I think th e r e f o re i a m .

After the of , a on the . Why? , would to do of . to to . the any and is it to at it if it I to do the
(Quote is snipped for concision.)

By the way, Buggy, I meant to ask: how did you do the spacing on this such that the browser didn't collapse it? I was expecting to see transparent text when I checked the BBCode, but there wasn't. Did you actually paste in non-printing characters or...?
 
I kinda see two major paths in front of us, both of which lead to a similar outcome: Leaf Hegemony.
  • We abide by Naruto's suggestion, go missing as soon as it makes sense to, understand the rift, bring back Jiraiya, Asuma, Hiruzen, Minato, etc. We come back to Leaf heroes with four extra S rankers, Leaf immediately achieves military domination or it gets attacked by all other villages simultaneously. If Leaf achieves domination, then we get to take part in shaping the policy of the next generation of people basically everywhere on the EN. The resurrections will probably give us enough goodwill with Leaf at large and with the people we resurrected to let us achieve Uplift goals, at least for a while. But to be completely honest I don't see ourselves becoming Top Dog, because we'll still be chunin, maybe jonin level with some nice tricks. We won't be reaching the levels of bullshittery it takes to become truly powerful on EN, and that's what actually matters when getting people to listen.
  • We stay in Leaf because Naruto has spooky brainwaves telling him about our FOOM secrets, and Tsunade and Orochimaru fully realize the training possibilities with SC refilling. We become Even More Important Than Previously Thought Possible and Naruto retracts his suggestion for us to go missing, because we're just that valuable. Noburi becomes a chakra rebalancing robot. Maybe we can get Noburi out of being under the combined boots of Tsunade, Orochimaru, and Naruto by working on the Sage Stone Rune with Orochimaru. Once we achieve that we basically give Leaf the keys to eternal hegemony, because now every genin with shadow clone can become an S ranker within a few years. At least as long as other nations don't figure out runes. All the current essies go back to their pre-stagnation xp rates. With enough Sage Stones we still get to FOOM and achieve S rank status one day, but we'll still probably stay behind the current essies without another game breaking exploit. We get enough goodwill from Naruto to conduct more of our Uplift strategies, but we still aren't the Top Dog. We will never be the Top Dog.
Basically neither path leads to Omnikage Hazou, at least in my opinion, given what I know about our current plans and projected character sheets. I'm not saying Omnikage Hazou is the ideal end state of the quest, because we have our own share of sins. But I do think Omnikage Hazou is better than being under Naruto's thumb, or Jiraiya, or Hiruzen, or any other Essie who is stronger than us. Omnikage Hazou is a bigger proponent of Uplift than anyone else would be, and so we should aim for that if we can.
 
(Quote is snipped for concision.)

By the way, Buggy, I meant to ask: how did you do the spacing on this such that the browser didn't collapse it? I was expecting to see transparent text when I checked the BBCode, but there wasn't. Did you actually paste in non-printing characters or...?
It did collapse it; originally the formatting was supposed to be every letter except for the intended characters is just 'not there', but the spacing was there, so it looked like a paragraph that you could only see a little of. Like this:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀?⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀?⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀'⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀.⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀...⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀?⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀.⠀⠀a⠀⠀'⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀?⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀.⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀?⠀⠀⠀a⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀.⠀⠀⠀⠀
But apparently it concatenates adjacent space characters, and I didn't think to use a non-standard space character to avoid that...

Wait, is this only on my end for some reason? Because to me it looks like this:


Edit: Oh, I never mentioned how I did this. I kinda just did it the dumb way with Notepad++:
Match all but the characters I want to keep with some simple regex and replace it with space, or a non-space blank character like braille blank or such. Not super fast and technically I could do this entirely with regex instead of a find-replace dialogue, but I'm not super familiar with regex.
 
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He'd dreamt of yesterday. When he'd gone out with Kagome-sensei and tried to… retrieve a message from the future? Except, instead of nothing, in his dream he'd received a message. But he'd woken up, and when he fell asleep again, he'd dreamt of the same thing again, yet subtly different. Something about it didn't feel right though, and he kept waking and falling asleep, and each time the message he received from the future got stranger and stranger and stranger. His dreams twisted away from the message, sometimes overwhelming and other times underwhelming.
Okay, this is genius. I'm so glad you found a way to incorporate our shitposts into the story.

Why had he planned to take the message while dramatically infusing a rune anyway? Or with Kagome-sensei, brilliant sealmaster and walking OPSEC leak, present? If his future self ever managed to crack time travel, surely he would be able to send the message somewhere better suited? Somewhere like…

Hazō pushed himself upright in his bed, only for a letter to fall into his lap.
YOU DIDN'T

Lord Hazō,

The housekeeper said you had difficulty sleeping during the night, so I took the liberty of rescheduling most of your morning appointments. If you do rise before 10, do proceed to the parlor with all due haste to meet with Lord Kurusu.

Best,
Your Chancellor, Gaku
Okay, so you didn't. Oh well.

If there is a silver lining to Haiwarai's death at the Crusade, it is that I did not need to negotiate passage from the Hyena on my return here."
But Hyena is to the east of Dog?

"The seals you provided have given the Dog Clan mobility in ways no other summoner of ours has ever managed. The trade network has granted us access to wealth from across the Path. In fact, as your actions were a key part of its execution, the entire Crusade is arguably the fruits of your labor. That is an incredible accomplishment. Take pride in your strengths, summoner."

"I… thank you, Cannai," Hazō said.
Damn. Thanks, Cannai. (Watch out for those death flags though.)

"I think we're in trouble. Actually, let me be clearer. I think Naruto saw all that happen and had a brainwave: 'What if Noburi's refills for shadow clones are effective on the home front too?'"

"Oh, no," Hazō said, the realization slowly dawning on him.
There was only one thing they could be using it for. The Gōketsu's secret path to power had finally started to crack.

"Training."
Ah, shit. Well at least Naruto is relatively friendly and will hopefully only be using this to empower his loyalists.
 
Ah, shit. Well at least Naruto is relatively friendly and will hopefully only be using this to empower his loyalists.
Juiced SC training is unfortunately way too slow to matter against the Akatsuki doomsday clock even with spreadsheet vision...

Assuming that he doesn't share it with the ANBU Mole and give us another color Cabal doomsday clock... slay one dragon head and two more take its place :V
 
All the current essies go back to their pre-stagnation xp rates.
Probably not...? They will still have trouble finding on-level combat challenges to unstagnate with and even if they could find one or two they have stacked up so many stagnation barriers over the past couple decades that they are unlikely to ever unstagnate. That's my understanding, anyway.

Wait, is this only on my end for some reason? Because to me it looks like this:
*checks*

Oh, now it is?? Dunno what happened. Yeah, I see the multispacing in the edit box when I hit 'Reply' but I don't see it on the page anymore. Don't know what happened.

But Hyena is to the east of Dog?
My brain is suddenly distrusting itself, but IIRC the discussion from QM meeting on Saturday was that Cannai went back to the east coast with everyone else, riding on Kamehameha, did some diplomatic stuff, then traveled west overland back to Dog.
 
We should talk to Mari about what Noburi told us, ask her if she can do a little snooping to she if she can infer how much Naruto knows about FOOM, and discuss options.

I figure we can either go missing immediately or talk to Naruto, let him know that we know what he's doing, impress upon him the importance of keeping this secret, and possibly twist his arm a little to make sure enough of Leaf's chakra is allocated to us to keep FOOMing.
 
Noburi becomes a chakra rebalancing robot. Maybe we can get Noburi out of being under the combined boots of Tsunade, Orochimaru, and Naruto by working on the Sage Stone Rune with Orochimaru.
Or just build closer ties with Mist, have the Wakahisa set up a second clan compound nearby, arrange for a few more barrel boys (or girls or whatever) to get dual citizenship. Or some sort of diplomatic permanent residency at least.
We should talk to Mari about what Noburi told us, ask her if she can do a little snooping to she if she can infer how much Naruto knows about FOOM, and discuss options.

I figure we can either go missing immediately or talk to Naruto, let him know that we know what he's doing, impress upon him the importance of keeping this secret, and possibly twist his arm a little to make sure enough of Leaf's chakra is allocated to us to keep FOOMing.
Other key piece he might be missing (which we could thus hand over to prove we thought of it first) is that resistance to shadow clone reintegration shock is, itself, a trainable skill.
Another strategic implication is that, if Leaf as a whole is going to start pooling chakra on a routine basis, that makes ninja with disabling injuries or other medical-stand-down far more valuable - particularly if they can still train up their own chakra reserves over time. May need to adjust triage, retirement, and Final Gift Program priorities accordingly.
 
Probably not...? They will still have trouble finding on-level combat challenges to unstagnate with and even if they could find one or two they have stacked up so many stagnation barriers over the past couple decades that they are unlikely to ever unstagnate. That's my understanding, anyway.

I should've been more precise, but basically what I meant is that with full FOOM Tsunade and Oro can effectively achieve what used to be their unstagnated xp rate. If they're at 0.3x xp due to partial stagnation, then with FOOM (assuming they have enough resolve for 2.0x XP multiplier, which doesn't seem far fetched) they're at effective 0.9x XP rate.

Or just build closer ties with Mist, have the Wakahisa set up a second clan compound nearby, arrange for a few more barrel boys (or girls or whatever) to get dual citizenship. Or some sort of diplomatic permanent residency at least.

The timeline for doing this is imo similar to the timeline of researching Sage Stone in Oro's basement. Building ties takes time, setting up the diplomacy takes time.
 
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We should talk to Mari about what Noburi told us, ask her if she can do a little snooping to she if she can infer how much Naruto knows about FOOM, and discuss options.

I figure we can either go missing immediately or talk to Naruto, let him know that we know what he's doing, impress upon him the importance of keeping this secret, and possibly twist his arm a little to make sure enough of Leaf's chakra is allocated to us to keep FOOMing.
It's probably safe to say that Naruto figured FOOM out. He's been taking advantage of SC training for longer than us, so it was a small step to realize that he could just have Noburi top up other SC users.
 
"More chakra means more SC for training" is trivial - anyone who's lacked chakra for their SCs figured that out I assume. "You can just keep getting better at mental fortitude to survive clone sickness with ridiculous amounts of them" is the real secret. THAT said... we don't want to give people a chance to figure that out.
 
Nah, I think he figured out the Noburi-SC connection. FOOM needs the Resolve training part.
Noburi SC training with jonin resolve 40 and SC 30:
40 - 11 + 3 = 32 / 3 / 10 = 1.0x multiplier, doubling your rate.

If you push resolve all the way to the 60s it becomes triple your rate, which is better long term but it also means raising resolve 20 levels which is expensive. It isn't quite FOOM but it's still a decent advantage compared to the extra .2x you get SC training otherwise. In the short term you would outcompete the guys pushing resolve up infinitely.

I would say an arguably more time-relevant advantage is Hazou's spreadsheet vision telling him exactly how many SC hours everyone can safely tank. Probably would need to trim off another few training blocks if you don't know that info to avoid accidentally giving yourself mediums sometimes. But even that they would eventually iron out, I'd think.
 
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