Mascot & Magic: Revival

Spoiler: Winning Vote

[X] Train Analysis: You can teach Kuuhaku how to observe and take notice of patterns during the heat of combat, forming a profile on her opponent’s strengths and weaknesses.

“Let’s focus on combat analysis.” You said, thinking about it. “Being able to identify an opponent’s strengths and weaknesses through observation and forming a profile on them can let you make better use of your toolset and make more effective tactics and strategies that you could use against them.” You explained to Kuuhaku after she tilted her head questioningly at you. You contemplated on how to do this for a few moments before speaking again. “Consider, for instance, the avian Dreg Beast I killed yesterday. While a truly fearsome enemy to most, if you know its strengths and weaknesses, you can prepare countermeasures to nullify the former and exploit the latter. Knowing is half the battle-“ Just as you finished that line, Kuuhaku suddenly hummed a tune. You blinked a few times at the unexpected action as Kuuhaku seemed to realize what she just did and looked away from you, her mask probably hiding a blush of embarrassment.

“… Continue…” Kuuhaku said quietly, and you nodded before doing so, while finding her reaction to be somewhat adorable in a way. It still did somewhat baffle you how well she was doing considering what happened yesterday, but maybe she had just processed it all while you were flying around and doing your initial investigation and scouting, you should probably ask her how she was feeling later.

“Alright then. Something you might know regarding my birds is that they have hollow bones to help to fly, reducing the weight their wings have to generate lift for in order to get off the ground and into the air. While a Dreg Beast will naturally be tougher and larger, applying sufficient blunt force trauma will be more effective on that type of Dreg Beast than compared to one based on an Elephant. Breaking their wings in particular would also take away any potential use of flight, limiting their combat options and methods of escape.” You explained, and paused as Kuuhaku raised a hand, like she was in class. “Yes, Kuuhaku?” You asked, somewhat amused.

“Do the monsters usually try to run away?” She asked, and you considered the question. While it was not something that happened often, the more intelligent Dregs were able to recognize when a fight wasn’t going their way or that they were at a disadvantage, and so they would try to retreat. It rarely worked, but occasionally they managed to get away, though strangely those ones rarely ever popped back up again. It was theorized that the Accursed Ones disposed of most minions who ran away, though how isn't really known besides a potential kill switch that they might have access to. You couldn’t really dissect a Dreg, and capturing them wasn’t something past Mascots did. However, getting back to the actual question, most Dregs didn’t try to run, Dreg Beasts and Dreg Golems would keep fighting until they were vanquished, and immature Dreg Demons never last long enough in a fight to even consider retreat. Fighting a Dreg outside of a host just didn’t happen most times, the bastards were just that good at staying hidden.

“Generally, no.” You said before explaining your relevant thoughts on the subject to Kuuhaku, with her nodding in order to show that she understands, or at least thought she did. “Continuing on, that particular Dreg Beast’s primary weapons were its beak and talons, so piercing and slashing attacks are the most likely ones that you would have to watch out for. In the case of most attacks, it’s better to dodge out of the way instead of blocking or parrying. We’ll cover effective dodging at a later time. So, from what I’ve just told you, what sort of plan of attack would you use for this Dreg Beast, having the powers you do now?”

Kuuhaku thought about it for several seconds. “Constant movement, don’t stay in one place for long. Use Magic to make something that can smash its bones, aim for the limbs first or the spine, incapacitating or paralyzing it to create an opening….” Kuuhaku looked up to the sky as she seemed to have an idea, but what expression she was making behind the mask was unknown to you. “Maybe bait it into trying to peck me while opening a portal, then closing it in order to decapitate it?”

She was taking to this better than you had expected, but then again, you had provided her with most of the information she needed to form a plan to begin with. That said, that last one was all her, though… “And do you know if your portals can do that? While it might work as a good alternative to block an attack, possibly redirect it back at the attacker, simply assuming that your portals could be used as makeshift guillotines without testing is a dangerous risk.” Kuuhaku nodded, but then tilted her head and started to raise her hand again before you spoke up. “You can ask questions without raising your hand, as long as I’m not actively speaking, Kuuhaku.”

“How is this helping with forming an analysis while in battle? We’ve been talking about something that’s already happened.” She asked after putting down her hand.

“Well that’s simple, I’m giving you a baseline idea of the concept before starting the real lesson. An introduction before the training. Like orientation days at school or… something like that, I’m not familiar with how the school system operates on this island.” You said, with Kuuhaku staring at you for a moment before taking a step back as she just came to a realization of just how you’ll be doing this training. “I see you’ve figured out what we’ll be doing for the next few hours, let’s get started then!” You said, smiling at her. “I recommend opening a portal to somewhere with lots of empty space, the southeastern corner of the agricultural lands should do. Near the shoreline preferably.”

Kuuhaku hesitantly nodded and opened a portal in mid-air, taking the form of a six foot tall disk of pitch black darkness with a halo of pale white around the edges, where void and existence touched. Showing her your trust, you jumped in first…


…and immediately face planted into the sand of the beach as the exit portal had formed in a slight angle so that the momentum of you leaping into the entry portal carried into a head first dive into the sandy shoreline, burying your head somewhat in the sand. Quickly you pulled your head out of the ground and quickly moved out of the way as Kuuhaku tumbled out of the portal, falling over and landing in an undignified heap as the portal closed behind her. Kuuhaku laid there for several seconds before slowly getting up, the front of her outfit now covered in sand. She took a moment before looking over to you. “… let us never speak of this to anyone.” She said, to which you nodded in silent agreement.

Shaking off the sand on your head while Kuuhaku de-transformed and re-transformed to get rid of the sand on her, you shifted into combat form. “Alright, we will be going a few rounds and at the end of it, I want you to tell me what you managed to learn from it and explain the logic of any tactics you come up with and make use of, understood?” You asked her.

“Understood.” She said as she immediately drew her gun and started shooting, spikes of void matter silently being fired from the barrel as you dodged. When you moved to counterattack, she shifted into her Void Form and used the enhanced physical abilities of the form to leap over you. Turning quickly, you saw her land somewhat un-gracefully and dropping Void Form. She seemed to experience a small degree of vertigo or dizziness for a moment, leaving herself open to attack. You took the opening and lunged at her while swinging a paw, aiming to not hit her with the claws but instead the paw pad. You could heal and resurrect, but that wasn’t a reason to use potentially lethal force in a spar.

Seeing the attack coming, Kuuhaku formed a two-inch thick tower shield of Void Matter to block the swing, which still made her stumble a bit as she didn’t properly brace herself for the impact and she lost her hold on the shield. Once more, she entered her Void Form and this time you noticed her legs shifting into something resembling grasshopper legs before she jumped away from you… and went a little too high up. Kuuhaku flailed around in the air uncontrollably as she clearly didn’t expect to go so high. You quickly flew up and caught her and brought her back down to earth safely. Kuuhaku had to take a moment to catch her breath and calm down from her accidental super jump.

“Well, that one was a bit of a bust I suppose.” You said, looking her over. “You okay?”

“Everything is fine.” Kuuhaku said, sitting down and looking at her legs, which were back to normal after she had dropped out of Void Form while in the air. “I will not be doing that again without further testing…”

“Mind explaining why you thought giving yourself super jumping skills would help you?” You asked, Kuuhaku looking at you after you did and taking off her mask.

“You can fly, and are very fast. Needed ways to match or keep up with mobility.” She said, and you could see a faint blush on her face. “It did not work as I planned.”

“Well, that’s why it’s good to find these things out while training instead of out in the field.” You said. “That way, you can improve and know what to do or what not to do when fighting Dregs or whatever else might come up.”

“I understand.” Kuuhaku said. After a few more moments she stood up and put her mask back on. “Let’s keep going. I haven’t really analyzed you yet…”

You nodded and started off the next round of sparring, and then the next one after that. So on and so forth for the next few hours before Kuuhaku needed to return home to sleep.

Spoiler: Training

DC: 50
Roll: 54

Kuuhaku gains progress on acquiring Combat Analysis skill (⅕)

After Kuuhaku went to bed, you were left to your own devices, which was mostly planning out your moves for the next day. You could follow up on one of your leads on trying to locate the Rings, you had a general idea where they were, but not their exact locations or what Rings were where. You still didn’t have anything regarding the weird ‘gravity’ thing happening that drew in magical stuff to the island, so you may need to revisit that. You could continue training Kuuhaku in Combat Analysis, though thinking about it, only having you as a training partner might hinder her abilities. Not all opponents she would face were going to fight like you do. So, going out on a recruitment drive might help out there, and there were plenty of candidates in the local area of the city, and if you were lucky, maybe some of them even went to school with Kuuhaku and give her some friends. Having people to talk to and hang out with was good for mental health, and a sense of camaraderie could help then perform better out in the field.

Welcome to Day 2. You have a total of 3 Action Slots. Plan Format Required.

[ ] Patrol: Go out on patrol for Dregs, or even other supernatural problems. Chance to Encounter Dregs. Chance to Encounter ???
-[ ] Northeast Hoseki
-[ ] Southeast Hoseki
-[ ] Southwest Hoseki
-[ ] Northwest Hoseki
-[ ] Agricultural Section
-[ ] “Noble” Section
-[ ] Golden Dragon Park

[ ] Scout Recruits: Search for Champion Candidates that you could potentially recruit. Chance to Encounter Candidates.
-[ ] Northeast Hoseki
-[ ] Southeast Hoseki
-[ ] Southwest Hoseki
-[ ] Northwest Hoseki
-[ ] Agricultural Section
-[ ] “Noble” Section
-[ ] Golden Dragon Park

[ ] Recruitment Drive: Go after an Ember of Magic and try to Recruit the person it’s attached to towards the cause. Can select the same option multiple times.
-[ ] Northeast Hoseki
-[ ] Southeast Hoseki (5 Embers)
-[ ] Southwest Hoseki
-[ ] Northwest Hoseki
-[ ] Agricultural Section
-[ ] “Noble” Section
-[ ] Golden Dragon Park

[ ] Training: Help a Champion improve in some way. (Will default to Kuhaku.)
-[ ] Combat Training: Train a Champion to improve in Combat.
-[ ] Mystic Training: Train a Champion to improve their Magic.

[ ] Investigation: This city and the island it was on is a little strange. Maybe you should investigate deeper.
-[ ] Gold Dragon Statue: It sits at the center of a lake, which is in the center of a park in the center of the city. That it also sits exactly at the center of the island itself makes you wonder what the deal is.
-[ ] Mystic Attraction: Something about this island has an attractive effect to anything with a magical and supernatural nature, at least that’s what you can sense. Looking deeper into what might be causing it might help you.
-[] Follow Up, Noble Neighborhood: Two rings detected here, should be easy to collect if you can get a lock on them.
-[] Follow Up, Founder “Palaces”: With only one ring located in the area, you should be able to track it down and claim it quickly. Hopefully it’s not in a jewelry box or something…
-[] Follow Up, Hoseki City: A fourth of the rings are all located in the city, but it’s a much bigger area to search through. You don’t know which sections of the city have a ring, so you should focus on that.
-[] Follow Up, Agricultural Section: Six rings in the entire section of the island south of the city, lots of space including farmland and the greenhouse complex where they could be and you have to find them. Literally half of the rings are in this section, best get started.

[ ] Something Else: Sometimes, there are options that aren’t obvious at first. (Write-In).

 

Spoiler: Winning Vote

[X]Plan Recruit, Investigate and Train
-[X] Recruitment Drive: Go after an Ember of Magic and try to Recruit the person it’s attached to towards the cause. Can select the same option multiple times.
--[X] Southeast Hoseki (5 Embers)
-[X] Investigation: This city and the island it was on is a little strange. Maybe you should investigate deeper.
--[X] Follow Up, Agricultural Section: Six rings in the entire section of the island south of the city, lots of space including farmland and the greenhouse complex where they could be and you have to find them. Literally half of the rings are in this section, best get started.
-[X] Training: Help a Champion improve in some way. (Will default to Kuhaku.)
--[X] Combat Training: Train a Champion to improve in Combat.

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You were flying over the southeastern section of Hoseki City, looking for one of the five other Embers of Magic that you had sensed when you first arrived. While you were certain that Kuhaku would be a fine champion, the fact of the matter was that one girl would not be able to stand against the enemies that you were up against without some backup that wasn’t just you. In fact, any time a champion tried to pull the whole ‘Lone Wolf’ thing, it… never really ended up going well for them, and they needed to be bailed out by the rest of the team. When they make it in time, anyway…

You shook your head free of such thoughts. ‘It’s an occupational hazard, Dregs won’t show mercy just because you made dumb decision.’ You thought to yourself. ‘Besides, they didn’t have someone like me in their corner.’

Your power to resurrect the dead and heal injuries was… a boon that you were sure many past Starborn would covet and desire more than any other. It’s not exactly spoken about, but your kind can get attached and even a bit clingy at times when they become a Mascot and start building their teams of champions, spending time with them. It’s a byproduct of interacting with the Ember, and tending to the mystic flames that burns within a champion’s soul. Even now, you couldn’t help but feel concern for the grey eyed girl and… Well, it was kind of clear even with the minimum interactions so far that her current civilian life was not optimal. Hopefully it improves, though if need be, you could eventually get the resources to pull her out of there if needed after some Dreg killing.

‘Look at me, already considering basically adopting her even after, what, a night and a day? They really downplay how fast this bond forms.’ You thought, your wings flapping a few times to gain altitude while your senses spread out and pinpointed the location of the Embers. ‘Let’s see, what is the human ritual? Eeny…meeny…miny…moe…’ You flew over to a random Ember, going as fast as you could to reach its location. Once there, you found that the candidate was…

[ ] A young girl around Kuhaku’s age, with eyes the color of royal purple. Well, you could only see one eye, the other was covered by an eyepatch. She also had some bandages wrapped around her left arm with something written on it that you couldn’t make out. She seemed to be… making an amateur ritual circle, badly?
[ ] A boy with fiery red hair, facing down a group of delinquents with a glare from eyes like molten gold. He seemed to be defending another boy that had some bruises.
[ ] A girl with white hair and sparkling gold eyes, smiling as she helped an older lady put away some groceries, and being given an apple as a reward.
[ ] Two for one, what looked like an older boy was trying to get his energetic younger sibling to calm down while he was trying to fix up… is that a motorcycle with a tank tread instead of wheels?

---

The Agricultural Sector made up everything south of the city, with massive plots of farmland and a super complex of interconnected greenhouses, all growing crops to both feed the people of the island and to export to the rest of the world in order to earn money. As you performed aerial recon over the large area where a full half of the rings were located, you ended up discovering that among the farmlands was a smaller town area that you had completely overlooked during your initial broader sweep of the island and that you hadn’t known about as part of the info you got when you were sent out. That would make scouring for any Embers in the area a lot easier, as they’d likely be located there, but your senses were busy trying to locate the exact coordinates of the Rings.

Spoiler: Search

DC: 80
Ring 1: 60, Fail
Ring 2: 98, Success!
Ring 3: 85, Success!
Ring 4: 42, Fail
Ring 5: 83, Success!
Ring 6: 87, Success!

Today was your lucky day! You managed to locate four out of the six Rings. As you flew over to the closet one however, you started to retract that statement. “Oh you have got to be kidding me…” You said as you stared at what looked like empty land to normal senses, but to your more mystical senses, you could detect a dimensional distortion that surrounded the location of the ring. Checking the other locations confirmed that it was the same for each one.

You knew that this wasn’t going to be easy, but apparently racing against the Dregs and the Accursed wasn’t the only problem you’d have to deal with. From what you can gather, the dimensional distortions would act as doors leading to a subspace that likely needed to be entered in order to retrieve the Ring, though you wondered why they were doing this? Was this some kind of defensive mechanism, or a sign of something else? At the very least, you could get an idea of what the nature of the Rings were from the faint impression your senses got from the distortions. You had managed to find the Earth, Water, Animal, and Plant Rings.

Well, at least you located them…

Locations of the Earth, Water, Animal, and Plant Rings discovered. Dimensional Distortions leading into pocket realms discovered at the locations, will need to enter to retrieve the Ring. Exact nature of pocket realms is unknown.

New Actions Unlocked.

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QM Note: Hey everyone. I got hit with some serious burn out, so this took a long time. The general small number of votes also kind of contributed to the lack of motivation. Maybe I’m just a bad QM, or what I’m writing isn’t interesting. Especially given how many times I’ve rebooted this. That and I suppose QQ isn’t the best place for the Non-NSFW reboot in particular. I don’t know. Still working on this version, just… could use some feedback and maybe discussion? I don’t know…

Combat Training will pop up once Recruitment action is resolved.