Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]

[quantum lurker]

So a semantic difference in interpretation on both our end then I see. (Quantity Vs Quality)

on purpose

Click to shrink...

I guess it read more uncontrolled to me in that sense of Overgrowth not having enough Integrity to counterbalance?

(Though I've been wondering about the degree we can quote specific text from Nero's Sidestory to analyse beyond the spirit or general idea - surely Saaya doesn't have Pattern Spider Touch?)

 

[Quine]

Hoy, I actually wasn't wrong about Saaya having used her powers before. Someone else did think I was wrong and they actually managed to convince me that my suspicions about it were unfounded.

But as it turns out..... Saaya knew what she did.
She'd knowingly tried to use psionics to break stuff before her standoff with Amu - it just didn't result in reality completely breaking to the point of letting in demons that time. So she did know (or suspected) that she'd contributed to making the rift.

And boy, do I regret letting myself get gaslit into doubting my own initial reading of that.

What I didn't guess was exactly how mentally broken Saaya was, to the extent that the Humpty Lock was needed to keep her mind together. So my initial idea getting her to move her ass and contribute in order to take her mind off blaming herself would, in hindsight, not have been enough to salvage the situation.... but that's only with the benefit of hindsight.

Click to shrink...

Your theory was "she's seen rifts before, and seen them go away". You wanted to grill her about how they go away. Turns out, that would have been a waste of time.

The argument back then wasn't about whether she'd used her powers before. I argued that the "she's seen rifts before" inference was built on a weak foundation, and that it would be a bad idea to vote based on the assumption that it was correct.

Then you made a faulty inference that Saaya had never used her powers before, based on one of Baughn's comments. No one gaslit you into that. You considered the possibility that she'd lashed out at inanimate objects, but deemed it improbable:

I can go as far as to tell you that yes, Saaya's reaction does seem oddly muted, right? However, I wouldn't assume that means she'd ever attacked anyone else. Or, really, that she was trying to here.

Click to shrink...

....This is about as close as it gets to a confirmation that it was her first time, without outright calling it a confirmation. And also suggests that Nero's guess about her reaction being muted due to unnaturally high resistances (apparently higher than Amu's) is apparently the right one.

The only other interpretation I can see of that (that doesn't involve you trying to mislead by saying "don't assume" when the assumption was right) is that she HAS lashed out with her powers before, but just not at things that could be considered "anyone".... and I somehow don't feel that's likely at this point (though, not quite with enough confidence to dismiss it entirely).

Click to shrink...

 

[PistachioCookies]

Your theory was "she's seen rifts before, and seen them go away". You wanted to grill her about how they go away. Turns out, that would have been a waste of time.

The argument back then wasn't about whether she'd used her powers before. I argued that the "she's seen rifts before" inference was built on a weak foundation, and that it would be a bad idea to vote based on the assumption that it was correct.

Then you made a faulty inference that Saaya had never used her powers before, based on one of Baughn's comments. No one gaslit you into that. You considered the possibility that she'd lashed out at inanimate objects, but deemed it improbable:

Click to shrink...

Excuse me.

The exact vote I made was for this:

Secondly, you said 'it's not gone'. That means you've seen something like this before and it usually goes away. Does that mean you've seen something like this before and it usually goes away? Do you know what usually makes it go away?"

Click to shrink...

You might notice that I concurred in assuming she'd seen a rift before was jumping the gun and crossed out that section. Instead, I stuck to questioning and though she might not have seen the rift before, she DID see herself erase a chunk of her room and the effects of her own power before.

That counts as "something like this".

Finally, I also direct you to this part of my own quote that you just quoted:

(though, not quite with enough confidence to dismiss it entirely).

Click to shrink...

I did not dismiss the idea.

The inference that Saaya had never used her powers was not one originally made by me. It was made by someone else who had potential inside information and yes, the QM's comments did play a part in swaying my confidence about my initial theory.

If you don't like the word "gaslit" being used to describe that situation, you can replace it in your mind with whatever phrase you like.

But for the love of god, please don't pretend it was just me suddenly convincing myself away from my initial theory with no other external stimulus.

That WOULD be gaslighting.

 

[quantum lurker]

It would appear that you two are talking past each other:
Pistachio prefers to come up with plausible theories and take it as far as they can with the given evidence, while Quine prefers to not assume stuff without fairly solid evidence and to go with the default options when in doubt.

It's just preferences at the end of the day, as long as we are careful enough to not let it creep into voting without good reason, and also careful not to present speculation as anything other than what it is (which is harder).
Both attitudes are important for us as players, since being able to pursue one line of reasoning deeply is an important skill in trying to go for better endings, and knowing when said reasoning may be lying on faulty grounds is good since not every gamble will pay off?

---

I wonder what you guys think of why the number of timelines is less than Science will predict in the Informational Post?
(I also wonder why Ragged Crossroads has the "can't see what actually happened" limitation here given it is likely keying off the Many Worlds Hypothesis but for the past?)

As for more currently relevant speculation, I wonder what's in Kana's Shadow, given the clues we have from this update, the Ragged Crossroads invokes from last time, and the stuff from our first time(s) meeting Kana? Might be able to add this to the current vote if we figure something out solidly enough and all.

 

[PistachioCookies]

It's just preferences at the end of the day, as long as we are careful enough to not let it creep into voting without good reason, and also careful not to present speculation as anything other than what it is (which is harder).

Click to shrink...

....By the way, about that, the main reasons I bumped those other theories down my list were:

1. Point in favor - Naomi is known to be controlling and hostile to strangers. Points against - There's been absolutely no sign of Naomi being anywhere around this place. The only reason this is a theory at all is because Naomi is the only one we currently know with the personality for it (Dreamwalking skill is not an issue, it's assumed if Naomi wanted to do this, she would've browbeaten Yui into doing it for her).

2. Exact opposite problem, Yui doesn't have the personality for it. She's not Naomi, "sudden insanity" is literally the only way she would think of doing something like this, which sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud. Also, the vote to try calling the "real Yui" didn't immediately find her and apparently wouldn't have even burning WP, strongly indicating she's not here. It's possible that she was simply further away than Kana and is now following in pursuit, but.... the likelihood doesn't seem high.

3. Meta reason against - Manticore are supposed to be out of Amu's weight class. Have doubts the QM would throw us against them at this point. In-story reason - if they were in an actual Manticore lab, the place probably wouldn't be called "Abandoned" Laboratory. Since if they were being experimented on there.... it's not abandoned.

4. Point for - there's nothing that says Manticore couldn't have done this or didn't have the capability for it. Point against - there's nothing that says that they did or have the capability to. It doesn't offer any explanation for why the domain is tearing itself apart or the Akane name thing either. You'd have to make whole-cloth assumptions about the actions, disposition and capabilities of this hypothetical construct to explain those things. This theory is plausible, it's just not much of a theory.

5. This would require Manticore to have demon summoning capabilties. While it isn't strictly impossible, nothing of what we learned of Manticore indicates they have that kind of capability. In fact, meta-wise, we know in the original plan, Manticore would have called JP's to help deal with them. If Manticore had demon summoning capability, it seems unlikely they would've needed to call for JP's to help clean up the mess.

6. One of the 2 most likely ones here. As mentioned, the reason I bumped it lower is because Normal Kana wouldn't make much of an opponent for Amu. "Normal" non-Shadow Kana means we're talking about Ms. "Let's Be Friends" who first met Amu. Would probably be mostly reasonable and not immediately attack Amu on sight. Any brainwashing she might be under seems too easily breakable given Amu's direct access to Kana's mind.

7. The other of the 2 most likely ones. This one is basically a variant of the "transplanted Shadow" theory, as it still boils down to having 2 Shadows occupying the same cognitive space, ripping each other apart. The only difference is that the other Shadow would've come from Kana instead of being completely foreign. Between some (botched) soul surgery splitting a Shadow into 2 versus the idea of transplanting another Shadow wholesale into a different body, I feel like the transplant idea offers a better explaination for the hostility between the occupants. For the split-shadow theory to work, it would basically have to be that one of the halves is uncontrollably aggressive for no other reason than "because it is". Not impossible, as Shadows are not exactly known for their sanity, it just seems like a cop-out from a narrative perspective.

8. Meta knowledge tells us the Scavengers were meant to mirror Amu's capabilities and Amu doesn't have Astral Projection naturally. For this one to be the case, Kana would need to be good at Astral Projection, so she'd have 2 areas of strength - Mind Control and Astral Projection. Possible, but that would seem kinda stacked and not in line with what we've been told about them.

 

[Quine]

8. Meta knowledge tells us the Scavengers were meant to mirror Amu's capabilities and Amu doesn't have Astral Projection naturally. For this one to be the case, Kana would need to be good at Astral Projection, so she'd have 2 areas of strength - Mind Control and Astral Projection. Possible, but that would seem kinda stacked and not in line with what we've been told about them.

Click to shrink...

Not sure what role "Amu doesn't have Astral Projection naturally" is supposed to play here. Astral Projection is on Amu's character sheet with exactly as many dots as Thermokinesis, that being 0, and we already know Naomi mirrors Amu's 0-dot Thermokinesis.

It's also pretty likely that Aoi has multiple strengths - Clairvoyance and Precognition - though those are much closer thematically than Mind Control and Astral Projection.

That said, I consider this to be an unlikely hypothesis too, though not for the same reasons as you. I just don't see much support for it.

6. One of the 2 most likely ones here. As mentioned, the reason I bumped it lower is because Normal Kana wouldn't make much of an opponent for Amu. "Normal" non-Shadow Kana means we're talking about Ms. "Let's Be Friends" who first met Amu. Would probably be mostly reasonable and not immediately attack Amu on sight. Any brainwashing she might be under seems too easily breakable given Amu's direct access to Kana's mind.

Click to shrink...

Normal Kana might not be much of an opponent, but I don't think whatever is coming was supposed to be a serious threat. Amu and Utau alone were already considered heavily overleveled for this place, even before bringing in heavy hitters like Naoto and Hikaru (who's probably still incoming, by the way).

Personally, I think if Normal Kana is coming, she's probably not completely lucid. She's likely to be heavily stressed, and/or fog-drunk.

 

[PistachioCookies]

Personally, I think if Normal Kana is coming, she's probably not completely lucid. She's likely to be heavily stressed, and/or fog-drunk.

Click to shrink...

One thing I'm suspicious about is that Kana has a known penchant for.... well I won't say "random" violence, but has a temper that makes her abruptly feel like crushing people's brains without too much thinking.

The current Shadow does not exhibit that personality. The Kana that Amu knows is friendly on the surface, so "normal" Kana (or small p persona Kana) is probably the "friendly" one too.

So the question is- where is the representation of the psycho side? The one that has the hair-trigger mind-crush temper?

It's possible it's a hidden side to Shadow Kana, possibly if the Shadow bulks up.

But Shadow Kana's just has mentioned a "her" who is mad, which makes me think that the killer personality isn't the Shadow's flip side, it's the one that's incoming.

If the incoming pursuer is a facet of Kana and not a third-party, I feel it's going to be the serial-killer-Kana representation. Whether that comes in the form of an ax-crazy "normal" Kana, a cognition or other construct, or another Shadow, I have no clue.

 

[quantum lurker]

....By the way, about that, the main reasons I bumped those other theories down my list were:

Click to shrink...

1: Is Naomi known to have a Dark/Light Immunity? If yes then maybe, if no then I guess not?

2. All that was actually stated was "don't burn WP if you don't want disasters": Could be that Yui is in too many fragments to call here properly right now (why does a random Shadow have Yui mind shards again?), could be that Yui was sealed in a metaphorical box with Kana's last efforts before she succumbed, many other possibilities without further facts to narrow it down?

As for the personality thing...

'Shattered whispers of a promise, lingering in silence.'

Click to shrink...

Could be 50% ran out of medicine, 50% trapping Kana here so she doesn't suffer the same fate as the rest after they broke a promise to always come back after doing something dangerous, 50% mutant third option?

3. Counterpoint: "Call JPs/escalated enough that JPs came in" is a reason I can absolutely use to justify throwing Manticore at us?
I don't think it likely either mind, but if we want to go meta than "I don't want Naoto and the Investigation Team by proxy to be thrown in Manticore's direction that early" would also be a decent reason against that happening, considering Baughn knows the thread isn't exactly risk-happy by now?

4. If they have that much skill, I imagine Hikawa is about to get some heavyweight competition? Trial-and-erroring Soul Surgery into success eventually is already a lot, being able to do this intentionally even with heavy drawbacks/only working on children is something else entirely.

5. While meta-wise the plan could have just changed because of crossover, I don't think it's a thing, because that would be way, way too easy to defeat?
Also, Baughn wouldn't say following Naoto's lead has a ineffective Utau/Amu, since I doubt she'd prioritise fighting a Shadow over a literal Demon, and I doubt said Demon also has Dark/Light Immunity?

6. *Gestures in the direction of Persona Memes*
I do not want to find out what Mind Crush feels like, but sadly that's probably going to be in our near future?

7. Maybe, I guess?

8. Uh, that means that 1) Kana casually Mind Controls Naoto and co to a fairly invasive extent, and 2) She must have all the Astral Projection dots to maintain that Projection for that long?
I find this really unlikely, this lies on a mountain of implied assumptions.

---

I'm still writing the second half of my post, but in the meantime:

The current Shadow does not exhibit that personality.

Click to shrink...

I don't think Kana exactly rejects her Murder Out side of things? I do think that Kana may reject her timid/hesitant side because she wants/wanted to burn it out, which I think still fits with Shadow!Kana's displayed personality so far.

 

[PistachioCookies]

8. Uh, that means that 1) Kana casually Mind Controls Naoto and co to a fairly invasive extent, and 2) She must have all the Astral Projection dots to maintain that Projection for that long?
I find this really unlikely, this lies on a mountain of implied assumptions.

Click to shrink...

You mean Naomi and co. (not Naoto)? Might not necessarily need any Mind Control or memory alteration, could be they all know she's actually a Projection and just haven't told Amu. Amu doesn't know how Kana's name is actually spelt after all, even after mind melding with her.

But yeah, not likely. The theory would posit that the reason Kana needs to watch Yui while she sleeps is because Kana needs to "reapply" her powers at that point and Yui would disappear when sleeping if she didn't. Still sounds like stretch, of course.

 

[quantum lurker]

While we are on the topic of assumptions, and taking 1000 steps back (please correct me if I am wrong, and help me add items to this list comprehensively):

We know these facts right now:
1a) Whatever Aoi was talking about was only intended to last at maximum one week. Given Aoi is implied to be a Precog, this statement holds more weight than usual. It is implied that Aoi didn't want Amu around because what was upcoming was something serious, but we don't know what exactly said something is.
She may also be a decent Precog, because rain is not a high impact event, even if she was predicting something in the short future (5 minutes out or so)?
1b) Obviously, Aoi did not see Demons coming, given Precog limitations and given that I'm pretty sure she'd have mentioned it if she did.

2a) Amu become a public figure of interest after the Rift incident, and thus those interested about Amu could easily find out about it if they were inclined so; especially given the reporters about Amu's house.
2b) The Scavengers have been historically avoiding publicity, for good reasons.

"Kana's older sister, or so I'm told," Naomi said, raising an eyebrow. "She's talked about you a lot, and I wanted to see who this mystery girl was. Plus, you see, she seems smitten, and you never know, right? Better to be safe than sorry."

Click to shrink...

"Do you mind if I ask her about it?" Aoi asked.

"I don't, but," Amu said, and stopped, unsure.

"Yes?" Aoi prompted.

"Why not ask me? I'm right here," Amu said, and then flushed.

"Because," Aoi said, "It's nearly ten. And unlike us, you have school tomorrow. So, why don't you head home? I'll have a word with Kana."

Click to shrink...

3a) Amu went in a one and a half week coma, and no one from Scavengers attempted to obviously contact her in the meantime that we know of. (Kana's phone was turned off or blocking Amu's number or unreachable by cell signal; we do not know when this started.)
3b) The Scavengers as a whole can be assumed to know Amu's house's location and possibly Amu's phone number as well, not just Kana, if they wanted to reach out to her in that way.
3c) It can be reasonably assumed that the Scavengers know of Amu's abilities and, uh, veterancies with violence and experiments; although it is also known that they don't want to involve Amu with whatever happened then. Depending on what exactly Kana/Amu told them, they may be aware of Utau's/Hikaru's/Tadase's abilities as well?

4a) In the Scavenger house/hiding place (which may be one of many), only Kana and Yui could be detected by the 3 dot Empathy + Key Psionic user. (Note that it is theoretically possible that the rest couldn't be detected because they are hidden better somehow, but I don't know how likely that is?)
4b) With the examples we know of so far, only Immunity to Dark/Light can shield one from Empathy - does the rest of the Scavengers have that OOC?

"Which is why Naomi teaches us at home,"

Click to shrink...

4c) Given how they typically spend large amounts of time in this house, the present state of the house cannot have been not noticed by the rest of the gang, if they were in a state that allows for such noticing then.

5) The Scavengers were experimented upon by Manticore, Naomi pretended to be on the scientist's side for a while, and after a currently-unknown breaking point Kana killed people to escape with her friends still inside. (Some unknown number of Kana's friends have died inside the labaratory, that is presumably now abandoned)
6) Naomi has missing medicine (and Naoto doesn't currently know what said medicine is for).
7) Something of Yui is spread all around this Shadow Castle, athough what and how much is currently an unknown, and also whether there are any other Scavengers mixed into that.
8) This place is unstable for some reason.
9) The more Shadows we defeat or otherwise deal with, the less Fog is present in this area and the more of the regular house is brought back.
10) There was no obvious sign of searching or struggle in the house, and probably no abandonment considering the medicine and sentimental objects still present.

Her hand twitched towards her waist. She wasn't holding a knife—was not, in fact, wearing a belt—but she could feel the mental twitch from wanting one.

Click to shrink...

Misc) Kana is a habitual knife user - we might be seeing one soon.

@Baughn Apologies for the trouble, but can I have these statements verified, disproven or given a "Amu doesn't know" answer?
1) Has Amu talked to Midori and Tsumugu about the appearances of the rest of the Scavengers, and do they then recall any Scavenger member snooping around afterwards?
2) Does Amu know about any of the Scavenger's Psionic/Persona capabilities beyond the obvious?
3) Has Amu heard of the Scavengers having any other houses/hideouts, or is this house the only one she knows of?

---

In light of the above facts, what do you think actually happened to the Scavengers, and how that that cohere or not cohere with the present facts? (Please state assumptions, and exhaustiveness is appreciated - I'd do it myself first, but I ran out of time coming up with the above list lol)

"She means that much to you?" she said, and Kana flinched, her mind flaring with anger and guilt and—

"Yes," said Kana. "She does."

"Huh." Utau's eyes met Kana's, and for a moment both girls stared at each other. Finally, Utau blinked, and nodded. "Well, she does that, you know."

"Does what?" Kana asked, confused.

"Just... gets to people,"

Click to shrink...

What did Utau actually share back then? A threat to Kana about association with/harm to Amu, or something else?

It was like she was used to this sort of meeting… on neutral ground? Was that the term?

Click to shrink...

(???????)

 

[Skelm]

I wonder what you guys think of why the number of timelines is less than Science will predict in the Informational Post?
(I also wonder why Ragged Crossroads has the "can't see what actually happened" limitation here given it is likely keying off the Many Worlds Hypothesis but for the past?)

Click to shrink...

I think this world doesn't actually run on many-worlds quantum mechanics, any more than humans actually evolved from apes over millions of years, or it actually contains billions of far away galaxies. My understanding is that there are many Kagutuchi's running many different worlds, looking for whatever it is they're looking for here. It's possible that a large number of them are running very similar worlds, where similar events took place, and "alternative-present" precognition can effectively do a search over them. In that case there might be 10^10 such worlds, but there won't be 10^10^10 as you would find in a world that actually ran on quantum mechanics all the way up to the largest scales, because the Great Will actually has to pay for all these worlds. I'm not sure how actual regular precognition works in this model, since looking at the future requires looking at things that haven't happened yet, rather than things that happened but somewhere else.

I should also note that, while many-worlds quantum mechanics does imply that each present has multiple histories, these histories must all lead to exactly the same present, and so you wouldn't have any way to pick out one specific history as the "real" past and the others as "alternatives". For this reason, for relatively low entropy configurations (like the one we find ourselves in today, but maybe not the distant heat-death of the universe) almost all of their weight comes from histories that only differ in microscopic details, rather than having macroscopic differences that were then erased. Ragged Crossroads must be looking at something else, in which case the limitation is presumably that it can't query the universe-bubble the user is standing in.

 

[quantum lurker]

I'm not sure how actual regular precognition works in this model, since looking at the future requires looking at things that haven't happened yet, rather than things that happened but somewhere else.

Click to shrink...

Precog scales off Impact and Likelihood, so this could easily be spun as a filter that searches some number of alternate worlds, and which reports based on said criteria? (Low likelihood stuff needs to be really important to pass the filter at low Precog dots - usually you'd just get nothing because of the one output limitation I guess)

But then that doesn't explain how Impact and Likelihood affects (time) range of all things in Precog, even at low dots huh

 

[Baughn]

I think the discussion on Pistachio's speculation style has played out; it appears to be going in circles now, and it would certainly be more beneficial to focus on the story. Or even on the speculation itself.

The asynchronous nature of a forum might also be working against you. I wouldn't normally recommend you take things off the forum, but there's a handy discord link in my sig? Might be a better place to handle this, if you want to continue.

Onwards to infinity:

Apologies for the trouble, but can I have these statements verified, disproven or given a "Amu doesn't know" answer?
1) Has Amu talked to Midori and Tsumugu about the appearances of the rest of the Scavengers, and do they then recall any Scavenger member snooping around afterwards?
2) Does Amu know about any of the Scavenger's Psionic/Persona capabilities beyond the obvious?
3) Has Amu heard of the Scavengers having any other houses/hideouts, or is this house the only one she knows of?

---

In light of the above facts, what do you think actually happened to the Scavengers, and how that that cohere or not cohere with the present facts? (Please state assumptions, and exhaustiveness is appreciated - I'd do it myself first, but I ran out of time coming up with the above list lol)

Click to shrink...

I can give it a try.

1) This would be, like, describing them in detail..? No, and Amu might not be able to do so even if asked. The part of her that could do so is Miki, and was effectively rejected. They know the rough ages of everyone involved, but not e.g. preferred clothing / hair style.

2) No. Nor that there is a distinction. She worked out that Naomi does stuff with fire, obviously knows Kana is excellent with mind control -- but that isn't a persona ability -- is aware that Yui does something that's detrimental to her, and based on the state of the house would guess that the "something" is "uncontrollable dreamwalking / reality-warping". Jury's out on whether that was actually uncontrollable, but Amu has trouble imagining the current situation is intentional. If pushed, she'd guess that Aoi probably has some form of sensory power. She bases that on the fact she's blind, and doesn't act it.

3) She hasn't heard of it, and with Kana it would be hard to miss. The kanji for Akane's name never came up (and might not exist), but something like that would loom larger.

As to your last question... Amu hasn't thought it through, but would guess "Ran up against Manticore; failed." This is based mostly on tropes from the manga she reads.

(???????)

Click to shrink...

As was this.

Spoiler: Bonus picture of Amu, in a year perhaps

 

[PistachioCookies]

In light of the above facts, what do you think actually happened to the Scavengers, and how that that cohere or not cohere with the present facts? (Please state assumptions, and exhaustiveness is appreciated - I'd do it myself first, but I ran out of time coming up with the above list lol)

Click to shrink...

I can say what I don't believe happened - I'm fairly certain they did not just up and leave to avoid Amu. The fog alone sort of makes that kinda obvious, but so does Naomi leaving the drugs behind in her locked shelf. If nothing else, she would have taken them along if they'd deliberately tried to abandon the house.

At the moment, I'm leaning towards Naomi, Aoi and Mimi having gone out on their own leaving Kana and Yui behind. And then Yui's powers going out of control and Kana getting stuck in the Dreamlands. Essentially, your theory about this:

Could be 50% ran out of medicine, 50% trapping Kana here so she doesn't suffer the same fate as the rest after they broke a promise to always come back after doing something dangerous, 50% mutant third option?

Click to shrink...

Except that Kana getting trapped in there probably wasn't on purpose and I'd rate "ran out of medication" at far less than 50% likelihood. Naomi still had supply in her shelf - so probably the only way they'd run out is if Kana not only didn't know about Naomi's supply, but also either didn't bother to search the house for more or didn't think to check Naomi's room.

I find that unlikely, I'd think it would be likely Kana would have ransacked the house if the situation got that desperate, especially if they knew Naomi and co. had promised to come back and failed to return. There was no apparent sign of a search or struggle when Midori looked around, so whatever happened probably happened suddenly.

Could have been multiple things that caused it, but since the cognitive domain was reeking of fear, my guess is that the stress of the situation made Yui suffer a nervous breakdown and she lost control of her powers.

As for where Yui is now, I have no clue. "Sudden insanity" suddenly doesn't seem so ridiculous when it comes after the phrase "nervous breakdown".

 

[quantum lurker]

As to your last question... Amu hasn't thought it through, but would guess "Ran up against Manticore; failed." This is based mostly on tropes from the manga she reads.

Click to shrink...

Makes sense, although that question was directed to us questors lol.

She hasn't heard of it, and with Kana it would be hard to miss.

Click to shrink...

Hm... while they could always have taken another house in between then and now, this likely does reduce the weightage of several possibilties?

Naomi still had supply in her shelf

Click to shrink...

Problem: She had one missing row with nothing in it? (Though the point about ransacking the house does make some sense)

 

[PistachioCookies]

Problem: She had one missing row? (Though the point about ransacking the house does make some sense)

Click to shrink...

Midori's guess was that Naomi brought those with her somewhere:

"Some of these are missing," Mom noted, running a finger along an empty column in the grid. "Though maybe she brought them with her. In any case I think we've spent enough time here. Let's move on."

Click to shrink...

Which lends credence to the theory they went out and never came back.

If we take this guess at face value, it means Naomi planned to go out somewhere far away enough and/or for a period of time extensive enough that they needed a row's worth of drugs to keep them supplied.

Like, for an excursion meant to last a week. Exactly where? No clue.

 

[Nero200]

So a semantic difference in interpretation on both our end then I see. (Quantity Vs Quality)


I guess it read more uncontrolled to me in that sense of Overgrowth not having enough Integrity to counterbalance?

(Though I've been wondering about the degree we can quote specific text from Nero's Sidestory to analyse beyond the spirit or general idea - surely Saaya doesn't have Pattern Spider Touch?)

Click to shrink...

The italics part of Saayas 'attack' were all rough approximations for the readers understanding.

Her abilities are not anything that Amu has, which is part of the disconnect Saaya experienced when trying to replicate the 'Hinamori Dream' abilities.

While avoiding spoilers (since I am currently working on the follow up Saaya piece), the first two words of that spiel are the most accurate.
Erasure / Destruction would be the name of the power on her sheet.

 

[quantum lurker]

Like, for an excursion meant to last a week.

Click to shrink...

But why would a timeline given by a probably-a-Precog get thrown off by so much? Demons?

(And will Naomi's trip be the equivalent of a father going out to buy milk and cigarettes? )

 

[PistachioCookies]

But why would a timeline given by a probably-a-Precog get thrown off by so much? Demons?

(And will Naomi's trip be the equivalent of a father going out to buy milk and cigarettes? )

Click to shrink...

Maybe if those milk and cigarettes were coming at five-finger discount. Even so, a whole week is still an awful long time for a shopping trip.

The timing of their excursion does coincide with the demons showing up at Seiyo, so if Aoi is precognitive, I'd imagine that could do it. I'd think the demons would not necessarily need to show up wherever the Scavengers were going, it's possible it could have been the very same ones that popped up at Seiyo whose effects snowballed into breaking Aoi's predictions by butterfly effect.

If you think about it, those demons caused JP's to enact a sudden mobilization with the agency's own head unexpectedly riding out in person to clean up at a school, bringing a whole bunch of men along with him. And there was a media frenzy thanks to the incident. Therefore any prediction that required calculating the movements of law enforcement - especially JP's specifically - would have been susceptible to getting thrown off by the whole thing. Anything that required calculating the movements of the media would also have run that risk.

Of cause, that's all pure speculation since I'm not even sure if Aoi has Precog or just Clairvoyance with specialties.

 

[Baughn]

Manticore are supposed to be out of Amu's weight class. Have doubts the QM would throw us against them at this point.

Click to shrink...

Not directly, at least. You'll get more hints on Manticore's nature once @Nero200 has finished his Saaya sidestory update, which surely won't be long now.

In which case, a note on the canonicity of those stories:

They're canon. I look them over for any mistakes, I partially cowrite them, and the planning is also collaborative. There should never be any outright falsehoods.

That being said, while Nero does know more about the story than anyone else outside myself, we see the world in different ways. The facts on the ground are the same, but the slant—the inferences you may make based on them—can be inaccurate.

That being said, I also try to minimise that. It's just a much harder task.

Yui doesn't have the personality for it.

Click to shrink...

Indeed, she's never had the chance to get anywhere close.

As mentioned, the reason I bumped it lower is because Normal Kana wouldn't make much of an opponent for Amu. "Normal" non-Shadow Kana means we're talking about Ms. "Let's Be Friends" who first met Amu.

Click to shrink...

Not a direct reply:

A Shadow represents the parts of yourself that you reject, but they still exist. Fully rejecting it, and making that stick, would turn you into a caricature of yourself.

This could also be compared to the effect of boosting a virtue up to five dots, then hitting limit break. Inverted, in a way, but it's the same concept—take just one side of yourself, present it in its "perfect" form and ignore all else.

Amu likes the confident, outgoing side of Kana that wasn't broken down by reality… but she likes it because of what's inside, not despite.

This one is basically a variant of the "transplanted Shadow" theory, as it still boils down to having 2 Shadows occupying the same cognitive space, ripping each other apart.

Click to shrink...

Not entirely impossible, but this would be hard to get right and even harder to make stable.

Compare and contrast: Charas.

 

[Quickshot0]

I wonder what's in Kana's Shadow,

Click to shrink...

If one thinks about the picture one found and what happened afterward, then as you speculated it could be her more hesitant side. The part of her doing as Manticore told her, that kept her head down, didn't try to go against what she was told to do, all while she possibly could hear the mind screams of others in pain. Thus, in such a case she might be rejecting her more naive and passive side.


-

Assuming that or something like it was the shadows form, then the person that is angry at her could well be Kana, and she might not understand why exactly because she is to naive for that.

-

Alternately, something went wrong, maybe with Yui, maybe it was something entirely different and it lead to the formation of this dream world. But what ever the case Kana in such a case potentially wants out of this dream world as some one might be in danger... or multiple people. And so she may just be trying to tear the entire thing down and breaking her way out, even if it means kicking and or destroying her passive side.

If it is something like this, it might just be a really panicked and or angry Kana coming that may be pretty tired and delirious by now. And she is just trying to do her best in the situation she found herself in. In a case like this she probably doesn't understand all that well what even is going on and might consider herself in some kind of terrible nightmare.

-

The biggest outstanding mystery in all of this is really... what are the Yui parts doing here? Which is hard to say... speculative Kana mind power could just have some Yui fragments on them as side effect of trying to help keep Yui together. But alternatives like Yui caused the structure to form inadvertently or on purpose and left parts behind, or Kana developed a mental break large enough to cause this matter to happen and Yui tried to help but failed leaving fragments behind. Well those are certainly options one could consider as well.

What ever the case, considering Yui needed Kana's help fairly regularly, it seems likely they probably tended to remains not to far split apart from each other. So whatever happened would always also leave the mystery of where is Yui now? In parts? Ran off to try and find help? Trapped somewhere in an area inside? Sleeping somewhere? Actually part of the overall structure around everyone?

- -

Sadly I can't think of anything that would make one of these options particularly implausible. So I guess between these and some of the other ideas broght up, it depends a bit also on what others think fits best. But I do think there is a good chance it could thus be just a normal Kana coming as such. Or well as normal as she'd be after being stuck who knows how long here.

 

[Nero200]

I did bring this up a couple votes ago.

I'm pretty sure Yui has degraded into this Midnight Channel effect, somewhat like Labyrinth from Worm.

She's providing the 'foundation' for Kana to be going through the Face Yourself persona situation.

IIRC, Yui was unable to sleep without Kana to 'hold her together' or something similar. I'm typing from mobile so can't search the thread.
That would seem to imply some level of her mind is missing, either connective tissue wise or possible even just flat out missing her 'Shadow'.

If she's acting as a conduit for the CU as a result of Manticore experiments, she might be something of a conduit, her shadow ripped out and the gap in her mind left as a channel / doorway that Kana was keeping shut while she slept.

 

[quantum lurker]

A camera she'd stuck an illusion in front of.

Click to shrink...

coming with a mental image of a lab full of vials.

Click to shrink...

So for the (potentially) upcoming fight we need to worry about Illusion and someone good enough at Mind Control to do a budget form of Heads Up Display huh.

I'm typing from mobile so can't search the thread

Click to shrink...

Indeed, she's never had the chance to get anywhere close.

Click to shrink...

Yui, too, was scared of sleeping. The moment she started to nod off, Kana swooped in to scoop her up, and it seemed to be an unspoken rule: Don't let Yui sleep, unless Kana is there to help.

Amu was a little curious as to what Kana did, to help.

Click to shrink...

And I've never seen Yui this comfortable around anyone but Kana.

Click to shrink...

I wonder if it's Amu's Shadow thing at work again? (As for what Kana did, might be that she Mind Controls her into more pleasant places, considering how Ami's Dreamwalking notably is based off your mental state at the time of sleeping?)

And Yui makes nightmares

Click to shrink...

"Yui-chan made that for you," Kana explained. "It doesn't do anything. It's just a feather. But I thought..."

Click to shrink...

Comparing with Ami, does this read like Dreamwalking to you?

---

Amu likes the confident, outgoing side of Kana that wasn't broken down by reality… but she likes it because of what's inside, not despite.

Click to shrink...

Gap Moe is fun, isn't it?

Anyway, it seems clear from the responses that we don't have enough information to disambiguate and figure out "what happened to Yui" or "what happened to the rest of the Scavengers" huh - too many plausible theories with different action strategies.

Continuing to poke the Precog and Ragged Crossroads thing further instead:
Is Kagutsuchi the same Kagutsuchi throughout the different worlds accessed through Amala?
Furthermore, does the equivalent of the Akashic Records exist in this setting?

cross-world interference

Click to shrink...

If it is, given how Overgrowth keys off the Collective Unconscious, and how Psionics has built-in mechanics for interfacing with K-physics, might Precog be searching through other worlds using Kagutsuchi as a medium? (Which would naturally explain the Demons problem - Demons are not supposed to be in Kagutsuchi at all, therefore you won't get anything out of it that way)

But how does Precog predict the future? I would say that the worlds aren't actually in sync relative to each other, but the Precog 5 Feat doesn't quite work with that.
Unless training Precog is the equivalent of building better simulation machinery, and then later on branching out to other worlds for different seeds for confidence intervals; and Precog 5 is treating yourself as a machine that you understand and so you can target and modify?

her point of view is limited to what her other psionic skills would ordinarily allow her, plus a gestalt impression of the events that led to the anchor's creation

Click to shrink...

I suspect Ragged Crossroads uses the object in question (emotionally charged being a requirement because Utau's everything keys off emotion) as a template to search for other related objects in other worlds, then uses Empathy/Dreamwalking to see the associated events around said anchor.

 

[PistachioCookies]

IIRC, Yui was unable to sleep without Kana to 'hold her together' or something similar. I'm typing from mobile so can't search the thread.
That would seem to imply some level of her mind is missing, either connective tissue wise or possible even just flat out missing her 'Shadow'.

If she's acting as a conduit for the CU as a result of Manticore experiments, she might be something of a conduit, her shadow ripped out and the gap in her mind left as a channel / doorway that Kana was keeping shut while she slept.

Click to shrink...

I'm thinking probably not missing a Shadow, as that sort of thing usually leads to becoming a vegetable in Persona (Apathy Syndrome, Mental Shutdown etc). Manticore would have had to have made some huge breakthrough in cognitive psience to find a way to remove her Shadow and still allow the body to keep functioning.

I can think of 2 theories right now-

1. Yui herself is a Shadow, removed from her original body. Was able to use Dreamwalking to manufacture another body separate from her original owner's, like Miki. Except hers was unstable and prone to losing cohesion when sleeping, requiring Kana to reinforce it possibly due to a lack of dots in Integrity, unlike Miki, who can seemingly supported hers stably with her 3 dots in Integrity.

If this is the case and if Yui's original body is also still alive somewhere (Manticore custody?) she might have simply been "sucked back" to the original Yui's cognitive domain and is now stuck there. If it's not, she might have slipped back into cognitive space and simply "got lost" the moment she did, like Akkun. Or she might not have gotten lost, but deliberately wandered off in a "fit of insanity" to look for Naomi and the others.

2. Yui is an Astral Projection, but not Kana's - it's Yui's herself. We know Ami uses Astral Projection in conjunction with Dreamwalking to make Akkun. Yui's real body could have been somewhere else the whole time and the one we've seen was an Astral Projection, who needed to be kept cohesive by Kana when sleeping. We know Akkun only appears when Acchan sleeps. When Akkun goes to "sleep", is probably when Acchan wakes up in the real world. So when Projection Yui sleeps, real Yui might be awake and no longer maintaining her, forcing Kana to take over the job.

Exactly where the "real Yui" would be in this scenario, who knows. In the worst case, she could be dead and the Projection is all that was left - she somehow transferred "enough" of her consciousness into it when her real one died to serve as a substitute, but it's still unstable and prone to dissipating when she sleeps. Or else the physical Yui could be in Manticore custody and they assume she just sleeps 90% of the day due to being damaged.

 

[quantum lurker]

I can think of 2 theories right now-

Click to shrink...

You are saying that "real Yui" is currently an ill-defined concept, and so we chose bad or "bad" phrasing for this last vote?

2. Yui is an Astral Projection

Click to shrink...

Doesn't really explain why there are shards of Yui's mind in a random lesser Shadow though?
Furthermore, if that is the case I strongly doubt Projection!Yui would've had a consistent enough sleep schedule for Kana to get to her in time for what sounds like years? (And this sort of panic would likely have played up in Kana's mind and Amu noting it down - which clearly didn't happen?)