This is never, I will never vote to raise it into the 70s.
If you find yourself thinking "...but what if we..." NO! Get your spreadsheets recalibrated immediately.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- Tags
- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard
If you find yourself thinking "...but what if we..." NO! Get your spreadsheets recalibrated immediately.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
We ought to propose some social Stunts that boost Resolve in social scenarios (when it matters again)
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Simply Say No
Prereqs: Resolve 60
You discover the ancient ability forgotten even in legend: The ability to say no.
Saying no is a reflexive supplemental action that can be used to combat any offensive social rolls, genjutsu, or anything that affects your chakra system/cognition directly. When saying no, roll resolve + AB against the opposing roll.
No Harder
Prereqs: Resolve 70
When saying no, succeeding on the roll inflicts shifts of damage to your opposition's mental stress track.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Here's one that's not a meme, and that I think Hazou, if he invested into socials, would actually be able to do, due to his particular ... experiences ... with essies people.
Psycho Analysis
Req: Empathy 30, Rapport 30, Spending way more time than is healthy around people with 10+ TYS
With more than your share of failures, you've peeled back a little more of what makes other people tick and how their emotional traumas change them. This stunt does not guarantee any particular bonuses, but it provides you with significant insight into the traumas of those around you, which may of course be used against them, or to better them. This also provides Hazoupilot additional information.
If you are engaged in social combat against someone with a significant degree of trauma, a successful Empathy roll will, in addition to the usual revelation of their aspects, sometimes cause them to take penalties to further social combat against you, scaling with their TYS and how appropriately the particular traumas they have apply to the situation.
Psycho Analysis
Req: Empathy 30, Rapport 30, Spending way more time than is healthy around people with 10+ TYS
With more than your share of failures, you've peeled back a little more of what makes other people tick and how their emotional traumas change them. This stunt does not guarantee any particular bonuses, but it provides you with significant insight into the traumas of those around you, which may of course be used against them, or to better them. This also provides Hazoupilot additional information.
If you are engaged in social combat against someone with a significant degree of trauma, a successful Empathy roll will, in addition to the usual revelation of their aspects, sometimes cause them to take penalties to further social combat against you, scaling with their TYS and how appropriately the particular traumas they have apply to the situation.
- Location
- Can’t say. I know my momentum.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
We don't have a stunt that applies a bonus to Resolve for the amount of TYS you have. And, if I recall correctly, TYS can actually subtract from certain rolls in certain circumstances --and I could see trauma undermining one's Resolve, depending on how that trauma is leveraged by an enemy.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
Wait, we've left Leaf now, right? Aren't we making things more complicated than they need to be?
[X] Join the Akatsuki
[X] Join the Akatsuki
- Location
- Can’t say. I know my momentum.
Oh yeah. I got Resolve and Intimidation mixed up. 3am brain goes hard.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, normally you do resist Intimidation with Resolve + TYS (but you don't add TYS to psychic defense rolls). Hazou doesn't because he has Forged in Fire, which affects rapport and Empathy instead of Intimidation and Resolve
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
It was intended to affect rapport and empathy instead of intimidation, in the way FATE stunts usually do... *grumble grumble*
This is easily the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals.
iirc FiF is also what stops Hazo from collapsing into a miserable heap of trauma due to his unnaturally high TYS score. Or was, before we capstoned Resolve. His Resolve might be high enough now, but who knows?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That was my understanding as well, it lets him trauma hyperfocus on fixing the world instead of becoming Orochimaru-esque
The further his sanity twists the more obsessive he is about helping the world/people
I thought this was because he's controlled by the hivemind and as long as we vote in [X] Do Not Collapse Into a Miserable Heap of Trauma, Hazou will continue to truck along
Dunno, there's Hazopilot to consi--Wait. When was the last time we did that?
- Location
- Liverpool
All the new reacts are gone. Sadness.
i remember players proposing the idea. but don't recall the QMs ever confirming it.
- Location
- Can’t say. I know my momentum.
With how intimidating she is, I don't see how it's possible.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
shrimply level it the old fashioned way (or just be strong enough to explode someone's bones by looking at them)
More seriously she can't have the stunt (anymore) cuz she's a quitter who gave up on striving for real change and resigned herself to doing patch jobs :^)
We should say this, out loud, to her face, preferably when we're injured (again) and can't get away.
Do it when Hazo is badly injured enough for Tsunade to be acting nice (read: near death). Have him slur it out while in a delirium.
(Canon?) Interlude: Akatsuki's Mauling
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
(Canon?) Interlude: Akatsuki's Mauling
Sorry folks. Given the characters in the update it should be obvious that I can't reveal any of the rolls. Rather than wasting time with writing stuff with lots of question marks, it's easier to simply leave all the mechanics out.
"Huh," Kisame said, looking around with his hands on his hips. "I haven't seen this much chakra bubbling around in ages. You weren't wrong, kid."
"Don't call me 'kid'," Itachi said. There wasn't a lot of heat in the words. Not anymore, since hope that the instruction would actually be followed had long since died. Short of setting the shark-man on fire, nothing Itachi could do would get Kisame to stop using that annoying descriptor.
The two stood atop another rocky hillside among the endless rolling waves of rocky hillsides in Earth Country, perhaps eighty or a hundred miles southwest of Hidden Rock itself. Far enough that they were unlikely to encounter a patrol, but close enough that it was necessary to keep an eye out just in case.
"How'd you find this place, anyway?" Kisame asked, turning slowly in place as he reached out with his strange more-than-human senses. His hands floated in front of himself, stroking the air the way one might stroke fabric to determine its softness. He stared at his fine-scaled fingers in fascination, curling them and twisting them while watching the way their motion disturbed the local chakra flows. It was a thing that few living humans could perceive, and Kisame was one of the very few who could do it without having the clan name 'Hyūga' or 'Uchiha'. Granted, from what he had told Itachi he didn't actually see chakra the way the Sharingan did, but—
"Oy!" Kisame said, snapping his fingers at Itachi.
"Hm? Oh, right." Itachi shrugged. "I got stuck partnering CrazyPants and he wanted to go track down that Gōketsu kid who bailed out of Leaf recently. We were passing through this area a few days ago and I felt the hairs on my neck stand up the same way they did when we fought the golem. I wasn't sure it was the same, so..." He shrugged. "Second opinion."
Kisame went still for a moment at the word 'golem'. The Sharingan showed Itachi the tiny, unconscious movements of the man's facial muscles. The movements that showed sadness at Akatuski's joint loss and longing for the time when they had all had purpose and leadership. The time when things were simple and the path forward was clear.
"I miss him too," Kisame said quietly, not looking at his companion. "Everything is harder now."
Itachi cleared his throat and quickly moved the conversation to safer ground before his Sharingan became filmed over with tears. "So, do you think we're likely to see another eruption?"
"Yeah," Kisame said, nodding grimly. "Question is, do we try to dig down and harvest the metal before it erupts so as to head the whole thing off, or do we just bail?"
"And if we 'bail', do we notify Rock?"
"Yeah, and that."
Itachi chewed his lip, staring at the ground. One of the few things that the Sharingan did not do was allow one to see through solid rock.
"Can you tell where exactly the nodule is likely to be?" he asked. "I mean, I obviously know where it is but a second opinion is always helpful."
Kisame snorted. "This is why I call you 'kid'. Yeah, looks like it's about...here?" He paced to the side a few steps, then uncertainly one more, paused, and crouched to press his hand to the ground. "I think we can—"
An arm of living earth shot out of the ground and caught Kisame's wrist, yanking him down into the ground. The earth parted easily for his arm, overbalancing him so that he slammed his face into the hard-packed clay and rocks of Earth Country. The shark-man got one hand up in time to barely cushion the blow; Itachi winced at the crack of bone from Kisame's left wrist.
"Lightning Element Technique: Earth Dissolution!" Itachi shouted, fingers flicking through handseals as he blasted out the most powerful instance of the technique he had ever used. Raiton energy surged outwards and the ground beneath Kisame's knees was instantly converted to fine powder that exploded outwards. Itachi didn't wait to see what happened; he turned and sprinted east as fast as his chakra could carry him.
The golem was made of particles and nodules of chakra metal held together with earth and stone that had soaked up so much chakra from the environment that it had become semi-liquid. The technique did nothing to the chakra metal, but the earth that bound it together was eliminated. Bits of silvery metal fell into a pile at the bottom of the pit that Itachi had just created.
The pit was thirty feet wide, fifty feet deep, and centered on Kisame; the older ninja plummeted without a chance to catch himself, but lightning reflexes scooped the massive sword off his back and flung it outwards. The bandages that normally wrapped it spooled out, one end pulling back to loop itself around Kisame in a harness while the other end remained secured around the hilt of Samehada, the Shark Skin Blade.
Loosed from its cover, the Blade was revealed for what it was: a swarm of sharks fused together by ancient arts thankfully lost to the ages. Hundreds of mouths snapped, clamping onto the wall of the pit like a piton. The bandages tightened, reeling Kisame to the wall; the moment his foot touched a solid surface, he leaped up and out.
"That's not going to stop it! Run!" the shark-man shouted, hitting the ground and promptly sprinting away with so much chakra boost that the ground exploded beneath his sandals.
"Obviously!" Itachi snapped, already well on his way. Despite forty feet of head start, Kisame's ludicrous chakra reserves let him boost harder, run faster, and catch up before Itachi even began to form the word. The Blade was once again on Kisame's back and (thankfully!) wrapped in its bandages, compressed down into something that looked vaguely sword-like instead of like the monstrosity that it truly was.
"Can you Surge us out of here?" Itachi demanded as Kisame fell in next to him. He cursed when Kisame held out his right hand; the fingers were mangled, each joint shattered and splayed, and the pinky was flat-out missing. The sleeve of his robe had been torn away and the skin sanded off most of his forearm, but that was the cost of doing business as a top-tier ninja. The skin would heal but the hand was a problem.
Itachi held a kunai in front of himself, its polished surface providing a distorted and confusing reflection that the Sharingan rendered into a clear and detailed view of what was behind them. Thus, the eldest Uchiha ninja was able to fully appreciate when things went from catastrophic to worse.
There was a SKADOOM and a fountain of sparkling metal blasted up and out of the pit, arcing overhead and pouring itself to the ground in front of the two fleeing ninja. The soil and stones surged upwards on contact as the chakra metal reformed its golem body. This time it had four arms, non-symmetrically distributed and with different numbers of fingers on each. Its head was simply a lump, no neck, with three blazing red gems the size of walnuts in place of eyes.
Itachi poured chakra through the Sharingan, spending his reserves like a drunken wastrel, and the world slowed around him.
The world dragged to a halt and suddenly he was moving through nearly-frozen treacle. His bloodline accelerated his body, making him faster than nearly any ninja alive, but that was nothing compared to the speed of thought and perception that he was granted when he went all-out like this. He had all the time he needed to think, to calculate, to be precise, but his flesh could not remotely keep up. Kisame was moving like a snail.
The golem was moving at half normal ninja speed.
Itachi didn't waste time cursing. He had burned a quarter of his reserves on the Earth Dissolution and the Sharingan demanded a heavy price for its power; he needed this fight to end quickly. How?
Amaterasu? It hadn't done anything to the last golem.
The crows? They wouldn't carry Kisame.
Physical combat was out; chakra metal was indestructible, so the best you could do to a golem was make it fall apart for a few seconds. Besides, Kisame being forced to fight offhand meant that his swordwork would suffer, making a supremely difficult task essentially impossible. Not that his so-called 'chakra-draining' blade had made much of a dent on the last one of these things the team had fought. The golems didn't have chakra, they were chakra. Endless torrents of it. Samehada could drink and drink but could no more drain the golem than it could drain the ocean.
Kisame's ridiculous water jutsu would be the perfect thing to let them escape. Unfortunately, he couldn't make handseals, so no shark summoning and none of those ridiculous water jutsu. You know, the ones that let him travel at ludicrous speeds and that were perfect for locking an opponent in place while you fled for your life. Itachi's Sharingan could copy the jutsu but he would never in his life have the chakra to execute...on...them. Oh. That couldn't work, could it?
Twenty feet in front of them, the golem was raising an arm as though about to throw something. The motion was languid to Itachi's accelerated perception except that he was pushing so hard that he could barely make his own limbs move.
Energy crackled across Kisame's scaled skin, sparks jumping from his gill slits as he burned ridiculous amounts of chakra to push himself even faster. It shouldn't have been possible; there was a limit. Apparently no one had told Kisame that.
The golem's arm reached the apex of its arc and started to come down again.
Itachi grabbed Kisame's arm, feeling his own bones creak and his flesh tear as he forced himself to move faster than his mortal frame could sustain. He dove to the side, blasting chakra repulsion to get them out of the way of the cloud of chakra metal particles that ripped through where they had been an instant before. The cloud would have torn through them and left nothing but shredded meat in its wake; instead it swirled up and around, returning to its main body.
"Water Element: Separating Shark Surge!" Itachi cried, pulling Kisame's left hand out, forcing it flat and slapping his own right fist up under it to form a Dog seal.
Kisame was a master among masters; he was into his thirties, ancient for a ninja. One did not reach that age without thinking fast and understanding an opportunity when it was offered. His chakra flashed within himself, wrapping around their joined hands to form the first chakra construct of the necessary chain.
"Water Element: Separating Shark Surge!" he shouted, then flipped his palm up, fingers curled. The speed and precision of the Sharingan allowed Itachi to push his right hand into place, fingers interlacing with Kisame's to form a Snake seal identical to the way Kisame formed it. Kisame's chakra flickered again, the second construct forming.
It was insane. Handseals were not something that could be shared. Unless one's handseals were perfect, matching precisely the way that one had practiced them for uncounted hours, any jutsu would fail and the chakra would be wasted. Jutsu weren't a team sport, they were unique to each caster's chi and no one did the handseals or the chakra manipulations precisely the same way.
Unless, of course, you had the Sharingan.
It was clumsy and awkward and the resulting jutsu was an abomination of inefficiency, but it was working. Dog, Snake, Ox, Tig—
Itachi screamed as a jet of chakra metal sand tore his right leg off at the knee. He started to fall but Kisame caught him with his destroyed right hand and clamped him hard against the shark-man's side.
Itachi's style and specialty were different, but he was no less a master than Kisame. His will forged in countless battles, his hand did not falter as it matched Kisame's, move for move, handseal for handseal, providing the physical framework atop which the Blademaster could weave the chakra construct for his jutsu.
The final seal was formed and Kisame's chakra clicked into place, the construct that was the jutsu bursting to blazing life and erupting out of the ground below its caster's feet in the form of a massive shark, fully eighty feet long and made purely of construct water—an impossible amount, nothing that should be possible for a human. It bore them aloft and launched itself to the east in a long-arced jump that tore the breath from Itachi's lungs and streamed his long hair out in a straight line behind him. At the same time, a circular wave made of water-construct sharks stormed out from where the two ninja had stood, smashing aside every obstacle and bearing away everything and everyone that wasn't rooted to the bare earth itself.
The chakra golem, fortunately, hadn't been rooted to the bare earth. The wave knocked it off its feet, picked it up and tumbled it this way and that in helpless confusion even as it carried the monster off faster than a ninja could sprint. All the while, the construct sharks broke their teeth on the monster.
Voting remains closed. The inimitable @Paperclipped is doing the chapter for Thursday, which will finally execute on the plan.
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- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Could you imagine that? All this time and effort spent on figuring out esoteric runes to kill the dread Itcahi, only for a random chakra golem to get him. It would both be relieving and frustrating.