- Location
- Central Coast, Australia
Its Tokei. He knows we're training and now doesnt know quite what to think of us, so he's giving us a test or slightly giving us a hand to see what we do.
Game of the Year: A Naruto Quest
- Thread starter Vesvius
- Start date
- Location
- Staring into the void
[X] The who isn't important- what matters is the why. Try and figure out why someone left Mr. Straw like this.
- Location
- In the ocean of my heart
[jk] Give it a hug before moving on and try and figure out why someone left Mr. Straw like this.
Dissonance
Luna's Luna
- Location
- Ginnungagap.
- Pronouns
- S/H/T
- Location
- South Africa
[x] The who isn't important- what matters is the why. Try and figure out why someone left Mr. Straw like this.
- Location
- SG
What does that mean?
- Location
- Spain
[X] The who isn't important- what matters is the why. Try and figure out why someone left Mr. Straw like this.
If I had to guess Tokei did it for some reason related to training us. That pose has to be like that for some reason, maybe to simulate a person attacking?
If I had to guess Tokei did it for some reason related to training us. That pose has to be like that for some reason, maybe to simulate a person attacking?
[X] The who isn't important- what matters is the why. Try and figure out why someone left Mr. Straw like this.
[X] The who isn't important- what matters is the why. Try and figure out why someone left Mr. Straw like this.
Shapeless Phobos
Filthy Casual
[X] The who isn't important- what matters is the why. Try and figure out why someone left Mr. Straw like this.
RedV
Refuelling
- Location
- Right here
Or Tokei could have been murdered and replaced by an imposter, and the straw dummy not being quite right as normal is a clue that he's been replaced. As is the fact that Relationship : Tokei disappeared.
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Possibilities to take in serious consideration. However, I still think "who" isn't the question for us to answer. Us figuring out "why" is an easier route to reveal whether this is foul play. And if we do get a hint of something awful, the proper course of action is to involve mom or close Ninjas, not stalk the night in hopes of outsmarting someone capable of professional murder and infiltration. Others can figure out "who", that is much above our skill level.
MortichFrittle4
Verified Speculator
[X] The who isn't important- what matters is the why. Try and figure out why someone left Mr. Straw like this.
13. Training Montage!
Vesvius
The Wicked God
You stare at the strangely positioned Mr. Straw for a few long moments. Someone's been in your backyard, and the only thing it looks like they did was move around Mr. Straw. Who would do that? But more importantly, why would they do that?
The who doesn't matter; you could stay up for a dozen nights and keep watch, but there's no guarantee you'll ever see who does it- and that's if they ever do it again. What really bugs you is the why. Why would they just leave Mr. Straw standing around like that? If they wanted to steal him, they just would have. If they wanted to destroy him, they would have. But they didn't do anything to him that you can see besides extend his arms out at shoulder level like he's the world's most motivated zombie, and you have no idea why.
This needs to be fixed.
You amble out to your makeshift backyard training ground and head straight for the repositioned Mr. Straw. Now how to do this? Should you poke and prod him to see if anything else is different? Maybe you need to take him apart and check if he's stuffed with something else? Or…
Nah.
He's a training dummy. The best way to find out what's different about him is by punching him.
You lash out with one of your flails and tag him in the stomach. Nothing happens. It's just like when you 'punched' him yesterday. You repeat the process with your other hand and then move on to all your other strikes. There's no change whatsoever.
Clearly you're doing this wrong. Hitting Mr. Straw like you have been won't help you figure out why he's been moved. You need to focus on the repositioned parts. So you step back, raise your knee, and… huh.
With Mr. Straw's new stance, his 'hands' are out of reach for your tiny knees. And you can't forearm him properly; you try and the blow just glances off. And tackling his arm is completely out of the question. When you try to 'punch' him, his hands profile is so slight that you just barely brush along where his knuckles would be.
If you want to hit Mr. Straw's hands, you're going to have to actually punch them. Like, for real. Not just swing your arms and hope they collide with their target. Not just punch them: uppercut them. And if you want them to count as solid blows for your ticker, you're going to have to put your whole body into it in a way you're not used to.
Well. No time like the present to get started.
You stand back, square up as best you can, and launch your hand out, curling it down and then back up. Your aim is off, but you don't let it deter you. You reposition and refocus, lashing out again and again. Each time your knuckles brush past the arm or the wrong part of you hits it as your wrist twists at the last moment.
Before you know it, hours have passed and you have to take a break for lunch. You're back out at Mr. Straw the moment your plate is empty; you need to hit his hand at least once. Just once, you want to uppercut it and see your hit counter go up by one.
Your afternoon is long and spent in painful trial and error. Even after you peg the distance you need to go to successfully hit the palm every time, the hit doesn't count. Apparently it isn't 'solid' enough for the game. So you try more and more things to make it count. You step into the blow like you vaguely remember pro boxers doing. You try twisting your wrist on purpose to put more force into it. You try every single thing you can think of as sweat drenches your body and weariness starts to set deep into your muscles.
It isn't until the sun is at the horizon that you finally punch it correctly. Turns out the secret was keeping your thumb on the outside of your fist. Who knew?
You fall into the sleep of the exhausted the second your head hits your pillow, but when you wake up the next morning, you're right back at it. This time you use your left hand. There are some difficulties here too, but nowhere near as many as with your right. The uppercuts are hard, harder than any of your other strikes, but watching your hit counter steadily rise up makes it all worthwhile.
There's no doubt left in your mind; whoever repositioned Mr. Straw like this did it so that you could learn to uppercut properly. Why they want you to be able to do that is another question entirely, but you're certain that that's the reason.
Especially because when you head out there the day after, Mr. Straw's been moved again.
It's not as obvious this time. The arms are still lifted into position to receive uppercuts. But they're spaced differently. When you go to hit it for the first time you miss wildly. Mr. Straw's hand has been moved to the right slightly, throwing off your aim.
It only takes a few moment to correct your stance to hit Mr. Straw's new position, but it still bothers you. If they moved Mr. Straw the first time to teach you to uppercut, why did they move him the second time? Was it to teach you something else?
The pattern repeats for weeks. You punch Mr. Straw, occasionally varying it up with other strikes, and every night he's moved to a different position.
It takes you a month to realize what the Straw Mover is trying to teach you: it's all about training your body. If you had continued punching Mr. Straw in the same position that he was in on that first day, you would have trained your feet and your arms to only hit uppercuts if your target was in that exact space that Mr. Straw's hand was in. If you wanted to hit something else you would have had to move around to get your target in that space. In other words, it would have been pretty useless.
But now, you have to be ready to punch Mr. Straw in whatever position he's wound up in, usually without changing your footwork at all, so you don't have that problem. Whoever's moving him around really knows what he's doing.
And they also must be keeping an eye on you. Because right when you've got that down, Mr. Straw abandons his uppercut mitts, repositioning for you to work on low kicks.
You get low kicks down easier than you did uppercuts. After that comes regular jabs. Then body kicks. Then better elbow strikes then you were already throwing. Then front kicks that push Mr. Straw across the ground. Each blow comes easier than the one before it, and before long Mr. Straw's positioning is changing every day.
Until…
The sound of bugles greet you as you wake up the next morning.
YOU HAVE ATTAINED THE ACHIEVEMENT 'WORKING OUT FOR BEGINNERS'! CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENT!
Oh. Right. You'd had almost forgotten why you had started doing this.
Wait. That isn't the achievement you were after! You pull up the screen quickly and mouth the words in front of you. 'Working Out for Beginners. Anyone can walk on a sidewalk or wade through a puddle. But not just anyone can do the things you can. Sure, most people can- but not just anyone! Unlock Condition: Raise All Physical Attributes to 'Simple'. Reward: Energy Motive decreases 25% slower. Status: Unlocked.'
Huh. You guess you did do that. A glance at your stat screen shows that not only are all your physical attributes at the next level up, but you've managed to raise your Taijutsu up to 'Student'. Not bad for sevenish months of punching a dummy!
As you take in your achievement, the scrawl speaks in your ear for the first time since you got your first achievement. "Congratulations! You've just unlocked your second achievement! You should now be filled with a sense of pride and accomplishment! But your journey isn't close to being over yet. Let's move on to the next step in the tutorial: combat!"
The scrawl continues on in that vein for a little while, talking about health bars and blocking to avoid taking damage. It's cookie cutter stuff out of any game. You pay it only half a mind. Instead, as you listen, you stagger out of bed and get on with your morning routine. Bathroom. Food. Drink.
A strange emptiness fills you as you look out at your backyard training ground. You don't have to get back Mr. Straw if you don't want to. But you're close. You're damn close to fulfilling that achievement. And you really want to know how Mr. Straw is set up this time.
A glance outside answers that question: he's not.
He's gone.
The fuck?!
The Mr. Straw you've been whaling on for months is gone, as if he was never there! There's only a divot in the grass that shows he was ever there in the first place!
A quick survey of your other dummies show that that's the only one gone. The rest are still in place, even the other Mr. Straw that you've barely touched. And when you ask Mother and Tokei, both profess their innocence. Mother seems horrified that someone dared steal your 'toy', and Tokei seems more worried that someone's been in the backyard then that your dummy is gone. He rushes out to check before going back inside and making sure he has daggers stashed in appropriate places around the house. Just in case.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out who stole your Mr. Straw: your mysterious helper. But the question is still, as it was before, why?!
The entire time, the scrawl continues to talk. Finally, it ends with something you pay complete attention to. "Now it's time to practice what you've learned! Head out of the house and follow your minimap to practice your combat in the real world!"
Well. That could prove interesting.
You have three things in front of you that you could do. Which do you pursue?
[] You may not have your normal Mr. Straw, but you have a Mr. Straw. You going to finish up that achievement and see what the reward is!
[] This combat tutorial seems important. You'll need to get this out of the way sooner rather than later. Better get to it.
[] Someone stole your Mr. Straw! You liked that dummy! And between the minimap, your decreased need to sleep, and your boosted physical skills, you're pretty sure you can track it down. You'll find that dummy, and you'll find out who stole him too!
The who doesn't matter; you could stay up for a dozen nights and keep watch, but there's no guarantee you'll ever see who does it- and that's if they ever do it again. What really bugs you is the why. Why would they just leave Mr. Straw standing around like that? If they wanted to steal him, they just would have. If they wanted to destroy him, they would have. But they didn't do anything to him that you can see besides extend his arms out at shoulder level like he's the world's most motivated zombie, and you have no idea why.
This needs to be fixed.
You amble out to your makeshift backyard training ground and head straight for the repositioned Mr. Straw. Now how to do this? Should you poke and prod him to see if anything else is different? Maybe you need to take him apart and check if he's stuffed with something else? Or…
Nah.
He's a training dummy. The best way to find out what's different about him is by punching him.
You lash out with one of your flails and tag him in the stomach. Nothing happens. It's just like when you 'punched' him yesterday. You repeat the process with your other hand and then move on to all your other strikes. There's no change whatsoever.
Clearly you're doing this wrong. Hitting Mr. Straw like you have been won't help you figure out why he's been moved. You need to focus on the repositioned parts. So you step back, raise your knee, and… huh.
With Mr. Straw's new stance, his 'hands' are out of reach for your tiny knees. And you can't forearm him properly; you try and the blow just glances off. And tackling his arm is completely out of the question. When you try to 'punch' him, his hands profile is so slight that you just barely brush along where his knuckles would be.
If you want to hit Mr. Straw's hands, you're going to have to actually punch them. Like, for real. Not just swing your arms and hope they collide with their target. Not just punch them: uppercut them. And if you want them to count as solid blows for your ticker, you're going to have to put your whole body into it in a way you're not used to.
Well. No time like the present to get started.
You stand back, square up as best you can, and launch your hand out, curling it down and then back up. Your aim is off, but you don't let it deter you. You reposition and refocus, lashing out again and again. Each time your knuckles brush past the arm or the wrong part of you hits it as your wrist twists at the last moment.
Before you know it, hours have passed and you have to take a break for lunch. You're back out at Mr. Straw the moment your plate is empty; you need to hit his hand at least once. Just once, you want to uppercut it and see your hit counter go up by one.
Your afternoon is long and spent in painful trial and error. Even after you peg the distance you need to go to successfully hit the palm every time, the hit doesn't count. Apparently it isn't 'solid' enough for the game. So you try more and more things to make it count. You step into the blow like you vaguely remember pro boxers doing. You try twisting your wrist on purpose to put more force into it. You try every single thing you can think of as sweat drenches your body and weariness starts to set deep into your muscles.
It isn't until the sun is at the horizon that you finally punch it correctly. Turns out the secret was keeping your thumb on the outside of your fist. Who knew?
You fall into the sleep of the exhausted the second your head hits your pillow, but when you wake up the next morning, you're right back at it. This time you use your left hand. There are some difficulties here too, but nowhere near as many as with your right. The uppercuts are hard, harder than any of your other strikes, but watching your hit counter steadily rise up makes it all worthwhile.
There's no doubt left in your mind; whoever repositioned Mr. Straw like this did it so that you could learn to uppercut properly. Why they want you to be able to do that is another question entirely, but you're certain that that's the reason.
Especially because when you head out there the day after, Mr. Straw's been moved again.
It's not as obvious this time. The arms are still lifted into position to receive uppercuts. But they're spaced differently. When you go to hit it for the first time you miss wildly. Mr. Straw's hand has been moved to the right slightly, throwing off your aim.
It only takes a few moment to correct your stance to hit Mr. Straw's new position, but it still bothers you. If they moved Mr. Straw the first time to teach you to uppercut, why did they move him the second time? Was it to teach you something else?
The pattern repeats for weeks. You punch Mr. Straw, occasionally varying it up with other strikes, and every night he's moved to a different position.
It takes you a month to realize what the Straw Mover is trying to teach you: it's all about training your body. If you had continued punching Mr. Straw in the same position that he was in on that first day, you would have trained your feet and your arms to only hit uppercuts if your target was in that exact space that Mr. Straw's hand was in. If you wanted to hit something else you would have had to move around to get your target in that space. In other words, it would have been pretty useless.
But now, you have to be ready to punch Mr. Straw in whatever position he's wound up in, usually without changing your footwork at all, so you don't have that problem. Whoever's moving him around really knows what he's doing.
And they also must be keeping an eye on you. Because right when you've got that down, Mr. Straw abandons his uppercut mitts, repositioning for you to work on low kicks.
You get low kicks down easier than you did uppercuts. After that comes regular jabs. Then body kicks. Then better elbow strikes then you were already throwing. Then front kicks that push Mr. Straw across the ground. Each blow comes easier than the one before it, and before long Mr. Straw's positioning is changing every day.
Until…
The sound of bugles greet you as you wake up the next morning.
YOU HAVE ATTAINED THE ACHIEVEMENT 'WORKING OUT FOR BEGINNERS'! CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENT!
Oh. Right. You'd had almost forgotten why you had started doing this.
Wait. That isn't the achievement you were after! You pull up the screen quickly and mouth the words in front of you. 'Working Out for Beginners. Anyone can walk on a sidewalk or wade through a puddle. But not just anyone can do the things you can. Sure, most people can- but not just anyone! Unlock Condition: Raise All Physical Attributes to 'Simple'. Reward: Energy Motive decreases 25% slower. Status: Unlocked.'
Huh. You guess you did do that. A glance at your stat screen shows that not only are all your physical attributes at the next level up, but you've managed to raise your Taijutsu up to 'Student'. Not bad for sevenish months of punching a dummy!
As you take in your achievement, the scrawl speaks in your ear for the first time since you got your first achievement. "Congratulations! You've just unlocked your second achievement! You should now be filled with a sense of pride and accomplishment! But your journey isn't close to being over yet. Let's move on to the next step in the tutorial: combat!"
The scrawl continues on in that vein for a little while, talking about health bars and blocking to avoid taking damage. It's cookie cutter stuff out of any game. You pay it only half a mind. Instead, as you listen, you stagger out of bed and get on with your morning routine. Bathroom. Food. Drink.
A strange emptiness fills you as you look out at your backyard training ground. You don't have to get back Mr. Straw if you don't want to. But you're close. You're damn close to fulfilling that achievement. And you really want to know how Mr. Straw is set up this time.
A glance outside answers that question: he's not.
He's gone.
The fuck?!
The Mr. Straw you've been whaling on for months is gone, as if he was never there! There's only a divot in the grass that shows he was ever there in the first place!
A quick survey of your other dummies show that that's the only one gone. The rest are still in place, even the other Mr. Straw that you've barely touched. And when you ask Mother and Tokei, both profess their innocence. Mother seems horrified that someone dared steal your 'toy', and Tokei seems more worried that someone's been in the backyard then that your dummy is gone. He rushes out to check before going back inside and making sure he has daggers stashed in appropriate places around the house. Just in case.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out who stole your Mr. Straw: your mysterious helper. But the question is still, as it was before, why?!
The entire time, the scrawl continues to talk. Finally, it ends with something you pay complete attention to. "Now it's time to practice what you've learned! Head out of the house and follow your minimap to practice your combat in the real world!"
Well. That could prove interesting.
You have three things in front of you that you could do. Which do you pursue?
[] You may not have your normal Mr. Straw, but you have a Mr. Straw. You going to finish up that achievement and see what the reward is!
[] This combat tutorial seems important. You'll need to get this out of the way sooner rather than later. Better get to it.
[] Someone stole your Mr. Straw! You liked that dummy! And between the minimap, your decreased need to sleep, and your boosted physical skills, you're pretty sure you can track it down. You'll find that dummy, and you'll find out who stole him too!
- Location
- Somewhere else
[X] This combat tutorial seems important. You'll need to get this out of the way sooner rather than later. Better get to it.
dragon
Ancalagon the Black
- Location
- The Skies of Arda
[X] Someone stole your Mr. Straw! You liked that dummy! And between the minimap, your decreased need to sleep, and your boosted physical skills, you're pretty sure you can track it down. You'll find that dummy, and you'll find out who stole him too!
So it wasn't tokei, or he's a good actor. Maybe it's sarutobi...
So it wasn't tokei, or he's a good actor. Maybe it's sarutobi...
- Location
- Home
[X] You may not have your normal Mr. Straw, but you have a Mr. Straw. You going to finish up that achievement and see what the reward is!
Combat Tutorial? At this age? Do we look like a Clan Kid to you Game System?
Combat Tutorial? At this age? Do we look like a Clan Kid to you Game System?