- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You can if you decanonise it first. But I assure you that you don't want to.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
-
- 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
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And the outcome of this will be that Maito Gai takes you permanently under his wing as his cute little apprentices - and Jiraiya lets him.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
*wipes eyes that are streaming from laughter*
Brilliant, @MadScientist. Brilliant.
Really well done. I laughed so hard I cried. Have all the XP.
Oh, and Team Uplift can have +3 XP each.
'A sage' is a wise person who isn't capitalized, 'The Sage' is the demigod from history who is most definitely capitalized.
,
Brilliant, @MadScientist. Brilliant.
*laugh* Sounds like Kagome all right.
Congratulations, you have rendered with perfect accuracy the persona of my woobie. I shall now have to kill you.
*snicker*
Ah, so gloriously paranoid.
Awww, Ren. You really don't get him yet, do you?
*Laugh*
*snicker* Such an image. Makes me imagine farmers smacking their crops with shovels to keep them from struggling to much.
Snicker.
THANK you! God, some people.
Really well done. I laughed so hard I cried. Have all the XP.
Oh, and Team Uplift can have +3 XP each.
Reverse the comma and the period.
You probably want an em dash here in order to indicate that "Kagome kept talking but I'm shifting focus to someone / something else". If you end on an ellipsis it suggests that he simply trailed off.
Comma before the close quote. For more info on dialogue tags, check out this article.
Specific individuals are always capitalized, so it's 'Hokage'.
Specific individual, so it's: Oh Sage, she needed a holiday....
'A sage' is a wise person who isn't capitalized, 'The Sage' is the demigod from history who is most definitely capitalized.
All those periods should be commas except the last one, and the "he" should be lower case. Grammarbook has a good article on how to use commas.
Em dash is two hyphens when not using the actual mark.
"It's over," said the Kurosawa, grinning nastily
Two hyphens again.
Thank you, edited.
I had way too much fun writing this omake. I don't think I've ever written a love story before.
Tua
鸡肉面条汤
- Location
- شوربة الدجاج المعكرونة
A just reward, and I hope one that qualifies as a nonstandard win condition.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
I'm not sure how... uh, helpful that will be.
I'm not sure how... uh, helpful that will be.
Just take it. Maybe there'll be some way of converting our XP totals into whatever the new system uses when we do the port.
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(Canon?) Interlude: Perception
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
(Canon?) Interlude: Perception
Naruto swam back to consciousness and was promptly assaulted by the worst headache he'd had since Uncle Jiraiya decided to figure out how much it would take to get him drunk—strictly as part of his counter-intel training, of course. He moaned and pressed one hand to his forehead in a futile attempt to squeeze out the pain.
"You'll be all right," said a woman's voice that he didn't recognize.
He sat up fast, ready for a fi— He grabbed his head and moaned. Sage's ballsack, it was splitting in half!
"Move slowly," the woman said. She was sitting in a chair across from him, curled up with her legs tucked under her, staring at him with vague interest. Her hair was red with white streaks, her face was narrow, and she wore a long white kimono. She was no one he had ever seen.
"Where are we?" Naruto asked. "And who are you?"
"We are here," she said. "And I am myself. Who else would I be?"
He tried to glare but couldn't manage it, being too focused on the pain.
"What's up with my head?"
"It's torture."
He winced. "Look, lady, Hatake Kakashi has been one of my instructors since I was four, okay? I know all about mindgames and stupid answers to perfectly sensible questions. Now are you going to answer my questions or not?"
She frowned, confused. "I have."
Naruto groaned and pushed himself upright, doing a quick appraisal of his surroundings. Maybe this was another one of Uncle Kaka's test scenarios? The white-haired lunatic considered the words 'good training' synonymous with 'anything that sucks for Naruto'. The boy couldn't remember the number of times that he'd woken up to find himself in some sort of insane situation. One time he'd been stark naked in the middle of the woods, slathered in barbecue sauce with no idea which way was home. Another time, he'd been chained up in a trunk, which promptly got kicked off the side of a ship and started sinking fast.
Right now, however, he was in a small room, perhaps ten feet by ten feet. The walls were painted white and the only furniture was the bed he'd been lying in and the chair where the woman sat. There was one window, it was in the door on the wall opposite the bed, and it was blocked by a sliding metal plate on the outside. The door had no handle and the hinges were on the opposite side.
"Bad idea," the woman said, following his eyes.
"Oh? Why?" He doubted she knew the specifics of his plan—whoever she was, it was very unlikely that she knew of his skill with the Rasengan—but the general 'smash the door down and escape' idea was pretty obvious.
She looked at him the way you looked at very stupid children. "It's your door."
"Lady, you are really getting on my nerves. Either start making sense or get out of the way while I take a knife to that door." He cut a few handseals and raised his hand, pushing chakra into the spitting, swirling orb of the Rasengan—
Which completely failed to materialize.
He stared at his empty hand. That had never happened to him before.
"Ninjutsu doesn't work in here," she said.
"Thanks for letting me know," he grumped, right before another spike of pain went through his head. "Oh, Sage's swollen ballsack, what is going on with my head?"
The woman looked at him like he was the dumbest creature to ever besmirch the good name of the world. "It. Is. Torture."
"That's not helpful, lady. Ow." He sat down on the bed again, bending forward with his head clutched in both hands. It would have been nice to make a couple of shadow clones to hold his head closed for him.
She seemed to ponder that for a moment, the way a shogi master might ponder a Go puzzle.
"The Earth Rendering has besmirched the name of the Absent Death," she tried. "He claims his skills are faded and do not apply to the needs of communion. Death carves at the door to the great hall because the chancellor will not allow him to look through the window, but the daimyo is safe in his bed. The noise awakens him and he feels the pain of his castle for it is made of his bones. He attempts to summon a servant but the bell pull is not where he expects and he doesn't recognize that it is actually his hair because, again, the stones of the castle were carved from his bones."
Naruto looked at her for a moment. "Okay, that sounded batshit crazy. I've been trying and failing to dispel a genjutsu for the last minute and a half, so I have to assume that what I'm seeing is real, which means you're real—"
She shrugged, cocking her head to one side. "Perception."
He paused, thoughts derailed. "What?"
"My existence," she clarified. "Perception." She raised her left hand to about shoulder height. "Exist?" She lowered it and raised the right hand. "Don't exist?" She shrugged, dropping both hands into her lap. "Perception."
"Riiiight. Is this one of those things about how 'everyone has their own conception of reality that is real for them', or maybe 'a hallucination is still real to the person having it'?" He waited but there was no response. "Okay, well, for the moment let's assume you do exist, okay?"
"Okay. I exist."
He sighed, settling back on the bed and leaning against the wall. He was careful to keep one eye on the woman, just in case. She hadn't done anything threatening yet, hadn't even moved, but that didn't mean she couldn't. Now, time to back up and figure out what was going on.
"I remember being on the beach," he said slowly. "I just don't remember why."
"You were the worm for Little Turtle."
"..."
"You were the worm dangled in front of Little Turtle, but wrapped in steel so that he would break his jaws on you. He didn't, but all his friends did. Then the dawn came and ground you beneath bloody wheels. They unwrapped all your steel and flew away with you and Little Turtle in their claws. The bloody wheels tore open your brain and nightmares spilled out, so you ran to your innermost den and have hidden here ever since. You forgot to bring all of you with you, though, so conversations become circular once you fall through your empty head. I try to keep the path straight but there are so many threads to untangle and they all pull on each other when you move one of them. Straightness is very much a question of perception."
Naruto frowned, pieces coming closer together so that he could almost see the picture they formed. "Right...I was on the beach with Sensei, training with clones. Uncle Jiraiya was there, and Grandpa, and...ow." He whimpered as a particularly vicious spike of pain went through him.
"The Absent Death grows frustrated," the woman said sadly. "He has disappointed his master for so long and all of the papers are hurled to the ground in crumpled balls. Beware, for he is beginning to pry at the castle's foundations. If he does not stop soon then the donjon will collapse and the light of the ancient stars will be lost to the sky once more."
Naruto grunted, pressing tight on the sides of his head as the pain grew worse. "Lady, you are seriously three dango and a maki roll short of a bento box, you know that?"
She nodded. "It's true. Also, the box is inside out."
"Ye—aaagggh!" Naruto rolled to the floor, hands coming away from his head as an instant of visceral horror banished the pain to unimportance. "Grandpa, no! Look out!" He reached out, but there was nothing for it but to watch his funny, sweet, loving, insanely lethal grandfather get cut down by that fucking bastard with the ghost of a spiny turtle wrapped around him. The Naruto he remembered being surged to his feet but there was a noise from above him and suddenly he was flying through the air and the world became red agony and vanished under a tidal wave of his screams.
o-o-o-o
Naruto swam back to consciousness and was promptly assaulted by the worst headache he'd had since Uncle Jiraiya decided to figure out how much it would take to get him drunk—strictly as part of his counter-intel training, of course. He moaned and pressed one hand to his forehead in a futile attempt to squeeze out the pain.
"You'll be all right," said a woman's voice that he didn't recognize, speaking from just above him.
He sat up fast, a kunai appearing in his hand as he lunged forward to gut the looming threat. Less than six inches from her throat he collapsed, dropping the kunai and grabbing his head. Sage's ballsack, it was splitting in half!
"Move slowly," the woman said. She was standing over him, completely calm, with her hands folded behind her, staring at him with vague interest. Her hair was red with white streaks, her face was narrow, and she wore a long white kimono. She was no one he had ever seen.
"Where are we?" Naruto asked. "And who are you?"
"We are here," she said. "And I am myself. Who else would I be?"
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- Location
- Somewhere over the rainbow
I'm not sure how... uh, helpful that will be.
"So, what's this 'XP' and why do I have a +3 of it?"
"GET THAT AWAY FROM YOUR FACE HAZOU! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT COULD BE! AND YOU, JIRAIYA! I THOUGHT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE THE SMART ONE! DON'T POKE IT WITH YOUR BARE HANDS!"
"Relax, Kagome, I can take whatever comes out of here. Besides, this is the best way to do Science! Up close and personal!"
"I would like to reiterate Hazou's question. How is this useful to us?"
"Maybe as a weapon of last resort?"
"I certainly wouldn't mind a plus three myself..."
"Yes, yes, dear, I know you want to see how many- "
"SENSEI!"
"You might want to finish that thought later tonight, dear. There are children -"
"WHY DID YOU POKE IT WITH WATER WHIP YOU IDIOT YOU COULD HAVE KILLED US ALL-MMMPH!"
"Thank you, Mari-sensei. Anyways, relax, I'm a medic. It doesn't look like a poison, slow or fast acting. It doesn't seem to have done anything at all, for that matter; anybody else have any other ideas?"
"Maybe see if we can't give it too each other?"
"Here, let me try!"
"MMMMPH!"
"Aww, aren't they adorable, honey?"
"Yeah, they totally are."
"GASP WHAT ARE YOU DOING RAMMING STUFF INTO EACH OTH-MMPH!"
"Akane, I don't think I have it inside me."
"AwwwweeeeeeeeEEEEEEK!"
"I did not know that shade of red was possible."
"Me neither. Sure is fun to watch, though."
- Location
- Somewhere over the rainbow
Reads more like Tsukuyomi loop where his mind is protected by Kurama, of all beings.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Oh man I'm gonna be picking at that chapter for days. Great job, @eaglejarl.
Speaking of which, @eaglejarl, how is the port coming along? Last I heard, the QMs were starting to get annoyed with M&M, but I don't think there's been any news since.
- Location
- Yes.
After rereading...I think Naruto's assimilating the memories from his clones. Tsukuyomi is supposed to be several days, right? What if each of these loops is a Naruto clone waking up and getting its memories assimilated into the original?
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Come on, I don't need more horror in my life
- Location
- Yes.
It's also possible that this entire thing is a Tsukuyomi loop and "Kurama" is Itachi pretending to be Kurama protecting him, and eventually Itachi'll figure out the right ways to poke Naruto to get him to release the Kyubi or something and let Pain eat it.Come on, I don't need more horror in my life
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
See, that sounds more like his style, inasmuch as we know Itachi's style at all.
- Location
- Yes.
NOT PARANOID ENOUGH!
HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT "NARUTO" IS ACTUALLY NARUTO AT ALL?
WHAT IF THIS "NARUTO" IS AN ITACHI PLANT SUBVERTING THE REAL NARUTO'S SUBCONSCIOUS?
will408914
(slouching towards bethlehem)
- Location
- California
NOT PARANOID ENOUGH!
HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT THERE EVER WAS A NARUTO?
What if Naruto was always just Itachi pretending to be Naruto in order to gain the trust of Leaf? Akatsuki got Kurama years ago, and now they're just using "Naruto" to lure Jiraiya and all of us into a trap, at which point we will learn that Akatsuki was subverted by the Sage and Dummy nearly since its foundation and we will be taken to the Sage in order to be killed and resurrected as loyal minions!
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Of course Naruto was Zabuza was Itachi, that was never in question!
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Skills, Aspects, and combat are reasonably solid. Sealing is done in the broad strokes. We're working on using the DF Evocation rules to implement jutsu. Once we get a basic platform put together we're going to throw it out to y'all and ask you to break it before we implement. And then you will, and we'll all find solutions together, and then GOTO 10.
"Nearly"?
- Location
- Yes.
Note to self: Only reveal the broken stuff we can't readily access, and hide the broken stuff we can.
- Location
- Somewhere over the rainbow
On the other hand, that means the moment we do access that broken stuff we have to go through ten to twenty more interludes as we come up with a new, swear-to-Sage, unbreakable system.Note to self: Only reveal the broken stuff we can't readily access, and hide the broken stuff we can.