- Location
- Yes.
I mean, everyone who has anything to say about the subject will agree that Hazou "tripped on some stairs", alright.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- 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 open voting
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Exactly! And this incentivizes the world to avoid randomly killing us. Out will surround us with a grue-like outcome pump effect, which will ensure that the actual timeline is always the one where Hazou is alive. It's brilliant.
(I don't actually believe this.)
If that's the case, then things already went terribly wrong. There should be nobody left to say anything on any subject in the wake of Hazou tripping on some stairs.
Tua
鸡肉面条汤
- Location
- شوربة الدجاج المعكرونة
More seriously though:
Unless the sealing failure/implosion has a nigh continent ending radius then all this does is turn Hazou into a high value ninja piñata for enemy infiltrators.
Rock would surely love to jump at the chance to trade one or two of their jounin for one Village wide explosion.
Unless the sealing failure/implosion has a nigh continent ending radius then all this does is turn Hazou into a high value ninja piñata for enemy infiltrators.
Rock would surely love to jump at the chance to trade one or two of their jounin for one Village wide explosion.
- Location
- Pacific standard
Counter evidence: Kagome invented stupid boxes
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Oh god we do not need Dimentio in this story kthanks.
Do you want to eat a sealing failure to the face? It seems that the problem would be 'not enough space to unstore'.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Apropos of nothing, you guys know how every so often a new reader will show up and not really get the simulation thing and talk like various plot points were narrative-devised?
Well, in the Battle of the Gods, pretty much the battle with Akatsuki:
Well, in the Battle of the Gods, pretty much the battle with Akatsuki:
- Jiraiya died.
- Orochimaru looked like he died but really didn't.
- Tsunade survived.
- Pein was defeated by talking.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Apropos of nothing, you guys know how every so often a new reader will show up and not really get the simulation thing and talk like various plot points were narrative-devised?
Well, in the Battle of the Gods, pretty much the battle with Akatsuki:
People aren't gonna believe us when we say that the simulation just so happened to pretty much exactly mirror canon.
- Jiraiya died.
- Orochimaru looked like he died but really didn't.
- Tsunade survived.
- Pein was defeated by talking.
Simulation generated narratively convenient circumstances both times, but I'm fairly certain @eaglejarl, @Velorien, and @OliWhail could have worked with a very large amount of possible outcomes.
Though, some of the weirder ones like "Only canon fodder survived, somehow" would have been a bit strange to work with.
The watchers most likely exist. Sealing failures are too dangerous, if there was no moderating influence a significant part of warfare would be suicide sealing failures. Since we've never seen suicide sealing failures even discussed, some moderating influence must exist, and we have first hand account that the watchers exist. jiraiya said that his traps were disarmed and then rearmed, that doesn't sound like sleep paralysis.
Also strapping a city busting nuke to ourselves is a terrible idea. It would instantly make us the enemy of everyone who prefers their cities to exist, and let Hiashi justify any emergency action he feels he needs to take to get the existential threat under control. We can't build a dead man's switch that can withstand a half a dozen sealmasters trying to break it. Remember what happened to hidden Whirlpool.
Also strapping a city busting nuke to ourselves is a terrible idea. It would instantly make us the enemy of everyone who prefers their cities to exist, and let Hiashi justify any emergency action he feels he needs to take to get the existential threat under control. We can't build a dead man's switch that can withstand a half a dozen sealmasters trying to break it. Remember what happened to hidden Whirlpool.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Yes, he said that they were disarmed and then re-armed. In other words, they were armed when he went to sleep and armed when he woke up. How did he figure they were ever in the disarmed state to begin with?
Possible reasons why sealing-failure kamikaze aren't a thing:
- Biases. Sealing failures are horrifying and could kill you with no saving throw. Sealmasters quickly develop pathological fear of them, and automatically veto any idea of their weaponization. Those who don't, die to their own recklessness.
- Inefficiency. To be able to cause a sealing failure, you need to have ninja-level chakra reserves, some level of chakra control, and be smart enough to understand Sealing 101. Each sealing-failure kamikaze is a former giften genin into which the village invested years of training, and who was a prospective chuunin/jounin. And they'll be spent in a single battle for an uncertain benefit, perhaps for nothing — sealing failures are inherently unpredictable, and while one may destroy all enemies, it could also just create some useless smoke, or just explode in the kamikaze's face.
- A competent sealmaster could probably figure out a way to optimize it, to figure out which sealing failures are simultaneously easy to cause (and so don't require the kamikaze to be competent) and highly likely to be destructive, but such a sealmaster will probably die to one of their own sealing failures in the process of optimization.
- Convincing people to sign up for the kamikaze corps will require some serious indoctrination, of a level that doesn't appear to be present in the setting.
- There's certainly the conspiracy theory of the Watchers' existence going around. It was likely created by sealmasters themselves, perhaps as a cautionary tale to sealmaster apprentices, and it appears to be working to scare off even Jiraiya-level sealmasters from researching failures.
Hmm. I expect this will serve as a deterred from positive enemy actions, but won't cause positive enemy action on its own, at least beyond Leaf. Sealmasters aren't usually in Kage-level positions, and IIRC EagleJarl had said that Kages don't really realize what a serious threat sealing failures are, lest they would've banned all research altogether (@faflec, you recall that? I think it was when we were first discussing gruing Henge). So foreign sealmasters will be forced to either deal with us on their lonesome, or try to convince their Kage that we're an existential threat, which probably won't work.
Might get us targeted by Sasori though. By which I mean, hey, @MMKII, this doubles as a way to get Sasori to talk to us!
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Well Kagome might use them if he judged it worth the risk in combat. But I agree he would never have let us test out SINs without mentioning it.
There's probably some condition on their safe destruction considering it's supposed to be hard to make fool-proof storage seals.
Anyways, studying implosions seals is a good way to learn how to make fool-proof storage seals. In fact, if you modify storage seals to store everything in a radius then you've got fool-proof storage seals already. And storing everything might be even easier than just storing air.
Seems reasonable explanation
In case I forget. We should ask the QMs Hazou's progress on the sealing research he did once we aren't putting out fires
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Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Just to be clear: Did I miss the punchline here, or is it still coming?
Given that we can apparently skedaddle out of the village whenever we want so long as we're on an appropriate mission, why aren't we actively hunting for ways to get in touch with these folks again? Lets get the band back together folks! It's sure to net us some decent XP.
- Location
- Yes.
Is this what you're looking for?
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
If only Jiraiya knew what we'll get up to once he dies...
Yes, it appears I somewhat misremembered it. Thank you.
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- Location
- Yes.
He knew. He absolutely knew what we'd get up to after he died. He'd just
- Location
- United States
Then he shouldn't have went off and died then!
Yes, doubt the testimony of the Kage level spymaster. I know that if I built something, and then someone else took it apart and then put it back together, I'd be able to tell that it was messed with.
Broadly speaking your objections are that suicide sealing failures are a bad fit in the current military setup of the hidden villiages, which is true, but if suicide sealing failures were a known part of warfare than warfare would look very different. I figure all it would take was one hidden villiage, or one clan, back in the warring clan period, to set up the following.
- Take a bunch of kids (maybe 10) who have enough chakra to infuse one seal, but not enough chakra for sustained fighting, and put them through a very specialized training course.
- All they learn is enough chakra control to infuse a storage seal, no taijutsu, or ninjutsu.
- This would reduce training time to maybe a year or two
- Send 2 or 3 of them off with a chunin towards your enemies population centers (trading centers, isolated bases, any part of a hidden villiage)
- The chunin runs off, and the sealing kamikazes intentionally induce a sealing failure, not even knowing what that will do
- Even if one sealing failure won't cause mass horror, with enough chances something horrible would happen to your enemies.
Not sure what your point is here, if people in power don't believe our threat than it's useless, if they do believe our threat than they would crush us. Even without sealmasters, genjutsu, yamanaka mind control, hyuuga doing something with juuken, orochimaru doing anything. There are too many possible ways to make a dead man's switch useless, I don't see why Hiashi would take the risk to letting us live with a possible city destroying nuke strapped to us.
- Location
- Australia
What if Kagome is right? It is implausible that a group would achieve secret domination of the whole world, stay cohesive and not have any other socioeconomic political ambitions. Watcher's don't exist. The hallucination of the watchers is just how sealmasters rationalise experiencing the slightest irritation from the Outer Entities or Chakra AI at being poked.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
To the best of my understanding, chakra reserves is a bit of a binary when it comes to ninjadom. Part of becoming a ninja is taking your extremely miniscule chakra reserves (albiet larger than the other civvies and thus large enough to make said training possible at all) and growing them to the point where you can shoot fire with your eyes, and from there there's nothing stopping a ninja from growing their chakra reserves further.
Therefore, any child who could be trained to activate a seal can also be trained up into a full-fledged ninja reserves-wise, and there's no such thing as half a ninja.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Fair enough. I still don't consider this sufficient, given lack of any other evidence and the overwhelming number of situations in which they should've appeared but haven't. Jiraiya wasn't infallible.
I don't think it'd be any more effective than giving the minimal-chakra-reserves kids a bunch of explosive tags and telling them to detonate them at the target. Teaching them to activate one single seal is almost certainly easier than teaching them to misinfuse, and much more reliable.
My point is that they won't truly buy into the threat until they start thinking about it in near-mode. They won't hear about the countermeasure and decide they must drop everything else and deal with us to protect reality, but it will give them second thoughts if they're ever in a situation where they want to attack/threaten us for unrelated reasons.
Chapter 298: Regrouping
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Well, that was exciting," Noburi said, once all the guests had been ushered out and the family was together again in their favorite restaurant's private function room. (At this point the family simply paid a retainer for the restaurant to keep the place unoccupied and ready for any Gōketsu who needed a moment of privacy. It was simpler than throwing everything into disarray every week or so. Also, it meant that they could make certain alterations to the room, such as installing blast shields and posts suitable for mounting door-facing explosives on, for when Kagome-sensei was feeling edgy...or, in plainer language, every visit.)
"Indeed," Keiko said, nodding from her position on Mari's right. "If by 'exciting' you mean 'utterly disastrous'."
"Actually," Hazō said, "it didn't go that badly. No, really! I made it through four separate topics before annoying him."
"You mean before inciting him into a homicidal rage so intense that we could feel the killing intent from down the hall?" Noburi asked.
"He wasn't actually angry," Mari said from the head of the table. "If he had been, Hazō would be dead. He was annoyed and made an effort of will. If anything, it sounds more like he was amused by the offer of adoption and then mildly offended when Hazō got condescending about how he knew better than Orochimaru how to design a research methodology and how Orochimaru needed to rebrand—as though he weren't happy with who he is and that he should care about popular opinion."
"Right, well, enough of that," Hazō said quickly. "Here's my take on it: I definitely do not want him as Clan Head—"
"Duh," Noburi mumbled.
"—both because he's clearly unstable," Hazō continued, plowing right through Noburi's snidery, "and also because Naruto has first claim." He turned to the blond seated to his left. "Naruto, what do you say? Want the position?"
The young jinchūrki (or, rather, the Prime body that was seated at the table, as opposed to the fifteen clones scattered around the perimeter of the room) sincerely considered the idea for several seconds, then shook his head. "Not now. Letting the Uzumaki name die out means giving up a piece of who I am...and also costs us a Council vote, maybe two. Shitlicker was smart to offer me a special dispensation under the Hokage's seal to have a non-clan member as my regent. It means he doesn't have to set the precedent that non-blood clan members can officially be regents or Clan Heads."
He gestured around the table. "As the founding members of the Gōketsu clan you are all of the Gōketsu blood, even if you don't have any blood in common. I am definitely not of the Gōketsu blood, so if I get adopted and take the Clan Head position then it's up to the Council to decide whether or not that can be a thing." He rolled his eyes. "I mean, sure, it's technically up to FartyMcShitPants, but he would definitely throw it over to the Council so as to avoid any appearance of bias. He could hold it up as him being magnanimous and upstanding and all that crap, all the while pulling the strings to make the vote go his way."
Mari's eyes widened, mouth opening in an oh of surprise. "That's twisted," she said, shaking her head. "You get adopted, Hazō appoints you as his heir, he steps down as Clan Head, but the Council determines that it's illegal for you to take the office because you aren't of the blood. Suddenly, there is no Clan Head of the Gōketsu. As regent I have power to vote in Council, but only as proxy for the authority of the Clan Head. When there is no Clan Head, I can't vote. Furthermore, there wouldn't be a Clan Head available to appoint the next Clan Head. And, of course, the Uzumaki ceased to exist the moment you got adopted, so there's no clan for you to go back to."
"Hang on," Noburi said. "How does the Council get a say? I mean, sure, Leaf-wide age of majority, I guess that makes sense. Why do they get to mix in on who we choose as Clan Head?"
Mari puffed out her cheeks in thought for a moment. "It's murky," she admitted at last. "I guess at base it comes down to the fact that Leaf is a joint venture between the clans. Joining Leaf meant that they gave up a certain amount of rights and control in order to live at peace with one another. They don't get a say in anything internal to the other clans, but they do get a say about the interfaces between the clans, and the Council is the most visible example of that. No one wants to be sitting at the table with another representative who is dangerously insane, or too senile to make binding agreements, or things like that. As a result, they agreed at the founding that there would be consensus rules for who could be Clan Head."
"Okay, but why not just let us have a proxy?"
"It would defeat the purpose," Keiko said. "The entire idea is to ensure that the individuals seated at the Council table will be mature, educated, of sound mind, able to contribute productively during discussion, relatively trustworthy, and of the clan that they represent so as to prevent conflicts of interest. Aside from that is the concept of clan itself...if anyone can be appointed as effective head of clan, what does it even mean to be a clan? Of all things that might be discussed among clans, the rulership of a clan is the most critical for agreement."
"Anyway," Hazō said, quickly reclaiming control of the conversation, "Naruto, you say you're not taking the job, or joining up. Honestly, I'm a little conflicted about that...on the one hand, I would really like to have you with us. Because you're cool, and because it was Jiraiya's wish, and because sometimes I would like to dump the responsibility and just go do research, and because I'd like to finally be able to show you some of our clan secrets that I think would be really useful to you and therefore by proxy to us." He shrugged and flashed an unrepentant grin. "On the other hand, I admit that having mighty power to rule ruthlessly over all these, my minions, is kinda fun."
"Try it, Mr. MEW," Noburi said, snorting. "Call me a minion one more time, I dare you."
Hazō cleared his throat. "Yes, well. Moving on. I feel very strongly that we should not give Orochimaru the Clan Head seat, but I'm not going to be unilateral about it. Anyone want him in?"
"I do not think it wise."
"I'll pass. I'm enjoying being regent as much as you're enjoying thinking of us as minions."
"Holy everloving fuck no."
"I find him most unyouthful."
"That stinker? Clan Head? We wouldn't survive ten minutes."
"Good. I do think we should work with him." He raised his hands to interrupt the frenzied interruptions. "Hang on, hear me out! I think we should work with him, very carefully, because his research is undeniably useful, and there are some areas of overlap in what he wants and what we want. He's looking for fast regeneration, agelessness, immortality, defense, that sort of thing. All of that would be very useful to us, both personally and as part of our Uplift project."
"Uh, dude, you realize he's psychotic and torture-crazy, right?"
Hazō shrugged. "Yeah, he's definitely a few knots short of a tie, but you have to admit that his work is impressive."
Glances were exchanged.
"Hazō," Keiko said carefully. "I am concerned that you have had multiple instances of head trauma recently and it is possible that the effects are starting to show."
"Yeah, do you remember what was in that basement?" Noburi demanded. "Seriously, the guy on the table...that was messed up."
"Don't forget the 'turn you into a cannibal' seal," Naruto added. "I spent weeks being tortured and starved by Akatsuki and that seal was still the most messed-up thing I've ever felt."
"You didn't feel it," Hazō pointed out. "It was Naruto Pepperoni, and you didn't get his memories back."
Naruto looked at him as though he were an idiot. "I watched someone who looked and talked exactly like me clearly want to eat my friends—or, at least, you guys." He stuck out his tongue, swivelling to direct the insult to everyone equally. "Even if I don't remember it first-person, it was still all kinds of messed up."
Hazō nodded, raising a hand in surrender. "Okay, fair. Still, working with him is the only way we're going to be able to exert any kind of moderating influence, or—"
"Moderating influence?!" Noburi yelped. "Dude, are you out of your fucking mind? He's not going to listen to a damn word anyone says. Why should he? Who's going to stop him? Tsunade's all fucked up and may not even be in town, Naruto's fucked up and not good enough—no offense, man—"
"Some taken."
Noburi brushed the issue aside with an apologetically dismissive wave. (It was a gesture that contained multitudes.) "Look, you're really good, but he's better and you know it. He's three times your age; he's had more time to study and practice, to think up tricks and learn stuff. His entire focus is on survival; you heard what Captain Minori said about the Battle of the Gods. Orochimaru got cut in fucking half and didn't even really notice."
"He did get killed at the last," Keiko noted. She paused. "Probably. It seems likely that he was in fact killed and then resurrected with the rest of Akatsuki."
"Are you sure?" Noburi demanded. "Because I'm not. Captain Minori said that seven figures got resurrected and walked off. Uchiha, Hoshigake, Hidan, Deidara, Sasori, Konan, Kakuzu. Notice the absence of the name 'Orochimaru'? Odds on that he came back to life on his own after the battle."
"He could have reverse-summoned himself before being killed," Akane put in, her voice containing a notable absence of youthful certainty.
"Sure," Noburi said. "Doesn't sound like it, though. There were a bunch of snakes still crawling across the field until they got blown up. They were either some weird form of body shifting, or they were a chakra construct like clones, or they were summons from the Seventh Path. In those last two cases, wouldn't they have popped when their creator left this Path? Because it sounds to me like those snakes were Orochimaru, they got killed, and he came back to life after everyone else had left the island."
"Regardless," Hazō said loudly. "We still need to work with him. If nothing else, we want to keep one eye on his research. If he's working on some kind of paralysis-plague, wouldn't it be better to know before he releases it?"
Uncomfortable silence reigned.
Mari sighed in defeat. "I suppose," she said. "For the record, I have done a classified but very high number of seduction missions, too many of which required me to get into the bed of someone that I found personally revolting. I have had guys want me to act like a little girl, or tell me to take a very cold bath and then lie still. I have had men call me every filthy name you can imagine while they were pounding into me. I have pretended to be enthusiastic about a lot of disturbingly weird stuff, because that was the mission. I have never in my life felt so unclean, so utterly degraded and objectified, as when Orochimaru casually studied me for five seconds while I was mopping up his office. After we finish here I am going to take a bath and scrub off three layers of skin so I can hopefully feel clean again." She shuddered. "He never glanced at my tits or my ass, and I'm confident he wasn't thinking about fucking me; I can't even make my brain picture what he might have been imagining, because I start to shake every time I do." She slammed back the mug of mostly-cooled sake that had been sitting untouched in front of her, then pulled a hot bottle out of a storage seal and poured most of it down her throat in one go. She set the bottle down carefully and lay her hand casually back in her lap.
Hazō swallowed a lump of fear/anger/guilt/something at the slight tremor in Mari's fingers that she had not managed to conceal in time.
"Let's wrap this up as soon as we can," Hazō said. "Keiko, thank you for agreeing to put everyone up at the Nara compound."
"It was the obvious solution. Many of the civilians will need to stay in storage facilities or field shelters, but they will at least have a roof and bedding, since Orochimaru allowed them to bring their possessions." She smiled very slightly. "They definitely would not have fit on the Uzumaki 'estate'."
Naruto Bodybagger, on sentry duty beside the door, glanced over his shoulder at her. "Let it go, Scary Sis," he grumbled. "It was just Mom and Dad, okay? No other Uzumaki or Namikaze, so they didn't need more than a house. There were plans to adopt people, get an estate, start rebuilding the clans, but both Mom and Dad came down with a really bad case of dead before that could happen."
"Oy!" growled the clone next to him, smacking him upside the head. "Eyes on your sector, numbnuts! You and I are on the door, Prime is on the meatbag convo."
"My apologies," Keiko said, nodding to Naruto Bodybagger and then to Prime. "My attempt at levity was ill-chosen. I did not intend to offer hurt."
Prime waved her apology aside. "It's fine," he said. "You're not the first, or even the fifty-first, to be surprised that I just have a little house instead of a big fancy clan compound." He shrugged. "It's just easier, you know? I can keep it clean myselves without having to hire a ton of servants."
"Can but don't, apparently," Noburi said with a grin.
"It's clean! I just...wasn't ready for houseguests."
"Do tell?" Noburi asked, eyebrows raised. "The remains of wild drunken debauchery everywhere? Or maybe you had a desperate need to get the women's undergarments stuffed back into your closet before we guessed your terrible secret?"
Naruto shifted nervously. "Nothing like that," he mumbled. "Just...you know, stuff. And the guest rooms aren't made up, so three of me are on that." He gestured around the table. "You know it's going to be pretty tight, right? Two guestrooms, but they're designed for either a singleton or a couple who are sleeping together."
"It's fine," Kagome-sensei said. "We've slept in tight spaces plenty of times. I've still got my bedroll, so I'll take the floor."
"Back on topic," Hazō said, desperately trying to save the focus, "I'm glad that the civilians and the 'branch family' ninja are taken care of. Keiko, you said that Shikamaru would give us a week to find alternate arrangements, right?"
She nodded. "Indeed. I apologize for his unwillingness to shelter the team as well, but that would be too far for the current political environment. Sheltering the civilians is obviously not relevant to any other clan, and sheltering the clanless ninja is not a strong political statement; simply because they were renting dwellings on the Gōketsu land and attending parties there does not make them Gōketsu. Sheltering the five of you would destroy the illusion of political distance he has been trying to build." She reached into her jacket and pulled out a storage seal, from which emerged a heavy sack that jingled as she gestured with it. "He wasn't sure how much liquidity we would have available, so he provided this to tide you all over. It's a hundred thousand ryō; it should be more than enough to cover expenses until you can find something." She looked away, clearly uncomfortable and guilty, then stretched across the table so she could set it in front of Hazō.
"Thank him for me," Hazō said, studying the pouch.
Keiko ducked her head. "Of course. There is...there is no need to pay it back. Nor are there obligations. It is not a gift, it is a...repayment of a debt that Shikamaru feels he incurred to Hazō during the Chūnin Exams."
Hazō looked up, frowning. "A debt?"
"Yes," Keiko said. "A debt. Which has now been discharged."
"But—"
"It's an imaginary debt that exists so that the money is neither charity nor a loan," Mari said impatiently. "This way there's no obligation on our side. Can we move on?"
Hazō blushed to his hairline. "Right. Um...okay, the civilians and the other ninja are taken care of for now. Keiko, Furiko should be done checking on the taxidermist and back at the Nara compound when you get home. Have her come over to Naruto's place and give us the word, okay?"
"Of course."
"Hopefully there isn't actually a horrific face-melting chakra plague spreading through Leaf," Noburi grumbled.
"Okay," Hazō said. "Noburi, I'd like you to take a couple of Narutos—if that's okay with you, Naruto—and go track down Lady Tsunade—check the hospital, the Tower, wherever else you can think of. We need to know about Orochimaru's personality, his history, and his motivations. What is he likely to do next? Is he actually a threat to us? Whatever she's willing to say."
Noburi grimaced. "I mean, I'll go, but I'm not sure she's even still in Leaf. She was talking about heading out to get back to work, and I haven't had a chance to check if she left yet."
"There might be other sources," Mari noted. "Kabuto was his apprentice and prime assistant. Anko worked with him for a bit, although I don't know the details. There are others around who were active before he went missing. I'll ask around."
"Thanks." Hazō said. He blew out a tired breath, thought for a moment, then nodded. "I think that's everything. Orochimaru is not becoming a Gōketsu, and certainly not becoming the Gōketsu Clan Head. We do want to work with him, although very carefully, just so that we can try to keep an eye on what he's doing and make sure we aren't blindsided. Mari, I'll keep you away from him."
"It's fine," she said. "There's nothing about me that he finds interesting, so I may actually be less at risk from him than the rest of you would be." She gestured around the table. "Three bloodlines, a sealmaster, and a girl who is a lot stronger and tougher than her age mates."
"Uh...yes, well, good thought. Anyway, I think that covers everything. Naruto, it's getting late. Are the rooms ready yet?"
"Let me check. Multiple Shadow Clone!" A Naruto appeared and then immediately disappeared. A few seconds later, Naruto Prime nodded. "Yes, they're just wrapping up. Should be ready by the time we get there. Mari, I told them to draw you a hot bath."
The redhead gave him a megawatt smile. "You are my favorite dimple-cheeked blond jinchūriki, Naruto. Thank you."
"How many dimple-cheeked blond jinchūriki do you know?" Naruto Windripper asked, not looking away from the wall he was guarding in case a snake-mounted Sannin came bursting through.
"Don't answer that," Naruto Prime hurried to add. "Windripper, let's just take the compliment, okay?" He pushed his chair back and stood up. "C'mon, it's been a long day and I'd like to bag some Zs."
"You guys go on ahead," Hazō said. "Keiko, hang back a second? I had a weird experience that I want to ask you about privately."
"You want me to leave a couple mes outside the door?" asked Naruto Prime.
"Thanks," Hazō said, smiling gratefully. "That would be great. This shouldn't take long. We'll catch up in a few minutes."
There was some discussion and mild disagreement, but eventually everyone agreed that allowing Hazō to travel on his own with only a pair of Naruto clones for protection probably would not end up with him strapped to a vivisection table while insane biosealmasters put lupchanzen in his orifices. Hopefully. Regardless, 'good evening's were said and ways were parted, leaving Hazō and Keiko alone in the room.
"This sounds ominous," Keiko said.
"Not a bad word for it," Hazō replied. "Let me tell you what happened when I looked at your Summoning Scroll..."
o-o-o-o
Keiko paced back and forth across the function room, her body language alert but her eyes staring somewhere into the distance. Hazō had narrated his experiences to the best of his ability, punctuated by Keiko's regular "You did WHAT?!" and "Why would you do that to yourself?!"
Finally, as if having covered the preliminary pacing distance necessary to discuss difficult subjects, Keiko stopped to look directly at him. "You attempted to directly interface your consciousness with a mystical artefact whose function and basic principles of construction are not understood after a thousand years of constant use, which requires extensive training to utilise, and which interacts with space and time in a fashion completely different to any other seal ever, while being a skilled sealmaster."
"That would be one way of putting it, yes."
"Hazō, that you still retain some passing resemblance to sanity after direct exposure is a miracle equal in scope to the continued existence of the human race. You exposed your unprotected mind to the alien truth of the universe, an action akin to diving into the caldera of an active volcano as a recreational activity while shouting, "The fire kami are worthless scum, and magma-dwelling chakra beasts doubly so!"
"Fine," he said, "I do suicidal things for fun every day. As you pointed out, I'm a sealmaster. Can you help me?"
Keiko sighed.
"First, the optimal course of action would be to cast you into said caldera, ideally somewhere very far from civilisation. Your actions were on the level of a mind-affecting sealing failure. Your mind now periodically decouples itself from human thought, a state of being that is liable to give rise to unpredictable activities that may place those around you in direct danger. You are receiving visions of what may be the future, or communications from an external agent which could with equal ease be interested in your welfare, your suffering, or any number of goals orthogonal to your own—or they could merely be delusions which express some profoundly dubious information concerning your mental state.
"For the record, incidentally, if you take any hostile action towards Ami on the scale implied in your visions, I will use any and all means at my disposal to protect her, which will likely include your complete and utter destruction. Nothing personal."
"...duly noted."
"Next on the infinite list of your concerns which I lack the lifespan to fully enumerate—especially given that I, as a summoner, can be expected to be sent to the front lines in the coming war—is the possibility of possession. You yourself have described the experience of seemingly returning from a variety of possible futures, many of which contained versions of yourself with terrifyingly warped visions of morality, or other properties inimical to your loved ones and/or the world. There is no reason to believe that any such do not continue to lurk within the deeper layers of your mind, awaiting only a suitable trigger to emerge and consume what you naively believe to be a consistent and resilient consciousness."
"So, volcanic caldera, huh?"
Keiko nodded. "I would recommend it," she said in what he could only hope was S-rank deadpan.
"And supposing I want a less extreme option?" Hazō asked.
"Brief the rest of the clan if you have not already done so. Instruct them to observe your behaviour at all times, and regularly seek reports on your mental state, so as to notice any changes which may seem natural to you as the subject. If you are at all uncertain whether your judgement has been impaired, err on the side of inaction and seek immediate aid from someone you trust. Failing that, isolate yourself until you feel more stable.
"Oh, also, attempting to weaponise the very forces that shape this world on a level far beyond your conception is sheer insanity. Every time you 'brush against it', you are offering a connection to your mind to forces you are literally incapable of understanding. It is for this very reason that summoners are not taught, and indeed do not attempt to develop, any further art derived from summoning, despite the potential inherent in being able to breach the gap between worlds at will."
Hazō frowned. "I could have sworn that at some point you mentioned using a light touch to manage your emotions with the Frozen Skein."
"Did I? That was not intentional, I assure you, and may now be placed on the list of 'knowledge forbidden to Hazō lest he attempt to exploit it in unpredictable ways and bring equally unpredictable doom unto us all', a list informally created by Kagome but, it would appear, in desperate need of formalisation."
"Still, Keiko, everything you've told me makes the Frozen Skein sound like the closest anyone else has had to this experience. Can't you offer my any insight based on that?"
"Indeed," Keiko said impatiently. "I am most keen to draw parallels with a sophisticated process founded in a Bloodline Limit optimised for the purpose, and utilised in accordance with teachings passed down and expanded for countless generations, taught to every Mori child from the noteworthily early age when they begin to comprehend complex concepts, on the one hand, and your blind fumbling through powers far beyond your comprehension, on the other."
Hazō couldn't help but seize on a single detail.
"The Frozen Skein has a purpose? As opposed to being a gift from the Sage of Six Paths, or a blessing randomly bestowed on a bloodline by the ancestors or the ancient spirits or the Will of Fire or whatever?"
"Pay it no mind," Keiko said. "What need concern you is that attempting to interface with inimical entities of terrible power requires certain vital preparations, including means to contact the relevant entity and only the relevant entity, and to have defences in place that have been optimised against that particular entity. Compare, if you will, the hopefully-fictional tales of summoning a demon of the Asura Path by calling on its true name while protected by a flawless magic circle. Summoning the wrong asura would surely end in the magician's demise, as would the tiniest flaw in the design or implementation of the circle.
"In that context, you are opening the Akatsuki Children's Dictionary of Asura Names to pages determined by random die roll, and reading those entire pages out loud while drawing fractal patterns on the ground because you find them aesthetically appealing.
"To summarise briefly, are you familiar with the expression 'do not call up that which you cannot pull down?' Hazō, you have called up the universe."
"So all in all, you think I am stupid and/or crazy, and definitely doomed."
Keiko nodded curtly. "You may also have potentially doomed the rest of us, but as this is only a slight change to my overall view of the world, I am less moved by it than I might be.
"With these facts concerning your thought patterns, behaviour, and consequences thereof fully established, I do not deny a certain level of commiseration with your condition. The training required by the Frozen Skein is brutally demanding, insofar as the consequences of failure are cataclysmic for the individual—in a more immediate sense than what you have unleashed upon yourself. Your pursuit of absolute mental discipline, which you will require, must be equally demanding, albeit without a qualified instructor."
"What about you?"
Keiko looked at him impatiently. "How many times have I repeated this over the last two years? I am a Mori genin. I was kidnapped for this thrilling adventure mere months after graduating the Academy. There are any number of levels on which my psychological survival is a miracle no lesser than the physical, and rest assured, a fragile psyche begs to be devoured by the stresses you will now experience alongside me."
Because Keiko's psyche was in no way fragile when they first met her.
"But I do understand the stresses. Do not attempt to call on these powers at all, if powers they be, and if you do, be certain to focus on some key element of your identity that is antagonistic to them. In the face of helplessness, focus on what you have the will and power to achieve, however small. In the face of apathy, recall what sets your heart aflame, however irrational. In the face of ruthless curiosity, perhaps the greatest of your many vices, and the one most likely to manifest when faced with the unknown and the unknowable, ground yourself in what remains undone in the world that already is. Above all, accept for free this lesson that was hard-earned: do not allow yourself to be alone. Though you may leave your humanity behind to journey into the darkness, that humanity remains real, for others to acknowledge or even to embrace. Strange and unnatural though the idea may be, comprehension is not required for acceptance.
"That said," she added finally, "it has its benefits. If the stress ever proves excessive, and you continue to disregard the caldera option, come to me. I am the second most qualified person in Leaf to support you through this horror that you have inflicted upon yourself."
XP AWARD: 1
Brevity XP: 1
Author's Note: The second scene, the one in which Keiko and Hazō talk privately, was written by @Velorien. Thanks, amigo.
It is now about 1am.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, November 6, 2019, at 12pm London time.
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