Chapter response!
"Huh," said Kagome-sensei.
"Yah," agreed Hazō.
The two of them continued to stare at the patch of lichen that was happily sitting there, doing nothing except glowing very faintly whenever Hazō pointed the HOWS seal at it and going back to normal whenever he turned the seal away.
The Harumitsu's Outstanding World-Saving seal was a simple thing, almost a toy. It glowed slightly, with a flickering light the color of which could be chosen when the seal was infused; the more celestine the localization, the bluer the light. The average sealmaster would have looked at that and said "well, cool, that works, now let's go do something important."
Hazō was no ordinary sealmaster. He looked at the HOWS seal and said "hey, what happens if I make it as blue as possible and then make it even more blue?"
The answer was that the seal no longer emitted light, but sometimes when he pointed it at things they would glow in strange colors.
"Do you suppose..." Hazō trailed off. The idea was too crazy.
"That when you point a red-emitting HOWS at a thing the thing looks reddish, and when you point a green-emitting HOWS at a thing the thing looks greenish and this HOWS is emitting a color too blue to see, so when you point it at things they look whatever color that is?" Kagome-sensei said, gesturing towards the glowing lichen.
"'Too blue to see'?" Kei asked. "What could that even mean?"
I know it's unintuitive Kei, but not everyone lives in a blue house, with blue windows, where everything is blue for her.
"Hey, look," Hazō said, running over Kagome-sensei's reply. He waved the seal across HazōHOWSItGoing's face and pointed at the Shadow Clone's teeth; under the touch of the seal's effect they had begun to glow a soft white.
"Your pardon, Kagome," Kei said. "Could you repeat that? Hazō distracted me."
Kagome-sensei smiled slightly. "I figured he would. Don't worry about it."
Hmmm grue or standard adhd?
"Anyway, how can there be a color too blue to see?" Hazō asked, leaning in to study his clones glowing dentition more closely.
Well, it gets brought up again, but Kei remains skeptical. She does manage to remember, though.
They were camped on a tiny little island in the middle of Aisu Bay, fifty or sixty miles off the coast of Earth Country. The island was small enough to walk across in five minutes and it stood only five or six feet above the waves at its highest point. It was largely barren except for some hardy scrub brush whose roots had drilled their way into the stone surface and begun digesting it for nutrients. Lichen covered wide swaths that the brush didn't, and there were some seagrasses down by the rocky beach. Still, the island was far away from any possible prying eye, it had a freshwater spring in the center, and that was all the team needed.
I think this island would look better with that anatomically correct statue of Jiraiya we've been talking about building in Leaf forever. The title of this chapter is in reference to Ozymandias, the story of which includes a giant statue. Its fate. Lets turn this island into a giant statue of jiraiya, and 5sb rune it so it stays perfect forever
"I wonder if watermelons are still sweet?" Kagome mused.
"What?"
"Nothing. The color thing makes sense, right?"
"It is logically coherent, if that is what you mean," Kei said. "As to the soundness of the assertion... I find myself dubious."
"Makes sense to me," said HazōHOWSItGoing. "Have to admit, I was kinda hoping for this."
"Why?" Kei asked, one eyebrow rising. "What good is a lightsource that sheds light one cannot see?"
Both Hazōs shrugged.
"Dunno," said Prime. "Still, we're looking for ways to kill some of the most unkillable people on the planet. The usual suspects aren't going to cut it—I can't just make a faster rock or a bigger fireball. We need weird stuff that they won't see coming and that normal defenses don't apply against. Weird light was the first thing that came to mind. Maybe it helps and maybe it doesn't, but we have to try something."
Hmmmmmm yeah I think Kagome misfired. This one wasn't the grue buddy, just Kei and Hazou being neurodivergent at each other
"A sensible framing," Kei said. "What will your next step be?"
"Not sure yet," Hazō said. "HOWSItGoing, how about you dispel so I can remember doing the infusion?" He held out one fist.
"On it." HazōHOWSItGoing said, rapping knuckles with his progenitor and immediately disappearing in a puff of smoke. Hazō stood still, head tipped in concentration as he absorbed the memories.
"Anything interesting?" Kagome-sensei asked.
"Not really. It was just like any other HOWS infusion, except more celestine."
"Hmph."
The three of them stood silently, watching the strange effect of the seal. After a moment, Kagome held out his hand and Hazō passed the seal over so that the senior sealmaster could play with it inspect it.
"so, do anything special to make this seal more blue?"
"not really, I just made it more blue"
This does remind me of a theory I had a while back that celestine and (uhhhhh cant remember the other one. lol) had consistent usages, and that the sealing babble isnt
entirely technobabble. Celestine means 'further away along eldritch dimension x' while the other one means 'closer along eldritch dimension x'.
"How are you doing, Kei?" Hazō asked. "Everything okay in Pangolin?"
"The Condor Clan has evacuated and the peace of the east is holding, so at least I am not being compelled to murder slaves or Hyenas for no profit."
"Uh, that's good." Wow, what did one even say to that? Whatever it was, he didn't know it and Kei wasn't saying it, so he desperately cast about for a new topic.
"Kagome-sensei, how are you doing with the Scenery Clone seal array?"
"I'm working on it," Kagome-sensei snapped. "Stupid thing to put me on, if you ask me. I should be working on the rift so that we can recover Akane and Jiraiya-stinker, and keep those Akatsuki schnooks from bringing their Pain brat back." He sniffed. "Or you should be working on it, really, being the better sealmaster. One of us should be working on the rift, anyway. But it's fine. I'll keep plugging along on the silly 'conceal my encampment' seal array."
"Thank—"
"Actually," Kagome-sensei interrupted, "now that I think about it, it's better for me to be working on this array than you. You got it from SnakeStinker and you trust him way too much. Yup, better that I do it. I'll check the notes properly." He nodded firmly, then turned and marched off to the part of the island that he had claimed for his own research space.
"Uh...right," Hazō said, watching his teacher's retreating back. "Okay, well... I guess I'm going to go check on the other clones, see how their research is coming. Kei, want to join?"
She smiled slightly at the invitation. "Thank you, but no. I wish to check in with Noburi. He promised to— I mean, I want to see how our brother is."
"'He promised to' what?" Hazō asked, a grin spreading across his face. "Might the rest of that sentence have been 'deliver one or more lurid love letters to one or more of my numerous romantic entanglements and I am hoping a reply might be waiting'?"
Kei blushed as red as the blood that suddenly sprang from her finger where she had pricked it on her belt pin. "Summoning Technique: Pandā!"
Poof!
1. Kagome realizing the pain of being a sanity checker
2. Yay! The soft power of trade is disincentivizing war and shittiness!
3. I love you Kei, and all your paramours. They should come over for dinner more often, but only if they're not weird about us accusing them of treason every now and then - you know thats a Gouketsu tradition
"Hi, Kei! Hi, Hazō!" The little pangolin looked around, claws drumming slowly on his belly. "Wow, this place smells awful. It's all salty and metallic. Why are you—"
"NevermindthatweneedtogogoodbyeHazō!" Kei squeaked, placing the tip of one finger on Pandā's head so that the young and surprised pangolin could whisk her off to another dimension.
Which he didn't do immediately, prefering instead to open his mouth for another question. Fortunately for Kei, a mild kick to the shins was enough to make him get an extradimensional move on.
Hazō watched the smoke of his sister's departure disperse and laughed. Once it was fully gone, he shook his head in amusement and went off to check on his shadow clones and their research progress on the various seals and runes he had assigned them.
HI PAANDA BYE PAANDA
Hazō threaded the last of his chakra out of the crystal and sighed, shifting position to relieve muscles that ached from hours of sitting motionless on the rocky ground.
He stood and walked around the runic blank, examining it from every angle. There was no point; he had already checked it thoroughly with the chakra sense granted by the Earthshaping jutsu. Still, he needed to move a bit and this was a good excuse.
Unsurprisingly, there were no visible problems.
He did a few quick toe-touches and backbends, then went off to find Kagome-sensei. The older sealmaster would have taken a filleting knife to Hazō if Hazō didn't invite him to a rune infusion.
"This is going to be boring," he reminded his teacher. "Seriously, it'll be an hour or so of me just sitting here like a blob."
Kagome-sensei grunted and pulled a beach chair, a straw hat, and a beach umbrella out of a storage seal. He got himself settled, then dug out a blanket and a mug of hot chocolate. He scruffled himself a nest in the chair and glared impatiently at Hazō.
"Dude you found a type of ancient magic that the source code of the universe is explicitly okay with you having. Growing a bonsai could be one of the steps and I'd happily get my clippers out"
Paraphrased
"Right, sorry," Hazō said, smiling at his grumpy teacher. He sat down again, placed his hands on the blank, and began to lead his chakra into it with the obsessive caution that every sealmaster took when infusing a seal (or, in this case, a rune) for the first time.
The blank was strange, its internal chakra structure bent and looped on itself as a necessity of the design. Infusing it wasn't difficult per se, but Hazō was taking extra care since this was the first time. It ended up being closer to an hour and a half before he opened his eyes and glanced over to Kagome-sensei.
"I'm about to tie it off," he said quietly.
Is it a klein bottle?
Kagome-sensei was up and out of his chair in a blink, everything vanishing back into seals within moments before he disappeared behind the nearest berm.
"Ready!" he called.
Hazō took a deep breath and closed the final loop of chakra inside the rune. Immediately, he Substituted away to where Kagome-sensei and HazōMeatBagMinion178012 waited.
Hazō had given up requesting that his clones not choose names like 'MeatBagMinion'. He also no longer bothered protesting that there had not been 178011 previous clones with that name—or, indeed, any clones with that name—but his clones had literal minds of their own and absent a direct order to change their names they would not be moved. He wasn't quite sure where they got their sense of 'humor' but it was definitely not from him.
Hmmmmmmmm we should probably be careful to never let our sealing get so good that a shadow clone could research a seal to make themselves real at our expense in a single sit down
The three waited silently for five minutes until it was clear that the newly-infused rune wasn't going to explode or convert the island into sausage or anything other than sit there. Finally, HazōMeatBagMinion178012 stood up and gave the two flesh people a jaunty wave.
"First activation of Fast Forward Rune, Mark I, proceeding! HazōMeatBagMinion178012 proceeding to the rune for activation! Equipment check: hourglass!" He produced the hourglass from his pocket and held it up to show it to both men. It was, obviously, a clone of the one that the actual Hazō had in his pocket. Hazō Prime pulled his out and held it up. Simultaneously, he and his clone flipped them over.
"Acknowledged," he said. "Good luck"—he sighed—"HazōMeatBagMinion178012." The name was infuriating but the least he could do was respect his clone's chosen identity when it was about to throw itself on a potential runic failure to protect Prime.
Embrace the name. Change your own name to HazōMeatBagMinion178013 in solidarity.
The shadow clone placed a hand melodramatically on his heart. "It is a far braver thing I do than has been done by—"
"Get on with it," Hazō said, caught between impatience, annoyance, and a smidgen of amusement.
HazōMeatBagMinion178012 sighed, long and windy. "Fine. Be you later." He jogged off down the berm.
"You're sure we're out of the area of effect?"
"Yes, sensei."
"Really sure? You did the math both ways?"
Mild concern at this being his reaction to a version of himself being nervous about risking their own life. Hmmmmm though, unless Hazou has picked up a bloodline that affects his brain; they should stay all in sync. His level of annoyance shouldn't keep growing. Something to keep an eye out for.
"Yup. I was careful, sensei. I used all the tricks you taught me. And yes, I did the dances."
Kagome-sensei nodded, not taking his eyes away from the telescope that he had trained on the rune. HazōMeatBagMinion178012 was in the process of laying his hand on the rune to activate it, and the senior sealmaster was not about to miss this.
The air—no, reality itself—rippled out from the Fast Forward Rune, rushing out in a hemisphere that stopped a comfortable twenty yards short of the berm where the two flesh people waited. It stopped and faded away, leaving no visible demarcation.
Hazō studied the rune and its surroundings through the telescope that Shino had given him; it was a wonderful tool that he firmly intended to make standard issue for every Gōketsu sealmaster going forward.
HazōMeatBagMinion178012 was standing next to the rune, undisturbed, unpopped, and apparently feeling fine. He carefully placed his hourglass on the ground and wedged it in place with a few rocks to make sure it didn't get knocked over by a gust of wind, and then he started walking a spiral search pattern around the rune, trying to see anything out of place. He was moving at a perfectly ordinary pace.
nod nod small effect, small aoe -> several zones, like 10% speedup. This was the only research roll for it, right?
"Well, not as good as I was hoping," Hazō said with a sigh. "I can't see anything."
Kagome-sensei grunted. "S'what the hourglasses are for."
"I know, but...I was really hoping that it would be a big deal, right from this first version."
bah. Put more oomph in it next time
"Yeah, well, I'm just happy that it does what the math said it would do. It's bad when it doesn't."
"Fair point." Hazō settled in to wait.
I
do quite like clearly marked safe boundaries. They make planning a lot easier
And wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Did you remember to hurry up?
After far too long, HazōMeatBagMinion178012 turned to face them, raised his arms in a T-shape in front of his chest, and then bent to flip his hourglass over.
drumroll please
Hazō Prime and Kagome-sensei both looked down at Hazō's hourglass. It still had a bit of sand in it. They looked at each other, a smile spreading onto Hazō's face and a nervous one onto his teacher's.
Eyyyy we touched time!
When the hourglass ran out, Hazō flipped it over and went back to waiting.
And waiting.
And waiting.
I think they did remember to hurry up, actually
Later, HazōMeatBagMinion178012 once again signalled time was up and flipped his hourglass over. Hazō Prime's hourglass had, as far as he could tell, twice as much sand still to run as it had the first time. Prime waited for his to run out, then flipped it. He couldn't keep the grin of delight off his face.
We touched time!
The single greatest challenge that Hazō faced in saving the world from Akatsuki, saving Akane and Jiraiya from the afterlife before they faded, and so many other things, was time. There simply wasn't enough of it to let him do the work he needed to do.
Now? Now, time was his to create.
Kagome-sensei looked very alarmed when Hazō started laughing and rubbing his hands in full-on 'evil vizier' fashion.
Please tell me his spider friends are on his shoulders and doing it alongside him.
Fast Forward Rune
Hazō (Earthshaping): 50 - 6 (timeladdering down) + 0 = 44
Hazō (Primordial Sealing): 15 + 25 (crossover bonus from SSA-boosted Sealing) + 4 (prep) - 3 = 41
This is a medium-size rune, consuming 5 units of runic substrate, leaving 2166 units. Hazō completes research on the Fast Forward Rune!
Speeds up time by 3% in the zone the rune is in plus the adjacent zones (i.e. 3x3 grid of zones). Nothing interesting seems to happen while crossing the boundary. Lasts 1 month.
Re-evaluating my model of the simulation: We finished the rune with a single roll, meaning we rolled at least twice the TN of the project.
I set the likelihood of the TN of the rune being less than 20 as 70%.
In order for us to get the result we got this chapter, the TN of the rune
must be 20 or less.
My model seems accurate - no need to change it.
