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Wait, All For Who?! (MHA Jumpchain Quest)

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3. Arc 1: The Tarot Part 2
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    • [x] Attempt to use the Sealing Staff.

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    World 3: Card Captor Sakura (Tokyo)

    'The Tarot'

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    ​
    Ochako closed her hazel eyes, and took a deep breath. When she cracked one open again, both of the impossible objects were still there. Neither of them were as pink as she remembered, but it didn't take much to be less pink than her glue-and-glitter childhood memories.

    Below, the gentle flow of nighttime traffic was interrupted as someone began irritably honking on their horn.

    Ochako, entranced, didn't hear it. Dim light, extending from the streetlights below, gently wreathed her as s    he turned the staff over in her hand. It might not have been as pink as she remembered, but it was still like looking at a pickax made of the distilled spirit of the little princess aisle in toy store. There was, for starters, the cherry-pink haft, about as long as her arm, topped with a goldish knob. Two white wings extended backwards from the gold, screwed in by a polished pink sphere, while a chunk of carmine crystal, about as round and dangerous looking as a doctor's rubber hammer, extended forwards. Taken altogether, the effect was rather like the head of a bird. In her mind's eye, she could see a small girl doing cheerleading tricks with it, spinning it around like a baton.

    Between, yanno, using it to seal away dangerous magical cards and use magic.

    The insistent honking of multiple cars brought her out of her contemplative reverie and she hastily lowered the staff. Down below, it sounded like there was a bit of a traffic jam going on. Odd, considering the late hour. Good timing though: if she had had a mirror Ochako had the sneaking suspicion that if she looked into it, she'd resemble Deku at his most starry-eyed and adorable. TV might have raised some of her classmates, but when her parents were busy she had to make do with the free, time-worn comic books inside the library, which, incidentally, had also come with the advantage of free air conditioning.

    Calm down, she told herself sternly. You're only holding the most badass magical girl's weapon in the history of mahou shoujo, no big deal, right? Right. She took another deep breath. It helped more than she thought it would, but less than she needed it to. It'd probably be easier, of course, if she could get her hands to stop shaking. And sweating. And generally acting like a bunch of little girls about to ask their crushes out on a d-d-date.

    Breathe. In and out. In and out.

    Phew.

    Ochako Uraraka did not have the advantage of knowing about the obscure, short-lived twenty-first century light novel genres known as tensai and isekai, let alone the far more obscure internet storytelling conceits that had been in vogue among certain pits of depravity in the English-speaking world, but she did have the advantage of being sensibly optimistic.

    Being sensible, her first thought was not 'this can't be happening!' but rather, a far humbler 'Huh' that acknowledged she might not be in possession of all the facts and was going to wait for them before making up her mind. Being optimistic, she assumed that all of this was, at worst, a particularly vivid dream, and not a product of her fevered imagination or a sign of incipient psychological issues.

    You could get a lot done with sensible optimism. Get into the top heroing school in Japan for starters.

    So, until reality proved otherwise, she was going to act like this was all really happening. She, Uraraka Ochako, had stumbled into the Cardcaptor universe, and by extension, the CLAMPverse.

    And she was holding Kinomoto Sakura's sealing staff. And a mystery card.

    She put the mystery card away in the handy-dandy storage unit around her hips: it could keep until later.

    The sealing staff on the other hand...

    In the original series, Sakura had used it to seal away the nineteen escaped Clow Cards and prove herself the successor of a famous magician. As was the usual for these sorts of stories, Sakura'd stumbled across her magical heritage in her basement and, after an amusing series of accidents, immediately set the more mobile bits of it free to roam around Tokyo causing mostly minor inconveniences like rampaging lightning beasts, homicidal weapons that could wield people like puppets, and tests of courage that erased small, inconvenient children from existence.

    Ochako frowned.

    Given all that, the first thing she needed to do was find out if this were the real sealing staff, and the second thing she needed to do was give it back to a certain middle schooler who probably needed it more than she did. If, of course, Sakura was in middle school: given all the facts, the timeline was a little wonky. The cloaked figure she'd seen earlier - and darn if she couldn't remember who it was under there - was from a much later arc, far past the original series, when the sealing staff (spoilers!) had already become Sakura's Star Staff and she'd been confirmed as Clow Reed's successor.

    The stick in front of her, however, was clearly the original sealing staff, back from the original series and when the protagonist had been in fourth grade.

    Hrm.

    Well, no time like the present to try and-

    The wail of police sirens made her shelve those ideas. What she had earlier taken for a traffic jam was beginning to take on less pleasant connotations. A series of gunshots, firecracker loud, even here, made her run to the edge to the edge of the roof. She looked down, scanning for any obvious signs and immediately spotted one: a bunch of cars, all piled up in one area including a police cruiser. Stepping off the roof, she touched her face with all five fingers and floated gently downwards, hoping this wasn't a Cardcaptor thing.

    As she got closer, somehow able to ride the breeze so she could get where she wanted to go, she realized it wasn't.

    It was worse.

    It was a her thing.

    ----

    Igarashi cowered behind his police cruiser.

    Being a beat cop in Tokyo you saw a lot of weird shit. It was part of the job description. Protect, Serve and Occasionally Piss Yourself while running from Horrible Things From the Great Beyond. Back in the good ol' days apparently the weirdest things that happened involved people. Monstrous people, to be sure, but people nonetheless. You knew where you stood with people. You knew, specifically, that if you shot them in the head with a service pistol, they wouldn't chuckle in a voice that sounded like it was gargling rocks, pick up a weapon heavier than you were, and proceed to beat your partner to death in front of you.

    Because, and here was the important part, they were human.

    The guy in front of him, approaching with slow, ponderous footsteps... well, let's just say Igarashi had his doubts. He had horns. He had pebbled skin. He had rings embedded in his flesh. He had a cleaver the size of a small child. He had, and this was the the part that would make his supervising officer think he was on something when he wrote up his report, a series of bullets lodged in his head and across his chest that hadn't managed to penetrate much farther than skin deep.


    Igarashi wanted to run. His entire body was a tensed spring, ready to uncoil and take up the flight half of fight or flight. Parts of him were, in fact, already well on their way: his boots were wet. As were his trousers.

    Igarashi would be the first to admit he wasn't a particularly good cop. He wasn't even a particularly good person. To him, being a copper was all about having a job that paid better than that of a dead end convenience store clerk, let him carry around a gun, and got him free food and coffee from suddenly respectful shopowners.

    But he'd seen his partner reduced to mince. That wasn't something he could just let go.

    He peeked around the corner of the car, gun out, ready to fire - and nearly pissed himself again as a girl plummeted from the sky, landing right next to him, boots making a funny little sound. She was a high schooler, if he was any judge, wearing a costume with some sort of spacesuit motif. Appropriate.

    "Sorry, I need to borrow this," she told him, sounding slightly out of breath. She was clutching, for some reason, a bright pink wand.

    Igarashi blinked, feeling slow.

    "Borrow wh-"

    She picked up the entire police cruiser with one hand. Just grabbed it and lifted it up. He gaped at her.

    Then she threw it at the monster.

    Auto-success initiative: The Butcher is suffering from confusion brought upon by target saturation.

    Uraraka Attack: Technique (3) + Power (2) + Telekinesis Stunt (2) + Unwieldy Weapon Penalty (-2). 5 Dice. 4, 1, 1, 10, 5 (1 success) DV8.
    Butcher Defense: Technique (1) + Speed (3) + Weapon (-1) = 3 dice (6, 2, 4) (0 success)
    SUCCESS

    It hit the monster like a truck, metal bending, accordion-like, glass shattering, and a god-awful squeal of colliding metal and meat as the two tumbled and rolled across the street. When the mess came to a stop, the Butcher was clearly bloodied, but incredibly, unbroken. The hood of the police cruiser popped open, steam billowing outwards. A massive, bloody hand, attached to an equally massive body, twitched feebly, pinned beneath one of the wheels. Then, apparently gathering strength, it began to push.

    Behind him, he could hear the sirens: backup was arriving.

    Igarashi snarled. Gun in hand he approached the monster.

    And then the girl said...

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    [x] "Wait." Try to Seal the Butcher Using the Sealing Staff
    [x] "Be careful." Let the Butcher be taken into custody

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    No matter what your choice is, you'll be heading to a world soon after. You can propose pretty much any one you like, up to and including quests on this very forum, though please be aware if it's a setting I have no knowledge of, I'll most likely butcher it. I hope you found my cursory depiction of CCS adequate even if it got invaded by Diablo near the end there.

    [x] write-in world

    (You can add details, for example, a legitimate vote could be:

    [ ] Discworld during the events of Night Watch or
    [ ] Quest X during Update Y)
     
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    • [X] Discworld during the events of Night Watch

    Discworld one million percent. GNU Terry Pratchett.
     
    [x] "Wait." Try to Seal the Butcher Using the Sealing Staff

    [X] Bridge of the Starship Enterprise TNG-era.
     
    Well, this certainly looks interesting. So, I'm guessing that since we only get one or two things each jump, and since Megaman ZX, which if I recall correctly, was not yet a proper jump, was mentioned, we can just make up our own potential jumps, even if they don't technically exist in a proper format yet, and just end up stealing borrowing whatever ends up in our hands as we try to guide Ochako home? I'm in.

    [X] "Wait." Try to Seal the Butcher Using the Sealing Staff

    [X] Hyrule, The Great Plateau, circa Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

    There, something (relatively) easy to start out with to start out with that peaks pretty high up there without pressuring Ochako (provided we don't accidentally warp in next to an angry Lynel for some reason) and hey! We might even meet Link, and if anyone'd give us a helping (silent) hand to start out with, it'd be him. Whereas, personally, I think most of the other choices outlined here are... a bit out of our weight class, so to speak. Like, I'm fairly certain that even most of the street-level villains Spider-Man fights would give us serious trouble at this point, let alone someone who's actually considered a threat, like Venom, who, if I recall correctly, was nowhere near being a good guy circa-1998, Marvel Universe or otherwise. Then there's Discworld, where, if I recall my tenth-remembered, mostly forgotten lore by this point, everyone there is either crazy-powerful or crazy-crazy (Or both) and Ochako is, for all intents and purposes, a hedge wizard who has no idea she can even do magic yet, and chances are, even if we go there, we probably aren't getting the badass sentient luggage chest to cover our back, at least, not immediately. And then there's Star Trek, where, and pardon me, I know even less about Star Trek than Discworld, after Q and any of his bullshit, wouldn't the sensible response to someone teleporting in unannounced be to level phasers in their general direction, set to kill? And If I remember correctly, TNG was Picard, who going off of what little I know about him, basically order that immediately? All I'm really trying to say in this case is maybe reconsider where we teleport in first, guys. (At least for Star Trek, otherwise I have no problems with it)

    Whereas, comparatively, starting off in Jackie Chan Adventures, means that we could at least get one of the Talisman's, or failing that, take one (probably completely on accident, now that I think about it). Who knows? We get there soon enough, we can prevent season two from happening entirely, or maybe just stop Shendu from resurrecting at all! Especially if we get one of the more arguably useful Talisman, like Bull or Dragon. Then we'd probably be set for a little bit at least.

    And I apologize if this seems a bit ranty to anyone, I'm currently running on zero hours of sleep and my brain decided to nitpick at the worst possible time.
     
    Uh no Picards first order to a child appearing on his bridge would NOT be to kill it.

    I picked it because it's

    A. Funny and interesting without being super dangerous.

    B. A decent place to possibly score some useful tech like tricoders or hyposprays.

    C. Even if they don't give us tech they'd still give us basic supplies like food, a backpack, spare clothes, etc.
     
    KaizerRyu said:
    Then there's Discworld, where, if I recall my tenth-remembered, mostly forgotten lore by this point, everyone there is either crazy-powerful or crazy-crazy (Or both) and Ochako is, for all intents and purposes, a hedge wizard who has no idea she can even do magic yet, and chances are, even if we go there, we probably aren't getting the badass sentient luggage chest to cover our back,
    Click to expand...
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    Mm, 90% of Discworld magic is learning not to use it. Wizards and Mages are powerful and all but they aren't going to actually use that power unless we seriously provoke them. The gods are too busy with the divine soap operas to pay attention to anyone who isn't actively taunting them and nothing else is a serious mystical threat.

    Honestly, we're probably in more danger from the smells of Ankh-Morpork and the ordinary citizens than any magic. Besides, it's going to be hilarious to see a superhero (in-training) react to the legalised crime in the city and the general hilariousness of the people there.

    EDIT: Also, wow, all of us have picked different settings.
     
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    [X] "Wait." Try to Seal the Butcher Using the Sealing Staff

    [X] Hyrule, The Great Plateau, circa Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

    not any more now Hyrule has two
     
    [X] "Wait." Try to Seal the Butcher Using the Sealing Staff

    [X] Gravity Falls. Literally any point not the finale.

    I have no idea what we'll get there, there's so many options.
     
    [x] "Be careful." Let the Butcher be taken into custody

    [X]Vorkosigan series.On the prince Xav.
    Reasonable authority figure, cheap spacesuits and sturdy tech. What's not to like?
    We need somewhere to learn some bullshitting and pick pocketing .
    Also, dealing with unexpected situations.
     
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    [x] "Wait." Try to Seal the Butcher Using the Sealing Staff
    [X] Hyrule, The Great Plateau, circa Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
     
    runeblue360 said:
    Mm, 90% of Discworld magic is learning not to use it. Wizards and Mages are powerful and all but they aren't going to actually use that power unless we seriously provoke them. The gods are too busy with the divine soap operas to pay attention to anyone who isn't actively taunting them and nothing else is a serious mystical threat.

    Honestly, we're probably in more danger from the smells of Ankh-Morpork and the ordinary citizens than any magic. Besides, it's going to be hilarious to see a superhero (in-training) react to the legalised crime in the city and the general hilariousness of the people there.

    EDIT: Also, wow, all of us have picked different settings.
    Click to expand...
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    Ah okay, that's good to know. I was worried we were going to get punk'd the instant we got there, because I'm pretty sure I've heard some horror stories about that place.

    Also, my choice is actually getting traction for once! Neat!
     
    KaizerRyu said:
    And I apologize if this seems a bit ranty to anyone, I'm currently running on zero hours of sleep and my brain decided to nitpick at the worst possible time.
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    I never say this, so let me preface by saying: you really should get more sleep. However, we QMs live for this sort of analysis, so go ahead, knock yourself out on less sleep. :V

    Edit: To make my life easier, next vote for either Jackie Chan or Zelda locks it in.
     
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    [X] "Wait." Try to Seal the Butcher Using the Sealing Staff
    [X] Jackie Chan Adventures
     
    This is terrific so far! Thanks for posting it.

    I'd be fine with Jackie Chan, but I can think of a few threats that need to stay in said universe. I definitely want to loot this boss before moving on. Can we loot it if it is sealed/banished?

    I'm going to guess that we have to meet some requirement or expend a consumable to reach a previous world. Diablo would be a huge risk, but Tower of God has some more esoteric options. I'd expect some stuff like magic resistance or spectacles that show magical activity. I wonder if we could land in the past or future of previous worlds.
     
    FixerUpper said:
    No matter what your choice is, you'll be heading to a world soon after. You can propose pretty much any one you like, up to and including quests on this very forum, though please be aware if it's a setting I have no knowledge of, I'll most likely butcher it. I hope you found my cursory depiction of CCS adequate even if it got invaded by Diablo near the end there.
    Click to expand...
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    I don't suppose you could go through the jump list and make a list of the settings you're familiar with?
     
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    Selias said:
    Jumpchain Google Drive
    Jump List

    The list is missing a few, because it hasn't been updated with the newest ones, yet. They'll be in the UPLOAD NEW JUMPS HERE TO BE SORTED folder, along with any jumps that were updated. There's a LOT of jumps, though, so I'll understand if you don't want to go through them all and find which ones you know.
    Click to expand...
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    I'll need to get onto my computer (it has a VPN that's... occasionally dependable). Out of curiosity, is this list List of jumps similar enough to be workable?
     
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