Well, probably not: The "best" approach is generally only visible in hindsight. But I think being polite is a generally useful tone to take even if Riona is hostile, and that the current plan addresses a lot of potential issues. If you think there's other things that need to be prepared for, please share those concerns in detail, so I can try to incorporate them into the plan.
I don't see any reason for her to spend Grief and effort on hacking Kyubeynet to contact us directly and then asking where we are instead of proposing a meeting. Even if you're totally out of practice you don't do stuff like that. She's also not sure who she's talking to, which is even more strange.
Then there's the question of why she came to Mitakihara at all; wouldn't it have been easier to contact someone like Nadia and get an opinion from them? I'm sure that Nadia isn't the only traveler out there, and if word has spread far enough to have reached Riona, I'm certain that she knows at least a few travelers that she could have called that'd have been closer to us and could've given her better information before she literally got in a plane and flew halfway around the world. It would've been trivial for her to redirect someone like Nadia to meet us and either give her a report or, even better, open a conversation before she got here.
The thing that's bothering the most is that she wants to know where we
are. Not where we want to meet, but where we are right now. And then she says that she's going to come to us, even though she has to know that that's inefficient and error-prone. What if we're moving right now? What if we can't describe our address well enough for her to get within a mile? Where even
is the airport?
We know that she's sufficiently hostile that she sometimes kills Oriko. I don't recall Oriko significantly emphasizing "sometimes it's Riona" over "sometime's it's Homu"; given that Homura has
plenty of motivation to kill Oriko, this tells me that Riona will likely have at least some
significant reason to come into conflict with us, sufficiently so that she follows up by wiping out everyone that knows us. I'm not expecting Riona to be immediately and unavoidably hostile, but there is
absolutely something that is going on that could
make her decide to put enough effort into making us dead that she catches Oriko in the sweep.
I'm sure there are plenty of other explanations, and I know that I'm in a bit of a bad mood these last couple days because I haven't been sleeping well, but right now I just feel like there is something
off and that we need to be ready if not already moving. I'm not sure
how, but this feels more like she's trying to confirm a target than it does an attempt to communicate.
The biggest issue is that I'm not sure what shape an attack would take. Was she one of the ones that killed Oriko without causing any visible harm? Either way, if she is using some kind of soul magic to talk to us directly, if she can
talk to us, she can almost certainly also
attack us, so that's the first thing I'd worry about. It'd also explain why she tends to scare the piss out of other magical girls: nobody would have a real defense against it, she'd be able to kill anyone that was within telepathy range, and it'd probably not have much of a less-lethal option so she'd rapidly acquire a reputation for straight-up killing troublemakers.
Concrete proposals.
- Do not give her our location.
- Pick a crowded public place for the meeting. We've demonstrated in public before, we can do it again, and I'd prefer even a small incentive against doing anything noticeable.
- Whatever location we give her, let Homura or Sayaka arrive first to scout the area out before we land in what might be a kill box.
- Alternatively, do what I've been voting for: Don't provide a meeting place at all, just hoof it for the airport and tell her to look for a sign for Riona Mag Aoidh, party of one. Put some of those fast-travel ideas into practice, be ready and arrive faster than she was prepared to deal with. Also works if she's really in so much of a hurry that she wants to come to us - she wanted to meet us, we came as fast as we could.
- Detection quickly. Push out some grief fog and start feeling for patches of air moving wrong. Use that bit of enchanted grief we were thinking of using for a chibi to make a griefhax soul detector. Ask Mami to be on guard. Griefhax magic sensor. Just transform and push magic sense as hard as we can looking for anything monkeying with our soul gem.
- Protection right now. Griefhax soul defense, griefhax counterspell trigger on our soul gem set to disrupt any funny business, pull our gem as far as we can out of reality so it presents the smallest target possible (ideally a point target), just shield with grief.
- Pull a Kazumi: Say "sorry, handling guests, MAMI/SAYAKA/ORIKO YOU HANDLE THIS" and disconnect.
- Contact Nadia and ask if she knows how Riona fights or if there're any rumors to that effect.
- I'm not sure we can avoid confirming our identity, but I'm really, really not feeling good about this. Why would she spend Grief to do her own telepathy? Over such a long distance and for little to no discernible gain?
