Homura stares at the two Soul Gems in her hand. Two fragile lives, cradled in shaking fingers.
"I-" you begin, and find words failing you. What do you even say at this point?
Oriko's being way too melodramatic? Well, she is.
She's backsliding? You're not entirely sure she is. She wants to live, or at least she said as much, she's just... incapable of not being an absurd, self-destructive drama queen.
She's trying? She sort of is, you suppose. She's making it an offering of sorts. 'It' being her actual and literal life, in exchange for trust.
She's putting some actual trust in Homura? You know you trust Homura. You don't think she'd actually kill Oriko or Kirika without a truly good reason to do so, not at this point, and... you suppose Oriko knows that too. You could characterize what Oriko's doing as trust in that.
People aren't logical. Emotions aren't logical, to paraphrase a certain white rat. Homura's emotions about Oriko aren't logical. Trust isn't logical, and a gesture this big is as much symbol as anything. The melodrama is, perhaps, part of the point.
You...
You're pinching the bridge of your nose, is what you are. You shift to rubbing at your face, half-exasperation and half frustration with the melodramatic, martyr-ish but mostly well-meaning idiot Oriko is.
"What the hell," Sayaka mutters again, staring at the Soul Gems now back in Homura's hand. "What just happened?"
"A gesture of peace, I suppose," Mami says quietly.
"A stupid one," Sayaka grumbles.
You laugh. Just a short, sharp bark of laughter, muffled by the palm of your hand, but it feels good to just... let go of some of the frustration.
"You know what?" you say, grinning up at Sayaka and Homura's expressions. "You're not wrong, Sayaka. I... I mean, I kind of get what Oriko was trying to do, but no, you're kind of right, too. She's just..."
"An idiot," Sayaka supplies.
"Again, not wrong," you agree, and sigh as you sober up. "I'm... Homura? Are you alright?"
"Explain," Homura says. Her gaze shifts from the Soul Gems to yours, hard amethyst clouded with confusion and incomprehension.
"Gladly," you say with a warm smile. "I'm happy to offer my thoughts, but... just that. I'm not going to tell you what to do, OK?"
Homura nods jerkily, and out of the corner of your eye, you can see Sayaka folding her arms slowly, regarding the two of you with a thoughtful look. Some part of you worries that she might be starting to put things together, and some part of you wonders if that might be a bad thing, and some other part of you complains that Sayaka who is definitely an angel of Madokami should really be the bigger person and stop messing with you already.
"Well... honestly, as dramatic as all this is," you begin slowly. "Oriko really is trying here. I mean, we talked about... concrete proof, and guarantees of trustworthiness, right? I guess Oriko was thinking about it too. Talking about it."
"I can't say that I approve of her methods," Mami notes. "Better than her previous ones, but she does seem to be a rather... all or nothing person."
Homura's eyes go to her, the lines of tension clear in her face and her shoulders.
Mami shakes her head, smiling gently. "I think Sabrina has more insight here, but I was just thinking that she truly does seem to throw herself into things, to the detriment of others."
"Well, yeah," you say. "Mami's not wrong, I think. She made this offer of her own free will, and I think that's significant, considering how little Kirika or Oriko herself seem to like it as an idea. But trust is a two-way street, and I guess... she took the first step."
"I don't trust her," Homura snaps.
Sayaka's attention swivels from you to Homura, blue eyes alive with curiosity she visibly tamps down on.
"And I'm not saying you have to," you say. "But... that's why she did it. It's a gesture, an offering, that she's willing to start."
"But we were already gonna bring her along, right?" Sayaka asks. "I get what she's doing, but I mean we were already planning on bringing her along."
"Again, it's about trust," you say, shaking your head. "Technically speaking, with Homura's power, and that we were gonna have Mami ready to disconnect and other stuff... well, if they acted up at any point, we just... y'know. But it's a symbol."
"I don't want this," Homura bites out, glaring at the Soul Gems in her hand. "I don't-" She shakes her head.
"And that's fine, if that's what you prefer. You can just give them back," you say softly. "We already had our own contingencies prepared, so we can just stick with those, right?"
"Right," Homura mutters.
"... hey, Homs," Sayaka says.
Homura's attention snaps up, glaring at Sayaka, to which the bluenette only responds with a sunny grin rivalling one of yours.
"Thought that might get your attention," she says. "Yeah, so... listen. I'm pretty sure I'm missing more than half the story here, but uh... just talking about those. I mean, I guess Sabrina kind of said it already, but putting your life in someone else's hands is a pretty big gesture. It feels like..." Sayaka grimaces. "It feels like Oriko's saying she can trust you. Or maybe that she trusts Sabrina, since she's here and stuck into everything? I dunno where I was going with this, ignore me."
Homura stares at Sayaka for a long, long moment.
"... what?" Sayaka raises an eyebrow, obviously trying not to fidget. "Something I said?"
Homura turns to you, face blank. You're pretty good at reading Homura, at this point, but you're not sure what she's thinking this time, barring the tension still in her shoulders and the stress lines etching deeper into her face.
She thrusts her hand towards you, Soul Gems held out. "I don't want this," she enunciates clearly.
"... neither do I," you say, blinking at Homura. You reach out, and hesitate before closing your hand over the Soul Gems in her hand. "I... what are you thinking, Homura? Get us all on the same page?"
"It doesn't make a difference," Homura says, her tone measured and controlled. "We were already going to bring them along. This..." She gestures with the Gems. "This doesn't make a difference."
"Are you sure, Homura?" Mami asks, clear concern on her face. "It is a... powerful guarantee."
"You can disconnect them just as easily," Homura says evenly. Her eyes flicker over to you for a second. "That's a better guarantee."
"Then..." You consider it for a second, and withdraw your hand slowly. "If you're sure, Homura, and if you're willing, I think you should be the one to return the Gems to them. I know you don't trust them still, but it's still a gesture of... acceptance, I suppose, to working together for this."
Homura hesitates, still holding the Soul Gems out.
"It's fine that you don't trust them," you add quietly. "And if you want me to do it, that's absolutely fine, too. But to them, I think it would mean more if you gave them back, and maybe it would help establish the beginning of them accepting you. Small steps, that's all."
Some part of you registers a thought, a question, an answer: that Homura might never have had an opportunity to really learn, or to learn how to learn. Where would she have? The orphanage? In the hospital? Right after being precipitated from the hospital and into magical girl life? During the endless grind of the loops?
Perhaps never.
There's more to that thought, you feel, but it's something to unpack later.
For now... you offer up an explanation, offer up a warm smile and uncompromising acceptance for Homura.
"... alright," Homura says.
Sayaka snorts, sounding amused. "Gee, Homura, it's no big deal, right? You're just giving them back their lives."
Homura shrugs again, twitching her head towards the house. "Let's go," she murmurs, and suits action to word, striding off towards the house.
Mami smiles at you, squeezing your arm gently as you leave the frozen grey rosegarden and the frozen grey dome of rain behind. You return the smile, exhaling slowly.
This is as good a result as you could have asked for, you think. You'd been prepared to offer up tactical considerations, especially with regards to how odd it'd seem to your allies for Homura to be holding three Soul Gems, but Homura's simply giving them back of her own free will.
Oriko and Kirika are still curled up on the sofa, arms wrapped around each other when you enter, but their attention is already fixed on the door as the three of you file through - they can't possibly have missed your footsteps against the absolute silence of Homura's timestop.
Homura marches over, wordlessly thrusting their Soul Gems at them, Mami simultaneously extending ribbons to keep them linked together.
Oriko stares at Homura, expression flickering between confusion and hope. "I-"
Kirika swipes both Soul Gems from Homura's hand, immediately clutching them to her chest. Homura, in turn, takes a long step backwards the moment the Soul Gems leave her hand, wary glare riveted to the couple.
"What is this?" Oriko asks quietly.
"You might be useful," Homura grates out, her voice stiff, and turns her gaze to you, her tolerance apparently expended for now.
"You knew what you were doing when you handed over your Soul Gem," you say, raising an eyebrow. You motion at Homura. "And it's hard not to understand what you were trying for, but... for goodness' sake, Oriko. Kirika, have you spritzed your wife for being an inconsiderate doofus yet?"
Mami giggles quietly even as Sayaka's palm meets her face with a loud smack.
"No," Kirika mumbles, still cradling both Soul Gems close. "Pr'bly should've. Was too upset."
You sigh, rubbing your forehead wearily.
"Ugh," you say. "Well... you're coming, if you're still up for it, so we can talk on the way. But seriously, Oriko. I get what you were doing, and I'm sure you can figure out why I'm at least somewhat annoyed with you. And so help me if the next words out of your mouth are some variant on 'it was necessary' I will dunk you in the next pond we fly over."
Oriko opens her mouth, and then closes it thoughtfully.
"Anyway. Shall we go? We've got a lot more pickups to make," you say.
"I hope you apologised to Kirika," Mami notes quietly. "I think she deserves one, don't you?"
"I did," Oriko says. "I did."
"Good," Mami says, nodding.
Kirika makes a soft, protesting noise when Oriko shifts to stand.
"Dear..." Oriko murmurs.
Kirika grumbles quietly, but stands herself, pulling Oriko with her.
"Let's go, then," you say.
And now there are six of you. Seven, if you count the awkward silence, which quite frankly has nearly as much physical presence as any of you on your Mobile Oppression Platform as you speed through the sky. Grief fog billows out ahead of you, batting aside motionless raindrops and damping the roar of wind.
"So," you say, pivoting your chair to face your friends. "First things first, rough itinerary: We're going to pick up Kyouko, Yuma, Mika, Noriko and Akemi, then head over to Fukushima to collect them, drop Miss Akiyama back here in Mitakihara, then off to Kasamino to pick up the Pleiades."
"Have you determined anything more about the Iowa group?" Oriko asks.
"Not much, other than their location," you say. "I'm hoping Akemi, Noriko, and Miss Tsuruya might have more info - we'll have to discuss it when everyone's picked up." You make a face. "The problem with these staggered pickups is that either we have to go through the same info multiple times, or we're going to have to wait until we grab everyone."
Oriko shrugs slightly, settling back with Kirika curling a little tighter into her side.
"Also, so... Kirika, I don't suppose you could make some antimagic enchantments on the way over?" you ask. "It'll be good to have an option other than Gemming people... and I think you've met everyone who's coming, barring the first three we're going to pick up, so you can key it to us."
"... yeah, sure," Kirika says, apparently only half paying attention to you as she rubs her face against Oriko's shoulder, cat-like.
"I'll make sure she does it," Oriko notes quietly.
"Thanks," you say, flashing them a quick smile before sobering to a frown. "... And Oriko? Again, I understand what you were trying to do." You glance at Homura, then back to Oriko. "I... look, I'll keep this brief. Speaking personally, I appreciate you making the first move. But like Mami said - you owe Kirika an apology, and more. It's something you should talk out when this is done."
"I am aware," Oriko says quietly, eyes fixed on Kirika. "I... I am aware of what I have to potentially lose, Sabrina. As I mentioned, I have reasons to want to live."
Kirika opens her eyes, staring up at Oriko, and leans up to give her a gentle kiss. You avert your eye politely, trying not to listen, either, but given the proximity, you can't help but overhear her words.
"I love you, always, but Sabrina's right," Kirika murmurs. "We are going to talk."
"I know," Oriko says.
You swallow, facing forward once more, and even Homura, in the back row, seems vaguely uncomfortable. Mami sighs, leaning her head against your shoulder.
"Also, so..." You raise your voice, cutting through the cloying awkwardness. "I know the silence can get to people a bit, so I'm taking requests for music?"
You get blank stares from your friends, apart from Mami, who just giggles, beaming at you.
"Maybe Credens Justitiam to start with?" Mami says, giving you a warm look.
"Sure!" you say, beaming. And rather than forming discrete instruments -you could, but this feels more elegant- you use the entire floor of your Mobile Oppression Platform as a speaker, the energetic drums and crooning strings carrying through the still air.
[x] Vote in abeyance
- [x] Enchant some more Grief along the way
- [] Anything to add?
-- [] Try and talk through the awkwardness
-- [] Just leave it be for now
-[X] For yourself, ask Kirika if she can make antimagic enchantments with what you have handy. You'd rather not gem people if there's a better way and you think she's met or fought everyone on our side but Mika, Akemi, and Noriko already, all of whom are in town to be picked up early.
[X] Overarching flight goals: In the time before you arrive in SEA you need...
-[X] to understand your opponents as best as possible so you aren't taken by surprise
-[X] to make sure you and your allies all know enough about each other to fight together effectively
[X] Gather Mitakihara and head to Fukushima. Plans for the first leg, to Fukushima and back to drop off Atsuko:
-[X] You're going to need a bigger Mobile Operations Platform. Make a full on flying saucer.
-[x] Put on some music or other white noise in the background. (Take requests.)
-[X] Given that you're going halfway to space by the end of this, and general utility, can you use grief fog sensors instead of windows? Can you make a "very foggy array?" (Thousands of mechanical grief micro cameras distributed throughout your fog and/or the hull of the MOP. Do not trance.)
-[X] Gather basic info prior to a bigger tactical discussion once you've picked everyone up.
--[X] Generally offer your enchanted grief for any one tool your friends might need and don't have, with a note on the limits of what you can make
=====
There. The next update should be the pickup of everyone else, and finally arriving for the confrontation proper!
Believe me when I say I've been looking forward to this as much as you have, but I really wanted to finish an update tonight, so...
I say it like that's the tagline here but it's both that and an evaluation of her early life.
So, Homura arrives at MMS after doodling this flower on her calendar for when she'll be able to go there and, you know, we presume this means she's looking forward to it. She gets there and she is just, like, not only humiliated but also a totally useless failure.
She, uh, she doesn't manage to make any friends.
That one kind of crushes her.
Everything changes when Madoka saves her from that witch and just... unconditionally loves her. For the first time in her entire life there is Light in Akemi Homura's world, there is a star in her formerly empty sky.
I mean it when I put it like that: insofar as we are aware this girl had fucking nothing. No hobbies no friends no activities no life. Nothing she enjoyed and, just, nothing good whatsoever. Seriously.
And she was stuck like that for fourteen fucking years.
And she built MMS up as this, this chance to be free from that, to have something good in her life. And then that all came crashing down on the first day.
And then there was Madoka.
Homura has never had anything else, and she has never known how to acquire anything else because nobody ever taught her or gave her a chance to learn how to do that kind of thing.
So when Madoka comes along, Madoka is the only source of happiness Homura has ever known and also for all Homura knows the only source of happiness she may ever have. Again: Homura doesn't know how to go and, like, find other sources of happiness.
So what plays out then is that the month at MMS becomes this Madoka-centric near-paradise. It's marred by exactly one thing: Homura is fucking useless.
Madoka gives to her freely, but Homura has... absolutely nothing that she can give back. Homura has no way to hold on to Madoka, no way to know how to become able to hold on to Madoka -- there's a star in her sky, she can't grasp that, she can't protect it, she can't help it.
But that's fine, because Madoka is there. Madoka is strong, Madoka is perfect (of course she is, she is the only Light in the Darkness, there is nothing to compare her to), and crucially Madoka is invincible, and so she can just... be okay with it, kind of. Madoka puts herself into constant danger -- the Light puts itself into constant danger -- but that's okay because even though Homura is too useless, too helpless to do anything about that danger, the Light is invincible. It can't be taken from her by the dark, so the danger doesn't matter.
At the end of the month, Homura gets a front row seat to watch helplessly, protected as the Darkness stands the fuck up and swallows that star whole.
There are things in the night that can rip the Light from her world.
Homura makes this exact wish:
"I want to redo my first encounter with Kaname-san. But this time, instead of her protecting me, I want to become strong enough to protect her!"
It's... It's a simple wish.
It is this:
"I want Madoka back. I want to have never been as useless as I was (she had to protect me because i was useless). And I want to be able to protect her if the darkness comes to destroy her!"
It is a wish for the agency that she never had. The ability to do something about darkness rising up to claim her light.
It is a wish that is fatally flawed, because nobody ever gave Homura Wisdom to go with the power she obtained.
Anyway, her immediate action is to go tacklehug Madoka and exclaim about how great it will be to be magical girls together.
This wish, it gives her powers meant for use as part of a team (with Madoka). We know that. It was meant for fighting alongside Madoka: Homura wished to not be useless, and to be able to protect Madoka. She never wished for Madoka to never be in danger, and the concept behind this is pretty clear again based on what she immediately does (goes and teams up with Madoka). And it's used to fight alongside Madoka and to, you know, try to protect her during that fighting, until, uh...
People highlight the moment Madoka asks Homura not to let QB trick her again as super important but that's actually not what I view as kind of the original sin in the matter.
Homura wished to be able to protect Madoka... She got a perfect multiperson defense: timestop, then take your protectee back in time, where the danger doesn't even exist.
The "original sin" in this matter was that that was not used to protect the both of them from the reality of Tetris.
There shouldn't have been a fight against Walpurgisnacht. There shouldn't have been Madoka lying on the ground. They should've gone back in time right then, protected Madoka from Sayaka's loss, but they didn't.
The perfect defense was not used correctly, because Homura received power from her wish, but not the wisdomto use it.
And as a result Madoka basically asks Homura not to let her become a magical girl again and everything goes to shit in the way I mentioned earlier; Homura eventually starts trying to put Madoka in a box once she loses all confidence in her own power to protect Madoka, because in a box she will be safe from all the things Homura can't protect her from. But ofc this doesn't work at all. And the disgusting thing is if at any point Homura had gained the wisdom to know that she could take Madoka back in time with her everything would suddenly have gotten better, because, like, even at the WPN fight Homura could just stop time and take Madoka back in time instead of having her wish.
Dramatis Persona (in order): Koizumi Sasami, Nanami Shinobu, Tsuruya Yuki, Akiyama Atsuko, and Nishimura Moe!
Once more, thanks to Firn for answering questions so we could get these accurate! Shinobu actually does have weapons, I swear, they just didn't make it into the cut! (Some day we will get a meguca who has literally no magical weapon or shield and just throws hands.) If you can believe it, Shinobu also had to be toned down from her original version... she was too much muscle. Though looking at Yuki and Shinobu side by side I can only hope that Yuma asks Yuki at some point if Shinobu is her big sister hehehe
This might also show some weird thoughts for me, but Sasami looks a lot like Jaune from RWBY (or at least that was my first thought), which was probably added to by the fact that Shinobu is doing a Pyrrha pose, even if she looks nothing alike.
...I think design wise, Moe ended up being top tier compared to the rest. Maybe it's just me?
At this point everyone has art that is part of our next great timestop hunt. Canon characters (and Sabrina) have art from other places, so ha!
To geek out a bit more... ZOOM IN
I literally had no idea until I zoomed in for the small detail on Moe's dress. Or for that matter how good the shadow effects were!
Anywho, more art will come when it comes! I was thinking of the university girls but I think I want to round out the meguca in Mitakihara and have some art for Ono.
All right, let's start opening up Homura's options.
[ ] Ignore the awkwardness by pivoting to another point entirely
-[ ] Get everyone enchanting, actually. Magic is best countered with magic, and Iowa will be using magic. Because they're magical girls.
--[ ] (Obviously the point is to subtly tell Mom that her guns will work better if they're magic guns.)
[x] Sayaka, did you want to copy Oriko's power? Now might be a good time to ask her.
[x] Kirika, about those antimagic enchantments: could you make defensive antimagic enchantments, that would protect us from hostile magic while still letting us use our own magic?
[x] Is there any way we can upgrade the Mobile Oppression Platform with defensive antimagic? Maybe attach an antimagic clip to the platform?
We're going to do a near-180 on our stance and embrace a very, very specific part of Homura's current mentality.
She's fucking right: she is broken. I mean dude look at what I've laid out here and tell me that a critical part of her isn't broken. Those motherfuckers at the orphanage did this to her and it's godawful.
But she is wrong to think that that break is inherent.
Taking this stance lets us align our actions with Homura's own thoughts and make this ultraplausible to her. The blueprint vote as I've been drawing it up is, uh, very different from what I think most people are conceptualizing it as. It's basically one giant action aimed purely at explaining, in fine detail, in a massively convincing way, to Homura that she is basically capable of becoming someone she would like being and that the reason she has not been able to manage that is specifically because she has lacked crucial knowledge/wisdom that we can teach her.
It's not "trying to solve all of these issues in one action" it's "making it absofuckinglutely nigh-undeniably clear to Homura that A) her problem is lack of knowledge rather than lack of ability B) we can teach her that knowledge / teach her to be able to acquire that knowledge C) convincing her that not only are we going to teach her those things but that she deserves to be taught those things."
I plan to have us do all the actual issue-solving spread over, you know, much much more time IC, with maybe an initial session immediately following the blueprint vote, or not. The blueprint vote is purposed to absolutely smash into her skull, so hard that she will never ever ever be able to get it back out, that her good-for-nothing-ness is temporary and can be changed. It's purposed that way for a lot of reasons, but the huge primary yields and the reasons I want to ram it in as soon as possible are, in order A) it is as I wrote exactly as big a deal as telling Mami she wasn't going to be alone and B) it instantaneously changes her response to the potentialbomb from "despair" to "go find Sabrina." Because if she's not stuck being good-for-nothing, then "you screwed this up" doesn't make her go "i am worthless and bad" it makes her go "i screwed up i don't want to screw up again please help me." I mean, in a much more desperate tone than that, but fuck that's an improvement.
In terms of the actual issue solving I have two-three major goals:
1. Before end of quest scope Homura should be able to go through a simulated social first/encounter with, like, at least Mami, and get simulated favorable results from her.
We have at our fingertips the tools to pretty well demonstrate to Homura that she could change the social situation of the loops herself. We teach/help her learn about social, then we demonstrate to her that she's become capable of some of the things she viewed as miraculous.
2. Before Walpurgisnacht Homura should be able to hurt Walpurgisnacht.
It is impossible to understate how much becoming able to hurt Walpurgisnacht would do for Homura's self-image. Impossible.
3. Before end of quest scope Homura should be capable of learning, from scratch, about a topic of interest to her that she knew no fucking thing about, on her own.
Some part of you registers a thought, a question, an answer: that Homura might never have had an opportunity to really learn, or to learn how to learn. Where would she have? The orphanage? In the hospital? Right after being precipitated from the hospital and into magical girl life? During the endless grind of the loops?
Perhaps never.
There's more to that thought, you feel, but it's something to unpack later.
I have no idea what the hell we're even doing but I guess I can look! Now that I'm not writing, rewriting, and throwing out multiple thousands of words of drafts on the daily I have all this time lmao
and some other part of you complains that Sayaka who is definitely an angel of Madokami should really be the bigger person and stop messing with you already.
Excuse you, this part has a name and would like you to use it, Sabrina.
Anyway, that went alright, more or less. I would have vastly preferred Oriko hadn't done that at all, but I'd bet Kirika would have preferred that too, Sayaka would have preferred she hadn't burned her home down to make us befriend each other, Hitomi would have preferred not to have had her arm broken...
Compared to their concerns I'm small potatoes.
Anyway
[Q] Drown awkwardness with more awkwardness
-[Q] In Homura's honest opinion, if Walpurgisnacht and Kriemhild Gretchen got caught in an armwrestling match, who would win?
Shinobu actually does have weapons, I swear, they just didn't make it into the cut! (Some day we will get a meguca who has literally no magical weapon or shield and just throws hands.) If you can believe it, Shinobu also had to be toned down from her original version... she was too much muscle. Though looking at Yuki and Shinobu side by side I can only hope that Yuma asks Yuki at some point if Shinobu is her big sister hehehe 
