There must be a reason why no one in the village is a summoner; we need to find out what it is before attempting to summon something.
- (If I had to guess, it would have something to do with all of the village's purification rituals and other taboos.)
Mini-Omake : Lye + Fat = Soap
Keiko was apprehensive as she approached the podium. Everything she had done for the past 3 months has been leading her towards this, to her attempt at the summoning ceremony. Each of the last 15 attempts to gain a summoning contract had failed, and that fact sat heavily in her mind.
As Keiko approached the dias with the scroll she steeled herself against the inevitable disappointment of both her sensei. Carefully, Keiko pulled out a kunai and cut a precise pattern into her own thumb. Silence reigned in the room as everyone watched with bated breath. Her teacher, her love, and her teammates all wanted her---expected her---to succeed. Keiko knew she wouldn't. She knew that nothing she did could change that.
However, she also knew that she must perform the ritual correctly. Any mistakes simply meant that she would have to try again, and that would make the inevitable disappointment of her friends deeper and harsher. So, to spare them that pain, Keiko focused.
Keiko channeled chakra into the wound she just made, the actions made rote through practice even as blood obscured her movements. As the seal took hold it changed the blood flowing out of her thumb into something more. The flow became a trickle and the blood glowed blue as it became both signal and conduit.
A wave passed through her audience, a wave of held breaths being released and subtle gasps of amazement. Keiko suppressed her sigh and signed the slot allotted her on the scroll.
As she pulled her finger away, a powerful boom rocked the room. The dias was caught in a maelstrom that pushed Keiko back despite the chakra she was using to hold herself down. It looked like a hurricane compressed into a sphere complete with arcs of lightning and momentary glimpses into a calm center.
All stood silent as the storm dissipated to reveal a
small animal. It stood on its hind legs, with its hands held as if it was begging for something. Scales ran along its back like natural armor and its tail gleamed, looking as if it could cut steel.
It took a moment to glance at its surroundings before standing up a little straighter and saying "Right, what's all this then?"
"I, uhh, summoned you." stammered out a shocked Keiko, her mind still caught between incredulity and surprise.
"Yeah little miss perceptive, that much was bloody obvious. Why did you summon me?" said the animal while staring directly at Keiko.
"I wanted to sign the summoning contract for, umm, your species." said Keiko, feeling like the little creature was dissecting her with its beady eyes.
"Pangolin. We're Pangolin. Good lord, has everyone forgotten about us since our non-sophont cousins went extinct? Anyway, I'm Walter. I'm the primary intake coordinator for the summoning branch of our government.", he said, preening for a moment before seeming to decide that he should act more professionally.
As Walter looked around the room, he said, "There's a standard interview process and a goodly bit of paperwork, but since you already have the blood signature thing sorted that should be much easier. Before we get going, do you have any questions? Any of you?",
While Keiko was stuck attempting to process all of this, Takahashi took the opportunity to ask "Why now? Why have you finally responded to the summoning ceremony?"
"Huh, that was you? We usually take a bit of a sniff before popping over to this dimension. Our sense of smell is better than our vision, after all. The last 15 times the machine went 'bing' everything smelled like lye mixed with tapir fat. We assumed it was the damnable lions messing with the dimensional transport system and decided that discretion was the better part of valour."
@eaglejarl,
@Velorien,
@Jackercracks: I figure you've probably already decided on the canonical type of the summon animal, but I just want to give you a nudge toward pangolin. They're mammals, super adorable, covered in armor, and curl up into little balls as a defense. With some jutsu they could be an awesome fighting force, especially for guerrilla operations and sneaking around.
Killing the former owners of a normal contract does not make you the new owner of that contract;
You know, a modern-ish world where "Killing the owner of a contract makes you the new owner of that contract" was written into physics would be a very fun setting for another rational quest.
I had, though, forgotten one more thing I want to learn.
@Jello_Raptor, I'd be interested in a line in Poor Communication Kills about Mari asking Keiko if she's been using her bloodline during the training and, if she has, ask her to spend some time with Mari going through whatever exercises her clan has to check that they are not overusing it.
I'd like to have some sort of a line in the sand where if Takahashi has been pressuring her to use her bloodline, then I'd vote either to leave or to take a break on the apprenticeship for a while, but honestly he's good enough at what he does that he wouldn't do anything oppressive like that. He'd lead her into wanting to use her bloodline instead. But at the least it would inform the next vote.
I added a note to Conversation 2, but that's just discussing things. I figure we can use the next update to act if there's an actual issue. This includes asking Inoue to do something.
[X] Action Plan:
Poor Communication Kills
This entire plan should take no more than a few hours immediately after the meeting. Once the conversations are done, the update should end, and allow us to vote on further action.
Conversation 1: Inoue's Information
- Before the debrief: Everyone makes sure the only people around are Inoue, Keiko, Noburi, Kagome, Akane, and Us. Minimize chance of external eavesdropping as best each of us can.
- Let Inoue debrief us off screen unless she has something new to add.
- We want to see how everyone reacts.
- We react to the news of Kannagi's betrayal by dispelling, then we react as the thread approximately has.
- Mention possible options of "Burn it all", "Run away quickly", and "Roll with it until we have the scroll, then one of the first two".
- Ask everyone what they think about those options, both how amenable they are to them, and concerns with them.
Conversation 2: Keiko Concerns
- Talk to Inoue privately about Keiko's mental state.
- Mention what she said to us, and our concerns about:
- Takahashi worsening her depression.
- Takahashi suborning her loyalty.
- That we fear her crush on Inoue might now be her strongest tie to the team.
- Ask Inoue what we could do about this. Mention following options and ask for her opinion on them:
- <Looking for contributions on specific remedies for Keiko's mental state>
- We could run, steal the scroll, and get Jiraya to teach Keiko the neccesary information.
- Spend more time with the party. A N-days-on N-days-off schedule with Takahasi.
- Find some way to give her active leadership again, some task which forces her to worry about our well-being.
- Bad Option: genjitsu mind-fuckery
- Bad Option: play into the crush to tie her deeper to our group
- Does Inoue know whether Keiko has been using her bloodline during Takahashi's training?
- We're worried it might be harming her and changing her mindset for the worse.
Conversation 3: Kagome's Catastrophes
- Talk to Inoue and Kagome, again privately.
- Ask both of them about their estimate of our tactical and strategic combat position.
- How capable are we of destroying this place? How much time would it take for Kagome to deploy explosive seals all over town, enough to obliterate everything/kill most people?
- How capable are we of an assasination? against Takahashi? other leaders? could we make it look like an accident?
- How effectively can we run away? Kill pursuers?
- How much do we know about the scroll's security measures? Do they think we could steal it? destroy it?
- Ask Kagome "Pretend you're the one designing the scroll security measures but with the tools you think village sealmasters have.
- Would you, with your actual skillset, be able to get through that?"
Conversation 4: Needling Noburi
- Make sure this is private, with only Nobby and Us listening.
- Ask him how he's feeling about the Yuno betrothal stuff.
- Ask him how he would feel about the following options:
- Run away immediately, leaving Yuno behind.
- Run away but take Yuno with us.
- Letting the marriage go through and staying.
- Finding some way to disrupt the marriage while still staying. (Politically incredibly bad).
- If he seems amenable to advice:
- Point out that arranged marriages do happen and if both parties are reasonable, willing to compromise, and care about each other's well-being then love will often come in the long term.
- If those things aren't there then it's really difficult to create happiness and stability.
- Do you know why Yuno is considered cursed? If not, what is your guess? Also, could you ask her next time you get the chance?
- Does he think Yuno's reliable? Does he actually want to be in a relationship with her?
Conversation 5: Akane Assessment
- Talks to Akane, again privately.
- Mention that she shouldn't have brought Yuno into the base. What if she sneaks in at night to steal/stab Noburi?
- Try to be a little less trusting of people she doesn't know well or who don't have the trust of the entire team.
- Tell her to ask herself "what would Hazou do?" when dealing with non-group members. This won't always be the right option, but it should always be an option she considers carefully.
- Be kind and understanding as we talk with Akane.
- Give her a hug if she wants. Tell her that we understand how hard this is for her.
The update needs to end no later than 8 in-game hours after Inoue gets back, allowing us to vote again. We should also schedule this update so we have some time to talk to Keiko/others immediately afterwards (Immediately afterwards in game time, two updates from now in external time). Feel free to not go through all the conversations as long as they go in order and the update ends as early as possible in-game.
I want to make sure that if we run, we take the entire team with us. That means knowing how they feel about things and gathering more information on their mental state.
We have very little to lose by doing this and the information we gain can allow us to keep the team together no matter what option we choose next.
Edit 1: Changed "Proto-Plan" to "Plan". Added an explicit call for people's opinions in Conversation 1. Added note to leave some time to talk to Keiko/others. Added some explanation/justifications to the rear end of the plan.
Edit 2: Voted for own plan ...
Edit 3: Added some options for helping Keiko to Conversation 3
Edit 4: Added note to ask Nobby about Yuno's cursed status. Added Conversation 5.
Edit 5: Grammar and spelling. Added Akane Hug.
Edit 6: Changed "Scene" to "Conversation" so that the plan is a little less prescriptive to the QMs. Added "Run and get jiraya to tech keiko" to possible options to discuss with INoue. Added questions about stealing the scroll.
Edit 7: Added note that QMs don't have to write all the conversations as long as they short circuit correspondingly early. Re-ordered the conversations in the order I want to have them.
Edit 8: Added note asking Inoue about whether Keiko has been overusing her bloodline during training.
