a Magical Girl. But first... she ought to make amends with the people she's hurt with her actions, Niko most of all.
-[x] Let the Pleiades take the lead when more arrive.

Stole bits and bobs from everyone. 150 words.
 
I believe we should address this part first...

[X] Telepathy: Yuuri is behind all this. The search must go on.

[X] Be empathetic Sabrina.

[X] Reassure Hijiri. We captured her because we knew someone attacked our friends, and she greeted us by throwing a laser at us.
-[X] No hard feelings from us, Hijiri is just one of Yuri's victims here. It's Yuuri we want. She's the one at fault.

[X] A peaceful life is what Niko Wished for Hijiri. Niko cares in her own way. Hijiri's not an experiment.
-[X] Explain that Niko is feeling as hurt as Hijiri is scared right now.
-[X] Ask that they talk, try to understand each other.
-[X] If Hijiri agrees, offer to undo the restraints.

[X] If she wants a peaceful life, the Magical Girl girl life is anything but peaceful. But we can help. We'd love to help after this mess is sorted out.
 
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Okay, so there are a few main issues here:

1) Hijiri is clearly afraid of Niko. This could be for several reasons, but the most plausible to me is that she thinks Niko created her as some kind of experiment that Niko intends to "end" now that Hijiri has gone off the rails. She clearly thinks she has no future in Asunaro, and her desperate offer to just go and live somewhere off on her own quietly strikes me as someone who doesn't have much hope for herself, either. We need to clear up her misconceptions regarding herself and Niko. We could probably add in that we think we were created by a Wish ourselves, and that there's nothing wrong with that--it doesn't make you any less of a person, nor does it mean that someone can just fuck with you at will.

2) Yuuri is out there, armed with a Clear Seed, and was looking for something. Either way, she is dangerous and at large. We need to warn the rest of the Pleiades.

3) Hijiri may not be comfortable staying in Asunaro anymore. The Pleiades might not be okay with her staying in Asunaro anymore--that is unclear and something to be determined. If either of those turn out to be the case after we've dealt with issue #1, we should offer for her to stay in Mitakihara, where we can support her and find her a place to stay. We should be sure to tell her that magical girls tend not to last very long on their own, and that the vast majority of them tend to be highly territorial. Just striking it out on her own without a destination in mind, a plan, or financial resources is going to be dangerous and probably miserable. We can not only give her a place to stay and teammates to rely on, we can also ensure that she never has to worry about a shortage of Grief Seeds or being screwed over because her Clear Seed was stolen or taken by force. We can even arrange for her to attend school again, in Mitakihara, if she wants to.
 
Narrators right. It reads far more like it's Sabrina's interdependency with her magic making the Antimagic stronger, not the fact that she's an artificial person. Hijiri should have no reason to get hurt if we hit her with it.

Also
[X] Redshirt Army

Sounds good to me. Although I would also suggest that we make sure to double check that she's telling the truth once the memory machine is off/away from her. Just in case she's lying through her teeth.
 
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