Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

[mCooperative]

or we have a lot of employees who will eventually realize that nobody actually knows what happens in the most important part of the facility or who works there.

Click to shrink...

... or we have lots of magical girls listed as "employees" who are in on the secret of how we're producing goods using magic. 'Course, that runs into the organized-crime-territory of money-laundering, or at least seeming like it.

... ask around to see if anyone has contacts who can help us with money/chip-grade-silicon laundering? (... contacts who wouldn't be put off by us robbing the yakuza.) Or see if Hitomi's family-who-are-totally-not-yakuza know anything about how to do it.

We could also take the route of using hidden grief-or-magic-run machinery to make conventional production methods more cost effective- both by physically manufacturing the manufacturing equipment ourselves to perfect specs, and just generally breaking physics a tiny bit to make it work better than is possibly for non-magically-affected conventional methods.

 

[CornyBones]

Stressed from making votes?
Have a cool Mami

Click to shrink...

 

[justinkal]

... or we have lots of magical girls listed as "employees" who are in on the secret of how we're producing goods using magic. 'Course, that runs into the organized-crime-territory of money-laundering, or at least seeming like it.

... ask around to see if anyone has contacts who can help us with money/chip-grade-silicon laundering? (... contacts who wouldn't be put off by us robbing the yakuza.) Or see if Hitomi's family-who-are-totally-not-yakuza know anything about how to do it.

We could also take the route of using hidden grief-or-magic-run machinery to make conventional production methods more cost effective- both by physically manufacturing the manufacturing equipment ourselves to perfect specs, and just generally breaking physics a tiny bit to make it work better than is possibly for non-magically-affected conventional methods.

Click to shrink...

Once Oriko works out her problems, have her play the stock market

 

[SaltyWaffles]

she's so vicious and direct and cutting and cuteeeeeeeee~

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She's just like To The Stars' Yuma! Yes, she's 450 years old, one of the most powerful people in the world, thoroughly versed in getting her hands dirty or outmaneuvering you, but she looks and acts like an adorable little child, and she's just TOO CUTE.

---

Anyway, I'd hold off on giving out throwable antimagic devices, mainly because it's one of the most effective weapons against us. We can give the (entirely reasonable and truthful) excuse that we're a ways off from figuring out how to even make such a thing, since the girl who makes the antimagic enchantments is very new, and a device like this is something that'd need significant development and testing before it's ready for combat.

And jesus, what the hell is Sakura's problem? She seems to hate us even more than she did before, and considering we gave her a Clear Seed for free with no special conditions or anything asked in return, it's utterly baffling. Her refusal to even allow us to cleanse her soul gem is even weirder. I'm thinking we should ask Rin about this via telepathy. Ask if she knows why Sakura seems to hate us so much, and why she seems to hate us even more than she did before.

 

[mCooperative]

Once Oriko works out her problems, have her play the stock market

Click to shrink...

I mean, so long as we keep it small-time enough to avoid getting caught out on insider trading allegations, and make a few strategic 'poor decisions' so we appear to be normal, if lucky, stock traders, it's not really so much of a joke proposition. It's not a really hard thing to get into, yeah? We just have to have some startup capital, and make sure to fill out our taxes to properly report our assets. Um, in America at least. Does working within the Japanese stock exchange have different requirements and limitations? Or, rather, are they ones we can work within, I suppose.

... clearly while we're getting Sabrina's identity properly set up, we need to make sure it will stand up to scrutiny as a tax-paying stock-playing citizen.

Edit: Hell, does Homura remember anything that happened major-events-wise that's been consistent throughout the loops? Even a short warning on a major event is usually enough to get quite a bit of mileage out of. I remember I kicked myself for days when I forgot to tell my dad that the Nintendo Switch was coming out and that stock prices were probably gonna do some things in response.

 

[Phigment]

And jesus, what the hell is Sakura's problem? She seems to hate us even more than she did before, and considering we gave her a Clear Seed for free with no special conditions or anything asked in return, it's utterly baffling. Her refusal to even allow us to cleanse her soul gem is even weirder. I'm thinking we should ask Rin about this via telepathy. Ask if she knows why Sakura seems to hate us so much, and why she seems to hate us even more than she did before.

Click to shrink...

It's apparently extra work for her to move more stuff.

If Sabrina cleanses her soul gem, that's even more free-floating grief to transport. If she cleanses with a grief seed, teleports, and then allows Sabrina to refresh the grief seed, she's not working as hard during that teleport.

I mean, it's probably pretty marginal, given what Sabrina is already toting around, but it's not crazy.

 

[SaltyWaffles]

It's apparently extra work for her to move more stuff.

If Sabrina cleanses her soul gem, that's even more free-floating grief to transport. If she cleanses with a grief seed, teleports, and then allows Sabrina to refresh the grief seed, she's not working as hard during that teleport.

I mean, it's probably pretty marginal, given what Sabrina is already toting around, but it's not crazy.

Click to shrink...

Er, what? That's not how it works. Either way, that Grief is being added to Sabrina's pile. Whether it goes through that Grief Seed or not. And Sakura still has to teleport it afterwards.

 

[Redshirt Army]

Er, what? That's not how it works. Either way, that Grief is being added to Sabrina's pile. Whether it goes through that Grief Seed or not. And Sakura still has to teleport it afterwards.

Click to shrink...

Grief inside of Grief Seeds "doesn't count" as far as Sakura's teleporting measures mass. Ergo, by strategically keeping as much Grief inside of Grief Seeds as possible, we reduce her workload.

 

[SaltyWaffles]

Grief inside of Grief Seeds "doesn't count" as far as Sakura's teleporting measures mass. Ergo, by strategically keeping as much Grief inside of Grief Seeds as possible, we reduce her workload.

Click to shrink...

Didn't we take the Grief out of the seed to refresh it, though, after Sakura used it?

 

[mCooperative]

Er, what? That's not how it works. Either way, that Grief is being added to Sabrina's pile. Whether it goes through that Grief Seed or not. And Sakura still has to teleport it afterwards.

Click to shrink...

There's a question- is the transport load for Sakura determined by mass or by volume? How far down did we compress it during transport- and given that Sakura hasn't shown ill effects by transporting grief seeds (given the number they'd had as moving around as liquid assets before), I'm curious once again about how grief seeds pack down the grief, i.e. if they're merely very dense, or if their extraspatial properties handle most of the load.

 

[Phigment]

Didn't we take the Grief out of the seed to refresh it, though, after Sakura used it?

Click to shrink...

Yes, after the teleport was completed.

She cleansed with a seed, teleported, then allowed Sabrina to refresh the seed.

Edit: No, I think I'm wrong about this. Just re-read that bit again.

 

[Vebyast]

I'm iffy about silicon wafer fabrication; faking the inspections and logistics for a major corporation would be a huge PITA, and silicon suppliers like that operate on multi-year contracts. We're not going to be breaking into that industry. We could do semiconductor manufacturing, but it'd have to be done at a much higher level - take designs and fab small runs of insanely high-quality boards using those layouts. This would be fantastically useful for research labs and places that manufacture other sensitive analog equipment.

Okay, quite vote.

[] Payment
-[] Loop in O&K. Explain request.

[] AM manufacturing
-[] Loop in Homura.
-[] Suggest longer-term business arrangement: AM manufacture for Walpy help.
-[] Would want small outing for prisoner transport and to hammer out deal face-to-face.

I'm going to laugh my ass off - entirely off, onto the ground - if Kirika ends up being the breadwinner in the Kure household.

[] Quietly offload some Grief to Kyubey. Don't want to cause more problems for Sakura.
-[proposal] Let Sakura notice you doing it.

Would she appreciate this?

[] Yuki
-[] Ask to see the location.
-[] Recommend saving grief seeds. Hint at dewitching research.
-[] Discuss hiring them again in the future. You could get used to this efficiency.
--[] Explain welcome expected decline in witch-hunting motivation.
--[] Explain unwelcome likelihood of future peacekeeping actions.
--[] Explain Walpy.
--[] Express desire for proliferation of nonlethal weapons; that plus the clear seed plus shitloads of cash sufficient compensation?

No reason to pack too much stuff into this update. I think that I'd want to save the idea of hiring professional help for a face-to-face, and I don't see any down-time where that would fit until we're done teleporting around and have offloaded Anri.

mainly because it's one of the most effective weapons against us.

Click to shrink...

• It's strictly less powerful than OG Kirika, and we mopped her up without trouble.
• Observing that AM is effective against us is like observing that handguns are effective against F22s. Yes, under the right circumstances you could put it in the shop for a while. Good luck.
• It may be effective against us, but it won't do shit to stop Mami, Homura, Sayaka, or, hell, Kirika herself from ruining the day of anyone that tries anything.
• We have bigger things to worry about if people start betraying us like that.
• AM is actually not that effective against us. We can stay out of range, AM has historically only disrupted our control inside its range instead of totally shutting down our powers the way it did for Anri, and it doesn't do anything to stop things like Prima Luce.
• There are things out there that are way the hell more worrying than a little bit of antimagic. I'd understand if you were worried about the proliferation of superspeed enchantments, but AM? Meh.

 

[Redshirt Army]

I'm with @Vebyast on this one. Antimagic isn't a major risk to us at all, and groups like Fukushima having improved nonlethal takedown capacity is entirely in our interests.

 

[Torgamous]

we're a ways off from figuring out how to even make such a thing, since the girl who makes the antimagic enchantments is very new

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There is absolutely no reason that the current process couldn't produce bolas.

 

[Vebyast]

For cashy money, I'd prefer to stick to custom fabrication of exotic devices, with Hitomi's Mom handling the business end of things. Every research lab under the sun has some wacky apparatus that they've always wanted to make but that's somewhere between "can't get funding for it" and "actually impossible to machine", and the grad students would be absolutely thrilled to talk your ear off about it and probably even share the models with you. Hitomi's Mom can get us as many introductions as we want in those circles with zero suspicion or doubt; no bureaucratic hoops to jump through, no huge contracts, no businessmen to call us little girls. You hand a professor the apparatus that'll put his name in Nature and he wouldn't even question the part where you're a two-headed lizard wearing a tie-dye wig. Start with tabletop equipment worth $10k, contract at cost of raw materials or less, and snowball on reputation and word of mouth until we're fabbing mirrors for satellite observatories and superconducting rings for particle accelerators at a billion bucks a pop.

 

[Phigment]

Depends a lot on how the antimagic enchantment thingy works.

Like, an AM item that requires you to be touching the enchanted item isn't so dangerous. If they can hit you with an AM gadget, they could probably hit you with a grenade.

Something that allowed you to replica Kirika's AM pulses is a different ball of wax.

 

[Julian Bradshaw]

For cashy money, I'd prefer to stick to custom fabrication of exotic devices, with Hitomi's Mom handling the business end of things. Every research lab under the sun has some wacky apparatus that they've always wanted to make but that's somewhere between "can't get funding for it" and "actually impossible to machine", and the grad students would be absolutely thrilled to talk your ear off about it and probably even share the models with you. Hitomi's Mom can get us as many introductions as we want in those circles with zero suspicion or doubt; no bureaucratic hoops to jump through, no huge contracts, no businessmen to call us little girls. You hand a professor the apparatus that'll put his name in Nature and he wouldn't even question the part where you're a two-headed lizard wearing a tie-dye wig. Start with tabletop equipment worth $10k and snowball on reputation and word of mouth until we're fabbing space telescope lenses and superconducting rings at a billion bucks a pop.

Click to shrink...

Not to mention we'd be doing some real work towards advancing the entirety of humankind. It'd be very nice if our moneymaking schemes had positive side effects like that.

 

[Onmur]

[] Quietly offload some Grief to Kyubey. Don't want to cause more problems for Sakura.
-[proposal] Let Sakura notice you doing it.

Would she appreciate this?

Click to shrink...

She'll notice we got rid of the grief either way. Probably better to just offload the Grief.

 

[Raiseth]

There's a question- is the transport load for Sakura determined by mass or by volume?

Click to shrink...

The problem is, as far as I understand ( now ), Grief shouldn't have either, because fuck you, Witch Girl physics. That is, unless we want it to.
Can we... not?

Alternatively, Sakura's teleportation might work by transforming everything in her vicinity into magic and then taking it someplace else, probably in her own pocket dimension courtesy of her Witch Barrier. That would have been ironic. So this is "volume of magic" she's having difficulties with.

Don't think too hard about it.
Or you can think about it very, very hard, get yourself a magic doctorate, resolve world hunger, entropy, what to wear on your prom night with Mami(???), and answer any Kyubei's question by saying: "It's Magic, I ain't gonna explain shit."
Your choice.

 

[Madou Sutegobana]

[] "We don't make the anti-magic enchantments, but we could put you in touch with the girl who does, and you could ask her."

 

[Onmur]

[] "We don't make the anti-magic enchantments, but we could put you in touch with the girl who does, and you could ask her."

Click to shrink...

She's part of our group, just like whoever's gonna be put in guard detail is part of Yuki's.

What we can do right now is contact O&K with the details and maybe let them listen in.

We already walked in here as the spokerperson for our group.

 

[mCooperative]

AM has historically only disrupted our control inside its range instead of totally shutting down our powers the way it did for Anri

Click to shrink...

Like, an AM item that requires you to be touching the enchanted item isn't so dangerous. If they can hit you with an AM gadget, they could probably hit you with a grenade.

Something that allowed you to replica Kirika's AM pulses is a different ball of wax.

Click to shrink...

Fair point, my thoughts automatically went to AM pulse generation, but no, yeah, just an enchanted hitting-things-thing is what we're reasonably talking here, not arming people with anti-magic EMP grenades. I withdraw my concerns about the matter.

Possibly, instead of directly offering to put them in contact with Kirika, poke the Kure's by telepathy to fill them in, and act as the official go-between? Aside from them being counted as 'our' group for all practical purposes, on the Mitakihara side of things they're still kinda technically prisoners until we re-settle the matter with Homura and Sayaka, and I feel like it's something of a faux pas to be treating them like free agents open for independent work at the moment. A faux pas in relation to how both the Kure's and Homura and Sayaka may see the situation, and maybe how Yuki may see it too.

 

[Onmur]

[] Payment
-[] Loop in O&K. Explain request.

[] AM manufacturing
-[] Loop in Homura.
-[] Suggest longer-term business arrangement: AM manufacture for Walpy help.
-[] Would want small outing for prisoner transport and to hammer out deal face-to-face.

Click to shrink...

The rest of the protovote looks fine, but I think you can ax this part off to literally no consequence.

We can offer a few AM enchants just by filling in the vote prompt Firn left us; calling Homu will be extra words (I really doubt she'll do anything but grunt along, and I don't feel she'll be specially interested), and we can just impose on Kirika to make a few AM enchants without losing any Best Buddy points.

Kirika did agree to help us save the world and whatnot.

We walked into this without asking our new Socialguca for support. I believe we can take decisions of this magnitude without consulting/bothering anyone.

 

[The Phoenixian]

Okay, on re-reading I'm certain that something bad is up in Sendai.

Rin looks a little... heavier than she used to. Not literally. Physically, she looks the same emerald figure-shrouding haori wrapped around a cream-coloured undershirt, trimmed with frills and bands of yellow. But the worry lines around her deep green eyes and across her forehead are perhaps etched in a little harder, her motions perhaps a little weightier as she releases Sakura's arm and starts forward.

Click to shrink...

Rin is haggard, weighed down by something.

"Hey!" you say, grin already on your face. "Thanks for coming to pick me up, Rin-san, Tachibana-san!"

"Fuck you, Witch Girl" Sakura snaps, almost on reflex.

Click to shrink...

Sakura studies you for a second, and snorts. "Fuck you, you're not sorry. You don't know how to keep your hands to yourself."

"If I'd known, I'd have done it differently," you say, letting your arms drop. "I don't want people to suffer. In any way."

"We've got nothing to fucking talk about," Sakura snaps "Get on with it. The... stuff in the air's yours, right? Pull it in."

Click to shrink...

"Keep your resolving to yourself," Sakura spits. "We going, or we going?"

Click to shrink...

Sakura is furious with us, more so than she was before.

"How's things in Sendai been?" you ask, glancing at Rin.

"Uneasy," Rin says. "We're not really sure what to do. We give the University group a wide berth, and we just... hang out, now that we're not forced to fight."

Click to shrink...

And when combined with all that, this reads like Rin is avoiding a topic.

[ ] Yuki
-[ ] Ask to see the location.
-[ ] Finalize details.
--[ ] Include Anti Magic enchantments. Hint they're a great help for ending fights without harm.
--[ ] Sabrina Vee guarantee™: They don't have to trust our Clear Seeds. Wether those pan out or not, we're ending the Grief Seed scarcity problem.
-[ ] Talk about the effect of our actions, and how they will affect mercenaries such as her.
-[ ] Mention the possibility of long term cooperation, with us and other groups.
-[ ] Mention Walpurgisnacht.

[ ] Rin. Try and find a chance to talk to her alone.
-[ ] Ask about Sakura's mood.
-[ ] Ask how everyone is doing. Thought about going back to more normal lives?
-[ ] Ask about getting Akiko professional help.

[ ] Kyuubey.
-[ ] Grief Seed dump. Keep enough for large Witch effects and the cloud.

[ ] Bring Anri over.
-[ ] Thank Oriko and Kirika again.
-[ ] Ask them to invite you and Mami to dinner some time?

Click to shrink...

I want to make some changes here:

[] Payment
-[] Call O&K and Homura. Explain request.

[] Yuki
-[] Ask to see the location.
-[] Various chat topics (intersperse as appropriate):
--[] Ask if Nishimura, Koizumi, and Kuvira Akiyama are alright.
--[] She said she had "supervillains" in town... You're really curious.
--[] Recommend saving grief seeds. Hint at dewitching research.
-[] Finalize details
--[] You're happy giving them Anti-Magic, and nonlethal options generally.
-[] Discuss hiring them again in the future. You like them already.
--[] Ask other payments/services she might be interested in.
--[] If amicable, explain various ideas. And that unnatural disaster, Walpurgisnacht.


Cut the "Vee guarantee" and the "hinting," since I don't think the tone of either of those things play well here. I think it's much better here to be open and frank. Let our capabilities demonstrate themselves.

Added some of Veb's stuff.

Added general chat.

[] Telepathy Rin.
-[] You've got the impression something's rotten, and you're to blame.
--[] Ask if something's happening. Particularly with Akiko and/or power-loss.

Didn't like the idea of getting Akiko "professional help," since that seems pretty condescending. Stuck to examining what's wrong this round.

[] Kyuubey.
-[] Grief dump. Keep two clear seeds' worth.

Shortened.

Cut the final talk, since there's likely more to get to.

--[] Explain welcome expected decline in witch-hunting motivation.

Click to shrink...

I think this is missing important details. I don't think the decline of witch-hunting is something to so much call in Fukushima for, as to ask their help in setting up a system to outright replace the current way things work. We'd do just as much to call in the University group for it.

I'm not sure how to handle that, but it's been a while already, so I'm posting.

 

[Redshirt Army]

--[] Recommend saving grief seeds. Hint at dewitching research.

Click to shrink...

Nadia's pointed out how "dewitching research" can be taken by those in the know, aka "run far away from the disaster radius". Not sure bringing it up is a good call.

--[] She said she had "supervillains" in town... You're really curious.

Click to shrink...

The supervillains aren't "in town", as in, in Fukushima, by my read. Still might be worth asking about.

You like them already.

Click to shrink...

The ease of dealing with her really is laudable. Maybe a touch more professional compliment, though? We haven't had much contact with them, and most of that was on the opposing side. "It's been a pleasure dealing with you," maybe?

Article:

Excellent customer service, able to negotiate alternative means of payment with minimal hassle, prompt service. Despite some ethical qualms, would recommend for sheer convenience alone. 9/10.

Source: Sabrina Vee