Puella Magi Imperatrix Mundi, or: Wherein Half Of Japan Tries To Kill You

[Echo]

Replace wallet with soul gem?

Click to shrink...

Nnnnnnot as easily, no. Minami's magic has the same type of limitation as Yui's authority trick; it only works insofar as there's a way for everyone else to justify it, by rationalizing it away or otherwise interpreting the situation in a non-alarming way. It's not impossible, but trickier.

Basically, the underlying mechanism of Minami's magic is to make things seem bland, generic, reasonable, mundane, commonplace, etc. Wallets are replaceable, even if their contents are valuable. Soul Gems aren't, and anything non-magical with major sentimental value isn't likely to work either; e.g., the scenario described would probably not succeed in getting someone to hand over their wedding ring.

The thing to keep in mind here is that while Minami's magic can do a lot, her karmic potential is only moderately above average and her magic is meant to be used as a flexible toolkit, not a hammer to smash problems with.

 

[Guile]

The thing to keep in mind here is that while Minami's magic can do a lot, her karmic potential is only moderately above average and her magic is meant to be used as a flexible toolkit, not a hammer to smash problems with.

Click to shrink...

Yui... does not understand?

Could you rephrase your description of her power in the form of a face smashing through concrete? Thanks.

 

[The3rdCorinthian]

Yui... does not understand?

Could you rephrase your description of her power in the form of a face smashing through concrete? Thanks.

Click to shrink...

Minami can make many interesting shapes by smashing the face into concrete, but not leave a very big crater, unfortunately.

 

[Undead Martyr]

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.

Click to shrink...

As if Mad Science isn't its own reward!

Doubtful. Remember that healing herself was Naoko's actual wish--her general healing magic is very good, but her personal regeneration is absurd.

Click to shrink...

...so no taking her out of the freezer without a cooperative Shinobu, got it.

Hmm. What about Fuuka?

Click to shrink...

Well, we know even less about her than Koharu, and Koharu has the absurd wealth, oppressive family life, cool big sis, and white hair and elegance going for her. Plus seeing their parents' reactions would be completely hilarious and would in no way end in tears.

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.

Click to shrink...

SEE? MAD SCIENCE BEST SCIENCE.

I vote we go full Girl Genius. Because what could possibly go wrong.

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.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I doubted Minami would be of much use. Still it's better than nothing if need be.

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.)

Click to shrink...

Good for Minami, using her mindfuckery powers for good.

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.

Click to shrink...

So Shinobu is definitely sounding like a prerequisite to de-icing Naoka.

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..

Click to shrink...

Worst comes to worst we help Shinobu abandon her mind geas and double down on her velocity magic, because that's an exceedingly useful power to have. Especially since we could possibly synergize if Yui can use her "power over power" magic to, say, boost kinetic energy...
Regardless we need to talk to her ASAP because if we let her stew it's apocalypse time in Nagamioka.

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.

Click to shrink...

Still seems like a good investment to make. Given all the crap headed our way a home field advantage like that is indispensable.

 

[DarkLight140]

Minami's magic doesn't have the raw power to just steamroll her way through that sort of thing, but with a minor effort she totally could, e.g.:

• Activate "generic NPC" quasi-stealth mode, walk up to someone
• Talk to them, generic NPC effect means they won't think anything is strange
• Minor compulsion, tell them to take their wallet out, then grab it
• Amnesia burst so they forget she grabbed it
• Generic NPC effect means they assume there's a good reason she has it now
• Memory dissociation, make them not care about losing their wallet so they won't think about it
• Walk away with the wallet free and clear.

All of that would cost a small but non-negligible amount of magic and would work just fine on anybody who doesn't have specific, magic-based immunity.

Fortunately, Minami is a Nice Girl who wouldn't do that sort of thing.

Click to shrink...

What I'm getting out of this is that with Minami in the party, Yui can genreshift from magical girl protagonist to RPG protagonist.

Because they can walk into someone's house, rifle through their stuff, take anything that looks like it would fit neatly into their inventory but isn't a Plot Item, and leave... all without changing the dialogue options of whoever lives there.

 

[Genial Precis]

What I'm getting out of this is that with Minami in the party, Yui can genreshift from magical girl protagonist to RPG protagonist.

Because they can walk into someone's house, rifle through their stuff, take anything that looks like it would fit neatly into their inventory but isn't a Plot Item, and leave... all without changing the dialogue options of whoever lives there.

Click to shrink...

PMIM AU: Maiko shows up on Minami's doorstep one morning, looking to hire a burglar...

 

[Krika]

PMIM AU: Maiko shows up on Minami's doorstep one morning, looking to hire a burglar...

Click to shrink...

Please. Ocean's 11-style heist on a massive reserve of Grief Seeds held by Maiko's former boss, Momoko. Having been disillusioned with Momoko's policies, Maiko intends to steal her Grief Seed reserve and distribute it to the less successful groups in the area, a la Robin Hood. Unable to do this on her own, she recruits a group of Magical Girls to help her.

Minami (The Thief): Someone capable of walking in and out of Momoko's base without setting off all the alarms, and therefore the person on whom the heist hinges. She also is capable of long range spying, a skill that will not only make planning the heist easier, but enable her to (hopefully) have a better grasp on what's going on around her when she's actually in the base.
Maiko (The Brains): She has detailed knowledge of every magical girl in the area, and thus knows how their weaknesses and how to plan around them. Plus the person with the most incentive to get the heist done.
Yumi (The Backup): With her generalized wish magic, someone who can support, replace, or double up anyone else on the team should it become necessary. Not a critical role, but probably the largest safety net they have.
Himari (The Cracker): Another former member of Momoko's team, and the one responsible for making most of the security her base has. Her job is to outfit everyone else with the necessary equipment to get the job done (and hopefully survive), as well as work out how to deactivate/bypass the security system.
Yui (The Brawn): The smallest member of the team, and the one designated for smashing things that need smashing, and causing excessively noisy distractions. Both of which she is more than happy to do, as long as nobody actually gets hurt.
Shinobu (The Face): The counterpart to Himari (except for humans and not enchantments), and Maiko for knowledge gathering. More versed in social fu than any other member of their team (except possibly Yui to everyone's surprise), she schmoozes around to try and get her magical hooks into other people to nudge them away from where the heist team doesn't want them to be.

At least 1 person here is going to double-cross the group to Momoko, and another one is going to betray them for their own ends. Have fun guessing who.

 

[FelOnyx]

Please. Ocean's 11-style heist on a massive reserve of Grief Seeds held by Maiko's former boss, Momoko. Having been disillusioned with Momoko's policies, Maiko intends to steal her Grief Seed reserve and distribute it to the less successful groups in the area, a la Robin Hood. Unable to do this on her own, she recruits a group of Magical Girls to help her.

Minami (The Thief): Someone capable of walking in and out of Momoko's base without setting off all the alarms, and therefore the person on whom the heist hinges. She also is capable of long range spying, a skill that will not only make planning the heist easier, but enable her to (hopefully) have a better grasp on what's going on around her when she's actually in the base.
Maiko (The Brains): She has detailed knowledge of every magical girl in the area, and thus knows how their weaknesses and how to plan around them. Plus the person with the most incentive to get the heist done.
Yumi (The Backup): With her generalized wish magic, someone who can support, replace, or double up anyone else on the team should it become necessary. Not a critical role, but probably the largest safety net they have.
Himari (The Cracker): Another former member of Momoko's team, and the one responsible for making most of the security her base has. Her job is to outfit everyone else with the necessary equipment to get the job done (and hopefully survive), as well as work out how to deactivate/bypass the security system.
Yui (The Brawn): The smallest member of the team, and the one designated for smashing things that need smashing, and causing excessively noisy distractions. Both of which she is more than happy to do, as long as nobody actually gets hurt.
Shinobu (The Face): The counterpart to Himari (except for humans and not enchantments), and Maiko for knowledge gathering. More versed in social fu than any other member of their team (except possibly Yui to everyone's surprise), she schmoozes around to try and get her magical hooks into other people to nudge them away from where the heist team doesn't want them to be.

At least 1 person here is going to double-cross the group to Momoko, and another one is going to betray them for their own ends. Have fun guessing who.

Click to shrink...

I was literally considering a quest like this once, except not a PMIM spinoff. Magical girls have a lot of cool heist potential.

 

[veekie]

Nnnnnnot as easily, no. Minami's magic has the same type of limitation as Yui's authority trick; it only works insofar as there's a way for everyone else to justify it, by rationalizing it away or otherwise interpreting the situation in a non-alarming way. It's not impossible, but trickier.

Basically, the underlying mechanism of Minami's magic is to make things seem bland, generic, reasonable, mundane, commonplace, etc. Wallets are replaceable, even if their contents are valuable. Soul Gems aren't, and anything non-magical with major sentimental value isn't likely to work either; e.g., the scenario described would probably not succeed in getting someone to hand over their wedding ring.

The thing to keep in mind here is that while Minami's magic can do a lot, her karmic potential is only moderately above average and her magic is meant to be used as a flexible toolkit, not a hammer to smash problems with.

Click to shrink...

Well, she could combine it with other stuff to stalk them home and loot it while they sleep maybe.

Or just look at them while they sleep maybe

 

[Krika]

I was literally considering a quest like this once, except not a PMIM spinoff. Magical girls have a lot of cool heist potential.

Click to shrink...

-insert any supernatural set of abilities- can have a lot of heist potential. Stands, D&D wizards/adventurers, etc.

Still, I'm interested in that idea. Especially if you can make it actually feel like a proper Magical Girl plot, and not just something that has the trappings of one.

 

[Gnarker]

On the discussion about Naoka: Any chance that we could get actually professional help? As in, approach a mundane psychotherapist ideally with experience working with children in traumatic environments, explain the situation, and then hire them, paid for possibly with a combination of the pocket money of our more affluent members? Not just for Naoka, having someone around to give therapy to those who want it, and to get social advice from, would be worth his weight in gold. It'd also allow us to limit the mind-control on Naoka to 'merely' forcing her to visit and cooperate.

On Shinobu, with our Power over Power, could we usurp and suppress her involuntary mind control temporarily to allow her at least a bit of stress-free social time?


Third, is there any compendium of Echo's art for this story, or an up-to-date list of our team members and neighbours?


Also stumbled over this while scrolling over the first post:

"Well... there was this one girl in high school," he says. "Tall, kinda scrawny, thick glasses. Usually top of the class."

"Perfect! How'd it go?"

"I. Um, well," he mumbles. "I never actually talked to her. Kept thinking that, uh... if I could beat her test scores she might notice me."

Click to shrink...

That's totally Maiko, isn't it?

 

[Hestia&theCourt]

On the discussion about Naoka: Any chance that we could get actually professional help? As in, approach a mundane psychotherapist ideally with experience working with children in traumatic environments, explain the situation, and then hire them, paid for possibly with a combination of the pocket money of our more affluent members? Not just for Naoka, having someone around to give therapy to those who want it, and to get social advice from, would be worth his weight in gold. It'd also allow us to limit the mind-control on Naoka to 'merely' forcing her to visit and cooperate.

Click to shrink...

Theoretically...? Kyubey did say that he wouldn't stop us from revealing magic to some people even if he didn't recommend it. Whether we could get a psychotherapist who both believes us and is willing to stick their head into the utter catastrophe that is meguca life is another question entirely. Still, might be worth looking into.

On Shinobu, with our Power over Power, could we usurp and suppress her involuntary mind control temporarily to allow her at least a bit of stress-free social time?

Click to shrink...

I mean, if we have the Grief Seeds, I don't see why not. We might even get a Grief discount because she doesn't want those powers.

That's totally Maiko, isn't it?

Click to shrink...

Echo has confirmed that whether this is Maiko or not is based purely on which situation would be more embarrassing for everyone involved.

 

[Nevill]

I am a bit worried about the rising sentiment of 'we'll start bothering with Naoko once we have more free time'. While there is nothing wrong with it, our experiences for the last couple of weeks indicate that there won't be a time when things aren't on fire in the nearby future, and there always be a whole sleuth of problems in need of fixing at any given time. If not in our region, then in the neighbouring parts like it happened in Adachi/Chiba and Nerima where we are involving ourselves with Someone Else's Problems.

Not to mention that having the world constantly on fire makes the story more intense and interesting, so we can always count on something coming up, and we will always need to prioritize. Naoko is contained, so it makes it easy to put her situation on a backburner and shift her to the lowest priority.

With that in mind, I would prefer to set a deadline for when the problem needs to be attended to. If we think that we lack options to tackle it, well, then we need to start actively searching for them before the time is up, rather than be content with 'we'll get to it when we'll get to it'.

No one is arguing that Shinobu's case or our border trouble are more important right now, but we need a way to prevent stalling this indefinitely for an unspecified amount of time.

 

[Echo]

Status: Update should be done within 24 hours-ish, hopefully the lower end of -ish.

While there is nothing wrong with it, our experiences for the last couple of weeks indicate that there won't be a time when things aren't on fire in the nearby future,

Click to shrink...

Serious mode, Word of QM time: My ideal situation is that, at any point in the story, if Yui has time to easily juggle X number of concerns, there should be at least X+1 outstanding issues on her plate. "Free time" isn't really going to be a thing unless you make it a thing.

Which you should, really. Not every situation will be necessarily Yui's responsibility, nor will they all be "oh look now this other part of Tokyo is on fire"; making time for Yui's non-meguca life and building friendships are also important and neglecting fluff in favor of meddling with Tokyo is definitely not optimal.

What I'm getting out of this is that with Minami in the party, Yui can genreshift from magical girl protagonist to RPG protagonist.

Click to shrink...

I think Maiko already has the "RPG character" slot handled.

As in, approach a mundane psychotherapist ideally with experience working with children in traumatic environments, explain the situation, and then hire them, paid for possibly with a combination of the pocket money of our more affluent members?

Click to shrink...

[Q] Invent interdimensional crossover portal magitech and kidnap Jessica Yamada from Worm
- [Q] Problem solved

On Shinobu, with our Power over Power, could we usurp and suppress her involuntary mind control temporarily to allow her at least a bit of stress-free social time?

Click to shrink...

I mean, if we have the Grief Seeds, I don't see why not. We might even get a Grief discount because she doesn't want those powers.

Click to shrink...

You can meddle with the compulsions that are in place; because it's a one-shot effect rather than her actively controlling people, you can't hijack the effect like you did the Witch's Kiss or Chizuka's metal control. Meddling with the compulsions, including removing them entirely, is possible but expensive as fuck because it's countering Shinobu's wish, and whether she wants you to do it or not doesn't change that.

Third, is there any compendium of Echo's art for this story, or an up-to-date list of our team members and neighbours?

Click to shrink...

Well, most of my art for the quest should be on my imgur. Though now that I look at it I'm pretty sure there were rough drawings of Kaede and Naoko that I didn't add... ugh.

There aren't really any good up-to-date lists of characters with any detail, currently. I made a mostly-complete list of named or otherwise significant characters a while back but that's just names.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

That's totally Maiko, isn't it?

Click to shrink...

That's what I figured, too. It makes Yui's shipping plans... slightly less likely to fall through or more likely to fall through at a later and more dangerous point, I'm not sure which.

EDIT: Largely because Maiko is established to be roughly Yui's brother's age and has this line.

"Seems fair," Maiko says blandly. "I do recall an exam or two where I only placed second in the school." She looks thoughtful for a moment. "I did better in high school, if memory serves me."

Click to shrink...

making her likely the girl he saw topping the charts.

 

[Echo]

Echo has confirmed that whether this is Maiko or not is based purely on which situation would be more embarrassing for everyone involved.

Click to shrink...

I'll be honest, I'm leaning pretty heavily toward "yeah it totally was Maiko he had a crush on" now that Yui's already planning to set them up together. The other option would mostly lend itself to mistaken identity shenanigans and/or Yui jumping to conclusions about who knows what and... meh, just not as entertaining for me at this point.

That's what I figured, too. It makes Yui's shipping plans... slightly less likely to fall through or more likely to fall through at a later and more dangerous point, I'm not sure which.

Click to shrink...

To be fair, Yui is 120% certain that Maiko is Kaoru's type and only 10% of that is her overconfidence. She is equally certain that even in the best case scenario getting the two of them to actually do anything about it will be the biggest challenge, because neither is the sort to prioritize having a love life over other interests, Kaoru gets nervous about people he doesn't know expressing personal interest in him (romantically or otherwise), and Maiko's not all that successful at hiding her body image issues.

 

[Jrin]

Don't really care for bringing Kaoru in, still it would be interesting if he upset Maiko if the meet did not go well.
Having Maiko badly distract would increase risks.

 

[Aranfan]

Magical Girl Commander of the World huh?

Watched.

 

[veekie]

To be fair, Yui is 120% certain that Maiko is Kaoru's type and only 10% of that is her overconfidence. She is equally certain that even in the best case scenario getting the two of them to actually do anything about it will be the biggest challenge, because neither is the sort to prioritize having a love life over other interests, Kaoru gets nervous about people he doesn't know expressing personal interest in him (romantically or otherwise), and Maiko's not all that successful at hiding her body image issues.

Click to shrink...

...just how is Yui so familiar with her brother's interests anyway?

Snooped through his room?
Got a friend to climb a tree near his window?

 

[Nevill]

I think the very first update explains this stuff.

You laugh, leaning back in your chair. "I wish! Though I imagine she wouldn't be thrilled by--ooh, look! Over there, by the electronics store."

Your brother groans. "We're not doing this, Yui."

"C'mon! See? The cute one in the blue hoodie, with the pixie cut hair and glasses."

He glances over involuntarily, then buries his face in his hands when he realizes what he did. "Yui!"

You giggle madly. "Well...?"

"Yes," he mumbles.

"I knew it! Excellent taste, brother dearest. Excellent taste, indeed."

Click to shrink...

Straight from the horse's mouth.

And judging from Kaoru's exasperation, she has been doing it for a long while.

 

[Krika]

To be fair, Yui is 120% certain that Maiko is Kaoru's type and only 10% of that is her overconfidence. She is equally certain that even in the best case scenario getting the two of them to actually do anything about it will be the biggest challenge, because neither is the sort to prioritize having a love life over other interests, Kaoru gets nervous about people he doesn't know expressing personal interest in him (romantically or otherwise), and Maiko's not all that successful at hiding her body image issues.

Click to shrink...

There's always the "lock in a closet" plan that she considered.

 

[Aranfan]

@Echo

Do you have plans for if we do actually try for worldwide takeover?

 

[redzonejoe]

There's always the "lock in a closet" plan that she considered.

Click to shrink...

Arrange for them both to meet Yui at a cafe seems simplest though.

Tell Maiko to dress nicely, and that we'd like her help introducing yet another friend to the world of magic.

Tell brother to dress nice, because we're rich damn it just do it nerd.

 

[Echo]

Do you have plans for if we do actually try for worldwide takeover?

Click to shrink...

Concrete plans? No. Not that I'll stop you by any means, but the scope in which I've preplanned anything is mostly limited to the Kanto plain and the next few months of in-quest time, and even that is mostly pretty tenuous, broad-strokes stuff. There are only a few things with significantly detailed plans that haven't really come up yet in the quest beyond maybe brief mentions--a few groups in Chiba prefecture, some meguca in Yokosuka where Kaoru goes to school, a messy situation involving a particular meguca in northwest Tokyo, and of course canon-related stuff including the fact that Mami was on friendly terms with Momoko and that Yui's father is a significant financial backer of Hisaomi Mikuni.

Arrange for them both to meet Yui at a cafe seems simplest though.

Tell Maiko to dress nicely, and that we'd like her help introducing yet another friend to the world of magic.

Tell brother to dress nice, because we're rich damn it just do it nerd.

Click to shrink...

They then spend the entire time commiserating with each other about Yui's ideas of what constitutes "helping" and she can't even complain because that still counts as a mission success.

 

[redzonejoe]

Yui's father is a significant financial backer of Hisaomi Mikuni.

Click to shrink...

Oh dear, that's going to have an impact.