Right, back to intrigue, headaches and a lot of overthinking:
"Miss Vee, it's a pleasure to meet you," most-likely-Toshimichi says, her voice cutting through the distant rumble of Tokyo with effortless ease. She sounds like she means it too, warmly sincere as she inclines her head to you, her hands tucked into her voluminous sleeves. "And your companions. Miss Tomoe, Miss Miki, Miss Kazusa..."
This strikes me as being very rude. She didn't give us an opportunity to introduce ourselves, on our terms, and forced us to ask her to introduce herself. She's saying "I'm in control here, I dictate the conversation. You have no secrets from me, but must beg for answers."
Now that could be for several reasons; she could be leaning hard into her heritage, or maybe she's wary of us, or maybe she's showing off, or maybe she's just not used to talking to people who consider themselves her equal.
It strikes me as too rehearsed to be a mistake or a spur of the moment thing though. She came at this meeting with the intent to "attack" first, and keep us off balance.
But, notably, she wasn't hostile. She was genuine in her welcome. Sincere.
One thing I wonder, is how she would have addressed Homura if she were here. Homura, after all, gave her name in the wrong order to Nadia. If Toshimichi had gotten it wrong, we would have known who her primary source was, but if she'd gotten it right, we'd know she had other sources available to her.
"Oh, no thanks are necessary," Toshimichi says. "Even setting aside policy of free passage for other mages and prospectives, for visitors as notable as the Constellation, a personal meeting seems the least I could do."
I've talked about the "other mages" thing in a comment above, and the "I know who you are thing" is just repetition at this point, but I want to quickly touch upon the "personal meeting" bit. She's implying that she's busy and that she has people to meet guests on her behalf, but we're important enough for her to discard and skip past all of that. A mix of flattery whilst also implying her own, higher status—that she is equal to the Constellation as a whole, maybe? That she'd normally delegate this to someone lesser—a courtier of some description, if this was a traditional fantasy setting. Again, leaning hard into the "nobility" thing.
her gaze settling once more on you. "Not to mention Miss Vee's capabilities."
"It is my duty," Toshimichi says serenely, with a touch of pride in her voice. And yet when she speaks again, there's that tug of insistent curiosity. "I wonder, what drives you, Miss Vee?"
I think she exposes herself here—she can't read us, and she's directly probing for information. What drives us, what motivates us—it's the angle she can't figure out.
That, or she's testing us, making sure that we are saying what she thinks we'll say, making sure we're keeping consistent. By forcing us to explain ourselves, that'll make it harder in the negotiations to demand things that stray to far from our stated ideals; indeed, she could be looking for something to attack us with later "You say you want to help people, but this concession only helps you/hurts us/benefits nobody." That'll probably wont happen because we're genuine, but she did force us to expose what our bargaining position was before we met at the negotiation table, and she hasn't yet admitted to anything she wants from us.
Conclusion: She's cautious of us, and intercepted us in order to extract information from us so she and her allies can be prepared to haggle and negotiate with us. It was a delaying tactic, and they are probably discussing what we revealed right now, similar to how we are conferring with Madoka and Hitomi. She's also not as all-knowing as she presented herself as. She likes to feel like—or at least, present herself as if—she's in control.
But... I don't think she's a bad person. She was pleased at Sabrina's compliment, and genuinely so at that. Saving lives and helping people is important to her, even if it's just a "duty" to her. She was genuine in her welcome. Assertive and controlling, yes, but not unkind.
I think if we can find a way to surprise or shock her, we'll break her control of the conversation, put her on the back foot and be able to get some answers from her. The problem is that I don't see a reason to do that at this point in time, nor can I think of something that would actually surprise her. She (roughly) knows of our abilities, our mission and our allies. There's not a lot of cards up our sleeves after all of that, and we don't know how many decks Toshimichi Akane is carrying.
Also, try to think of what Sabrina looks like from the other side. Grief controllers are the big bad boogeymen of the magical girl world. Then a war starts practically on your doorstep, but before anyone can get involved, it's resolved by a brand new, never heard of before grief controller who took down two magical girl teams, including a famous mercenary group who made their reputation on taking down a grief controller—and the only casualties were three civilians killed by the other sides rampage. Then you find out the grief controller is working with Tomoe Mami, a powerful, idealistic and reclusive magical girl. Then the mercenaries form an alliance with the grief controller, followed by the large, if isolated, Asunaro group, along with a handful of powerful independents. Now she's coming to Tokyo, but not before taking down one of the most feared raider teams in the world in under an hour, forging her band in the flames of conflict.
Meanwhile, everyone who meets her claims she wants to "help".
Honestly, Chiyoda Quest have probably been making "Dark Lord Sabrina" memes for a while now.
On a more serious note, they might be worried that Sabrina plans to take control and rule Tokyo to impose her "help" onto people. Which is explicitly
not our plan, but we do have the powers and the allies to attempt it.
