Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

[Buggy]

THing is presumably what Ooh-boo-hoo did so idk

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Oro didn't have ES 50, the incentives are very different. He would be focused on making something he can use with less investment, not using a already highly-leveled jutsu in a slightly different way.

Overall I'd place Konan as a top risk for surviving, Itachi and Kisame as medium risk, and Deidara and Sasori at low risk. Hidan can only pray we never get a bead on him.

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To add on to this, I don't think we really ran from the EM nuke test. Not the center, at least.

We set it off via SC, so we were already several miles from ground zero. If you're at ground zero, you're fucked.

Though actually, I'd say Hidan is one of the ones that stands a better chance of surviving. He'll be drowned, painfully frozen, and dashed against a bunch of debris. His regeneration might actually be able to keep up with all of that.

 

[Inferno Vulpix]

Though actually, I'd say Hidan is one of the ones that stands a better chance of surviving. He'll be drowned, painfully frozen, and dashed against a bunch of debris. His regeneration might actually be able to keep up with all of that.

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I'm thinking about how he was killed in canon here: blown to bits and scattered in the dirt enough that he couldn't put himself back together. Not only did that neutralize him, it also left him slowly dying of starvation.

When I think of Hidan getting hit by EM, I see him being blown to bits by the immense destructive forces (enough to crater the earth, after all) and those bits scattered by the churning tide of the frozen waves. Toss in stuff like "at those temperatures his flesh might literally shatter" and the other objects being thrown around by the violent energies, and I feel like there's enough going on there to reduce Hidan to a nonfunctional state. Then, with his body parts scattered across miles and buried beneath ice and rubble, it's unlikely he could reform himself. It's a pretty close mirror to how he canonically died.

I can't say that with certainty, of course, but I don't think Hidan has the tools necessary to stop this from happening, so as long as I'm right about the destructive forces of EM being sufficient to rip his body apart I'm pretty sure he's a goner.

 

[Twinnstars]

Oro didn't have ES 50, the incentives are very different. He would be focused on making something he can use with less investment, not using a already highly-leveled jutsu in a slightly different way.


To add on to this, I don't think we really ran from the EM nuke test. Not the center, at least.

We set it off via SC, so we were already several miles from ground zero. If you're at ground zero, you're fucked.

Though actually, I'd say Hidan is one of the ones that stands a better chance of surviving. He'll be drowned, painfully frozen, and dashed against a bunch of debris. His regeneration might actually be able to keep up with all of that.

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Yes, exactly. Oro is an absurd expert able to isolate the substrate effect from a jutsu he barely knows, and does so so he doesn't need to wait until he has earthshaping 50 to start with his new obsession
Edit: 60 lmao earth shaping is suffering, and so close to my heart

 

[RandomOTP]

THing is presumably what Ooh-boo-hoo did so idk

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Orochimaru thought Earthshaping was a Pangolin Jutsu, remember? Presumably, he made BoC from scratch.

 

[Cariyaga]

Orochimaru thought Earthshaping was a Pangolin Jutsu, remember? Presumably, he made BoC from scratch.

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We told him it was from the public library.

 

[Velorien]

I've finally finished binging the entire quest. I'm not sure if I will be able to contribute much to the hivemind, but I must say it's been a wild ride catching up. I praise the authors for their delightful prose, their almost decade-long dedication to the story, and their commitment to following the will of Lord Jashin's dice.

It's darkly hilarious that Hazou has unwittingly dipped into treason against most of the leaders he's served under and yet outlived many of them. And so again we return to the holy land of possible treason, only this time sanctioned.

Here are some other random questions I had from the quest overall if any regulars care to discuss:

Spoiler: Questions

Isn't it curious that out of all the times the clan suffered foul play that we never turn up concrete evidence for the culprits, only inferred suspects? From the bank run to Akane to a mysterious scarved figure, is this just a uniform failure of our investigative plans against various political actors, an underlying conspiracy like the Color Cabal, or some combination?

As I read mostly story-only, what was the thread's reasoning for having Akane test the EM nuke at the time? Were players anticipating a tactical-level nuke or a strategic-level nuke like the 10 mile storm it ended up being? I guess it was better to learn about it sooner than later, but she was already feeling bad about her war crimes and she didn't have a summoning scroll at the time to use it against the dragons.

Also would going the opposite direction for EM have created a similar nuke in the form of a firestorm? Or did it specifically depend on generating liquid air for the wide area effect?

If we want to create EM nuke runes, would this actually be effective at killing S-tier ninjas? The effect seems escapable due to the windup of EM and the static nature of runes unless they were too close to the rune in the first place. Maybe we could plant it with a dead man's switch as an insurance policy against Hidden Rain but that depends too much on Akatsuki believing us and not deciding to kill us anyway.

Did anything ever come of Kagome's "therapy" sessions with the Yamanaka? It feels like it just faded into the background, though I don't remember if the therapist survived the Collapse.

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Welcome! It looks like you'll fit right in.

 

[Noumero]

• Deidara: if his clay dragons are significantly faster than skywalkers he'd need less advance warning to make it out safely, but otherwise it's a pretty solid kill.
• Hidan: wrecked.
• Itachi: can reverse summon with a small amount of forewarning. May unsummon right into the middle of it if careless. Otherwise, it's a pretty solid kill.
• Kakuzu: already ded, would've been helpless anyways.
• Kisame: same as Itachi, can reverse summon out of trouble, might unsummon carelessly into the middle of it, otherwise has no counter.
• Konan: Her "become a mile-long chakra construct inhabiting random scraps of paper" trick is OP enough that I could see it surviving an EM nuke.
• Sasori: You have to actually, you know, hit the right one, but if you do then it's all over.

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I agree regarding Deidara, Hidan, and Konan.

Itachi and Kisame survive it by pulling out a bullshit ninjutsu that hard-counters the EM nuke in some manner. "They have a counter for it", with "it" being any weapon deployed against them, is pretty much what Orochimaru said there, and I'm taking him seriously on that. In addition, even Naruto's spiel about S-rankers not being all-powerful was preceded by noting that the likes of Itachi are exceptions to what he's saying, who are genuinely well-rounded.

They have a counter for the EM nuke, and will survive it if given the chance to react to it.

Kakuzu and Sasori were/are also at risk of being able to do that (with a bullshit seal in Sasori's case), though a lower one.

 

[Cariyaga]

I agree regarding Deidara, Hidan, and Konan.

Itachi and Kisame survive it by pulling out a bullshit ninjutsu that hard-counters the EM nuke in some manner. "They have a counter for it", with "it" being any weapon deployed against them, is pretty much what Orochimaru said there, and I'm taking him seriously on that. In addition, even Naruto's spiel about S-rankers not being all-powerful was preceded by noting that the likes of Itachi are exceptions to what he's saying, who are genuinely well-rounded.

They have a counter for the EM nuke, and will survive it if given the chance to react to it.

Kakuzu and Sasori were/are also at risk of being able to do that (with a bullshit seal in Sasori's case), though a lower one.

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I figure Itachi would be able to reverse summon pretty easily, even if the sharingan doesn't, strictly, provide precognition, given the wind up time that EM nukes have.

Anyway making EM rune nukes is a losing move that paints a massive target on us.

 

[ContextBot]

• Deidara: if his clay dragons are significantly faster than skywalkers he'd need less advance warning to make it out safely, but otherwise it's a pretty solid kill.

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I want to remind you of Oro's dossier, he can likely fly alone, he has the Shadow clone and is a earth/lightning ninjutsu master.

I am pretty sure could hide underground, that's kind of what he did in canon to survive.

Rock Ninja are pretty much used to this:

"This first one's the Tunneller's Friend. We happened to coincidentally complete the research on it right after a Hidden Rock infiltration team disappeared in Fire territory. It's got two active modes: absorption and release. The first stores up air from the environment. The second gradually releases it. The more active you are, the faster you use it up. Rock burrowers like to stick it inside airtight masks, but you and I both know restricting it to that is just tunnel vision. What? Don't give me that look. I swear, some of my best material…

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So fighting Deidara is more a question of "Did we actually get Prime?".

 

[Nebulus]

They have a counter for the EM nuke, and will survive it if given the chance to react to it.

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Anyway making EM rune nukes is a losing move that paints a massive target on us.

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It's only ineffective if they can return to the Human Path. If they come back in an environment where they die instantly or something, it's a win. We can't do radiation poisoning, but the idea of creating environmental chakra poisoning seal/rune is an interesting one.

Basically, launch EM nuke, use a jutsu to keep ourselves unaffected when we come in - after the mayhem- then powerup the rune or use an armada of clones that will put seals to prevent the survival of the summoners when they inevitably come back.

 

[RandomOTP]

Not going to lie, the fact that Itachi --whiny, little tantrum-throwing Itachi --is apparently the most dangerous Akatsuki member still throws me for a loop sometimes.

 

[Noumero]

Not going to lie, the fact that Itachi --whiny, little tantrum-throwing Itachi --is apparently the most dangerous Akatsuki member still throws me for a loop sometimes.

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Eh, I feel that his personality has been somewhat flanderized in the hivemind's internal memetic ecology. We've had, I think, two whole interactions with him? And yes, we've managed to get under his skin in the first one, which led to some fairly embarrassing behaviour on his part. But he'd done nothing of the sort in the second one, and actually displayed some uncharacteristically non-essie growth in it. And the abnormalities in the first interaction were partially OOC-caused: my interpretation is that he wasn't meant to come across as quite so psychotically mood-swing-y, and then we got to get under his skin and make a fool of him due to having temporary plot armor.

So I don't know that "a whiny little tantrum-thrower" is an accurate characterization of his personality. I'm currently expecting it to be a dangerously inaccurate one, such that if we rely on it, we're going to lose to him.

 

[Sir Stompy]

So I don't know that "a whiny little tantrum-thrower" is an accurate characterization of his personality. I'm currently expecting it to be a dangerously inaccurate one, such that if we rely on it, we're going to lose to him

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Yeah I think this is basically right. He seems competent, dangerous, focused, and smart.

While he has his emotional weak spots, and something of a sadistic streak, I don't think we can rely on those to make him less dangerous than the dossier says he is.

Plan on him to be the adversary most likely to take Hazou seriously and the one most likely to come after us.

 

[Paperclipped]

@Paperclipped @eaglejarl @Velorien I hate to be a bother y'all, but any chance we could get an update on the substiution seal mechanics?

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Two seals are paired at infusion time, like with ARS/MARS. The seals must be attached to different objects, then are primed for activation. The seals may be activated any number of times while primed. After an hour primed, they burn out.

The two objects the seals are attached to instantaneously (to the degree that people at this tech level can measure 'instantaneous') switch their positions and velocities (that is, objects retain their initial velocity like with the substitution ninjutsu) when either of the paired seals is activated. The objects must be within the same Zone or adjacent Zones, have a clear, straight line to one another, and be below 100kg in mass and 1 m^3 in volume. The seals burn out without activating if one of the objects is more than double the mass of the other.

Unlike the substitution ninjutsu, the seals allow substitution through the air where there isn't normally a valid path for the substitution ninjutsu, but a path must still exist – you can't swap a padlock off a door, or a log through a brick wall.

Also, unlike the usual specification for objects, substitution seals can work on objects with trace chakra (i.e. objects with seals on them). It still doesn't work on living things, or anything that contains more than trace chakra. It may get wonky if there are too many seals on the target objects – Hazou isn't sure exactly where that line is, but low single-digit seal numbers are probably fine. Jiraiya's notes suggest that making it work on objects with more than trace chakra is a dead end.

 

[eaglejarl]

Ah my b, in the same doc it's VD sensing that is 1.5m × VD, not draining. Though it does seem a bit weird that your detection range goes up but not your actual draining range...

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Blast from the past here: we answered part of this before and the final part now.

Range on Vampiric Dew sensing is (Vampiric Dew AB) zones.

 

[Velorien]

@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped Did we get another S-rank mission pay for our contributions to killing the other Dragons, or for being Summoners associated with Dragon-killers (see: Kumokogo)?

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Naruto notes that it is very unusual for a summoner to be compensated by the Tower for missions taken at the request of the summoner's Seventh Path clan. Still, he'll defer to Asuma's judgment and award a similar amount as the previous mission payout when Hazou requests it (though it's all lumped into a single operation on the mission records). The payout is split between Hazō and Noburi equally, and if Tsunade and Orochimaru are being paid as well, the Tower's budget might be hurting for a little while.

 

[Paperclipped]

Does Hazou think he could teach someone the Earth Infusion stunt using a different substrate? Like chakra-silk for instance.

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No.

 

[Emstar]

Also, unlike the usual specification for objects, substitution seals can work on objects with trace chakra (i.e. objects with seals on them). It still doesn't work on living things, or anything that contains more than trace chakra. It may get wonky if there are too many seals on the target objects – Hazou isn't sure exactly where that line is, but low single-digit seal numbers are probably fine. Jiraiya's notes suggest that making it work on objects with more than trace chakra is a dead end.

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Hmm.

Substitution Runes for Ninja and Rune transport..?

 

[eaglejarl]

If I may ask, is there anything about jumps in velocity if you tear the inertia increasing seal off of an object it's been applied to in the notes or a moving object slowing down immediately? Or from theory, do we have any idea if we would get some sort of conservation of momentum?

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We assume this refers to Jiraiya's Leadening seal, the description of which says:
> Makes an attached object heavier.

There is a sudden slowdown or speedup when (de)activating the seal on objects that are moving. Jiraiya's notes caution against doing this at extreme speeds, as doing this on an object that's going too fast or is too massive causes sealing failures. His notes are irritatingly vague about what is an 'extreme speed'.

Yeah I think it might be offset a little. Otherwise he'd blow his finger off while activating the seal.

@eaglejarl @Paperclipped @Velorien is that right? How does the ring box work exactly in practice?

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The explosion emerges from the surface of the seal in a cone normal to the surface. You activate it by touching the edge of the seal so that your finger isn't in the blast area.

 

[Paperclipped]

Can you confirm at this time how much XP is in the TH notes we got in the original Orochimaru deal?

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@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped My understanding of the TH notes we have from Oro, including what he may have given us in our original meeting, is that it still follows similar rules to the Sealing notes he gave us. That is, there are ~8 sets of notes with diminishing values, that total 1k. But further notes wouldn't help bc of the diminishing value thing.

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@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped Can we get an official ruling on how much TH notes XP we have?

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@Shrooms is correct. Orochimaru gave you a couple sets of notes the last time, and many more this time. However, due to diminishing returns, no more than 1000 XP can be drawn from all of Orochimaru's notes combined.

 

[DanZapman]

Thanks for the answers, all! Much appreciated.

 

[Buggy]

Naruto notes that it is very unusual for a summoner to be compensated by the Tower for missions taken at the request of the summoner's Seventh Path clan. Still, he'll defer to Asuma's judgment and award a similar amount as the previous mission payout when Hazou requests it (though it's all lumped into a single operation on the mission records). The payout is split between Hazō and Noburi equally, and if Tsunade and Orochimaru are being paid as well, the Tower's budget might be hurting for a little while.

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Right, well, we have infinity dollars and Tsunade and Oro aren't strapped for cash either. Lets not burn any social capital on this.

 

[Suleverf]

Basically, launch EM nuke, use a jutsu to keep ourselves unaffected when we come in - after the mayhem- then powerup the rune or use an armada of clones that will put seals to prevent the survival of the summoners when they inevitably come back.

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The bigger problem with EM nuke runes or similar indiscriminate catastrophe runes is that due to the way Akatsuki operates it's unlikely we'll nab all of them or even a majority at the same time without a blatant disregard for genocide or a very compelling reason for them to gather. And then we have to worry about retaliation from any members outside the blast radius and AMITY.

If we are willing to use EM to kill just a few high value targets like Sasori, Itachi, etc. then it would be better to work on a more subtle and precise rune meant for assassination, like the proposed gamma ray lasers.

Though what I am really hoping for is if runes will help us unexpectedly weaponize new esoteric effects. Even something simple like storage runes being able to seal living creatures.

 

[RandomOTP]

Naruto notes that it is very unusual for a summoner to be compensated by the Tower for missions taken at the request of the summoner's Seventh Path clan. Still, he'll defer to Asuma's judgment and award a similar amount as the previous mission payout when Hazou requests it (though it's all lumped into a single operation on the mission records). The payout is split between Hazō and Noburi equally, and if Tsunade and Orochimaru are being paid as well, the Tower's budget might be hurting for a little while.

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Does this mean "Hazou has asked, and Naruto has given it," or that "if asked, Naruto will give?"

Side note, @Velorien, @eaglejarl, @Paperclipped

Have the Goketsu resumed all their philanthropic efforts? I know GED was never shut down, so that's fine, but the rest (Till'n'Fill supplements, MARI missions, etc)?

 

[Twinnstars]

Thank you so much! Okay, to the thread. I've been hyping up substiution seals/my inventions for a while now, and unfortunately I now get to say that: it won't work with this version of the seal. HOWEVER - there's a couple details of the sub seal in here that I was *not* expecting, stuff that - should we spend the time on a project or two to remove the barriers the sub seals have from seikyuu, it's going to be *super strong*

For instance, substiution seals *can* move through the open air. This enables so so so much nonsense if we get it to work.

Two seals are paired at infusion time, like with ARS/MARS. The seals must be attached to different objects, then are primed for activation. The seals may be activated any number of times while primed. After an hour primed, they burn out.

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The 'two seals pair at infusion' is what's killer. Changing this to just three should solve the problem, though it would be really finicky keeping them straight.

So. Proposed seal research! Multiple Action Substitution Seals, which has a way cooler acronym than I was expecting!

This is one of those other bits of nonsense, that the seals can be reactivated freely for an hour afterwards. That's fricken absurdly efficient for a combat trick, and oh man the long distance travel implications are fun. Just gotta get it to work.

The two objects the seals are attached to instantaneously (to the degree that people at this tech level can measure 'instantaneous') switch their positions and velocities (that is, objects retain their initial velocity like with the substitution ninjutsu) when either of the paired seals is activated. The objects must be within the same Zone or adjacent Zones, have a clear, straight line to one another, and be below 100kg in mass and 1 m^3 in volume. The seals burn out without activating if one of the objects is more than double the mass of the other.

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Okay test we need to try. Take two pieces of wood under 50 kilograms, ask kagome to carve them such that they lock together securely. Put the substitution seals on the wood, lock them together, activate the sub seals. Do they move at all? Fail to activate?

Unlike the substitution ninjutsu, the seals allow substitution through the air where there isn't normally a valid path for the substitution ninjutsu, but a path must still exist – you can't swap a padlock off a door, or a log through a brick wall.

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Very important test here: Hazō has a sub seal in each open hand. He's also standing 5 zones above the ground on skywalkers. He activates the substiution seals (they're attached to a brick or something idk). Do they swap hands?

Also, unlike the usual specification for objects, substitution seals can work on objects with trace chakra (i.e. objects with seals on them). It still doesn't work on living things, or anything that contains more than trace chakra. It may get wonky if there are too many seals on the target objects – Hazou isn't sure exactly where that line is, but low single-digit seal numbers are probably fine. Jiraiya's notes suggest that making it work on objects with more than trace chakra is a dead end.

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See Jiraiya this is why you really should have listened to Hiruzen when he told you that there's somethings you just gotta use jutsu for! Like convincing a seal it can actually carry chakra.