From what I'm getting, taking Ashtaroth down is like laying siege. You have to deal with everything in Ash's barrier else it will still be hunting you down. And that's a drawn out conflict that's likely to take more magic than you are likely to get out of the grief seed Ash drops.
Though, thinking more about it, fighting ash might be more like dealing with Guerilla warfare than a siege, given illusions and intelligent enemies exist in her barrier.
It isn't like I could like or dislike it, sorry but I didn't understand anything that happened in the update, not even the part before the... fight? something?
Magical girl who gets future visions sends friend to take Ash's grief seed. Ash is still aware and moves her barrier after them. Then the fight happens and they rescue ash. Now they are being tracked. It was a good chapter overall.
It isn't like I could like or dislike it, sorry but I didn't understand anything that happened in the update, not even the part before the... fight? something?
So the update before this one Ashteroth was maxin and relaxin outside of school.
Then Kiraka started causing trouble in the neighborhood
Ash got in one little fight and died
This update we got to follow Oriko as Kiraka returns with Ash's grief seed. She is a Seer and saw Ash suck the Earth into her labyrinth, so to prevent the bad future, she sent Kiraka to assassinate Ash.
Kiraka comes back with a GG EZ, but Tira and Sayaka track Kiraka back to Oriko to get Ash's Grief seed back, since their Soul Gems are still embedded in the Grief seed.
Sayaka and Tira are weirdly in sync as they work together to get Ash's Grief seed back.
Tira keeps Kiraka busy while Sayaka bum rushes Oriko.
Working in conjunction with the opening to Ash's Labyrinth and a surprise attack by MamiWitch, Sayaka manages to snatch the Grief Seed and toss it back in the Labyrinth. Then Sayaka and Tira bravely ran Away.
Yeah it does seem like right at the moment of Witchout, Ash did a U-turn and somehow subsumed her OG Soul Gem before it completely exploded. Which could explain her unexpected lucidity and the Witch-Instincts lurking in the back of her mind that takes over when certain triggers are met.
So maybe the "Ash" we see is just a constantly out Doppel-expy.
Edit:
Sayaka and Tira being able to fight as inefficiently as they want make them a terrifying duo to counter, especially since both cover offense (Tira's flexible paint stuff and Sayaka's exploding swords) and defense (near instant healing and barrier shields)
Saar's wind covering their retreat is a nice touch.
Oriko's vision: Does Ash subsume Waluigi night? UKG? Dedolere?
Candeloro being able to be active outside of the barrier makes me think either Ash is a wuss or her base stats suck. Could be both, she does get chumped a lot if she doesn't get time to get literally everyone else to cover her. Maybe she could take a page from Homura and steal an M2 Browning.
Well yeah, but Oriko and Kirika's specific skillsets would go a long way to preventing Ash from getting ganked with no warning again: Oriko to see the threat coming and Kirika to be extra killy when it arrives.
Because at first glance, it looks like Sayaka and Tira are not in the driver's seat anymore. And weirdly, as the fight goes on that becomes more and less likely to be true.
I'm turning around on this. Because I hadn't really considered something before I wrote, which is Sayaka, Tira, and Ashtaroth's emotional state. After all, we know grief a Magical Girl's grief is fed directly to Ashtaroth if they're subsumed. And we know that if the grief is too much, it can boil out into a witch. We also know that everyone that's subsumed is linked telepathically.
Are their other emotions also linked? Not as strongly perhaps, but if their thinking, feeling selves are all in Ashtaroth's Grief Seed, why wouldn't they feel each other, at least a little? And we all know Sayaka feels very, very strongly about her Soul Gem. She doesn't like it, but she'd absolutely go ballistic if someone stole it. Ashtaroth would also be pissed, but more I feel out of indignation, plus a spot of revenge. She's done nothing but try to mind her own business, and people keep going after her and attacking her. Tira finally felt safe, some form of relief after all her time as a Magical Girl. Her new situation was far from perfect, but to her at least things were finally looking up.
So were Kirika kicked down the door and killed Ash, she set them all off. They got on the same angry, and strong, emotional wave length. That's the synchronicity. The same emotions behind the same goal, bolstering each other. They're all still themselves, yet them same. They're greater then them sum of their parts.
Which might explain the chains Sayaka suddenly had, which I don't remember as a thing for her, and might explain that monster Tira cooked up, which didn't quite seem her style.
Well... This gives Sayaka and the others Ashtaroth are an out... Technically.
If Ashtaroth grows to walpurgis class entity (who is so powerful her barrier intrudes into real space in a meaningful manner) then the girls she ate could go about doing what they want ... Though that doesn't address the issue of a super witch being in sight over every mg in the city at least ...
Also, credit where credit is due I didn't expect the reverse gank of oriko and her pet lunatic
If Ashtaroth grows to walpurgis class entity (who is so powerful her barrier intrudes into real space in a meaningful manner) then the girls she ate could go about doing what they want ... Though that doesn't address the issue of a super witch being in sight over every mg in the city at least ...
Almost every magical girl we encountered in the past timeline was eaten or killed/witched, even if we have convenient excuses.
Leaving someone else in the driver seat until we have needs isn't really a great indicator of anything either. We have no cares, no interests, no priorities that take precedence above ourselves. We essentially have absolute power over the others and we make use of it as we see fit. A passive personality making "as we see fit" an irregular occurrence doesn't change that.
Oriko sent kirika after us. The writing is on the wall that if we're not evil now, we're well on the way
For me personally, if I had to deal with Ash from a 3rd party perspective, my response would be to put her down, which is to say that I empathize with oriko too much here to blame her for anything. We're simply too dangerous to be left alive.
Since we're all in this together though, I'd like to keep things going. Operation KATAMARI DAMACY sure is tempting though
We fought to survive against magical girls that attacked us despite our repeated attempts at pacifism, and barely survived by eating the, once again, belligerent despite peaceful messages magical girls, and because of that, we are actually evil? As for the "convenient excuse" bit, Again, Belligerent despite repeated offers of peace magical girls. Self-defence isn't a "convenient excuse" it's a thing that exists. as for Mami's Witching, at no point did we want to cause it, nor did we even try to conspire to make it happen. An accident isn't a convenient excuse, it's an accident.
Oriko had a vision. An unclear vision, by the ways, it's literally described as muddled. Because it involves a Witch, and because all other Witches they met were evil, she tries to be preemptive and sends Kirika to stop it (us) before it can do anything bad.
I have no problem with that, since she couldn't guess that we weren't evil.
Here's the thing though: a muddled, half incomprehensible vision of the future isn't a proof that we are "well on the way" to become evil. Nor does using every abilites we have to retrieve our SOUL.
By the way, did you notice? Our soul. Our Grief Seed. tell me, how are Grief Seeds made, again?
You might be wondering where I'm going with this. So here it is. We made a copy of everything that the magical girls we ate were. Including their gems. In short, their souls. That is my argument against them being "false". They have their bodies, they have their minds, and they have their souls. They're real and independent, though fuelled by our existence.
What is happening here is (I believe) Ash taking over their bodies, and sending them to get her soul back. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they're still conscious, but unable (or unwilling) to fight Ash's control.
I'm starting to think that, due to the whole events of this last update, Ash isn't the witch. Or rather she is, it's just that she isn't the only one. Sayaka, Tira, the other Witches are also the witch. That, sure, it started with Ash being Ashtaroth, the Subsumption Witch but that changed with every addition to the barrier. That Ash is only one single part of Ashtaroth, the Subsumption Witch, that's why the barrier stayed. Because yes, Ash was killed and became Grief Seed, but since all of the other parts were left alone the barrier didn't vanish. Because Ashtaroth, the Subsumption Witch wasn't actually dead yet.
TL;DR everything (magical girls, witches) Ash subsumes basically becomes more phylacteries for her.
We did kind of see something like this back when Ashtaroth defeated Saar. Instead of collapsing, Saar's barrier was stabilized by Ash's barrier, and because Saar still had a barrier, she wasn't really destroyed. She just sort of melted into a pile of Saar stuff that Ash could only get rid of by subsuming. If Ashtaroth works the same way, then she can't be defeated in the conventional manner, every witch in the barrier has to be defeated first, and perhaps every magical girl as well.
It is weird that Ash dropped a grief seed though. Saar never did that. I wonder what would happen if Oriko actually did destroy it. Would it actually destroy the barrier, or would it only kill Ash and the magical girls, leaving the other barriers to pop out along with their witches. Candeloro would be enraged in that case, and she'd probably revert back to her prior behavior of luring guests back into her cottage afterward.
Man, this might hold the record for highest collective number of post-chapter comments I really want to reply to, but essentially can't, at least not until the next chapter is out. Ah well, here's the ones I could respond to!
Glad to have pleasantly surprised some of you.（￣︶￣）↗ Loved reading the theories about how Ashtaroth would get out of this mess in the meantime by the way; there was quite a variety!
I really want to see this chapter from Tira and Sayaka's PoV. Did they have to figure out how to drive the labyrinth themselves (in which case I expect student driver shenanigans), or did it get dragged along in the wake of the Grief Seed?
And that is very sad, given an update every two weeks is, at least theoretically, my "schedule". ^^;
(Granted, it's since been generalized to "an update to a story I write every two weeks", but even then I'm not the best at consistently meeting that goal.)
Sayaka was actually just here to help renovate Oriko's house — she and Kirika seemed strangely resistant to the idea of having a more open floor space, but I'm sure they'll come around eventually.
Oriko's visions could've easily either been an evolved Ashtaroth, some other witch that overtook Ash, or just a different witch entirely. Point is, Oriko's visions are kinda shit when looking for details. Least as far as I can tell.
Edit: The only reason Oriko starts to question if Ash was the right witch is cause of the Magical Girls that Oriko didn't know about.
While I won't deny Oriko's visions aren't set in stone (else she'd be completely unable to change them), I'd like to note that she wasn't questioning if Ashtaroth was the witch she'd intended to target at the end — she was questioning if she shouldn't have instead been targeting the pair of magical girls apparently toting her barrier around.
If the duo went the effort to get this particular seed back despite having ability to control multiple witches, they're clearly Big Villains working to cause The End of the World using the Power of a Forsaken Child! A Magical Girl of Love, like Kirika, is entirely right in stopping them!
I mean, from a veteran MG's perspective with no context, I guess Tira and Sayaka do come off as a pair of supervillans gathering power in their pet Witch superlabrynth.
... And Sayaka comes off as the mastermind in all of this. Since she's the one mostly giving orders and going for objectives in all this.
On the other hand, this is potentially great segue into Oriko attempting to recruit Mami and Homura to stop the most evil magical girl in the city, nay, the world!
Oriko: "Behold, a captured image from the internet of the insane evil worldender."
Mami: "I'm sorry, did you just say you want to kill my kouhai?"
Homura: "You're planning to kill Sayaka Miki and not Madoka Kaname?"
Kirika: "Whoa, she has more allies? Lets kill them both!"
Kyuubey: "This time, it is all on you."
Oriko, privately: 'Actually I'm planning to kill Sayaka Miki and Madoka Kaname, but I suppose that's hardly going to convince them.'
(More realistically, if Oriko wants to "team up" with anyone to take care of this problem, she likely has a much better, and more easily manipulated option than Mami or Homura.)
I'm not sure Ashtaroth would actually want that all things considered, given how much of a headache they'd likely both be if she ever let them back out. ^^;
Well yeah, but Oriko and Kirika's specific skillsets would go a long way to preventing Ash from getting ganked with no warning again: Oriko to see the threat coming and Kirika to be extra killy when it arrives.
...though this is true, assuming Ashtaroth could actually convince them to help her. Also, given how Ashtaroth's abilities "define" things, there's a potentially interesting interaction with Kirika's wish there...
God, Oriko's precog is so fucking scuffed, it's like it's deliberately showing her only the edge-case, highly unlikely worst case scenarios tailor-made to start unnecessary shitfights and self-fulfilling prophecies. Like, it's never the future where the problem gets solved and she can just follow that future, instead she has to come up with her own, shitty solutions that end up not helping anything.
Well of course it's not going to show her the best-case scenario. Oriko at her lowest point wished for a purpose in life. She was never going to see visions of "and so everything went fine", she's going to see things she theoretically needs to change; things that give her a goal and a need to act.
Because without that... what reason does she have to keep on living?
(Also, Oriko's magic as we've seen it in canon has actually been pretty reliable about predicting the setting's major threats; ie. Walpurgisnacht and Kreimhild Gretchen, of which the former essentially was guaranteed to always show up and destroy everything, even if the latter wasn't, simply because she didn't exist yet.)
Kirika ambushing Ash was basically the only way to take them down, and now they're going to be extra paranoid going forward. I don't know exactly what Oriko's planning, but it's better involve getting outside help, because next time they fight they're very much lacking in surprises to pull out of their sleeves, while the crew might have more.
Oriko's greatest strength — besides Kirika — is planning, especially given sufficient prep time. No matter what Team Ashtaroth's situation is, I wouldn't count her out just yet.
It seems that things are going "not as planned" for those two. Good, here's to hoping that they end up subsumed as well after their plans end up failing, not to mention that Ashtaroth and the gang are possibly heading for Mitakihara, where Homura is, and she likely knows about Oriko and what a pain in the ass she can be, so could quite possibly run into Oriko and decide to remove the headache.
Actually (as was determined several years ago, because I've had this plot point in mind for ages), Oriko's house is in Mitakihara, though on the very outskirts. So, chalk another one up for the disaster city! Ash is on a real roll with this place.
Ashtaroth and co are presumably still heading to Asunaro like they were planning before they were Kiri-bombed. If Oriko and Kirika are planning to catch them, they're going to have to travel to Asunaro too, which means...
Well, let's just say that I expect a great deal of batshit insanity to occur in the nearish future as Oriko pits her own brand of crazy against the advanced crazy that everyone in Asunaro seems to possess.
-darn it, how dare you so accurately predict my plans! Granted, I did tell you Ashtaroth would become the Witch of Cosmology at some point, but still, very rude! >:O
what about ash's familiars besides her MG? She did absorb quite a few witches with familiars which can then feed to become a new iteration of said witch.
As for the familiars...I think, and this is just a guess, that in order to "feed" they'd have to exit the barrier, but since Ashtaroth controls the barrier's exit/entry portals, it's likely that they can't exit, and so they can't feed to grow into a new witch. It's even more unlikely because we see clearly in this latest chapter that Ash can still control the barrier even while in grief seed state, so the familiars wouldn't be able to exit even if Ash herself is (slightly) incapacitated.
I'll say nothing on this beyond that Shemesh, at least, has definitely left the barrier on his own on at least one occasion (which is what ultimately kicked off the whole chain of events that led us here). Whether or not this has changed since Ashtaroth subsumed Sayaka and Tira (and thus gained the ability to make those portals) is up for debate — though I'd note that under normal circumstances, familiars outside the barrier of their parent witch generally have little mini barriers of their own, implying they're less "leaving" the barrier so much as tearing off their own little portion of it.
It makes sense that Ashtaroth's barrier didn't disappear, with a couple possibilities for the underlying mechanics. For one, it's also Charlotte and Candeloro's barrier, and neither of them are yet part of (and as a result died with) Ashtaroth. Though even if they weren't there, it's possible that the barrier would have stuck around independently like Tira and Sayaka. Or maybe, possibility three, it's because of Tira and Sayaka. After all, they're Ashtaroth, and they're not dead, are they? So by the transitive property of equality, Ashtaroth = not dead. And why would her barrier go away if she isn't dead?
I do wonder what would happen if either Sayaka or Tira Witched out while Ash is incapacitated though. Would Ash be the one to emerge? Or would either of their Witches simply take over the entire barrier.
Not without fighting a fierce custody battle against Charlotte and Candeloro first they won't. They have seniority here! ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ
(Oktavia argues that actually, she has seniority, since Sayaka was around before either of them, which Candeloro and Charlotte both contest. Shemesh, acting as judge, ultimately overrules her, while Izabel just goes off and sets up a nice little art corner for herself.)
Oriko's greatest strength — besides Kirika — is planning, especially given sufficient prep time. No matter what Team Ashtaroth's situation is, I wouldn't count her out just yet.
Planning is great, but plans are useless. Especially with Oriko, who only sees a version of the future. See being a keyword here, because that's very specifically what's happening in her visions, and Ashtaroth has illusion powers.
Well, that and she's a dumb kid. She didn't even register why Sayaka and Tira were so mad even after they shouted the reason at her. And that was after poking at the Soul Gem bits. Her sense of saviorship is very self centered, at least that's what I'm getting from here.
That, and the Crew can get stronger faster then Oriko can, if they think they need to. Oriko needs to find Magical Girls willing to work with her. Ashtaroth and the girls can beat up witches to take their lunch money, and entice Magical Girls with some very unconventional offers. It's just easier for them.
Of course, the above depends on if they realize they're being specifically targeted and need power. If they don't, then it's slower. Then again, after these attacks they might decide that Ash needs to be stronger so the can't get alpha striked so easy. It's a security concern now, especially with how offen they get attacked. Ashtaroth and Sayaka were already sick of all the attacks.
Planning is great, but plans are useless. Especially with Oriko, who only sees a version of the future. See being a keyword here, because that's very specifically what's happening in her visions, and Ashtaroth has illusion powers.
Well, that and she's a dumb kid. She didn't even register why Sayaka and Tira were so mad even after they shouted the reason at her. And that was after poking at the Soul Gem bits. Her sense of saviorship is very self centered, at least that's what I'm getting from here.
That, and the Crew can get stronger faster then Oriko can, if they think they need to. Oriko needs to find Magical Girls willing to work with her. Ashtaroth and the girls can beat up witches to take their lunch money, and entice Magical Girls with some very unconventional offers. It's just easier for them.
Of course, the above depends on if they realize they're being specifically targeted and need power. If they don't, then it's slower. Then again, after these attacks they might decide that Ash needs to be stronger so the can't get alpha striked so easy. It's a security concern now, especially with how offen they get attacked. Ashtaroth and Sayaka were already sick of all the attacks.
Honestly, this plays into my core conception of how to process Oriko and Kirika: they're Homura split into two characters.
Oriko is the half who knows things she shouldn't about what's going to happen in the future and doesn't actually have a real idea of what to do with that information, Kirika is the half with time powers, ruthlessness, and a deep-seated unhealthy obsession with someone.
Edit: Oriko's also got Homura's "Only I can be trusted to do what must be done" thing, but ironically is actually healthier about it than Homura herself because she trusts Kirika to do things for her rather than personally marching out to handle crises on her lonesome.
I'll say nothing on this beyond that Shemesh, at least, has definitely left the barrier on his own on at least one occasion (which is what ultimately kicked off the whole chain of events that led us here). Whether or not this has changed since Ashtaroth subsumed Sayaka and Tira (and thus gained the ability to make those portals) is up for debate — though I'd note that under normal circumstances, familiars outside the barrier of their parent witch generally have little mini barriers of their own, implying they're less "leaving" the barrier so much as tearing off their own little portion of it.
Honestly, this plays into my core conception of how to process Oriko and Kirika: they're Homura split into two characters.
Oriko is the half who knows things she shouldn't about what's going to happen in the future and doesn't actually have a real idea of what to do with that information, Kirika is the half with time powers, ruthlessness, and a deep-seated unhealthy obsession with someone.
Edit: Oriko's also got Homura's "Only I can be trusted to do what must be done" thing, but ironically is actually healthier about it than Homura herself because she trusts Kirika to do things for her rather than personally marching out to handle crises on her lonesome.
Yup. Oriko and kirika have always been foils for homu.
For oriko:
Time related powers; one knows the "past" and one knows the future. The same goal (stop gretchen) via opposite means (kill/save madoka). Both initially individually useless (oriko gets combat help from others in the form of kirika. homu gets guns and stays solo). The greater good vs an individual desire.
For kirika:
Dark and edgy magical girl with unhealthy fixations on another. Time slow/speed vs stop. Close combat vs long range. "Do anything for ___" but homu is reluctant to kill while kirika would be glad to.
Sure, but you need to keep the spooky void in the air floating nearby for at least half an hour, and Ashy's track record of getting some peace and quiet is 1 out of 5.
