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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Halberdier said:
This. Aside from Asuma currently being a neutral Jonin, which means both busy and harder to influence, if he's the one we're about to push for Hokage, he's about to have Zero free time. Remember how burnt out J was after taking the hat, or how Hiruzen was gone for most of the first (I think it was year) after re-taking the hat. Having him teach us is right out, and it would need to be a very strong pitch for him to give up his time for anything else. And while it would be more efficient, I'm doubting Hazou's can give up 2 months right now to learn it.
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We should probably explain this to Keiko and ask her again whether she really really can't train a summoner. Because she's been a summoner longer than Asuma has, so I don't see why she wouldn't be decent at teaching it.
Also probably have Akane as backup instead of Hazō. Akane can somewhat afford to spend all that time training, Hazō can't.
 
...who taught Asuma how to Summon? Did Sarutobi have him taught years ago, xor did Jiraiya teach him while he was busy Hokage'ing?
 
faflec said:
...who taught Asuma how to Summon? Did Sarutobi have him taught years ago, xor did Jiraiya teach him while he was busy Hokage'ing?
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We don't actually know for sure he has the scroll. We just know that it makes sense, and that Ino said he did (in order to bluff everyone at the exams about her suddenly having monkey jutsu).
 
...you know, maybe we should ask Keiko to write a manual with all the information someone needs to learn how to be a summoner? I could imagine that being useful, both practically and as a bargaining chip.
 
eaglejarl said:
We are offering an additional 1 XP per seal for FtD-style mechanics for each of those seals. Note that this only pays out if we actually use the mechanics. The point here is to move the cognitive load off the QMs, so we would ask the players to handle it without much input from us until the final idea is submitted for approval. (If we downcheck it, you are of course welcome to try again. The point is to get working systems without us getting exhausted.)
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So here's a proposal for our Casino Seals. I basically copied the Jutsu Design system, complete with Strain and 'chakra cost'. Hm...maybe we could use that when determining how difficult it'd be to create a new seal or something.
Type Manuever Strain
Effect 0 to Effect +10, +30, +60...
Duration Seconds +10
Durability N/A  
Range -1 (Melee) +20
Casting Speed Supplemental +75
AOE Zone +40
Advantage
Impose Penalty (Stealth)
Effect * 3 		+30
Total Strain 35 + (2, 6, 12...) 175 + (10, 30, 60...)
Set an Effect (determined by the Sealmaster's Sealing level) when creating the seal. When activated, this seal detects active chakra emission within Melee range (~6 ft) of it. When this happens, it emits a high-pitched alarm, complete with light, for several seconds before deactivating. Mechanically, it will penalize Stealth by [Effect] * 3 for everyone within a Zone of the seal.
 
eaglejarl said:
Interlude: Chosen for the Grave, Part 15​

"Team Uplift, meet your—"

"Shut up, you stupid stinker!"

Val, Oli, and I all blinked. Team Uplift's expressions varied between exasperated and terrified, except for Mari's, which managed to express patience, mild reproof, and amused tolerance all in one quirk of an eyebrow.

"Kagome, be nice," she said. "Jiraiya has been very polite to us, we should return the favor."

"Nope," I said, taking Val and Oli's arms and turning them towards the door.

"Hey!" Oli said. "What—"

"Just trust me," I said, virtually dragging them with me. "We're out of here."

"Hang on," Jiraiya said, amusement gone from his voice. "Where do you think you're going?"

"They're our what?" Hazō asked curiously.

"Nope, nope, nope," I said, physically pushing my otherworldly cohort out the door. Val had apparently figured that this was one of those times where you should just go along with the teammate who was freaking out and ask questions later, so he was moving willingly. Oli was reluctant, casting fascinated gazes behind himself, but he was going.

Once we were in the hall I shut the door and leaned against it with a sigh of relief.

"Yes?" Oli asked pointedly.

"I don't know why," I said, "but I'm pretty confident that if we had stayed in there for just a few more paragraphs then the bladed arm of a god would have torn through the fabric of reality and scythed across the room, killing everyone."

"'A few more paragraphs'?" asked Val, eyebrow raised.

"What, you've never wondered if maybe we're the creations in someone else's story?" I asked. I deliberately looked over my shoulder, a knowing expression spreading across my face.

"What are you doing?" Oli asked, clearly wondering if I needed a hug-me coat.

"Trying to look at the camera," I admitted after a moment. "Or through the fourth wall, whichever."

Oli and Val exchanged concerned looks.

"Look, I'm really confident of this, okay?"

Oli and Val exchanged more looks, but these were less 'do you want to call the orderlies or should I' and more 'it would not be the weirdest thing about our lives recently....'

"Okay," Oli said. "You might want to step away from the door, since I'm pretty sure Jiraiya is going to be barging through it any second."

No sooner had I jumped aside then the door failed to open.

"That would have been amazing," Val commented, sounding regretful.

I paused to blow my running nose; I still hadn't shaken this damn chakra virus, and Tsunade's latest treatment had been only moderately effective. "Yeah," I replied. "And more evidence for my 'we are characters in a story' theory."

"I sure don't feel like a character," Oli said doubtfully.

"How would you know?" Val asked. "Not that I buy into it, but it is true that we're following a lot of isekai tropes—relatively ordinary young men with 21st century knowledge, portaled to a fantasy world and given amazing powers—"

"And a virtual harem," I noted. "I've got Anko, who is way out of my league, trailing me around—"

"Bodyguard," reminded the Blanket of Wetness.

"—Val is being fawned over by no less than three separate women of varying ages and stunning beauty, as well as a half-dozen students who hang upon his least word with bated breath—"

"Seven-element ninjutsu teacher who can effortlessly handle nature chakra and might give them the Hiraishin and/or Sage Mode," Oli pointed out.

"—and let us not forget Oli, who has had to buy up half the paper in Konoha just to keep track of all the metaphorical phone numbers that are being thrown at him. Didn't you have like, four separate meet-cutes on the way to the Tower this morning?"

Oli shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know that I would call them 'meet-cutes'...and it was only three."

"Hah! See!"

"I'm not saying that I believe you," Val said, "but if your theory were true then we should probably stop talking about this. A lot of readers hate fourth-wall breaking, and a lot of authors will stop writing a story if the audience complains too much."

I started to reply, but had to pause long enough to cough up what felt like half a lung. "Point," I said at last. "Well, I'm going to go off and continue transforming the industry of this feudal-ish fantasy world, said activity being in no way relevant to any isekai trope that might or might not be relevant in turn to our existence. Val, why don't you go back to the Konoha Public Library that I anachronistically wrote into existence by sorta-mistake. There you can continue delving deep into the history and mythology of a fantasy world, the underpinnings of which will be far more obvious to you than to the natives because you have an outside view with the addition of advanced knowledge and the equivalent of ancient lore because we wrote it all. I'm sure the very attractive and rather underdressed-for-the-weather female assistant librarian who is almost exactly your age will be delighted to make eyes at you while cooing in fascination regarding your stories of our world."

Val looked disgruntled.

"Hey, you and Francesca are both poly, right?" I asked, referring to the lovely girlfriend back home. "Moving on: Oli, don't you have a class to teach in which you will impart advanced medical techniques to worshipful young doctors who think you're the greatest thing since the Sage because your advice is actually panning out?"

"No, that's tomorrow. Today I'm adjusting the spreadsheets for the newest crop of Academy students in order to make them legendary-tier ninja...and I think maybe I see your point."

The door opened at last; Jiraiya stepped into the hall and closed the door behind himself. "Excuse me," he said, his voice demonstrating carefully-controlled annoyance. "What was that all about?"

I shrugged. "I have no rational explanation, but I'm pretty confident that if we had stayed in there for just a few more minutes then the bladed arm of a god would have torn through the fabric of reality and scythed across the room, killing everyone including you. I really don't think us meeting the protagonists of our story is a good idea. Think 'potentially a major sealing failure' levels of badness."

Jiraiya digested that. Finally, he nodded. "Right, let's get you out of here. Having you meet this lot would have been useful, but it's not essential."

The Continuing...​




Author's Note: This might or might not end up being the update for this weekend. I'll see if I have anything in the tank for tomorrow, but this was knocking on my brain demanding to be let out.
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Any chance this could be threadmarked?
 
Multiple Earth Wall jutsu can produce different types of stone, right? Can it produce salt crystals?
 
Noumero said:
Why not?
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Because we've already done enough damage.

Anyway:

At this point we have a few major issues: Kei finally let the horror get to her so we're tight on money and on ways to get it for the foreseeable future. Politics is bad, bad, bad. Ami is being Ami, which means if we don't stop her she's going to conquer the world without anyone even noticing what is happening. All the villages but Mist are down a Kage.

The problem I'm having is... there's almost nothing we can really do, here. Kei isn't going to change her mind, Naruto is going to be in recovery too long, and is too young to win the hat (on top of the other problems). Our socialization skills are more or less as bad as our opsec ones, which means any attempt to play politics personally is likely to end in unmitigated disaster.

My best thought is to see if Naruto wants to talk to Sasuke. They know each other and are (former) teammates, so he's likely to be more effective than anything we can do personally, and I'm pretty sure he's chomping at the bit to be allowed to do things.

I can't even begin to figure out what we can do about Ami's apparent world domination by making everyone owe her too many favors to stop it campaign. Because it's scary effective. I've noticed some people thinking of her as a nominal ally: I disagree. I think she's probably the biggest threat to our goals left. Because she'll play our game until it isn't useful to her anymore. Then we get dumped in a ditch.
 
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Noumero said:
Why not?
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Because that would be bad. We need to intentionally invent suborbital bombardment. That way we don't accidentally end up hitting some place we like.

Byzantine279 said:
The problem I'm having is... there's almost nothing we can really do, here. Kei isn't going to change her mind, Naruto is going to be in recovery too long, and is too young to win the hat (on top of the other problems). Our socialization skills are more or less as bad as our opsec ones, which means any attempt to play politics personally is likely to end in unmitigated disaster.
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Our socialization and OPSEC skills have been getting a lot better, actually. Right now I think we should focus on fixing our finances. Then figure out how to swing a few votes.

Maybe we can ask Ami to get us as many income streams as possible, specifying that they must be ethical and not cause problems for us?
 
Tua said:
It's not bombardment, it's an extremely localized and very brief hail storm at most.
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Until you drop a few hundred blocks at a time.

Oh yeah, are we absolutely, 100% sure Oro is dead dead? Cause in canon the guy had like a dozen different backups to make sure he didn't really stay that way. In this one a simple trick would probably be just to detach a single snake and leave it in the 7th path. It'd probably take ages to recover. I'm not sure if it would actually work, but the guy died surprisingly easily for how many tricks he had.

Sentient Tree said:
Maybe we can ask Ami to get us as many income streams as possible, specifying that they must be ethical and not cause problems for us?
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Are you trying to make me run away screaming? Ami terrifies me.
 
Byzantine279 said:
Oh yeah, are we absolutely, 100% sure Oro is dead dead?
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I actually think its quite plausible he left a Horcrux/rez option in our basement, guarded by all manners of monsters.

Unsure why he'd need floors and floors and floors of rogue experiments and traps, if not to guard something important near the bottom. If he was just doing it for the lulz, he could've disposed of the evidence afterwards and/or make them all on one big subterranean basement level.
 
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