Word count < 300
[X] Action Plan: The best time to keep trying is right now
- Suggest to Asuma:
- Let's investigate the current event before making concrete plans for after
- Observations:
- Solid matter, although scattered, does not seem to have been destroyed. The debris is still around.
- The liquid is additional, and turns back into air
- Ask someone to get some
- Give them air supply seal
- Bubbles underwater or fills waterskin or balloon
- Collected result looks like air
- Thus plausibly the jutsu transformed the air into the liquid
- There are safer tests we could have started with, given foreknowledge, which still make sense and help OPSEC
- It is possible to cast this in an deep underground, sealed cave. This has lots of advantages:
- Primes above surface are shielded by ground
- It could be limited in size since the air supply is limited
- Worst-case is probably surface disruption that's less similar to original, which helps OPSEC
- We can cast eg. in southern Iron, to make the mission faster
- It's harder for others to observe underground than observe even fairly long distances at sea
- Eg. ice could wash ashore
- Other options to limit the jutsu:
- Cast deep underwater
- Ask Asuma how to make a zone of air under the ocean
- In a deep well with a free connection to the surface
- Limits the access to air, and can collapse if it goes nuke
- Cast inside an airtight 5SB zone
- Pre-check for airtightness
- Pre-check if the material can survive being filled with liquid from the original (though the actual test would be elsewhere)
- Then do that
Out of character context for why you should vote:
Asuma is trying to check whether the nuke is a fluke or a reliable attack. I think it might be possible to make it seem like a fluke, without much downside, by using the fact that Elemental Mastery only just went nuke because it was a cold day, and it probably won't in warmer circumstances.
1. This plan is an extremely believable story, in that
I was literally making these suggestions a long time ago without ulterior motive, and have been repeating them recently. Hazō should be able to make these suggestions sincerely.
2. Temperature goes up as you go down into the ground. Akane's Elemental Mastery only just managed to go nuke, so there's a good shot this second attempt doesn't do the thing if we go somewhere warm. Underground tends to be warm.
I don't think this solves the problem, or is particularly robust, but, you know, let's keep trying. Now isn't the time to give up.
I personally give this about a 1-in-4 chance of working, with most of the downside being that Asuma keeps trying things after underground testing fails.