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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Reader mode
Well first of all, wow. A lore update. A fun lore update! Very enjoyable and I'm sure the thread will love discussing the various implications.

Secondly
eaglejarl said:
He made a throwing away gesture with one hand
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I've noticed that this phrase comes up rather frequently. I'm aware that it's intended as a small, casual gesture of dismissal. However it is notable to me because if the wording isn't specific enough, my imagination conjures up an image of a full-bodied baseball pitch. This in turn leads me to notice the phrase more often, creating a loop.

I'm happy to notice I've still got over 200 more chapters of this phrase to look forward to before my reread is complete.
 
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Reintroducing my action plan from after the last update as voting is open again:

[X] Action Plan: Leaf No Rune Unturned

Word Count: 298
  • Appreciate + laugh at the absurdity of being offered to commit "treason"
  • Note that Hazou still needs Tsunade to finish healing him and Dragons still live, so he cannot leave soon
    • Akatsuki expects Hazou to work on the Dragon problem, so it gives him time to find novel applications of known sealcraft if runes are not necessary to defeat Dragons
  • Introduce Insane ideas:
    • Fake Hazou's death after the Dragon fight near the Great Seal and blame resulting weirdness on interactions with reverse summoning near an unstable Great Seal
      • Hazou stays hidden in Dog while doing minimal physical rune research on the Human path
    • Look for runic breakthroughs for our dilemmas like how Hazou revolutionized warfare with Skywalkers
      • Perhaps two giant air dome runes whose effects covers most of Fire Country, one for above and one for below ground?
    • Store our new runic research notes inside of nondescript boulders with Earth Shaping
      • Akatsuki cannot steal them?
    • Have Hazou infiltrate Akatsuki to "steer" rift research in Leaf's favor
    • IF the Dragons are totally defeated and Hazou proves undeniably invaluable in fixing/replacing the Great Seal, lean on the crusader clans to have their summoners and their bosses pledge to protect Leaf if Leaf is ever attacked
      • We saved their home(s), surely we would be even if they saved ours?
    • Meet with every sealmaster in the Elemental Nations at neutral AMITY ground to collaborate on the Dragon Great Seal problem
      • Gives Hazou access to Sasori so Hazou can scout out just how talented Sasori is
  • Only with Naruto's permission: Hazou may need this knowledge for Great Seal repairs
    • Hazou experiments with runes to understand runes' capabilities and how they differ from their seal equivalents
      • After the meeting, conduct basic rune research (in order of priority) on:
        1. air dome,
        2. storage,
        3. HOWS-style runes
This is the basic, unchanged version. We've had some discussions both here and on discord of other options but I wanted this here for reference as well as a back up option in case we cannot agree to anything better.

Many suggestions welcome.
 
Dictator4Hire said:
I would prefer to have two or more options to pursue simultaneously instead of going all-in on just one. Especially when we have not done any basic research on either rifts on runes to make assumptions about how skilled Hazou will reasonably be when he does actual work on either of those projects.
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Yes but the FOOM everyone plan is...likely to fail AND cause more problems than it solves, even if it solves the immediate Akatsuki problem.
 
Dictator4Hire said:
Many suggestions welcome.
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Seeing as there are plenty of benefits and the only real downside is Naruto saying no, and given this is when we're trying to pitch insane ideas that Naruto is likely to reject anyways... would you consider adding the clan takeover angle we've been discussing recently?

Something like
[] If Hazo decides to go missing, would Naruto be willing to take over as head of the Goketsu?
-[] This would provide protection to the clan after Hazo's 'betrayal', give Naruto access to Goketsu clan secrets, and could be worked into the narrative as another reason Hazo might leave.

Feel free to workshop for word count or details or whatever, just offering up something basic for copy/pasting if you're not feeling the effort rn.

Edit: I forgot how this quest formats votes and made it harder to copy/paste as a result. Oops.
 
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redzonejoe said:
Seeing as there are plenty of benefits and the only real downside is Naruto saying no, and given this is when we're trying to pitch insane ideas that Naruto is likely to reject anyways... would you consider adding the clan takeover angle we've been discussing recently?
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As long as we preface it as an Insane idea that's fine by me. I could see him declining for a reason that has not been mentioned yet: it would drastically lower the clans' faith in Naruto's rule as Hokage if he begins throwing his official weight around in clan matters, but this is ultimately Naruto's call to make.

Would this wording satisfy you? I'd tried to make it a bit shorter:
  • Naruto takes over the Goketsu to better protect our people, give more credence to Hazou's betrayal, and to give Naruto access to our clan secrets.
 
Dictator4Hire said:
As long as we preface it as an Insane idea that's fine by me. I could see him declining for a reason that has not been mentioned yet: it would drastically lower the clans' faith in Naruto's rule as Hokage if he begins throwing his official weight around in clan matters, but this is ultimately Naruto's call to make.

Would this wording satisfy you? I'd tried to make it a bit shorter:
  • Naruto takes over the Goketsu to better protect our people, give more credence to Hazou's betrayal, and to give Naruto access to our clan secrets.
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I mean we stick it in the insane section, sure. I don't want to give it special emphasis over some of the other insane ideas though. and yeah he's freely available to say no for any number of reasons, expected or unexpected, though I'd personally feel a lot better about going missing with this in place.

Wording is a-ok by me. Could even make it uber-short if you wanna rely on QMs/Hazopilot/Naruto himself to fill in the details, and just say 'Naruto takes over the Goketsu with all that implies'
 
[X] Action Plan: Leaf No Rune Unturned Digging Even Deeper

Word Count: tbd and optimized later
  • Appreciate + laugh at the absurdity of being offered to commit "treason"
  • Note that Hazou still needs Tsunade to finish healing him and Dragons still live, so he cannot leave soon
    • Akatsuki expects Hazou to work on the Dragon problem, so it gives him time to find novel applications of known sealcraft if runes are not necessary to defeat Dragons
  • Introduce Insane ideas:
    • Fake Hazou's death after the Dragon fight near the Great Seal and blame resulting weirdness on interactions with reverse summoning near an unstable Great Seal
      • Hazou stays hidden in Dog while doing minimal physical rune research on the Human path
      • Kagome could be included in this
    • Look for runic breakthroughs for our dilemmas like how Hazou revolutionized warfare with Skywalkers
      • Perhaps two giant air dome runes whose effects covers most of Fire Country, one for above and one for below ground?
    • Store our new runic research notes inside of nondescript boulders with Earth Shaping
      • Akatsuki cannot steal them?
    • Have Hazou infiltrate Akatsuki to "steer" rift research in Leaf's favor
    • Naruto takes over the Goketsu to better protect our people, give more credence to Hazou's betrayal, and to give Naruto access to our clan secrets.
    • Feed all of the known spies of the other Hidden Villages intel that Akatsuki used their authority to try to arrest the former Hokage and, failing that, they murdered him and used one of the assailants deaths as a pretense to steal village secrets from every clan in Leaf and more!
      • We could use this as a way to cause Akatsuki more headaches aboard so they cannot spend as much time checking in on Leaf and Hazou.
    • SC for Kagome, as he was not barred from rift research by Akatsuki
    • IF the Dragons are totally defeated and Hazou proves undeniably invaluable in fixing/replacing the Great Seal, lean on the crusader clans to have their summoners and their bosses pledge to protect Leaf if Leaf is ever attacked
      • We saved their home(s), surely we would be even if they saved ours?
    • Meet with every sealmaster in the Elemental Nations at neutral AMITY ground to collaborate on the Dragon Great Seal problem
      • Gives Hazou access to Sasori so Hazou can scout out just how talented Sasori is
  • Only with Naruto's permission: Hazou may need this knowledge for Great Seal repairs
    • Hazou experiments with runes to understand runes' capabilities and how they differ from their seal equivalents
      • After the meeting, conduct basic rune research (in order of priority) on:
        1. air dome,
        2. storage,
        3. HOWS-style runes
This is the version I'll be editing with new suggestions as I am not sure if I can get everything under the 300 word limit for the brevity bonus. Honestly, with everything we can think of I am okay with ignoring the brevity bonus as long as everyone else is just to be sure we are as thorough as possible during this private brainstorming session with Naruto.

If you vote for this plan, please check back in frequently if new changes to the plan are not to your satisfaction even after you have voted for this plan. I'll stop editing this around 12 hours before the voting deadline so there will be no last minute drastic changes unless everyone who votes for this unanimously wants a particular change.
 
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Oooh, interesting. Finally, some good fucking lore!
eaglejarl said:
"He didn't invent it," she said. "Chakra has always been there, just like heat or light. It comes in different flavors the same way food does, and it strengthens us the same way too. It's made from life and dances through everything that lives. It swirls and flows like water. It is made of many parts, just like life. What you humans consider chakra is just a tiny fraction of one flavor of chakra. Us Toads, we use far more of it—that's why we call it 'nature chakra', because we use all the flavors. Chakra has motion, currents, and feelings like the sea does." She smiled, nostalgia on her face. "Pa took me sailing on the ocean for our two hundredth anniversary. Just a little boat and the two of us under the stars." She basked in the memory for a moment, then shook it away.

"He didn't invent chakra but he was the first human to master it," she continued. "He worked out how to speak to it—not in words, of course. It's not intelligent." She paused. "Well, not exactly. It's more like..." She thought, then gave up. "It's not exactly intelligent the way you think of intelligence, but it's not mindless like a stone either. It's complicated.
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Noumero said:
According to Kagome, [The Sage et al.] took hold of a local distributed parasitic species, and turned them into chakra. A distributed computational system, a sort of cloud of metaphysical nanomachines that people could program and control at will. He'd programmed a bunch of subroutines into it, ways for it to interface with the other local cosmic horrors like the Five and the bijuu and Sealing.
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Checks out.

"I tend to go with Gamashisōka's view," Shima said. "The Sage and his band wanted to save the world. Avra and Dhruv went to map the way, learn about who else was out there, while the others stayed local to where they had been born and focused on coming up with a workable methodology in an environment that they were familiar with."
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"There's another theory," Fukasaku said, touching his wife's webbed hand for a brief moment before turning fully back to Noburi. "The Sage and his friends were gathering an army to fight the Tenfold Abomination. Dhruv and Avra were sent away in case the others lost. They were to gather their own forces elsewhere to serve as a second and third chance if the main team fell, try to create secure fallback points for any of the survivors."
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Wow, thaaat's a blast from the past. Resurrecting my ancient (almost five years old!) "5+2" model?

With light filling-in-the-blanks:
Noumero said:
Core idea: Five and seven are Arc Numbers. Take a concept, divide it into seven parts; five of them are "ordinary", two — "different".

Complete the patterns:
  • Chakra natures:
    • Ordinary: Fire, Water, Earth, Lightning, Wind.
    • Esoteric: Yang, Yin.
  • Paths:
    • Open and known ones: The Human Path, the Seventh/Animal Path.
    • Sealed, unknown: The Deva Path. The Naraka Path. The Asura Path. The Preta Path. [The Animal Path.] The Outer Path (Out?).
  • Major Villages:
    • Known: Leaf, Mist, Rock, Cloud, Sand.
    • (?) Concealed: Whirlpool, Depths.
  • Cognition bloodlines:
    • "The Five Clans": the Nara of Leaf, the Mori of Mist, the Tama of Rock, [Raiyoke] of Cloud, [Yodomi] of Sand.
    • ???: [Avra/Dhruv] of Whirlpool, [Dhruv/Avra] of Depths.
Taking it at face value:

All five paths between the Human one and the Seventh one are occupied by sealed superintelligent entities. All of these entities represent a particular chakra nature, and manifest in minds of people descending from particular bloodlines. They give their "hosts" different mental enhancements and impairments, which thematically resemble their corresponding chakra natures and/or Paths as defined by Buddhist mythology. Members of these five bloodlines form clans. Said clans, historically, either settled into their thematically corresponding villages... or, more likely, formed said villages around themselves. [...]

Straightforward so far. What to make of the rest?
  • Yin is supposed to be passive, "evil". Depths literally reside in the oceanic darkness, are "A-rank stinkers" according to Kagome, and are virtually unheard-of.
  • Yang is Yin's opposite: active, "good". Whirlpool: so active and visible it caused the entire world (sans Leaf) to unite against them; additionally, they were supposedly developing non-military technology.
  • Bonus point: Yin and Yang are supposed to complement each other, and Depths and Whirlpool were allies, according to Kagome — until Depths learned of Whirlpool's lupchanzen project, and betrayed them.
Now it gets trickier. Cognition bloodlines of Depths and Whirlpool are supposed to "draw" from the Human Path and the Seventh Path. They're "esoteric", so they aren't necessarily connected to superintelligences... but to what?

Regarding Depths, I have no idea. The Seventh Path seems pretty brutal, and Depths are supposed to be brutal, so let's say they fit together. That makes "nature chakra" Yin chakra? Why not; it turns people to stone, and stone is pretty passive. Maybe their cognition bloodline is somehow related to summoning.

Whirlpool, though! Bear with me: By the process of elimination, its cognition bloodline is connected to the Human Path, i. e. the EN. Whom do we suspect of being from Whirlpool? Kagome. Did Kagome ever display any unusual mental capabilities or impairments? Why yes, he is extremely paranoid and—

—immune to shifts.
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Avra sounds like maybe the Human Path representative, if the talk about her being the one to grant people chakra is right? Or, well, whoever "the medic" was.

And of course, either Avra or Dhruv maps onto Kagome's mysterious "Dummy" character, of whom we heard about from no other source before. Avra = Dummy? Maybe also Avra = Yang = Whirlpool, given that Yang = active = good = "superpowers-granting medic", whereas Yin = passive and we've heard nothing about Dhruv nor about Hidden Depths.

Filling in that blank, though–
"I thought [the Sage] wasn't a sealmaster?" Noburi asked, trying to head off another violent 'debate' that could endanger the local ecology.

"We don't know for sure," Shima said. "Still, he was clearly the idea man for his team."
[...]
"What we know for sure is the Sage and his friends created the Summoning contracts that allowed travel between worlds," Fukasaku said, visibly ignoring his wife's accusation.
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– I hypothesize that Dhruv (or whichever of the two unknowns wasn't the medic) was the one to create the Summoning Scrolls, and the one who is "linked" to the Seventh Path the way Mori/Nara/Tama/Yodomi/Raiyoke are linked to Deva/Asura/Preta/Naraka/Animal (not necessarily respectively; I've never been able to make the normal-five mappings work properly; we only know Mori = Deva).

Very little is known of Dhruv and Avra because they only stayed with the Sage for two years and then they left. Avra went east to lands unknown while Dhruv went west. There's a bunch of different theories on why they left.
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Also maybe Dhruv and Avra are the Sage's children:
Velorien said:
"Good question," Kagome-sensei said seriously. "I was going to wait to tell you once you'd graduated from your apprenticeship, but now you already know too much, so it's a moot point. See, the Sage had kids—two brothers who decided they didn't fancy living in a world where Daddy was absolute ruler for ever and ever. They were never going to beat the Sage and Dummy at their own game, so they came up with something else—something that anyone could use if they were smart enough, without having ancient lore coming out of their ears or making themselves into a chakra powerhouse."

Kagome-sensei's voice took on a ritual cadence. "A power earned not by birth but by dedication. A power that grows stronger with every wielder and every generation. A power founded on truth, to defy those who would keep the truth from us."

"Sealcrafting," Hazō breathed.

"Sealcrafting," Kagome-sensei said proudly. "The Sage managed to erase their names from history, but he couldn't wipe out sealcrafting, and after a few close calls with cornered sealmasters and undefined behaviour, he stopped trying. Instead, he created hidden villages where sealmasters would be under his control, or at least under the control of somebody he had influence over, and where there'd be plenty of oversight to stop them wrecking the world before he could save it."
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Fits with one of them maybe being the Scrolls-creator and the sealmaster, and their names being missing from history. Doesn't fit with Avra = chakra's creator = Dummy = The Sage's brother. Maybe Avra was indeed his wife/partner, a relation Kagome confuses with "sibling" because it implies equal standing (or maybe they were partners and siblings, who am I to judge), and Dhruv their child?

... Still doesn't work. Here's the people we currently have at play:
  • The Sage.
  • Nara, Mori, Tama, Raiyoke, Yodomi ("normal" companions).
  • Avra, Dhruv ("esoteric" companions).
  • The Dummy (maybe the Sage's brother).
Some of them may be the same people, or not exist. But who? And which of them map to which parts of the cosmology? I assume everything is normal with the five normal ones (Five Thinker Clans linked to Shards each imprisoned in an afterlife-Path). But:
  • Which is linked to the Seventh Path?
  • Which is linked to the Human Path?
  • Which is the sealmaster/summoning-scrolls inventor?
  • Which is the chakra-granter/"medic"?
  • Which, if any of them, is the Sage's...
    • ... brother?
    • ... partner?
    • ... kid(s)?

"There's plenty of people on this Path who believe it was created by the Sage, or whatever title they call him by since no one knows his actual name. They're all wrong. The Sage wasn't actually a god and he didn't have the power to create entire universes."
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Hm. I suppose it's all a matter of what counts as "create". I still think he heavily refurnished the place. Maybe forged it from the body of something he killed.

"Oh, right," Shima said. "The Sage and his friends defeated it. It's an External, so you can't kill it and imprisoning it is problematic. Instead, they tore it apart. Its body became the Tailed Beasts. Its mind was broken into fragments, carefully divided so that no one chunk could accomplish anything on its own."

"By 'accomplish anything', she means 'go reunite with the other shards and reform the Abomination'," Fukasaku added helpfully.
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This postulates that the Five are pieces of the Tenfold Abomination as well. I am skeptical. Mostly because the numbers don't add up, duh.

Like, in this very chapter they also say:
The Sage and his friends defeated it. It's an External, so you can't kill it and imprisoning it is problematic. Instead, they tore it apart.
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Implying that split-and-seal is maybe the best way to deal with any "External", meaning it's wholly conceivable they did it multiple times to different monsters. And then whatever sources the Toad Sages have available mixed these up.

"It might not be completely their fault," Shima said to her husband. "When the Abomination's mind was torn apart and the Sage gathered it into the various fragments, it's quite likely that some tiny scraps were missed. Escaped into the environment and bonded to human bloodlines."

"You're saying that some humans have an External's...dreams, or whatever, corrupting their minds?"

Shima sniffed. "It's a theory."
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This implies that the things whispering into the Five Clans' minds are just those escaped fragments. I do not buy it, especially since that part of the guess comes from Noburi. I think the Five are the main imprisoned fragments/Shards, and that yeah, maybe some smaller fragments escaped into the environment. But escapees =/= the Five.

"Reality lives balanced on a knife edge. Any day now, one of the fragments might get out of its prison and reunite with one of its others, then they would all reunite to reclaim and recombine the fragments of their body. A few hours or days later, pop!" He slammed his palm onto the table with an echoing slap. "Reality bursts like a bubble and we're all swept into nonspace to suffer in unending agony forever!" He took a big bite of his tart. "Oh, this is good, Ma! You really outdid yourself."
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Mood.

Fun!
 
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@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped Given the retroactive nature of the toad sage update and the urgency of the current situation, how do you feel about declaring something like "Noburi and Hazo immediately realized the severity of this situation and rushed to inform Kei and Shikamaru of this information and the reliability of the source shortly after Noburi returned from that meeting"? I've tried to think of several possible responses for convenience.

-This wouldn't take any FP or wordcount, Noburi and Hazo did that and here is a very brief blurb of Kei and Shikamaru's reaction about learning that two of the most knowledgeable figures on the Seventh Path think their bloodlines intermingling might be an X-risk
-This would take X FP but otherwise works the same as the above if and when you spend the FP
-This would take X FP and also it'd be complicated enough to figure out the IC reactions that it would have to be part of an action plan/update
-This wouldn't take any FP but it'd be complicated enough to need to be part of an action plan/update
-This is not something we're willing to handle retroactively at all but you can immediately make plans to inform them and they won't be significantly upset that you waited to verify this information/were occupied with more pressing matters than relaying Toad Sage opinions, given that they're not exactly in a rush to have kids
 
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Oh, and we have some guesses regarding what Itachi's "Primal Malice" is now. Either:
  • Some of these escaped "tiny scraps" of the entity that was torn into the Five. Potentially spread around, creating a "background radiation" of malevolence-inducing cognitive influence of a sort.
  • Some remnant of chakra initially being for combat, like @Sir Stompy speculates on Discord.
 
[X] Action Plan: Schrodinger's Treason Dragon
Word Count: ~380
  • Hazou doesn't know what to think, and needs time to consider. And, somewhat obviously, wouldn't tell Naruto so he can maintain deniability either way.
    • Potentially noteworthy, regarding Hazou's fears of Goketsu being punished/ exploited by Akatsuki should he defect, that Jiraiya always intended Naruto to become Clan Head.
      • Hazou's unsure what Naruto thinks about it. The Uzumaki legacy is certainly important too.
      • But, treason-wrangler Naruto could plausibly take advantage of this fact from Jiraiya's will to undermine treason-Hazou's political influence/authority. This could even be additional grounds to make treason-Hazou go rogue.
      • Naturally, this grants Naruto access to Pangolin armor techniques without getting Kei in trouble.
      • Goketsu's new patriarch being Naruto himself adds yet more psychological deterrence for Akatsuki enacting retribution on the remaining Goketsu, lessening some consequences of leaving.
      • Would this be okay if Hazou didn't leave?
      • No need to commit right now. But consider it?
    • If he stays... honestly he's not sure how they can win currently. He'll think of more options but it looks pretty grim right now. Not that leaving is especially promising.
      • The extent of 3D sealing's abilities remain unknown. Maybe investigating its capabilities will make it more obvious if it can fortify Leaf against invasion, making surviving the aftermath of the rearguard attack viable.
    • Either case, Hazou needs to spend time healing and teach Orochimaru lithosealing.
    • Does Naruto want the key to cracking Minato's notes? Akatsuki doesn't know it and tmay come back to interrogate Naruto if they fail infusions, but it would mean the secret is still with Leaf even if Hazou leaves.
    • What resources is Naruto willing to share with Hazou? It needs to be things Naruto would share in either Hazou decision, ostensibly out of gratitude for Hazou's election help, so neither of them are biased towards expecting a given decision and to maintain deniability. To be clear, nothing is fine too, but Hazou may as well ask.
      • Jutsu? Any relevant Lore, like Whirlpool or something? Any remaining Minato Sealing insights for sealing/3D Sealing? Any mind-strengthening tricks for researching with parallel SCs?
      • Can Hazou examine the other Akatsuki seal submittals?
      • SC for Kagome. They didn't tell him to stop researching the Rift and in Hazou's estimation is likely a jonin-level sealmaster himself. In fact, he is regularly overlooked, which could be an advantage.
 
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Shrooms said:
Hazou is not sure Jiraiya actually ran that by Naruto or not, or what Naruto thinks about it. The Uzumaki legacy is certainly important to him too.
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eaglejarl said:
He paused, his face crumpling for just an instant and his breathing getting ragged before he wiped his arm across his eyes and cleared his throat. "But Uncle Jiraiya said that he was going to form the clan as soon as we got back, with him as the Clan Head and me as the heir and sole other member." He grinned, the poorly-hidden grief and fear momentarily vanishing as a million pranks and years of mischief flashed forth from his eyes. "When I was a kid we used to talk about me adopting him into the Uzumaki, but that was a non-starter. As the last of the blood I'm the Clan Head. He used to say 'The Sage will come back and dance naked on a table before I will take orders from you, brat.'" He paused again, pretending to cough in order to hide his face for a moment, then cleared his throat and continued. "Anyway, we figured we'd come back and he would form the Gōketsu with just the two of us. The Noble Clans wouldn't care too much, since me giving up the Uzumaki name would mean that it was a dead clan and would lose its seat at the Council table. Framing it as a reward to the two of us for the amazing feat of killing that rat bastard Yagura and all his strongest ninja, it would have been a shoo-in. The minute that the bastards signed the paperwork we were going to have you guys brought in and adopt you right in front of them, while the ink on the Clan formation documents was still wet." He laughed. "It would have been hilarious."
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Uhhh so I wanted to list what our gameplan would be should we stick to Leaf, but genuinely I don't know what it is. If we research Rift shit I feel like Akatsuki just comes and punches us in the nuts

So are we researching things to kill them and repel AMITY? Or are we letting Pain come back? What is the win condition for people who want to stay
 
Shrooms said:
Uhhh so I wanted to list what our gameplan would be should we stick to Leaf, but genuinely I don't know what it is. If we research Rift shit I feel like Akatsuki just comes and punches us in the nuts

So are we researching things to kill them and repel AMITY? Or are we letting Pain come back? What is the win condition for people who want to stay
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Do lithosealing research, poke around at a few basic sciences, "coincidentally" reinvent EM Nuke, EM Nuke Rain.

Or gamble it all on Pain being reasonable/dying again to save us from the Dragons.
 
faflec said:
Do lithosealing research, poke around at a few basic sciences, "coincidentally" reinvent EM Nuke, EM Nuke Rain.
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How do we prevent the remainder of Akatsuki and AMITY from annihilating Leaf in retaliation?

To me it seems easier to do this strategy as a missingnin as the blame is not so easily attributed to Leaf in the eyes of the EN.
 
eaglejarl said:
"Oh, right," Shima said. "The Sage and his friends defeated it. It's an External, so you can't kill it and imprisoning it is problematic. Instead, they tore it apart. Its body became the Tailed Beasts. Its mind was broken into fragments, carefully divided so that no one chunk could accomplish anything on its own."

"By 'accomplish anything', she means 'go reunite with the other shards and reform the Abomination'," Fukasaku added helpfully.

"I was getting to that! Stop interrupting, you obnoxious old fart!" She looked back to Noburi. "Yes, that. The fragments aren't bound—they're just chunks of a mind, you can't tie ropes around a mind. They could go reunite with the rest of the fragments anytime they wanted and there's no way to prevent that."

"Obviously there's some way!" Fukasaku said. "You can tell on account of reality is still here."

"Fine," Shima said. "Whatever, be difficult. The Sage and his friends didn't want the fragments escaping, and they wanted to make sure that no single individual knew all the details. None of them talked to anyone or wrote down what their method was."
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So, uh, this makes me very concerned about the fact that the first three Bijuu haven't reformed yet. Pain has the Sage's power (or at least he seems to) and it's sounding like that power is insufficient to kill the bijuu but sufficient to release their bindings.
eaglejarl said:
"He created the demiverses," Shima corrected. "The ones that the humans use for their storage scrolls."

"He created the method for creating them, he didn't create all of them himself! Besides, that's not a universe."
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For context, we once heard that the math necessary to accomplish storage scrolls was prohibitively difficult until one clan invented... was it "topomorphic theory", and once that secret got out storage seals became the norm. It's possible whatever clan that was has a direct tie to the Sage.
"Are the Dragons Externals?" Noburi asked. "I've seen what their scales do—they poison and dissolve anything they come in contact with."

Shima shrugged. "Maybe?"

"Of course they aren't!" Fukasaku snapped. "Those things are just horrible monsters. They dissolve things, sure, but they don't affect actual reality. Maybe they burn the skin off your hand but afterwards your skin isn't Tuesday."

"You aren't seriously going with that nonsense tablet from Karatoa, are you?" Shima demanded. "He was a drunk and a drug user, and you know it! The whole thing was nonsense, soup to nuts. Of course they are Externals. They're the ones that the Sage bound first. It said so in Volume 3 of Nakae's Annals!"

"That section is an insert by his brother! You can tell by the word choices."

"It is not! That's a dirty lie put out by Gamabobo! He was always trying to tear down Gamaatamai, and discrediting her sources was just part of that."
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I think the fact that they can be killed points against them being Externals. Or at least, we haven't seen any signs of a dragon reforming or otherwise reviving yet, and the idea of them being forced to reform within the Great Seal or somesuch sounds a little complication-penalty to me.

(But then, who's to say that all Externals are unkillable? Maybe you just notice the ones that refuse to die: I know that "keeps coming back to cause problems" is the sort of thing that would promote a given creature to my attention more than an otherwise-comparable counterexample. (But then, why would they have been bound if they were possible to kill?))
"Anyway, after he learned how to use chakra he shared the knowledge with some of his closest friends. We don't have names for all of them but we know of seven: Dhruv, Avra, Nara, Mori, Yodomi, Raiyoke, and Tama. Very little is known of Dhruv and Avra because they only stayed with the Sage for two years and then they left. Avra went east to lands unknown while Dhruv went west. There's a bunch of different theories on why they left."
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Dhruv and Avra, noted. While I doubt things would be so convenient as to just have Avra's name show up as the goddess of whatever lands Ioannis came from, I'd like to emphasize the "we don't have names for all of them" part. There are more than seven, and by all accounts they seem like ordinary people except for their exceptional role in history and tampering with forces perhaps within their comprehension (charitably), so I would advise against Number Shenanigans without further evidence (such as, for instance, the five companion names that are very obviously progenitors of five clans bound to the Five, glad we got that squared away).

Is anyone else thinking of the Karasu here? Warrior-poets, dedicated entirely to slaying the most monstrous of monsters, when we know that the Sage's whole story arc seems to be about slaying the most monstrous of monsters and if Dog is any indication he certainly fancied himself a poet. Itachi called them heretical, but they might be one of the longer-lasting branches of the Sage's Army or something.
"We don't know for sure," Shima said. "Still, he was clearly the idea man for his team."
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Hazou: He just like me fr fr

It's honestly a little uncanny. The way the Sage was described it honestly felt like Hazou got isekai'd back in time, being the guy with crazy groundbreaking ideas surrounded by a small group of loyal comrades, each with their own specialization sufficient to help further advance his grand goals, being the primary line of defense against the apocalypse purely because nobody else is in a position to do anything about it, etc.

It also explains why Kagome remembers so many alternate realities where the Sage had a "great idea" that ruined everything. Face it, Hazou would probably make and then promptly lose control of Lupchanzen, if you put him in the right research facility.
 
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