You really want me to spout 5 pages worth of stuff that a website easily explains instead? cause I could go into every single ship class in the fleet and we be there all day.
The airforce I admit wasnt my greatest work but I was running out of time (and sleep)
Nah, I didn't see the link to the JMSDF rundown you edited in until rereading, that's fine enough.
As I said at the end of my post you quoted there, I just found it kinda weird that an in character document for political consumption purporting to summarize the current status of the JSDF as a whole would focus so much on just the JGSDF with the other branches just as an afterthought. I fully admit I'm nitpicking.
Given that there's serious concern about Japan being attacked by monsters that seem to focus on the land rather than the air and sea, a report focusing on the JGSDF might be entirely appropriate.
The Maritime Self Defence Force is one of the most powerful navies in the world. And has a good force well trained and numerous force of destroyers and other craft.
As many have said, awkwardly phrased. One of the big issues is that you use the word force twice in one sentence but with different meanings. Here are suggested versions that mean the same thing but with better wording. (Version 1 is closest to what you wrote, but version 2 is clearer and more grammatically correct).
Possible Version 1:
The Maritime Self Defence Force is one of the most powerful navies in the world. And has a good force well trained, with numerous destroyers and other craft.
Possible Version 2:
The Maritime Self Defence Force is one of the most powerful navies in the world. A numerous force of destroyers and other craft with well trained crews.
Given that there's serious concern about Japan being attacked by monsters that seem to focus on the land rather than the air and sea, a report focusing on the JGSDF might be entirely appropriate.
It being apparently written by some fuckup in the CIA instead of someone either more informed or working off of only public knowledge, however, is a bit of a confusing choice.
A couple of hours after you get home and go back up to your room, and probably just before dinnertime, you grit your teeth and, with a powerful effort of will, wrench yourself away from Vale of the Starry Mists. You've got your trellises lined up properly for the queensberry vines, and you promised yourself you'd take a break after that after you kind of broke the second promise to yourself because you got distracted making sure your four-leaf floofs were growing okay, after you broke the first promise to yourself because trying to get an irrigation line set up was important.
But this is important, and you don't let yourself forget that. Well, not for very long at a time.
See, you know the Crystal Millennium stays at least sort of open on weekends. You're not sure of all the details, but you're sure of that much. Which is good, because by far the best time for you to get down to Tokyo is either tomorrow or Sunday. Which means, much as you'd like to spend the next hour poring over the still views in the game and comparing them to your books to see if you recognize any of the plants, anything at all… You need to talk to your parents.
***
"Mom? Dad? Erika's going to the Crystal Millennium building in Tokyo tomorrow after school, and I'd like to go with her." Not quite how you first thought of it, but Erika's… Erika… took to the idea pretty fast.
Pros:
Cons:
Years of good behavior
No adult supervision
Reliable when out and about
Crossing unfamiliar ground
Diligent trait: Responsible!
Shy trait: Known social anxiety
Clearly very much wants to go...
...To a weird maybe culty place
Reliable helper this week...
...And we could still use the help
Won't be alone
Has known Erika literally a week
Before cell phone culture
Before cell phones, period.
Parental guilt...
Click, clink. Mom sets down her chopsticks. Dad sets down his spoon. .
Mom speaks first. "Oh? Does Erika have any special reason?"
"Welllll…" You're not really lying to them; Erika did say all this stuff. At some length. With great enthusiasm. "Erika almost got attacked by the DK Gang a month or so ago, and Sailor Mercury and Sailor Jupiter were right there and saved her. And her sister was one of the judges at the Cinderella Caravan event, the one the DK Gang did attack, and Sailor Moon kind of rescued her, too… She really wants to meet them again. When there aren't any monsters around."
Your father nods slowly. "Hmm. Well, that's certainly a good reason. But we were hoping you could help us with the shop tomorrow…"
"I'm sorry, it's been a really hard week…" You cringe.
"It's okay. I understand. I know you like Kibougahana well, but moving is still very stressful, and it's been your first week at a new school. Even without the rumors about monster attacks here too, that would be a problem for anyone, and the monsters certainly can't be making it better."
"...They are not." You sigh. If they only knew!
He smiles. "Well, it's only fair if we let you have a vacation. But… the Crystal Millennium?"
"I just think it'd be really cool!" Your eyes flash. You mean it, you really do! "Please let me go!"
Dad takes a deep breath, and gives Mom a significant look.
Diplomacy: d10 + 7 vs DC 12 Awkardness Bomb Strikes!
d10 + 7 - 1 vs DC 12
6 + 6 = 12
Team Heartcatch Success!
Then his eyes narrow a bit. He frowns. "Be careful. I've heard rumors that they talk about being able to teach people magical powers. People like that… can be dangerous to believe in too much." He sighs. "Not that I'm saying they're a cult, but they're very new, and I don't know what to make of them and this DK Gang, the Uzaina, now Labyrinth… Well, your grandmother raised me to believe that there's a logical explanation for everything." He smiles. "So I suppose maybe there's a lot that goes on that we don't get told. Be careful, and don't be too quick to trust someone just because they seem nice and do things you don't know how to explain."
You shuffle unhappily. "I'll be careful, Dad." You're not sure how to say more without lying, even though you really do intend to do exactly as he says.
And then your mom tilts her head. She has a funny look in her eye. "Well, we got you the local transit pass, but that only takes you as far as Utsunomiya. What will you do for the express train fare?"
"Mom..."
"What's the round-trip fare from there on the Aoba, two thousand yen each way?"
You give Mom a look of your own. "It's much more than that. I did look it up. Please, Mom, I'm serious, and I'm taking the local, okay?"
You stoically consign your manga budget for the next several weeks to the mists of history. Or rather, you've already written it off, because you saw the need coming. But taking the bullet train would just be silly; an hour of your time isn't worth a couple of thousand yen!
And your mother, to her credit, looks a little bit abashed. "I'm sorry, Tsubomi. I wanted to be certain that you'd been thinking this through."
"It's okay, Mom."
Expense Incurred:
Round trip train tickets for one, to/from downtown Tokyo! -6 Funds!
Remaining Funds: 24 + 4 (allowance) - 1 (Turn 1 snacks) - 0 (Turn 1 manga and gardening supplies) - 6 (local train fare) = 21 Funds
Erika is going to Tokyo with you, but does not plan to buy a train ticket. She has a cunning plan!
***The Next Afternoon***
Well, since you can't play Vale of the Starry Mists on the train, you might as well catch up with that book report and at least try to draft it…
You get most of the way through your draft before your eyes start to cross and you realize you're just wearing down your pencil eraser. About an hour out from Kibougahana, and maybe half an hour or so short of Tokyo Central Station, you reach into your bag and pat Chypre again. Then you pull out your library book about this dashing trick-shot archer; you find your bookmark, and you'd (with difficulty) managed to put the book down last time just before he daringly rescues the noblewoman's daughter from the bandits…
***Half An Hour Later***
So! You're in Tokyo Central Station! That, at least, you know pretty well, even if you're usually coming in on the lines from the south, not along the Utsunomiya line from the north.
Now… there's a little convenience store set into the ground floor of a ten-story building a few blocks from here. Erika made very sure to tell you about that specific store during school today, because she stopped there on a field trip three years ago and she still remembers it for some reason.
Stewardship: d10 + 9 vs DC 11[/s]
8 + 9 = 17
Team Heartcatch Success!
You hold up the piece of paper she drew on for you and yes, yes, this is the place. It's a good thing Erika likes to draw randomly once in a while because she's bored, and not only just new ideas for outfits.
So you sit down on a bench nearby and wait for Erika.
***Several Minutes Later***
Come to think of it, you don't actually know how fast the fairies can help you fly, since you chickened out before doing more than going up and then very carefully back down.
***A Few Minutes Later***
Are they slower than a commuter train? Or did Erika just leave a lot later? That, or Erika and Coffret got lost…
***A Few Minutes Later***
Hm, maybe this wasn't as good an idea as Erika thought. Though it's Erika's money and you can't blame her for trying to save it. Even if it involves hurling herself screaming through the empty air, a thought which gives you cold chills.
You can't help but think that Erika is the bravest person you know, with the probable exception of Grandma.
Unless she… she can't… like flying, can she?
***A Few Minutes Later***
You're starting to get impatient. You're lucky you brought a good book, because while you'd really like to fire up the magical Sailor Scout gizmo and play Vale of the Starry Mists, you probably shouldn't do that in public.
Darn it.
***Several Minutes Later***
From thirty meters above you, you hear a thump that seems oddly significant, more so than many of the incidental sounds you've heard in the past fifteen minutes or so. A strange sensation of presence rings in your mind like a bell.
Then you hear a somewhat awkward and jarring thud of a fast landing from the alley around the corner of the building. A quick, blink-and-you'd-miss it flicker of cyan light reflects off some of the bricks near the entrance.
Erika emerges from the alley, seeming very, very cheerful. She looks around to get her bearings, and sees you. "Oh, hi!"
She waves with one hand. Her other hand is held oddly to her chest. For a moment, you worry that she's hurt somehow… until you realize that she's holding herself just about right to be carrying an invisible fairy.
As Erika approaches, you hear a faint rustling sound, perhaps of Chypre locating and nuzzling up against her brother, obviously having deduced his location the same way you did. You have trouble picking up her voice over the city noise, even sounding so close, but she sounds concerned. "Are you okay-desu?"
Coffret is a little louder. "...I just flew here all the way from Kibougahana and wow my arms are tired-desu!"
Chypre makes a strange meep. "Lord Coupe says that it gets easier with practice-desu."
"I sure hope so-desu!"
Erika frowns. "I'm sorry for making you work so hard, little friend."
"I thought it would be easier, so it's okay-desu…" Coffret trails off uneasily.
Erika smiles. "We'll take the train back home, though, okay? And for the rest of today, you can just ride in my bag. It's my turn to carry you… with my magical 'being really big' powers! Ha-ha!" She flexes her free arm like a posing weightlifter.
"Desu…" Coffret sighs a tiny sigh of relief.
Erika turns the smile to you, as the moment's gentleness fades to eagerness. "So, Minato's only three or four kilometers south of here. We're getting close to the Crystal Millennium!"
"...We still have to find the place."
"How hard can it be?"
***
Stewardship: d10 + 9 vs DC 13 Awkardness Bomb Strikes!
d10 + 9 - 1 vs DC 13
"Is it just me, or has this bus been going north for the last five or ten minutes?"
"...Um. The sun is south of us, right?"
"Uh-oh. And I can't see Tokyo Tower anymore."
"It could just be the buildings being really tall."
"I mean maybe, but… uh… we'd better get off at the next stop and figure this out."
***Several Minutes Later***
"...We're lost." Your hand flies to your mouth. "Oh, no. I knew this would happen. Mom and Dad knew this would happen. We're lost in Tokyo and we're probably going to get eaten by youma or something!"
Erika leans over and murmurs in your ear. "Remember what happened to the Desertrian. The youma should be worrying about us. Besides, I thought you said you had Sailor Moon on speed-dial."
You glance around, sidling from the main paths of pedestrian traffic towards a decorative fountain in front of a hotel. That should keep you from being overheard.
"Erika, that line is for special emergencies! I can't just go calling Sailor Moon like a baby because I got lost in whichever ward this is." She'd… she'd… You shiver. Would she ever take you seriously again?
You look around, and the strangers seem very strange, and very confusing. You know you don't do your best thinking when things start to get like this. That just makes it worse. Oh no. Oh no no no…
Erika suddenly reaches up and grabs you in a tight hug for a minute! You calm down a little and stop hyperventilating. She pulls back. "Besides, you don't have to call Sailor Moon! You have me! I'll get us out of here and back there in no time! We just need to ask the right person for directions!" Erika beams, planting one foot on the lip of the fountain and striking a confident pose.
Then a small fuzzy thing invisibly brushes against your cheek. You almost cry out, but… it's Chypre. You can tell it's Chypre, and even though an ordinary talking flying invisible plushy might freak you out right now, Chypre is Chypre.
"Um, and just in case-desu…"
Softly, you reach up and pat Chypre with a fingertip. "Yeah?" You're starting to have some hope.
"Well, the Sailor Senshi have a lot of spiritual power-desu…"
Coffret pipes up excitedly from Erika's bag. "I bet the two of us could track down their building-desu!"
"We'd love to help-desu!"
You stop. You think that over. Hmm.
You are lost in downtown Tokyo! What do?
[] Just calm down and try to figure this out yourself. Tokyo is pretty much the biggest city in the world, but it's pretty much the most modern city in the world, too. Surely you can figure out where you are and how to get to where you're going before Crystal Millennium closes up for the night. Sure, it's pretty far into the afternoon already between the train trip and going the wrong way, but you can make it. You were just distracted last time, that's all. You're… you can calm down and stop fretting and start making better choices. You know you can.Results: ???
[] Trust in the power of Erika Kurumi! Erika's nearly invincible self-assurance and energy are, if nothing else, different from the careful, cautious, and significantly wrong thinking that got you lost in the first place. And she's not afraid to walk up to just anybody and ask for directions, even if they might shout at her or something! You… you can be like that, but maybe not right now.Results: ???
[] Trust in the power of magic! Maybe Chypre and Coffret really can home in on the spiritual power of the Sailor Senshi, even from kilometers away, if they try. Or… maybe you could turn into Cure Blossom and Cure Marine and cover more ground that way. Come to think of it, Tokyo has so many tall buildings that you could go a long way just bouncing around the rooftops, and you'd be able to orient on Tokyo Tower from up there.Results: ???
[] Call for help! You know Sailor Mercury told you the emergency instructions for calling Sailor Moon were a special emergency thing that would interrupt whatever she was doing. And you know Sailor Mercury was grouchy. But Sailor Mars and Sailor Venus were nice, and Sailor Moon probably is too… You… You're nervous about doing this. Even if she's nice about it, you don't want your first conversation with her to be you not being able to handle a basic normal regular-people thing. You really don't want that. And you kind of don't want to seem helpless in front of Erika, either...Results: ??? [x0.5 vote weighting]
Eight Hour Vote Moratorium in place. After that time, vote duration not to exceed 36 hours.
For the record, within the context of TsubomiQuest events, Sailor Senshi are NPCs whose actions are fully controlled by Lunaryon.
And it only makes sense to me that the vote run for around 36 hours. If everything goes according to plan... *glances at brother's doctor appointment scheduled for like 6 tomorrow morning*
Well, hopefully the Turn post will be done sometime after that.
Following magic runs the risk of leading somewhere other than Crystal Millennium, though not much of one since the Senshi are pretty much the only people around who don't bother hiding their magic in any way.
Following Erika has the advantage that Tsubomi can tell her parents what happened without lying.
Asking for directions on an emergency line before other options have been exhausted would be jumping the gun.
You look around, and the strangers seem very strange, and very confusing. You know you don't do your best thinking when things start to get like this. That just makes it worse. Oh no. Oh no no no…
Following magic runs the risk of leading somewhere other than Crystal Millennium, though not much of one since the Senshi are pretty much the only people around who don't bother hiding their magic in any way.
Following Erika has the advantage that Tsubomi can tell her parents what happened without lying.
Asking for directions on an emergency line before other options have been exhausted would be jumping the gun.
"We got lost, but someone from Crystal Millennium found us and showed us around, so it worked out!" seems like a safe thing to say.
If they ask "how did they find you?"... well, the honest answer is probably going to be something like "I dunno" or "they used their magic powers"
EDIT: Safe in terms of protecting Tsubomi's secret identity, at least.
EDIT 2: I suppose I should declare my not-really-secret-at-all agenda of "get these characters comfortable enough communicating with each other so that it can just be assumed to be happening without anyone spending actions on it"
Hmmm... leaning towards this, as we might find something interesting. Either an Onogoro thing, one of the Kami, or maybe a even a Dark Kingdom outpost - but probably just the Crystal Millennium.
This one... isn't too bad, as Sailor Moon probably won't be upset, and might be available but I'd rather not use it just yet. Instead we can use it if we get into an actual problem.
So, worst case scenario, they cross paths with Ryoga who gives them directions and the group somehow finds themselves at the portal to the Dark Kingdom.
By the way, what does Team Heartcatch have in terms of resources for dealing with someone who has a rotten heart flower, but hasn't been exploited by Desert Apostles yet?
Following magic runs the risk of leading somewhere other than Crystal Millennium, though not much of one since the Senshi are pretty much the only people around who don't bother hiding their magic in any way.
With that said, Erika is not wrong to observe that the Heartcatch girls are tougher than the average mild-mannered schoolgirls, and have the Sailor Senshi on speed-dial! Who knows, discovering some other locus of magic might be a good thing!
EDIT 2: I suppose I should declare my not-really-secret-at-all agenda of "get these characters comfortable enough communicating with each other so that it can just be assumed to be happening without anyone spending actions on it"
Tsubomi isn't actually so much phobic about reaching out to Sailor Moon as she's phobic about using an emergency hotline frivolously, and ignorant of how to use the regular apps on the phone to communicate more normally.
Besides, for all she knows, at any given time Sailor Moon is doing elaborate magical workings necessary to keep Japan from sliding into the ocean or something! She's important and obviously very powerful, so jostling her elbow every time you have a metaphorical cat that needs taking down out of a tree would be just plain irresponsible!
So, worst case scenario, they cross paths with Ryoga who gives them directions and the group somehow finds themselves at the portal to the Dark Kingdom.
By the way, what does Team Heartcatch have in terms of resources for dealing with someone who has a rotten heart flower, but hasn't been exploited by Desert Apostles yet?
Just to be clear, Cure Flower visited Nagasaki in 1947, in case you were thinking of the thing the city's normally famous for.
Mind you, it's not a coincidence; the occasion that brought here there was indirectly connected to the fact that the city had been hit by an atomic bomb a year and a half earlier.
I have to say that it beggars the imagination to try and process what a massive list of truly, truly evil deeds Hofmann had put on his ledger between 1926 and 1947. In all candor, I find it hard to consider Hofmann's spontaneous combustion as anything other than an instance of "things generally working out alright."
Kaoruko was quite discommoded by it, of course; nothing like that had ever happened before in her experience.
To be more clear, the irony I find would be that Cure Flower encountered such an individual near the end of her career after she had already lived through the war and all the horrors it brought to the people she knew and helped, while the implication is that her granddaughter could encounter such an individual at the beginning of hers, before she has any chance to harden herself to the inevitable conclusion of such an encounter.
I imagine that for someone like Cure Flower who tries to see the best in everyone regardless of who they are and what they have done, it would still be fairly traumatic to see a spell that normally gives people a fairly swift but ultimately harmleas reality-check instead find someone so vile that it decides "Purge it in FIRE" is the only appropriate response.
