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
- Location
- Yes.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Are you, uh. Going to?
- Location
- Yes.
OK, now you're just asking for me to answer "Yes." again.
But in all seriousness, I was taking a nap. Here's a brief dump of Mari doing a wordless, sealless Henge:
Oooh! Oooooh! Can we turn this into Apocalyptic Chemistry Quest? Please? Please?
We really need to get our hands on some Akimichi stim- oh, wait, ACQ. Let me pull out some reference material. It's time to break bad medieval style.
Barbiturate - Wikipedia
Delirium tremens - Wikipedia
GABA receptor agonist - Wikipedia
GABAA receptor positive allosteric modulator - Wikipedia
GABA analogue - Wikipedia
Admittedly, it's probably the wrong approach here, because Tsunade is probably the single most qualified person in all of history or fiction to take one glance at the symptoms and prescribe a stiff drink.
Chapter 289: Stickball, Salt, Surprise!
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Let's get some height and sleep," Hazō said. "Earth Element: Multiple Earth Wall!"
Two red granite pillars rose up from the water around them. Without needing to be told, Akane started pulling boards out of her storage seals and laying them across the pillars to form a platform above the swamp water. Once it was built, she and Hazō worked together to lay a spiral of ninja wire across the platform, anchoring it down with purpose-built weights as they went. Small wooden boards were interwoven into the spiral in order to make four projections that stuck out several yards. Hazō pulled out one of his Five-Seal Barrier seals, affixing the primary element to the main spiral and each of the four supporting elements to one of the projections.
"Builder ready," he said, once he was satisfied with the placement of the seals.
Akane took a moment to survey all the components, then nodded. "Checker confirms."
Hazō bent down and got his fingers under his side of the platform. "Three, two, one, lift!"
He and Akane hoisted the platform up to chest height, then worked their way around the outside, carefully keeping the platform balanced between them as they shifted one step at a time around the circumference, activating each of the four secondary seals. When that was done, Hazō balanced his side of the platform on one hand and stretched inwards with the other so that he could tap the center seal from beneath and send a pulse of chakra into it.
The central seal pulsed brightly for a moment. Golden flickers of light danced back and forth between the central seal and each of its secondaries, quickly spreading and forming a net of chakra between the five disparate elements. There was a faint crump and the lights faded away.
"What was that all about?" Naruto asked, bemused.
Wordlessly, Hazō and Akane lowered the wooden platform out from under the wire. The wire didn't seem to notice; it hung unsupported in midair, blithely ignoring the suggestion from physics that perhaps it really oughtn't do that.
Naruto's eyebrows shot up. "Okay, that is cool. Uncle Jiraiya's work?"
Hazō smiled quietly and said nothing.
"Stinking Jiraiya-stinker didn't have a thing to do with it," Kagome-sensei grumbled. "It was Hazō who thought it up. Hrmph. Like Jiraiya would come up with something like this. 'Greatest sealmaster alive' my left bunion. He never thought of skywalkers, did he? No, that was Hazō. Had Air Dome seals for decades, never thought to turn them over. Stinker." He humphed. "And I don't miss him, either. Big old fathead, always bragging about how awesome he was and how good he was with women and all that."
Naruto laughed. "Yeah, he was a bit of a horndog. One time, in training camp—"
"Hold that thought?" Hazō asked. "I want to hear the story, but we need to finish this."
Naruto cocked his head in curiosity but made a 'go on' gesture with one hand.
Hazō and Akane tossed the wooden platform up on top of the hanging wire spiral and jumped up after it. Akane pulled out another coil of wire while Hazō pulled out another seal. Both of them pretended not to notice Naruto's quiet inhalation of surprise as realization struck at what was about to happen.
o-o-o-o
"So...you do this often?" Naruto asked, peering nervously over the edge at the ground far, far, far below. Hazō and the others had stair-stepped two platforms up, repeatedly deactivating the lower one so it could be moved above the higher one, and they had felt no particular need to stop at any sort of sane altitude. "Sleep in the clouds, I mean?"
"Nah," Hazō said. "You don't want to sleep in the clouds or skywalk through them. The seals get soggy and deactivate."
"We do find it most youthful to sleep very high up, as we are now," Akane added helpfully. "It is disconcerting at first, but after a bit it becomes quite relaxing."
"Unless more stupid skysquids come along," Kagome-sensei muttered.
Naruto looked at him in surprise and disbelief. "'Skysquids'? Tell me that's not a thing."
"It totally is," Hazō said fervently. "We all saw one."
"Indeed," Akane said, nodding. "It was quite real."
"Huh." The jinchūriki went back to looking at the far-off ground and almost visibly contemplating his own mortality.
Hazō yawned. "I'll take first watch. Nose goes for second." He quickly put his finger on his nose; Kagome-sensei and then Akane were an instant behind him.
"Huh?" Naruto said, putting his finger on his nose in confusion because everyone else was doing it.
"You're on second watch," Hazō explained.
"What?! No way! Second watch sucks."
Hazō shrugged. "Sorry. You were last putting your finger on your nose, so you get second watch. You'd best rack out now so you'll be rested. I'll wake you in three hours."
"That...but...that's not a thing!"
Akane grinned. "Welcome to Team Uplift, Naruto. I'm on third watch, so please wake me at the appropriate time." She pulled a Team-Uplift-specialized sleepsack out of a storage seal and attached the straps to the wire framework they were sleeping on, then slid into the sack and closed her eyes. A moment later she opened them again and glanced over at Naruto. "By the way, be sure to tie yourself to the platform when you sleep. Wouldn't want to accidentally roll off if you turn over in your sleep."
Naruto looked a little green.
o-o-o-o
In the morning, Naruto grumbled for the entire hour that it took to carefully stair-step their way down from the heights to be on solid ground again. (They came down at an angle, of course, so as to touch down outside of the Swamp of Still-Pretty-Dangerous-Even-If-Not-As-Much-As-When-I-Was-A-Genin. As Hazō noted, there was no need to deal with smelly stagnant water and hostile plants if they didn't have to.)
Once on the ground there was debate about in what order to do all the various things that Hazō wanted to do. When he suggested that they go back and investigate the hellrift in Iron from which the blade monsters had come, Kagome-sensei expressed his displeasure at the idea. Once Hazō had convinced the sealmaster that no, he was not having a delayed psychotic break as a result of looking at the storage scroll and that Kagome-sensei could stop doing the Exorcism of Interdimensional Horrors That Ate My Apprentice dance and also to perhaps tell the Narutos that it was okay to let Hazō out of the multiple vicious submission locks the clones had administered, they moved on to other planning. (The Narutos were repeatedly congratulated on how quickly and effectively they had followed the order to "grab him, he's seal crazy!", even if they had not understood the reasoning at the time. Also, everyone agreed that the thrashing convulsions and animalistic yelling that Hazō had involuntarily indulged in upon being reminded of his summoning scroll experience had not helped his case vis-a-vis the whole 'not crazy' thing.)
The final decision was that they would do the mission first—that is, they would kill every threatening thing within five miles of the city of Tanzaku Gai—and then go build salterns up in Iron.
The mission proved to be both boring and grueling. It was a day's run to Tanzaku Gai and on the following day the actual clearing started. The humans and a dozen Naruto clones formed a line with the humans on the side closest to Tanzaku Gai and started jogging in a circle around the city, moving outwards with each full revolution. The clones on the farthest-out edge had the most distance to travel, so the people on the inside had to move at well below their top speed, but they could not even go at the top of their reduced speed since they had to actively look around at their surroundings and spot signs of burrows and varmints in trees. Things got simpler after Kagome-sensei got annoyed and started tossing explosives around every few yards in order to spook the wildlife. Not to be outdone, the Narutos started Rasenganing the trees and animals and ground and basically everything, sending wood chips, dirt, bone fragments, and blood flying everywhere.
After ten days of being itchy and filthy, the team had left a trail of destruction in their wake and were pretty confident that the vast majority of dangerous fauna had been eliminated from their assigned area of operation. Also a lot of the non-dangerous fauna, but no one was too bothered by that. Furthermore, they all agreed that one itty-bitty little twenty-acre crown fire was hardly worth mentioning in the report they would eventually have to file.
o-o-o-o
"Remind me why we're doing this?" Naruto asked as they walked into the tiny village in the middling-depths of Iron. "I thought you wanted to get to the shore quickly so that we could mess around with these salty..saltine...those salt-maker things of yours."
"Salterns," Hazō noted absently. He was too busy looking around at the village to pay much attention. Honestly, calling it a 'village' was giving it too much credit. It was a collection of four shacks and a scratch garden that couldn't really be called a 'field' without laughing. Frightened faces peered out from each of the shacks, men and women and children clearly afraid to find ninja walking among their homes.
The team had finished clearing Tanzaku Gai, then rinsed off and run up to Iron for the next round of experimentation. By now even Akane was starting to get tired and grumbly...well, Akane was more 'not as cheerful and not saying 'youth' as much as usual' than grumbly, but Naruto was grumbling and complaining while Kagome-sensei was irritable. Still, Hazō was so excited about the salterns that everyone else allowed themselves to be swept along in his wake.
"Salterns, saltines, whatever. Why are we wasting time in this little mudhole? Let's just tell the local lord that he's got some runaways and move on."
Hazō stopped and turned to face the blond. "What?"
Naruto gestured around. "It's clearly not an approved settlement. These aren't sanctioned homesteaders, these are a bunch of bondsmen who ran away. Not our problem. I just want to see these salt thingies of yours and then go home, because there's a hot spring with my name on it. Tell the lord so he can reclaim his property, or don't. I really don't care as long as we get moving."
The Iron Nerve froze Hazō's face in an expression that wasn't furious anger and kept his throat closed tight.
"These are people," he said, once he was confident he could do so calmly. "They deserve a decent life."
Naruto stared at him. "They're bondsmen, Hazō. They couldn't pay their taxes, so they swore service to pay their debt and then they broke their word and ran away. They don't deserve a damn thing."
Akane and Kagome-sensei watched nervously as their leader and the jinchūriki squared off.
Hazō eyed Naruto consideringly for several long seconds. "Wait here."
He turned and walked to the nearest hut, calling out and raising a hand in reassurance as he went. The people in the hut shrank back, retreating into the darkness of the interior. Hazō stopped on the threshold and said something quietly, presumably a request for permission to enter. A moment later he went inside, the door swinging closed behind him.
The other three (well, twelve) ninja waited outside. Kagome-sensei seemed unbothered, shooting no more than the usual number of suspicious glances around but showing no signs of impatience. Akane wore a small and amused smile, watching after where Hazō had gone and shaking her head. Naruto variously rolled his eyes, sighed in disgust, fidgeted and whinged with himselves about how ridiculous it all was.
A few minutes later, Hazō was back, a family trailing reluctantly behind him. The mother looked to be in her sixties and had lived hard; her hands were swollen and crooked with joint freeze, there were scars on her face and a patch of missing hair that looked more like a long-healed wound rather than an effect of age. She still had a few teeth, but they were worn down and yellowed.
The six children behind her were clearly her children and grandchildren, all of them with traces of her features. The oldest girl was perhaps sixteen, brown-haired and moderately attractive beneath the dirt that covered her hands and face. She had been working in the gardens when the team came out of the woods and had run inside at sight of them, shouting the alert as she went. The youngest child was four, perhaps five, sucking his thumb and hiding behind his oldest sister's skirts while looking up at the ninja with big, frightened eyes.
"This is Yumiko," Hazō said, gesturing to the adult woman. "She's forty-seven years old and her husband died from a beating given to him by one of the overseers in the mine when he didn't make quota. Her hands ache all the time, she has trouble feeding herself, and she can't prepare chicken anymore because she can't hold the knife." He was pleased to see that Naruto's gaze because more sympathetic, and his eyes flicked to the swollen hands in question.
"This," Hazō continued, indicating the oldest daughter, "is Yoriko. When she was fourteen the tax assessor started eyeing her whenever he went through. When she was fifteen he tried to put his hand up her shirt. She punched him and ran home. Yumiko grabbed the kids and ran for it with barely more than what was on their backs.
"This is Yamato," Hazō continued, placing a hand on the shoulder of a wiry young man holding a leather-wrapped ragball and a long, straight stick. Yamato flinched away at his touch. "He's twelve, and he likes to play stickball. Apparently he's got a really good throwing arm."
"Look, Hazō, I get it. You're trying to humanize them, make me empathize so that I won't report them to their lord. I already said, I don't care if we do or not. It's fine, let's just move on."
Hazō took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "No, Naruto," he said calmly. "This is not about whether we report them. This is about noticing that Yumiko, Yoriko, Yushimi, Yamato, Yoshika..." he paused and an expression of embarrassment flickered across his face. He glanced at the next child in the order, a young boy of ten or so. "I'm sorry...?"
"Yuri, sir." The boy cringed, looking as though he expected a blow.
Hazō smiled and nodded thanks. "Yuri and his youngest brother, Yoshimi. It's about noticing that they are human, just like you. When you were growing up, you spent a lot of time on the ISC clan compounds, right?"
Naruto shrugged. "Sure. Why?"
"Doesn't Yumiko look a bit like Nara Masaki?"
Naruto frowned, eyeing the aged mother thoughtfully.
"A day or two before we left on this mission, I visited the Nara estate, and I walked by the civilian quarters on my way out. There were a half dozen kids playing stickball out back." He turned to Yamato and held out a hand. Reluctantly, Yamato handed over his bat.
"Give me your best shot!" Hazō said, smiling as he pulled the bat back and waggled it a bit. Yamato backed up a few yards and started to throw but Hazō waved him off with a 'farther' gesture. Yamato backed up a bit more, and then a bit more when Hazō waved him off again. Finally, when he was at standard pitching distance, Hazō tapped the bat on the ground and swung it back over his shoulder, ready to receive. Yamato lobbed the ball to him underhand, fat and slow. Hazō let go of the bat with one hand and plucked the ball of the air. "You call that a pitch?" he called, mock-scowling. "C'mon, kid, put some pepper on it! My grandma throws faster than that, ya big wuss!" He threw the ball back and hunched down, both hands once again on the bat.
Yamato's eyes glittered with tweenage competitiveness. He wound up and hurled the ball as hard as he could, sending it right down the strike line. It was a good pitch for a civilian child; nothing like the crushing speed that a chakra-boosted ninja could manage and his throwing form wasn't as smooth as Keiko's, but nonetheless it was a good pitch.
Hazō unloaded on it like a pangolin crashing into a termite burrow, but he was too low; the bat got a piece of the ball but popped it up in the air instead of sending it screaming into the woods. Yamato ran forward and got under it, snagging it before it could touch the ground and turning to Hazō with an excited "OUT!"...and then suddenly remembering whom he was mocking, at which point his face went pale as milk.
"Argh! Ya got me!" Hazō said, grinning. He turned and held the bat out to the one he thought was Naruto Prime. "You want to show me how it's done, or are you too much of a pussy?"
Naruto had been watching in amusement but at Hazō's taunt he scowled. "Fine," he said. "Yeah, I can show you how it's done." He took the bat and stepped up to where Hazō had been standing. "C'mon, kid," he called to Yamato. "Give me your best shot."
Yamato was one short step from peeing himself at the realization that he was caught in the middle of a bout of ninja dick-measuring. Yamato looked at his mother; she had no advice to offer.
"Go for it, Yamato!" Hazō called, crouching down behind Naruto and holding his hands up to receive. "It's all good. Pound it in here!"
Yamato gulped and started to throw, but Naruto stopped him with an upraised hand.
"None of that!" the blond ninja said. "I see you there, setting me up with a hanger. Go fast or go home, kid!"
Yamato looked like he'd be just as fine with the 'go home' option if there weren't a bunch of ninja standing in the middle of his home and every member of the village peering at him through their windows or out of their doors. Still, he wound up, hurling the ball at Hazō's hands with every ounce of force he could muster.
Naruto's swing caught the ball center and sweet, connecting so hard that the bat cracked and the ball went screaming into the woods.
"Damnit, Naruto! No chakra boost!"
Naruto had been blushing at the broken bat, but Hazō's accusation made him forget his embarrassment and turn on his fellow ninja.
"That was all me!" he yelled. "I don't need to boost to hit a ball without putting it up in the air for any granny to catch!"
"Bullshit! I know how to hit, and you were boosting!"
"Was not! You just suck!"
"Oh yeah? Go find the ball and I'll show you who sucks!"
"Fine! Multiple Shadow Clone Technique!" A horde of Narutos stampeded off into the woods, each yelling that he would be the first to find the ball, and you better believe it!
o-o-o-o
Kagome-sensei had, surprisingly, not had a purpose-made stickball bat in any of his storage scrolls. He did have an oar (well, six oars) and a handsaw, so with a little bit of cutting the competitors were once again bat-enabled. From there, things had naturally progressed to an all-in game with one, then two, then five, then all of the village children playing with all of the ninja, the two groups mixed together into vaguely-defined teams that shifted as time went on. Kagome-sensei turned out to be a sneaky bastard who would steal multiple bases the moment your back was turned. Naruto Pompadour solved this by stealing seventh base and running off into the woods with it while Naruto Bluejay chased Kagome-sensei all around the field with the ball, loudly yelling that the adult ninja couldn't run home until he tagged seventh.
The ninja played it straight; when pitching or batting against a civilian they avoided using chakra boost and slowed their pitches when the younger children were at bat. When the action was ninja-on-ninja, all bets were off. Chakra-boosted strength and speed were the least of it; Multiple Earth Walls blocked the runner's path, Gale Insurgence dragged fielders out of the path of the ball, thrown explosives forced basemen to allow easy runs, and 'tagging the runner' became a full-contact sport which Akane typically won.
They played until the civilians were drooping and the sun was setting, then took a break. Team Uplift built a bonfire (Akane lit it with her Flame Aura jutsu, much to the delight of the younger villagers and the amazement of the older ones), then dug into their storage seals for food so that all twenty-seven villagers could have a good meal consisting of things they had never before eaten and likely never would again.
"This was fun," Akane said, smiling. "Thank you, Hazō."
"Yeah," Naruto said. "I enjoyed it. Except for when this little guy was tagging me out!" He poked the four-year-old Genki in his (disturbingly thin) belly, making the child eep and giggle. Genki's father, the twenty-eight-year-old Genjirō, watched with a nervous expression.
"I'm glad," Hazō said seriously. "Still think they're just bondsmen not worthy of your time?"
Naruto gave him a brief glower, then rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, okay. I knew what you were doing, but it was still fun."
"I'm going to build a few walls for them before we leave," Hazō said. "Want to help?"
"Seems to me like you already have built a few things for them," Naruto CookieConsumer said archly. "Or did it just happen by accident that you blocked the baseline with what looks suspiciously like a charcoal-making oven?"
Hazō chuckled. "No reason I can't do two things at once, right? What do you say? There's a lot we could do that wouldn't be too hard."
Naruto snorted. "'Could'? Some of us can multitask, you know." He pointed with his chin to the north end of the village where a small platoon of Narutos were hauling entire tree trunks in from the woods and Rasenganing them into a mix of conveniently-sized firewood and useful-as-tinder splinters.
"Cool," Hazō said, smiling.
o-o-o-o
"Okay," Naruto said, once they had broken out of the trees onto the beach of the Land of Iron. "What's this crazy plan of yours?"
"Easy," Hazō said, pulling the appropriate storage seals out of the pockets of his CHAOS suit. (How much easier it made the organization! He didn't have to shuffle around looking for things anymore!) "First, help me assemble this."
Minutes later, a wobbly metal shelving unit stood on the sand a short distance above high tide. The lowest shelf was two feet off the ground, but after that there were slots every two inches into which could fit shallow metal pans that Hazō had brought. The pans filled half the space at each level.
"This thing's going to fall over if I let go," Naruto SkyScout disparaged, meanwhile keeping one hand on a support pole.
"Doubt it," Hazō said. "Earth Element: Multiple Earth Wall."
Granite walls rose up on three sides of the shelving unit, locking it in place. At the top, a 'wall' grew up at an angle, forming a rainshield over the whole thing.
"Neat trick," SkyScout admitted. "Now what?"
"We put these pans in every couple of inches, except leave about a foot of space here, here, and here. We fill the pans with salt water, then Akane uses her Elemental Mastery technique to reduce the temperature slowly so that the water starts to freeze. As long as we bring the temperature down slowly enough it will be just the water that freezes and it will leave the salt behind, making a concentrated brine. We throw the ice out, then Akane heats it up as much as she can and we build fires under the bottommost pan and at each of the gaps. The remaining water boils and the steam pours out through the top of the chimney, leaving all the salt behind. We collect the salt, put it in storage seals, and head home. Easy peezy, lemon breezy."
"'Easy peezy, lemon squeezy'," Naruto SomeoneOrOther corrected.
Hazō stopped slipping trays into slots. "What?"
"It's lemon squeezy, not breezy."
"No it's not," Kagome-sensei said. "'Squeezy'? That's stupid. What kind of idiot would squeeze a lemon? It would bite you. It's lemon breezy because their poopsies smell so good."
SomeoneOrOther's eyebrows went up. "'Poopsies'?"
"You know," Kagome-sensei said, shifting uncomfortably. "When they, uh, when they make wind."
"You mean fart?" Naruto BrotherBladeBoundBadass asked innocently.
Kagome-sensei wriggled in embarrassment. "Well...um...."
"I'm pretty sure he means 'fart'," Naruto MorningMaster chimed in, his voice the model of helpfulness. "Lemon farts are supposed to smell good, right? It's gotta be farts."
"Naruto, stop teasing Kagome," Akane scolded. "It's not nice."
"What?" MorningMaster yelped. "I didn't do anything!"
"Just stop saying 'fart'."
"What's wrong with 'fart'? Farting is completely natural! I fart all the time." His face squinched up as he bore down until rewarded by a ripping thblat. "See?" he asked, his voice full of pride. "Hey," he said to BrotherBladeBoundBadass, "do you think that if we all worked together we could fart the national anthem? That would be so cool!"
"No!" Kagome-sensei said, blushing to the roots of his hair. He stood up. "I'm going to go check the perimeter." He quickly disappeared into the woods.
"Bring me back some firewood!" Hazō shouted after him.
o-o-o-o
The work was exacting, annoying, and brutally boring. The temperature had to be managed very carefully to ensure that the freezing water did not take too much salt with it. The only way to verify was to lick the ice and see if it tasted salty. If it did, the tray had to be taken out and heated over a fire until it re-melted, then they tried again. Periodically, Akane needed to re-cast the Elemental Mastery jutsu, since at her current level of skill it only lasted about an hour and a half.
The team had arrived at the beach around midday and it had taken time to get the equipment set up and haul the requisite amount of seawater up to fill the pans. By the time night fell there had been lots of experimentation and no results.
"This sucks," Naruto GloriousGloryGuy griped, once they were all seated around the fire with dinner in hand. "It's even worse than watching paint dry."
"Have you actually watched paint dry?" Akane asked, curious.
"Yeah," Naruto BaconBuggy said. (One of the clones that Naruto had made most recently had wanted to name himself BaconBuggerer. This had been met with loud protestations from everyone except the Naruto Collective, who had thought it was hilarious. It had looked like BaconBuggerer was going to get his way, until Naruto MeadowLarkSlowSadSongSinger "got tired of listening to you guys whinge" and stabbed BaconBuggerer in the back with a kunai, popping him. Naruto Prime had immediately created another clone who had grumblingly agreed to be known as "BaconBuggy". BaconBuggy had stabbed MeadowLarkSlowSadSongSinger in the head the moment the latter's back was turned.) "It was a punishment that Uncle Kaka used to love for whenever I 'got out of hand' as he put it. He'd throw a bunch of paint at a wall and tell me to watch it. I'd have to give him a precise report on which colors dried in which order from which positions, and if I got it wrong then he'd make me do it again."
"That's evil," Hazō said, amazed. "I thought it was bad at the Academy when they made us eat maggots until we puked."
"Hah! Maggots?! I wish all they'd done at the Academy was make me eat maggots! One time..."
o-o-o-o
The next day started early. Hazō was still enchanted with the fiddling adjustments necessary to get the water to freeze at the right temperature, and would wax rhapsodic about the joys of experimentation whenever one of the team didn't run away fast enough. Akane worked gamely with him, casting and recasting Elemental Mastery at various temperatures until her chakra ran low. Various Narutos were willing to take turns fetching firewood and maintaining the fires, although they spent most of their time playing stickball. (The fact that Naruto could field two entire stickball teams of clones meant that he never had any trouble playing with himself, as he put it with a juvenile grin.)
At the end of the second day they had collected perhaps twenty pounds of salt. Naruto (Prime, probably) turned a skeptical eye on the results of two days of effort.
"That's it?" he demanded. "This piddling little bit of salt is why we traveled hundreds of miles and spent two days boiling water slowly?"
"Hey, this is just the proof of concept!" Hazō protested. "Now that we know it works, I want to scale up. The shelving and careful tending was just to make things go quicker. Before we leave I'll MEW up a bunch of wide, flat chimneys in the surf, high enough that the water won't come in over the top. We can come back in a month or so after it's all evaporated. Besides, this is something like six grand work of salt right here."
Naruto scoffed. "Two days of work for six grand! Dude, hasn't anyone ever told you about opportunity cost?"
"It scales up!"
"Bah." Naruto swung his flak vest off the grass where he'd been using it for a pillow and pulled it on. "C'mon, let's head home. We're almost out of time for this mission and we don't want people wondering where we are."
o-o-o-o
It was a tired, footsore, but generally happy group that came through the Sunset Gate of Leaf near sundown. (They'd needed to swing around to the Sunset Gate because it would have been implausible for them to be coming back from Tanzaku Gai from the north.) They turned in the mission and were each given a completion chit, although payment would be held until another team was sent out to check their work. From there, it was back to the Gōketsu compound for a much-anticipated soak in the hot spring.
They walked through the estate gates and around the house...and then all of them stopped walking.
"Hazō," Naruto Prime asked calmly, "why is there a small army of people in your hot spring and half a dozen cottages being built on your back lawn? And what are those little...stone mushroom-house things?"
"I think those are Earth Domes. Big ones. As to the rest, I...am not sure," Hazō said, although suspicion was tickling the back of his mind. A singsong chant about 'having carte blanche' paraded itself across his mind's ear.
"Look!" someone shouted. "It's Lord Gōketsu!"
A dozen ninja were suddenly racing towards them; Hazō braced himself and Kagome was suddenly in a guard stance, but the strangers stopped a good ten yards away and dropped into a full dogeza in the snow.
"What...I mean...who...." Hazō stopped, gathered himself, and tried again. "Stand up, please. Who are you people?"
The ninja climbed to their feet, bowing once more before standing straight.
"Sir, we are Cabins Five and Seven," the oldest one said. He was in his forties, missing two fingers on his left hands and his left eye. Burn scars trailed down that side of his face and disappeared under his collar. "I'm Atomu, Cabin Captain, and these are my squad. We're Cabin Five."
"I'm Reo," another man said. He was missing his right leg above the knee, although he moved spryly enough on a crutch. "I'm Cabin Captain for Seven, and this lot are mine. It's an honor, My Lord. Really. Thank you."
Hazō blinked and then did what any good missing-nin or sealmaster did when completely out of his depth: Keep going and pretend you're totally in control.
"No trouble at all," he said, smiling. "It's a pleasure to meet you all. Have you by any chance seen Mari?"
Reo's face split into a wide grin. "Lady Firehair? She's in the tea room behind the hot spring, having cakes with Mr. Kuwahara from the Merchant Council. Got him eating out her palm, My Lord. Funny as anything."
"I see," Hazō said. He paused, trying to figure out which question to ask first. "Captain Reo...how many cabins are there, and how many people living on the grounds right now?"
Reo bobbed his head in apology and then glanced at his opposite number from Cabin Five. "Eight cabins, My Lord. As to people...what do you think, Atomu? Thirty? Forty?"
"Something like," Atomu said, nodding. "I apologize, My Lord. I don't have an exact count. What with all the construction going on, people have been coming and going enough that it's hard to keep track of who's actually living in the cabins and who's just working on them."
Beside him, Hazō could feel Kagome-sensei tense up. Without even needing to think about it or look, he reached out and placed a hand on his teacher's wrist.
"Thank you, gentlemen," he said. "If you'll excuse us, we've just gotten back from a long mission and we're going to go soak."
"Of course, My Lord!" Atomu said, saluting. "Can we get you anything? Iced tea? Sake? Food?" His gaze shifted to Kagome-sensei. "Your Lordship, could we get you some hot chocolate? Lady Gōketsu said you liked it with ginger, so we've been keeping a pot ready for whenever you got back."
Kagome-sensei glowered at him distrustfully. "As if I'd take anything from you, you—"
"Thank you very much, Atomu," Hazō said loudly. "We're fine for now. Much appreciated."
All fourteen ninja bowed deeply. "Yes, My Lord," the two Cabin Captains said. "We'll get everyone out of the hot spring so that you can have some space. Again, it's a real pleasure to finally meet you all. And thank you so much for telling Lady Gōketsu that we could stay here."
"You're welcome?"
The ninja bowed again and jogged away, except for one of the heretofore-silent younger ones who paused after a few steps and turned back. Atomu stayed beside him, looking angry.
"My Lord Kagome," the younger ninja said hesitantly. "Sugiyama is on a mission right now, but Genda and Jinno have been talking nonstop about their studies with you. They...they showed me some of the math that you taught them."
"Yeah?" Kagome-sensei demanded, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
The young man bit his lip. "I...I was wondering if—"
"Fuyuki!" Atomu snapped. "Shush your yapping! Don't bother Lord Kagome when he's just now back!"
"Quiet, you!" Kagome-sensei said. "He can talk if he wants to!"
Atomu dropped to his knees in the snow and bowed dogeza. "Of course, My Lord! I'm terribly sorry. Please forgive me!"
Kagome-sensei blinked, looking at Hazō helplessly. His student shrugged.
"It's...uh...it's fine?" the elder sealmaster said. "You can stand up now. Please."
Atomu came to his feet and bowed one last time. He gave Fuyuki a gimlet stare that held dire warnings, but remained silent.
Fuyuki gulped nervously.
"What were you saying?" Kagome-sensei asked.
Fuyuki licked his lips, shooting a sidelong glance at the fulminating Atomu. "Um...the math that they showed me was really fun and I...I was wondering, uh, if maybe there was any chance I could sit in on your next lesson?"
Kagome-sensei eyed him suspiciously. "Why?"
"I...I thought it was really interesting, My Lord. It was beautiful. Like ninjutsu, only purer." He struggled. "They're real, the numbers. Realer than I am, I think, even though I can't touch them. They...." He struggled for another moment, then shrugged helplessly.
Kagome-sensei studied him for another moment, then sniffed. "Ten tomorrow morning in the solarium. Don't be late."
"Yes, My Lord! Thank you! Thank you!"
"And bring some of that hot chocolate."
"Of course, My Lord!"
"And a slate and some chalk. You can't take notes without a slate and chalk, so don't forget."
"I won't, sir—My Lord! Sorry, My Lord! Thank you, thank you, thank you!"
Kagome-sensei hunched in on himself at the effusive praise and fidgeted nervously.
"You're welcome?" he said hesitantly. "I'll see you tomorrow, I guess?"
"Yes, My Lord! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" The ecstatic young ninja turned and sprinted away, Atomu beside him.
There was silence for several seconds as everyone digested what had just happened.
"So," Naruto Prime said at last. "Long hot soak?"
"Long hot soak," Hazō agreed definitively. The rest of the group echoed him an instant later.
"And I refuse to think about the madness until tomorrow," Naruto said firmly. "So no talking about it."
"Deal." / "No problem." / "Well, duh!"
XP AWARD: 81 (includes brevity bonus)
This update covered 20 days. I enjoyed writing it, so the XP award is high, but it had too many scenes for one update (six or more, depending on how you count), so the XP award is not as high as it could have been.
It is now about 4pm.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Saturday, October 5, at 9am Eastern time.
Last edited by a moderator:
- Location
- United States
I really enjoyed the update @eaglejarl
Seeing everyone have a fun time with the villagers really puts Uplift into perspective and makes it much more tangible than the abstract of "make the world better".
Seeing everyone have a fun time with the villagers really puts Uplift into perspective and makes it much more tangible than the abstract of "make the world better".
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
- Location
- Under a Rock
This was our first planned bonding activity with Naruto that did not end with someone nearly dying! Victory!
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Well, first things first.
[x] Training Plan: By Demons Be Driven
Hazou:
Purchase Summoning Scroll Acolyte for 100 XP.
Purchase Calligraphy 12 for 12 XP
Purchase Calligraphy 13 for 13 XP
Purchase Calligraphy 14 for 14 XP
Total: 139 XP
[x] Training Plan: By Demons Be Driven
Hazou:
Purchase Summoning Scroll Acolyte for 100 XP.
Purchase Calligraphy 12 for 12 XP
Purchase Calligraphy 13 for 13 XP
Purchase Calligraphy 14 for 14 XP
Total: 139 XP
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- Location
- Yes.
Hold up, I thought we were still pushing for SC?
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
We gain the most utilitons/time by spending 100 XP for the "Stunt that gives you +16 sealing" and some more XP on calligraphy before spending a couple months (7-9) on CR for Shadow Clones (and then leveling that). Prime research time.
tl;dr: Would you like to grind CR for months straight while being slightly-worse-than-Kagome at Sealing or as we are?
- Location
- Yes.
*urge to YES rising*tl;dr: Would you like to grind CR for months straight while being slightly-worse-than-Kagome at Sealing or as we are?
Alright, fair enough. I'm non-trivially concerned that our Calligraphy skill won't be high enough to keep up with our boosted Sealing (Rules doc says it ought to be ~2/3 Sealing, which means 24 Calligraphy for our 36 Sealing), but if we take 20 on rolls I think we can somewhat compensate for this. Maybe.
[x] Training Plan: By Demons Be Driven
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
With our Severe Consequence, our Sealing is low enough that we likely won't be able to do any real sealing until it heals. SSA changes that, because with +16 Sealing we can easily do sealing at our old level of skill no problem. Getting it now as compared to after SC costs somewhere around 30 XP (assuming SC gives something on the order of +1 XP/day), but what we get in return is months worth of sealing time that we wouldn't otherwise have, so in my opinion it's worth the XP inefficiency.
The Calligraphy I'm not as sure about, because that's even more XP for more marginal gains that I'm not so sure it's really worth our time, but a couple levels is probably worthwhile just to make up for the Consequence and get our Calligraphy back up to par.
[x] Training Plan: By Demons Be Driven
- Location
- Yes.
Point of order, we should only have a week left on our Severe Consequence, since the mission's taken 3 weeks and Severe Consequences take 4 weeks to heal IIRC.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
They take 121 days.
- Location
- Yes.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
They take 112 days to heal per the rules (44,800 shifts healing at 400/day). I thought they were a month to heal too but they actually take just shy of 4.
Given that we've spent three weeks so far, we've still got about 3 months left on it.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Yeah.
I'm planning on bringing it to Calligraphy 19 , sink XP into CR, and then bring it up to 21 once the Consequence clears (AB fuckery with the consequences).
We're effectively screwed if Rolls Happen until the Consequence is gone, so lets go do some cool Uplift/narrative-socials work in the meantime while we farm XP to improve our handwriting.
(Although, we might be able to move down the time ladder to make the Calligraphy roll with a bit of a boost or something. )
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
There wasn't even remotely enough time.
Approximately.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
And @eaglejarl, I must chime in as well and say that this update was great! I loved seeing a Naruto interaction that stayed cool-headed, I know he's been around off-screen a lot so it's good to see that growing familiarity shown on-screen beyond just the incidents where everything was stressful and we almost killed each other.
I also enjoyed the civilian scene in general. It's always heartwarming to stop and help out some people and have some fun.
I also enjoyed the civilian scene in general. It's always heartwarming to stop and help out some people and have some fun.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Totally get that. I just personally wanted to see it the most for purely selfish reasons