Has a strong chance of being actively obstructive. Because the entire argument centers around how we actually WOULD deal with Iowa without Homura being around, in a scenario where Iowa's clairvoyant is Kyubey OR where Kyubey is at least aiding Iowa, motivated by Kyubey's interests being clearly aligned WITH Iowa's and AGAINST us, and Iowa's overwhelming interest in working against us to obtain clear seeds.
It's not even really about how much easier she makes fights. Every action we take outside of Mitakihara is possible because we know Homura's staying on overwatch with Madoka.
I agree with these sentiments. Homura is better left protecting Madoka on homeguard duty than taken with us to whatever other country we'd be traveling for intercepting Iowa.
There needs to be somebody to guard Madoka at all times and right now Homura is unlikely to let it be anyone but her (or maybe Sabrina) and even suggesting anyone else is liable to piss her off. She won't let Madoka be moved from Mitakihara and dragged into meguca affairs either - which is a bad idea regardless - so there would need to be a really, really good reason to convince her to come along short of "conduct the entire operation in timestop and be back before Madoka knows anybody ever left".
The other reason it's a bad idea is because, remember, her main timestop ability has already been doxxed by Kyubey. Other people might have contingencies for dealing with it by now, especially if they are planning a full assault on Mitakihara. As Kyubey mentioned way before, Kirika is not the only magical girl in existence to have Antimagic abilities (and not even the only one we have access to with it since Sayaka copied it and Kazumi possibly could too). And Antimagic was a pretty good counter to Homura the one time it was used against her.
---[X] Their likely initial targets: Mitakihara Middle School, Hitomi or Madoka and their families, Sayaka's family... or Homura herself, if they know enough to try to take out our "trump card".
--[X] You're hoping that Oriko's new magic can help you spy on Iowa and pin down their location for a pre-emptive strike. Fingers crossed that they don't have a counter to Homura's power - that'd make this much easier.
I propose a modification to this:
---[X] Their likely initial targets: Mitakihara Middle School, Hitomi or Madoka and their families, Sayaka's family... or Homura herself, if they know enough to try to take out our "trump card".
----[X]
Which is very possible since Kyubey has been spreading the info around, hence the pressing need to hit them first before they develop a way to come after her.
--[X] You're hoping that Oriko's new magic can help you spy on Iowa and pin down their location for a pre-emptive strike.
Fingers crossed that they don't have a counter to Homura's power - that'd make this much easier. Take advantage of the fact they may have been tipped off to Homura's power in order to lay a trap* for them.
I realize that you guys may have misgivings telling Homura that her timestop power is now in the open thanks to Kyubey, but hear me out:
the downsides to doing so are basically non-existent right now.
Before now, there would've been a pretty huge problem with telling Homura about it - it would have raised the question of where Kyubey got his intel from, would likely have pointed the finger squarely at Oriko and set Homura off on a murderpath against the latter with no way to repair relations between the two. The question was better left unasked back then.
Asking that question now? Yes. Yes, this is exactly the right time.
Not only do we have another potential clairvoyant to point the finger at, but we actually have a more or less surefire way at hand to make sure Oriko wasn't the one who told Kyubey and confirming this would strengthen the trust between her and Homura and Sayaka all at once.
How so?
Umika Misaki, or more relevantly her power. She can break into peoples minds and
steal read their memories. We don't even have to call over Misaki - Sayaka has a copy of her power and we know is able to use it.
All we have to do is get Sayaka to read her memories and make sure that Oriko wasn't the one who told Kyubey about Homura. This will answer the question for good on whether or not Oriko has been working against us the whole time. If it turns out she has been a traitor the whole while (unlikely) we will have exposed her and cut her off as a threat. But she almost certainly hasn't, which will set Homura and Sayaka much more at ease once they know for certain and possibly gain her some brownie points with Sayaka depending on how willing she is to expose her memories.
And then we can move on to finding out how Kyubey got his information on Homura. It's a win-win all round.
*Trap: This basically involves something along the lines of Sayaka dressing one of her clones up as a fake Homura (possibly using Michiru's illusion powers) and then pretending to be Homura and making Iowa show their hand and waste whatever decapitation strike tactic they had planned for Homura on the decoy.
>be me
>time traveling magical girl
>fucked up a loop once again
>lmao what else is new
>this loop started out the same as last time
>hopefully this time I fuck it up less
>anyways
>go hunting witch, running kinda low on seeds
>easy as hell, destroyed it without using too many bombs
>GetRektScrub.gif
>get seed, wait for barrier to drop
>as soon as barrier drops i see madoka, mami, and sayaka standing outside barrier
>what
>next to them a random girl i've never seen before
Hmm, you know now that you mention it... did we ever find out what exactly Homura was doing before we got picked up in the alley? I don't think we actually know much about the events that happened prior to "awakening". We should probably confirm with Homura at some point that she didn't do anything out of the ordinary that might have tipped off Kyubey about her timestop powers. Unlikely, but it's still a vague possibility and one that needs to be eliminated before investigating the possibility of Kyubey having an external source of info.
