So, another batch of IRL stuff hit and I haven't had time to finish the update. It'll probably be another day or two at this point, unfortunately. There will probably be another multi-day delay 1-2 weeks from now, but after that things should be more consistent.
Besides, aren't we already preserving it with magic?
Longer term preservation doesn't seem to be on the cards if Maiko can't do it, either.
My understanding is that the Naoko timeline can be extended by recharging the magical freezer gizmo that we're using right now on an as-needed basis.
Yep.
Also, it's rather more potent than just a "freezer", but that's not really relevant at the moment. Mostly just of interest to Maiko for Science! purposes, actually.
We're strong enough to break concrete, but we probably stand a decent chance of accidentally breaking Naoko's body beyond even her ability to repair.
Doubtful. Remember that healing herself was Naoko's actual wish--her general healing magic is very good, but her personal regeneration is absurd.
Which is why I ship her with Koharu, since Maiko is unfortunately too old and she's the closest there otherwise is to a Weiss. I mean, Asami sorta works, if you squint and polish her a bit.
....What? Winter Rose OTP.
Hmm. What about Fuuka?
Given comments that Echo's made saying that, for all of Yui's power, she can't bypass the system, I would assume that if we could do this, the Grief cost would be so exorbitant that we never would.
Anything that directly alters or otherwise messes with souls is going to be difficult and expensive at best for Yui. Maiko has no such limitations, but all of her magic has to be discovered and derived from first principles and it's a hard problem. Even relying heavily on her grimoire you'd be looking at many, many years of concentrated effort for her to research, reverse engineer, and recreate the relevant Incubator magitech. Without a steady supply of Grief Seeds to power her grimoire, it'd be many decades. And even so, there's still no guarantee that she'd find a practical solution.
Of course, that's working independently. Collecting more !!SCIENCE!!-gucas and/or soulgucas would probably help things along rather a lot.
In theory, you could argue that there's not really any way to make Naoko worse,
Oh, I'm sure there is!
Making her worse without making it no longer viable to keep her alive? Eh, maybe not.
I am hoping that we can also lean on Minami for this- she literally wished for memory alteration that helps people get over their problems, so expecting her to have memory wish magic that can help people get over their problems seems eminently reasonable, and we know that Naoko is a bitch because of deep-seated personal issues- but word from Echo thus far seems to indicate that Minami's powers are basically useless for therapy purposes. Still, it's worth a shot- maybe she can push them farther than she thinks she can.
Minami's wish magic is biased toward fairly recent memories, with magic costs getting larger the further back she tries to go. Naoko is probably out of reach for that, since she's 19-ish (I think? can't remember) and her issues go all the way back to... well, her whole life, basically.
and she just got zapped by Minami's wish softening all her personal problems.
Shinobu, both fortunately and unfortunately, hit the exemption clauses and got passed over by Minami's wish. (The "fortunately" part is because there was no way to help her via the wish without some degree of unpleasant mindfuckery.)
In no uncertain terms, what we are discussing not a course of action I can morally support, because it's essentially brainwashing and mind rape for our "greater good". I, personally, would rather murder her in cold blood than do that.
I think what they're getting at is the whole "overwriting their personality to how we like it" part of that. That is definitely a road to be avoided for various reasons, especially with the person who'd have to do it already hating the idea of doing so (since it seems like that's exactly a thing they've done on accident by this point).
That seems like a pretty easy fail state to avoid if we're using any restraint at all. I feel a little better about this.
Yeah, "brainwashing" isn't really something Shinobu can do. That said, low-key compulsions may be indirectly mind-altering because the subject's mind will confabulate a reason for why they did/didn't do something. Especially if the target is a non-meguca and subject to bunnycat's "nothing to see here" effect. (e.g.: Shinobu's parents) Basically, the compulsion feels like acting on a spontaneous impulse, not acting in response to some external influence.
If the target knows about Shinobu's magic and what the compulsion is then yeah, it's much closer to pure body control in terms of experience because they'll recognize it when it happens.
Also, keep in mind that the general "no monkey's paw" aspect of wishes still applies here. Other than being involuntary, the compulsions will generally follow the most reasonable interpretation. (i.e., an order to "leave the room" will make the subject leave the room but not prevent them from re-entering that room after a period of time that makes sense in context.)
...of course, you don't actually know any of this IC right now, but Shinobu has a good understanding of how her compulsions work and if you get her to talk about it at all, she'll be very up-front with you about the details.
As I recall, she does have some nifty velocity-changing magic or something that could be a useful force multiplier in a fight.
Basically, she can alter the velocity of objects either by hitting them with a hammer or letting them hit forcefields she creates. The change in velocity occurs without acceleration and while she can apply very high velocities she can't do anything like "this field doubles the velocity of objects hitting it", only set velocities to constant values.
Her velocity control is more flexible than she currently thinks it is and she also has a direct attack option she hasn't even figured out, given that she's spent basically no time even transformed so far and is trying to not even think about it as much as possible..
Hmm. How much effort would that take? How would we do it?
Well... Chou
can make plants grow faster, but doing that to enough plants to matter would cost a lot of Grief Seeds. It would also take a lot of time, but it's not like Chou would
mind spending her time doing that.
Y'know, once all of the urgent stuff is done the Quest is over and we can stop running around like a headless chicken on fire.
FTFY.
I'm only mostly joking.
