Willow Wonka’s Candy Shoppe obviously licensed their brand name from the bestselling children’s book, Chicory and the Chocolate Factory.
Violet: So if we called backup, and they scanned for unidentified threats — now that you have the actual building —
Atarangi: Other magical girls won’t see it.
I’m lucky. I have an unusual skill set that lets me work around . . . whatever’s blocking psychic scans of this place. Anyone else would have to overpower it by force. I don’t know how much force.
Violet: What if they get a look using a psychic link with you?
Atarangi: . . . I’m also unusually unsuited to psychic links. We’ll need a more physical reason to call anyone in.
Juniper: Violet! . . . Why did you text me the address of a Willow Wonka’s Candy Shoppe?
Violet: Keep me on the line for a bit, Juniper? You hear anything go sideways — Well, I guess you better send in the Magical Crime Law Investigation Squad.
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Will the unusual Neineikura skill set save the day? – I’d guess so.
Will the nature of this skill set be revealed to Violet? I’m excited to see where this goes!
Will it save the day? Nah, I think it’s just going to get her into trouble. But good for her on actually calling for at least a degree of backup so the cavalry knows where to ride to.
One thing that always confused me was that after Thorn had that telepathic interview with Atarangi, he never did any follow-up we saw on the whole “Who was that?” surprise. From his point of view, her having an apparently random or permanent telepathic link to her sister could be a major opsec risk, ultimately needing her sisters to have their own security clearances. Would likely be streamlined because they share a history, but I can see another message needing to come in and give them each an interview and ensure they all share the same loyalties.
This story line might end with her plurality coming out, which I think will be a good thing for the system as a whole, as they’d have a group of people who they can all socialize with, instead of Atarangi being front the entire work period.
Well, there is a threat and they are looking for it instead of waiting for it to reach them. So trouble is already coming up, whether the sisters spoke up or not.
Atarangi says she’s unsuited to psychic links, but if she’s blocked anyway Kallie or Kiki could have to step in. Not sure if this is how systems work, but it’s an option most magical girls don’t have, so I’d think that would be an advantage.
If it’d be easier for Violet to work together with them instead of her usual teammate or if it’d be worse to have an all blocked magical girl, who knows.
Good point with the security clearances. I didn’t think that far.
but isn’t only one of them actuality magical?
I can’t remember where I read this (Patreon?), but I’m pretty sure Erin said at least one other of the Neineikura system is magical. I suspect Kiki.
(yep, patreon)
Specifically, Oct 21, 2020: Spoilers for the next Leif & Thorn knights.
Psst, it’s hard to get more readers to support the Patreon if people copy stuff from the locked posts and share it for free!
I don’t know where the line is. Should I not reference Patreon-sourced spoilers at all?
On the other hand, occasional detail could convince people the Patreon contains something worth looking at.
EDIT: Oh, I see you addressed it below.
I suspect Pond Thing.
I realize we don’t talk about that, so I’ll not discuss that further. Just putting it out there.
Don’t say what the spoilers *are*, is the important thing.
You can refer to them in general, e.g. “I have a different theory based on a Patreon spoiler…just checked, it was from the February 21 post.”
That’s even a helpful kind of comment for me, since it lets non-patrons know “see, there’s worthwhile stuff on Patreon — you don’t just have to take the creator’s word for it, the actual subscribers think it’s interesting too.”
Plus, it’s considerate for people who are patrons already, but *not* because they want to see spoilers — so they skipped the original post when they saw the spoiler warning!
So avoid giving away the specific details, e.g. “I have a different theory based on the exclusive February 21 Patreon reveal that the Woman in Black is secretly a dimension-hopping lizard person from the space AU.” That just sucks all the mystery out of it.
Okay, thank you.
System member here.
My interpretation of her headmates seeing through the block is that the spell was designed to fog up anyone who cast a scrying spell like Atarangi’s. AnyONE. Another headmate casting a similar spell would probably be fogged up the same way, but because the block was built for singlets, headmates who are co-concious/close to front aren’t hit.
She and her headmates are probably unsuited to psychic bonds for the same reasons that some forms of therapy don’t work well for systems. First, because there are already a lot of consciousnesses sharing her headspace, and second, because systems tend to have pretty firm “protective walls” that can be very difficult or impossible to consciously drop. I imagine Atarangi’s system’s psychic guarding system is just as strong as Leif’s and just as unconsciously created.
I suspect part of the issue is Kiki not being great at OpSec, since, y’know… Teenager.
Good luck getting a clearance for the Pond Thing….
😂
Surely you only need to move the water weeds out of the way? ;-]
Good luck getting a clearance for *any* of them without the Neineikura system coming out or being outted.
Once *that* happens, the rest of the clearances would probably be relatively straightforward, since they’ve already interviewed most if not all the other people they’d need to. Even, you know, the one we don’t talk about.
I would expect that there is some person doing her magical evaluation or something who KNOWS she’s system but agreed to keep it secret as personal and not relevant.
Now, I’m not entirely convinced it was right decision, but I would be more worried if she got into position like this WITHOUT anyone noticing …
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