To be fair, the people calling him a god are his own fairies, who aren't coming out of the Dressmaker as far as we know. If he's creating them from scratch (and Rose says he is) then I can sort of understand why they think of him as their god.
Let's get a more complete picture of him and how he is perceived by both his own followers (fairies and magical girls alike) and what steps he takes to cultivate his own reputation, before we form judgment on him. At least some elements of his portrayal may differ a bit from both canonical Happiness Charge and fan-memetic Happiness Charge.
Besides, "god" as in "kami" is a pretty wide category and we've already seen evidence suggesting that a powerful human archmage can be stronger than some gods. In a fight between Fine and, say, Polyhymnia, Fine would almost certainly win if not talked out of having a fight in the first place.
Most magical girls are actually bisexual, statiscally speaking. Also Nozomi ends up getting married to a guy in a future flashforward.
Part of this is because we tend to watch magical girl fiction with fairly active yuri goggles and because the girls are spending 90% of their time around each other and almost no one else, a combination which makes it very easy to find support for any given girl being bi.
I'm not entirely sure what the statistics would be if we could compensate for uncertainty in things like that.
We're also kind of reaching peak crossover limit and that's with missing the inclusion of a bunch of other very famous magical girl shows like Cardcaptor Sakura and Magical Knight Rayearth, with shows like Princess Tutu being part of the crossover but not having showed up yet (not to mention we only have less than half of the Precure teams active)
Yeah. It's obvious that canon Usagi is interested in some of the girls around her, but her canonical romance is with a boy and it's a downright famous romance and there's actual serious interest there, it's not just an afterthought.
Quest!Usagi is rather different, but Quest!Usagi is the product of SV.
I know, I've watched most of those and seen Cure Magical and Cure Miracle kiss during their transformation sequence, it's just that treating the possibillity of magical girls being attracted to men as completely ludicrous when the most famous among them are bisexual and the genre is pretty linked to het shoujo is something I find deeply annoying. (Also treating it as an automatic default obscures the fact that many magical girl shows, including those you mentioned above, deliberately leave said pairings as subtextual because they hate queer people: I've had people go "but MadoHomu are so gay" when I mentioned how deeply homophobic Urobochi's statements regarding the nature of their relationship were)
I mean, it depends on how far through the season the Pretty Cure team are. Blue could send some of his more experienced PCs, or he could be losing track of some of his new local recruits. Yuno's wards could probably hold off pre-midseason-powerup Cures with little issues, while end of series Cures would get through the wards like it's tissue paper.
As an entirely practical consideration, the typical Precure is not the type to approach a problem by FIRST winding up a giant, overcranked team attack.
The most likely is that each of them will approach the problem their own way - the social one will just walk up and ask, the sneaky one will try to sneak in the back, the smart one is doing science at the wards and the impulsive excitable one is just going to charge the door full speed while everyone else is still planning their actions.
The duet/trio attacks come later once they recover from Plan A and B going wrong, and the full prismatic attacks are usually reserved for enemies who have already shown no intention to allow any other resolution but violence.
I think Lunaryon said it wouldn't be part of the crossover on Discord at some point, and also its inclusion would probably break SV's rules on underage content in a big way.
We're also kind of reaching peak crossover limit and that's with missing the inclusion of a bunch of other very famous magical girl shows like Cardcaptor Sakura and Magical Knight Rayearth, with shows like Princess Tutu being part of the crossover but not having showed up yet (not to mention we only have less than half of the Precure teams active)
Unfortunate. I was hoping that there was the possibility so that it would be possible for us to recruit what would be considered villains to our organization.
Unfortunate. I was hoping that there was the possibility so that it would be possible for us to recruit what would be considered villains to our organization.
Unfortunate. I was hoping that there was the possibility so that it would be possible for us to recruit what would be considered villains to our organization.
Well, of the major dark general/dark magical girl tier opponents we (and by we I mean "the Sailor Senshi and the Crystal Millennium, in particular") have faced, let's see...)
Dark Kingdom characters: Jadeite, Kunzite, Drella/Cendrellion.
Pretty Cure villains we've actually fought at least once in any but the most trivial sense: Pisard, Poisony, Moerumba, Kintoleski, Eas, Soular, Westar.
Original Character villains: Lotus Man, Ahma sorta fits the archetype, a few assorted Onogoro lords who might individually qualify as 'dark generals' insofar as they have a leadership role.
The OC characters are all in jail, dead, missing and possibly dead, actively fighting us right now, or some combination of the above.
Of the Pretty Cure villains, Pisard and Poisony are presumed dead off-camera, Moerumba is a scrub we don't even want that badly and keeps getting resurrected to re-fight the Splash Star girls, Kintoleski fucked off and quit, Soular and Westar are in jail at our hands, and Eas quit and is in the process of a turn to Team Good that we poked and influenced even if it was probably destiny.
Jadeite has turned to Team Good under Endymion's direction and is one of MCAT's more effective individual agents. Kunzite escaped and is still at large. Cendrellion is decapitated and either dead or fervently wishing she was, while Drella has been Moon Healing Escalation'd back to Anzimee and may well be joining Team Good as some kind of ancient Atlantean sorceress once she recovers from being, well, half the woman she used to be in a profoundly metaphysical sense.
All in all, we're not doing that badly for recruiting villains, especially if you count our villains and nobody else's.
But we haven't recruited any of those villains into our group specifically, so clearly we need to go looking for that napalm golem aga-
*Is crushed by the door being kicked down by the Placeholder Cures*
Looked at that way, we beat out everyone else in terms of numbers. There were what, at least a thousand people in the Amazon village? How many other magical girls can lay claim to having flipped an entire faction?
We didn't really "flip" them, though. IIRC, Outside of an incident they didn't even want to be involved in, are only interaction with them beforehand was Cologne offering to teach Usagi magic.
The Amazons kind of recruited themselves, when they decided that throwing themselves on the mercy of the local benevolent-looking superbeings was much better than being on fire. Thereby starting what may end up being a pattern for exactly how Sailor Moon ends up ruling a large civilization.
Based on a few tidbits of history we got of the Silver Millenium, this is a tradition that Selene carried as well.
I don't think Ranma is unbiased on determining if Cologne counts as a "dark general", much less the rest of the Amazons. We should probably ask non-Nerima martial artists/magical girls for more unbiased determination. 🤔
Nah, it's cute. We can put a little dome over it for preservation, make a little museum out of it. Maybe invite Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins for the opening.
She pretty much has to have better bonuses, but this is probably close enough that the Jewel Seed won't be wrapped up cleanly, even if the Empty Face is defeated.
Only rolls/bonuses I can find from a quick look relating to Nanoha are from the Precure Pileup incident when she was crafting and using the Areas Search spell. In both cases her effective Learning bonus was +13.
On the other hands, the elite EF's from Team 1 have prowess of 21 and 19, learning of 14 and 13 and intrigue or 21 for the leader and minimum of 18 (which I don't think should matter in this scenario unless Whisper elects to drop the Jewel Seed to get away). The scenario should give Nanoha a significant edge from a massive speed difference, and Nanoha probably has a lot better prowess than an Empty Face. Nanoha probably has better learning since Precure Pileup given she has almost certainly started her mental training exercises.
Given that Whisper is a less experienced Empty Face, I'd say she's probably on the lower end of the numbers, so if prowess plus learning then she'll probably have a +32 to her roll, although she's also distracted keeping the Jewel Seed from activating, so there could be a minus to her roll.
Unless Nanoha has a prowess lower than 23 then she's at least won this round, even if it isn't totally clean.
Whisper probably has lower stats than the Team 1 EF's thinking about it, given that she is explicitly described as working her way up to the full skills of the Imperial Truthmakers.
You are Sailor Moon, and you are quite suddenly surprised by a child screaming in your ear. Well, it only sounds like she's in your ear; she's probably a kilometer or more away and flying around in crazy circles or something.
But you recognize Nanoha's voice, so you know it must be Raising Heart patching a call through to you.
Still, it sure sounds like Nanoha is screaming in your ear.
"No. No no no! Sailor Moon! Divine Shoot! Sailor Moon, please, help! There's a Jewel Seed getting away at a hundred and forty-seven kilometers an hour, but- Divine Shoot! - the rockets! The helicopters! What should I do? I can't leave the helicopters alone! But I can't let the Jewel Seed hurt anyone! I don't know what to do!"
You take a very short moment to think, then ask Nanoha a very important question. "White Meteor, it's going to be all right. Can Raising Heart tell where the Jewel Seed is by herself, or do you need someone following the witch to make sure she doesn't change direction or something?"
"Uh… yes. I mean, all by herself."
"Is she sure? No matter what?"
There's a pause, followed by a "Yes ma'am!" Now that's the non-panicking but worryingly eager Nanoha you remember!
"Okay. I'm going to try to get the helicopters out of there. I'll talk to you again in a moment, okay?"
"Okay!"
You turn to Captain Sano, who's been watching you- and presumably listening to your side of the conversation- with an alarmed look on his face. He actually starts asking you questions before you've found words.
"...Did you just say Jewel Seed? As in, "Uminari Tree" Jewel Seeds?"
"Yes. And the one who stops Jewel Seeds and the one who keeps rockets off your helicopters are the same person, and she can only be in one place at a time."
Captain Sano nods very soberly. "Then I'll go warn the helicopters to retreat. We'll do the best we can as-is. Please remember what I said about the attacks to the west and north."
"Thank you," you say as he turns to go across the room towards where a couple of soldiers are sitting in front of a radio-like thing on a table. You press the communicator on your wrist- it seems to have learned to answer your wishes to the point where things like buttons would be entirely redundant.
"White Meteor, this is Sailor Moon, can you hear me? The helicopters will be out of there soon, And as soon as they're away from where the rockets can get to them, you go right down there and you get that Jewel Seed, okay?"
"Right! I'll do my best!"
Okay. That is… that is one thing that's probably handled. Next thing!
"Sailor Venus, this is Sailor Moon. You can still see the witch on the broomstick, right?"
"Yeah, it's not really that fast. Do you want I should Crescent Beam her?"
"No, we think she's carrying a Jewel Seed."
"Wait, one of Nanoha's Jewel Seeds? How did MCAT- nevermind, what's the plan?"
You look around you at all the people in the command center, reminding yourself to use the code name. "The White Meteor will be after the witch in a few minutes. She says Raising Heart can smell the Jewel Seed or something like that. You can turn around now and come back to MCAT."
"Wait, are you sure?"
"Yes-" You hear a sort of loud skidding crunching sound- "Did you just turn around?"
"Well, you said yes."
"I need you back here. The Empty Faces must have been going after the prison after all, and they've broken out a lot of the prisoners. Can you shut that down?"
"Probably. I'll get on it as soon as I get back!"
She stops talking, and you're tempted to ask if she actually knows where the prison is, but Minako's not stupid. If she's in a hurry- and she is- and she needs to know, she'll ask you. Or Rei.
The JSDF Cobra gunship contingent, having expended roughly half their TOW missiles against the reinforcement column to the east of headquarters, and having wasted only a few trying to engage through the smokescreens covering the northern and western columns, has already regrouped in a direction from which they have noticed relatively fewer MANPAD launches. The flying girl in the white dress has been an extremely welcome blessing without which their quite successful airstrike would likely have proven impossible. But they regard her with the uncertainty any trained soldier might have for a visit from the Fairy Godmother Department. Until they have a clear target or orders from the officer on the spot on the ground who's been given overall command, their own unit commander sees no particular need to stay in what would normally be a killbox.
By sheer coincidence, the gunships have fallen back in a roughly southeasterly direction to assemble over a public park (closed at night) on the opposite side of the freeway from the MCAT compound. It is the work of a minute or so for Captain Sano to explain the situation and for the unit commander to order his pilots to seek an assembly point more distant- entirely out of MANPAD range, if possible. Hopefully, the chance to re-engage will come soon enough.
Nanoha finds the last moments of her effort to defend the helicopters much simpler than the first few. The attacks are coming from more or less the same direction, allowing her to pick the rockets off as they approach. Head-on intercepts between guided weapons at relative velocities of around Mach 1.5 are beyond the judgment of her unaided eye, but not at all beyond what can be achieved with Raising Heart's metaphorical hand on her shoulder. One pursuing rocket gets past the barrage of Divine Shooters, only to have its guiding spirit snuffed out by Raising Heart's TCM pod. Nanoha hears a warbling alarm in her mind as Raising Heart tracks its ballistic trajectory; she blows that one apart in midair with a spellbolt too, while most of the rest of the Divine Shooter salvo orbits under automatic control in a holding pattern to intercept the next- and last- rocket.
The elapsed time from Nanoha's first report of a Jewel Seed detection event, until the moment when she decides that the retreating helicopters are safe from enemy action, is roughly four eventful minutes. How eventful those minutes have really been, Nanoha only realizes when, as she picks up to top speed along her west-by-southwestward course to intercept the witch, she hears Raising Heart murmur in her mind:
"Alert! Bandit Number One is in the target airspace!"
Fate Testarossa catapults awake and leaps to her feet. She throws aside the light blanket and rises off the thin unfolded floor-mattress she found in a closet off of what, for lack of cultural context, she doesn't recognize as an executive office.
The furniture is too big and she doesn't like any of it. But then, furniture doesn't exist for her to like. Calling up a bounded domain to duplicate an existing tower-top location was the most efficient way to find a habitable yet concealed space on Unadministered World 97, densely populated as it is in the area where the Jewel Seeds came down. The 'concealed' part is especially important, since the planet shows so many clear signs of magical activity that Bardiche and Arf and even Mother didn't know about until they got here.
Bardiche wouldn't have woken her up this way without a very specific reason, so she's grasping him and calling out "Bardiche, Set Up!" before she's really awake. Immediately thereafter, still more or less on autopilot, she's jumped out the window and is instinctively making sure she's got control of her Flier Fins.
The bounded domain is kept at a regulated pseudo-cosmic background temperature, and there's no precipitation or insects. So there was no reason not to cut a hole in the floor-to-ceiling window for just such jumping. A tiny, mostly numb corner of Fate wants to think more about the reaction of whoever uses this room for whatever mysterious purpose. About how they'll react, one day, after she's done with this secret domain-hideout. When they come back to the room and find a big plasma-cut hole in their wall. The idea almost cuts through her focus and seriousness, but that makes it unserious and bad to waste time on.
Fate climbs above the top of the döppelganger-tower and Bardiche helpfully calls up low-signature dimensional vanes. The vanes ease the jolting transition from the bounded domain into sidereal space as Fate continues to gain altitude, in hopes of giving Bardiche an unobstructed line of sight on the Jewel Seed. She knows that helps Bardiche, and with at least one rival mage specifically hunting for Jewel Seeds, she knows that it will take all her speed and strength if she's going to recover enough of them now.
Fate's barrier jacket hoards pressure jealously. A quick ascent to and past twelve kilopeds doesn't cause any of the side effects she's experienced when running through imaginable practice situations. Or used to have before she started customizing. No popping of the ears, nothing like that.
<Signature Acquired.>
Good. That comes with a strong sense of direction, easy to follow. Fate flips just sharply enough to trigger automatic physical reinforcement from her barrier jacket- she may need it later- and turns her near-vertical climb into a very shallow dive from a peak of around twenty kilopeds. She can see with the naked eye that there are some kind of bright lights hanging in the sky below and ahead of her-
Fate takes only a moment to take that in, before another alert sounds in her mind.
<Master! Emissions detected from the Device of the unknown mage who interfered over Jewel Seed Fourteen!>
.
That's… that's the other girl. The one who tried to defend the construct-animal several days ago. She's out there, somewhere in the middle of…
The flickering near-infrared sigil that Bardiche casts at a frequency higher than human senses can follow throws little helpful glints of illusion onto Fate's retinas. The other girl is out there, near a pitched battle that's happening out under and around the emitter-lights. The indigenous mages don't seem to have Devices and don't use modern tactics, so Bardiche is having trouble figuring them out. He suggests that if she wants to get close, he's going to need to redo her barrier jacket for all-round performance against things no normal magician would bother with.
But the Jewel Seed is already dozens of kilopeds away from the battlefield, airborne, and moving away from it. So there really isn't a point to that. Even better, the other girl is flitting around the battlefield's airspace on some errand of her own that Fate can't be bothered to figure out. If the other girl's even noticed the Jewel Seed yet, she shows no sign of it.
Which is perfect. Fate doesn't know what the other girl wants with the Jewel Seeds, but Mother needs them, so Fate is going to get them for her. And it's… better… if the other girl doesn't get in the way and make herself a problem. That would be better.
So the battlefield isn't important, and the exact details of what the other girl is doing aren't either. Fate wishes, and Bardiche obeys, turning his attention to the task of scanning whoever is carrying the Jewel Seed.
For a moment a false signature pops up, between the Jewel Seed and the battlefield. One that's… Bardiche throws it to Fate to try to figure out what he's looking at. Something on the ground, something using a lot of mana, something using it very inefficiently. Something moving faster than the mystery mage carrying the Jewel Seed, surprisingly fast for something that isn't airborne. And it's… it's a little like a Jewel Seed construct, but- Bardiche casts a magnified visual image into Fate's eye- a humanoid one.
So this is some kind of… humanoid Jewel Seed construct? But it's not one of the set of Jewel Seeds, those are all identical until they start to manifest, and even then the constructs all have the same underlying signature, the one Fate's been hunting down. This thing's different- obviously different. It might almost pass for a mage, almost, if there were any mages that had that kind of mana to throw around. And there's none of the instability, none of the rampancy, nothing like what Fate saw with the quadruped or what she's been told to expect from the other Jewel Seed constructs.
And the signature… Fate's eyes narrow. Could someone have found a Jewel Seed, or something like one, and formed some kind of unison with it? That… that might explain it, maybe. And… those sidebands. The signature reminds Fate of the background magic on that space station.
…The space station from three days ago, when Mother got- When Fate let Mother get hurt.
The rebuke of Fate's performance comes to her easily, in a motherly voice. Even if none of Fate's training involved anything like it, she should have been able to guess that some of the bloodsucking insects in the station's interior could bite through light barrier jacketing. Especially after she stopped the first pack of the local predators. A parasite that could feed on something resistant to mid-voltage plasma fire must necessarily have special capability.
And even if she can't be expected to think of things like that, if smashing things really is all she's good for, then she should have been able to stop the giant plant that grabbed Mother while Fate and Arf were dealing with the third and fourth waves of wild animals.
Especially since Mother is very sick.
She's been trying to hide that, but Fate knows now. Because she saw what it cost Mother to cast the immolation that destroyed everything in the clearing after the plant got to her. It cost her… more than it should have. Arf had to help Mother back to the station's airlock while Fate focused on fending off the animals.
And even before that… she saw one of the insects that bit Mother. And she isn't sure Mother noticed her watching it, but not long after it first landed on Mother, it fell off and started twitching on the ground. It… died. That can't possibly be normal.
Fate knows, her conscience tells her with her mother's voice, that she's not an intelligent girl. She's not careful, she makes so many mistakes. If she were good enough, Mother would never have gotten hurt. Not even a little. But flawed and stupid as she may be, Fate's not quite flawed and stupid enough to imagine that Mother is healthy.
And yet, Fate… thinks she remembers, mistily, a time when things were better. And in the better time… Mother was healthy, wasn't she? She's thought about it, while Arf was handling her back yesterday. Maybe that's what Mother wants the Jewel Seeds for. She needs them for medicine. And then things can be good again.
Which means that following a false Jewel Seed that gives Bardiche such confusing and conflicting readings instead of a real one could be very bad, if it means losing sight of the real one. False Jewel Seeds might be better than no Jewel Seeds, or they might not be. But the real thing is in front of her. So Fate ignores the false not-really-Jewel-Seed that reminds her of the space station, and locks in on the real one. If she has a chance to get a closer look at the false Jewel Seed later, well and good. But for now, she's on a mission for Mother.
Bardiche is getting a much better read on the mage who's carrying the Jewel Seed than he ever got on the other girl. The new mage clearly has a countermeasure suite, maybe even a good one, but something's wrong with it. It's hard to tell because it's so strange, but her problem is probably because she doesn't have a Device to help her manage it any more than the rest of the indigenes do. She's also using some kind of purpose-built implement to fly, and it's… slow.
Very slow.
Which means Fate has options.
***
The junior Empty Face known as 'Whisper' does, as noted, have an array of rather frayed divinations, mental awareness disciplines, and magic-sensing practice that a certain kind of person would call her "thaumaturgical warfare suite."
However, it is not adapted to maintaining long-distance awareness. And here, Whisper is rather out of her element, being only lightly familiar with broomstick-enabled flight and very much not expecting pursuit. She is also distracted by the need to maintain tight mental discipline to prevent the 'Shikon fragment' she believes herself to be carrying from reacting off her mind and continuing to awaken.
While she is so far succeeding- the Jewel Seed continues to stir in its metaphorical sleep and no more- she has little attention to spare for anything else.
Fate: Flier Fin: Expert triggered! +2 Prowess against aerial/anti-air opponents!
And so, Whisper experiences a rare reversal of roles for an Imperial Truth Maker, one that under better circumstances she might even grudgingly admire. The first warning she has that she's under attack is a sudden sense of crawling unease and even that only begins a few seconds before that attack reaches its climax.
***
Whisper is flying about sixty to seventy meters above ground level- high enough above rooftop level to feel confident of avoiding any but the largest buildings, the sort that would have aircraft warning lights anyway. This provides a little room for an enemy to slip into Whisper's six o'clock low position, if they are daring, very agile, and unafraid of ground clutter.
Fate is all three.
She'd usually have Bardiche computing a lead pursuit curve, but against such a slow target, on a nearly ideal approach vector, she decides that a pure pursuit curve is good enough to serve- a simple chase of the native mage's tail. She takes a moment to match speed with her target at a distance of about two kilometers (though she does not know the Earthly units herself) while she decides on her final approach.
Taking such a close position on an opponent's tail would be unwise against an alert enemy with a Device. But Fate's already starting to believe that she and the other girl are the only people on the planet who have one.
Fate briefly considers and discards a few showy, unnecessarily complicated ideas; they're appealing but life isn't about doing what appeals. She remembers the books Mother makes her read on air combat tactics. Keep it simple. If you can use the element of surprise, get it. So she accelerates sharply, crossing most of the gap between her and the enemy mage at around half the local speed of sound.
Fifteen seconds pass, during which time the enemy's posture begins to change as though her thaumaturgical senses have finally begun to notice something amiss.
But the target doesn't make any sharp defensive maneuvers. She looks around- looks up- doesn't see Fate closing in from below. So Fate carries on as planned, with a slamming oof of deceleration that she stifles as she stifles so much else. By the time she converges on her opponent, she's got a relative closing speed of only fifty kilometers an hour or so. Without stopping to conjure up Bardiche's blade, Fate swings the staff up and out from below- and connects, shattering the Jewel Seed's containment vessel.
Fate snaps up into a painful twelve-gravity climb and flips to get line of sight on the enemy mage again. The mage has quick reflexes once she understands that she's being attacked. She's already drawn some kind of implement, no doubt a weapon, and she's looking up, twisting awkwardly because now Fate is above her and moving in nearly the opposite direction. She's probably about to cast, but Bardiche knew what she wanted and already has the sigil ready, beating Whisper to the draw.
<Photon Lancer!>
Fate fully expects her opponent's barriers to hold up under light plasma fire, and indeed they do, though the shock and heat leave her reeling and she drops her self-defense wand. Unfortunately for Whisper, while she rides out the blow, the broomstick's bristles do not. To Fate's surprise- she is unfamiliar with fragile flight-assistive implements- the Empty Face begins an abrupt crash-landing from a considerable height. But Fate has other business to attend to. Mother, she has become convinced, needs her medicine. And the enemy mage, she is sure, can't possibly be about to hit the ground hard enough to do more than rattle her through her barriers anyway.
The Jewel Seed had barely touched the ground when Fate opened fire, and despite the extreme psycho-reactivity of the ancient artifacts, they take quite a while to register the biological impulses of lower forms of life such as insects and microbes as a "wish." Thus, despite the abrupt and total loss of containment, Fate makes it to the Jewel Seed well before it can begin cascading power into reality. She touches down close by and raises Bardiche to the heavens-
<Sealing Form, Set Up!>
Fate grits her teeth. It… it would be easier… if Arf could have gotten here fast enough- But she forces herself not to tremble with exertion as she forces the electric arcs and rosy clouds of light to wrap the Jewel Seed up, to compel it into something that can be contained.
And at last, it does. The rainbow light fades, the hissing call of chaotic possibility goes silent. A little piece of temporarily harmless shining crystal ceases to float defiantly, and drops into Fate's black glove.
Fate stares at it, murmuring softly to herself, "That's two."
And then she hears a whoosh of air and the hiss of dissipating Flier Fins and running footsteps, and she forces herself to look calm and confident and not surprised as she turns.
