Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- Tags
- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard
- Location
- Liverpool
I believe the summoning scroll conspiracy is to check into rumors of scrolls, try to find ones that we know exist/pseudo have leads one (Like the Condor scroll), etc. For the sake of getting ourselves one (and Noburi. Beasts for the Best Bro). @Oneiros can certainly correct me/ tell you more.
The uplift tour was just to go on a bunch of missions (till&fills and the like) to actually be doing something to promote uplift, rather than just talking about it. I know there was a lot of discussion a while ago about building earthen walls to protect smaller villages as part of it.
It sounds as if you're basically reinventing Orochimaru's game. -with the added guarantee that eventually an S-class will show up to contest their stats.
What are the literacy and numeracy rates in the EN?
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
[X] Poll: Trading Card Game
[X] Poll: Emperor of Salt
[X] Poll: Chakra quantification project
[X] Poll: Hidden Mountain
[X] Poll: Outreach
[X] Poll: Emperor of Salt
[X] Poll: Chakra quantification project
[X] Poll: Hidden Mountain
[X] Poll: Outreach
I love it. I've wanted to do something like this for a long time: flood the EN with hyperviral future memagents and take over the world via Culture Victory.
Are you saying we'll be able to use it to make S-rankers come to us and/or reveal information about their capabilities? That's grand.
Thanks for putting this together!
[X] Poll: Hidden Mountain
[X] Poll: Summoning Scroll Conspiracy
[] Poll: Emperor of Salt
[X] Poll: Uplift tour
[] Poll: Seal research
[] Poll: Chakra quantification project
- Location
- Kiev, Ukraine
Oy, there was an idea to make a Champion Tour as well as Uplift Tour or to combine both. Is idea still on the table?
E:
[X] Poll: Spend time with best Bro, buy him a present
Though it may count to the Family Stuff
E2:
@ting since original Oneiros' post there were a few additions to poll, that you may want to consider as well. Check the vote tally
E:
[X] Poll: Spend time with best Bro, buy him a present
Though it may count to the Family Stuff
E2:
@ting since original Oneiros' post there were a few additions to poll, that you may want to consider as well. Check the vote tally
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- Location
- Potato land
I think I speak for all of us when I say this: If you're not feeling well, it's fine to just skip the update altogether. I know you guys have a very strong work ethic and a commitment to delivering on schedule, but I don't think it's worth it if you're going to feel like crap in the process. It's a quest, it's supposed to be fun for all of us, and not an unpleasant obligation.
The playerbase will be fine, really. At worst, the Void Between Updates will claim a bit more sanity, and we don't need that anyway. And it sounds like Discord is in the process of trying to inflict pay-to-win game mechanics unto the MfD-verse, so it's not like we'll be bored.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
We do. We just burn through it as fast as we make it. Today's is going to be the last of the current stockpile.
- Location
- Liverpool
Let's be real, the MfD- verse has always been pay to win. In this case they're just paying in money instead of chakra usage. And if loot boxes being more fair than status quo isn't indicative of how miserable that world is...
Interlude: Experimenting with Grace
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"You called me," Anna said. "I was afraid you never would."
Kei offered no greeting. It would have been a waste of breath.
"Tell me what you want, Anna," Kei said. "Abstractly rather than immediately. What is it that you desire from me, given our shared history which impels me to erase your existence from my mind at best and to use my newly-acquired resources to destroy your future and plunge you into a bottomless pit of despair at worst?"
Anna did not answer immediately, despite having had an entire month to prepare a response
.
"I want to make it up to you. Somehow."
A predictable platitude from one who had only recently discovered the concept of guilt and did not know how to express it in her own words. Kei had expected nothing more.
"What makes you believe that such a thing is possible?" she asked. "You were at the heart of the torment I was forced to endure in my latter years at the Academy. Your cruelty shaped my life. And you did not so much as offer an explanation. Was that one… kiss… truly enough for you to dedicate all of your efforts to my destruction?"
"I worshipped you," Anna said softly. "In the beginning, I was an outsider as well, struggling to understand a world that no one would explain to me. But it didn't matter, because you showed me that I could live in that world without trying to be someone else. Without spending all my time seeking other people's approval. You were my role model."
Kei could not process the words. They were addressed to someone else, somewhere else.
"That night was merely a game to everyone else, but to me it was special. Not the kiss itself—I'm not one of those, and besides, we were children. But you had always been somewhat distant, and this was the most focused attention you had ever paid me. In that moment, in the dark, we were both curious and confused together, and relying on a bond of trust to find our way. It was… intimate.
"Then you rejected me. You violently thrust me aside and fled, as if I were some disgusting thing, and this new act of defilement was more than your mask of tolerance could withstand. You left, and abandoned me to be humiliated before the friends we—you and I—had so painstakingly made."
"I never considered them friends as such," Kei observed, "nor they me. It was simply assumed that as we were all females of a certain age, we should participate in the same social activities. The peer pressure was not worth resisting and besides, Ami had instructed me to seek new experiences.
"But worship? A role model? I could never have deserved anything of the kind, nor did I possess the extraordinary hubris to believe otherwise. Anna, did you spend all those years resenting me, inflicting endless pain upon me, for failing to satisfy the needs of your delusion?
"Well, I must disappoint you. Just as I should never have been the centre of your universe, you were not of mine. Yes, I was fond of you in a bewildered kind of way, a girl behaving as if I had in some way earned her attention when all others had already recognised it as a waste of time. If I could not fully embrace your friendship, it was because it never occurred to me that anyone would wish to befriend me in the first place.
"As to the… kiss..., my reaction was unexpected and indiscriminate. I have already explained as much. If you believed that I would react so strongly to you and you alone, then that was your conceit, another delusion which could have been dispelled had you only made the effort to ask.
"Is that all?" Kei asked coldly. "Anna, have you come here to seek the second chance that you never offered me?"
"I know I can't rewind time," Anna said, looking down. "I can't undo all the things I did. But I have to try.
"I betrayed you first."
There was that statement again. As if Anna's free will was a coin spinning in the air, each side marked with a different order of events.
As if to her, a single coin toss was enough to decide Kei's fate.
"Anna, allow me to be blunt. I hate you. I despise you. You are self-centred, cruel, and arrogant. That you should react as you did to my perceived behaviour—that you should react as you did to anything—speaks volumes about your character. I have no reason to believe that, had you and I remained on cordial terms, you would not have proceeded to persecute some other innocent child on some other pretext."
For how many years had she longed to express those feelings? How many years had she spent wishing she could choose not to flee, and instead cast defiance in the face of the clique that had selected her as its target? How many years had she spent adding that weakness to her ever-mounting stack of self-contempt?
Anna failed to deny the accusation.
"Keiko…" she said, "Keiko, I've spent the past month asking myself the same thing, I don't know who I would have been. The desire for vengeance changes people; everyone who's ever listened to a storyteller knows that. Uchiha Madara, the first and greatest missing-nin, started out as a hero. Many of the world's greatest villains used to be good people until they were so badly hurt that they decided to dedicate their lives to revenge."
"And that is how you excuse your actions? With narrative? Or perhaps you have reverted to blaming me for what you have become?"
"No!" Anna exclaimed. "No. I only mean…"
She fell silent, as if choosing words.
"I mean that I do not remember making choices. There must have been some, mustn't there? Forks in the road of what I could do and what I could become? But I can only see a straight line, from that first moment to when we went our separate ways at graduation, a natural progression of cause and effect.
"Except now I learn that I was wrong from the very beginning. If that's true, then what if I was supposed to be somebody different? What would I have been—to you, to myself, to everyone—if I hadn't been driven by revenge? There must have been opportunities to realise and undo my mistakes, and I simply failed to see them. It can't be that I was doomed forever by that one error."
"In other words," Kei said, "you are finally awakening to your monstrous nature. I thank you for your efforts. Why, I can feel my years of trauma melting away already."
But Kei forced herself off that path before she could travel too far along it. Yes, being here, finally in a position of power over her nemesis, was intoxicating. But intoxication healed nothing. At best, it failed to destroy.
"Anna, I have no interest in how you justify yourself. Nor, at this time, do your struggles with your identity concern me. That is not why I summoned you."
"Then why am I here?" Anna asked warily. "If you called me here to punish me, then I have no choice but to accept it. I am beginning to grasp the depth of my transgression. You have every reason to despise me."
"Punish you?" Keiko asked sardonically. "Do you truly believe that I would take the time to dredge up the past and all of its pain purely for the sake of punishing you?"
"Then why?" Anna appealed. "Are you offering me an opportunity to atone? To give something back in return for all those years I spent denying you happiness? I will do it, Keiko. Please… tell me what I can do to earn at least a fraction of your forgiveness."
"No."
Anna reeled back.
"Keiko, please..."
"There is a question," Kei interrupted, ignoring her, "that I have been led to ponder in recent times. Can something bestowed only on the worthy, or as the result of a transaction, truly be called forgiveness? You are, without a doubt, unworthy, and there is no deal you can offer me that will repay the debt incurred by those years of pain."
"What are you saying, Keiko?"
"I have not ceased to loathe you, Anna. There is no reason why I should. However… I am prepared to experiment with loathing you less, purely on a trial basis. I do not anticipate the restoration of a friendship so thoroughly buried beneath the experience of torment that I can barely recall it. On the other hand, according to the teachings of Kagome, that is not dead which can eternal lie."
"I still don't understand," Anna said.
"Is it friendship if it requires an assessment of worth, a quality that you have already proved yourself to lack? How far can such a bond develop and endure when one party's agency is treated as superior to the other's? Must a damaged person be made whole before they can accept forgiveness, and can forgiveness be bestowed on one who cannot understand the full extent to which they harmed you?
"I do not grant you permission to atone, Anna. I doubt such a thing is possible, and even if it were, you will not have such convenient balm for your soul. However… I will accept you as my experimental subject, to seek the answers to these questions and more, and I place no constraints on where such a relationship might lead.
"Choose."
Anna closed her eyes.
That she should take the time to contemplate was surprising. Kei had assumed that Anna would either be one kind of person or the other. If there was one trait she had displayed during those years, it was consistency.
"Do you mean that? This isn't some elaborate scheme of revenge I am duty-bound to sign up for because of what I did?"
An egotist to the last.
"I did not come here to seek revenge. If I sought such, I would not waste my time, and instead simply crush you. I have that power now, though not, as our original reunion testifies, the pettiness to prioritise you as its victim.
"I came here because I believe that your tears were genuine. And because, while I continue to hate you, recent events have led me to believe that even the most pathetic worm can sometimes be bestowed with a modicum of grace.
"I do not forgive you, Anna. I make no promise that I ever will. Instead I offer you something that may be much more valuable: the luxury of choice.
"In this place, at this time, choose your own future."
Hazō's art was sealing, the most advanced and most sophisticated of all shinobi disciplines. Noburi's art was interpersonal relationships, more complex and more challenging by far. But Kei...
"This is a fork in the road, isn't it?" Anna asked. "Finally?"
She paused briefly as if to gather her resolve.
"I'll do it. I choose to be your experimental subject. Tell me what I need to do."
...Kei's canvas would be the human soul.
- Location
- Yes.
Alright everyone, we need to make a fuckton of half-finished Omakes and Omake ideas for the QMs to polish and submit as interludes. THE SPOON GODS DEMAND IT.
- Location
- Pacific standard
***SCREAMS IN AMI***
- Location
- Pacific standard
I've been toying around with Kagome having a chance meeting with the dog clan in leaf, and finding surprising companionship with them.
I have a very amusing mental image of Kagome petting an explosive seal while muttering "boom... squish!" While the inuzuka clan head looks on approvingly.
Aodyssey
The glass will not protecc you
- Location
- Chaldea
It's a testament to your characterization that Canvas of Human Soul is a phrase that is simultaneously terrifying and tremendously squandering of her potential.
All hail Keiko, Omni-summoner, Noach Parashah, Maiden of Monsters. Death on paws and hooves, Life on wings and fins. Lo, Man, for your Doom is Ice.
- Location
- Poland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
O M I N O U S
- Location
- Yes.
- Location
- Poland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Now Keiko has two minions with sensory/mental powers.
That on top of a summoning of a wholly different race, with (probably) a different mental makeup.
...
Why just canvas of the human soul?
Keiko could order Ann to enter Frozen Skein, and Hanabi to look very closely at what happens.
Same for pangolins. Maybe summon one, let Ann activate FS, and see if Pangolin reacts?
Ami already has super-perception, thanks to her AI-tier mind.
Keiko could go that route, and then a step further, with her minions, powers and our ingenuity.
A full understanding of the...human living condition, with all the little twists and turns they go through.
A systematic understanding of the mind, which would allow leveraging said knowledge with Frozen Skein.
Noburi's a great socialists, but Keiko could go assasin route to his brawler style. An insighftul machine to his reliable charms.
That on top of a summoning of a wholly different race, with (probably) a different mental makeup.
...
Why just canvas of the human soul?
Keiko could order Ann to enter Frozen Skein, and Hanabi to look very closely at what happens.
Same for pangolins. Maybe summon one, let Ann activate FS, and see if Pangolin reacts?
Ami already has super-perception, thanks to her AI-tier mind.
Keiko could go that route, and then a step further, with her minions, powers and our ingenuity.
A full understanding of the...
A systematic understanding of the mind, which would allow leveraging said knowledge with Frozen Skein.
Noburi's a great socialists, but Keiko could go assasin route to his brawler style. An insighftul machine to his reliable charms.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
There are a lot of mirrors here to the conversation Keiko had with Ami, I believe. It also looks like 'unconsentually declaring Keiko family' had farther-reaching effects on Keiko's perspective than I initially expected.
I wonder just how much Keiko is going to change as a result of our time here in Mist, how much impetus and direction we've given (unwittingly or otherwise) to her growth as a person.
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