- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, unless he's killed by Itachi's soul sword and we need to be able to move it
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
Yeah that's valid, I definitely regret deciding to work on them now.
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Nah, I want redundancy here. There's a reasonable chance he goes splat in the fight and if that's the case I'd rather not be left with a clear battlefield and no way to take advantage of it.
I think we should be straight with him and take any scorn on the chin. Hindsight is 20/20 and if he acts like it isn't then that's just essie nonsense.
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Disagree. These runes are useful in the case where we bring the Rift back to Leaf for everyone to use, which is a plausible outcome and one we definitely hadn't excluded. We can honestly say that was, if not our intention, then one of two plans, and the second plan didn't preclude his participation either: staying missing doesn't mean that we don't work with him, it's just that he'd have to abandon Leaf to come and play.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Eh, I'm pretty indifferent to the Rift Runes as a whole.
On one hand: I'm glad we've researched the first one, just in case Orochimaru rolls a bunch of Nat 1s at the Rift Site and dies. This means we'll have already made progress towards stealing the Rift for Leaf (or ourselves), and won't have to start from scratch.
On the other uand: I also don't think it's likely that Orochimaru steals the Rift. There's a reason he rejoined Leaf, after all.
If, for some reason, Orochimaru decided to ditch Leaf and steal the Rift for himself, then I think that Orochimaru views Hazou as a mix of competent enough to help him and weak enough not to worry about (meaning Orochimaru's likely enough to ask us to join him).
On one hand: I'm glad we've researched the first one, just in case Orochimaru rolls a bunch of Nat 1s at the Rift Site and dies. This means we'll have already made progress towards stealing the Rift for Leaf (or ourselves), and won't have to start from scratch.
On the other uand: I also don't think it's likely that Orochimaru steals the Rift. There's a reason he rejoined Leaf, after all.
If, for some reason, Orochimaru decided to ditch Leaf and steal the Rift for himself, then I think that Orochimaru views Hazou as a mix of competent enough to help him and weak enough not to worry about (meaning Orochimaru's likely enough to ask us to join him).
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
If that were actually our concern, we should've come into contact with him and asked to trade notes. That would've dramatically sped up our research of rift runes, no? And surely this instance of communication would've been less risky-on-net than spending 33% of our research on redundant work, instead of on increasing our chances of totally obliterating the Akatsuki.Well, unless he's killed by Itachi's soul sword and we need to be able to move it
Instead, we did that without his knowledge. I think he'll infer what we were actually planning correctly.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
We made the decision to research the rift runes based on the uncertain amount of time remaining. If we had enough time to finish all of them, I think it would've been worth the time.
It's unambiguous that we're in a worse position than in the counterfactual world where we didn't do rift runes, and it's fine to regret it in that sense, but it's folly to act like we should've been able to act back then on information we only have now. We made a gamble, based on all available information we had about how much time was left, and the gamble lost.
This isn't to say that we can't update from this evidence. I, personally, am thinking that I should've been more consistent about my gnawing worry that we didn't have much time left, and sided against this gamble which predictably does not pay off if our deadline truly is close. But if you thought we had more time than this, time enough to finish the rift runes, don't beat yourself up about making choices consistent with that.
It's unambiguous that we're in a worse position than in the counterfactual world where we didn't do rift runes, and it's fine to regret it in that sense, but it's folly to act like we should've been able to act back then on information we only have now. We made a gamble, based on all available information we had about how much time was left, and the gamble lost.
This isn't to say that we can't update from this evidence. I, personally, am thinking that I should've been more consistent about my gnawing worry that we didn't have much time left, and sided against this gamble which predictably does not pay off if our deadline truly is close. But if you thought we had more time than this, time enough to finish the rift runes, don't beat yourself up about making choices consistent with that.
Given that neither Oro nor we had foreknowledge of when the deadline was, this is false.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Pretty much six months on the dot, yeah, from the day Hazou went missing (i.e. the day we went off the grid and started flying blind deadline-wise) to the day Orochimaru contacted us. September 5 to March 4.
If you instead track from when we first set out on this research trip, that's about three months earlier in early June, for a total of nine months of research.
We DON'T have redundancy, we are months away from redundancy. Probably 2-3 solar months.
Huh, IIRC that was exactly what I estimated at the beginning of the arc. Good to know.
From leaving Leaf? Total XP 1963.7 XP/270 solar days = 7.3 XP/solar day
From going missing? Total XP 1261.7 XP/179 solar days = 7.05 XP/solar day -- this made much less difference than I thought it would. I chalk this up to improved TRs and higher base rates.
This does not include notes XP.
It's wild that I looked at this and went "only 7xp/sol? What happened? Were we slacking?".
FOOM setup and leveling ES sucked, but FOOM payoff and TRs are really really nice.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Leaf Lighthouse is just insane income sadly
A lot of this time is like 0.4 effective FOOM
Under ideal conditions (4XP/day base, 1.5x FOOM, 1.35 time dilation) we can hit 13.5XP/day. We need a lot of unstags tho.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Ideally we will be able to solve the chakra problem for next time we commit treason
Tbh it's so insane and sealing unstags take enough time that we straight up will probably do, sealing unstag, combat mission, sealing unstag, combat mission, over and over.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Hopefully we can raise THing or Medicals up to a Third Domain.
I see this as an absolute win!
Where about at the point in Hazou/Uplift's career where a world war world actually be great for their growth.
....that was weird to say. I do not endorse triggering WWV just for a growth environment for uplift.
But maybe that was part of the Sanin's and Minato's ascension. A long giant messy war, with everyone pulling out all the stops, right when you have enough combat power that you don't autolose to jounin and a few esoteric side-specialties that are just starting to come together.
It's not that fast. It takes us about 100 days to clear 1000 XP and the next combat barrier, world wars are much faster paced than that. Now in the short term we are giga backed up from Notes XP so we could use a triple combat unstag, but under normal circumstances we don't need that much.
Omake: Cultivation Planning Session
New
Cultivation Planning Session
It was widely understood around the leaf village that the Goketsu clan were weirdos. Not like, creepy weirdos or anything, that wouldn't be allowed on this platform. No, if you were to ask the average ninja on the on-goings of the clan and their specific objectives, the answers you'd get would range from a shrug or a weird luck, all the way down to a diatribe about how they've seen the supposed clan lord painted in green trying to 'train his sneakiness' by camouflaging on a wall on plain sight. In the middle of the day. The wall wasn't even green for the love of god Hazou would yo-
I digress.
So yeah, the Goketsu and their leader were kinda weird. This time though, things were getting out of control.
Inside the most insidy part of the Goketsu grounds, hidden from the world by several different barriers of seals and other transdimensionally aligned stuff, the highest echelons of the Goketsu Clan came together to hold a meeting. Everyone from the so-called Team Uplift, minus the weirdo-number-one and professional arms-manufacturer. The room was as bare as could be, just a sterile space with white walls, some candles on the walls for a proper atmosphere and a set of chairs with a table.
"And so we give opening to Meeting #4 Category B Rating:F3"1 of Team Uplift." Intoned Keiko from her chair, with all the magnitude and severity in her voice as she was able to direct.
Everyone looked at her for a moment, before Noburi raised his hand. "So…" he started, looking around the room a little. "Why exactly are we meeting? I thought we had already had our sub-sub-sub meeting yesterday about the way we're screwing the Hagoromo? And also, where is Hazou? Is he coming later?"
Mari shrugged. "I'm sure there is an absolutely valid reason for Hazou to not be here. And well, since when have we ever not gotten in an extra meeting on a good day? Perish the thought we actually do something interesting,"
Kei coughed on her hand. "This meeting is actually about Hazou."
"Yeah, what about him? Does he need help or anything?" Noburi asked. "You can help him with all this planning stuff, I'm not really that good at it."
"It's not that!" Kei grumbled, before sighing. "We have to make an intervention, something is wrong with Hazou lately."
"Kei dear, I'm sorry for saying this, but when isn't there something wrong with Hazou?" Mari said clearly amused.
"Please, don't tell me you haven't seen it." Kei asked imploringly.
From the other side of the table, Kagome tapped the table with his finger. "So you finally see it, huh?"
"Uhm.." Noburi mumbled slightly. "See what, exactly?"
"The ever changing moods? The ideas that come from nowhere? How he bounces from place to place as if there was something injecting thoughts into his brain?!" Kagome asked, increasing the level of his voice by the second.
Mari just sighed. "Yes, yes, we all know Hazou. I myself have learned how to deal with his…peculiarities, since this whole thing started."
"I find myself somewhat troubled to be saying this, Mari, but haven't you seen it getting worse lately?" Kei said while looking down at the table. "Just last week he was mumbling to himself all day until he went to sleep, something about 'armageddon initiative' and 'narrative tropes'. Shortly afterwards he disappeared for two hours just to come back with a twelve thousand, nine hundred and seventy three pages manifesto on strength maximizing and why increasing combat 'stats' is useless."
"That's just Hazou thought." Noburi argued. "I'm still not seeing your point."
"Noburi, yesterday he was laughing himself hoarse after seeing a green jumpsuit. He then went to a store and screamed about whales and eagles." Kei then executed sigh #23-b, also known as 'im-so-done-with-this-bullshit'. "Kagome, please help me here."
"I'm surprised it took you this long, honestly." The sealmaster said simply. "I thought that you would get it when he got into a fight with a ninja from lightning country some months ago over a shiny rock, saying it could create a 'gun of rail'."
Mari looked at him weird. "There is no lightning country in the elemental nations, Kagome."
Kagome shrugged. "Oh there was, it just disappeared one day after someone made a thousand dollar donation to the writer's paypal." Kagome looked around, and grumbled to himself seeing everyone's eyes glaze over. "Fucking stinkers."
"What?" Noburi was clearly confused at this non-sequitur.
"What I meant to say was," Kagome just continued, disappointed at seeing that they were still held by the matrix of narrative conventions. "He has started doing this kind of stuff since the rift got stolen by Orochimaru and we came back."
"The question is why, though?" Mari said, deciding to just follow along. "He has been relatively normal when speaking with me."
"Oh, he somehow becomes twenty percent more talented when doing interesting stuff on fixed two day periods, don't ask me how." Kagome shrugged. "I saw him once practicing, and after he finished harassing an anbu ninja his sealing had an immediate marked improvement."
"This sounds a little outlandish, you know that right?" Noburi was just weirded out at this point. "What, does he get rewards when he…entertains…the au-" Noburi suddenly blanched, his mind screeching at the thought.
Everything stopped.
He tried to continue speaking, but his mouth wouldn't answer.
He tried to protect himself, but his body wouldn't move.
He tried to think of a solution, but his mind wouldn't think.
What was he thinking anyway? Who was he? Why was he here? Oh, that was such a funny wall. A thin funny wall, red, purple, bluegreenyellowgold. Those eyes looked weird. Why was that whale looking at him? It was kinda big. Soooooo cute. The tentacles on the 'whale' were so funny! Hey, don't touch me, that's rood! Wait why does it have eyes? Oh it makes sense. Wait does it make sense? It makes no sense. NoooooOo waititsuredoes. W4it 5very!hing is fine! EEE5Everyth!84ueg fine. Oh look, more eyes! So pretty! OH they're approaching! Hey don't touch my face! Why do you wanna touch my brain? Oh yeah it's alright just go ahead. Where was eye? Oh right.
"-and by that focusing your efforts on the Water Flying Salamander Technique I think you can maximize your Qi usage to get the best out of your affinity while we get better cultivation materials for your next session of meditation." Hazou reasoned from his position on the podium of the Inner Sect's meeting room.
"Huh?" Noburi mumbled into himself, after having lost himself for a moment thinking about something else. Eagle northern tribal leader, what the hell was that?.
"Oh you're back." Kagome said, while vaguely scribbling cultivation notes on his notebook. "You normally take a bit longer to come back after touching that."
Noburi didn't even want to deal with that statement. "Don't you feel that things are getting weird lately?"
Kagome sighed. "The writers sold out and started posting on Royalroad. Sadly the readers over there prefer either cultivation or litrpg, and one fitted this quest better than the other."
Seeing Noburi's eyes get immediately glazed over, Kagome just sighed. "No, everything's fine. Just focus on the session and try to get help visualizing your meridians."
Noburi nodded and looked back at Hazou. Everything was fine.
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