Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

[Kaizuki]

Ahh I was under the impression things were different than canon.

The timing is suspicious enough that it could be Oriko but admittedly we don't have proof that it really was her (although from the sounds of it, it probably was). Maybe we should ask under a privacy construct, if she really did set Kyubey on Yuma than we'll have to take into account that Kyubey could reveal this information.

edit:
Ahh, here's the quote. Well it looks like you're in trouble Oriko.



Hmm the anti-pain ring is the only thing we had Oriko try out isn't it? I mean it's not 100% impossible but it seems very unlikely and there aren't any links that would lead to that assumption.

We've also healed others, covered Mami in our magic and had people in our privacy fields or otherwise touching Witch constructs. It just doesn't seem at all likely that our stuff causes soul cancer or whatever.



Hey thanks, I'm enjoying it and the rest of the quest. Anyway I do actually have plenty of ideas for those as well.

Money Problems: Honestly when a magical girl has infinite magic to call on money is really just absurdly easy to acquire, so I'll list a few methods.

Illegal: The absolute easiest way is to simply ignore the law and take what you want. It's not like anyone can stop a magical girl anyway.

Theft: Yep the easiest way is simple theft, most notably stealing from people while under timestop. We're actually going to be doing that pretty soon anyway. It's probably the fastest and easiest method since it doesn't really take any time at all.

Hacking: We know tech based magical girl who was capable of fabricating an entire identity out of nothing in moments. It's likely she can do the same for bank accounts. Just how many 0s do you want your account to have?

Legal: Ahh, so perhaps you have some sort of ethical objection to the illegal methods, or maybe you just respect the law. Well don't worry it's easy for a magical girl to make money legitimately as well.

Construction: This one is for Sabrina and others like her. The most obvious one here is to just go ahead and make gemstones. For example grab some carbon and crush it until we get diamond. However our utility fog is far more capable and can do more than just make a shiny rock, we can probably make everything from circuit boards to houses and maybe even an entire human body given the proper raw materials.

Or alternatively deconstruct the same, for example taking down a house in a fast and efficient manner. There are actual real life techniques for gentle deconstruction and we could emulate them but better and faster and cheaper.

Mining: Find some raw material and then proceed to extract it. This is pretty simple really, although you need proper contacts to sell the material but we already have a few of those. We could probably speed up the finding part by using a Witchy information book asking about good local ores.

Healing: The most obvious one that any magical girl can do, but can't really because of grief limitations. We could do this subtly by looking for rich ill people and then have them sign a confidentiality contract, giving them some sleeping pills and then having a magical girl heal them in their sleep. Or alternatively we can be as unsubtle as we like. Regardless medical treatment for money is a pretty standard situation and we have access to a miracle cure that can fix anything. This should be easy enough and we've got contacts who can make this fast and painless for us.


Grief Seed Replacement: This one is much harder to fix and really anything I come up with here is going to be more like speculation rather than a firm and easy plan to follow. Well other than the obvious of using Clear Seeds.

Clear Seeds: Basically what we have been doing. Get a Grief Seed and clear it into a Clear Seed. Grief Seeds so far are fairly plentiful so it's going to work out just fine for the foreseeable future.

Empty Receptacle: Soul Gems and Grief Seeds seem to be receptacles capable of holding quite a bit of Grief/other kinds of power. If we can make more of these we can distribute them it could likely solve the problem of needing Grief seeds, although they might not naturally accept Grief into them so that would require a second research step. Unfortunately I can't really think of anything else that doesn't start with attempt enchantment X, where X could be a grief pump, grief transfer device, grief container, etc. Basically I think we just need to find time to perform a research session (fortunately we have a time-stopper on the team so that's one thing we have plenty of) to test these things out.

Blowing Stuff Up: Because having a invention session without including an explosion would just be weird.

Disassembly Rifle: First we get some enchanted Grief and turn it into a bullet. The next (and technically optional) step is to get some explosive propellant such as gunpowder, witch powder or some other kind of explosive. Then we fire our enchanted Grief bullet at the target allowing us to fire an incredibly fast bullet that can actually accelerate towards the target and automatically self correct like the most terrifying smart bullet ever conceived. Then when it hits the target the bullet can separate into millions of tiny Grief Flakes and shred the target to bits, or just take out a leg if you're feeling gentle. Or alternatively you can adjust it to slow down and bind the target or whatever function you like.

Click to shrink...

So, as an idea, I'd like to expand on how we can make Kirika's antimagic enchantments better for us than just 'throw an enchanted dart at the enemy.'

1. This one is obvious, but we'll be using greif fog to carry the enchanted objects. This can easily reach anything within our control range quickly, and we can also use grief to throw aerodynamic objects (yes, sigh, like the darts) as fast as we need to to ensure that they embed themselves deeply into our targets' flesh. We can also use grief to hold enchanted objects onto a magical girl, preventing her from just throwing it away.

2. Less visible objects. While darts, bullets, and other large objects will still be useful ranged attacks, inside of our control radius it could be useful to go for stealth. Can Kirika enchant dust? Other small objects? Something small and unobtrusive, such as a hairpin? Scotch tape is clear, and adhesive, so we could stick it to a meguca and the only thing she'll notice is that her powers are gone.

3. Most importantly, we can hold a large number of these items in 4D space. If we want a meguca to suddenly not have powers *cough*Riona*cough*, we can pull an enchanted strip of scotch tape out of our pocket dimension, right behind her, and stick it to her before she knows what's happening. This is both faster and less violent than degemming someone, and allows for easier degemming once the target's powers are disrupted. Plus, when we try to gem someone, they will probably focus almost entirely on keeping their gem from us. If they also have to deal with 5-10 anti magic objects coming for them, they have to either split their attention or get hit.

Edit:
Also, hi everyone!

Click to shrink...

Have you guys checked out Marked For Death yet? Just asking. If you have any ideas on how to help Homura's self-esteem or get Oriko to stop rejecting her wish, those would be a lot more valuable than new ways to subdue people. We're pretty well set on that front.

 

[Sentient Tree]

Have you guys checked out Marked For Death yet? Just asking. If you have any ideas on how to help Homura's self-esteem or get Oriko to stop rejecting her wish, those would be a lot more valuable than new ways to subdue people. We're pretty well set on that front.

Click to shrink...

I came here from Marked For Death. I guess it shows.

 

[Kaizuki]

... there's magic in that flask. Faint enough that you didn't pick up on it with a cursory look in there, and she is definitely drinking it.

Riona catches you looking. She sloshes the flask in your general direction, raising her eyebrows.

"No, but thank you," you say. Nadia warned you about the stuff. You... don't think it's harmful. You're pretty sure she would have mentioned if it were, but you're awfully suspicious of the magic in there.

She shrugs, and takes another sip.

It smells awful. Not alcoholic, or if there is, there's so little it's drowned out by something sharply acidic, almost like curdled milk.

Click to shrink...

Question: what kind of magic do you put into a cider? More importantly, what kind of veteran guca would spend magic on a friggin drink? And why are we so "awfully suspicious" of it?

The usual joke has been that she's drinking "spirits", but it seems to me that no-one in their right mind would infuse a drink with magic unless it produced some form of useful effect, and moreover that they would just cast that effect with their damn magic unless, for some reason, they were using the drink as a "storage" of sorts to take the effect to other places without needing to use their magic for it... which makes a lot of sense if Rionna spends less magic at home than away.

Bennouna mentions her drinking pretty constantly, or at least gave that impression, I think. What effect do you keep up semi-permanently as a veteran guca?

The obvious answer, I think, is a mental one. The quest also tracks along the posts that Rionna is drinking, is drinking... is eventually out of cider.

...

Oh, dear.

That is a very nasty hypothetical, which fits with "keep being nice" quite perfectly, while preserving all the horrifying stuff Rionna has done, accounting for "I'm a veteran meguca constantly drinking a magical substance," explaining why Rionna is unwilling to accept help, keeping her redeemable, and playing exactly the line Firn wrote:

More importantly, some argue over the heinousness of Rionna's actions. Let me make this clear from an out of character position: Do not try and excuse her actions. You can justify them, perhaps, that she's working under a horrible system. She is, and so are Sabrina's friends. However, Rionna has done terrible things. She has not so far displayed any remorse for it. Don't try and both-sides the issue - it's not an acceptable thing to do in political discourse nor here. You're entitled to question her further, yes, or speculate that she might be faking or bluffing or whatnot. But she has absolutely done horrible things.

Click to shrink...

So, newest theory from the catgirl engine: Rionna is mindwhammying herself to one degree or another on a consistent basis with the cider. She's already laid out that she's more/less terrified of becoming a witch, and we think she's trying to accomplish unspecified something up in Edinburgh. The veterans here will understand the concept of a guca mindwhammying themselves to prevent grief accumulation; for everybody else, the general idea would be "If I don't do something to prevent myself from despairing over this shit, I'll witch and I won't be able to fix the problem(s). Time to start fucking with my own head." Hell, it might not even have been intentional: Rionna is the soulguca; this would be well within her purview to accomplish, but she could just as well have been looking for "slow my grief accumulation" and ended up with a mindwhammy. By now it could easily be self-perpetuating, what with the fucking atrocities we understand that she's committed.

 

[Kaizuki]

I came here from Marked For Death. I guess it shows.

Click to shrink...

Minmaxing here is more about pulling shit out of the text. One guy came up with the notion that Kirika's wish had granted her antimagic (non-canon ability) instead of a time-slow (her canon ability) not because it would be effective against us but so that she could block Oriko's precog visions. That ended up singlehandedly salvaging... God, everything, maybe. We suggested as much to Oriko and she went from giving off "Ima go back to being a supervillain and force you to kill me" vibes to, well, not. One-eighty about-face.

Firn basically hands out rewards for people finding things he hides in the story, and for the players playing the trope of love&kindness-magical girls to the hilt. Clever ways to use our powers sometimes have uses, but... usually character and plot insights are worth a lot more.

 

[Appletank]

@Kaizuki
Or... it could just be magic to make the alcohol in it actually affect her, as a magical girl.

Click to shrink...

Being extremely drunk all the time could also impair one's ability to feel despair, though it does create very varied results.

 

[Kaizuki]

You... don't think it's harmful. You're pretty sure she would have mentioned if it were, but you're awfully suspicious of the magic in there.

Click to shrink...

And why are we so "awfully suspicious" of it?

Click to shrink...

Doesn't quite mesh with it just being alcoholic, I feel.

 

[LendvaV]

Question: what kind of magic do you put into a cider? More importantly, what kind of veteran guca would spend magic on a friggin drink? And why are we so "awfully suspicious" of it?

Click to shrink...

Maybe it's like our speckled enchantments? She doesn't know how to brew cider, she uses magic to help, oops there's bits of peoples' souls in there.

 

[Redshirt Army]

Clever ways to use our powers sometimes have uses, but... usually character and plot insights are worth a lot more.

Click to shrink...

I mean, I can't say you're wrong, but those aren't necessarily transferable skillsets. I dunno if it was your intent, I feel like you've been a bit outright discouraging for the past few pages, and that's not really needed, especially when it comes to potential new blood showing up and becoming invested.

I've found that for me, it's easiest to work on PMAS when I have some discrete problems to focus on. In service to that, I'd say that Sabrina's long term priorities at the moment look something like:

• Keep Mitakihara Safe and Secure

• Prepare for Walpurgisnacht

• Gather up more willing help from Homura's Walpurgis Shortlist​

• Prepare for "Feathers"

• Find out more information about "Feathers"​

• Prepare for Iowa

• Find out more information about Iowa​

• Keep Mitakihara group stable

• Apply empathy/therapy to individuals who need it

• Aquire the services of an actual therapist​

• Ensure minimum damage/deaths in Mitakihara
• Keep Madoka uncontracted (pot. until issues with Homu worked out, see also The Nutcracker)
​

• Spread Cleansing Globally

• Cultivate global connections

• Make peaceful contact with major japan groups
• Perform international outreach​

• Create ethical grief/clear seed alternatives

• Investigate Sayaka's "gems"
• Investigate Mami's "connections"​

• Figure out Dewitching

• Aquire the services of a soulguca (with Sayaka's copying, if needed).
• Consult with other magical girls in the know (Niko, Nadia, Homu)
• Examine Clear Seeds for potential leads

• Continue experiments on feeding Clear Seeds hope infused magic.​

 

[Jonen C]

Hey thanks, I'm enjoying it and the rest of the quest. Anyway I do actually have plenty of ideas for those as well.

Money Problems: Honestly when a magical girl has infinite magic to call on money is really just absurdly easy to acquire, so I'll list a few methods.

Click to shrink...

/ IRS at attention.

Illegal: The absolute easiest way is to simply ignore the law and take what you want. It's not like anyone can stop a magical girl anyway.

Theft: Yep the easiest way is simple theft, most notably stealing from people while under timestop. We're actually going to be doing that pretty soon anyway. It's probably the fastest and easiest method since it doesn't really take any time at all.

Click to shrink...

Of course, stolen objects need fencing to turn to cash, and stolen cash may require laundering (or else you or QB may have to deal with a very convoluted police investigation).

Hacking: We know tech based magical girl who was capable of fabricating an entire identity out of nothing in moments. It's likely she can do the same for bank accounts. Just how many 0s do you want your account to have?

Click to shrink...

IRS and Financial-crimes/cyber unit says hello.

Legal: Ahh, so perhaps you have some sort of ethical objection to the illegal methods, or maybe you just respect the law. Well don't worry it's easy for a magical girl to make money legitimately as well.

Click to shrink...

Most of these are non union.

Construction:

Click to shrink...

This one is for Sabrina and others like her. The most obvious one here is to just go ahead and make gemstones. For example grab some carbon and crush it until we get diamond. However our utility fog is far more capable and can do more than just make a shiny rock, we can probably make everything from circuit boards to houses and maybe even an entire human body given the proper raw materials.

Click to shrink...

Do not fuck with diamond traders.
Most of the rest also lack the proper certifications for non-black market trade.

Or alternatively deconstruct the same, for example taking down a house in a fast and efficient manner. There are actual real life techniques for gentle deconstruction and we could emulate them but better and faster and cheaper.

Click to shrink...

No certifications, no permits and no licences to operate heavy machinery.

Mining: Find some raw material and then proceed to extract it. This is pretty simple really, although you need proper contacts to sell the material but we already have a few of those. We could probably speed up the finding part by using a Witchy information book asking about good local ores.

Click to shrink...

Uncertified origins tend to restrict us to black market deals. (We can't prove its not stolen from somewhere.)

Healing:

Click to shrink...

The most obvious one that any magical girl can do, but can't really because of grief limitations. We could do this subtly by looking for rich ill people and then have them sign a confidentiality contract, giving them some sleeping pills and then having a magical girl heal them in their sleep. Or alternatively we can be as unsubtle as we like. Regardless medical treatment for money is a pretty standard situation and we have access to a miracle cure that can fix anything. This should be easy enough and we've got contacts who can make this fast and painless for us.

Click to shrink...

TFW being a televangelical faith healer is the most legitimate, lucrative path open.

Grief Seed Replacement:

Click to shrink...

This one is much harder to fix and really anything I come up with here is going to be more like speculation rather than a firm and easy plan to follow. Well other than the obvious of using Clear Seeds.

Click to shrink...

AKA Meguca Cracklord.

Clear Seeds:

Click to shrink...

Basically what we have been doing. Get a Grief Seed and clear it into a Clear Seed. Grief Seeds so far are fairly plentiful so it's going to work out just fine for the foreseeable future.

Click to shrink...

Meguca Crack.

Empty Receptacle:

Click to shrink...

Soul Gems and Grief Seeds seem to be receptacles capable of holding quite a bit of Grief/other kinds of power. If we can make more of these we can distribute them it could likely solve the problem of needing Grief seeds, although they might not naturally accept Grief into them so that would require a second research step. Unfortunately I can't really think of anything else that doesn't start with attempt enchantment X, where X could be a grief pump, grief transfer device, grief container, etc. Basically I think we just need to find time to perform a research session (fortunately we have a time-stopper on the team so that's one thing we have plenty of) to test these things out.

Click to shrink...

I'll note we'd want to run confirmation tests outside timestop.

Blowing Stuff Up:

Click to shrink...

Because having a invention session without including an explosion would just be weird.

Click to shrink...

Noise ordinance.

 

[HeroCycle]

Question: what kind of magic do you put into a cider? More importantly, what kind of veteran guca would spend magic on a friggin drink? And why are we so "awfully suspicious" of it?

The usual joke has been that she's drinking "spirits", but it seems to me that no-one in their right mind would infuse a drink with magic unless it produced some form of useful effect, and moreover that they would just cast that effect with their damn magic unless, for some reason, they were using the drink as a "storage" of sorts to take the effect to other places without needing to use their magic for it... which makes a lot of sense if Rionna spends less magic at home than away.

Bennouna mentions her drinking pretty constantly, or at least gave that impression, I think. What effect do you keep up semi-permanently as a veteran guca?

The obvious answer, I think, is a mental one. The quest also tracks along the posts that Rionna is drinking, is drinking... is eventually out of cider.

...

Oh, dear.

That is a very nasty hypothetical, which fits with "keep being nice" quite perfectly, while preserving all the horrifying stuff Rionna has done, accounting for "I'm a veteran meguca constantly drinking a magical substance," explaining why Rionna is unwilling to accept help, keeping her redeemable, and playing exactly the line Firn wrote:



So, newest theory from the catgirl engine: Rionna is mindwhammying herself to one degree or another on a consistent basis with the cider. She's already laid out that she's more/less terrified of becoming a witch, and we think she's trying to accomplish unspecified something up in Edinburgh. The veterans here will understand the concept of a guca mindwhammying themselves to prevent grief accumulation; for everybody else, the general idea would be "If I don't do something to prevent myself from despairing over this shit, I'll witch and I won't be able to fix the problem(s). Time to start fucking with my own head." Hell, it might not even have been intentional: Rionna is the soulguca; this would be well within her purview to accomplish, but she could just as well have been looking for "slow my grief accumulation" and ended up with a mindwhammy. By now it could easily be self-perpetuating, what with the fucking atrocities we understand that she's committed.

Click to shrink...

Emotions. Tangent in archive.

 

[The Phoenixian]

Question: what kind of magic do you put into a cider? More importantly, what kind of veteran guca would spend magic on a friggin drink? And why are we so "awfully suspicious" of it?

Click to shrink...

Emotions. Tangent in archive.

Click to shrink...

You know, if the drink is mildly alcoholic?

The bad punster in my head immediately comes up with literal liquid courage. To deal with people, gear herself up "to do what has to has to be done", and so on.

Not sure how well that pans out given that Firn stepped in and said it wasn't alcoholic to curtail a similar line of argument earlier, but it comes to mind.

 

[Redshirt Army]

Well, whatever the effect of the drink is, Rionna seems to have run out of it. Soon the polyjuice will wear off and she'll turn out to have been Ono all along.

 

[Onmur]

Question: what kind of magic do you put into a cider? More importantly, what kind of veteran guca would spend magic on a friggin drink? And why are we so "awfully suspicious" of it?

The usual joke has been that she's drinking "spirits", but it seems to me that no-one in their right mind would infuse a drink with magic unless it produced some form of useful effect, and moreover that they would just cast that effect with their damn magic unless, for some reason, they were using the drink as a "storage" of sorts to take the effect to other places without needing to use their magic for it... which makes a lot of sense if Rionna spends less magic at home than away.

Bennouna mentions her drinking pretty constantly, or at least gave that impression, I think. What effect do you keep up semi-permanently as a veteran guca?

The obvious answer, I think, is a mental one. The quest also tracks along the posts that Rionna is drinking, is drinking... is eventually out of cider.

...

Oh, dear.

That is a very nasty hypothetical, which fits with "keep being nice" quite perfectly, while preserving all the horrifying stuff Rionna has done, accounting for "I'm a veteran meguca constantly drinking a magical substance," explaining why Rionna is unwilling to accept help, keeping her redeemable, and playing exactly the line Firn wrote:



So, newest theory from the catgirl engine: Rionna is mindwhammying herself to one degree or another on a consistent basis with the cider. She's already laid out that she's more/less terrified of becoming a witch, and we think she's trying to accomplish unspecified something up in Edinburgh. The veterans here will understand the concept of a guca mindwhammying themselves to prevent grief accumulation; for everybody else, the general idea would be "If I don't do something to prevent myself from despairing over this shit, I'll witch and I won't be able to fix the problem(s). Time to start fucking with my own head." Hell, it might not even have been intentional: Rionna is the soulguca; this would be well within her purview to accomplish, but she could just as well have been looking for "slow my grief accumulation" and ended up with a mindwhammy. By now it could easily be self-perpetuating, what with the fucking atrocities we understand that she's committed.

Click to shrink...

We do have to take into account she... brought very little cider. Unless she can make more of it anywhere, anytime, then she considered the amount she brought and already drank to be enough.

Which would mean it's likely not that important to stay supplied, at least not of her own brand of cider.

For all the thread exploded, we've only been talking for minutes, so I doubt we would have caused Riona to run out of cider through sheer Social, if having more of that cider was important to her.

Side note: While keeping watch (or asking Homura to keep watch), take note of whether Riona goes out of buy drinks, or apples.

Or offer drinks and take note of her reaction.

Well, whatever the effect of the drink is, Rionna seems to have run out of it. Soon the polyjuice will wear off and she'll turn out to have been Ono all along.

Click to shrink...

O NO!

 

[Kaizuki]

I mean, I can't say you're wrong, but those aren't necessarily transferable skillsets. I dunno if it was your intent, I feel like you've been a bit outright discouraging for the past few pages, and that's not really needed, especially when it comes to potential new blood showing up and becoming invested.

Click to shrink...

The last few pages have been outright discouraging for me. I just... Call me Ugo, but I don't see any use in listing all the ways we could subdue somebody, and to see new posters making their first post more or less exactly that...

I don't know. I haven't responded well to it. My brain's still turning over, too, it's just a lot less obvious these days, so... I dunno. Sorry.

 

[Firnagzen]

You stare at her for a moment, and then close your eyes. Kyuubey's called you a good actress before. Accused you of it, really, wielding it as a weapon against you, when it's the biggest liar you've ever known. You suppress a snort, dragging a hand down your face.

No. You're conflicted, and she might be reading your Soul. You're not really sure about that.

You exhale, and let your expression flatten out.

But you don't need to give her anything more than that, conflicted or not.

More than conflicted, really, but one thought stands out.

She might be holding on to her sister's shade. That's really the biggest thing you can see that might be driving her. And if she is... well, really, there are all kinds of nasty implications there, aren't there? But more importantly for you right now, Oriko warned you about bringing up Rionna's sister, which means you have to work around that issue.

You're still working on the premise that you want to see if you can rehabilitate her. Madoka Wished that everything could be fixed, and you're going to trust to that, despite your frustration and your bafflement.

Your eyes drift to Mami for a second, the way she's ever so slightly tense in her seat. She doesn't show any of it, still picking away casually at the enchantment, but you can feel that wire-taut alertness.

You turn your eyes back to Rionna.

"I... look. Rionna, I don't want to take things away from you," you say. "I want to provide you, and everyone, with the means of having..." You search for a word. "Having more humane ways to live."

"I live well enough," Rionna says, glancing about in seeming irritation. You watch the way her eyes track down to where your interdiction bubble intersects with the bedsheet, and then across to Mami, and then you.

The back of your neck prickles. You can't help it, but you don't let it show.

"Would you really keep Souls trapped if it became unnecessary?" you ask, raising your eyebrows. Are you that kind of person? "By your own judgement, not because I tell you that it's unnecessary?"

"Won't happen," Rionna says, and shrugs. "Can't happen. You can't make it happen."

"I mean, sure, I can't make it happen if you don't tell me what's wrong?" you say. "I mean, yeah. You won't even let me speculate about it, let alone try. I don't know why you do the things you do - is free, unlimited cleansing that uninteresting to you? I can feel the drain on your Soul Gem, you know."

You can't help but feel quietly irritated with Nadia, too. She'd led you to think that Rionna was an OK person. Grumpy, sure, from what you'd gathered, but you hadn't expected... this.

Then again, you have to wonder whether Nadia ever tried pushing Rionna. You doubt it. She probably visited in Edinburgh, in Rionna's seat of power, and didn't make waves. Polite, passive, just passing through. Would she ever have noticed this? She didn't know about Rionna travelling to meet you, and was surprised to hear that she would be.

Nadia travels all over the world. The apparent one-or-two-day raids of Rionna might not even have registered for her.

"I live comfortably enough," Rionna says again, scowling. "Yerra, I don't want your help."

"Yes, you said that, but that's like..." Metaphor fails you. "You live comfortably enough, but wouldn't you rather not have to work so hard? Wouldn't you rather not to have to enslave the Souls of others to live well? Wouldn't you rather... I don't know, I don't know what you want. Here. Look."

You grope in your pocket and jerk Aurora out. "This is a Clear Seed I've been trying to de-Witch. Is there anything at all interesting here? I've gotten somewhere with it, I think."

"Or I don't know. Are you maintaining some shades for personal reasons or something?" You keep Aurora up, in case she deigns to look at it. She doesn't, instead looking past it and at you. "That's something I'd respect. Fuck, I'd help if you wanted to revive them or something. What do you want, Rionna?"

"I want to be left alone," Rionna bites out.

"You wanted something," you say, raising an eyebrow and putting Aurora away. "You came here, and you were interested in my powers. And other Grief controllers, apparently. Listen - Rionna. You stop false Grief controllers, and that's admirable. I disagree with your methods, but no, it's a good thing. I know that most wind up monsters, and that's my problem. Most. You just... Are you trying to paint yourself a villain here? I don't understand, Rionna. Help me out here."

Rionna watches you, stone-faced once more.

You flatten your palms against your thighs, thinking. She baffles you, as much as she annoys you. She came down here for something. But what? Just to investigate another Grief controller? She wants your Soul for something.

One step back. What would she have Wished for? To bring someone back from the dead? Something of the sort, probably. And so, what is she protecting? A person? A shade? What would Grief control have to do with that?

A Witch? And yet she's completely uninterested in de-Witching. Not a Witch, then. A shade... but a special shade. Her sister, then, but... wouldn't a Wish have brought them back, alive? Maybe it didn't, not properly. And maybe... what if her sister had been a Grief controller, hence the fixation? Would that match up?

Or maybe her sister died to a Grief controller, turning it into a lifelong vendetta? It does seem to be the kind of thing Kyuubey would encourage. But then, how does that match up with her statement about wanting what everyone does?

"You don't get it. I'm not interested in working with anyone," Rionna says, snorting. She looks up at you. "I just want y' to let me go."

You open your mouth to speak, but she barrels on. "You want to know? I raised my sister's killer," she snarls. "I hate her. I hate her. I want justice, I want my sister back, but I cannae. I can't bring her back. You can't."

She raises a hand and twists it, and you feel the magic surging, but- nothing. Rionna's scowl deepens. Outside your interdiction bubble, Mami stiffens ever so slightly, alert and tense.

"Now," Rionna says. Power, magic infuses her voice, infusing it with odd harmonics that sing and push against you, against your Soul. "Let me go."

And the magic-

Simply slides right off you, rainwater sleeting off an umbrella.

Rionna glares at you, expression tight and... annoyed. Not angry. Not scared. Annoyance.


[] Write-in (word count limit: 150 words)

=====​

So here's another clarification on my position: Rionna has done reprehensible things. Case in point. What I take issue is disputing whether or not these things can be excused. You could, perhaps, try and redeem her, but that's the thing - redemption implies contrition on her part. Not simply waving it off as "it's not so bad" or "so-and-so are just as bad". And I'm not trying to be some absolute arbiter of justice here. I'm saying that for the sake of the thread, I'm not interested in having those arguments in this thread.

And again, let me apologise. I'd meant to update this long ago, but things just kept coming up. Hopefully, I'm back in the saddle again, and good to update on a more regular pace.

Be kind to each other.

 

[Filraen]

Edit: With that attack Riona unequivocally ended the conversation. And we got nothing to sway her, while she's still the Magical Girl who slaves souls into Shades and gloats about it. "Judge me all you want."

---

So that happened. For all of her power, Sabrina can't solve what Riona wants and then Riona attacked Sabrina.

... and I'm going to throw a guess that whatever Riona tried (which I believed was trying to Shade Sabrina) didin't work only because of her strange soul.

Otherwise we'd have a Bad End already.

 

[Guilop]

Did she just try to soulmagic us into letting her out? Seem we're at least a little resistant to her powers then since it didn't work.

 

[Redshirt Army]

You open your mouth to speak, but she barrels on. "You want to know? I raised my sister's killer," she snarls. "I hate her. I hate her. I want justice, I want my sister back, but I cannae. I can't bring her back. You can't."

Click to shrink...

Hm. Well, that answers a lot of questions, and raises more then a few others.

Power, magic infuses her voice, infusing it with odd harmonics that sing and push against you, against your Soul. "Let me go."

And the magic-

Simply slides right off you, rainwater sleeting off an umbrella.

Rionna glares at you, expression tight and... annoyed. Not angry. Not scared. Annoyance.

Click to shrink...

Preeeetty sure Rionna just tried to mind control us. Which means the gloves come off - we're in a combat scenario, and that means no more diplomacy. Trying to do mid-combat therapy is pointless. Take her down as efficiently as possible.

 

[Filraen]

Did she just try to soulmagic us into letting her out? Seem we're at least a little resistant to her powers then since it didn't work.

Click to shrink...

I believe she tried to Shade us.

EDIT: It isn't that surprising that we could No Selled her Shading, however, as Sayaka couldn't read our soul well enough to make a copy of our powers.

 

[Firnagzen]

I... I did a thing? The pmmm style is hard to replicate, so sorry that everyone's faces look awful.

With that out of the way, tada!

I did like five arts. And uhhh, they may or may not be of the first chapter of pmas?

Only the first one is in color because WHEEZE I can't color that many images.

Spoiler

The last one is when Sabrina looks in the mirror for the first time ever, so there's that

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Click to shrink...

These are great, dude. Thank you! I've added them to the fanart index.

And that said - no, she didn't try to turn you into a Shade. That would have been, uh. More noticeable.

 

[lancelot]

She isn't going to work with us so we have only a couple of options here.

First and the most likely to go horribly wrong is that we somehow shutdown her powers, cripple her magic and force her to work with us for her own benefit. But we can't bring the dead back so that is unlikely to work.

Second, she doesn't want our help, we can't bring the dead back, so we let her go she leaves and we never see her again. This ends and we move on.

Third, we kill her. No warning no chance to stop it she dies between heart beats never feeling it, or seeing it coming.

 

[angelofwhim]

I think she tried to use soul magic to jedi mind trick.

 

[Redshirt Army]

Alright, show's over. She outright attacked us.

[ ] Vaporize Rionna. Avoid direct soul contact if possible. Try to keep her gem intact if possible.
[ ] Contact Mami, request timestop ASAP.
[ ] Discuss the situation in timestop with Homura, Mami, and Sayaka.

 

[cmwatford]

And the line has been crossed.

 

[Onmur]

Soul weirdness acting up again!

She raises a hand and twists it, and you feel the magic surging, but- nothing. Rionna's scowl deepens. Outside your interdiction bubble, Mami stiffens ever so slightly, alert and tense.

Click to shrink...

Also, Mami. Of course the field won't keep her entirely away.



Well, we got something.

Riona's patience is snapping, so we might want to leave for now (and keep watch on her), let her stew in things, and talk again. In the morning?

You open your mouth to speak, but she barrels on. "You want to know? I raised my sister's killer," she snarls. "I hate her. I hate her. I want justice, I want my sister back, but I cannae. I can't bring her back. You can't."

Click to shrink...

So her Wish... basically won't let her move on, and will keep her focused on hate and revenge... chances of helping Riona plumetting down. :/

For a course of action... without much thought, I'd go right now for:

- Agree to end the conversation.
-- Tell Riona there's more things we want to talk about before she leaves. Things we need to consult her on.
-- Arrange a next meeting. Next morning.

- For trying to use her magic on us, and for her general Rionaness, demand she stays within this room for the duration of her stay. If she doesn't comply, we can make her.

- Only dismiss the privacy bubble once we get Riona's agreement to cooperate.

- Ask Homura to keep watch.

- Get antimagic enchantments from Kirika, STAT.

Preeeetty sure Rionna just tried to mind control us. Which means the gloves come off - we're in a combat scenario, and that means no more diplomacy. Trying to do mid-combat therapy is pointless. Take her down as efficiently as possible.

Click to shrink...

No, don't. Stop.

We're in control. She tried something against us and it didn't work. We can use it. We can make demands. Don't lash out, stay in control, use this.

We still need to get things out of Riona even if we have to be dishonest about our intentions. Even if we wouldn't actually let her leave tomorrow, we still need to consult her about Souls and try to find out what's going on in Edinburgh, in case something goes really wrong if we antimagic and imprison her.