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Usagi Quest (CK3/Princess Maker) (Sailor Moon)

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The Midnight Incident - Part 13.5 New
  • Sidestory
    • The Midnight Incident
    Part 13.5 (?)

    Previously…​

    Such fire as the Onogoro platoon does manage to unleash has considerable effect on the sandbags and fells several of the defenders, though. And as the attacking platoon draws closer to the MCAT lines, close enough to carry out their planned final offensive rush, Lord Bojo carries out a variation on his original intended action. He had of course immediately identified the giant redheaded man who fights in his shirtsleeves with huge and obviously magical gauntlets as an MCAT champion. Lord Bojo casts the targeting charm for rocket support and calls for a strike directly against the enemy champion.

    While guided rockets aimed at the helicopters are being consistently brought down by the White Meteor, some of those directed at ground positions do get past her during this phase of the engagement. This rocket proves to be one of them.

    In the last second or so of its flight, the rocket causes sudden alarm as several MCAT soldiers point up into the sky at the burning streak curving down towards them, aimed squarely for the red sparks swirling around Mr. Kazanari's chest and shoulders. Those around him, realizing what is happening, begin to scatter, though it is too late to reach a safe distance.

    To the surprise of everyone present, Genjuro's response is to whip his gauntleted hands out and catch the missile's nose cone between them, with the untriggered fuzing rod protruding to within roughly ten centimeters of his chest.

    As Genjuro skids backwards towards the brick wall of a building under the thrust of the solid-fuel rocket, a verdant glow erupts from his gauntlets. He bellows wordlessly at the missile at the top of his lungs, then with a wrench of his arms and hands pivots the missile body- about twelve centimeters in diameter and well over a meter in length- upward into the air.

    The intimidated missile guidance spirit does not attempt to re-engage and instead ascends into the heavens, preferring to burn out quietly at altitude and trace a ballistic trajectory across Tokyo Bay to its relatively undramatic retirement via hard landing in a field near the city of Narita.

    ***​

    It is perhaps a testament to Lord Bojo's ability to keep his head in a crisis and project, if not enthusiasm, at least a measure of stability, that the Onogoro platoon does not rout on the spot. Bojo begins calling out orders in a voice that carries surprisingly well for its mild-mannered tone, along the lines of "fall back, slow walk, keep your heads, hold the array, do not turn your back on the rocketproof man, slow walk, slow walk…"

    The attackers carry out the orders, holding up their barriers and banners rather more nervously than before. They fall back to a hastily conjured earthen fieldwork erected around the east side of the same breach in the perimeter wall that Bojo crossed to enter the compound in the first place. While the defenders attempt to smash the improvised fortification apart with antitank weapons, the depletion of their immediately handy ammunition earlier in the action and further trouble with the Type 87's laser designator forces limits their volume of fire to something less than the Onogoro forces can repair.

    ***​

    From his embattled bunker, planted tenuously but squarely in the breach he's forced in the MCAT compound walls, Lord Bojo makes an understandable error of judgment.

    Apparently, not only are the Sailor Senshi on this battlefield, but some other minor deity has sided with the rebels and taken the field against his warriors. So he calls for support.
    Genjuro Kazanari
    d100 + 0 (Foot-Mobile) - 5 (Very Conspicuous) + 5 (Melee Only)
    Vs
    Onogoro Godbinders
    D100 - 5 (Temporary Service Outage) - 3 (Rather Rattled) - 50 (Be Ye Kami?) - 50 (NAY, WE ARE BUT MEN!)

    D100 + 0 -> 79 + 0 = 79
    Vs
    D100 - 105 -> 49-108 = -59

    Differential: 138

    Category Breakpoint between "Devastating" and previously hypothesized "Beyond Devastating:" 140!

    Onogoro Devastating Extremely Embarrassing Failure!
    Genjuro is soon distracted from the ongoing efforts to keep the samurai behind that rock-wall suppressed with machine gun fire when a piece of old twine whips past his face. It is followed by another, and another, flailing through the general area around him more or less aimlessly. A few of them slap him lightly, but then twitch and fall to the ground, doing nothing.

    Eventually he grows annoyed. He snatches at one of the stupid strings, twisting his hand to wrap it firmly in his grip and pulls.

    ***​

    Somewhere in a heavily reinforced and very deep basement under a nearly invisible stronghold well outside Kyoto, a little old magician is watching a rack full of spools of twine. This duty, usually routine and perfunctory, has been vitally important. Many of them have run out and back in the past little while.

    But this time is different. He now knows how to recognize something that hasn't happened in his long life- the telltale shimmer of the cords as they generate sealing talismans to bind the power of a hostile kami, like these Sailor Senshi he's heard about. The cords shimmered gold, and then more recently green. That happened. Which meant the cords were still working, as in the days of his ancestors. That he'd been doing his job all this time, even if he's fairly sure something's going wrong over in Edo.

    This time, one of the cords is caught, and there is no such shimmer. Is something wrong? Did the binding ritualists somehow... make a mistake? Are they try to snare a mere mortal? That doesn't even- that wouldn't work! What got into those whippersnappers?

    And then there's a tug.

    More than a tug.

    There is a creak.

    Old but lovingly maintained Japanese cypress is not a weak wood, but it has limits. Whatever is pulling on the deity-binding cord has the strength one might associate with stampeding wild horses- quite a lot of them. And, importantly, isn't being contained or limited by the conjured talismans that are supposed to keep that strength from being transmitted anywhere where someone might get hurt! This didn't happen the last two times!

    The creaks get louder. The enchantment that acts as a ratchet begins to hiss.

    The little old wizard realizes that the axle is about to either catch fire, or splinter, and either way it's going to send the whole spool flying through space, probably clear to Edo and into the hands of whoever's got the far end as far as he knows.

    He thinks fast.

    There's an old toolbox down here. It's always been here, as far as he knows. And he's had this job for nearly fifty years for a very specific reason. Namely, because he's the kind of person who obsessive-compulsively maintains anything around him. It doesn't matter whether it will ever be needed, or what it's for, or anything else. He keeps things ship-shape.

    Therefore, the saw in that toolbox, which has been there since the nineteenth century, which would never conceivably see any use in maintaining the spools because a broken spool would be dismounted and taken to a workshop, is not as sharp as a razor. It is sharper, possibly beyond the point of practicality for a saw blade. But the old man does not care. It's the principle of the thing.

    The teeth are, indeed, sharp enough to nick the enchanted twine, especially given the profound lack of divine power flowing through it. And it's under a lot of tension. It parts almost instantly.

    And whoever's somehow trapped the far end gets only a few meters of the stuff, not the entire spool.

    Damn, that was a close one!
     
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  • Sidestory
    • Simon_Jester said:
    There's an old toolbox down here. It's always been here, as far as he knows. And he's had this job for nearly fifty years for a very specific reason. Namely, because he's the kind of person who obsessive-compulsively maintains anything around him. It doesn't matter whether it will ever be needed, or what it's for, or anything else. He keeps things ship-shape.
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    What a useful person.
     
    Winged One said:
    What a useful person.
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    When Onogoro realized they might have to bind several highly active and clearly belligerent demigoddesses, they worried about a lot of things. They worried about their samurai falling in battle against the rogue kami. They worried about the ritualists not being able to learn the spell in time. They worried about not being able to find suitable sites for the many ritual circles that could be concealed until the fateful day.

    They did not worry that their stockpile of deity-binding cords might have been eaten by moths.

    Because there's this guy.
     
    LordKill90908 said:
    Is Nanoha going to need her own sealing roll?
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    If it hadn't been for what a disaster trying to seal Sailor Moon was last round, to the point where for the duration of Round 3 the godbinders have basically given up trying to hit fast-moving aerial kami who aren't actually unleashing terrible terrible violence directly upon the persons of Onogoro warriors, unless they have a really definitive lock on their position... probably.
     
    Simon_Jester said:
    Category Breakpoint between "Devastating" and previously hypothesized "Beyond Devastating:" 140!
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    We are (almost) breaking new ground! Imagine, if that roll had gone just a bit worse...

    Simon_Jester said:
    And whoever's somehow trapped the far end gets only a few meters of the stuff, not the entire spool.

    Damn, that was a close one!
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    Excellent comedy, and another instance of Simon and Lunaryon excellently depicting 'that was very close to a major breakpoint'.
     
    This is also a good example of a roll competition where one side loses incredibly badly, but suffers only limited consequences because the situation is such that the other side has very little ability to actually retaliate.

    The attempt to 'seal' Genjuro was doomed to fail from the start, but in return Genjuro has no ability to hit back beyond yanking on a string. Now, to be sure, he did damage that string, and that particular spool might not hold up so well against the Senshi in the future, but at the same time it's a pretty minor counterattack.
     
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    I don't think Nanoha has that much to fear. She not even vaguely Kami-like like the Senshi, so she probably puts a hefty -30 or worse modifier on this by default, plus (minus?) whatever Raising Hearts countermeasures can do to something like this, plus extreme aerial mobility... it's probably the Godbinders facing a -60 roll at best (~8% chance) and quite possibly something like -80 (~2%).
     
    It would be hilarious though, if at the end of the battle, the God Binders one success was "enshrining" a fancy magic focus as a deity... for all the at most half hour until someone pulls her out.
     
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