I mean, you joke, but if the QMs dropped something like that, I'd buy it in a heartbeat... unfortunately, it didn't seem possible to get a Stunt that folded Sealing into Socials (we had Mari work with Kagome on it, iirc), so I'm uncertain how possible it would be
Arikada Hibiki
Standard: Taijutsu vs Sanada Genzaburō (Taijutsu)
?? + 6 + ? = ?? vs ?? - 3 + ? = ??
Arikada plants a bioseal on Sanada Genzaburō.
Sealing ?? + 3 = ?? vs Physique ?? - 3 = ??
Sanada Genzaburō takes 5 stress. He is Taken Out horrifically.
Don't worry guys. I'm sure we will crack Minato sealing and have a fourth research skill to level long before we get to level up combat stats let alone socials
Good news we won't have to worry about leveling up combat skills even after this! I'm sure we will figure out how to combine Minato sealing and runecrafting into one discipline and have a 5th research seal to level before we get to combat skills
That was before we had MS, although we did download the Great Seal before we got Runecrafting going so. Who knows. Maybe Discord speculation is right and the extra dimension in MS is how it moves over time and we didn't see enough of that.
That was before we had MS, although we did download the Great Seal before we got Runecrafting going so. Who knows. Maybe Discord speculation is right and the extra dimension in MS is how it moves over time and we didn't see enough of that.
I don't have a strong answer, or the "correct" answer as I don't know enough about the rules to say. But Hyōtsumaranai only rolled a 47 on the initiative. Getting above that seems doable and probably would have helped. Or having a highly leveled and usable geode coffin. Or....etc. I'm just assuming that the spreadsheet people here know more about this game than I ever will and would have shored up any major weak points.
Due to Akanes high karma she might have reincarnated as a Deva. She might be advocating to the other Gods that Hazou needs more help from the celestial realms.
We are feeding Souls to the cycle of reincarnation anyway, I am sure it's going to be fine. Don't worry my Lord or Lady, we will feed more cats too you!
"Cancurunchu, the two leopards we injured are falling behind," Hazō said, watching the fleeing leopards. "Why don't we-"
"Fine," Cancurunchu said sharply. "Canrippu, Canzappu, keep an eye on sleepyhead. Everyone else, time to claim two more on our kitty quota."
Hazō and the five remaining dogs of the raiding troop quickly gained on the wounded leopards. No surprise there – one of the survivors was spilling blood by the pint across the terrain from a Force Claw gash.
The dogs had no difficulty encircling and taking them down the isolated leopards. Cancurunchu clearly wanted to shake his head and snap their necks, but Hazō stopped him. Instead, Hazō pulled a brazier from a storage seal and immediately dug kunai into the burning charcoal.
"Summoner," Cancurunchu said, "Could explain to a humble dog why we shouldn't kill these kitties while we can, instead of leaving our pack spread out in hostile territory?"
"Well, no need to leave ourselves vulnerable," Hazō said. "Let's get Canfuwumpu, Canrippu, and Canzappu up here. We're going to kill the leopards of course, but we should interrogate them first."
Cancurunchu cocked his head. "I'm glad we haven't forgotten the mission the Alpha sent us on, but what will the leopards tell us?"
"The location and makeup of their other hunting groups. Their special senses, if they have any. The locations of any encampments or lairs, if they have them. And more. I'll make them talk."
Cancurunchu barked. "I see. Well, if we get all that, I'll call it a worthy delay. I'll wake Canfuwumpu and bring the others here."
"You'll never break the will of a Leopard Clan warrior!" called one of the leopards, the one who Cancurunchu had mauled before the kitties' will had broken and they'd fled.
"We'll see about that," Hazō said. "But you're bleeding far too much. You'll die soon at this rate. Let's take care of that."
He donned his blacksmith's gloves and reached for the kunai he'd left in the brazier, now barely glowing a faint red at their tips. The leopard hissed, and Cankamu leaned forward, pinning the kitty down slightly harder as Hazō approached to cauterize the leopard's wounds.
o-o-o
Once the leopards were suitably stabilized and restrained, Hazō set about refreshing his seal loadouts. He paired a dozen new MARS seals, swapped in a new Banshee Fucker (and a new shirt to go with it), and made sure everything else was working to standard. He offered chakdar to the dogs in his party, but they refused after he explained how it worked, saying that without any familiarization, it would be more distracting than helpful to them.
Eventually, Cancurunchu came up to Hazō.
"I realize I said that we'd wait for the leopards to come to us, but we fucked up the last set of kitties pretty hard. I'd rather not face down the warriors they dig up that have the guts to fight a group like ours. Lets get a move-on soon to find a softer target. What's the plan for getting information out of the kitties here?"
"I was thinking about that," Hazō said absentmindedly as he double-checked his seal loadout. "I'd offer to torture them, except I really don't know anything about torture. I thought I could try to catch Kei since her girlfriend apparently knows the T&I catalog back-to-back, but their devices probably wouldn't work too well on quadrupeds. I could try to improvise – after all, that leopard was whimpering and crying by the time I finished with the kunai – but I figure if it was as simple as just inflicting a lot of pain, Leaf wouldn't have a whole department about it."
"I'm going to pretend like I understood more than one in three of the words you just vomited at me," Cancurunchu said. "What's the final answer? Can you squeeze information from the kitties, or should we just kill them and keep moving? I don't think asking them questions will get us more than hissing and spit."
"Right, sorry," Hazō said, putting his seals away and turning his attention fully to Cancurunchu. "Since we'll kill them either way, we give them both the same offer – whoever cooperates more gets to die easily and painlessly. Whoever provides less information dies hard instead."
"What do you mean, die hard?" Cancurunchu asked. "We can't stick around playing with them like a Cat. We need to get a move-on."
Hazō wracked his brain. Growing up in Hidden Mist, he'd attended many a public execution in his life – they were sometimes like festivals, with candies and games for the children while the adults enjoyed the traitor getting their due. Still, they didn't have days to drag out the execution, even if Hazō somehow found the requisite skill and equipment to perform the Circles of the Bloody Mist. Still, Mist had plenty of executions even if they didn't all have drama of Yagura's chosen destiny for traitors.
"I have an idea," Hazō said. "I have a big cauldron in one of my seals. We can set it up on a skytower so other leopards can't interfere. We fill it up with water, tie up the leopard's head so that it can't drown itself, then light a fire under the cauldron. The water will slowly heat up and boil the leopard to death. They'll get to feel the water slowly going from cool, to warm, to boiling. Even when the water gets boiling, it takes a long time to die, so the leopard will spend a long time feeling their skin melting and their organs slowly cooking."
The dogs around him had gone silent during the explanation. Canchō had shuddered. Wimps. With water instead of oil, the smell wouldn't even be that bad.
Cancurunchu barked again in laughter. "Brutal. Well deserved, too, after what they've done to ours. We'll tell the bards what we did to avenge the Winding River pack. No one will mess with Dog after that. Maybe we can learn a thing or two from you humans!"
o-o-o
Faced with the choice of slow death and fast death, are either of the leopards coward enough to prioritize their own comfort over the good of the clan?
Likely, yeah. They're pretty self-centered, not particularly group-focused. I'll give them each a 1d6: 2 or less means they talk. Otherwise, they're obsessed with their warrior discipline/already in enough pain that they figure it can't get worse/don't buy that the human wimp would do that/lie through their teeth/etc.
2d6: [6, 2]
Poor Hyōrōbā, your honor (and Hyōfajī's lack of spine) has earned you a painful death.
"I would never defile the honor of Leopard like that. I will die either way, at least I will die now knowing I have lived better than any of my kin, and hunted more of yours than you ever will of mine."
o-o-o
"...and then, after hours of agonizing suffering, your heart will finally start to slow down again as the heat cooks it to the point where it can no longer beat, and you'll finally die," Cancurunchu said. "Unless you answer our questions, of course."
The leopard didn't answer.
Hazō and Cancurunchu let the leopard sit for a minute. Hopefully, imagining his soon-to-be-gruesome death.
Eventually, the leopard spoke.
"What do you want to know?"
o-o-o
"Well, that was pointless," Hazō said.
"It's unsurprising," Cancurunchu said. "Leopards are loners. It's not like Dog, where we have packs and pack leaders. I should have guessed that their raids weren't organized. The attack patterns were too different. Some raids hit combatants, others went after dens. It was just a bunch of individuals making decisions following Hyōhakken's order to nip at our sides."
"But shouldn't they know more about the other raiding groups?" Hazō complained. "If they're territorial, shouldn't they know everyone in their territory?"
"They can't, their brains are too small to count higher than four!" Cansaku said.
"That's just a myth," Cancurunchu said. "Leopard scholars can reach as high as nine. But no, why would they? No one wants territory right on the border, and raiding groups passing through will mostly want to stay out of each others' noses. If they run into someone, they'll turn around and walk away, not exchange information and future plans."
Hazō looked down at the pad of paper. The leopard he'd just executed, apparently named Hyōfajī, had recited his best-remembered counts of all the other leopard groups their little kitty-party had encountered in the past week.
Ran into a group two days ago resting below the three big rock spikes east of here. There were five of them, two older and three juvenile.
A group passed by us while we were sleeping five days ago in the south fields with all the antelope. There were three of them, but they were all strong because they moved silently. Hyōtsume barely noticed them approaching, and when he noticed, they all backed away.
We spotted a big group a week ago. Four cubs, two immature adults, six adults. They were moving south.
…
Those and a half-dozen more entries were all that Hazō had to show for his efforts. On the one hand, they knew more than they had an hour ago. But it was far from what he'd wanted. Their movement patterns, their strengths, their senses, their ninjutsu, their preferred fighting styles; the leopard had nothing that would have actually helped Hazō. Hyōfajī had known the location of a tribe's encampment… But try as he might, Cancurunchu hadn't been able to force that location out of the condemned leopard, since there were apparently cubs there. Even the spineless Hyōfajī wasn't willing to share that, and Hazō's reassurances that they weren't there to kill cubs hadn't helped. Their threats had made them too brutal to be trusted in Hyōfajī's eyes.
The paucity of information almost made Hazō regret what he'd had to do to the other leopard. He glanced up to the skytower a hundred feet off the ground – high enough that even if another leopard hunting group came to inspect the site of the battle, they wouldn't be able to interfere. The water in the cauldron was probably barely lukewarm now. It would be an hour before it would start to burn.
Hazō didn't want to torture the leopard to death, but he needed his commitments to stay meaningful. The leopards wouldn't tell the difference, but with the social specs he regularly dealt with, he needed the ability to keep his own commitments even when he didn't want to. Then again, he found it easier to condemn a prisoner to death, even a painful death, now that Akane was gone. Plus, Hazō had to admit he didn't see the inhuman predators the same as his fellow humans. Hazō didn't think he'd be having nightmares about this.
"So," Hazō finally said, sensing Cancurunchu growing impatient with his ruminations. "I think we could do three things now.
"One, we retreat to Dog to rest and recover chakra. We can leave behind traps to catch Leopards as they come. I have a seal that makes an area look exactly like it did when the seal was activated. If we set up some of those, then put some skyslicers – infinitely sharp blades – inside the area, the leopards might run into the area and get sliced to ribbons, and their friends won't know what happened. I can keep some clones out to do recon on whatever force makes it past the traps, and once we're recovered, we can head back in."
"First thing's first," Cancurunchu said, "how are we doing on chakra?"
Various calls of "doing good," "half-full," and "could do another fight like that," went around the group.
Cancurunchu turned on Canzappu. "You're sure you're good to go? Your ninjutsu burn chakra fast."
"They would," Canzappu said, tail high in the sky, "if the kitties stuck around long enough to take them. They fled in five seconds, I barely burned anything."
"Right," Cancurunchu said, turning back to Hazō. "Sounds like we're at about half capacity. We should rest a bit in case we end up in a longer fight. Your traps sound interesting. You said they make an area look like whatever was in there when you turn the seal on, right?"
"That's right."
"So how about this: we take Canfuwumpu and a couple others and have them pretend like they're sleeping inside the seal. Stupid kitties'll can't resist an easy kill. They'll stalk right up to the edge and shred themselves for us hoping to catch a couple dogs unaware."
"That's brilliant, Cancurunchu," Hazō said. "We can definitely do that if we go with the first option. The second option is to just dig in here and fortify the location. I can deploy lots of seals to harden a perimeter, and we'll kill up to our quota in leopards just sitting here."
"Not a fan," Cancurunchu said. "Staying static is inviting trouble, and surrounding ourselves with traps means that if things go bad, we don't even have an exit."
"There'll be a safe route through the perimeter – I'll walk everyone through it before we settle in," Hazō said.
"And everyone's going to remember it? In the middle of a battle we're losing, when the traps you're packing seem to all be invisible death? No thanks," Cancurunchu said. "Besides, running from Leopards in a battle is like howling at your prey. They're too fast in a tactical engagement – our relative strength is that we can outpace them over distance. Let's stick with something that keeps us mobile."
"Understood," Hazō said. "In which case, the only other thing I think we should consider is to go hunting for a Leopard camp with some softer targets. If we can identify it from a distance, we can tunnel under, get all our ninjutsu ready, then pop out with surprise and start killing."
"That's the plan," Cancurunchu said. "We keep a move-on until we find where they sleep. Like I said, we're faster over land than the kitties, so if leopards catch our trail while they're in the area investigating the fight, they won't catch up to us. And that's assuming that any of them are smart enough not to get themselves sliced."
"So what do you think we ought to do?" Hazō asked.
"Let's head back to Dog and rest for a few hours. We gotta keep this all as one raid though, so we'll come back into Leopard in the afternoon and find one of their camps to finish this before nightfall. Let's set up a couple of these traps first though, and see if we can't slice up some bonus kitties…"
o-o-o
"Well, would you look at that," Canchō said.
"That's gotta be two leopards, right?" Canhachi said to his brother. "There's way too many chunks for that to be just one."
"Maybe it was one really big leopard," Cansaku said.
Apparently, eight hours had been enough for the Leopard response to return to the site of the battle and try to pounce on the sleeping forms of the dogs fabricated by the Scenery Clone Seal Array. The trap wasn't active any more – whichever Leopards hadn't jumped through the skyslicer had burned the area down, destroying the seals, the skyslicer, and the corpses of their fellows.
"If we wanted, we could root through the pile and try to identify the sliced up bones," Hazō said. "If we find two skulls, or two pelvises, that means there's two."
"No, we shouldn't wait here longer than necessary," Cancurunchu said. "I'm marking that down as two juveniles, so we're at six. Let's move west and try to find a soft target to make our way to twelve."
o-o-o
The raiding pack was loping through the plains when Canhachi abruptly stopped, ears going up in the air and tail going stiff. The rest of the dogs stopped short and turned to look at Canhachi, who was sniffing the air.
Hazō opened his mouth to say something, but stopped as he caught a glare from Cancurunchu.
"I smell leopard," Canhachi said. "And fresh kill. I think we crossed a trail."
He started pacing back and forth, nose to the ground.
"...and I think it goes this way. To their den."
o-o-o
Somehow, it was Canchō's stupid brother who had found the leopard's trail. It was just like the time when the Hyenas raided their pack and Canhachi had been the one to find their forward base and got all the credit for wiping them out, even though Canchō had killed three and Canhachi had only killed one.
At least Cancurunchu had paw-picked him to help scout the Leopard base. They wanted to tunnel under the base and pop up in the middle to kill as many of the kitties as they could, but to do that, they needed to know exactly where the base was. They crept forward little by little, while the rest of the team followed a hundred yards behind – hopefully far enough that the Leopards wouldn't notice the summoner snapping every twig and knocking every pebble he could.
Cancurunchu crept forward a tiny step more, then stopped. Slowly, he shuffled to the side, tail wagging ever so slightly to tell Canchō to come up beside him.
In the middle of grassy, broken earth, the leopard camp sat against the base of a thirty foot tall cliff. Outside the mouth of a small cave, an irritated-looking leopard played with a half-dozen cubs, while a couple other leopards sat here and there, dozing on sun-warmed boulders deposited near ridges in the earth. Canchō saw skulls, ribcages, and bones scattered on the ground – the signs of several successful hunts. The leopards must have been staying here for nearly a week. They'd been lucky to find the camp now, as the leopards would surely move on soon.
Cancurunchu flicked his tail slightly, tapping Canchō's side. Time to head back, get the others, and get to tunneling. Hopefully, that human's vibration-sensing ninjutsu would let him detect the tail-swishing of some of the sun-dozing leopards. He'd rather start the fight by burning up one of them, instead of popping up in the middle of the cubs.
The pair of dogs turned around and picked their way back through the underbrush as slowly as they'd come. The rear team was following them, so they'd meet in the middle, then hopefully-
Canchō heard a rustle of movement that some part of his mind immediately classified as Leopard pounce. Chakra pumped through his body as he called out for the packbond between himself and Cancurunchu that gave him strength and speed, then dove to the side.
Canchō felt Cancurunchu moving too as claws cut through his flank, and he turned to see a wispy, dark shadow coming at his face like an inverted lightning bolt. Darkness filled his vision except for a pair of ivory fangs that closed around his head.
The fangs sank in and the leopard shook its jaws. Canchō's neck snapped.
o-o-o
Hazō and the raiding troop started as Cancurunchu burst through the underbrush at chakra-boosted speed.
"They spotted us, Canchō's dead, we-"
"What!?" Canhachi cried out.
"-have company!"
"Strength of the Pack!" called a half-dozen voices in unison, as the blue glow of the dog's packbond brought them together. They sank into their combat stances as Hazō heard the faintest rustle of movement in the woods where Cancurunchu came from.
The rustling immediately faded away.
"Shit," Cancurunchu said. "It's going back. To warn the others."
The leopards were going to be ready for a fight. They needed to run away and find another leopard base – this one had barely taken twenty minutes to find, so there was no point engaging here.
"Should we-" Hazō started.
"Jutsu up and move in!" Cancurunchu roared. "Avenge Canchō!"
"For Canchō! Strength of the Pack!"
"Sun Element: Blinding Aura!"
"Life Element: Eye Spy!"
Hazō swore internally as he made hand seals. "Earth Element: Pangolin Earth Armor! Earth Element: Living Roots!" Solid stone clad itself around Hazō. Now wasn't the time to second guess Cancurunchu.
The dogs were already racing ahead by the time Hazō finished his second ninjutsu, but they slowed to let Hazō catch up.
"The woods clear up ahead," Cancurunchu said as he ran. "The camp's at the base of a cliff – they won't be able to run except to the sides. Once we're winning, spread out to hem them in."
They didn't pass Canchō's body. Smart, Hazō thought in the tiny part of his brain that could be spared. Cancurunchu couldn't afford to let the troop get distracted now.
"Seals going on now," Hazō called, making his decision. He couldn't wait until the fight broke out to trigger his seals – the dogs would need every advantage they could get running into a camp of prepared leopards. "Careful, the Force Claws cut allies! Sound going out now!"
He tapped his MARS chain and bounced forward as his Reusable Rocket Boots activated. The dogs listened to his armor-muffled words and spread out so that the Force Claw seals on either side of their combat harnesses wouldn't cut their fellows, and the world went quiet as their Banshee Slayers activated. Hazō reached into his pockets and started grabbing Banshee disks. He activated one, hanging it from his belt, and started throwing the others ahead of him.
The woods cleared, revealing a pair of ridges and a short uphill slope to the mouth of a cave where four adult leopards were standing with the hair on their backs raised, clearly ready to make their stand to defend the cave. Above them, dozens of gold-glowing rocks orbited the cave mouth.
Canzappu and Canhachi slowed, starting their ninjutsu as the other dogs raced ahead through the shallow gulch up to the cave mouth. Hazō and Canfuwumpu slowed as well, watching as Cancurunchu turned his head, then stopped, pointing with a paw up one side of the gulch. Hazō followed the line and saw twisting forms of black shadow, barely visible poking out around a crook of rock.
Cancurunchu had tried to call it out, but the Banshee Slayers kept anyone from hearing him. That's why everyone was facing the wrong way when the other leopard jumped down from the opposite side of the gulch. It was a massive thing, double the size of even Canhachi, and it knocked Canrippu over in its leap. Canrippu swelled with blue power and tried to get up, but his injured rear leg buckled under the leopard's weight. In an instant, the leopard had Canrippu's throat raised above its head while the dog's blood spilled out onto the mossy boulders.
Hazō crouched low and pulsed chakra to his Rocket Boots again, jetting forward. Two dogs had died in a matter of seconds. This wasn't nine of them against four leopards – now, their seven barely had the advantage against the leopard's six.
The black shape leaped back up to the top of the gulch, dropping Canrippu's torn-out throat to meld back into the shadows of the sparse trees above. Cancurunchu started in that direction but stopped himself – it would take him too long to climb the ridge the way the leopard had, and it would leave the rest of his team exposed.
The world went dark for an instant as Canzappu completed his technique, and a beam of compressed sunlight lanced towards the leopard that had distracted Canrippu. The beam cut through a tree trunk as the leopard bounded towards the gulch and cut a deep gash across its hindquarters – but not enough to slow it down. It leapt down towards the dogs as the floating, glowing rocks in the distance finally descended, racing like meteors towards the group of dogs in the gulch.
Cancurunchu and Cankamu took passing hits but quickly rolled to their feet as the younger Cansaku darted around the falling stones. Immediately, the trio was dancing around the leopard that had jumped down, covering each other's openings with attacks and feints. Encircled by blue-glowing dogs, the leopard tried to leap back up the gulch wall, only to be tackled by Cankamu. That tactic would only work once.
Hazō raced past the brawl as Canhachi's chakra-bees started drilling into the flesh of the pinned-down leopard. They couldn't spread out too far without breaking the packbond, so that meant that dealing with the ranged ninjutsu user at the head of the cave was Hazō's job. Even distracting them would mean giving the rest of the dogs that much more room to maneuver.
His vision distorted and stretched as Canfuwumpu fed him the sight of the whole pack, focusing in on a single brown-spotted leopard that was wriggling as if casting a ninjutsu. That had to be the one. As Hazō closed in, he pulsed his Rocket Boots one more time, giving him a burst of speed through the leopard. As he expected, it dodged to the side, and he shot a granite macerator after it. The macerator's velocity added with his own, and-
-the leopard somehow put on a burst of speed, turning in the space of a ten-ryou piece, and easily evaded the granite chunks. Okay, these cats were fast.
Hazō landed on the rock just above the mouth of the cave and turned to see a giant, glowing set of jaws racing towards him. He tried to pulse his Rocket Boots to drop to the ground, but misjudged the angle and went right through the jaws. He felt them cutting and crunching at him. The Pangolin Earth Armor chipped and broke, and he felt the Pangolin Conditioning Technique break, sparing his shoulder from a dislocation.
He finally hit the ground on his opposite shoulder and rolled to his feet as earth flowed back up to encase him again. The last two leopards that had been guarding the cave mouth were spreading out to pounce on him from either side.
Leopards, using teamwork?
They might have pinned him if they'd picked a fight a month ago, before Hazō had his new Rocket Boots. Instead, Hazō leaned to the left, pulsing chakra and getting under the leopard as it leapt. One swipe left a trio of slashes through its ribcage, and the second-
It dashed away before Hazō could secure the kill, and Hazō flipped midair and bounced back towards the second leopard as its pounce landed hard on the stone. Before it could recover, Hazō's Force Claw cut through its face, tearing away its nose, an eye, and half its jaw.
The glowing rocks lost their light and dropped, disintegrating into golden dust as they fell. Hazō turned to see the fight he'd left behind– Cansaku was bleeding as he tore out a leopard's throat and Cancurunchu was disappearing into the forest after Canrippu's killer, while Cankamu had moved up beside Hazō and torn a vicious gash through the side of the meteor-thrower.
The leopard that had hit him with the chakra-construct jaws was wriggling its way through another ninjutsu. Hazō dashed towards the leopard, Force Claws outstretched to cut it to ribbons, only to find himself barely too slow to land the strike. The leopard completed its ninjutsu, sending another cloud of claws racing towards Cankamu and catching the dog with a silenced whimper, while the previous set of chakra-construct jaws turned on Hazō. He punched through it, letting the grinding energy break itself against his stone armor.
He pushed himself through the jaws and saw the paired leopards moving in behind the energy construct for a last-ditch attack. They had been too slow before Hazō had maimed them, and now Hazō dismantled them easily. One swipe severed a leg. Another cut through neck and spine, leaving the leopard's head flapping as its momentum finished its leap. The other, whose face Hazō had mauled, Hazō simply knocked out of the air with an elbow. A pulse to his Rocket Boots let him drag the Force Claws along the full length of its spine, nearly cutting the whole beast in half.
Hazō felt the air ripple at an incredibly fast movement. He turned, seeing Cancurunchu attacking a leopard cloaked in black shadow by the cave mouth, above Cankamu's savaged body. As he watched, the shadows wrapped around Cancurunchu. An instant later, Cancurunchu stumbled out of the darkness, a trio of claw marks trailing blood down his face.
Hazō's blood ran cold. If Cancurunchu couldn't land a hit on the leopard even going all out, who could?
The world dimmed again as Canzappu fired his ninjutsu into the cloud of shadow, but the concentrated sunlight failed to break the darkness. Hazō pulsed his Rocket Boots again as an arc of glowing white energy cut through where he'd been standing, but as he turned to the enemy, Cansaku was already tearing the offending leopard to shreds.
Chakra-construct bees raced towards the jaw-hurler, and Hazō decided to deal with the weaker leopard first. He didn't need to be anywhere near the fight with whatever passed for a Leopard jōnin. Canhachi's bees distracted the ninjutsu-user just long enough for Hazō to land a slice halfway through the leopard's foreleg, then he was surrounded by the chakra-construct jaws again.
His stone armor protected him. He pushed forward through the buzzing, grinding claws as they tried and failed to cut through the Pangolin Earth Armor, and closed in on the retreating leopard. He feinted to the left, it dodged right – and its injured foreleg buckled. It rolled to its feet a hair too slow, and Hazō punched his Force Claws right through the top of its head.
It dropped, and Hazō turned, pulsing his scarily-low chakra once again to rush back towards the mouth of the cave. If he arrived at a bloodbath, he wouldn't be able to fight the leopard off himself. He'd have to unsummon and tell Cannai that the whole team had died, and he'd-
Hazō arrived to see Cansaku panting atop the body of the massive black leopard. The Dog was in the process of dragging the Force Claws on the side of his harness through the dead leopard's body.
Canfuwumpu shook his head, making his ears flap silently on either side, and the ground opened up and spat out a collapsed Cancurunchu. A moment later, the grizzled veteran pushed himself up to all four paws.
They all waited a long, silent second for any other leopard to burst from the forest and kill their weakened squad. No Leopard came. They had won.
o-o-o
Hyōosore was the eldest of the cubs, and he was quaking as the footsteps entered the cave. The unearthly screaming had stopped a few minutes ago, which had given them the slightest bit of hope that the bad times had finished. But the adults didn't come, and the footsteps that were approaching weren't in fours – they were in twos. That meant it was a human, a summoner, the Dog Summoner approaching them. The adults were all dead, and Hyōosore wasn't strong enough to fight off the human. But he had to try, for his sister and his cousins and-
He flinched away as a light suddenly lit the cave, and he heard his sister gasp and back up to the wall as well. He felt a trickle of urine spray down to the ground.
"We mean you no harm," the human said. "The other adults of your pack will soon be here to take care of you. But know this – we have killed twelve of your kind today in payment for the six dogs that your people killed on the border just north of here yesterday. Dog will continue to retaliate in kind, taking two Leopard lives for every dog that dies until the raids stop, or until Hyōhakken comes to meet Cannai at the border to discuss peace terms."
Hyōosore's eyes had gotten used to the light barely enough for him to see the human brandish the thing he was holding. It was the severed head of his grandmother.
"Understand this: today, we took the first of our steps of escalation. You do not want to see our last."
With that, the human dropped the head to the ground and walked out.
o-o-o
Trouble on the way out? 1d8: 1 means they get attacked by someone on the way out of Leopard.
1d8: 4
They make it back to Dog with no issues.
"Twelve leopards killed, yes," Cannai said. "But at what cost? Three skilled warriors of mine dead, and three more so gravely injured that they'll be out of commission for months. What went wrong?"
Cancurunchu was among those gravely injured dogs, and Canfuwumpu had begged for the sweet release of sleep, so it was Hazō and Cansaku delivering the report to Cannai.
"The mission started out fine," Hazō said. "We met a medium size hunting group and annihilated them, and killed a couple more with traps. It all went wrong when we found one of their camps."
"Yeah," Cansaku said, enthusiasm dulled by the events of the day. "See, there was this leopard there, a really, really strong one. I killed her in the end, me and Cancurunchu and also Canfuwumpu and Canzappu helped out I guess, but she was crazy strong like you wouldn't believe Alpha, I mean it. On the way back, I talked with Cancurunchu and he said he thought he knew who it was. Apparently, he thinks she was this really strong Leopard warrior named…"
o-o-o
"Hyōhisan. Is dead. Have I heard correctly?"
"Yes, Lord Hyōhakken," said the messenger, cowering back from Hyōhakken's viridian gaze.
Hyōhakken glanced to the side, where that silver-coated leopard lounged. Or – normally lounged. Now, he was sitting upright, ears perked up and eyes focused directly on the messenger.
"The Dog Summoner. What color was the tuft of fur atop his head?"
The messenger leopard cringed. "I do not know, Lord Hyōkagyaku."
"If he killed Hyōhisan so casually, then who else could it be but my old friend?" the leopard said, rising to his feet. He stretched slowly, impossibly slowly, leaning back then forward and letting every joint flex and relax.
"I wonder what made him remember me after so many years of abandonment," Hyōkagyaku mused. "Forgive me, Hyōhakken, but I'm afraid I must go and see if he wishes to dance with me once again."
Hyōhakken considered Hyōkagyaku. Should he reveal that the new Dog Summoner was but a stripling, not the old man that had spun the song of lightning and death across a hundred Leopard pelts?
No. After so many years of ennui, he should let his brother enjoy a hunt for at least a little while. Perhaps he would even kill that troublesome Dog Summoner.
"I would not stop you, Hyōkagyaku."
"Hyōhakken."
The silver-coated leopard disappeared into the tall grass.
Balance Changes/Things I Will Do Differently Than EJ
Tentatively ruling that you can't use two Reflexive Supplemental ninjutsu simultaneously when you're attacked (so no double Strength of the Pack) as people in general cannot multithread complex chakra manipulations. You can still use a RefSup ninjutsu and a different RefSup (like activating CATEARS).
The leopards kind of got embarrassed last time by their clan's +AB (relative to the dogs' +3*AB), so I'm ticking up their racial perk to +2*AB on physical skills and +AB on Alertness.
[NB: I am realizing after the fact that I did not actually incorporate the +AB to initiative that the Leopards had. Tragically, this would likely have mattered. Ah well.]
I realize this is not how I would rule it if these guys were player-side – I'd probably find a more nuanced way to represent their individual strength. Alas, I do not have TR200, so I will accept that this is imperfect and move on.
This is an innate bonus, so it doesn't count towards Leopard buffcaps, if there are any leopards with buffs.
[NB: I am also realizing that I forgot to make any buff for the Leopards, even the tiniest +AB for the Leopard jōnin. Tragically, this probably should have happened and would definitely have mattered. Alas.]
To balance this perk out a little, Strength of the Pack is being buffed slightly:
I'm having it affect ninjutsu so Canzappu, Canfuwumpu, and Canhachi don't feel left out. It'll only be 1x taggable there though.
Instead of requiring that every dog be in the same Zone, the ninjutsu continues to function as long as every dog is within a Zone of every other. That way, some amount of tactical movement is possible, but the Dogs still need to stay close together.
The dogs would have bought up to 6 FP before going on the combat mission (have I mentioned that I dislike FP-buying?), and probably should have spent some on the last fight, so I'm setting their FP at 6 - 1d4 + 1 (+1 is for winning the combat, +2 for Canrippu who took a Mild):
Cancurunchu 3 FP
Canzappu 3 FP
Cankamu 4 FP
Canfuwumpu 5 FP
Canchō 3 FP
Canhachi 4 FP
Canrippu 7 FP
Cansaku 5 FP
Random leopards aren't passively sitting around at 6 FP because they don't expect a fight. Instead, they're at 1 + 1d4 FP each.
For simplicity's sake, all the summon combatants have two combat-usable Aspects. Probably this should scale and the genin-ish combatants should have around one and the jōnin-ish around three, but whatever.
Weapons ratings: The dogs are rocking Weapons:1 on their close-combat attacks, the leopards get Weapons:2.
Tactics:
The dogs will work together tactically and try to take down the strongest enemies first, when possible.
They'll flee once they take a Moderate, since they don't want to weigh down the pack, or if the pack is fleeing.
The leopards will not work together tactically. They'll try to take out the weakest enemies first, and will avoid attacking in melee if another leopard is already engaged.
They'll flee once they take a Mild – they're in it for their own skin.
[NB: I realize this didn't happen in the combat – this is because the leopards were defending the cubs, who they were the parents/aunts/uncles/grandparents of.]
I've been inconsistent in the past about whether summons get chakra boost or not – tentatively, I'm saying that they do.
I dislike ninjutsu that directly targets secondary stats for balance reasons. Ninjutsu that previously targeted Resolve will now target Resolve + ⅓ CR instead.
Pre-Combat Prep
The team retreats to Dog, rests for 8 hours on a skytower, and gets back into Leopard.
Hazō and the dogs have a few options – they can run into another hunting group, they can run into a non-hunting group, they can find a camp, they can find a trail (which they can follow forwards into a group or backwards to camp), or a hunting group can find their trail and ambush them.
1-6: ambushed by leopards
7-9: find hunting group
10-12: find non-hunting group
13-18: run into a camp
19-30: find trail (and follow to a camp)
31-100: find nothing this hour, reroll (this entry here to determine how much chakra is regenerated over time)
Gut check – this feels right. The chance of finding a camp would be higher if Hazō could use skywalkers + telescopes, but the dogs don't want to risk it. Rolling it out:
Nd100: 27 aaaand we're done, that was quick!
20 minutes after coming back into Leopard, Canhachi sniffs out a trail, which the dogs can then follow to its source. They want to do the "tunnel under, buff up, break through and fight" strat, but need to localize it first – they don't know how far the camp is down the trail, and they can't follow the trail while tunneling.
The camp has 3d10 (2, 4, 10) = 16 leopards, of whom 3d4 (1, 1, 3) = 5 are cubs. Of the remaining 11 adults, 2d4 (2, 3) = 5 are out and about (in small groups, maybe solo), 1d4 (4) are sleeping, leaving 2 awake and keeping watch over the cubs. All adult leopards are combat capable, but some are weaker (think: 20s/30s in their combat stats; just enough to hunt prey by), while others are strong. The two awake ones are equivalent to (2d100 [1-40: genin, 41-90: chūnin, 91-100 jōnin; though these ranges aren't accurate to Human Path demographics]: 65, 97; wow!) a chūnin and a fairly strong jōnin.
Cancurunchu and Canchō are the most confident in their stealth skills. They'll try to sneak forward to pin down the camp location without the leopards noticing. Ordinarily, sneaking up to the camp and back would take 10 minutes. They won't time-ladder it, since they don't want to leave the team alone for so long close to a leopard encampment – a large hunting group coming home could stumble across them at any moment.
The Leopard Jōnin, now named Hyōhisan, sees a pair of dogs trying to sneak up on her. Hyōhisan is a 1d6 (1-3: CQC, 4-5: 'normal' ninjutsu, 6: esoteric ninjutsu): 2 = CQC specialist, but she also has passable ninjutsu skills, of course. She will (1d4):
1: Play it cool until the dogs get closer, then eat their faces once they're in face-eating range.
2: Turn the hunt around on the dogs, and stalk them back.
3: Throw a ninjutsu at the dogs to scare them off – she's not in the mood for a hunt right now.
4: Do the smart thing and wake the camp.
1d4: 2
As Cancurunchu notices the camp and turns back to the pack, Hyōhisan takes note of her new prey. Once his back is fully turned, the leopard rouses herself, telling her junior to mind the cubs for a moment before slipping off into the shadows.
The dogs are going slow so as to not disturb the leopards – so Hyōhisan has plenty of time to line up an attack. She'll target the weaker-looking one on pure leopard instinct. Canchō will use Strength of the Pack immediately at Effect:4, spreading 2 tags to Cancurunchu and keeping 2 tags for himself.
Cancurunchu immediately realizes that this leopard is going to be trouble, and races out to rejoin the pack. While they're far enough away not to interrupt the stealth mission, they're not actually that far away in terms of Zones, so he gets there in a single Standard, then saves his Supplementals for defensive Strength of the Packs (so he can allocate the tags to whoever needs it).
[NB: I realize I forgot to actually use my ambush rules here – normally, I would have started initiative immediately after the ambushing attack, immediately giving Hyōhisan another turn with which to attack a Cancurunchu since her Alertness is higher than his. While no longer Flat-Footed, Cancurunchu wouldn't have Strength of the Pack available, and thus would have been pretty screwed. Instead, I treated the ambushing attack as Hyōhisan's turn (even though initiative shouldn't have started yet), and let Cancurunchu go right away. Oops.]
Hyōhisan follows with her Standard, and realizes that she's walking face-first into a miniature warparty. She'll immediately about-face and dash back with her Supplementals, probably taking her out of range of most of the party, but Canzappu can take a potshot with Focus Blast (Effect:3):
At this point, the dogs need to decide – do they press forward, or do they try to run? As established, Cancurunchu gets a bit battle-heated, and decides to press forward. Everyone gets their buffs up before the fight starts, so this is going to be a pure slugfest.
Meanwhile, Hyōhisan is waking the leopard camp. The four adult leopards that were sleeping were roughly (17, 32, 14, 45): two weaker genin, a stronger genin, and a weak chūnin (in terms of base stats; these Leopards are stronger than their human equivalents). Hazō takes two Standards to cast his techniques before the dog raiders start to run in, so the leopards are all woken and buffed up.
Hazō decides it's best to activate the MARS chain now rather than risk waiting for his low initiative, but they're too far from the combat to use a Banshee Fucker effectively – instead, he'll throw Banshees ahead of him as they run to keep the sound-denial up, and keep everyone silenced by Banshee Slayers. He also has his RRBs active, and everyone has their Force Claws (or Force Jaws, as the case may be) active.
Map
Grabbing a battlemap off the internet:
Zone 1: Clifftop. Border:2 to get here. High Ground. Forested.
Zone 2: The Den. The cubs are hiding in a crack in the wall.
Hyōkutsū
Hyōkirai
Hyōsonae
Hyōuppun
Zone 3: Low Ridge. Big Boulders. Patchy Forest. High Ground to 4.
Hyōgekido
Zone 4: Watering Hole. Low Ground – Border:1 to get up to 3 or 5.
Cancurunchu
Cankamu
Canrippu
Cansaku
Zone 5: High Ridge. Cliff Wall. Patchy Forest. High Ground to 4.
Hyōhisan
Zone 6: Lowland. Dead Trees. Border:1 to get to 7.
Zone 7: Entry of the Dogs.
Canzappu
Canfuwumpu
Canhachi
Hazō
Hyōhisan and Hyōgekido are hiding, trying to catch the dogs unaware with a flank:
Hyōhisan (Stealth): ?? + ?? (Shadow Blend) + ? = ??
Hyōgekido (Stealth): ?? + ?? + ? = ??
Cancurunchu (Alertness): 61 + 3 = 64
[not rolling the rest of the dogs as they have no shot of noticing Hyōhisan]
Cancurunchu notices Hyōgekido and calls him out as they enter Zone 4, starting the battle. Hyōhisan is hidden.
[NB: all Leopard dice were replaced with + ?, even the negative rolls they had.]
Round 1
Initiative:
?? Hyōhisan
63 Cancurunchu
57 Canzappu
49 Cankamu
?? Hyōkutsū
46 Cansaku
46 Canrippu
?? Hyōgekido
41 Canhachi
40 Canfuwumpu
38 Hazō (no chakdar benefit, as everyone is already boosting around him so it's just buzzing constantly)
?? Hyōkirai
?? Hyōsonae
?? Hyōuppun
Hyōhisan
Hyōhisan, again, is not particularly tactically minded. She'll burn her surprise going after the weakest link she sees in front of her: Canrippu, who is limping slightly thanks to his Mild. Supp jump down, Standard attack:
Hyōhisan (Face-Nomming): ?? + ?? (boost) + ?? (Pounce from High Ground) + ?? (innate Leopard Clan bonus) + ?? (Flat-Footed – bonus increased by a stunt) + ?? (Shadow Blend) + ? = ??
Canrippu (Athletics): 52 - 3 (Mild) + 6 (boost) + 18 (Strength of the Pack) + 12 (2x Invokes) + 15 (5xFP ½ invokes) + 0 = 100
?? + 2 = ?? stress, Canrippu is instantly dead.
With that done, Hyōhisan will jump back up onto the Zone 5 ridge (she can do this with a Supplemental, thanks to her Leopard Clan perk).
Cancurunchu
Just saw another one of his pack members die. He has no tolerance for that – he would immediately jump on Hyōhisan… but he can't with the Border:1 needed to get up to her! He'll Block against any Leopard attacking.
Cancurunchu (Jaw and Claw): 64 + 7 (boost) + 21 (3x tag SotP) + 9 = 101
Canzappu
Need to kill Hyōhisan, but she's too agile to be targeted now that she's back in the shadows. Hyōgekido is getting ready to jump down. Canzappu will target that Leopard before it can deal any more damage.
Attacker wins on a tie, so Canzappu deals 3 stress.
Cankamu
Likewise, Hyōhisan is a bit too strong to deal with right now. He doesn't want the Leopards playing keep away, so he'll specifically Block against any Leopard running away after their attack. Together with Cancurunchu, they should be able to trap any Leopard that comes into the Zone.
Cankamu (Jaw and Claw): 59 + 6 (boost) + 18 (3x tag SotP) + 9 = 92
Hyōkutsū
He's got his meteors ready, it's time for a lightshow! He'll send in six meteors, sending them at (Cancurunchu, Cancurunchu, Cankamu, Cankamu, Cansaku, Cansaku). This isn't 6 attacks – it's 2 attacks per target, and he gets to choose the better roll.
Cansaku
Has nothing to do immediately, so will take Full Defense, since the two Leopards are on high ground on either side of him.
Hyōgekido
Jumps down to attack Cankamu, who seems weak since he just took a hit. Unfortunately, Cancurunchu is Blocking, so Hyōgekido needs to beat the Block to get an attack in:
Pretty good, but doesn't beat a 100. He can't make it to Cankamu, and he doesn't want to tangle with Cancurunchu because Cancurunchu looks too tough – Hyōgekido is gonna get his face eaten. He'll just try to jump back up, which is when Cankamu finally moves in to pin him down:
[NB: There was a brief QM discussion about whether Blocking with a melee skill should make an attack when enemies fail to beat the Block. Balance aside, I could see narrative logic either way, but in this case, I ruled that Cancurunchu could not make an attack. For balance reasons, I probably wouldn't apply an attack in the future.]
Hyōgekido takes ?? stress! That's a Mild and a Severe!
Canfuwumpu
He doesn't have much useful to do – but his teammates are taking fire in Zone 4, and he can't let that keep happening. Moving closer also makes him more likely to do something tactically useful eventually, and keeps the Dogs moving forward. He'll run forward into Zone 4, then take Full Defense while acting like bait. Hopefully that soaks some hits away from other members of his party.
Hazō
The Dogs can't run forward to deal with the meteor user, since that would break their Strength of the Pack bond. It's Hazō's responsibility to deal with that. They're a ninjutsu user, so Hazō needs to actually neutralize them, not just Goo Bomb them, so he'll attack with Taijutsu.
Supplemental: RRB-boosted Sprint to cross two Zones into the den Zone. [NB: Is this how this should work? This is extremely strong. Tentatively ruling that yes, RRBs let you cross two Zones in one Supp (assuming no border) for now, but will come back to this later.]
Standard: Attack (saving a Supplemental for emergency Substitution)
Hazō (Alertness): 36 + 2 (Living Roots) + 10 (Eye Spy) + 3 = 51
Hyōkutsū (⅓ Stealth): ⅓ * (?? + ?? (Shadow Blend)) + ? = ??
(This is so easy I'm going to skip any Alertness checks against Shadow Blend in melee)
Hazō deals ? + 4 = ?? stress, that's a Mild, Moderate, and Severe!
Round 2
?? Hyōhisan
63 Cancurunchu
57 Canzappu
49 Cankamu
?? Hyōkutsū
46 Cansaku
?? Hyōgekido
41 Canhachi
40 Canfuwumpu
38 Hazō
?? Hyōkirai
?? Hyōsonae
?? Hyōuppun
Hyōhisan
Attacking Cankamu didn't go so well for Hyōgekido – Cankamu is still on Hyōgekido, so let that guy figure it out for himself. Go for Cansaku instead. Cancurunchu will try to interpose:
Hyōhisan narrowly evades Cancurunchu's Block! But, it's at the cost of her High Ground bonus.
Hyōhisan (Face-Nomming): ?? + ?? (boost) + ?? (innate) + ?? (Shadow Blend) + ? = ??
Cansaku (Jaw and Claw): 56 + 6 (boost) + 18 (SotPx3) + 12 (2x Invokes) + 6 = 98 Cansaku spends a FP for ½ AB, check total is 101.
Cansaku takes 1 + 2 = 3 stress, filling his stress track. How lucky.
Hyōhisan bounds back into the shadows.
Hyōhisan (Athletics): ?? + ?? (boost) + ?? (innate) + ?? (Bounding Evasion) + ?? (Shadow Blend) + ? = ??
Easily evading Cankamu's Block.
Cancurunchu
They need to deal with Hyōhisan! But Cancurunchu is almost out of chakra! He can't move to Zones 2 or 3, because he'll break the packbond, so he instead Standard moves into Zone 5, hoping that this baits Hyōhisan into attacking him.
Canzappu
Moves forward to Zone 4 to give the packbond some more breathing room. Hyōhisan is a problem, but does Canzappu have a shot of landing a hit? It may be better to target the meteor-thrower.
That's another miss! But Hyōkutsū is out of Bounding Evasion RefSups momentarily, if some dog can take advantage of that…
Cankamu
Supplemental: move into the Zone with Hyōkutsū, breaking the packbond.
Supplemental: Strength of the Pack:4, making a new bond with Cansaku and himself.
Standard: Attack Hyōkutsū.
With the Force Claws, that's ? + 4 = ? stress, a Moderate.
Hyōkutsū needs to make a TN(stress * 10) Resolve check or lose Meteor Shower.
Hyōkutsū (Resolve): hahaha
Nope, the meteors go dull.
Hyōkutsū
Unfortunately, the meteors are a full-round action to get active, something he can't afford right now. He'll back up into Zone 3 (with Hyōkirai) and use a secondary attack on Cankamu, keeping one Supplemental for Bounding Evasion. He'd go into Zone 6, except the elevation doesn't work out for him to keep being able to target Cankamu.
Hyōkutsū dodges with a touch of luck, but he's barely keeping ahead of the attacks, and is now out of Supplementals…
Canfuwumpu
Debuffing Hyōhisan is priority number 1.
Standard: Follow Cancurunchu into Zone 5, hopefully to get the debuff off next round.
Hazō
Hyōkutsū is a weak target, but Hazō's attacks are rolling low enough that he doesn't think he's likely to hit even an injured Hyōkutsū. Instead, he'll attack Hyōkirai, taking a Supplemental to move into range before attacking:
Hazō takes 2 + 1 = 3 stress, of which PEA soaks all of it.
This summoner is annoying, but there's another dog now in the entryway to the clutch, ready to attack the cubs. Supplemental Sprint away (into Zone 6), then Fangs from Afar onto Cankamu.
Hazō deals ? + 4 = ? stress, which would kill two Leopards.
Round 3
?? Hyōhisan
63 Cancurunchu
57 Canzappu
49 Cankamu
?? Hyōkutsū
46 Cansaku
41 Canhachi
40 Canfuwumpu
38 Hazō
?? Hyōkirai
Cancurunchu overdraws for a Moderate! Canzappu overdraws for a Moderate and a Severe! Canhachi overdraws for a Moderate and Severe!
Hyōhisan
Well, these Dogs are annoying. Moreover, there's one in particular that's hanging out by the entry to the den, and all the old defenders there have been taken down or scared away. That can't be allowed.
Supplemental: Sprint to Zone 2.
Standard: Attack Cankamu.
With Jashin's favor, ? + 4 = ? stress is barely enough to kill.
[NB: I know I said the Dogs would focus on taking down the strong enemies, so Cansaku should have gone after Hyōhisan here. This was more tactically optimal I think, but my mistake nonetheless, as people shouldn't always be optimal (see: the Leopards).]
Canhachi
Attack Hyōkirai to take down the weird jaw-swarm things!
Jashin's favor has turned against our bloodied Leopard jōnin. Hyōhisan is now taking a -12 to physical skills, and has a new Aspect "Sleepy" that Canfuwumpu can pass tags around on. Half of the dogs are from Canfuwumpu's pack, and have taken the appropriate combo stunt to exploit this with SotP.
[NB: Oops, I forgot I was going to coinflip for each dog to see if they could combine with SotP, and just let everyone use it. Oh well.]
No dice. Should really be focusing on the summoner.
Round 4
?? Hyōhisan
61 Cancurunchu
54 Canzappu
46 Cansaku
41 Canhachi
38 Hazō
?? Hyōkirai
35 Canfuwumpu
Cancurunchu, Canzappu, and Canhachi take their overdraw Consequences! Cancurunchu overdraws for a Severe!
Hyōhisan
Debuffed, how annoying. The rest of her allies are dead, but she's still strong enough to kill these Dogs. Starting with the annoying Canfuwumpu.
Jashin smiles on Cancurunchu, and he barely deals ? + 4 = ? stress, inflicting a Mild Consequence!
Well, that was underwhelming. He's taking a Severe next round, all his strong dogs are Severe'd up, so this fight is lost. He's gonna call the retreat and back up a Zone so as to not let Canfuwumpu out of the packbond.
Canzappu
Retreat! Breaks the packbond running away.
Cansaku
He's young, he's impulsive, he's going for the kill.
Hyōhisan
Neither of the Dogs in her Zone are injured, and the two injured ones have ran off! She can't go running around willy-nilly – she'll fight to the death to defend the den. Still, any attack is probably insta-death, so she takes Full Defense.
[NB: I forgot to apply Hyōhisan's Full Defense, which would have let her survive this attack given Cansaku's bad roll, and Cansaku's future attacks would be much weaker without the double tag. Canfuwumpu doesn't have a direct attack technique, Hazō's not hitting high enough numbers to hit an injured jōnin, and the whole Dog team was ultra-low on chakra, so Hyōhisan might legitimately have won or at least stalemated from this point had I actually remembered…]
Combat is over!
Hazō has spent 5 FP (1 on the Declare for Scenery Clone seal array, 4 in the fight) and gained 1 FP for winning a major conflict, leaving him at 3 FP.
Hazō is back in Aisu Bay Murderland (now featuring time acceleration and 24/7 lighting!), and has unstagnated his combat domain. After the full explanation of how things went, Cannai had no objections to any decisions made and praised the team's perseverance in the face of adversity (but Hazō suspects that Cancurunchu will be privately admonished later for charging into unknown danger when a safe retreat was likely possible). Unless the Leopards quiet down after this, Cannai might request another mission of Hazō in a couple weeks' time.
Hazō will need to do a few days of scribing to make up the ridiculous amount of MARS and Force Claw seals used.
"I have an idea," Hazō said. "I have a big cauldron in one of my seals. We can set it up on a skytower so other leopards can't interfere. We fill it up with water, tie up the leopard's head so that it can't drown itself, then light a fire under the cauldron. The water will slowly heat up and boil the leopard to death. They'll get to feel the water slowly going from cool, to warm, to boiling. Even when the water gets boiling, it takes a long time to die, so the leopard will spend a long time feeling their skin melting and their organs slowly cooking."
The dogs around him had gone silent during the explanation. Canchō had shuddered. Wimps. With water instead of oil, the smell wouldn't even be that bad.
Rolls coming after I can get them cleaned up. Hazō will need to do a few days of scribing to make up the ridiculous amount of MARS and Force Claw seals used.
It's funny, but I do feel rather bad for that depressed, stupid Leopard. Imagine trying to "hunt" someone who is usually in another dimension, and who can effectively teleport from place to place.
I really liked this fight. It was very active and busy, with Hazou right in the middle of the action trading blows with multiple different foes. And I particularly liked the fog of war in it, the part where Hazou didn't know what was going on with the expert Leopard until he had the opportunity to turn around and check. But it just felt really nice to see Hazou's bag of tricks finally all come together as a direct combatant instead of a supporting role.
I really liked this fight. It was very active and busy, with Hazou right in the middle of the action trading blows with multiple different foes. And I particularly liked the fog of war in it, the part where Hazou didn't know what was going on with the expert Leopard until he had the opportunity to turn around and check. But it just felt really nice to see Hazou's bag of tricks finally all come together as a direct combatant instead of a supporting role.
You gain the Aspect "Deaf", which expires 10 minutes after you leave the AOE. Note that this does not prevent Seventh-Path natives from communicating, since their 'speech' is actually mind-to-mind
Ah I see, being that barrier breaking in advance is possible, and that Hazou unstagnated from just his first fight, does he think he made some progress towards breaking his next barrier in this fight?
Great, thanks. As for SC training, it didn't cover the update day today. But if Hazou did it from say 5-8 PM in Toad, he could get the SC XP from today without issue.
Also, any chance we could get research results from Chapter 664? There were some prep days people were interested in.
"If he killed Hyōhisan so casually, then who else could it be but my old friend?" the leopard said, rising to his feet. He stretched slowly, impossibly slowly, leaning back then forward and letting every joint flex and relax.
"I wonder what made him remember me after so many years of abandonment," Hyōkagyaku mused. "Forgive me, Hyōhakken, but I'm afraid I must go and see if he wishes to dance with me once again."
