It's just going to be in the pile of things Naruto will twitch an eyelid at but sigh and rubberstamp anyway as being Cool All Along Yup once we get back, as opposed to something we have to irrationally argue about later.
 
He would need to guard SC info the way he guards his and our seal research info (presumably involving a lot of indistinct quiet muttering)
 
So if we're giving it to Kagome, do we give it to Yuno? How about Tenten and Miyuki?
Tbh I think when the gang is all together we need to speech at the noobies who don't know Hazou well

Frankly I'm fine teaching SC to anyone who thinks they will benefit. Now is not the time to start pulling our punches, it's time to start pulling out all the stops to win.

EDIT: for that matter, if any of our awesome jutsu would benefit Kei's two gfs then I say teach em tbh. And I'd hope that they would in turn share anything that might help the group. I don't want to land in a spot of danger wishing we'd done it sooner.
 
Last edited:
Kagome deserves basic opsec skill. It would make him happier. He wants to be someone who can be confided in. Someone relied on.
It's too bad he isn't this person? Like sure, I sympathize, but he's emphatically not someone we can trust not to spoil opsec on stuff. That's a shame. If he was able to start leveling deceit or smth I might be more willing to trust him with stuff. But I don't think he's capable.

This is not a question of trust, it is a question of smart and stupid.
 
Tbh I think when the gang is all together we need to speech at the noobies who don't know Hazou well

Frankly I'm fine teaching SC to anyone who thinks they will benefit. Now is not the time to start pulling our punches, it's time to start pulling out all the stops to win.

EDIT: for that matter, if any of our awesome jutsu would benefit Kei's two gfs then I say teach em tbh. And I'd hope that they would in turn share anything that might help the group. I don't want to land in a spot of danger wishing we'd done it sooner.
So I assume we'll need to tell them about Runes? I can't imagine it won't come up. I'm fine teaching them our jutsu we got from Oro, Tenten especially would probably benefit from CotWG. We should also provide them with RRB/FB if they want them.
 
Kagome already has all the OPSEC on Shadow Clones. He knows how they work as was explained to him by Jiraiya IIRC. Teaching him the actual jutsu shouldn't change much in that category. And who cares about Treason when we're missing and trying to save the world?
 
If he was able to start leveling deceit or smth I might be more willing to trust him with stuff. But I don't think he's capable.
It's not really on the table, as I understand it. Like, "get Kagome better at OPSEC" is something we've tried many times from many angles over the years, and the result has always been failure, accompanied by QM statements of varying levels of explicitness saying, in short, "this will never happen and Kagome as a character is incapable of it".

If I were to speculate, I would point at the -12 Deceit he rolled against the [whatever it was](Shifting Thing) and said he was Kagome Yu instead of Kagami Yusuke. There is a coherent train of thought from there to suggest that "Kagome Yu" as a being is definitionally incapable of lying. Like, literally, the thing that defines him is lying badly, the baseline truth from which all of Kagome Yu was constructed.

But speculations aside, I do not expect that the N+1th attempt to get Kagome better at lying will finally work this time. An awareness that everyone would dearly like him to clam up about certain topics (when he remembers) is the best passive OPSEC defense we can get. What proves much more reliable is active OPSEC defense, i.e. having someone else in the room to elbow him before he spills the beans. So imo if we want Kagome to be less of an OPSEC leak, that's the only sensible angle to approach from.

The baseline implementation of it can be somewhat demeaning. Giving Kagome a minder everywhere he goes is a pretty rude signal that we do not trust him on his own, no matter how true it is that we don't trust him on his own or how much he understands that he can't be trusted on his own. I brainstormed a bit, a couple pages ago, on plausible Minatoseal projects to improve active defense, such as an automated Minatoseal that detects forbidden topics and shuts him up, or a telepathic bond by which we could always be in "elbow him before he spills the beans" range without explicitly being a minder. I do not by any means consider that an exhaustive list of ideas, but it's the sort of thing that - if possible - I believe would actually succeed at improving Kagome's OPSEC.
So if we're giving it to Kagome, do we give it to Yuno?
We should probably make sure there's no arcane Isanese prohibition against it. I don't think we'd get hit by something like "my status as a cursed child means I'm not allowed to reproduce, which I believe creating a Shadow Clone would count as" because Yuno has an express intention to have kids when she and Noburi are of age, but far be it from me to assume we know every foible of Isan's (now mostly destroyed) traditions.

But yeah, if she's okay with it I'd teach it to her. We're on our own out here, and for as much as we primarily expect to only encounter Akatsuki-tier threats there's no guarantee what level of combat power we'll wind up needing.
 
It's too bad he isn't this person? Like sure, I sympathize, but he's emphatically not someone we can trust not to spoil opsec on stuff. That's a shame. If he was able to start leveling deceit or smth I might be more willing to trust him with stuff. But I don't think he's capable.

This is not a question of trust, it is a question of smart and stupid.
I'm not sure Kagome's ability or lack of ability to learn OPSEC is actually relevant anymore. We're now not expecting to return to Lead until and unless we have Akatsuki-killing runes. If we fail, Leaf will be destroyed, so Shadow Clone OPSEC is irrelevant. If we succeed, Leaf will have access to overwhelmingly powerful weapons (the ones we'll have made to kill Akatsuki) which it should be able to use to again become the most powerful village, rendering Shadow Clone far less important as a keystone of Leaf's military strength. It wouldn't make it unimportant, but the whole situation is a balance of risk.

Plus, no matter what details Kagome leaks about Shadow Clone inside Leaf, he's not going to go off on a mission, get captured, and leak the actual jutsu, which is IIRC the biggest reason for Shadow Clone OPSEC; part of it is that leaked information about the technique might let someone design hard counters, but most of it is that they don't want anyone who might plausibly get captured and interrogated to be able to teach the technique. (I don't have specific quotes, so I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's the biggest concern.)

It's not really on the table, as I understand it. Like, "get Kagome better at OPSEC" is something we've tried many times from many angles over the years, and the result has always been failure, accompanied by QM statements of varying levels of explicitness saying, in short, "this will never happen and Kagome as a character is incapable of it".
Do you have citations for this? I don't remember ever seeing people explicitly trying to get Kagome better at OPSEC, and though I'm sure it's happened at some point, I wonder if it was just the method that was off. My impression has been that Kagome thinks of himself the same way we think of him - as someone who's incapable of lying - so he doesn't even try. However, I don't think we've ever tried, e.g., having Mari give him dedicated lessons, which might also help defuse his terror of social specs.
 
Last edited:
Do you have citations for this? I don't remember ever seeing people explicitly trying to get Kagome better at OPSEC, and though I'm sure it's happened at some point, I wonder if it was just the method that was off. My impression has been that Kagome thinks of himself the same way we think of him - as someone who's incapable of lying - so he doesn't even try. However, I don't think we've ever tried, e.g., having Mari give him dedicated lessons, which might also help defuse his terror of social specs.
No citations, sorry. This is something that's been happening since before I joined the quest, and comes up sporadically and sometimes without any visible evidence left behind (i.e. sometimes we toss some ideas around and then it gets shut down before we do any plans about it). I'm no faflec, these old conversations would take effort to find are beyond my reach.

The Mari thing has been tried, though. Pretty early on, IIRC, ultimately yielding no substantive results other than perhaps a greater awareness in Kagome about his problem, which is about where he sits today. Again, I don't have the citations for that, but I have enough recollection of it that I'm pretty sure we've tried the low-hanging fruit of that shape.
 
"my status as a cursed child means I'm not allowed to reproduce, which I believe creating a Shadow Clone would count as"

We already un-cursed Yuno,
"Gōketsu Yuno shall face Azai Shūsuke in single combat," Pantomaimu proclaimed. "If Gōketsu Yuno's curse cannot be lifted, then the worthiest of all shinobi shall surely defeat the least worthy with ease."

It was a whole spectacle. But I would be worried about her bloodline:

What will our children be like? We're going to have many children. Will they have my red eyes or his pale ones? My eyes are very rare. They're supposed to be proof of a cursed bloodline, but I inherited them from Mummy, and no one ever says she was cursed. If I can't pass them on, it'll be like she never existed. But on the other hand, his eyes are from one of the greatest Bloodline Limits in history. Who could ever say they don't want their children to have a Bloodline Limit?

So if we give her SC we might have another Snowflake/Singularity situation. Not really a good thing while we are a missing-nin researcher.
 
So if we give her SC we might have another Snowflake/Singularity situation. Not really a good thing while we are a missing-nin researcher.
On the other hand, she will have the most expert people in the world on hand to help her deal with this. (Plus, Kei needs some way to overcome her leadership barriers.)
 
The Mari thing has been tried, though. Pretty early on, IIRC, ultimately yielding no substantive results other than perhaps a greater awareness in Kagome about his problem, which is about where he sits today. Again, I don't have the citations for that, but I have enough recollection of it that I'm pretty sure we've tried the low-hanging fruit of that shape.
Hmm. If it was early on, might Kagome do better if we tried again now? He's got a lot less 'insane paranoid missing-nin' over the course of the quest; he has independent meaningful relationships with people now (Honoka, for example) in a way he didn't early in the quest. He might be a lot more able to follow that kind of social training now than he was back then. Maybe ask Mari if she thinks it might work first?

It was a whole spectacle. But I would be worried about her bloodline:
[snip]
So if we give her SC we might have another Snowflake/Singularity situation. Not really a good thing while we are a missing-nin researcher.
I don't think we have any reason to think Yuno has a bloodline. She's saying she was told she had a cursed bloodline, but then in the same paragraph she uses the phrase "Bloodline Limit" instead of just "bloodline" to describe the Byakugan; I think that makes it likely that her earlier use of 'bloodline' was in the mundane sense, rather than in the sense of having a ninja bloodline ability.
 
Wait, Shadow Clones have to follow orders to the best of their ability. Would a Kagome SC be better about OPSEC if you ordered him to?
That... is a very good point. And, coincidentally, also some of the most expert people in the world when it comes to shadow clones' effects on one's psyche are present.
 
On the other hand, she will have the most expert people in the world on hand to help her deal with this. (Plus, Kei needs some way to overcome her leadership barriers.)

Sure, I just want her to make an informed decision based on what we have already seen and in light of possible bloodline problems.

Just going: "Yeah I want a Sister-Daughter or a powerup" doesn't really cut it anymore. It's pf course possible that SC would make Yuno a lot more stable or even stronger.

I don't think we have any reason to think Yuno has a bloodline.

We have plenty of reason to check if the pink haired red eyed girl who's internal monologue hints at a bloodline has a bloodline. It's really just a talk with her and Noburi.

At minimum it's an "Hey, are we sure? SC does weired bloodline things" check.
 
Sure, I just want her to make an informed decision based on what we have already seen and in light of possible bloodline problems.

Just going: "Yeah I want a Sister-Daughter or a powerup" doesn't really cut it anymore. It's pf course possible that SC would make Yuno a lot more stable or even stronger.
I don't think that Yuno actually has a bloodline in the ninja sense of the word. She just wants her kids to have her eye color.
 
Wait, Shadow Clones have to follow orders to the best of their ability. Would a Kagome SC be better about OPSEC if you ordered him to?
I doubt it since Kagome's issue is more that he's careless or bad at concealing his OPSEC breaches. SC Kagome won't be any better at lying than normal Kagome imo
 
Back
Top