Player: MaxSalsa Character: Winter Adamas | Rikka Hishikawa Reason for Echo: Wise Snake: proximity (plot) Type and tier: T2: Item (ability?) + Item What is returned: Cure Diamond's Love Heart Arrow, which looks suspiciously like a big heart that happens to be usable as a crossbow otherwise sized for a fourteen-year-old girl. As with other her magically-generated items, though, it automatically sizes up for Winter as the wielder (which will be a difference of maybe two inches). By itself, completely useless. Canon gives it three functions over the course of the season, one of which I'll be returning to it now: Diamond Shower, Cure Diamond's mid-tier ice ability. It's much more versatile; it sprays in pretty much whatever fashion Rikka wants, even being used to make a spiral staircase from thin air into a canyon (out of ice, though; I don't know know she managed to get a whole team down it without anyone falling). Each member's Love Heart Arrow functions differently during their individual ability; Cure Diamond's is used as a tambourine, and each hit generates a huge blast of ice, in addition to an actual ringing sound as if it were a tambourine. Winter will also be getting back a unique Loveads (yes, canon is finally making me change the spelling; I'll update it in my info post) that, inserted into the Love Heart Arrow, actually makes Diamond Shower happen instead of something else.
There are two other abilities the Love Heart Arrow adds, which I'll mention briefly here for clarity: the Lovely Force Arrow, which is a shooting-type team attack that requires Heart, Diamond, Rosetta, and Sword to all be together and to all fire at the same time (and also requires a unique Loveads); and Diamond Blizzard, which is a significantly more powerful Diamond Shower in which Rikka surrounds herself in a cloud of snow and flash-freezes it into a massive three-dimensional diamond, useful to block paths and lock down lots of enemies... except it kind of freezes her inside when she uses it, ahaha. We only see that move once, during the final battle, when she's trying to buy Mana time to finish the job. However, it doesn't use a new Loveads - it uses the one for Diamond Shower, but also requires her to dump absurd amounts of power in that Winter just doesn't have. More to the point, Winter doesn't realize she can channel that much power into an attack - she'll need a memory Echo before she figures it out.
The limitations on the Love Heart Arrow are... mostly obvious, except for one that I still scratch my head over. First, like everything else, Winter can't use her Love Heart Arrow in civilian mode - she has to be transformed. Diamond Shower also uses a little more energy, so she'll get tired faster, but the sky's the limit with what she can dream up for effects while the power lasts. Most annoyingly (to me), even though the Love Heart Arrow is a bow in at least one mode, even if she figures out a way to unfold it into the bow form, it can't fire arrows without a Loveads that creates them, and that requires either Cure Heart's Loveads (which she never gets) or the Lovely Force Arrow Loveads (which requires a team). It also doesn't generate a string or, well, anything else you need to fire actual arrows. So it's only useful for Diamond Shower.
Probably worth mentioning: Winter will not be getting an Echo that tells her what her Love Heart Arrow can actually do. That's because Rikka didn't know how to use hers at the time, either; she just got the Lovies handed (telekinetically) to her and guessed. This seems a fair pattern and I'll let Winter figure it out on her own.
Reason for Echo: Wise Snake: staring down something she knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, she can't defeat. Something beyond her abilities in every way. (recurrence) Type and tier: T1: Memory What is returned: The memory of Rikka staring down something she should not have been able to defeat: King Selfishness. Think "as tall as the Empire State Building" and "its footsteps create tidal waves". The precise moment this is coming from is after a single energy blast blew her whole team into and through multiple buildings and brought them to rest in a pile of rubble, Cure Diamond staring with blurry vision at the approaching sign of the apocalypse. Winter won't have context; she'll just see herself (and enough of her Cure costume to tell her what form she's in), and feel intense pain, and have the feeling of certain defeat at the hands of whatever this thing is.
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Character: Winter Adamas | Rikka Hishikawa
Reason for Echo: Wise Snake: proximity (plot)
Type and tier: T2: Item (ability?) + Item
What is returned: Cure Diamond's Love Heart Arrow, which looks suspiciously like a big heart that happens to be usable as a crossbow otherwise sized for a fourteen-year-old girl. As with other her magically-generated items, though, it automatically sizes up for Winter as the wielder (which will be a difference of maybe two inches). By itself, completely useless. Canon gives it three functions over the course of the season, one of which I'll be returning to it now: Diamond Shower, Cure Diamond's mid-tier ice ability. It's much more versatile; it sprays in pretty much whatever fashion Rikka wants, even being used to make a spiral staircase from thin air into a canyon (out of ice, though; I don't know know she managed to get a whole team down it without anyone falling). Each member's Love Heart Arrow functions differently during their individual ability; Cure Diamond's is used as a tambourine, and each hit generates a huge blast of ice, in addition to an actual ringing sound as if it were a tambourine. Winter will also be getting back a unique Loveads (yes, canon is finally making me change the spelling; I'll update it in my info post) that, inserted into the Love Heart Arrow, actually makes Diamond Shower happen instead of something else.
There are two other abilities the Love Heart Arrow adds, which I'll mention briefly here for clarity: the Lovely Force Arrow, which is a shooting-type team attack that requires Heart, Diamond, Rosetta, and Sword to all be together and to all fire at the same time (and also requires a unique Loveads); and Diamond Blizzard, which is a significantly more powerful Diamond Shower in which Rikka surrounds herself in a cloud of snow and flash-freezes it into a massive three-dimensional diamond, useful to block paths and lock down lots of enemies... except it kind of freezes her inside when she uses it, ahaha. We only see that move once, during the final battle, when she's trying to buy Mana time to finish the job. However, it doesn't use a new Loveads - it uses the one for Diamond Shower, but also requires her to dump absurd amounts of power in that Winter just doesn't have. More to the point, Winter doesn't realize she can channel that much power into an attack - she'll need a memory Echo before she figures it out.
The limitations on the Love Heart Arrow are... mostly obvious, except for one that I still scratch my head over. First, like everything else, Winter can't use her Love Heart Arrow in civilian mode - she has to be transformed. Diamond Shower also uses a little more energy, so she'll get tired faster, but the sky's the limit with what she can dream up for effects while the power lasts. Most annoyingly (to me), even though the Love Heart Arrow is a bow in at least one mode, even if she figures out a way to unfold it into the bow form, it can't fire arrows without a Loveads that creates them, and that requires either Cure Heart's Loveads (which she never gets) or the Lovely Force Arrow Loveads (which requires a team). It also doesn't generate a string or, well, anything else you need to fire actual arrows. So it's only useful for Diamond Shower.
Probably worth mentioning: Winter will not be getting an Echo that tells her what her Love Heart Arrow can actually do. That's because Rikka didn't know how to use hers at the time, either; she just got the Lovies handed (telekinetically) to her and guessed. This seems a fair pattern and I'll let Winter figure it out on her own.
Reason for Echo: Wise Snake: staring down something she knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, she can't defeat. Something beyond her abilities in every way. (recurrence)
Type and tier: T1: Memory
What is returned: The memory of Rikka staring down something she should not have been able to defeat: King Selfishness. Think "as tall as the Empire State Building" and "its footsteps create tidal waves". The precise moment this is coming from is after a single energy blast blew her whole team into and through multiple buildings and brought them to rest in a pile of rubble, Cure Diamond staring with blurry vision at the approaching sign of the apocalypse. Winter won't have context; she'll just see herself (and enough of her Cure costume to tell her what form she's in), and feel intense pain, and have the feeling of certain defeat at the hands of whatever this thing is.