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Bone and Blood (Naruto Quest)

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I think there is some important stuff in the update that isn't getting any attention.

No Country said:
At first, it seems like picking off Konoha's scouts is mind-numbingly easy, as the chunin rapidly peel off from the formation only to rejoin it after dispatching their respective targets. It's only after you actually see one do you realize what the (only semi-competent) sensor has gotten wrong. It's easy to see why she would make the mistake she did, as the decoy is very convincing. The problem is with its movement, which only someone with a very keen eye for taijutsu and muscle movement would be able to catch.

About ten minutes after resolving the issue with the unconscious and dead Kusa-nin that were somehow being puppeteered by Konoha's forces, your little group of chunin spots a real group of Konoha-nin moving southwest, towards the Land of Storms.
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This is definitely something important. Maybe a Yamanaka inputting commands on some Kusa-nin? I guess it could be a result from an area commander and not this group too.

It's a shame that your sensor was good enough to pick them up before they detected you, but not good enough to feel that something was off about one of them. Namely, one of them is a Hyuga. Which isn't necessarily a problem, but it does mean that, when you finally achieve visual contact with your targets, the pair of heavily breathing Konoha-nin with huge scrolls on their backs have been squirreled away behind the nine other chunin present. You assume they're all chunin, at least, from the way they react to making contact with an enemy team, but it's not impossible that there's a jounin among them, blending in as best they can.
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Why are these guys breathing heavily? Did they just attempt to lay some trap, Yamanaka suffering aftereffects from their jutsu? Are they puppeted forces? Are they jonin who are faking being lesser?

One possibility is that these guys are the chunin they appear to be. In this case any of the options are probably okay, with the potential for the Tsubaki gets the two scroll carriers choice to go badly if they managed to lay a trap.

Another is that there is a jonin or two mixed in the bodyguards. In this case, both the Tsubaki deals with the chunin herself or the split the squad options are okay.

Another possibility is that one or both of the scroll carriers are actually jounin, and they are using that as a trap (or a relatively easy way for the supplies to escape). Tsubaki going after the scroll users works rather well here, fighting the bodyguards works poorly (6 chunin versus 2 jounin isn't going to go well for the chunin), and the split squad option likely gives Tsubaki enough time to engage the jounin before the make mincemeat out of the Ame chunin. I think this is less likely as having the giant scroll on your back would likely reduce performance in combat.

Lastly, there is the chance of a jounin level character being nearby but not in the group. In this case, the split forces with Tsubaki being ready to respond to bail out her team would be best. I think this is unlikely thanks to having a sensor-nin with her.

[x] Split the team. You'll hang back and hold off the Konoha-nin with two combatants and the sensor, while the other three chunin go after the supply runners. You'll really just be there to provide support and keep the pressure of your team members, you didn't want to be stuck with a bunch of chunin, but if you have to be, you'll at least get to see what they can do.
 
[x] Split the team. You'll hang back and hold off the Konoha-nin with two combatants and the sensor, while the other three chunin go after the supply runners. You'll really just be there to provide support and keep the pressure of your team members, you didn't want to be stuck with a bunch of chunin, but if you have to be, you'll at least get to see what they can do.
 
Archibald said:
This is definitely something important. Maybe a Yamanaka inputting commands on some Kusa-nin? I guess it could be a result from an area commander and not this group too.
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Due to Tsubaki's method of detection relying on their muscle groups not lining up with their motion or something, I would think Nara before Yamanaka. But we don't really know the limits or methods of Nara shadow binding, so whether or not that's fair is not knowable. I might also guess either chakra puppetry (not super likely, as it's Konoha over Suna, and the quality of the deception was praised so the puppeteer would have to be exceptional, but chakra strings are one of those universal techniques), or some kind of summon (spider or something) but then it would probably be Quest OC so no way to know that either.

[X] Split the team. You'll hang back and hold off the Konoha-nin with two combatants and the sensor, while the other three chunin go after the supply runners. You'll really just be there to provide support and keep the pressure of your team members, you didn't want to be stuck with a bunch of chunin, but if you have to be, you'll at least get to see what they can do.

I do think diving in headfirst would be Fun, but it's also committing everything immediately, which is quite a tactical error. A reserve is good to have, and there are definitely signs that something's up
 
[X] Split the team. You'll hang back and hold off the Konoha-nin with two combatants and the sensor, while the other three chunin go after the supply runners. You'll really just be there to provide support and keep the pressure of your team members, you didn't want to be stuck with a bunch of chunin, but if you have to be, you'll at least get to see what they can do.
 
My thinking is that the Kiri branch of the kaguya clan Kimmie Mark was born into declared him cursed because they didn't want him mucking up the succession since normally a bloodline user is gonna be more likely to take command of a bloodline clan.
 
We honestly have no idea. Maybe the QM set a mental baseline for himself when he was laying the groundwork for the quest, otherwise it's a blank. The only user of Shikotsumyaku in canon was Kimimaro, and he was very much not an average shinobi. The only user of Shikotsumyaku we've seen in the quest is Tsubaki herself, and she's also very much not an average shinobi.

We do know that the Shikotsumyaku is actually pretty rare within clan, with few members manifesting the ability, so it's not impossible that all wielders of Shikotsumyaku are bullshit monsters like Kimimaro and Tsubaki, which would justify the Kaguya's fearsome reputation.

But that's all speculation tbh.
 
[X] Split the team. You'll hang back and hold off the Konoha-nin with two combatants and the sensor, while the other three chunin go after the supply runners. You'll really just be there to provide support and keep the pressure of your team members, you didn't want to be stuck with a bunch of chunin, but if you have to be, you'll at least get to see what they can do.
 
tricholysis said:
Due to Tsubaki's method of detection relying on their muscle groups not lining up with their motion or something, I would think Nara before Yamanaka. But we don't really know the limits or methods of Nara shadow binding, so whether or not that's fair is not knowable. I might also guess either chakra puppetry (not super likely, as it's Konoha over Suna, and the quality of the deception was praised so the puppeteer would have to be exceptional, but chakra strings are one of those universal techniques), or some kind of summon (spider or something) but then it would probably be Quest OC so no way to know that either.
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I thought all Nara puppeting required a relatively close range which would be detected by the sensor. But if they have a chakra concealing jutsu too that could take care of that problem.

I've got no doubt that someone like Sasori could do it with puppet strings, but don't think Suna has any reason to be here.

I do think diving in headfirst would be Fun, but it's also committing everything immediately, which is quite a tactical error. A reserve is good to have, and there are definitely signs that something's up
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Full agreement here
 
[X] Split the team. You'll hang back and hold off the Konoha-nin with two combatants and the sensor, while the other three chunin go after the supply runners. You'll really just be there to provide support and keep the pressure of your team members, you didn't want to be stuck with a bunch of chunin, but if you have to be, you'll at least get to see what they can do.
 
[X] Send the chunin after the scroll-bearers, after all, the mission is to disrupt Konoha's supply lines in southeastern Meadows, and those big scrolls are absolutely full of supplies destined for its invasion of the Land of Storms. That you'll get to fight all of the enemy chunin at once is just a bonus, maybe that will present something of a challenge.
 
I've been convinced.
[X] Split the team. You'll hang back and hold off the Konoha-nin with two combatants and the sensor, while the other three chunin go after the supply runners. You'll really just be there to provide support and keep the pressure of your team members, you didn't want to be stuck with a bunch of chunin, but if you have to be, you'll at least get to see what they can do.
 
No Country said:
On average they're stronger than the average ninja. They were one of the strongest clans in the Land of Water during the Warring States period, but their overall potential is kind of capped by um, how do I put this gently? Just how stupid and inbred they are. Not that other clans like the Uchiha or Uzumaki aren't inbred (seriously, we see Uzushio once or twice in flashback and they're all redheads, and both of Sasuke's parents have the sharingan), but they're not stupid, at least not Kaguya stupid. Canonically, they're enough to threaten Kiri shortly after the Third War, but they're not an existential threat to the village.
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Does the series ever bring up the matter of inbreeding?

It seems like if kekkei genkai were that "fragile" (IE, if they were recessive traits, and/or if introducing new material to the gene pool would noticeably destabilize them moving forward), then they would have to also somehow nullify the consequences of inbreeding.

My dim understanding of the series' conclusion is that the sharingan was created via people eating magic space fruit or something, so you could potentially start off with a large enough group of people to let the sharingan carry forward for a while - but if so, where do all the other kekkei genkai come from? I vaguely recall hearing that the byakugan is some sort of degenerate offshoot of the sharingan. Would that mean that this genetic mutation was common enough for the Hyuuga Clan to form within the Uchiha over time?

To stop beating around the bush, my opinion is that kekkei genkai aren't recessive genetic traits, but they're also sufficiently complex that calling them dominant traits would be misrepresentative as well. It's entirely possible that the formation of seemingly 'true-breeding' clans sharing a powerset is as much about some sort of epigenetic trigger, or even the alien origins of chakra opening the door for radical departures from Mendelian genetics to occur.

The basic building blocks for kekkei genkai are distributed throughout the entire human race of Naruto. However, they seem to be a bit like so-called "junk DNA". 99.9% of the time, the genes don't actually do much, but under the right circumstances they become active - in this case, they assemble a viable kekkei genkai during the process of fetal development, resulting in the birth of someone with superpowers. Once a viable pattern emerges, it then tends to be passed on to the originator's offspring, which is how you get the modern convention of bloodline-bound clans.

If nothing else, in order for there to be cultural undercurrents of fear toward kekkei genkai and folkloric ideas of strange, solitary monsters born among the populace (as the Wave Arc seems to imply), you would need there to be either the possibility of novel kekkei genkai emerging spontaneously or for long-lost bloodlines to be 'reborn' from within the broader human gene pool.

After reading the Wave Arc in Shonen Jump, my mind quietly percolated away and eventually spat out the assumption that kekkei genkai spontaneously re-emerging from the civilian populace was a known phenomenon, and that Kirigakure relied heavily on this to keep their psychotic "graduation ceremony" from rapidly wiping out their supply.

In that imagined scenario, Kiri would be noticeably abnormal for having significantly less focus on the idea of allied clans, because their main source of genin would be monitoring the civilian populace within their lands and abducting children who demonstrate signs of suitable talents or manifest a kekkei genkai. Instead of familial connections, Kirigakure relied on the shared trauma of their graduation ceremony as the mortar holding it together, in a way very similar to the ancient Spartiates*.

While it would mean they'd have noticeably worse access to bloodline powers (especially in the sense of not having sizable, stable populations with a shared kekkei genkai, which Konoha's very existence was predicated on), the attendant lack of immutable, politically powerful dynasties would in turn make it far easier to absorb the extremely high attrition rate of their training program (at least until Zabuza happened.)

As for Uzushiogakure... why not assume that it had so many redheads because the Narutoverse genetic trait for fire-engine red hair was at least as capable of propagating as black or brown hair, rather than being hyper-recessive like red hair is IRL? That seems more likely than an entire nation of Hapsburgs.


That's the historically correct term for what we think of as "the Spartans", referring to the only non-slave sociopolitical caste within Sparta. A Spartiate's childhood largely consisted of being physically, emotionally, and sexually abused, and the Spartiate rite of manhood was to ambush and murder a helot - the lowest of the low, a caste subject to horrors which rival those of 2nd-millennium chattel slavery, and whose members therefore would generally be half-dead already. No threat at all to the Spartiate.

We don't have a means of determining whether it was intentional, but based on what we know of more modern examples of systematic abuse and brutalization, the upbringing which Spartiates were subjected to would leave them in a very particular psychological state.

After experiencing so many horrific things, and being pushed into committing them on others, questioning the depraved logic of their culture at any point thereafter would mean undermining the retaining wall of suppression and justification holding all that trauma in check.

I can't help but imagine that Kirigakure's "graduation ceremony" would have a similar effect. In theory, anyone who went through that and then completed the rest of their training would have had to come up with some way of rationalizing what they did which allowed them to function as Mist-nin.

(It seems like a no-brainer to presume that those who survived their graduation would then be closely monitored by Kirigakure's equivalent of ANBU, and that a percentage of each graduating class would end up being disappeared when they showed signs of resentment, self-loathing, discontent, or other undesirable attitudes.)
 
GardenerBriareus said:
My dim understanding of the series' conclusion is that the sharingan was created via people eating magic space fruit or something, so you could potentially start off with a large enough group of people to let the sharingan carry forward for a while - but if so, where do all the other kekkei genkai come from? I vaguely recall hearing that the byakugan is some sort of degenerate offshoot of the sharingan. Would that mean that this genetic mutation was common enough for the Hyuuga Clan to form within the Uchiha over time?
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I don't think we have answers for most kekkei genkai, but the sharingan and byakugan both came from kaguya, the sage of six paths inherited the sharingan/rinnegan from her which he passed down to one of his sons who then passed it down to the uchiha clan. meanwhile the sage of six paths brother passed on the byakugan to his children.
 
psub said:
Does Tsubaki know what the Kaguya Clan is doing at the moment?
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No clue.

Professor Vesca said:
So basically the Kaguya Clan neglects their own bloodline release? I did not realize that, is that why they feared and locked away Kimimaru? What exactly were they afraid of?
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To make him easier to control and use as a weapon, that how I read the situation. Basically treating him the same way as most of the Jinchuuriki were treated.

Archibald said:
Why are these guys breathing heavily? Did they just attempt to lay some trap, Yamanaka suffering aftereffects from their jutsu? Are they puppeted forces? Are they jonin who are faking being lesser?
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Could be, maybe they're tired from running halfway across a country lugging giant scrolls on their backs.

tricholysis said:
I do think diving in headfirst would be Fun, but it's also committing everything immediately, which is quite a tactical error. A reserve is good to have, and there are definitely signs that something's up
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Since when has fun not aligned with solid tactics?

psub said:
I have a question how much of Shikotsumyaku's abilities can the average wielder use?
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There's really no such thing as the "average" Shikotsumyaku user. That's like asking what the "average" Wood Style user could do compared to Hashirama. It's such a rare trait that anybody who manifests it will be exceptional. Or one of their pissed-off relatives will smother them with a pillow when they're a kid.

GardenerBriareus said:
Does the series ever bring up the matter of inbreeding?
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Not overtly, but it is a manga for 9-15 year old boys, so they can't state it outright. But the first time we see Uchiha or Hyuuga carry on relationships outside of their clans are Sasuke and Hinata. If you can call Sasuke and Sakura's marriage a relationship, given how their novel makes it look somehow even worse than the 10 gaiden chapters did.

My dim understanding of the series' conclusion is that the sharingan was created via people eating magic space fruit or something, so you could potentially start off with a large enough group of people to let the sharingan carry forward for a while - but if so, where do all the other kekkei genkai come from? I vaguely recall hearing that the byakugan is some sort of degenerate offshoot of the sharingan. Would that mean that this genetic mutation was common enough for the Hyuuga Clan to form within the Uchiha over time?
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Per canon, the sharingan devolved from the Sage of the Six Path's Rinnegan by way of his son (though we never see Indra with anything but the mangekyo); the byakugan came from the Sage of the Six Path's brother.

Per quest canon/legend, the sharingan evolved thanks to the power of ninshu given to the Sage's student mixed the power of the Ten Tails inherited by its worshipers also the ketsuryugan but I'm probably the only one who cares about the Chinoike.. The byakugan is entirely from the latter.

After reading the Wave Arc in Shonen Jump, my mind quietly percolated away and eventually spat out the assumption that kekkei genkai spontaneously re-emerging from the civilian populace was a known phenomenon, and that Kirigakure relied heavily on this to keep their psychotic "graduation ceremony" from rapidly wiping out their supply.
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I think the general assumption, and it might be stated but I should probably reread the manga again just to recheck everything I'm unsure of, is that the graduation ceremony is a free-for-all survival test, and Zabuza's was outstanding because he decided to kill everyone. Though the timeline for Kiri in particular is extremely messy.

As for spontaneous re-emergence, it's definitely possible, but I'd figure it's more prevalent in elemental kekkei genkai (see below). Izumi awakening her sharingan isn't seen as particularly surprising, even though she's only half Uchiha, and the clan took her right back in when that happened (it helps that the Nine Tails killed her dad), so any instance of a kekkei genkai popping up spontaneously would just have the relevant clan step in to adopt whoever achieved it.

We don't see a lot of the crappier kekkei genkai in the manga, but most of them wouldn't be as tightly-regulated as the sharingan or byakugan (surprised I haven't had to bring up the Caged Bird Seal yet. To go off on a little tangent it's kind of funny how most fanfics depict the Uchiha in a bad light when the Hyuuga are way more repressive and isolationist). And a lot of the other ones seem to be a lot rarer or at least were hunted down before the series started with enough prejudice that they're functionally extinct (Sage Transformation, Sakon and Ukon's kekkei genkai) thanks to not being protected by a village or other factors.

There's also all of the physical or chakra abnormalities that aren't kekkei genkai but are inborn to the ninja who have them so they're not hidens either, like the Aburame's symbiosis, the various Inuzuka traits, the Uzumaki chakra chains, and whatever the hell was going on with Kidomaru.

As for Uzushiogakure... why not assume that it had so many redheads because the Narutoverse genetic trait for fire-engine red hair was at least as capable of propagating as black or brown hair, rather than being hyper-recessive like red hair is IRL? That seems more likely than an entire nation of Hapsburgs.
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That would make sense except for Naruto sharing his dad's hair despite most of his features coming from his mom. I'm not saying that everyone in Uzushio was an Uzumaki, just that that clan probably wasn't very outgoing.

It seems like a no-brainer to presume that those who survived their graduation would then be closely monitored by Kirigakure's equivalent of ANBU, and that a percentage of each graduating class would end up being disappeared when they showed signs of resentment, self-loathing, discontent, or other undesirable attitudes.
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Yeah. It's sort of hard to justify Kiri being as self-destructive as it is, but I've sort of resolved it by headcanoning that the Land of Water is actually extremely populous, Kirigakure itself is just proportionally smaller than the other Great Villages. Because yeah, it is more purge-happy than the others.

As for the prevalence of kekkei genkai, it is stated that some of them can be learned, and I figured that Kiri's clans actually did more politicking than the other Villages', based on the way the Land of Water was unified under the First Mizukage. Also elemental kekkei genkai seem easier to propagate than the body based ones, so you have most of the Yuki Clan being able to use Ice Style and a several different clans/unrelated shinobi being able to use Boil Style. We also know that there's some method to teach elemental kekkei genkai, like Magnet Style and Explosion Style, so there could be another way to get those into a bloodline.
 
Also the lack of physical mutations in the elemental bloodlines probably makes it easier for them to just have one night stands or a roll in the hay with the local farmers' daughters.
 
No Country said:
There's really no such thing as the "average" Shikotsumyaku user. That's like asking what the "average" Wood Style user could do compared to Hashirama. It's such a rare trait that anybody who manifests it will be exceptional. Or one of their pissed-off relatives will smother them with a pillow when they're a kid.
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Or asking if we can ever reach Tomogoroshi no Haikotsu
 
[X] Split the team. You'll hang back and hold off the Konoha-nin with two combatants and the sensor, while the other three chunin go after the supply runners. You'll really just be there to provide support and keep the pressure of your team members, you didn't want to be stuck with a bunch of chunin, but if you have to be, you'll at least get to see what they can do.
 
No Country said:
Could be, maybe they're tired from running halfway across a country lugging giant scrolls on their backs.
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I thought of that but dismissed it because the type of breathing I think of when I hear "breathing heavily" is the type that you can't sustain it for long periods of time, like it would take to run across a country. Maybe you meant something less drastic then what I envisioned or chakra magic takes care of the problem or that spoiler is you messing with us

Since when has fun not aligned with solid tactics?
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If we're getting played like I think we are solid tactics absolutely will align with fun.

Yeah. It's sort of hard to justify Kiri being as self-destructive as it is, but I've sort of resolved it by headcanoning that the Land of Water is actually extremely populous, Kirigakure itself is just proportionally smaller than the other Great Villages. Because yeah, it is more purge-happy than the others.
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Historically, ancient Rome had periods with regular purges. If there are semi-long breaks between the purge happy times that would be entirely sustainable for a 100 year period, albeit, they would still be much worse off then if they didn't have regular purges.

As for the prevalence of kekkei genkai, it is stated that some of them can be learned, and I figured that Kiri's clans actually did more politicking than the other Villages', based on the way the Land of Water was unified under the First Mizukage. Also elemental kekkei genkai seem easier to propagate than the body based ones, so you have most of the Yuki Clan being able to use Ice Style and a several different clans/unrelated shinobi being able to use Boil Style. We also know that there's some method to teach elemental kekkei genkai, like Magnet Style and Explosion Style, so there could be another way to get those into a bloodline.
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I thought if it could be learned without the right genetics it wasn't a KKG?

w34v3r said:
Also the lack of physical mutations in the elemental bloodlines probably makes it easier for them to just have one night stands or a roll in the hay with the local farmers' daughters.
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They're ninja. The amount of power they have make both rather easy even with odd bodies.
 
Voting is now closed!
Scheduled vote count started by No Country on Mar 19, 2024 at 11:01 PM, finished with 58 posts and 29 votes.
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Hopefully we're done talking about incest for at least a while, but Tsubaki only has three Kaguya grandparents, her father's mother was an outsider.
 
while we're on the subject of morally dubious stuff that happens in Naruto, when a bloodline starts dwindling what are the odds that the village flat out orders anyone who has that kekkei genkai and is still single to go have kids? this obviously isn't happening in Kiri and I kinda doubt Konoha would do it, but there's no way Kumo wouldn't have something like that going on.
 
Negation said:
Or asking if we can ever reach Tomogoroshi no Haikotsu
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No Country hinted that All-Killing Ash Bones is likely not a pure expression of Shikotsumyaku, though something similar or equivalent might be on the tech tree.
No Country said:
You're barking up a tree with the idea of putting bones in bones to make bones bone while you bone bones, but it's not on track for All-Killing Ash Bones. Remember that Kaguya wasn't an alien, she was just a princess who was favored by the Ten Tails (whatever that means) here, or at least that's the common narrative, so maybe All-Killing Ash Bones isn't a thing. But if it is, it might not even have a place in the tech tree, especially if it isn't a pure expression of Shikotsumyaku.
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