So, what's our schedule for tommorow looking like?
• Start looking for a therapist (IMPORTANT!)
Am I missing anything vital?
Agreed. There are places we could walk into, and get some information / appointments set for us to bring advanced familiarity to the meeting with the Shizuki's. We may need their help to close a deal, but there is no deal if we don't move it forward. Inside of two hours we could do reconnaissance at two locations, get all the office directory names, hear some gossip, maybe find a patient our apparent age to talk with. Some patients are probably potentials, come to think about it. Further, we can get a request for info cooking with the Miles_Gloriosus folks. Find an American or two looking for adventures in therapy. Anon always delivers, right?
Can't we just do all of this with grief? Grief pseudo limbs, enchanted grief, etc. Keep grief in 4D if we need a surprise, unless people noticing it is really that big of a problem.
Rail-gunning our hammer is certainly an option, but that seems to be equally dangerous as a medium laser, just with over penetration problems instead of blinding and burning. Though I guess we do kinda lack an ally-safe ranged option, so "just" a supersonic hammer would probably be nice.
Again though, in terms of meguca combat I think we have it all covered, whether our hammer has any interesting magical properties would be, for me, something a bit unexplored.
Grief is indeed a splendorous thing.
Effective weapons in pitched battle are dangerous - a good reason to negotiate well!
Some people expect base level communication. For that person, an arm-bar delivered in the up close wrestling tradition is more likely to get the message to stick. There could also be an altercation we could deescalate, if we could solve it without everyone unholstering their magic. Real martial arts are not a handicap in some other way?
When we can't negotiate, over penetration is a secondary concern, girls are trying to kill us. Shoot properly, if we must. Using smaller faster attacks might make it "safer" for them, too. In use, the current laser is "an explosive." AoE damage. A smaller railgun or plasma discharge takes out less area during the blast. Instantly more deployable in human environments.
Some fights we want to win without showing them the Grief. We should fill in that gap between with "dirty" tricks.
We have a mission and loved ones, our safety is important. Thus, winning by a landslide is important, and we should keep that happening. Prevent the leakage of information. I'd be ROFL'ng if we could assemble a legend of our conflicts, where every story about Sabrina tells about how she won using a different power. As our legend grows, I hope that at least a few of the people we fight will listen after we hit them with the rubber chicken, knowing that we are exercising restraint. Think about the swordsman who can win duels with just a stick.
The idea underlying any of this planning is to outgrow our range limit and have alternatives. We cannot snipe using Grief alone, nor can we leave deadfalls. Grief is not permanent without us in range. If we want to detain someone and walk a bit away, perhaps on a battlefield, Grief is a tether. A pile of scrap metal will remain on top of whoever earned it for a spell. In pitched battle, sometimes hampering the opponent is just as deadly as finishing them. That applies to us as well. The ability to slime someone instantly and switch to a different location, or to do it from a half click away is a true upgrade. "Ramiel" girl was a bad match for us, even though it was our win. We should avoid getting pushed hard like that again. Parity is important, but not the end state. Let's go beyond that and be able to surprise any opponent. Only by having an ability to end combat on our terms can we protect our agenda. If they want to stop by talking, that's almost a win. If they don't, we can only get back to talking after they lose the freedom to choose violence. Match fighting isn't on my mind, putting multiple hostile girls from their offensive initiative position into custody simultaneously with minimum risk is more like it.
Options are what a human needs to overcome the future. In the world view, we will be fighting for months or years until the pace settles down. But everyone we fight is also one of our citizens. Those who capitulate to a mighty firehose blast might be easier to pacify later, as opposed to the ones we PTSD by bodykill. They make the choice, it is my answer to say we should have plenty of those choices.
Mami invented a gun upgrade, we should learn a pro-speed gun upgrade of our own.
Research 4-D as a combat drop, and we can baffle, distract, and win using our thinking to an even greater degree. It should be fun. It will be useful.