Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
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It's basically just puppetry.
Except, you know, long distance.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
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- 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
Except, you know, long distance.
- Location
- Yes.
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- He/Him
DO YOU PEOPLE NOT REMEMBER MY WARNING?
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
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I mean, using bodies is weird, but the main ability doesn't seem tied to the Rinnengan at all. It's Nagato's ability for puppetry, but using the rinnegan (With the black-metal as recievers) to allow him to use them cross continent, rather than being locked by the distance of a chakra string.
Theoretically you could do something like that with shadow clones if you had enough chakra.
Theoretically you could do something like that with shadow clones if you had enough chakra.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
As an aside, have you guys looked at the quest that Rihaku started a month after this one, Gardens of Enoch? It is almost on the first page of Quests sorted by number of replies. I do wish he still contributed as much thorough analysis as he did in the opening movements of MfD, but this quest is insanely busy. I've recently started actively following it. It's not rational fic, but its still pretty good.
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- USA
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- He/Him
Wow, that is impressive. It was also interesting combing through the other pages of stuff -- interestingly, we're on page 4 of 107, and there are a lot of people above us who started *way* earlier. I predict we will keep climbing the rankings.
It amuses me how much that pleases me. I fully recognize that "having the quest that I co-write on a low-number page on an Internet forum" is a petty thing to be pleased by, and yet I am still pleased by it.
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- He/Him
No kidding. I hadn't initially known that Rihaku is practically a celebrity on SpaceBattles and is a popular veteran Quest-Runner. Was weird finding out.
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- USA
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- He/Him
Ah, I see. He's got a rep and he's updating every day; no wonder he's got massive response. Those are long updates, too -- major props to him.
- Location
- USA
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AIUI, objects coming out of a seal do not exert force on the seal. (If they did, unsealing any moderate-sized object would tear through the paper of the tag.) If you could manage to seal an explosion, you could unseal it and it would be a non-spherical expansion. One option would be to create a storage seal with the (a) can accept other seals and (b) time passes inside options, then shove some explosive tags on a timer inside. Ideally, alongside a few cans of oil.
Typo: that should be an 'm', not an 'n'.
Yay, hugs!
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
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So, because I like tragic backstories, did Twitch lose the rest of his unit?
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- USA
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- He/Him
I strongly advocate reading the stories; I enjoyed them as narratives and frequently cracked up. To answer the question: the way the campaign started was the GM running the players through a whole series of trench warfare battles, generating and killing a literal regiment worth of characters, until 37 survived. Twitch was one of those 37. The protagonists of the story are six of those 37, including Twitch.
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
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Oh, I've read the stories...well, most of them I think I stopped when Sarge got his new rank. I meant here. In this verse.
What stories?
- Location
- Staring into the void
Recruiting/joining Kagome, some thoughts.
Because he crit failed, not only did we get a better deal, but I also think he may have given away more info than he might have otherwise.
Relevant info that I've collected so far:
Kagome is a missing nin sealmaster, this is extremely rare. We won the lottery.
Every serious ninja village has a seals master
He can be bribed with paper and ink.
The idea of training someone and leaving a legacy appeals to him.
He has been seriously spooked by something ninja related.
We will need to not only win over his trust, but most likely also need to have Hazou demonstrate adequate seal paranoia and awareness himself.
There is an odd contrast between the standard option of retiring - churning out explosive (and utility) tags for an income; and him being paranoid about being stuck doing just that.
Did he get taken out on a field trip, and everyone else got blown up because they ignored his warnings about the lethality of a tag, "the face-melting unholiness"?
Did he go missing nin because the village was using him like slave labour?
Because he crit failed, not only did we get a better deal, but I also think he may have given away more info than he might have otherwise.
Relevant info that I've collected so far:
Kagome is a missing nin sealmaster, this is extremely rare. We won the lottery.
Every serious ninja village has a seals master
He can be bribed with paper and ink.
The idea of training someone and leaving a legacy appeals to him.
He has been seriously spooked by something ninja related.
This is in addition to standard seal paranoia.
We will need to not only win over his trust, but most likely also need to have Hazou demonstrate adequate seal paranoia and awareness himself.
There is an odd contrast between the standard option of retiring - churning out explosive (and utility) tags for an income; and him being paranoid about being stuck doing just that.
Did he get taken out on a field trip, and everyone else got blown up because they ignored his warnings about the lethality of a tag, "the face-melting unholiness"?
Did he go missing nin because the village was using him like slave labour?
- Location
- Europe
Eh, I don't know. That's exactly one of the Bad Ends I see happening to Hazou. Stuck in a small room churning out seals for food all day long hoping that he won't mess up and get his face eaten by tentacles because he was too hungry to think straight.
It probably wasn't that bad for Kagome, but we have to remember that this is definitely not a modern society. Fancy concepts like 'labor rights' or 'safe working conditions' or 'free time' might not exist here. Being the sealmaker might be a relatively cushy job but I can see how a person might feel trapped by it. Especially if they feel that they are being taken advantage of, which is probably the case if you don't have someone backing you in the village power politics.
This brings us to the interesting case of clan Kurosawa. Why did they decide to keep their sealing skills hidden and made a point to train their descendants as front line ninjas? Maybe they were scared that their whole clan would get the gilded cage treatment and in few generations they would exist only as a glorified sealing factory with no actual ninjas. That is, they would be turned into civilians that are really good at making seal blanks. That sounds like a better reason than the "We want to protect our village!" -thing Hazou was spouting earlier.
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- USA
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- He/Him
Ah. For that you must wait and see.
The All-Guardsman Party. (EDIT: Doh. Used Reddit formatting by mistake.)
They can frame it as heroism, but being locked in a small room isn't very appealing to the Kurosawas.
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How hard would it be to make a storage seal that shoots out its contents at speed?
It would be great to have a shuriken ballista in our pocket.
It would be great to have a shuriken ballista in our pocket.
Chapter 17: History and Current Affairs
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- UK
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- He/Him
"Nope, doesn't ring any bells," Inoue-sensei said. "But honestly, that's not surprising. Sealing's never been my thing—I'm a people person all the way—and in terms of general fame, sealmasters don't tend to get much of that outside their own village. The really good ones normally don't get sent on missions, because they're way too valuable to risk. And when you get a sealmaster who can hold her own in combat… well, it's hard to build a reputation when there's no comprehensible evidence left of what you did, and no survivors to tell anyone that you did it. I mean, look what happened with Whirling Tides."
The three genin gave her blank looks.
"Uhh, Hidden Village of Whirling Tides? Land of Whirlpools? Come on, you must know some foreign history."
Inoue-sensei looked at them despairingly.
"OK, basic education time. So there used to be this teeny little country called the Land of Whirlpools on an island down south. It was one of those islands with weird currents that made it a nightmare to sail to if you didn't know the routes, kind of like Rokushima back in Water. And despite being as isolated as it was, Whirlpool had its own ninja village, the Hidden Village of Whirling Tides. Highest concentration of redheads in the world, a paradise ultimately brought low by the jealousy of the boring-haired majority."
Inoue-sensei flicked a hand through her hair demonstratively, then noticed that the genin's faces remained resolutely blank. She sighed.
"All right, jokes aside. Apart from having the best hair, they were also the world's best sealcrafters. They could do things with seals that the rest of the world still can't replicate decades later. And that freaked a lot of people out. Now, this was all before my time, but the long and the short of it is that the Elemental Nations, minus Leaf, sent them an ultimatum: 'stop your research or we'll do it for you'.
"That went down about as well as you'd expect. The reply they got was along the lines of 'our research focus is on non-military applications; mess with us and that will change.' Classic six-year-old-boy school of diplomacy on both sides. And naturally, when six-year-old boys don't get what they want, they throw a tantrum. If by 'tantrum', you mean 'huge joint punitive force'.
"Here's the thing, though. When that force finally gets to Whirlpool, communications drop like there's a ninja with the Gravity Element around. Suddenly, no one's getting any reports back from their troops, and even summoners can't get in touch with each other. So, of course, they send a new wave of scouts to find out what the hell happened. And do you know what those scouts find?"
Inoue-sensei gave a dramatic pause.
"Nothing. Literally nothing. The Elemental Nations did a full sweep, aerial scouting, genjutsu specialists, everything. There's no Land of Whirlpools anymore."
"What do you mean by that?" Mori asked.
"There's just a blank patch of sea where Whirlpool is supposed to be now, with some really freaky weather patterns. Pretty much every village with sensory specialists went over the area, and there are no bits of blown-up island, no ninja gear or corpses sunk beneath the waves, no blood, no bone, no ash. We don't know how that's possible, and we don't even know if it was deliberate or accidental. The only thing we know is that if the Whirling Tides sealmasters are still out there, then they have the power to get rid of entire countries… and they are royally pissed off."
She gave that a little time to sink in.
"Incidentally, some villages lost a lot more ninja than others in that fiasco, and the Third Great Ninja War just happened to break out shortly afterwards. A little something to think about."
-o-
Hazō: Awareness said:
Assorted Monsters: Stealth said:
Hazō: Taijutsu said:
Monsters: Awfulness said:
Mori: Weapons said:
The journey to Yuni was not particularly eventful by local standards. The chakra voles were no threat now that Hazō knew in advance what to look for, and even the hunter-killer dragonflies' near-silent wingbeats were loud to someone who'd been training with Inoue-sensei (who moved like a cat, in addition to being as elegant as a cat, as capricious as a cat, and on occasion as sadistic as a cat—not that Hazō was at all bitter about that round of punishments after the first encounter with Kagome). Dispatching attacking creatures had taken more of an effort—for instance, even without the advantage of surprise, the dropbears were heavy, aggressive, capable of taking amazing amounts of punishment, and very, very good at grappling. If it hadn't been for Mori and the ninja wire strangulation trick, Hazō wasn't sure he'd still have all his limbs.
The town itself was the biggest settlement Hazō had seen outside Mist. After the tiny villages the group had spent its time in, they were struck by the sight of crowds, the myriad different smells and the sound of multiple different accents. The guise they'd chosen for themselves was that of travelling mercenaries, loosely modelled after Baikan's caravan guards for extra verisimilitude. After establishing a temporary base (i.e. renting a room at the nearest inn), it was time to discuss their immediate plans.
Inoue-sensei, of course, wasn't here. She'd split off in an attempt to track the "Liberator"'s recruiters after every single villager averred that no, they had no idea where the travellers had gone, hadn't seen them leave, and in most cases didn't even know they'd been there at all. When she sent the group onward to Yuni, Hazō had asked how she'd find him and the others again, given that they'd be in disguise in an unfamiliar town, only to receive a stare of pure incredulity, followed by vengeful ruffling of his hair.
"All right," Hazō began in his burly warrior baritone, having, as usual, tuned out Wakahisa's chatter during the journey in favour of making plans. "Here's what I think we should do. Wakahisa, you can start by—"
"Hold it," Wakahisa scowled. "Who died and made you team leader?"
Hazō blinked. "Shikigami-sensei, actually, though not in that order."
Mori gave a quiet snerk, but the amused expression quickly disappeared. Wakahisa's scowl deepened.
Hazō refrained from rolling his eyes by dint of extraordinary, nay, legendary willpower.
"Look, anything I come up with is going to get run past Mori. If she vetoes it, we'll go with something else. OK?"
Wakahisa shrugged, satisfied and apparently unaware that he'd just agreed to being the only group member whose opinion didn't matter.
"Good. Now, Mori, you should go and find some ways of earning money, because I have a feeling what we earned back at the village might not be enough to cover everything that luna—um, Mr Kagome wants. Quality paper and ink are supposed to be expensive. Please figure out the most efficient jobs in terms of time, our skills and not exposing ourselves as ninja. Inoue-sensei said a lot of bigger towns have job boards for itinerant workers and such, so that's probably a good place to start."
Mori nodded seriously.
"Wakahisa, you can go and find the actual things we want to buy. Obviously, be discreet, and come up with good reasons why we want them if anyone asks. Also, if you can, use those conversational tricks Inoue-sensei taught you to try and lay the groundwork for some discounts once we're ready to buy. Try not to overdo it, though—she won't be happy if we get chased out of town with torches and pitchforks before she even gets here."
"What about you, Kurosawa?" Mori asked before Wakahisa could respond.
"I'll be looking for information. This Liberator business sounds like it's going to be a big deal. I don't know if we can make use of it or not, but we definitely don't want to get caught off guard. I'll also see if I can find out anything about ninja in the area, because getting caught off guard by them would be much worse.
"We'll meet here again at sunset and talk about what we've found out. Mori, any comments?"
Mori was silent for a little while.
"I am reminded that every last one of them is dead now. Shikigami-sensei and Kanna-sensei and Ueda and Saitō and Unabara and Yamaguchi and the rest."
For a couple of seconds, no one was sure how to respond.
Eventually, Wakahisa tried. "It's OK. They were fighting Captain Zabuza, so I'm sure they died quickly and without too much pain. And they were all strong ninja, so he wouldn't have been able to capture many of them for torture."
Wakahisa was stunned when Mori gave him a look of pure venom before disappearing downstairs. After a second, he glared at Hazō as if the whole thing was his fault, and then left as well.
Hazō was beginning to understand why so many jōnin instructors had perpetually hounded expressions.
The town itself was the biggest settlement Hazō had seen outside Mist. After the tiny villages the group had spent its time in, they were struck by the sight of crowds, the myriad different smells and the sound of multiple different accents. The guise they'd chosen for themselves was that of travelling mercenaries, loosely modelled after Baikan's caravan guards for extra verisimilitude. After establishing a temporary base (i.e. renting a room at the nearest inn), it was time to discuss their immediate plans.
Inoue-sensei, of course, wasn't here. She'd split off in an attempt to track the "Liberator"'s recruiters after every single villager averred that no, they had no idea where the travellers had gone, hadn't seen them leave, and in most cases didn't even know they'd been there at all. When she sent the group onward to Yuni, Hazō had asked how she'd find him and the others again, given that they'd be in disguise in an unfamiliar town, only to receive a stare of pure incredulity, followed by vengeful ruffling of his hair.
"All right," Hazō began in his burly warrior baritone, having, as usual, tuned out Wakahisa's chatter during the journey in favour of making plans. "Here's what I think we should do. Wakahisa, you can start by—"
"Hold it," Wakahisa scowled. "Who died and made you team leader?"
Hazō blinked. "Shikigami-sensei, actually, though not in that order."
Mori gave a quiet snerk, but the amused expression quickly disappeared. Wakahisa's scowl deepened.
Hazō refrained from rolling his eyes by dint of extraordinary, nay, legendary willpower.
"Look, anything I come up with is going to get run past Mori. If she vetoes it, we'll go with something else. OK?"
Wakahisa shrugged, satisfied and apparently unaware that he'd just agreed to being the only group member whose opinion didn't matter.
"Good. Now, Mori, you should go and find some ways of earning money, because I have a feeling what we earned back at the village might not be enough to cover everything that luna—um, Mr Kagome wants. Quality paper and ink are supposed to be expensive. Please figure out the most efficient jobs in terms of time, our skills and not exposing ourselves as ninja. Inoue-sensei said a lot of bigger towns have job boards for itinerant workers and such, so that's probably a good place to start."
Mori nodded seriously.
"Wakahisa, you can go and find the actual things we want to buy. Obviously, be discreet, and come up with good reasons why we want them if anyone asks. Also, if you can, use those conversational tricks Inoue-sensei taught you to try and lay the groundwork for some discounts once we're ready to buy. Try not to overdo it, though—she won't be happy if we get chased out of town with torches and pitchforks before she even gets here."
"What about you, Kurosawa?" Mori asked before Wakahisa could respond.
"I'll be looking for information. This Liberator business sounds like it's going to be a big deal. I don't know if we can make use of it or not, but we definitely don't want to get caught off guard. I'll also see if I can find out anything about ninja in the area, because getting caught off guard by them would be much worse.
"We'll meet here again at sunset and talk about what we've found out. Mori, any comments?"
Mori was silent for a little while.
"I am reminded that every last one of them is dead now. Shikigami-sensei and Kanna-sensei and Ueda and Saitō and Unabara and Yamaguchi and the rest."
For a couple of seconds, no one was sure how to respond.
Eventually, Wakahisa tried. "It's OK. They were fighting Captain Zabuza, so I'm sure they died quickly and without too much pain. And they were all strong ninja, so he wouldn't have been able to capture many of them for torture."
Wakahisa was stunned when Mori gave him a look of pure venom before disappearing downstairs. After a second, he glared at Hazō as if the whole thing was his fault, and then left as well.
Hazō was beginning to understand why so many jōnin instructors had perpetually hounded expressions.
-o-
Until Inoue-sensei gets back, your main priority as a group is to…
[] Seek lucrative but dangerous/questionably legal sources of income
[] Seek straightforward but less rewarding sources of income
[] Seek to directly persuade or "persuade" merchants to give you the things you need
[] Seek more information on events up north
[] Seek other ninja and news from the shinobi world
Write-ins accepted.[] Seek lucrative but dangerous/questionably legal sources of income
[] Seek straightforward but less rewarding sources of income
[] Seek to directly persuade or "persuade" merchants to give you the things you need
[] Seek more information on events up north
[] Seek other ninja and news from the shinobi world
Voting closes on Saturday the 13th, 9 am Pacific Standard Time
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Goddammit Nobby, you are supposed to be the guy with the most Diplomacy in this group!
Also, to say it in the language of 4chan, this ruffles my jimmies.
Hazou is trying so hard to be the professional, cool teamleader, it's kinda cute. Especially with his tendency to question any and all things.
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Umm... We're ninja.
Why haven't we already stolen what we need?
Why haven't we already stolen what we need?
At least he's trying?
I see this thing with Noburi turning into Hogwarts Battle School Blaise if we don't act now to nip it in the bud.
Any ideas on how to pacify him?
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Also, we need to think about which options among those that will best solve our problems will give us the most xp in the process.
Which completely writes off seeking less lucrative work, because poorly paying jobs don't carry danger, and we need danger to get lots and lots of xp.
Which completely writes off seeking less lucrative work, because poorly paying jobs don't carry danger, and we need danger to get lots and lots of xp.
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
[X] Seek straightforward but less rewarding sources of income.
[X] Steal what you can.
By which I mean, actually buy the supplies, but rob the places blind before we leave town.
I know what you're thinking, why not steal the supplies instead? Because this is easier and (as long as we don't rob every place we bought stuff at, and rob other places to throw things off) is less easily figured out.
[X] Steal what you can.
By which I mean, actually buy the supplies, but rob the places blind before we leave town.
I know what you're thinking, why not steal the supplies instead? Because this is easier and (as long as we don't rob every place we bought stuff at, and rob other places to throw things off) is less easily figured out.