- Location
- Austria
Puella Magi Imperatrix Mundi, or: Wherein Half Of Japan Tries To Kill You
You know, we seem to be taking attempted murder pretty goddamn casually. Chizuka came out of nowhere and tried to kill Yui without a word of negotiation or investigation. That's pure murder for profit, and it's one of the lowest places you can go, morally speaking.
I'm frankly surprised the thread is taking such a "awww, what a woobie" attitude to Chizuka. Was this her first attempted murder? Does she have a lot of successful murders to her credit? How would everyone feel if it was Tomo or Minami that got attacked and if they had been injured or killed? Would all of you be so forgiving?
I mean, look at that vote line I'm quoting. Do you really want to reassure Chizuka that her attempted murder-for-profit was a very nice attempt? Perhaps maybe a small amount of moral condemnation might be called for instead?
EDIT: Have you considered that putting things to Chizuka this way might imply that it's how Yui intends to operate, running ruthless lethal ambushes on anyone who has something she wants? Is that the message to Chizuka?
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- Location
- Lasha Tumbai
I was going to say steal for maximum bodyguarding along with Tomo, but if she doesn't want to fight she can be part of the shadow council we're creating that is currently Maiko and Minami.
@Echo - Would Yumi become better at being on our shadow council if she was on our shadow council, due to her wish/wish magic?
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- Location
- St. Petersburg
Speaking of, did we learn about the reason why Yumi decided to stay? I mean, we had an argument that our idealism was not baseless and that we totally can make it work... and she didn't buy it, not really. Or at least she said she was still unconvinced.
Once she knew Maiko was on board, and that we were specifically picked as Momoko's successor, she seemed to realize something. She told us she did some 'reevaluation', and that was it.
We chose not to look a gift horse in the mouth and left it at that. But what exactly changed her mind?
I guess that - maybe - she thinks she can't afford us to fail; that the alternative could have some serious, possibly lethal ramifications for the city and the neighbouring areas? Except that was her reasoning for leaving: she wanted to distance herself from us in case of our fall. Why doesn't she now? Something does not look tight here.
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- Location
- St. Petersburg
That's because most magical girls have nothing on us. Short of mind control and other shenanigans, we can dominate most of them in direct combat. Therefore, as the stronger side, we are more likely to show mercy, since while an attempt to murder us was made, the chances for it to be successful were pretty low, realistically speaking.
I'd note that in magical girl case, it's less a question of profit and more of survival. If they can't survive in their current territory, they need to invade another one, and that is how it works in Tokyo. The idea that someone would let them in did not occur to her, simple as that. It does not happen. She even said it to mock us because of how ridiculous it sounds to her, and she didn't believe we wanted to talk until we defeated her and didn't kill her right away.
That said, her behavior is borderline criminal, and some votes are dangerously close to condoning it with their understanding. I am all for forgiveness if it leads to discouraging this sort of behavior.
Chizuka's loyalty to the teammates together with limited options lead her to make some Bad Decisions, which would cause misery and death if it were anyone but us in charge of the territory. But it were us, and so the result may be different. People looked into her entry, and liked what they saw. If we manage to repurpose that loyalty towards a nobler (i.e. our) goal, she'd be invaluable as an operative and an asset. I guess that, too, plays a role in how much we are willing to overlook.
No. But there is a lot more leeway when it comes to ourselves.
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- Location
- Here
After thinking about it more, I think that rather than lieutenants who can function completely independently, we should try to form teams that can take on certain kinds of assignments. Not even Yui should be wandering around on her own, after all. Doing so improves social cohesion and makes it much more convenient to delegate things, because well-constructed teams are inherently more competent to tackle broader ranges of tasks. I suggest:
That's not much worse of a reason to kill someone than all the usual reasons meguca have for killing each other. We will definitely retaliate against such attempts to the full extent necessary to ensure it doesn't happen again, and we're working on that, and we will definitely hold the expectation that members of our team behave better under our reign, but... I assume that almost all of Himari, Haruka, Maiko, Yumi, Rio, Fuuka Kiyomi and Chou have body counts.
Anyway, the point of the quotation is to reassure Chizuka that she hasn't let her team down and in so doing establish a rapport with her in aid of negotiations or recruitment later. Also to emphasize how far out of her weight class Yui is, that she can afford to be nonchalant about it.
- Rio/Fuuka/Kiyomi. This one's a no-brainer since we already know that they get along and work well together. This is a good combat team and a good witch-hunting team. I'd like to test them out on problems that involve diplomacy, because if we could send them out to meet suspicious persons or to induct new contractees, we'd have a great troubleshooting team.
- Himari/Haruka/Koharu. Himari probably has brains and veteran-ness enough that this team could handle diplomacy. Also a good combat team with Koharu for muscle.
- Maiko/Minami/Yumi/Tomo. Investigation team. They can go places, talk to people, win the fight if there is one, and learn everyone's secrets.
No, I don't think moral condemnation is called for. She was trying to get territory for her team, for her friends. As far as she knew, talking wouldn't have gotten her that, because Yui is bizarrely reasonable as meguca go. So she forwent talking in favor of a better ambush.
That's not much worse of a reason to kill someone than all the usual reasons meguca have for killing each other. We will definitely retaliate against such attempts to the full extent necessary to ensure it doesn't happen again, and we're working on that, and we will definitely hold the expectation that members of our team behave better under our reign, but... I assume that almost all of Himari, Haruka, Maiko, Yumi, Rio, Fuuka Kiyomi and Chou have body counts.
Anyway, the point of the quotation is to reassure Chizuka that she hasn't let her team down and in so doing establish a rapport with her in aid of negotiations or recruitment later. Also to emphasize how far out of her weight class Yui is, that she can afford to be nonchalant about it.
Emphasis on this.
Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
I like the Yui Tomo team up idea because the two of them work well together and are ideologically compatible. And the sheer amount of Ham and posing would be awesome as well.
Chou's probably too averse to duplicity to fit in well with an intelligence squad, but she doesn't seem like she wants to fight unless she has to. Putting her on perimeter monitoring and garrison duty would work for that.
Chou's probably too averse to duplicity to fit in well with an intelligence squad, but she doesn't seem like she wants to fight unless she has to. Putting her on perimeter monitoring and garrison duty would work for that.
- Location
- St. Petersburg
I am sure there is some other way to show this than congratulate her on a well-executed ambush that would kill anyone but us.
Sorry, there is not a lot of things worth praise in her actions. They are understandable, and her motives are admirable, but that's as far as I can go.
The much better reassurance would be securing a future for her team, provided they are more or less people we can work with. That would actually establish some rapport and free her from the obligations to protect and provide for her team, enough so that she would consider us as someone worthy of her loyalty.
I don't think us outclassing her needs another demonstration. She surrendered and basically came to terms with us being able to kill her - hence the grief spike. I don't believe this needs to be rubbed into her face one more time.
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Echo
Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before
- Location
- "echolocation" dur hur hur
Yumi currently doesn't have access to her wish magic and nothing you can do directly is going to change that.
If you want to try and poke her into dealing with her issues, that's possible, but it'll have to happen independently of other stuff.
A lot of things, really. You can try to ask her if you really want to know, but the gist is that she was suddenly a lot less sure that she could distance herself far enough and at the same time the benefits of working for Yui suddenly looked a lot more persuasive.
Basically, it came down to "get in on the ground floor of the Next Big Thing or get out of the fucking country until things shake out" and she went with the first option.
This is true. Does anyone really think that, say, Kiyomi hasn't killed other magical girls? That meteor hammer of hers is absurdly lethal and her magic doesn't give any options for non-lethal takedowns. Or that Yumi, the jaded pragmatist, hasn't killed?
And that's not even touching Maiko's body count, which is higher than any three of your other allies combined.
By process of elimination, I guess Yui will be running around with... Chou and Sayuki? There's no way that could possibly go wrong!
Well, you have to admit she did pull it off with style and skill.
And aside from that pesky "potentially lethal" bit it's totally the sort of stunt Yui herself would pull!
Guile
Having a really great time right now
Look, we already set Kaede up with a job and welcomed Haruka into the fold, at some point we have to accept that we lost the vote on Yui having a normal response to attempted murder (on her).
It is because now she knows that we can find her wherever she runs and drop sparkly nukes on her from anywhere in the prefecture, I assumed.
- Location
- The Beach
By taking it casually, we are implying that Chizuka was never a threat to us. That what other MGs consider attempted murder barely gets a blip out of us. It's a power statement.
edit:
We should probably try and get to know her over the next few days. Pick an afternoon and hang out with her.
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Guile
Having a really great time right now
By the way, I was rereading that update Neville linked a minute ago, and found this gem:
Which, while undoubtedly unhealthy, is a pretty Maiko coping mechanism.
Maiko appears to have offloaded certain bad memories into her grimoire. Which is, sort of, herself but not really? Going by that previous line of Yui's about how '[the grimoire] (by which I mean you) appears friendly.'echo said:
Which, while undoubtedly unhealthy, is a pretty Maiko coping mechanism.
I don't like being so flip and joking about it, that's all. It wasn't a joke. It was a terrible thing to do, even if Chizuka did have her reasons. It's okay for Yui to forgive her, but it should be discussed in terms of something that needs forgiveness, not what a nice effort it was. Here's my take on it.
[x] Escort Chizuka back to the border, as planned.
- [x] Let Chizuka know that she can use her magic again, first.
- [x] Tell Chizuka that you know this can be a hard world, but that doesn't make what she did okay. You are willing to forgive her and let this go because you have enough power to have that luxury, but you wouldn't be acting so chill if Chizuka had injured or killed one of your friends. We have to try to be better. We know that Chizuka can be better.
- [x] Maiko and Minami keep to hidden-but-within-spying-range as backup.
- [x] Talk to her teammates a bit, if possible.
-- [x] Don't joke about what happened. We're willing to let this go this time, but if it had been one of our friends who was hurt, we wouldn't be this nice. Right now everybody needs to cool down a little, but we'd be happy to exchange phone numbers and email addresses.
-- [x] Make sure they know that they should really not be crossing the Tokyo-Nagamioka border without sending you a brainmail or text or something about what exactly they're up to and getting your approval.
-- [x] In fact, Chizuka had some concerning things to say about recent events in their territory and you'd be very interested in hearing more about that, if they're willing to share. Try to figure out their team social dynamics while getting the news.
-- [x] You have an interest in having a secure Nagamioka with stable border territories, and in making friends who share those interests- which they probably do. If some or all of them care to move, you're also in the market for reliable subordinates who don't mind living in Nagamioka. You'd like to see if you can cut some deals.
Echo
Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before
- Location
- "echolocation" dur hur hur
That was referring specifically to the fact that the creepy glowing green eye embedded in the cover of the grimoire is actually Maiko's Soul Gem, but yeah. The fact that the Soul Gem is affixed to the book, not her body... kinda says a lot, doesn't it?
- Location
- St. Petersburg
The country? I knew things were bad, but I didn't think the current situation warrants fleeing from Japan if they aren't stabilized.
Actually, no, scratch that - I don't understand how Momoko's death could have a country-wide ramifications.
Eh. The problem is not that they kill, but who they kill and how - and what do they think about it. I am sure we agree that Chiharu's actions crossed the line even by magical girl standarts.
I also suspect that you've made your setting to be quite a bit more vicious than it is depicted in other works. In a less competitive environment I would be a lot less understanding of actions such as these.
We are NOT threatening her to keep her at our side, that was the first thing we established. She is free to leave if she wants to, but... she doesn't anymore.
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Guile
Having a really great time right now
"Yes, we can find you anywhere, and yes I basically carry a tac nuke in a sparkly princess wand. But don't worry! We're the good guys."
Yeah, it's not about whether they've ever killed anyone, but the way they went about that. Maiko worked under Momoko's regime, and we know that Momoko at least tried to be harsh-but-fair. I don't know that Kiyomi, Yumi, or Maiko have ever ambushed someone they knew nothing about and killed them simply because better safe than sorry. And if they did, I hope they have the decency to be deeply ashamed by it and understand that no one should be expected to treat it with approval or as a joke.
It is not about Momoko, it is about us. Yui is very powerful and her goal of making things better means changing pretty much everything about how magical girls deal with each other. Alone that would be pretty big but with someone like Maiko backing us it means we are far more likely to grow and survive the inevitable backlash.
If we succeed we will likely be ruling over a good chunk of the country with the rest allied or at least abiding by our rules. If we fail chances are most magical girls in the country would have been dragged in the conflict and the rest affected by the ramifications of that. So as Echo said either get in with the Next Big Thing early or get the hell out of the affected area, aka the country, and she chose the former.
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Echo
Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before
- Location
- "echolocation" dur hur hur
Because Yui.
No, really. There's a very real possibility of Yui effectively conquering the entire Tokyo area, which would not go unnoticed by large groups in other areas of Japan, and there are lots of meguca who might have both means and motive to find meguca outside the Tokyo area with connections to Yui.
Well... Rio's group has, and no they didn't like it. A chance of getting away from that kind of shit is why Rio signed up for Yui's team on the spot and negotiated afterwards.
Of course, Chizuka doesn't exactly seem to be enjoying herself either...
- Location
- Here
I'm persuaded. Show our earnestness by playing fair with her team.
[x] DarkLight140
Hard lolis making hard decisions
!I think I have a better sense of how she ended up becoming so Hikkomori that people thought she was dead. Thanks for pointing that out!
Tomo is definitely a good partner to Yui, because she's so good for nonlethal combat.
Teams suggestion with skill ratings:
- Rio/Fuuka/Kiyomi
- Meguca combat: B
- Witch hunting: B
- Diplomacy: C?
- Himari/Haruka/Koharu
- Meguca combat: B
- Witch hunting: B
- Diplomacy: ?
- Maiko/Minami/Yumi
- Meguca combat: A
- Witch hunting: B
- Investigation: A
- Diplomacy: B
- Yui/Tomo/Sayuki
- Meguca combat: B
- Witch hunting: B
- Diplomacy: A
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Guile
Having a really great time right now
Another fun tidbit:
Together with that later comment of Maiko's, of Yui allowing her to reactivate [X] Magical Girl's storage space, it sounds like Yui just overpowered some kind of personal use seal. That has fun hypothetical uses for Yui v. any magical girl that makes her own equipment.echo said:
- Location
- St. Petersburg
And... what? We can find her anywhere, what of it? Are you saying that Yui has implied anywhere that she'd harm Yumi if she leaves, or that Yumi is not aware that Yui can't hurt her?
Great. Aya's situation just got more interesting.
Look, I agree with most of your sentiment, but she can't be better if it means she has to watch her friends die. You are not telling her anything she does not know. She expected death as retaliation, and that's without touching our friends.
Unless we offer a solution, this is just a platitude. And if that solution was available to her before, she likely wouldn't have tried what she did.
Just remember who her neighbours are. Itabashi girls (Kaede & Co., and now whoever drove them out - and rumor has it they are worse), and then there are the ones that are planning the invasion. What kind of diplomacy should she have attempted to make it work in that environment? She just assumed we are cut from the same cloth, and it made things easier.
I don't know what can be done about it other than just removing the conditions that caused this series of events.
Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
I think we need to accept that the majority of veterans we meet will have done things we find immoral, and that this does not mean we can't work with them. In general, I think we should have a sort of amnesty set up. Forgive earlier misdeeds and judge them on their actions after we've laid down the law. Otherwise we're going to have a hard time working with any veterans. Of course, serial killers, psychopaths, and familiar farmers are not getting forgiven, but people whose only crime is being stuck in a shit system without the power to change it should be given an opportunity to prove they can behave in our NWO.
- Location
- Here
That's a cogent statement of policy, and I agree completely. Well said.
Echo
Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before
- Location
- "echolocation" dur hur hur
Tokyo is that vicious. So are some of the nearby cities, including Kazamino (which is basically Tokyo lite: the place you end up if you're not quite strong enough or not quite ruthless enough for the real thing). Other cities probably aren't utopian by any stretch, but they're not as relentlessly murderous as Tokyo.
For instance, a significant chunk of the Kansai region is controlled by a rigidly defined and maintained meguca alliance with significant influence in non-magical affairs. Not that it's a nice place, but it's more... uh, Lawful Grimderp vs. Tokyo's Chaotic Grimderp?
Yeah, let's go with that.There's also the idol thing I've mentioned, which is basically their own little subculture where they all agree to only compete as idols, no direct magic use, and will band together and ruthlessly crush any non-idol meguca who fucks with one of their own. No murdering each other whatsoever.
Not a seal--a power source. The preservation effect in the room was created with and powered by one specific girl's wish magic. After she died, once it ran out of power there was no way to reactivate it.
That was one of Maiko's main tests of the "power over power" hypothesis, because it should have been literally impossible for a power source compatible with that room to exist.