Is the plate the hard part? What if we throw a stunt at it?
It's targeting. You're in a moving car, attempting to keep an illusion in place over a number plate you can't see, while it's accelerating in to-Amu unpredictable ways. Relativity isn't even fully applicable here.
The drawback of Big Miki - no Amulet Spade. If Amu had Amulet Spade, she could do it herself. Because she'd get 2 dots in paint-based Illusions and her paint would stick to the car and then she wouldn't have to do anything other than make sure it didn't disappear until the trip was done. But no, instead, we only have our less-than-trained 1.5-dots in Illusion and need to do it this way if Amu tries to do it herself.
None of that was an issue with, say, the decorations on Ami's gift box. Do those work differently?
That seems significantly more conspicuous than just leaving the plate unaltered. Our unaltered plate only stands out to someone who knows what they're looking for. A clearly damaged or defaced plate stands out without such information.
With the car, I'm actually more worried about Manticore recording its details and looking up who owns it than I am about anyone recognizing it on this trip. Taking Nikaidou's car doesn't really help with that.
Only to traffic police. I mean sure, maybe some other motorist might notice and be a tad disgusted at the state of it, but honestly who pays attention to numberplates when they're not specifically looking for them, muddy, dented or otherwise?
Cars in Japan are a privilege, as in, you have to meet a few standards to even be able to allowed to have one.
Who's going to pay attention to our regular, unaltered plates? If a traffic cop sees that we're driving with illegible plates, that's an actual crime with actual criminal penalties attached under the Road Transport Vehicle Act, and it's their actual job to pay attention to that kind of crime.
Amu was sitting right there, looking at it, and neither it nor her were moving. It was a gift, but not the sort of gift meant to last indefinitely; more of a presentation.
I expect any tracing of numberplates would be done via camera footage, rather than someone actually memorizing the plates. And it is also illegal for Amu to be attaching fake numberplates too, using illusions or otherwise. Fake numberplates are not any more legal than damaged ones and arguably worse, as you can at least argue damaged plates were damaged by accident and you're on your way to fix it.
In-story, that would be up to Utau and Nikaidou. We're already telling her what we're bringing her along for. She might refuse to ask Nikaidou to borrow his car.
Fake plates aren't the immediately recognizable kind of illegal that damaged plates would be.
Anything Manticore would be willing to do to us when they find us, they would be willing to do to Utau when they find her. I don't know what they're willing to do, but I don't think "knock on the door and ask politely" would figure in their plans.
Since I'm working off the presumption that anybody checking plates would be doing via camera footage after the fact, there would be footage of Midori driving around in car that looks identical to what is sitting in her house, but with plates that are clearly not her registered ones.
Guess we'll just have to disagree on how little or how much effort they would be willing to put in to verify that they've got the right target then.
She's not supposed to be recognizable as Midori. If Manticore can identify Midori, they don't need to identify the car.
Utau is going on the trip. She's one of the right targets.
They'd see the make, model and color. If they had access to government databanks, they would soon realize the numberplate doesn't exist for any cars of the kind, meaning the owner was using fake plates.
She's not the driver of the car. The driver they are looking for would be a woman, unless Midori makes herself look like a man.
She can't make tactile illusions with only 1 dot (the above was assuming her Illusions were effectively level 2, from being boosted by Chara specialization). Miki could've given her a painting specialization for that extra dot, but now she's Big Miki.
So if Amu were to borrow the Dumpty Key, she could use it to boost herself and conjure up tactile illusions (decals, paint, fake plate, etc.) that could actually stick to the car, that should last for 1 hour after application and not need her to constantly "recalibrate" its position like she would under her default Illusion 1 approach.
They wouldn't just be looking for the driver. They'd be looking for everyone who showed up at the house. Heck, the car might not even be in any footage they have, depending on their camera coverage and how close we take it. (Assuming they have any cameras, anyway - there's still the possibility that Manticore isn't watching the house at all and this whole discussion amounts to nothing.)
If Baughn says this works without introducing additional complications, I'm up for it. What you're describing sounds like it might take a while, though.
Utau has morale problems?
-Oof. Guessing trying to use the Dumpty Key to boost Amu's Mental Range wouldn't quite have gone to plan in that case either.
Looking at the new tally config, I think you might have set the wrong start post somehow - the new tally seems to be starting near the end of page 61 for some reason.
I think you're reading too much into Baughn's posts again.
I think what would've happened if we went through with that plan would've been an interrupt when Amu tried to use the Dumpty Key that resulted in Utau bailing her out and yanking it away.
