One of the main issues is that Onogoro isn't looking at their society from a debate table, but from a negotiation table. It's not necessarily that they are utterly incapable of knowing what some of their practices look like from the outside; it's just that they have been in the position of arguing "from a position of strength" until fairly recently.
For example, it does not take a genius to identify the problems of late-stage capitalism, but it's the only game in town, and nobody who wishes to truly oppose it has the resources to do so effectively, so whaddya gonna do?
I would be remiss not to point out that, even on this highly left-leaning forum, this is not an uncontroversial framing of societal issues in the West, and in the broader population it's an unusual minority view. What you call "late-stage capitalism" exists because most people mostly support it, and because there is genuine disagreement about both what issues society has, and the origin and solution to those issues.
Which, to return from the analogy to the object level, I think also applies to Onogoro. No society can sustain itself purely through force, they must always offer some kind of justification to their members as to their structure and actions. These don't have to be (and aren't) universally compelling, but you can't violently repress everyone at once, and the people doing the repression themselves need their actions justified. This isn't a one-off thing either, any living society is constantly having new people born or otherwise inducted into it who need these things explained to them. Explaining to a teenager why they can't tell their mundane friends about magic, or why Youkai need to be treated with constant suspicion, or why they should listen too and support the Ministry, should not be alien to them, and if they couldn't mostly succeed at it they would be fundamentally different today.
These people have grown up in a supernatural world that is legit deadly and dark. They are used to being the first and last line of defense of Japan and its people from monsters for centuries, and their entire perspective is based on that.
The Warring States era and Fade were literal hundreds of years ago. Onogoro has had fairly solid control over Japan and its Youkai for generations now.
It's like saying modern America is defined by bravely defying the wildness of the Frontier. Technically true in the way it's shaped a lot of stuff regarding individualism, but hasn't been physically true for awhile and the concept is in itself really messed up when you look at it.
And one could fairly argue Onogoro also are the monsters.
Actually, you're wrong. Clearly their lives should be under my control. You'd know that if you were me.
For my first act as UNDISPUTED ruler of the entire world, I declare that we eliminate assist those pesky MAGICAL GIRLS, we cannot allow children to endanger my position themselves!
What do you mean I'm part of the problem? People can't agree on who should rule? Bah!
I would be remiss not to point out that, even on this highly left-leaning forum, this is not an uncontroversial framing of societal issues in the West, and in the broader population it's an unusual minority view. What you call "late-stage capitalism" exists because most people mostly support it, and because there is genuine disagreement about both what issues society has, and the origin and solution to those issues.
Which, to return from the analogy to the object level, I think also applies to Onogoro. No society can sustain itself purely through force, they must always offer some kind of justification to their members as to their structure and actions. These don't have to be (and aren't) universally compelling, but you can't violently repress everyone at once, and the people doing the repression themselves need their actions justified. This isn't a one-off thing either, any living society is constantly having new people born or otherwise inducted into it who need these things explained to them. Explaining to a teenager why they can't tell their mundane friends about magic, or why Youkai need to be treated with constant suspicion, or why they should listen too and support the Ministry, should not be alien to them, and if they couldn't mostly succeed at it they would be fundamentally different today.
Except Onogoro aren't used to inducting "outsiders".
From the Doctor's side stories, particularly the one where he is interviewed by the agency branch on his actions at the hospital, we know that "wild sprouts", non-magical people who awaken to magic on their own either through extreme stress while encountering a magical threat or having found a rogue "legitimate" magic book like Shinju's cover story suggests, are exceedingly rare to the point where there is no SOP for agents to follow in the blue-moon chance they encounter one. It is left entirely to the discretion of the agent on-scene over what to do about the encountered wild sprout.
It's one thing to indoctrinate someone into your society when their entire family have been in said society for generations, even if in recent times they tend to fall on more moderate lines and have found ways to straddle the line between Onogoro and the rest of Japan.
It is entirely another to bring in a total outsider and convince them that your society's culture and secrecy is paramount when the criteria for joining that society is so specific as to be a sub-single-digit population percentage random chance, and the "secrecy" part is an active hindrance to bringing anyone who doesn't meet that criteria in order to establish that SOP.
Which, to return from the analogy to the object level, I think also applies to Onogoro. No society can sustain itself purely through force, they must always offer some kind of justification to their members as to their structure and actions. These don't have to be (and aren't) universally compelling, but you can't violently repress everyone at once, and the people doing the repression themselves need their actions justified. This isn't a one-off thing either, any living society is constantly having new people born or otherwise inducted into it who need these things explained to them. Explaining to a teenager why they can't tell their mundane friends about magic, or why Youkai need to be treated with constant suspicion, or why they should listen too and support the Ministry, should not be alien to them, and if they couldn't mostly succeed at it they would be fundamentally different today.
The main problem Onogoro faces here is that there's a big difference between the quality of argumentation you need in order to successfully 'convert' (that is, induct into the shared culture) a child you raised and the quality of argumentation you need to sincerely convert a child you did not raise.
As an illustrative example of this, compare the Amish rate of convincing their own teenagers to join Amish society voluntarily (90% or so) and the Amish rate of convincing non-Amish teenagers to voluntarily become Amish (negligible).
Onogoro is also not above using mind control on troublesome individuals who refuse to conform, which reduces the need to have good arguments in reserve for when the mediocre arguments fail.
So I don't think I've seen this discussed but something likely the Onogoro aren't thinking about but something the Diet, MCAT and to some extent the Silver Millennium are thinking about is the mass Awakening of Japan.
I'm sure that based on just being able to promise better health to people alone, let alone using it first for their pet projects or to actually improve Japan that there are plans in the work based around what they're learning from the test pilot programs of teaching that MCAT, SM, and the Diet have their fingers in as they accumulate information.
Like, between MCAT and SM there's a reasonable understanding that within say, 1 to 2 decades they can safely and easily Awaken all of Japan to use magic. This is good news because as far as they know, that'll help provide magical resistance against all sorts of mysterious health issues, the DE's attacks, Onogoro's attacks, and as America is also currently publicly dealing with magic ensures Japan is also on the front edge of Magic-ifying their country and staying on the forefront of things.
Onogoro can't conceive of this being their plan, and a core part of the 'Day of Fire' is the whole Haves vs Have-nots of magic. You can see that in the many canon interludes that 'mass Awakenings' are completely alien and panic inducing. Like right now they're thinking 'at worst' the Diet will awaken their family and retainers and trusted 'soldiers' and the like that might noticeably increase the magic using population. They aren't thinking the Diet might say, (if we say there's like 1 magic user per what, 100? 1000? people) increasing the population 1000x fold to include all of Japan even as MCAT and SM openly state their plans to lead the way on how to teach and work with the Diet on setting up magical education and accreditation for jobs and living normal lives with magic. (Edit: Basically they'll be viewing Awakening being used by the Government as a method of shoring up their powerbases or an expensive way to 'buy' into nobility and things like that, something they'd do as an example. Not as a public health issue to freely dispense across all of Japan.)
Ironically I can see this being brought up in class at some point by one of the adults, where 'Akizo' follows up perhaps to learn the rough summary from Artemis. Which to her is crazy but believeable and also helps reassure her faith in the Senshi. I mean when they have a working plan in discussion about 'Awakening all of Japan' to magic, a lot of their policies make sense and their 'motives to spread magic' seem reasonable and far less dangerous. And Youki being a threat is also a lot less when there's 100x to 1000x more trained Guardians/Agents/Whatever Japan calls their agents to match the increased freedom of Youkai. I mean if Onogoro can handle the Youkai as they are now, surely having so many more people across all of Japan will keep them behaving well, at least, she can see why the Senshi would have no worries if everyone has magic, that means everyone has magic protection. This of course means the mass amount of 'normal ignorant peasents' dying isn't an issue because everyone has some form of basic magical house protection, alarms, ectera.
Of course Onogoro after hearing her reporting that will have a vastly different reaction to the news that 'Little Brother' plans to make everyone 'equal'.
They do, we just haven't seen it because our exposure to the TEP has been heavy on theory and light on praxis. We can guess some of the Progressives' praxis, since they're our and MCAT's designated collaborators. That can only be all they do if they're new and formed in response to us, but let's assume that's the case.
If I recall the Weaver Lane updates correctly, that is indeed the case.
That is, there may have been a small nucleus of individuals who found the other factions of the TEP insufficiently earnest and motivated before March 1992, but they hadn't coalesced into a recognizable major faction within the TEP as a whole under the leadership of our wacky kinda pseudo-Goth friend Tsubasa. It was specifically the appearance of public magical girls attracting attention and openly using magic to fight for love and justice and all that that really got things going.
So it's quite possible that "collaborate with magical girls (and maybe MCAT)" is their whole praxis, since this is a group that literally did not exist at the beginning of the year and probably doesn't have a very robust corps of theoreticians.
Oh. So what Troubles were they asking about her being sent to?
When Elina, retired magical girl, said "the, ah, other troubles," she was referring to something distinct from what a normal British person would call 'the Troubles,' but nonetheless very troubling. Namely, magical Britain's losing war of attrition against the Dark Kingdom.
Regarding the TEP, I don't remember the exact name of the group in question, but there was a group that was intending to talk to MCAT and possibly the Diet themselves. The leader we met was a lady who's niece was the Shadow girl in Team Lion.
They've probably been reaching out, though I couldn't really guess as to what sort of conclusions they've come across.
Let's be real, if you are trying to do revolutionary praxis against the Onogoro, I don't think they will feel bad about killing your entire family, cutting off your legs, and offering you the choice between killing yourself after signing a lengthy letter of confession and contrition for your rebellion, or being fed to angry youkai alive. They certainly have no compunctions about kidnapping the families of precure in order to secure their cooperation. We should probably not judge too harshly those who chose the path they can survive over the path that they can be perfectly pure on.
This is sort of like how all kinds of protest against oil companies are turboillegal in Britain so now climate protestors can only spray orange cornstarch on Stonehenge or dye fountains black. Actually protesting at refineries is illegal, along with a whole laundry list of other protests. Forming an ineffectual protest group is allowed-forming an effectual revolutionary group is inviting the Dawn of Fire down upon us all and conspiring with youkai to kill your friends and family and is punishable by death.
Man this reminds me that I wanted to hear from her again. I know in qiest it's been like two or three days since she got accepted as artemis' apprentice, but like. I'm intrigued by her.
And then there's the one who didn't retire, and decided to get a job working with the English magic enforcers. By the sound of it, the only reason she's not actively opposing Irish independence right now is that she's not good enough to be worth sending.
Err... what? Is Ireland still part of the UK in this timeline? I don't remember that.
If you are referring to Northern Ireland, remember that the majority of Northern Ireland was Anglican and wished to remain in the UK, fearing to be placed under Catholic rule. The religious differences have greatly deceased in salience now, but back in the 70's it was still an incredibly big deal.
They are so used to 'Making the Hard Decisions' that it does not occur to them that they never did make the hard decisions. It's easy to just treat all of the Yokai like the man-eating monsters the worst of their kind were. Easy to just say that their clan head's know best and no one else does. But if they had actually tried to break with tradition and try treating the Yokai with respect for their personhood, that would have caused discontent in their ranks. It would have had to make them rethink their policies and beliefs. And both of those would have been actual difficult decisions to work through. Putting complicated thought and work into doing the right thing is the Hard Decision that is so often derided as the 'soft' or 'emotional' answer, and thus not the right one.
That makes me think of a discussion I recently had in the Winter of Widows thread on SB. Someone was complaining about the protagonist not resorting to torture, and then devolved into complaining about her failure to make the hard choices to protect her people, seeming to miss the point that the whole story was about how choosing to be merciful and kind are the hard choices. Being cruel and harsh to protect your own instead of trying to be good and help other is the easy choice, not the hard one.
That's also the point of Sailor Moon, and one of the things it does so well. It seems that in the stereotypical magical girl shows (YMMV on how accurate that stereotype is) the morally good choice is often depicted as the easy and obviously right choice, but in reality they are often the hard choice that has a cost. Sailor Moon actually does a pretty good job of showing how painful those choices can be. It's one of the reasons why Madoka Magica and Sailor Moon are actually rather compatible in tone
Simon has also mentioned that British Government Mages don't go into Ireland. Because if Ireland notices said Mages, Ireland eats them. Not the Irish, Ireland.
Err... what? Is Ireland still part of the UK in this timeline? I don't remember that.
If you are referring to Northern Ireland, remember that the majority of Northern Ireland was Anglican and wished to remain in the UK, fearing to be placed under Catholic rule. The religious differences have greatly deceased in salience now, but back in the 70's it was still an incredibly big deal.
Innocent misunderstanding, caused by the fact that Elina (the former Remedy Lavender), when speaking to Dame Judith Carroll, referred to magical Britain's war against Kunzite as "the, ah, other troubles."
Simon has also mentioned that British Government Mages don't go into Ireland. Because if Ireland notices said Mages, Ireland eats them. Not the Irish, Ireland.
Let's not try that again. And Usagi? I don't think you should try loaning this out to anyone. Anyone. Even if it's safe" Mom shakes her head, and you're inclined to agree.
Something about the shape that your mother took for a few seconds there – that elven-eared, raven-tressed sorceress – was strangely familiar. More than familiar; it was oddly unnerving. For a moment it was like bugs were running down your spine. You didn't know what you were looking at, but even more than you'd expected, she had your full attention.
Your father's response was similarly attentive, but, you suspect, rather different underneath. He certainly didn't seem unnerved. That is something that you won't be thinking about in detail.
Now you wonder whether the Transformation Brooch would change any regular person that tried to use it. Or just any magically awakened person. Or does it just work on people close to you? Was it somehow connected to what the Queen called your mother? It doesn't really matter, though. The brooch is too important to be letting people play with it. Even people you love and trust, frankly. Minori could get herself into danger, and you don't know what might happen to Mom.
You settle onto the couch, pull Mini into your lap, and talk with your family. There's a dozen things you want to do right now, but somehow, you know that this isn't the time. Both your parents are watching you like hawks, and they'd know immediately if you slipped away to go be Sailor Moon.
And as you sit down and actually stop to reflect on it, you realize… you've been unconscious for over a day. You're not in pain or anything now, but only that nagging, unstoppable well of "but you have to" is telling you to go out and be a heroine right now. And you find yourself making a decision you're not quite sure you've ever made before, not exactly.
Maybe you don't need to do that right now.
It's been a whole day. Your friends would have been doing their best to keep things under control. If things were really bad, they'd have left some kind of message or found a way to get in touch with you immediately as soon as you woke up. You… don't have to go out and save the world right this minute.
So you sit back, and you relax, and you talk to your family.
Naru should be by before too long, and she'll at least have kept in touch with your newer friends. So once you've got your homework, you can find out what's happened in the… forty hours or so that you were asleep.
You have plenty to talk about with your parents to pass the time. The closest you come to Senshi business is to mention what you've learned about the Diet's plan for approving new citizenship. If you understand what she told you last week, Minako will be starting school with an entirely new identity thanks to all the complications with her family life.
Your dad thinks of four ways the system as you describe it could be taken advantage of; your mom thinks of three. Oh, well. Surely the government will have thought of those too, and be planning for it.
A bit over an hour of casual chatter later, you hear the front door open. "Mom? Dad? I'm home!" Shingo calls out into the house. After a beat of silence, he adds "And Naru's here, too! Is Usagi out of bed yet?"
Your mother answers. "Shingo! What have I told you about yelling in the house?"
Did she just… yell in the house about yelling in the house? You look at your father. He looks at you. But neither of you are going to say anything. You look a bit anxiously down at Minori, but apparently she didn't notice the contradiction, or is wise far beyond her years.
Despite the rebuke, when Shingo levitates through the living room doorway, he has a bright smile on his face. "Not to. And hey, Usagi! You are up! I know you need your beauty sleep, but I don't think it made any difference."
Before you have a chance to find a reply to that little declaration of war against the Moon Kingdom, Naru's snort from behind your obnoxious little brother brings you back to the plane of normal foolishness. But even as she shakes her head at your brother's attempt to bait you, you can see the worry on her face. And then she almost stomps around to the front of the couch, crossing her arms and leaning over you menacingly. Minori clambers out of your lap before she even opens her mouth. You notice, quite suddenly, that Naru's jeweled hairpieces are… vibrating. They do not seem happy.
When Naru lets out her first deep breath and finds words, her first question is one you hadn't really thought of.
"Do you have any idea how much you've worried everyone?" Naru asks.
"I…" But Naru cuts you off with a shake of her head, glancing briefly at Dad before focusing back on you.
"Everyone's been beside themselves worrying about you. Venus and Mars look like they barely got a minute's rest when I saw them on Tuesday, Jupiter's twitchy, Mercury's so distracted that I have to drag her out of the clouds to try to talk to her. Uranus and Neptune ran off saying they were going to go off and run themselves out of Oblivion Knights to punch because otherwise they'd drive each other up the walls, and I don't want to talk about what I've been thinking because I nobody could explain what happened to you in plain Japanese, beyond 'she's sleeping!' "
You… you really don't know what to say to that. You finally settle on "I… I'm sorry, Naru. I didn't mean to worry all of them."
You can tell Naru's still frustrated, but she still smiles softly and shakes her head wonderingly. "You're too good a person, Usagi. I hope you know that."
Your answer comes out as a grumble, and why not? "I've heard it once already, and I have a feeling I'm going to hear it again." Hmph. You bet the wizard you were trying to heal wouldn't say that! Or the cold terrible voice in the dark place beyond nothingness!
"Good. You need to be reminded that we all care about you. Anyway, here's your homework. I'm going to go and let all the others know that you're feeling better!"
Looking through the folder that Naru handed over to you, you are a little thankful. Yes, there is homework here, but it isn't more than an hour or two's worth. Something that you will be able to take care of relatively quickly.
"Hey Mom, Dad…" You start to say softly, looking down at the paperwork in front of you. "I know I can finish this off in a couple of hours, and I promise I will tonight. But… I really do need to check in with the Crystal Millennium. I'm not going to go and do anything dangerous, but… I've been missing from them, just like I've been missing from school. Okay?"
Your mother's brow furrows. Before words cross her lips, Dad touches her wrist gently. They look at each other silently, seeming not to need words.
Dad's words are simple, when they come at last. "Do what you need to do this afternoon, but promise us you won't get into any more fights. Well. Not… so soon."
"I promise," you say to them both, and mean it.
Mom nods, smiling fondly but wistfully, and you take that as permission. You rise from the couch, patting Minori on the head. "Stay here, sweetie." You take a deep breath. "Moon Prism Power, Make Up!"
You're not sure how Minako knew that you'd teleport into the library instead of, say, the rooftop, or the front lobby, or the special teleporting-into-the-room-room that Luna and Artemis laid out for exactly that purpose.
But she knew.
Her jumping on you and hugging you would probably knock you over if you were both ordinary mild-mannered schoolgirls. Though somehow, you have a hard time imagining Minako having ever been mild-mannered.
"You're back you're back you're BACK!"
Surprised by the friendly ambush, all you can manage is a weak and slightly choked "uh, hi?"
Minako steps back, obviously relieved and delighted to see you. "Wow it is good to see you again. After we got out of Cendrellion's cave, we dropped you off in your mom's backyard. It was strange, you changed back as soon as she touched you. I don't know why; I never change back except on purpose. Then again, I never let Mom meet Sailor V." She winces, then takes a deep breath, as though choosing not to say something. "Ami and I… kind of ducked out after that. Went back to Choshi City to see what had happened. She left me and Haruka and Michiru to keep an eye on things. Long story short, we won. Everything's pretty much under control. We got Cendrellion. A few of the youma got away past MCAT, but between everybody we only had three get away out of, like, thirty. That's pretty good, if you ask me. Tuesday I heard something about some of MCAT's wizards working on tracking spells, too, so somebody still may chase down the others. Which reminds me. MCAT could use your help with some of that magic you do." She winks.
You stiffen. "They need help?"
"Nothing right this second. Everyone in a hospital is stable, and we have one youma who we really need to Moon Healing Escalation, but MCAT's been sitting on him since Monday night so he's, uh… actually." Minako starts poking her communicator. "Hang on a sec. Hey, you're, uh, oh, right, Yoshino, that's your name. This is Sailor Venus. Do the oni think they have Kintaro under control for now? Oh, oh wow, you got him tied up again? Great! What'd you use, never mind, I'll ask later. Do we have… An hour? Great, thanks. I'll have Sailor Moon over way before then. Okay thanks bye!"
She turns to you. "I have time to answer a few questions. Probably good to get it out there. I know one thing Miss Carroll was big on was after-action reports, don't you know." and she drops so perfectly into the imitation of an English voice that you almost look around looking for someone in the room who isn't Japanese.
You smile at her, teasingly. "Aren't reports normally the kind of thing you hate?"
She snorts. "Sure, but it's you and I'm telling you, not writing a ten thousand character essay on it."
"That makes sense." It really, really does. "So. Okay. It sounds like we shouldn't take too long, so I'll just ask about, uh, what happened down with us. In the weird space. You said you got Cendrellion."
"Yeah. I don't think she'll be making any more trouble." Minako says it grimly, shaking her head and looking away. You'll ask more later.
"Okay. And I handled the microphone youma, and Drella… you saw."
"Yeah, she looked pretty bad. We handed her over to an ambulance crew and she's in the hospital now. They think she'll be okay, but she needs a lot of feeding up."
"That's good." You mean that, you really do. You wonder what the human being Drella used to be, and now is again, will turn out to be like. You think you'd like to meet her some day. Not today. "But… what about the other youma who were down there with us? That hammer youma who was lined up with the others? And the chessman youma?"
"Well. The chessmen. Makoto beat one of them to pieces, and Ami beat the other one in a chess match. Somehow, that means that now that one- Katib- is doing whatever Ami says, at least for now. You know how weird things can get. Remember what you told me about that teacher-youma at the Crystal Seminar place?"
"Right, the one with the quiz questions!" That one was tough, though you were new to this then. But you remember how when you answered one of her questions, she seemed strangely helpless for a little while.
"Yeah. Guess this makes as much sense as that. Anyway, Ami uses those brains for more than just looking wrinkly, so she told Katib to go to an MCAT jail cell and not make any trouble. We don't think she's going to be a problem, and neither does Samui."
"Well, that's good. But the hammer youma…"
Minako looks a bit embarrassed for a moment, then draws herself up with her I-was-there-you-weren't look, the one you've seen her use several times before. You can't help but feel for her, for having it, but she has it..
"Well.. see, Rei buried him in a wall, then went off to fight Drella. And in all the confusion after you blacked out and Cendrellion tried to kill us all with what Ami assures me was an antimatter bomb, we forgot about that one until two o'clock that morning. Which is when Rei called me in the middle of the night. Guilty conscience for leaving him there. So I got up and we went back to the space together. Aaaand there was a youma-shaped hole in the wall Rei buried him in. So I guess some time after we left and most of the MCAT crew went to get some sleep, the hammer youma managed to break out and escape somehow without anyone being the wiser. Happens. Saw stuff like that in England." Minako sighs. "I think I said something about, uh, a spell…"
"You did."
"Yeah. Some of MCAT's wizards are working on a scrying spell to track the youma who left traces behind, so maybe something will come of that."
You pause, going over all that.
Wait. Wait.
"Wait, you said something about an antimatter bomb."
You know very little about what antimatter really is. Nothing, really. But you have seen enough science fiction to know that that sounds very bad.
Minako shrugs. "Didn't amount to much. I handed Cendrellion's head over to the Amazons after. And the head was still trying to talk, believe it or not. Yeowch." Minako shivers. "We did what we had to do, but I can't help but wish it'd ended differently."
You… will decide how you're going to feel about that later. Significantly later, you decide, and stop thinking about that for now. Change the subject.
"What about Shakoukai?"
Minako pauses. "She's dead. Can I explain later?"
You stop and now it's your turn to hug Minako. Anything about Shakoukai seems to be a sore spot for Minako. "If you like. If you really need to, you can never tell me at all."
Minako's voice is very small. "No, I want to. Just… not now."
"That's fine."
"Now, what's this big problem with, what did you say his name was?"
"Kintaro. Really strong youma, maybe stronger than anything else we've ever come across except for maybe Drella and Cendrellion themselves. Hard to be sure with those two, since we didn't end up trying to arm-wrestle them or anything. Haruka fought Kintaro back upstairs…"
Round 2:
Haruka uses Ring Stabilization Kick!
Haruka 44
44+d10 = 44+3 = 47
Vs
Kintaro 41+2 ("like giving an oni an iron club") = 43
43+d10 = 43+9 = 52
DARK KINGDOM SUCCESS!
Haruka at 2 of 3 wounds! Spell fails!
Round 3:
Haruka+Michiru = 44+(0.4*40) = 44+16 = 60 ("cue the lesbian space violins!")
60+d10 = 60+7 = 67
Vs
Kintaro 41+2 = 43
43+d10 = 43+4 = 47
SENSHI TRIPLE SUCCESS!
Kintaro at 3 of 3 wounds!
Kintaro vanquished!
"…and Kintaro was winning until Michiru showed up. Could have been messy if he'd been free to tackle the Amazons; he was out of their league. But the two of them took him down, and when we got back upstairs they had me chain him up to be trucked away to some special little bunker MCAT had ready for especially scary monsters. It reminded me a little of the Spellblade dungeon, you know the one, right?" She grins. "The one we had to bust you out of jail from~"
You harumph. "That was an accident."
"Sure, fine. But anyway, I learned a lesson this morning when I stopped by to ask the night shift here if there'd been any messages for us. See-" and now she seems a bit more sheepish, a bit on the back foot- "I didn't know my chains could be broken."
Horrified, you stare at her. "Wait, he broke out?"
"Uh, yeah. Took him about a day, just about exactly 'a night and a day' if I remember how the British used to talk, but he managed it."
The thought of such a powerful monster on the rampage sickens you. "What… what did he do?"
"He ripped a door open. Then he caught something in the chest." Minako smirks. "Booby trap." MCAT's pretty sneaky sometimes. I gather it was some kind of tank-blowing-upping-thing. By the time Kintaro came to, there were three oni and a lot of wizards watching him. But the messages MCAT's sending are getting kind of, uh, nervous about sitting on him much longer. So… yeah, it's probably okay if we wait a little, but we should get over there."
"Okay. Do you have a picture?" You're not sure if this 'special bunker' is in MCAT headquarters or another site, but it doesn't really matter if Minako has a Polaroid… which she pulls, in that strange way that all of you sometimes do, out of thin air and hands to you.
"Yep!"
"Okay, let's go."
You take Minako's gloved hand in your own, and pop.
You appear in a cinderblock room to a tremendous chaotic mess of noise. Clanging and crashing and booming voices tangled together, louder and deeper than anything human. There's a pair of big steel doors, thrown wide open.
And through them, you see Kintaro.
The youma is massive, stocky, rounded. His hide and the countless spikes of rock jutting from his arms and legs look, somehow, as though they're even tougher than such a mass of stone should be. His great red eye flames with angry light. He bellows and thrashes and struggles to break loose from the gleaming silvery cord that has him trussed up completely, even as a hugely muscled oni strikes him again and again with an iron club. Which seems to make only a little impression on the youma. Hardly more than a child swinging a pillow would on a human being.
And through all this noise, a second oni may be the only thing loud enough to be heard. You recognize the blue oni, as you recognize his brick-red friend with the club. And, yes, Zegg is loud enough to be heard even over Kintaro's cursing and roaring, even while Zomm beats him with that club.
"HEY! SAILOR MOON! SAILOR VENUS! We got him tied up again! One of the wizards whipped this really strong rope up out of cat footfalls and the outrage of an honest politician, but I don't think it's going to hold much longer!"
Minako does a very obviously deliberate double-take as the tremendous clash and clangor goes on. And somehow you can hear her under the noise, by some trick you're not sure you could match. Probably. Somehow.
"Where'd you find an honest politician?"
"Dunno! Anyway, Lady Moon, are you gonna do your thing? Or are we gonna have to find something big and ugly enough to break this guy's arms and legs so they stay broken for more than half an hour? This was fun for a while, but it's getting kind of repetitive! We've had a long shift!"
You wince. You don't know this youma, or what he was, but if he's this much trouble to keep contained… There's probably no other choice, in the long run.
There's a flare of blinding light and the massive, struggling rock-giant fades into… a big gray-green oni.
"HAWHAHAHAAA!"
"AHAHAAAHAHA!"
Zomm and Zegg, quite abruptly, both double over laughing. You frown at them in confusion, then hear a thwack as Minako slaps her forehead.
"Of course! They're laughing because the super-strong youma turned out to be the youma version of an oni!"
"I… guess that makes sense." You grimace sourly. "I wonder if they're going to stop." Laughing oni are at least half as loud as fighting oni, and the sound is somehow even more penetrating. But at last, they calm down, and rise to their feet, within a second or two of each other.
Gasping, Zomm wobbles out of the room, using his club as a crutch. "Hey, Zegg, was that, oh yeah, Sailor Moon!" You very deftly dodge his raucous backslab, just like Rei did back in London. "Thanks, I was starting to get all tuckered out beating that guy down. Turned out to be another oni all along, wouldn't you know!"
Zegg grins, looking just like a very scary festival mask. "Guess the Dark Kingdom was starting to figure out where the quality material is, huh?"
And then the freshly restored oni- still tied up- groans from the next room. Almost without thinking, you rush in. Usually, people restored by the Healing Escalation stay asleep for quite a while; that's what happened in London, anyway, the last time you used the spell on any youma apart from Drella.
Oni are just put together differently, you guess. This one's already trying to sit up- unsuccessfully, because of the rope- and talking.
"Oooogh, my head…"
Zegg points. "Hey, look, he's still got one eye just like before!"
The green oni makes an angry growling noise, managing to sound a little bit intimidating even all tied up. "Yeah! Runs in the family. From my great-great-great-grandma Barbara, she was Greek, you wanna make something of it? Anyway, you two planning to try and do a better job of putting the boot in now, or what?"
Before either of the friendly oni can answer that, you blurt out in surprise. "Wait, you remember?"
"Yeah, what's not to remember? Chief Cendrellion busted me out of that manor, did… uh, the thing… started fighting for her, then… hey, wait a minute! You're Sailor Moon, aren't you?"
Zomm grins. "Yep. She's their chief. I dunno how they handle things over on the other side, but your old chief's dead. Get used to it."
"...Huh." The green oni- for all you know, Kintaro's his real name after all- sounds… thoughtful.
Zegg takes his turn. "Look, this doesn't have to be too much trouble. I bet we can get you a job with MCAT. They can use all the muscle they can get."
And the green oni sounds rather more dismayed, now. "I don't know… when I was, uh, the thing, I…" he looks at you and Sailor Venus.
Zegg leans down to pat the prisoner. "Relax, they're pretty much human but they're all right."
The green oni sighs. "I… uh, look, I got kind of carried away. That life energy stuff really gets you drunk on it. I, uh, I ate a few people." A hint of nervousness creeps into his voice. "And humans don't write that off."
Zomm looks thoughtful. "Guess that might be a problem. It might depend, though. Who'd you eat?"
"Lady of the manor, a couple of her guards. At the place Chief Cendrellion busted me out of."
Zomm and Zegg look at each other for a moment, and Zegg is the one to speak. "Hmmm. Now, I'm not promising we can smooth that over. But just so you know, MCAT's even more at war with Onogoro than the Dark Kingdom is. Dark Kingdom's just at war with everybody on general principles, am I right?"
"Pretty much, far as I could tell." The green oni manages a sort of wriggling shrug despite being very tied up.
And Zomm grunts, smacking his fist into his palm. "Well you see, with our lot and Onogoro, it's personal. So if it was just the ones you said, maybe, just saying maybe, we can work something out. No promises, though…"
You and Sailor Venus, both more than a little grossed out and suspecting that this is very much an oni kind of conversation, look at each other. You both, in synchrony, take a one-meter steps back, then an umpty-kilometer jaunt out of this place. Wherever this place is.
Back in the library, you look at each other, and speak in perfect unison.
"MCAT's problem? MCAT's problem. So… oh-KAY!"
"MCAT's problem? MCAT's problem. So… oh-KAY!"
Then you both fall silent, a little taken aback by that. Minako loses the staring match as you dare each other to be the first to speak, of course. Because you have two tremendous advantages over your first and oldest knight. One, you have no idea what's going on; two, she knows it.
"All right. We captured some other youma during the fight. We're not sure whether to Moon Healing Escalate most of them, except Stanenge and probably Hellcabbie."
"Who are those?"
"Two of the greater youma upstairs. Stanenge tried to hypnotize Michiru and wound up getting hypnotized right back, the way I heard it. She got him attacking the other youma. Starting with Hellcabbie- who's apparently talking but in really, really bad shape even by youma standards. Then Stanenge went after a different youma, who'd been giving the Amazons some trouble…
Round 1:
Mei d10+26 = 9+26 = 35
vs
Stanenge's Assistant d10+26 = 6+26 = 32
AMAZON SUCCESS!
Stanenge's Assistant takes a hit!
Round 2:
7+26 = 33
vs
10+26 = 36 effective 46
DARK KINGDOM CRITICAL SUCCESS!
Mei takes two hits!
(Mei is not incapacitated due to Amazon boulder training!)
"Damn, boss, glad to see you. We've gotta get out of here, what do you say?"
"i obey Neptune."
The assistant hits hard and ruthlessly, bringing Stanenge down. The lurching, bomb-weakened mind slave turns out to be a bit slow. Stanenge collapses into a pile for the second time tonight, comatose.
The assistant turns to flee into the twilight.
"The youma that took him out, well, we're pretty sure Shampoo's little sisters accounted for him."
"Anyway, Stanenge is just a pile of rocks now, but they're twitching, which means maybe…" Minako shrugs helplessly. "Look, I don't know, but my gut says 'Moon Healing Escalation.' And given what a wreck Hellcabbie is- he keeps groaning his own name and saying he got cursed and catted, whatever that means, and nothing else he says makes any sense- Moon Healing Escalation would probably make his day a lot better. I think."
Minako shrugs, even more helplessly. You smile and reach up to touch her arm, just above the elbow. "I trust your instincts. Do you have pictures of where we need to go?"
"Sure, let me see…"
***
「Moon Healing Escalation!」
The pile of rocks turns… into a slumbering man wearing blue jeans and a button-down shirt. There's a strange bracelet on his wrist that glows faintly. At first, you wonder if it's Dark Kingdom magic, but the characters engraved on it are kanji, so you suspect it's not. Maybe this 'Stanenge' used to be an Onogoro wizard before he was turned into a monster. A powerful monster, you gather. You wonder what it was like for Michiru, before she managed to turn the tables on him. You'll talk to her about that at some point, probably, when you catch up with her.
Minako pats your shoulder. "Well, he's alive and not, y'know, a pile of rocks in a coma. And I'm sure MCAT will be able to handle him now. So that's good work. Now, I checked in on this 'Hellcabbie' youma last night. Things are… a little strange."
She leads you down the corridor to a room that is, yes, very strange.
The doors are wide and open, and you see through them them that this room contains one of the strangest youma you've seen yet, a kind of automotive centaur, propped up against a plywood frame covered in ruined, oil-soaked padding. A man in coveralls is… is that a hospital IV that he's filling with motor oil?
You can't see the youma's eyes behind the lenses of those- cracked- goggles, but his head moves, and he groans.
"Uuuugh… Sailor Moon…" He sounds scared.
You step closer, confused. This isn't the way you're used to thinking of youma. You wonder if he's going to try to talk to you.
"I don't wanna be a youma anymore. It's bad… You're cursed and everything hates you, Heaven and Earth hate you and nothing ever works out right and you warn the boss there's gonna be trouble and she doesn't listen and then KABOOM and the Sailor Senshi show up to kill you and turn your buddy into a Neptunian zombie and then a crazy woman tears your zombie buddy's arm off and hits you with it and screams about her relationship and then someone throws a cat inside your guts and it claws you up inside and and" He lets out a strange, ratcheting sound. "I don't wanna be a youma anymore. I wanna be a regular guy..."
Again with the ratcheting sound. Is that this youma's way of crying?
Well, that settles it. And frankly, you don't want to hear any more of this than you have to. You'd had some notion of asking Hellcabbie a few questions, if he was strong enough to answer. But somehow, you get the feeling that even if his answers would make any sense after whatever the Amazons and the Outer Senshi did to him, you might as well learn those answers some other way.
「Moon Healing Escalation!」
*CRASH*
A lot happens all at once.
Though you can imagine Sailor Venus losing a fight to a youma you'd have defeated, there is still some sense in which your dear friend is just more… combat-ready than you are. And so as Hellcabbie fades into white light that starts expanding quickly, Minako lunges forward, somehow sweeps the technician at the IV into her arms, and goes into some sort of roll that carries him and her safely to a stop against the far wall without hurting him from the fast movement.
Because that plywood framework and the equipment around Hellcabbie go flying.
And you, yourself, fall back, seated on the floor, pushed back because you'd gotten too close.
Standing between you and Minako is… a taxicab. With- you stand up, embarrassed- the driver asleep inside, slumped back in his seat.
Huh.
You step around the vehicle. Minako's already gotten up and set the very shaken technician back on his own feet. She frowns at the taxi. "That's funny. Youma are usually bigger than the things they're made from."
You grumble "and a good thing, too…"
But everyone seems to be all right. All's well that ends well, you guess.
Cendrillion was trying an antimatter bomb?! No wonder it blew up so badly in her face when she screwed it up. That is the kind of thing that would've really messed up... well, everyone in the area. It looks like Kintaro has a bit of a conscience, which considering he's an Oni... makes sense. Oni aren't mindless; They just have a different set of cultural norms. If he joins up with MCAT, all the better. That might even be possible, if 'community service' or 'supervised release' are potential punishments.
Stanenge being human beforehand makes sense. Given that he's in modernish clothing, I wouldn't be surprised if he was a modern mage of some variety before becoming a Youma. Moon Healing Escalation also cures mind control, so Stanenge could remain hostile or suddenly find themself confronting all of the mind control they performed while under the influence of life energy and needing to reconsider some life decisions.
Hellcabbie's youma form apparently being a cabbie fused with his taxi is... interesting. Wonder why the transformation process brought his vehicle in with him? Nonetheless, he seems to be genuinely regretful and might well just want to return to normal human life. When he appeared at the beginning of the fight, he seemed already leaning in the direction of 'maybe this dark kingdom gig ain't all it's cracked up to be'. Though if he ends up awakening and his magic is related to cars, that could prove helpful to him.
So this is actually interesting and fun, the DK are improving on Youma creation. Adding in full on vehicles and expanding beyond humans to more naturally potent beings.
Now any really powerful youma we see may have been things like oni, yuki-onna, vampires, or they combined a human with a house or tank or something.
....the Amazons did eventually completely obliterate that head right? What was the Chinese governments response? I also kinda want to know how the Amazons reacted after the fight and when getting the head.
The closest you come to Senshi business is to mention what you've learned about the Diet's plan for approving new citizenship. If you understand what she told you last week, Minako will be starting school with an entirely new identity thanks to all the complications with her family life.
Your dad thinks of four ways the system as you describe it could be taken advantage of; your mom thinks of three. Oh, well. Surely the government will have thought of those too, and be planning for it.
Well, the doors are pretty wide; this facility was probably meant to contain large creatures. And they have oni on payroll, so just picking the car up and carrying it out of the building is entirely practical.
In retrospect, Hellcabbie was actually quite fortunate, from a certain point of view. He did survive to be restored to his original self, an ordinary taxi driver presumably just trying to make a living. Even his taxi is with him, intact. In that regard, he is lucky compared to some of the other youma.
Yeah some of these guys got really lucky and we at least have seen that things haven't gone to hell in a handbasket yet.
On the other hand we finally dealt a good hit to the dark kingdom forces, now we just need to deal with the other 2 or heavenly kings iirc and make an attack plan to take down Beryl and Metallia later down the road.
Also continue some of precure plots we have like getting Kintoleski a new body or try to continue reaching out to Blue so we can get a foot correctly into the happiness charge plot alongside the first steps for solving that mirror mess.
On the other hand we pretty much have hint confirmation that Usagi's mom was indeed Nehelenia so that throws the entire dream arc off the rails.
On the other hand I remember that Precure lkes to use abstract concepts as their enemies from time to time, this includes grudges, so it is not impossible that while Nehelenia reincarnated, her grudge may be actually be out there plotting for the dream arc.
