Those words kind of slip out of your mouth. The four girls sitting on three seats in front of you and the two girls on the bland, beige couch you're sitting on turn around and stare at you. You put your hands in front of your mouth.
"Oh, um, sorry, I know this isn't a dinner date or anything…" you say, but your eyes immediately gravitate towards the two girls sitting on the same chair. One of them, a tall South Asian girl with straight hair cut about her shoulders, stares back at you, twirling her fingers through the cherry blonde curls of a comparatively tiny white girl with closed eyes and then placing her hands over her ears.
"We know as well. There's no need to worry." She coldly smiles back. "Emmy likes it a lot, so I just wanted to take her for a treat. Little things keep us all stable and together, you know?"
"Yeah," you mumble.
"We absolutely do need to be stable and together for this mission, which I assume you all want debriefed to you, yes?" she says to you.
"Yeah," you mumble. The two younger and shier girls to your left and front-left nod. The girl immediately to your right says 'aye', the girl to your front right says 'yes'. 'Emmy' doesn't say anything at all, like she's sleeping.
"This is our target." The tall girl takes out a photo of a somewhat brawny Mediterranean man.
"Oh. I recognise him. He told me how to get to this restaurant."
"You do?" she says. You look up at her, but see her reaching for a bread knife out of the corner of your vision.
"Yeah, uh…"
You're probably late — when were you supposed to meet everyone? — you have no clue where you're going. Spend a feverish thirty minutes clambering for your luggage, pass through airport security (can't detect magical weapons), pretend you weren't going to fall down that flight of stairs (you're not that ditzy, you swear), exit Hollywood Burbank Airport.
Were you supposed to be in Burbank? You check your phone's memo, full of notes you've copied from text messages.
'(iris forwarded this to me)
For the good of society
Take out a modern evil
Selflessness alone can't feed us
$10,000 for seven takers, pooled together by the South Cali's Witches Alliance'
Not helpful.
'('anne kathavarayan', """field leader""" for the vague mission with an actual payout)
I live in Burbank. We'll get something to eat at Barnaby's (floor three, Oldfield Shopping Mall) to build rapport before discussing mission details. In person security is best security (picture of cat im nto copying)' (oh, oh, that's the tall girl's name! And did you seriously have to remember leaving that typo in?)
Okay, that's more like it. Only, where's Oldfield Shopping Mall?
You continue to walk outside Hollywood Burbank Airport, fiddling away at your maps app. You press directions, try to press 'current location', your location is off (battery life), you press 'turn it back on and go to the settings menu, you turn it on but it doesn't take you back, press the back button, begin typing Oldfield and accidentally tap on some location in England, get directions to England—
Someone bumps into you, nearly sending your phone flying.
"Hi, sorry!"
"No, no worries!" You turn around. It's a Greek-looking guy in his early twenties with toned muscles, wearing only a white vest and cheap black jogging shorts. As you stop, you notice one of your earphones is dangling by your shoulder, somehow at its max.
"—No, no, you have to understand, it wasn't like we ignored her family on purpose. It was the late 60s, you know, Vietnam, protests, riots… We were caught up maintaining the peace on the home front, making sure our boys had a solid America to go back to." "And what about our girls?" "Obviously we needed to do the best for our girls, but we only have so many resources. What about Elodie Walter, you know? She was murdered more recently, why aren't you reporting on her? —"
"Oh, is that a true crime podcast?" the guy you crashed into asked.
"Yeah, needed something to block out the surroundings."
"I love true crime, I listen to it all the time when I'm jogging. I just find it so fascinating. Although, not the unsolved stuff! It's hard to sleep when you know there are sickos and deviants doing god knows what to our mothers, daughters, sisters, you know."
"Yeah… uh, I'm a little lost. How do I get to Oldfield Shopping Centre?"
"Oh, oh, I'm rambling, anyway—"
Anne puts the bread knife she totally wasn't pointing at you on the waiter's stack of everyone's plates as you finish recounting your journey here (making sure to sound better at travelling out loud than you do in your own head).
"It's weird that this guy sounds like he hates murderers and loves women, since we know he kills magical girls."
The girl to her left, your right — an African-American girl with her hair tied in a single bun — raises her hand.
"Oh, so that's why you paid so much and said so little!"
"It's not so much," the dirty blonde facing her cuts in.
"Okay, but, like, we usually clean up the nightmares and demons facing humanity, right? But this guy isn't a demon or anything, he's a real dude. And I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here: you didn't give too many details 'cause you don't know how or why he knows about magical girls, don't want the bastard finding us, right?"
"That's exactly right, Annette," Anne says. Nobody asked for two Annes, and yet…
"Okay, okay. You want us to hunt the hunters," Annette says.
"The Southern California Witches' Association wants us to apprehend or otherwise permanently deal with this individual, who has and remains capable of penetrating defensive and evasive spells and gunning down our peers, yes."
"You don't seem so worried. Neither do you," yes, you, "and you met him. Do you think he knew?"
"I don't know..." you reply.
"Well, we better figure out who this guy is and what he or the thing possessing him wants, right? Otherwise you're next on the cutting board, uh, um… I don't know anyone's names! What's your name." Annette asks flatly.
Date of birth: 05/17/09 (12 years old)
Magical girl since: 12/02/19
Appearance: Short, pale, brown-haired, kinda mousy... there are lots of pictures on the wall, but you don't want to be vain so you don't really look at them that much.
Motive: "You've always wanted to be a hero like in the stories...things didn't turn out exactly like how you expected, but you are now uncomfortably aware of how close disaster can strike your family. If you don't do it, who will?"
7/7 health
70/77 magic (+7 per turn)
31/35 lucidity (+5 per turn)
45/49 inspiration (+9 per turn)
Heroism (level 1/+5): You want to be a hero.
??? (?d10, +?): You know that you're especially good at magic, and this means something important. Unfortunately, you don't know what that is, so you can't gain a further edge from it.
More will be added as you learn more and discover more about yourself.
IDOLISATION (specialty: BONDS): Your magic's power is derived from society's beliefs, myths, legends and histories. Because of your desire to protect your family and closest friends, you've come to specialise in tales of legendary connections: people so close to others, they'll do anything for and anything with them.
Everything will be okay! (passive, illusion, ON, 1m+1l+1i base + 2m+1l+1i per target): A spell that makes others believe they're in a situation where everything is fine.
You tend to make most of these up on the fly, but you're really better than other people at doing that.
You have a bunch with your family, but those are irrelevant. You don't know any of these people, yet.
The de jure leader of your little field group. A member of the Southern California Witches' Association. In New York, you just have chatrooms, so you don't know who they are or what it does yet.
Serious, has almost no tolerance for her authority being belittled. She's in a group that doesn't seem to recognise it at all.
11/11 health
Our Love is God (level 2, Emilia di Napoli): Transfer up to 80% of your magic cost to your partner. + ???
RADIANCE (speciality: OUTSHINE): You don't fully understand this yet. Her powers are related to light, but you think they're weird and creepy.
A girl who is both too perceptive and too accepting of omissions and other suspicious things.
Motive: She wants ten thousand dollars. She tried to come off as super materialistic, but it didn't really work. You think she wants it to help someone with.
Haughty girl with the physique of a cheerleader, like she walked out of a teen drama. Was part of a failed sister organisation to Anne's. If things don't go her way, she's scared they'll fall apart.
Motive: To create an organisation of magical girls in the Pacific Northwest and cleanse America of filth.
12/12 health
RADIANCE (specialty unknown): She's similar to Anne in this way. Is that why she hates her?
Quiet, modest girl. On one hand, she's kind of gaunt and you think a wind could probably blow her over. On the other, she hasn't been completely drowned out by anyone else...
It was a gloomy evening. It would be Christmas break in about three weeks. You felt vaguely sick. It was your last year of elementary school, and your very best friend had told you that he was moving away for middle school. His parents had gotten a promotion, so they'd be going to the Czech Republic. He'd be enrolled in an international school or something, and when he completed all of the work there, he'd get a special certificate that would allow him to study anywhere in the world.
"And then I'll come back for you, okay?" he told you, and smiled. Well, he told all four of you that, but he looked right at you like he wanted to come back for you in particular or something! "We just need to work hard together."
What hurts the most now, remembering that conversation, is the way you coast along life with your natural talent. You're pretty decent at all of your classes and pretty terrible at studying, while your four friends are good to excellent at each and all of your classes and thorough and hardworking in general. North Hempstead is a comfortable place, and you come from such a loving and cherishing family, so you'll definitely be okay. But if you're just okay, you won't be able to keep everyone with you and reunite with all your friends at MIT. You'll drown in an abyss of white water, your body unmarked and alone.
Your thoughts certainly weren't so explicitly morbid back then, but you think it was the first time you felt such a whirlpool of desperation, hopelessness, jealousy. You were going to miss him so much, you were going to disappoint them all, you would never see any of them again once you turned 18...
You lived the furthest away from his house, already said goodbye to everyone else. December is cold and dark, even in a puffy jacket and a scarf.
You know the route home, right? And you're following it, so why aren't you there? Are you just being stupid and impatient and panicky? Petulant child. You'll just phone your parents, who have trusted you to make this route time and time again. You've totally failed them. Not like anything bad will happen to you or that they'll even be unhappy, just a little worried. And yet...
There's no signal? There's no signal. It's like human civilisation was nowhere to be found, which is weird, because there are a lot of people on Long Island.
It was like human civilisation was nowhere to be found. You fell. The shadows at the corner of your vision took everything over. You wanted to vomit. Something leapt at you, barreled you over. A dog licked your face. A crow pecked at your ears. Static filled your ears. You landed in black water.
Maybe that was your saving grace. Once, your dad (your dad!) told you about how there were lots of myths in apparently unrelated waters about a head god parting the waters beyond time. The waters told you, "Sinner, demiurge, what do you think you're doing?" How is a ten year old supposed to know what demiurge means, let alone answer back? How is water supposed to talk?
You looked up demiurge in the dictionary half a year later. You don't really get its relevance? You're twelve. You know why the water can talk now. It's the stuff nightmares are made of, the nightmares that intensify people's hatred, fear and spite to a breaking point alongside the things that feed off it.
You didn't answer that question, though. You picked up a shard of glass and started cutting randomly, splitting apart anything that crawled.
You woke up in your bed at 11pm. Your parents told you came in like usual and went to sleep early, but that didn't seem true, somehow? You got a weird text, though. 'Thanks for saving my life.'
The first weird text of many to come, on the first weird night of many to come.
Basic gameplay is like a normal quest, so I don't think we need to cover that. Vote for either X out of a list of options or a plan, depending on what options you get at the end of any given turn. I hope everything else is simple enough for anyone to follow after reading this full explanation.
You have four depletable stats: health, magic, lucidity and inspiration. Health and magic are self explanatory: how well you're doing, and how much magic you can cast before running out. Lucidity (how grounded you feel) and inspiration (how creative you feel) are stats tied to your willpower, and therefore your magical ability — your spells need magic and one or both of lucidity and inspiration to work! Magic, lucidity and inspiration regenerate every turn and are restored to full every day. Health is restored by half up to 75% of its maximum at the beginning of each day. It's probably advisable to heal after battles.
Each character has a number of aspects based on their history and magic, and a number of relationships to other characters. Aspects have a level and a modifier, while relationships just have a level. Levels are always positive, and have no theoretical limit, modifiers can be negative or positive.
You're chasing a killer through dreams and reality, and therefore have to deal with challenges from both. Challenges are bouts taking place within a turn between two groups with opposite aims, and happen when an action is contested. For magical girls, actions are contested when taken against other people or magical forces, and uncontested in all other cases. For example, if you knew what spell you'd need to cast to do it, you'd be able to crack the most secure encryption in the world easily, as long as no other person interacted with the file before you finished casting it!
The real world is messy, opaque and arbitrary. Challenges relating to the real world use dice: by default, both sides roll a 3d10. If a character has an aspect directly related to the action they're undertaking or a relationship with a character involved in that action, they gain or lose a number of dice equal to the level that aspect or relationship is and a bonus equal to the strength of an aspect's modifier, if applicable. Every vote applies a hidden modifier to your rolls revealed at the end of the challenge. Votes to use magic have a known modifier on top of this hidden modifier, so make sure the spells you cast are appropriate to the situation!
The dream world is the world of everyone's desires. Challenges relating to the real world use points: by default, both sides get 15 points. If a character has an aspect directly related to the action they're undertaking, they gain a number of points equivalent to its modifier. Depending on the nature and level of the relationship two characters have with each other, they will gain or lose (10 x relationship level) points. Votes that do not use magic cannot apply a modifier to your rolls.
In the vast majority of cases, the highest roll wins the challenge and the highest number of points win the challenge.
Generally, encounters in the real world use dice while most magical battles and encounters in the dream world use points. A slight majority of challenges use dream world rules, but the set of rules that apply always depends on the situation. After all, some moments in the real world feel illusionary, and some nightmares are just too vivid.
You start with three lives. You only lose a life when you run out of health. If you run out of magic, you won't be able to fight on and all of your passive spells will immediate break and need to be reactivated manually, but you don't experience any other adverse consequences. If you run out of lucidity or inspiration you will become unable to use spells that expend them and experience a mental break, limiting the options you can take until the respective stat has healed back to at least half its maximum.
If you lose a life, you can choose to be reset to the beginning of the current combat scenario and any previous event on the same day will be reset to the beginning of the current day.
Stats, aspects and challenges are abstractions that don't exist in character, obviously. What does exist in character are things you know about other people. You know all of your stats, aspects and relationships and the health of all six of your teammates. You do not know their current levels of magic, lucidity, or inspiration. Learning how to read levels of magic is much, much easier than learning how to read levels of inspiration.
Aspects and relationships represent character traits and backstory. If you don't know certain things about a character trait, certain parts of the aspect it represents will not be revealed until discovered in character; this means certain aspects may work entirely differently than expected.
Hi, I'm Cordova, but you can call me Cordelia, Delia, Lia, or something. I've been using lots of names lately.
I haven't GMed anything for basically forever, and I don't think I've GMed a quest in forever. In this game, you play as a magical girl as part of a team meant to chase down and capture a serial killer of magical girls. Seems simple? Well, I want to run something that has a simple concept, but becomes deeper as you play it, and isn't too easy. I hope you enjoy it, and that everything's clear.
Feel free to ask any question you need to, although I won't necessarily answer it. The first few updates should be every day or two days, but if things get lengthy we'll move to every Thursday.
First vote. Choose one option from each and every category, filling in the write-ins as necessary. I wrote a lot of flavour text, so you probably just want to copy the bold parts. What's your name?
[X] Write-in.
How old are you?
[X] 12: Too young to be thrown into the mystical line of fire? Probably, but for whatever reason, somebody thought you were old enough to be sent here. Lots of people condescend to you, but because of that they probably won't give you lots of trouble. [X] 15: In the middle of your teenage years. About the average age for a magical girl. [X] 18: The age of majority in the so-called sane and stable world (a world you can never fully ignore or run away from…), but older than many of your peers in the enchanting and ethereal world.
What difficulty are you playing on?Oh, you can't choose this? [X] Normal: A normal and everyday quest experience. If you die, we keep going until we finish the story, which is to say you have infinite respawns.
[X] Hard: A little harder than usual. You'll have to expend some effort keeping everyone alive and happy. You have seven lives -- isn't that a lucky number? [X] Challenging: 'Please keep both hands on the wheel at all times.' If everyone you care about makes it through this mission, either I'm being more lenient than I promised to be, or you're correcting your mistakes immediately. You have five lives. [X] Nightmare: Your dearest reality disappears under the sea of black water at the foot of an insurmountable peak. You have three lives.
How strong is your relationship with your family?
[X] Terrible: You are going to cut these people off as soon as possible. [X] Okay: They're your family. You love them, and they love you. [X] Devoted: You're your family's golden child, and they'd do anything for you. They fret about you a lot.
How talented are you at magic?
[X] Not very: You're a trainwreck who has no idea what she's doing. You hope you still have lots of potential, though. [X] Kinda?: You are nothing special, but neither are most of your peers. [X] Very: People see you as particularly good. They ask you for tips to help them improve and get jealous of you. [X] Incredibly: You're once in a generation!
For how long have you been a magical girl?
[X] Two weeks: You're a greenhorn, an initiate, a novitiate, a… you get the point. [X] Six months: You've been crushing evil in the name of good for some time. [X] Eighteen months: You've lasted long enough to realise that eighteen months doesn't actually make you a veteran.
What kind of magic do you use?
[X] Idolisation: There's a mass of myths, legends and histories about frightening prodigies and people with an overbearing innate spark which blots out everyone else's aspirations. If you ritualistically reenact their most famous feats, then you can capture a fraction of their power. Or so they say. (jack of all trades, as long as someone's done it before) [X] Radiance: You've always thought that the only way to have your wishes bestowed upon you is by shining brighter than everyone else, whether through the glow of your magical barrage or through the smiles your presence puts on everyone's faces. (light-based offensive magic, strong social presence, interference with other magic-users) [X] Reversal: Something about the values of this world is deeply repugnant to you, something about you is deeply repugnant to the world. Maybe the world's corrupt, maybe you're corrupt, but for whatever reason, your magic makes your values reality and turns everything around you upside-down. (delay on the operation of common sense and law, anti-social presence but you can turn lies into truth, interference with other magic-users) [X] Contracts: The grass is always greener on the other side, and you've always felt out of place and dissatisfied. You're willing to sign your life away to be happier, really, so sign away your life you did. Now you have some fraction of some form of otherworldly power. The more you sacrifice protecting that world, the more power you'll be able to use to remain happy. (emotional manipulation + time-space warping, more powerful magic but it leeches your mental and physical health) [X] Calculation: You're kind of fragile — a little bit asthmatic, a little bit anemic, a little bit sun-deprived. You don't even have the increased strength or ability to do physical feats that most magical girls have! However, you are better than most people at 'working things out', nerd. (strong intuition, speciality in magical theory, information gathering, something that looks like precognition.)
Why did you even accept this mission?
[X] Write-in
Adhoc vote count started by RandyTrevelyan on Aug 26, 2021 at 7:11 AM, finished with 23 posts and 16 votes.
[x] Ellie Ward [x] 18: The age of majority in the so-called sane and stable world (a world you can never fully ignore or run away from…), but older than many of your peers in the enchanting and ethereal world. [x] Terrible: You are going to cut these people off as soon as possible. [x] Very: People see you as particularly good. They ask you for tips to help them improve and get jealous of you. [x] Eighteen months: You've lasted long enough to realise that eighteen months doesn't actually make you a veteran. [x] Reversal: Something about the values of this world is deeply repugnant to you, something about you is deeply repugnant to the world. Maybe the world's corrupt, maybe you're corrupt, but for whatever reason, your magic makes your values reality and turns everything around you upside-down. (delay on the operation of common sense and law, anti-social presence but you can turn lies into truth, interference with other magic-users) [x] Your magic is a dangerous thing, and you feel the need to make some difference with it. You need affirmation that you aren't the one who is in the wrong.
[X] Elizabeth Brooks [X] 12: Too young to be thrown into the mystical line of fire? Probably, but for whatever reason, somebody thought you were old enough to be sent here. Lots of people condescend to you, but because of that they probably won't give you lots of trouble. [X] Nightmare: Your dearest reality disappears under the sea of black water at the foot of an insurmountable peak. You have three lives. [X] Devoted: You're your family's golden child, and they'd do anything for you. They fret about you a lot. [X] Incredibly: You're once in a generation! [x] Eighteen months: You've lasted long enough to realise that eighteen months doesn't actually make you a veteran. [X] Idolisation: There's a mass of myths, legends and histories about frightening prodigies and people with an overbearing innate spark which blots out everyone else's aspirations. If you ritualistically reenact their most famous feats, then you can capture a fraction of their power. Or so they say. (jack of all trades, as long as someone's done it before)
[X] You've always wanted to be a hero like in the stories...things didn't turn out exactly like how you expected, but you are now uncomfortably aware of how close disaster can strike your family. If you don't do it, who will?
[X] Nayna Vesuvius
[X] 15
[X] Nightmare
[X] Terrible
[X] Very [X] Six months
[X] Contracts [X] Recently, you've been learning just dangerous the world is. For yourself, your loved ones, and everyone else. So if you can save other girls, it's worth putting yourself in danger.
[X] Michelle Broussard
[X] 15
[X] Terrible
[X] Kinda
[X] Two weeks
[X] Radiance
[X] You never was close with your parents. You spent more times on the streets or the homes of like-minded friends. Bit of a weird behavior for a 15-year old. But hey, everyday's an adventure. Better then being with your mom. (Dad always came home late.)
[X] Carol Merlo
[X] 18
[X] Terrible
[X] Very
[X] Two weeks
[X] Contracts
[X] Becoming a Magical Girl was the best thing that had ever happened to you. You'll be damned if you let a serial killer put a stop to it!
[X] Nayna Vesuvius [X] 15: In the middle of your teenage years. About the average age for a magical girl. [X] Nightmare: Your dearest reality disappears under the sea of black water at the foot of an insurmountable peak. You have three lives. [X] Okay: They're your family. You love them, and they love you. [X] Kinda?: You are nothing special, but neither are most of your peers. [X] Six months: You've been crushing evil in the name of good for some time. [X] Idolisation: There's a mass of myths, legends and histories about frightening prodigies and people with an overbearing innate spark which blots out everyone else's aspirations. If you ritualistically reenact their most famous feats, then you can capture a fraction of their power. Or so they say. (jack of all trades, as long as someone's done it before) [X] Recently, you've been learning just dangerous the world is. For yourself, your loved ones, and everyone else. So if you can save other girls, it's worth putting yourself in danger.
[X] Mora Derringer
[X] 18 [X] Okay
[X] Kinda [X] Six months [X] Reversal [X] How could you sleep at night knowing your friends are being targeted by a maniac? Plus, the ten thousand in cash is definitely alluring for you with college coming up.
[X] Nayna Vesuvius [X] 12: Too young to be thrown into the mystical line of fire? Probably, but for whatever reason, somebody thought you were old enough to be sent here. Lots of people condescend to you, but because of that they probably won't give you lots of trouble. [X] Nightmare: Your dearest reality disappears under the sea of black water at the foot of an insurmountable peak. You have three lives. [X] Devoted: You're your family's golden child, and they'd do anything for you. They fret about you a lot. [X] Incredibly: You're once in a generation! [x] Eighteen months: You've lasted long enough to realise that eighteen months doesn't actually make you a veteran. [X] Idolisation: There's a mass of myths, legends and histories about frightening prodigies and people with an overbearing innate spark which blots out everyone else's aspirations. If you ritualistically reenact their most famous feats, then you can capture a fraction of their power. Or so they say. (jack of all trades, as long as someone's done it before)
4 votes for Ellie Ward, 4 votes for Elizabeth Brooks but there's a vote for the name Nayna but with a vote for Elizabeth Brooks. I really want to get this show on the road, so I'm going to close voting here and say the Elizabeth Brooks plan won, unless there are any major objections?
EDIT: Writing info into the reserved posts before writing the update, which should be up Friday evening. Your GM should sleep more. Or less?
[X] Elizabeth Brooks
[X] 12
[X] Nightmare
[X] Devoted
[X] Incredibly
[x] Eighteen months
[X] Idolisation
[X] You've always wanted to be a hero like in the stories...things didn't turn out exactly like how you expected, but you are now uncomfortably aware of how close disaster can strike your family. If you don't do it, who will?
"It's Elly Brooks."
Annette nods. "Is that your legal name?" You pause.
"No, that's Elizabeth, uh, Mitchelle, Brooks."
"I wasn't asking for your middle name. Can we call you Lizzie? We already have a name that's E, two consonants, I-E."
"Nobody calls me Lizzie."
"Perhaps you should be worrying about how to distinguish yourself from Mrs Kathavarayan over here," a taller blonde girl facing Annette says.
"I'm not that old, Heather," Anne says, as if uttering Heather would bring eternal misfortune on the seven of you.
"You're clearly married," Heather replies. You think back to the text message that lured you here. Getting something to eat at Barnaby's to build rapport. Getting something to eat at Barnaby's before discussing your eminent demise at the hands of a serial killer with a specific hatred for magical girls.
"I'd imagine that we'd be less touchy after marrying."
"You'd be an old hag by then! You'd spend all of your time studying the darkest of—"
"Shut up." The voice comes from Anne and Emmy's right, your left: the older and less gloomy one of the two quieter girls you think are about your age. "Shouko wants to say something."
Shouko is the wispy Asian girl behind you. Is the other girl just a telepath or does she know her? If they knew each other, you think they'd make a pair kind of similar to Anne and Emmy's. Anne and girl 7, last to be named, stronger, more confident, more awake, Emmy and Shouko perpetually tired, not so physically strong, smaller. Everyone turns to Shouko. She looks at her plate of melted ice cream.
"...We're not going to be very good at this if we hate each other, right?"
You briefly look back to your front. Anne nods. Heather smiles. Emmy isn't really paying attention. You turn back to Shouko.
"We won't hate each other." You smile as well. You hope you're being more genuine than Heather.
"That's good." Shouko doesn't really smile back at you.
"I'm not so sure, really," Heather replies. "There are lots of good reasons to hate Anne."
"Nobody asked," you snap back.
"Ooooh, you'll be asking me for a full list of later, please trust me."
"Why are you even here?"
"To cleanse the American continent of filth and prove myself capable of constructing an army of magical girls from Portland to Seattle, transcending the petty meandering of other groups."
Annette turns to Anne, asks "why did you even invite this girl."
Heather snaps back with a "and why did you show up?", which you think is dumb because Annette didn't even ask the question, you did.
"Because I want ten thousand dollars."
"You'd die for just ten thousand dollars?"
"Lots of people would die for just ten thousand dollars. People who need to send money over the ocean, people who can't pay for hospital bills..."
"And no higher goal?"
"Nope, don't need one."
Shouko nudges you. "And we won't hate each other?"
"I'll make sure of it."
Heather kind of laughs at Annette, then gets up. You cast a dampening spell to get rid of the... strange... adverse consequences of letting normal people learn about magical affairs. (-3 magic) "Very interesting! What about Anne? The crowd has so many questions for you—"
"I invited you because you're a genuinely powerful magician, and despite or maybe because of your myriad personal flaws, you're willing to take weird risks with no clear immediate reward."
"No, ah... that wasn't the question. The question was 'why are you here,' you and not any other magical girl from Southern California? And stop petting Emmy's hair, it annoys me!"
"You annoy me, and I haven't said anything..." girl 7 says, looking up past the pat pat pat of Anne's hand on Emmy's hair at Heather.
"I don't even know your name!"
"Carla Dryden."
"Heather van Buren at your service! You don't really annoy me. Well, you didn't..."
Apparently, Carla had kept a dessert menu, disposable compared to the laminated main menu. You realise this when she throws a paper airplane at Heather and it misses and hits Emmy's head. Anne seems more annoyed by this than by Heather's constant provocations, but composes herself. Not that she looked very decomposed. Discomposed? You're too old for vocab tests.
"I'm not friends with anyone killed by this person, so I'm not immediately vulnerable to emotional attacks."
"What do you mean, emotional attacks?" Heather asks. Emmy replies.
"She means that she'd like you to shut up so she can fully explain the situation."
Heather obliges and slides back into her chair. Anne gets up, drops Emmy on her chair, and stands behind her, leaning against it. She finally starts to debrief.
"As you probably know, magic is some reflection of human creativity."
"With the exception of girls whose powers derive from otherworld contracts instead of their own ability," Emmy says. You realise this explanation is going to go around in a duet. "You have so much ability, Emmy..."
"It taps into the thoughts and memories of not only its users but those living around them. It's the precise inverse of the techniques of our enemies, the 'nightmares' that bring humanity to its lowest point, the demons that feed on human misery and the spirits that use human conflicts for their own purposes." The spirits aren't usually classed alongside the demons; does she hate girls who make contracts or something?
"In Europe and the Americas, the usage of magic is largely confined to young women."
"In the past, these young women were often hated and despised by wider culture. Take the Salem witch trials for an example everyone knows..." Your mentor, a girl you saved without realising about a year and a half ago, taught you that girls who had enough time to waste studying these things were relatively certain that those trials were a mundane affair, although others were not.
"Today, we mostly get by due to obscurity. You'd seem insane if you saw magic and went running around telling others about it." ...don't they know about feedback?
"Mostly."
"People under the influence of demons, spirits and waking nightmares demonstrate some awareness of the existence of magic, but those people aren't very lucid, and forget about it entirely afterwards. Our target, on the other hand, has killed four girls in their sleep and five girls while they're engaged in combat, with the first killings in early April."
"How do we know they've been killed by the same person? 'Cause they've all been killed with the same method, an enchanted knife."
"Our gathering accomplishes two things. It creates a strong force of magical girls able to protect each other and magical girls across Los Angeles while sleeping or fending off the evils afflicting humanity, and it creates either an attractive target or a deterrent. Do you have that down?"
Everyone is silent for a second.
(Between closing the vote and writing this update, I also put some useful information in the reserved posts on the first page. Please check them out. If there's anything that isn't clear, feel free to ask or complain! Sorry for the delay. Reposted because I forgot to turn on voting...)
Vote for one response from the list given or a single write-in. Theoretically, a write-in can include as many questions as you want. Given how cohesive this group is, you suspect someone will interrupt you if you ask too many questions too quickly or say too much. Don't go for more than two?
Assent [X] Remain silent
[X] "Yeah."
Decent questions [X] "How did you get the photograph from earlier?"
[X] "How is the knife enchanted? Can this guy use magic?"
[X] "Are the girls killed related to each other? What about to the South Cali Witches' Federation?" (...is it even called that?)
Questions that give you interesting answers? [X] "Heather, you got awfully quiet awfully quickly...?"
[X] "Wait, earlier you said that people would seem crazy if they tried to tell people about magic, but letting people know about magic causes them to be infested by nightmares? In New York, at least."
[X] "What's your problem with spirits? I know plenty of girls with contracts and nothing too bad has happened to them..."
An interesting way to introduce the characters. It took me a while to remember who is who, but now I can almost differentiate them by tone, and there is only a single paragraph spent on their descriptions, if that.
I was expecting everyone to only pick one set of questions or a write-in, but what you actually did is intuitive and makes more sense. I'll be reading the vote as follows.
[X] "Yeah."
If everyone else is in agreement, you're in agreement.
[7] "How is the knife enchanted? Can this guy use magic?"
[4] "Wait, earlier you said that people would seem crazy if they tried to tell people about magic, but letting people know about magic causes them to be infested by nightmares? In New York, at least."
You'll definitely try to mention these things.
[3] "Cities are full of cars with at least 3 mirrors a piece. He has to be caught in one or two as he goes thru the day. Can't we work some sort of scrying spell and connect it to a map and the picture to pinpoint his routes or places he frequents thru the city?
[3] "Are the girls killed related to each other? What about to the South Cali Witches' Federation?" (...is it even called that?)
[3] "Could this guy be linked to some anti-magic organization? Would explain how he got the knife, if he can't use magic himself, and how he's not been caught so far if he's got people in high places pulling the strings for him."
These questions ring in the back of your mind. If they come up, they come up, if they don't, you're out of luck.
[2] "How did you get the photograph from earlier?"
[1] "He killed multiple girls in combat. Do we know if they in combat with him or did he sneak up on them while they were fighting the normal stuff?"
You probably won't remember to ask this.
Probably shouldn't start writing so late. Update up tomorrow. I hope I can make the delay between closing votes and writing shorter in the future... STOP MAKING PROMISES YOU'RE TOO FRAUGHT TO KEEP
