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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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MMKII said:
In canon/fanon, all of Jiraiya's works were really just encoded messages to his spy network. Hand people a string of page numbers and line numbers for orders (or prearrange that they always get a certain page number/line numbers of a work to get their orders from even).

Really (and if thats still the case) you could probably severely hamper his spy network just by murdering the shit out of everyone with a decently large fiction/porn collection.

Edit: Well, I guess technically you can only say there is one instance of Jiraiya doing this. OTOH, why would he have the page and line numbers of one of his works memorized, and one that conveniently gives a secret tactical message back to Leaf, if he wasn't in the habit of doing this and also had a regular use for it?
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Bah. I did not realize that when I wrote this:

eaglejarl said:
[Jiraiya] laughed. "Yes, yes. Anyway, here's the truth behind Icha Icha: it's one of the primary controls for my spy network—a fact, may I add, which I would appreciate being kept quiet. Anyway, each copy contains coded messages to various agents. What page different characters show up on, the specific kanji used for dialogue, various background images...every single page, pretty much, is meaningful to one of my spies. Most of what's in the letters section at the back is actually orders—not all, but most. I do get a lot of fanmail, and I do publish it, but there usually isn't enough space to fit more than a piece or two after I've finished writing all the steganographic bits.

"Intelligence directive or not, it's popular. There are fifty-seven volumes in the Icha Icha series, and most of them go through half a dozen print runs." He laughed. "I actually turn a profit on running my spy ring, and the hilarious part is that I pay my agents, but then they give some of it back buying my books so that they can get their orders." He shrugged. "Anyway, about a third of my sales are to my agents and the rest are to people who genuinely want to read the story. For whatever reason, they love reading about Jun being chased by women, repeatedly getting trapped into almost marrying them, or getting challenged by jilted lovers or cuckolded husbands. Still, one thing people have been begging for ever since volume three is for Jun to actually find Otoha."
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Inferno Vulpix said:
I dunno, that read to me like 'Akane wants to see what relationships between healthy and reasonable people are like so that she can compare and contrast that with herself and Hazou', not 'Akane wants to read about relationships like she already has'.
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Her internal monologue stated that she wanted to know what Keiko thought of as a healthy relationship between reasonable people. So that she could pass that on to Tenten:
Velorien said:
This wasn't technically true—Sakura was also a self-confessed fan of ladies' erotica—but the whole point of the exercise was to give Tenten an idea of what Keiko considered normal and healthy romance.
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[X] Self-sufficiency

Clarifying edit: this was a knee-jerk vote because this was a non-recursive version of a plan I'd already voted for. When I posted it, I hadn't caught up to the thread yet.
 
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eaglejarl said:
Her internal monologue stated that she wanted to know what Keiko thought of as a healthy relationship between reasonable people. So that she could pass that on to Tenten:
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Right, but what I was talking about is what Keiko was thinking about what Akane was asking. Akane asks Keiko for examples of normal healthy relationships; does Keiko think that Akane wants that because it's familiar to her with the normal healthy relationship she has with Hazou, or does Keiko think that Akane wants it to compare and contrast normal healthy relationships to her relationship with Hazou?

Roomba suggested that Keiko was thinking the former, that Akane wanted to read something she could relate to, and I suggested that Keiko was thinking the latter, that Akane wanted to learn what normal healthy relationships were like and if she in fact was part of one or not.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
Right, but what I was talking about is what Keiko was thinking about what Akane was asking. Akane asks Keiko for examples of normal healthy relationships; does Keiko think that Akane wants that because it's familiar to her with the normal healthy relationship she has with Hazou, or does Keiko think that Akane wants it to compare and contrast normal healthy relationships to her relationship with Hazou?

Roomba suggested that Keiko was thinking the former, that Akane wanted to read something she could relate to, and I suggested that Keiko was thinking the latter, that Akane wanted to learn what normal healthy relationships were like and if she in fact was part of one or not.
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This is going to be a clusterfuck.
 
Some more exploration of sealing ideas.
Inferno Vulpix said:
Electrocution Seal: sends an electric current into whatever they are attached to for some period of time. Touching the object is harmful but not lethal.
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This seems strange. What happens if you attach it to an insulator? Does size matter? Does grounding matter? It seems they must, otherwise it's broken.

What might make more sense it to just make the seal itself have a very strong lightning effect. This travels the typical way lightning stuff usually travels (which AFAICT is roughly equivalent to how you'd expect electricity to work in anime).

Then it seems not really that much different to a lightning jutsu, in a sense, which makes me think it's not more broken than a lightning jutsu. The only difference I can spot is the ease of stacking it... which doesn't seem to cause much of a problem anyway.
Whirlwind Seal: rotates all air within 10m of the seal clockwise around the seal at high speeds.
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I think this is broken unless a) it doesn't stack, and b) it isn't movable.

With those restrictions, it still seems stronger than the Gust of Wind Seal proposal, but it's not obviously useful for self-propulsion in combat, and isn't usable for flight AFAICT. The Gust of Wind seal didn't seem broken with Cariyaga's clarification, and this stronger one still doesn't. I like how this is stronger than the Gust of Wind without adding obvious new exploits. It lets you set it up once below you, and acts kind of like an Air Dome (in that it shields you from things), but without acting as a proper barrier.

Papering an area with these would be pretty neat, but assuming there's a short-ish timer (5m) it'd also be too expensive.

I feel this should be more exploitable than that, but I'm not seeing very much.
Rolling Seal: When placed on a round-ish object, makes it roll forwards at high speeds.
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This seems really ambiguous and troublesome. The "high speeds" thing is also worrisome.

I don't have a good enough model to break this, but the whole thing makes me uncomfortable.

(Also... does it stack? :p)
Glue Seal: When placed between two objects while active, makes it impossible to pull the two apart.
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Now there's a neat idea. You can do lots of fun things with this. I'd probably phrase it differently: "When activated, anything that touches this seal is glued to it with a very high binding strength. When active the seal itself has a tensile strength comparable to steel."

This is a great trap. It can be used to restrain people (downside: you'd have to explain why it why it wasn't used earlier in the story). It can be used to snare people who touch things. It could have been used in the exams to glue documents between sheets of paper, s.t. they were only accessible once the seal runs out.

Super awesome idea. Doesn't seem broken, since its range reduces its combat use, and its properties seem fairly sensible. Seems like a very flexible utility seal though.
Sun Seal: Emits a bright light, but only when it's day.
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...why?...
Footstep Seal: When placed on ground, applies periodic force indistinguishable from human footsteps.
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Seems OK. Not sure how great this is, but it also seems really hard to exploit. Not sure who it would be used against except Hazō, though.
Repulsion Seals: When both are active, they repel each other when they get too close.
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This seems like gun material, if you have two stacks of each kind and trigger them all. A difficult, absurdly expensive, and crippled kind of gun, admittedly, but still...

Overall usability depends on the force. It'd have to be quite high to be abusable, since it's only doing what magnets already do.

Doesn't seem that great a seal. Not terrible, just also not terribly useful.
 
Veedrac said:
Inferno Vulpix said:
Electrocution Seal: sends an electric current into whatever they are attached to for some period of time. Touching the object is harmful but not lethal.
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This seems strange. What happens if you attach it to an insulator? Does size matter? Does grounding matter? It seems they must, otherwise it's broken.

What might make more sense it to just make the seal itself have a very strong lightning effect. This travels the typical way lightning stuff usually travels (which AFAICT is roughly equivalent to how you'd expect electricity to work in anime).

Then it seems not really that much different to a lightning jutsu, in a sense, which makes me think it's not more broken than a lightning jutsu. The only difference I can spot is the ease of stacking it... which doesn't seem to cause much of a problem anyway.
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The mental image I was kinda thinking of when I was making this is a ninja sticking this seal on a sword to get an electric sword that also zaps people it hits. Not sure what changes you'd have to make in order to make that work, but it's probably doable.

Veedrac said:
Inferno Vulpix said:
Rolling Seal: When placed on a round-ish object, makes it roll forwards at high speeds.
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This seems really ambiguous and troublesome. The "high speeds" thing is also worrisome.

I don't have a good enough model to break this, but the whole thing makes me uncomfortable.

(Also... does it stack? :p)
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Yeah, this one was ambiguous in my mind too. Something something boulder trap, something something siege weapon. Probably not workable, but an interesting take on things, I think.

Veedrac said:
Inferno Vulpix said:
Sun Seal: Emits a bright light, but only when it's day.
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...why?...
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Technically, to give people who spend a lot of time underground or away from windows for whatever reason a way to tell if it's day or not. Realisitically, because I thought it would be cool to have a seal that cared about time of day and just sort of threw something out there.

Veedrac said:
Inferno Vulpix said:
Repulsion Seals: When both are active, they repel each other when they get too close.
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This seems like gun material, if you have two stacks of each kind and trigger them all. A difficult, absurdly expensive, and crippled kind of gun, admittedly, but still...

Overall usability depends on the force. It'd have to be quite high to be abusable, since it's only doing what magnets already do.

Doesn't seem that great a seal. Not terrible, just also not terribly useful.
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The general impression was magnetic force, so it'd probably calibrate to the strength of regular magnets being put near each other. I'd guess they could cross the room at most if you pushed them right on top of each other. Mainly just a neat seal interaction that might help lay groundwork for more viable seals, as I imagine sealmasters are wont to do.
 
Veedrac said:
Full disclosure: I actually have no idea how well this will go. I can justify just about every outcome, which means I have zero knowledge. I do think that part of the plan could have been a lot more bulletproof, but that only means things can go wrong, not that they will.
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I'm okay with this plan turning out poorly in ways that the plan doesn't make bulletproof. Less so for outside context reasons, but Hazou's safe in his home now. The worst that'll happen is he swallows his own foot again, we all collectively cringe, several lurkers who've never posted in the thread before pledge to never read this again because of it, and we all move on. :p
 
Kiba said:
Dumb as a rock.
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Earth Element
Kiba said:
Hot-blooded
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YOUTH
Kiba said:
Actually has a girlfriend! At least until the breakup.
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And now he doesn't have a girlfriend.
Kiba said:
Book dumb.
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If his outburst about the printing press books at the library isn't 'book dumb', I don't know what is! :p

I'm sad to say, Hazou is a shonen protagonist.
 
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