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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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I mean, besides Walpurgisnacht, Iowa and the twins, there isn't really that many things that actively seek to 86 us (and one of those isn't due yet, and another we are dealing with right now), and making sure Tokyo doesn't further delay us by becoming an enemy faster than we need them to seems best. They can probably keep one rogue group from barking at us too much until we decide to ruin everyone's whole career (for their own good)!

PS I'd say hotdog sushi sounds awful, but it's really just some Cajun seasoning away from becoming a jambalaya roll if you think about it.
 
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Kaizuki said:
So this is about Tokyo, which is tomorrow IC, not now...

First off: giant collation of Tokyo-relevant material.

















So, to be clear for everyone new here, the standing theory is that one of Meiji's members witched six months ago, they said as much at a meeting, Toshimichi kicked them out of it when everything went to shit because of the witchbomb and then mindwiped everyone else, and now Meiji is out to stick it to the establishment because -- at best guess -- their opinion is that Toshimichi (Or, hell! Maybe even the council in general) caused their friend's witchout via the static border system that Tokyo has and then swept it under the rug.

I think the odds that isn't the case are, like, nil. It fits far too well. And even supposing it isn't what happened, Meiji's friend is almost certainly still a witch because "getting killed" typically means a bodykill, which typically results in a witchout over time.

Now, the basic vanilla plan for Tokyo was, we'd go meet Toshimichi privately, and then we'd have a meeting with the council. And we'd sort of try to manage to inject cleansing into Tokyo without getting horribly entangled in Tokyo. Hitomi and Madoka had a bunch of words for us regarding that which we should rehash with them in the aftermath of Iowa because our political position is going to have shifted a hell of a lot after this, and we got a bunch of warnings from various people inside and outside Tokyo that Tokyo is a repressed tinderbox and etcetera, the vast majority of which I have quoted above -- but the basic plan was "Look/See via talking with Toshimichi and the Council."

I wanna do one thing differently in that sequence. I wanna go talk with Meiji before we talk with Toshimichi or the Council.

Why? As usual when it comes to Kai, a whole bunch of reasons.

We know the council is gridlocked and we know Meiji is voting to outright reject any help we might offer. We can guess that Meiji are probably primary antagonists in whatever Plot Firn has brewed up for Tokyo. We know that Meiji probably has had someone important to them witch and we've seen how people who've dealt with that can act and what they can want in Akiko, who didn't give a damn about anything we had to offer and then was all over the offer of clearing her girlfriend's grief seed.

To summarize: I think we can flip some of the primary antagonists of "Tokyo Arc" if we just go approach them before we show up at the council/Toshimichi, treat them with respect and basically pursue the dewitching angle in addition to our usual. Off the top of my head I'd run a vote that would look something like...

[] Establish that you're not here about your offer to the council.
-[] Establish that you're here about what happened six months ago, and that the impression you're under is that their missing member isn't dead dead.
--[] You don't have a completely clear picture of who did what at the time, but you don't feel you really need one. They want their friend back, among other things. You want them to be in a better situation, you want their friend to stop being subjected to torture, you want them to stop being in a position where they want to be an obstacle to you, and you'd like their help with any/all of the above and anything else they'd care to help you with. The question is whether they'd be interested in what you can offer.
---[] Negotiations: we're offering dewitching, seed-clearing, and in the extreme case eventually going to QB-land and freeing the imprisoned souls there. We're offering protection, patronage, the usual. And if they want out of the council, we'd need to hear about what they'd be interested in but it could be on the table. In return we're asking they not actively try to make things worse for anyone, etcetera: the usual.
----[] Refinements:
-----[] If we want to justify our dewitching: "So, the thing is, trying to turn a grief seed back into a soul gem without first emptying it of grief is insane. You'd be poking at the soul of someone not just drowning in their own grief but so far underwater they have literally turned into a witch and praying that it wouldn't end badly. Maybe it could be done if you could inject a weight of magic greater than the weight of the grief in the seed, but by my measurement -- comparing grief by volumes -- a grief seed contains grief equivalent to hundreds of thousands of soul gem cleansings. This is why I have clear seeds responding to infusions of hope-magic and everyone else has conglomerate witches: they can't dream of emptying a fraction of a seed and I can clear one in minutes."
-----[] If there's any call to justify our ability to protect them just namedrop Iowa and describe the alliance Fukushima has entered into with you.
----[] See where negotiations go, what they're willing to give for what they'd like to get, try to pick up on anything they want that wasn't already clear to us, etcetera. Listen, learn. We aren't sure we can reach a satisfying deal with them but we'd like to try.


... The big reason I want to do this before meeting Toshimichi and the council is that after we've met Meiji at the council they're already going to be locked into expecting us to be going to speak with them primarily because they're being an obstacle to us. They'll already be expecting that, don't get me wrong, but doing it after the council meeting, where by all indications Toshimichi will be pretty much on our side? It will form mental associations that will be hard to get them to do away with... to say nothing of how much time we might be able to save if we could get Meiji to not vote against us at the council, presumably.

I mean, there's a whole bunch else I could say... but that's the gist of it, and I don't think I've ever heard this particular suggestion from anyone else before, so before going super into specifics I'ma just put this down where everyone can think about it first.
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I can agree with that, but we have to be really cautious about how we do it. We don't want to mess up our presentation to the Council.

Angrygenius said:
Wow. Way to think ahead.

I agree, we may want to speak with the Meiji group before our council meeting. However, we also want to keep it secret, as I'm sure the rest of the groups in Tokyo may become suspicious of us talking with the local rebellious mecuga group, and Toshimichi will definitely be suspicious of us and might attempt to mind wipe us if we show that we know too much.

I'm nearly certain such an attempt would fail and possibly backfire horribly due to the very nature of the mind of Sabrina Velocity Vee, but it's better to try and keep the rest of Tokyo ignorant of our potential meeting with Meiji IMO.

Good kitty *pats head and gives fish sticks*
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No, absolutely not meeting in secret, that's just asking for a FUBAR paranoia result. If we meet it cannot be in secret.

Redshirt Army said:
As one of the primary crafters of the plan, I can more or less sum up the reasoning behind talking to the Chiyoda group before talking to the seditious elements (the Meiji and Sumida groups), since this exact argument did in fact come up at that time.

The main thrust is that we don't actually want to destabilize Tokyo, and if an alliance as powerful as ours goes around making backroom deals with people that Tochimichi full well knows want her kicked out, she'll be forced to treat us as an existential threat, since those are exactly the actions of someone who's trying to overthrow her in a coup.
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I think we could be able to swing it, if we are above board about it. Basically, tell the Chiyoda group and Tochimichi that we have heard the Meiji group is opposed to us, and so we wanted to meet with them briefly before meeting with the Council, in the hopes that we can if not persuade them, at least mitigate their opposition, if only by showing them the respect of meeting with them before hand. (Essentially treating them as the defacto "loyal opposition"). Of course we will listen to whatever Tochimichi wants to say about them, and then just innocently and naively insist on making the attempt, while promising to be on our guard.

That should be enough to make Tochimichi view us as just naive instead of a threat. I think she'd only become threatened if she actually was up to something nefarious - in which case, better to find out early I think.
 
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Yeah, I'm sorry but I'm pretty convinced the idea should be scrapped. There are other ways to go about handling things anyway...
 
I'd like to remind some of the present parties that while they may be frustrated with this whole Iowa escapade temporarily postponing their long running plans for talking to every character in the quest, some of us actually enjoy doing things like this in between month long conversations where a good chunk of the participants have nothing to do but sit on our thumbs. It feels like a whole lot of the time the same few people make executive decisions based on their long running ideas on how the story should run while the rest of us just turn up and vote as a formality.

I can't overstate how much I respect the passion and energy that people pour into this quest, but please, while it's happening, let those of us enjoying it have this without worrying about future events we will undoubtedly be planning and executing for most of next year.
 
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Lowlife pt. 20
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    • The half -third, if you're being pedantic- of Iowa you took is falling out of the sky. More importantly, it's empty but for you and your squad.

    Fine. Time to relocate.

    "We're moving!" you snap at your friends. Yuma, Noriko, Akemi. They close around you, Grief blossoming in a solid disc beneath your feet.

    More Grief surrounds you, floods the ship segment. The rear end of the Iowa - propulsion, one turret, just about fifteen thousand tons of faux-steel and mass. It's already disintegrating, metal stretching thin over the fabric of space and time. You're not sure if it'll be fully gone by the time it hits the ground, but then, you're not going to let it be a problem.

    A billion, trillion specks of Grief sharpen to impossible edges for an instant.

    You leave confetti drifting in the wind behind you as you lift skyward. Perhaps that hurt the Iowa girl, perhaps it didn't, but that's not your concern for the moment.

    The ship's reforming, armour and steel shimmering into place as a ghost-form.

    Both forward turrets reform, in that same camera-shutter stutter. A tripled roll of thunder, the shockwave shuddering through the air in the wake of the fore turret ripple-firing.

    There, and away.

    Some instinct has you turning your head away. Light blooms bright and pure, a solid beam of light that lances out from within the Iowa and over the horizon. Sasami, then, still fighting. Inside the ship, judging from the way the blast cored a turret from the underside before it got to fire.

    Mami meets the shells in flight with her own, golden thunderbolts crashing down from above in an explosion of ribbon. The indigo flare of magic you think is Umika's joins the gold, detonating the shots and containing the blast. And if Mami's got the shells handled, then it's your turn to do something about the turret.

    You surge towards the ship, Grief disc bucking beneath your feet. Your nanofog too boils forward, and you rip the turret from the ship, for all the good that it'll do, and-

    "We're going to the main half of the ship," you yell over the roar of the wind, switching mental channels for a moment. "Miss Akiyama! Is there anything happening in Mitakihara?"

    "All clear," Atsuko drawls.

    Yuma's eyes snap up at your words, her attention torn away from the cloud of shredded remains - which are increasingly translucent, as if some essence is being leeched away. But that's a thought for slightly later. Here and now, you give Yuma a firm nod and an approving grin, because she's done amazing so far.

    And it seems to help a little, the nervous jitter of her fingers along the haft of her mace easing a little. Noriko and Akemi catch your eye too, both of them looking anxious, but ready. Akemi offers you a measured, steady nod in turn - they're ready to head back into the fray.

    You exhale, and face forward once more as you vector towards the bulk of the ship.

    If Oriko's right -if they have a stealth specialist- then you might find them the brute-force way. Check first. Nanofog pours through the corridors of the ship, slashing past bulkheads and pipes and maintenance spaces. The layout feels... familiar to you. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you know that inch for inch, it's a perfect replica of the Iowa.

    In layout, at least.

    "They've disengaged," Yuki's voice is crisp and unruffled. "No casualties on either side so far. Encountered one girl with super-strength and flight, another with some kind of... mixture of powers, fire, ice, illusions, that sort of thing. Someone else is teleporting them within the ship, seems similar to my own powers."

    "Right," you say, vectoring towards the main bulk of the ship. You glance up to Mami, still on her platform and still duelling with the Iowa - but it seems that she's weathered it well, as outgoing fire from the ship slackens. "Do you think you can try to take over the ship?"

    "Returning to the attempt," Yuki says.

    "Alright. Sayaka, Kyouko?" you say, shifting mental gears.

    "Hit and run," Sayaka says. "Teleporting in for a few hits, then teleporting out."

    "Change the game!" Kazumi calls. "They have too much power in here. We're gonna get outta here - we've got one of their girls!"

    "Good call," you say. "I'll come in for a-"

    Ripples pushing through your Grief.

    "Incoming!" you bark out loud. Grief shimmers out ahead of you, disc congealing out of thin air to shield you. A feint, you realise a heartbeat later as three girls soar over the disc, one touching down briefly on the very edge.

    Very much her mistake. Grief surges up around the girl, a flood of dark purple. The poncho girl from earlier, her face pulling into a glare as she tries to leap back, but it's rather too late because her foot's already bound in place but-

    One of the girls plunges right for you, a blur of white silhouetted against the ocean-grey of Iowa. Grief. More Grief ahead to you as Noriko moves to intercept in a blur of metal, whirling sheets of shining silver that mean nothing as the white-clad girl ploughs right through. The blades bounce, shallow lacerations as Noriko savages at her and-

    The air congeals around her, Grief forming around her body in layers of fractal patterns, but-

    The breath whooshes from your lungs as you're hurled backwards by two fists driving right into your solar plexus. Grief wasn't enough to stop her, the girl -white and gold and a cape, discount Power Girl, knockoff of a knockoff- bulling right through with a flare of magic and brute force, forcing Yuma to dive aside.

    You ignore the pain, pushing it aside. You might have a few broken ribs.

    "Sabrina!" Mami's concern bleeds through her mental voice, her barrage halting momentarily.

    "I've- we've got this, Mami," you respond to her, and switch mental tracks. "Aleph - find them! Use Homura's power if necessary!"

    You do have this. The girl knocked you off the platform, but that's fine. She's a flyer, but so are you.

    "They're inside the ship," Oriko snaps. "Under the big tower, behind a lot of armour. Not sure about the hostages. Their stealth is blurring everything."

    "One of them's a... power enhancer," Umika adds, her mental voice clipped and strained. "Wasn't sure until now."

    You borrow a trick from Mami, and tear the girl away with Grief. Grief, Grief, more Grief, wrapped around her body and hauling her away from you. Akemi and Noriko are embroiled in their own fight, the other two girls piling into them. Your wings explode from your back once more to keep you aloft and now-

    Now you're on the offense. Grief blades slash through the air, impossibly sharp and just managing to draw blood, but that's enough to distract her for a split second, and-

    -your mind is inhumanly capable of multitasking, more blades finding targets in the other two girls. Wizard-girl and poncho-girl, you mentally tag them just from their attire, and they have far less luck against your blades, Yuma and Noriko and Akemi pressing advantage. You can afford them more, with the platform sliding under their feet to offer them purchase while you try to drop the floor out from beneath the attackers-

    -but then not-Power Girl is diving right at you through the storm of blades, snarling as she pushes through with raw ferocity and magic. Blades flatten against her skin, a creeping growth of nightmare purple surging over her body to bind and trap and hold her, her magic surging incandescent as she fights back.

    Her struggles slow and still as you accrete more Grief around her, burying her in a van-sized lump.

    The fight's not over yet. You leave her behind, piling on more Grief, as you dive right for the fight still ongoing. The two attackers are holding their own despite Yuma and Noriko and Akemi and you, your blades and mace bouncing off shimmering fields of force and replied to with blasts of flame or ice or dodged with perfect, precise little slips.

    Blood flows freely from a number of wounds, and wizard-girl's picked up a broken arm that doesn't seem to have slowed her down as she flicks a blast of rainbow light in your direction, forcing you to dodge. They're standing on air now, hounded by your allies as you streak towards them. They can fly, evidently, and-

    "Heads up," Kyouko drawls.

    You spot it.

    And then you apply a pair of angry bears to them. Neither of them are expecting you to slam two bears on them, razor-sharp claws flashing in the light and-

    -you slam face-first into a steel wall.

    You reorient in a heartbeat, which is a good thing, because there is a pistol to the back of your head. Grief in the works, gumming up the barrel and the mechanism -not a real pistol, magic- but it fires anyway. You catch the bullet with Grief, shredding it. More Grief. You smash the pistol aside as you whirl, hammer flashing to your hand and nanofog boiling around your attacker.

    Admiral's uniform, pristine black. Gold buttons and gold braid and a hat and another pistol already rising towards you, green eyes cold.

    Attackers.

    Hand-in-hand, the other girl in a green bodysuit, face set in a rictus of concentration-

    -and they're gone.

    "Sabrina!" Mami's voice sounds once more inside your head, panic and terror blending together.

    "I'm fine, Mami, I- what's happening?" you say, dropping into a wary crouch as you look around. You're in a... dining hall, you think? What might have been a dining hall. Long tables and benches of drab institutional beige, steel bulkheads. Your nanofog says you haven't moved, but you're somehow inside the Iowa.

    "The ship's on top of you!" Mami says. She's not that far away from you, or rather, she's within your range still, and you can offer her comfort, with Grief coalescing around her shoulders and squeezing gently. The closest thing you can deliver to a hug at range.

    Your mind races. You haven't been moved. You can sense your friends - Noriko and Akemi and Yuma not that far away from you, through the bulkheads. They're fighting.

    "Got our friends," Mika grunts. "Where do we want 'em?"

    The entire Iowa reoriented on top of you, you realize. There one moment and here this instance - the same stop-motion of the turrets firing. Which means Sayaka, Kyouko, the others must have been left with the deck suddenly vanished from beneath their feet as the Iowa was no longer there.

    "Can you break out, Sabrina?" Mami asks.

    "Now, now," a silken voice issues over the speakers. "Before you do anything hasty, Miss Vee -that is you, correct?- you should think about what we might do to your friends."

    But you-

    -you know where your friends and allies are. You can sense them, Mami and Homura and Oriko and Umika still high in the air, Yuki dropping to the foredeck with a murderous look on her face and her team behind her. Sayaka and Kyouko and Yuma and Noriko and Akemi and everyone else-

    -the hostages.

    Oriko couldn't find them, but-

    "Oriko," you snap. "How deep inside the ship are they? Same place?" You shift mental gears. "Sayaka? You girls clear?"

    You know where the citadel is, you think. Which means you can break it.

    "Yes, the same place-" Oriko responds, her voice tight and pinched. "I can guide Miss Koizumi on target if you need a breakout."

    "We're clear!" Sayaka calls. "We've got you, coordinating with Mami, just a moment-"

    [X] Continue the battle
    [] Write-in (word count limit: 150 words)

    =====​

    Ugh. Honestly, I'd wanted to end the primary combat scene this update, but my muse struggled a bit, and I'm breaking this into, hopefully, one more post. As before, no vote is necessary at this point, but can possibly improve things.
     
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    • Hmm.

    I don't think we're in any real danger, the main trick is going to be how to minimize the chances of them hurting the hostages. On the plus side, all of our allies are free and in play, Iowa's missing their anti-mage, and our friends still have timestop even if we don't.

    So yeah, here's what I'm thinking: we've got a bunch of enchanted grief that we kept around to counter shenanigans. Here's some shenanigans to counter. Trust our friends to rescue the hostages, use enchanted grief to make something to stop Iowa from doing any more ship bullshit, then fucking annihilate this whole thing.
     
    [X] Grief shielding; slag everything between you and outside. (With plasma?)
    -[X] "I'm holding back, not weak. Stop trying to scare Mami and just surrender already! You couldn't win this fight in a million years. The only question is how much you'll force us to hurt you first."

    I wanna slag something for once >:[

    E: don't vote for this. Redshirt has a vastly better grasp of what's going on than I do.
     
    They are attempting to intimidate, thus initiating a dialogue.

    We should not neglect to exploit this opportunity for psychological warfare, but foremost we should offer them a chance to surrender.

    If they decline... We need to say something cheeky. Itadekimas?
     
    Redshirt Army said:
    How so?
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    -you know where your friends and allies are. You can sense them, Mami and Homura and Oriko and Umika still high in the air, Yuki dropping to the fore deck with a murderous look on her face and her team behind her. Sayaka and Kyouko and Yuma and Noriko and Akemi and everyone else-

    -the hostages.

    Oriko couldn't find them, but-

    "Oriko," you snap. "How deep inside the ship are they? Same place?" You shift mental gears. "Sayaka? You girls clear?"

    You know where the citadel is, you think. Which means you can break it.

    "Yes, the same place-" Oriko responds, her voice tight and pinched. "I can guide Miss Koizumi on target if you need a breakout."

    "We're clear!" Sayaka calls. "We've got you, coordinating with Mami, just a moment-"
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    Sabrina is literally deep inside the ship right now.
     
    [X] Prepare to deploy Nanofog.
    -[X] Keep your guard up, she may refuse, and she'll be able to attack you from wherever she is.
    -- [X] "I will give you a chance to surrender. You'll liberate the hostages, make your girls stop, and then we will negotiate. I've been holding back this whole time, and right now, you're inside my range. So unless you wish to find out how it feels to be inside a nuclear reactor, you'll surrender. Enough combat. Let's end this fight in a way that doesn't include you being atomized."

    emphasis on stopping the fight, don't know what to do to deal with the hostages, aside from shredding the area that is holding them, and them enclose them in a room of Grief.
     
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