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Subsumption (PMMM Faux-Quest) (Witch MC)

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[x] Reload
-[x] Stay determined
--[x] You awake with a start in your own bed. Your eye twitches involunta- wait, you don't have eyes. Wait, are you a hamburger now?
---[x] You did not sign up for this shitpost.
 
Filraen said:
Huh? I thought Ashtaroth doesn't have arms?

Also @Flairina , you may want to not bookmark the update today. Or atleast wait until tomorrow to add the (Bad End 1) label to it
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'Arms', the sort of fixed ribbon-y things that are glued to Ashtaroth's pages and can't actually be used for arms in any meaningful way.
 
*Prays to... I dunno, something that there's a savestate from the start of this encounter. Or immediately prior to.*
 
I think she deserves a Darwin Award for that performance.

Like, she was super cautious and methodical about the whole encounter, but the moment she was in any actual danger, she does everything in the most reckless, unthinking manner possible, putting her own safety far behind making absolutely doubly sure that she doesn't harm the other Witch.
 
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Ah, I see Ashtaroth's compassion towards her fellow witch has earned her the usual reward for self sacrificing nobility in the PMMM setting :V
 
Zakanian said:
...So this is the power of teenage angst.
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Saar: Oh no, this is just my medium angst. You haven't seen anywhere close to my TRUE angst yet. In fact, one might even say...



(I'd apologize, but after the jokes from last update, you couldn't possibly expect me to resist this one. ^^; )

SaltyWaffles said:
I think she deserves a Darwin Award for that performance.

Like, she was super cautious and methodical about the whole encounter, but the moment she was in any actual danger, she does everything in the most reckless, unthinking manner possible, putting her own safety far behind making absolutely doubly sure that she doesn't harm the other Witch.
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Not quite sure what this means. Reckless how? There wasn't really any chance for Ashtaroth to react/retaliate/re-anything in this update, so I assume you mean the previous one? That still doesn't make much sense; harming the other witch completely goes against the entire point of this little expedition. Yes, Saar attacked you, but if your immediate response was to attack her back, that's like...

Say you're approaching an animal whose species is commonly known to be aggressive and potentially dangerous. Your goal is to gain its trust so it can be transported somewhere else, say... I dunno, a zoo. You don't want to scare it, so you approach with caution and call out to it, hoping it will respond positively. It does not, lashing out, but not actually hurting you. Well, okay, you're encroaching on its space, and of course it's not going to react well to you right off the bat. You try again, and it still responds negatively, injuring you this time. Seeing as you're hurt, you retreat for the time being, opting to either give up entirely, or get away until you come up with a different approach. Makes sense, right?

Now, say your immediate response to it lashing out was to draw the gun at your side and shoot it in the face- no, actually, to make this metaphor more proportionate to the in story situation, let's say you don't even have a gun; you have a bow and a supply of arrows, which will almost certainly just piss the animal off until you score some critical shot on it, thus giving it the chance to retaliate. Congrats, if you're not dead by the end of the fight you just invoked then you're at least mauled, and you now have a dead animal on your hands, have gained absolutely nothing for it, and have some serious explaining to do to the zoo that was supposed to receive it.

Obviously this isn't a perfect equivalent, but do you see what I'm saying here?
 
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Flairina said:
Saar: Oh no, this is just my medium angst. You haven't seen anywhere close to my TRUE angst yet. In fact, one might even say...



(I'd apologize, but after the jokes from last update, you couldn't possibly expect me to resist this one. ^^; )



Not quite sure what this means. Reckless how? There wasn't really any chance for Ashtaroth to react/retaliate/re-anything in this update, so I assume you mean the previous one? That still doesn't make much sense; harming the other witch completely goes against the entire point of this little expedition. Yes, Saar attacked you, but if your immediate response was to attack her back, that's like...

Say you're approaching an animal whose species is commonly known to be aggressive and potentially dangerous. Your goal is to gain its trust so it can be transported somewhere else, say... I dunno, a zoo. You don't want to scare it, so you approach with caution and call out to it, hoping it will respond positively. It does not, lashing out, but not actually hurting you. Well, okay, you're encroaching on its space, and of course it's not going to react well to you right off the bat. You try again, and it still responds negatively, injuring you this time. Seeing as you're hurt, you retreat for the time being, opting to either give up entirely, or get away until you come up with a different approach. Makes sense, right?

Now, say your immediate response to it lashing out was to draw the gun at your side and shoot it in the face- no, actually, to make this metaphor more proportionate to the in story situation, let's say you don't even have a gun; you have a bow and a supply of arrows, which will almost certainly just piss the animal off until you score some critical shot on it, thus giving it the chance to retaliate. Congrats, if you're not dead by the end of the fight you just invoked then you're at least mauled, and you now have a dead animal on your hands, have gained absolutely nothing for it, and have some serious explaining to do to the zoo that was supposed to receive it.

Obviously this isn't a perfect equivalent, but do you see what I'm saying here?
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Maybe... except that the goal was to determine whether or not the other witch was sapient. If not, then based on past experience it could be concluded that the witch was hostile.

Once Saar lashed out unthinkingly, like an animal rather than a sapient being, that should have been enough to clue Ashtaroth in.

... I'm not sure how much effect the votes have, if any, so I'm not sure if this is an incidence of the players/readers being dumb or the character being dumb. Either way, I anticipate more bad ends in the future. ;)
 
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will408914 said:
Maybe... except that the goal was to determine whether or not the other witch was sapient. If not, then based on past experience it could be concluded that the witch was hostile.

Once Saar lashed out unthinkingly, like an animal rather than a sapient being, that should have been enough to clue Ashtaroth in.

... I'm not sure how much effect the votes have, if any, so I'm not sure if this is an incidence of the players/readers being dumb or the character being dumb. Either way, I anticipate more bad ends in the future. ;)
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Which is where the metaphor breaks down a bit. Assume for the sake of argument that Saar IS sapient, but can't read witch runes- what she would have seen is another witch, whom she can't just assume is also intelligent, approaching the base of her hill and spilling giant runes into the air. Said witch then arranges the runes into a line and starts drifting closer to her, as if getting in range. If she didnt realize it was a communication attempt, Saar would have every reason to potentially panic and lash out, since it could easily seem as if you're about to attack her, and she has no ability to move or get away from you. Hence the line at the beginning of Emergence 21 thinking maybe she just can't read witch runes.

When she can't read human language either however, and actively brings you closer in order to attack you, that seems like a fair indication this is not going to work. There is still a slim chance- she is the Witch of the Netherlands after all, not that you'd know that, so it's possible she just doesn't know or recognize Japanese- but it's unlikely, and probably not worth being hurt any further.
 
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Emergence 22: The Calm
  • Threadmarks
    • > Evade!
    > Make more ammunition!​

    Seems as though the question of her sapience has been answered, which means you don't have much choice — looks like you'll have to fight it out.

    Figuring it to be the easiest method of avoiding the other witch's attacks, you begin pulling yourself into the sky, flagging slightly due to the pain currently coursing through Tome. Ergh, this hurts... why can you even feel anything like this anyways? Witches aren't biological creatures; they shouldn't have the necessary organs to feel pain in the first place!

    Your opponent doesn't seem particularly keen on the idea of you escaping to above, or so the geysers that begin continuously erupting around you seem to attest. Hoping to give her something else to focus on as you swerve away, you start throwing the pieces of your now useless message in her direction, one or two symbol chains at a time. Each of them ends up blocked by her blades, but the distraction slows the pace of her attacks enough that you manage to make a significant amount of progress upwards, the geysers becoming progressively easier to avoid the higher you rise.

    As you sluggishly make your way upward, you notice that the other witch is actually taller than you initially approximated her as being — you thought she was about your height, but now that you look closer, she has at least half a story or so on you. Those tiny windows on her side must have caused you to underestimate her size...

    Well, taller than you thought or not, she's still stuck in the ground, unlike you. Thus before too long, you've ascended completely out of range of the other witch's water spouts, leading her to twist her head not-quite-far-enough upwards to give you what you imagine is the best glare she can really manage with only a single eye and no mouth. You'd grin back, if you weren't also missing that feature.

    Now relatively safe, you take a moment to reevaluate your options. You suppose you could take this opportunity to simply escape, but you'd rather not leave a hostile witch just sitting around in your barrier like an unpleasant house guest. Plus, even if re-separating your barrier from hers is possible, which you're increasingly starting to doubt, you can't in good conscience release her back on the general populace without at least trying to take care of her yourself. You may not be a magical girl anymore, but you'd like to think you're at least still a relatively decent person, current species notwithstanding.

    Therefore...

    You begin recreating your swarm of shatterwords, making sure to keep an eye on the other witch in case she pulls out a skill she hasn't demonstrated as of yet. Surprisingly, she continues to do nothing much as your runes gradually surround you once more, their presence oddly comforting to you.

    With your opponent remaining almost disquietingly still, it doesn't take too long before you hit your word limit again, leaving a hundred or so large black projectiles revolving around you like a tiny solar system. You glance down at the living structure below, considering how best to use them.



    [-] Aim for…
    [-] Her blades.​
    [-] Her "eye".​
    [-] Her body.​
    [-] The foundation where she connects to the ground.​
    [-] The flowers at her base.​

    [-] Attacking from…
    [-] Where you are now.​
    [-] Her level.​
    [-] The base of the hill.​

    [-] Utilizing a strategy of…
    [-] Unleashing the entire mass on her at once. Overwhelming force is always nice, and there's no way she can fend off the entirety of this.​
    [-] Circling around her and looking for openings. She seems pretty slow while turning, so you can't imagine it being too difficult to get behind her.​
    [-] Staggering your attacks so they happen one after the other in succession. You'll force her to deal with an assault she can't keep up with.​
    [-] Disguising your real shots by interspersing illusory ones. It'll probably be costly, but for this, it might be worth it.​
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Why not try all at once from this location?
    Seems like this is the best spot for an attempt at a one barrage win
     
    An indication of what update we rolled back to would make it easier to understand this update. It looks like this update continues on from the one directly before the bad end; is that correct?
     
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    [-] Utilizing a strategy of…
    -[-] Circling around her and looking for openings. She seems slow while turning, so you can't imagine it being too difficult to get behind her.

    Going right round. Check out the rear
     
    A question I'd like to ask everyone before this continues, for potential later reasons that probably aren't related to the ones you'd think I'd have to ask this- based on evidence from canon/the spin-offs, can Kyubey, after offering someone a wish, refuse to grant it if he doesn't like it? Ashtaroth is assuming that, but I'm not sure it's necessarily true. Like, say someone wished for something that would be personally detrimental to him, his species, or his goal- would he be able to refuse? He granted Madoka's wish, even though the end of all witches meant the end of the energy collection system as he knew it, but that may have just been because he figured the energy from the "Witch of Despair" that resulted (ie. this) would be worth it, though how he could have known that would even happen given that Madoka wished to erase witches before they could even be born is questionable. Was it because he said he would grant her wish, and can't/doesn't lie? But then you have to question what he qualifies as a "lie"...

    I've been trying to figure this out, but I don't seem to be coming to a solid conclusion. I'd like to have an answer before it becomes important (which it very likely will), so if you have any input, I'd appreciate it.
     
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    i think if someone doesnt have enough potential for it, he cant grant the wish. other than that, everything else is fair game.
     
    I think that once Kyubey has agreed to the contract and the wish is made (so long as it is within his power to grant) that he must uphold his end of the bargain. PMMM has a lot of Faustian themes, and one of the recurring things with "deals with the devil" is that they (the aforementioned devils) hold to the agreement once it is made.
     
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