- Location
- Italy
Considering the
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
-
- 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
Considering the
- Location
- Pacific standard
[x] Action Plan: The Importance of Being Earnest
Edit: nooooo hours late. I wasn't the tiebreaker but still :<
Edit: nooooo hours late. I wasn't the tiebreaker but still :<
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Chapter 384: Paper Bombardment
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hazō knocked on the multiple-warning-equipped door. He wasn't sure if it was alarming or encouraging that it stood open a fraction of an inch instead of being barred and bolted. "Hey, Sensei, got a minute?"
"Sure, come on in."
Kagome-sensei was sitting on his bedroll in the corner of the room, leaning back on the wall comfortably. A lap desk and various notes and crumpled-up sketches sat around him. Tapestries, hanging scrolls, and seals covered virtually every inch of the walls and several parts of the ceiling. The floor had been painted in an 'abstract' design that contained at least three seals Hazō could identify and probably more that were too tangled up in the design to immediately notice. Metal strips stretched wall-to-wall across the floor in various spots, carefully painted so that they blended in. Undoubtedly intended to trip anyone trying to fight in here who wasn't familiar with their locations. Three chairs and a desk were pushed up almost against the walls, leaving the majority of the space open. Hazō dropped into the chair nearest the door.
"Not that one!" Kagome-sensei said in alarm.
Hazō caught himself halfway down, chakra adhesion locking his feet to the floor and core strength keeping his body bent in a wall-sit shape so that he wasn't touching any part of the chair. When Kagome-sensei told you not to touch something, you didn't touch it at all, so grabbing onto the arms of the chair was not in the cards.
Agonizing strain on his knees brought him upright and he stepped carefully away from the chair, glancing back at it and then at Kagome-sensei.
"Pressure-fused directional explosive under the seat and in the arms," Kagome-sensei explained, his voice somewhere between abashed and proud. "I figure if any stinker comes in here to capture me and wants to monologue, they'll sit in that one."
"And the others?"
"Oh, those are mined too. For the minions."
"Right. How about there?" He pointed at a spot on the floor near Kagome-sensei's bedroll.
"Best be a foot or two closer or father. That's where Force Wall 9a would activate."
"Right." He carefully took a seat, checking by eye with his teacher to make sure that he was in a...well, not safe but less dangerous spot on the floor. He leaned back against the wall, tilting his head back and letting his eyes close.
"You okay?"
Hazō nodded and opened his eyes, sitting up with a sigh. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just a little tired and I wanted to get away from being Clan Head Hazō for a bit, do something relaxing, fun, and important. Instead of, you know, paperwork." He almost spat the last word.
"Seals?"
"Seals."
Kagome-sensei grinned and sat a little taller.
"So," Hazō said. "Pressure triggers?"
Kagome-sensei nodded proudly. "Pressure triggers. Took a while to work out but I got it."
"Very cool. I was thinking about doing some work on—"
"Quiet!"
Hazō cut himself off and watched in bemusement as Kagome-sensei jumped up and started activating various seals, including an Earth Dome and an Air Dome.
"Okay," his teacher finally said. "What's this about?"
"Storage seals. Do you think it would be practical to make bigger ones? For a long time I've been wanting a seal that has enough water in it to flood a combat area so Noburi can use his bloodline drain."
Kagome-sensei shrugged. "I mean, sure. It's possible to make bigger ones, or smaller ones. Stupid, but possible."
"Why is it stupid?"
"The reason storage seals are the size they are is because it's an island of stability. Easy to draw, easy to infuse, the storage space lasts pretty much forever, has relatively low storage stress, negligible exit velocity, and the connection has low enough energy cost that you can open and close it dozens of times before it wears out. The more different a seal is from the standard size the less stable it is. Your macerator seals are just a regular storage seal with a very slightly smaller space and we managed to find a design that's stable enough that the alteration is predictably in the direction of increased storage stress and exit velocity. Mostly, anyway. Haven't you noticed that you get fewer opens off of them?"
"...No, I hadn't."
The older man nodded. "Probably eighty versus a hundred. Usually. Not generally an issue since you only use them during a fight. Well, or chopping vegetables. Even that's not often." He glowered. "I still say that the chowder should have worked better."
Hazō grinned. "It was delicious. Just a lot of cleanup."
"Hrmph. Anyway, once you start changing the size of a storage space it tends to pop. It's as though the seal were destroyed, except more likely to be wonky instead of just spitting your stuff out."
"'Wonky'?"
Kagome-sensei shrugged. "You know. Talking porcupines, facial broccoli, fountains of blood, behind creatures—"
"Wonky. Got it." He paused, cocking his head in curiosity. "'Behind creatures'? Behind what?"
"Behind you. Always behind you, no matter how much you spin or stand up or lie down. Moist hands patting your skin every few minutes or hours as they decide when to eat you and where to start. Chittering words that you can almost understand. That kind of thing."
A shudder went down Hazō's spine. "Ah. I see."
"So, yeah. Bigger storage seals: Possible but stupid. What other crazy ideas you got?"
"How about a storage seal that outputs somewhere other than right in front of the seal? I was thinking of a macerator that fired from a few yards to the side. Let you attack from an angle the bad guys weren't expecting."
Kagome-sensei frowned. "Hm. You'd have to modify the cthonomantic envelope on the storage space so that the boundary interactions with the seal were offset from the seal itself. Should be possible...the whole point of a storage seal is that the output site is offset by half an inch or so up from the seal. Wouldn't do any good to be in the seal itself. I suppose you could stretch that offset. In theory I can't think of any reason you couldn't stretch it as far as you like, but in practice I have to think it would be hard to get more than a few inches, a couple of feet at most. And it would be harder the farther you wanted it to go."
"Rats. Well, what about amping up the macerators some other way? I'd really like one with a lot more storage stress so it chews up harder substances and a much higher firing speed."
"We could try. You're talking about investigating unstable storage patterns. That's always tricky."
"If you're up for it, I'd like to."
"Sure. Be nice to have something that I can actually help with."
"What?"
Kagome-sensei shrugged. "Everything we're dealing with is politics and money. I'm no good for either of those. I could help with decrypting Jiraiya-stinker's notes and I can train the kids at sealcraft and set up the estate security but that's about it. I'm not really good for anything else."
"Sensei—"
His teacher held up a hand to cut him off. "It's fine. I know my limits and I'm okay with them. The things I can do are important. The fact that I'm limited doesn't mean I'm worthless."
"...Okay. As long as you know that." He thought for a minute. "Speaking of your students, how are they coming along?"
He grimaced. "They haven't killed themselves yet."
"Meaning?" Even with the Iron Nerve, Hazō struggled to keep the smile out of his voice and off his face.
"Well...I suppose I don't mind them making explosives for us. Sometimes."
"Oh, right, I did notice that the fruit bowl was unusually full."
"Hey! I was keeping it full! I'm not some kind of slacker who lets his family go unprotected!"
"Whoa, whoa! I never said you were, Sensei. I don't think that. No one thinks that. You've always been there for us. I was just saying that you've taught them well and it's nice to see that they can take some of the load off of you so that you have time to work on other things...speaking of which, what are you working on?"
"Right now? Those anti-Hyūga-stinker seals." He glowered. "Stupid Jiraiya-stinker, making them all complicated and stuff. I'll get it, though! And maybe I'll even figure out a simpler version! That'll show him. They can call it the Kagome Super-Awesome Stinker Blinder."
Visions of Academy training sessions from days to come flickered across Hazō's mind. 'Listen up, maggots! Today we WILL be working with the Kagome Super-Awesome Stinker Blinder seal! You WILL pay attention to my instructions! You will NOT activate the Kagome Super-Awesome Stinker Blinder seal without my EXpress instruction! DO you understand me?!' Hazō desperately smothered the laughter before it could escape.
"That will be useful," Hazō said, nodding seriously. "How's it going? Can I be useful?"
"You want to? Sure. It would be good if you could make them too."
"I'd like that. It's been too long since we had much time to work together. Speaking of, how do they work?"
Kagome-sensei shrugged. "I don't know."
"What."
"I don't know how they work. I've read the research notes until my eyes bleed and I can't figure it out. I don't think anyone else in the village understands it either, but we can reproduce the pattern and that's what matters."
Hazō reflected on the many, many things he found objectionable about that statement and decided to let it go.
"Speaking of how things work, have you seen any space-time related seals or research notes in Jiraiya's notes? Or anything related to space, time, dimensions, other Paths, that kind of thing?"
Kagome-sensei thought about it. "He had some details about a retrocausal failure that one of his collaborators got caught in. Jiraiya wanted to try to reproduce it, because he was a stinking idiot. He was thinking maybe it would be possible to make a storage scroll that came in two parts. You make the first part, the output side, and set it up somewhere. Later you make the input part. Anything you put into the input seal would come out at the output seal back when it was originally set up. Or maybe when it was set up plus a bit. Not sure. I couldn't follow the math." His mouth curled into a sour grimace at the admission.
"That's pretty cool."
"Yeah, except it's a half-baked idea and he had twelve entire pages listing potential failure modes. The least exciting of them was 'your blood reverses course and explodes your heart.'"
"Huh. Actually, that sounds pretty cool. I bet we could—"
"No!" Kagome-sensei scooped up a crumpled-up piece of paper from within his bedroll and hurled it at Hazō's head. "Bad Hazō! No weaponizing seal failures!"
Hazō raised his hand in defense, ducking in mock cowardice while laughing. "No more! I give, I give!"
Kagome-sensei eyed him dubiously for a moment, then nodded. "Fine. As long as you're not going to be stupid and run off to do it on your own."
"Nope. I promise, I'll be good. I'll enlist your help when I want to weaponize seal failures."
"Noooo! Bad Hazō!"
A rain of crumpled-up papers pelted the head of Clan Gōketsu. He parried them away, ducking and laughing the whole time.
Author's Note: You asked Kagome about what seals he would be comfortable giving to Asuma. He grumbled a bit about 'giving away our best stuff' and then said he'd make a list and don't get that look in your eye just because I said 'list'. Assume that he's given you that.
XP AWARD: 1 The update was about 20 minutes.
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It is now about 7pm.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, October 28, 2020, at 12pm London time.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Hagoromo have agreed to perform the wedding rites for Noburi and Yuno, but the feud isn't over. It's doubtless the Hagoromo will make this wedding the next battlefield against the Goketsu. Let's answer accordingly:
[X] Action Plan: The quiet knife stabs the deepest
Word Count: 276
[X] Action Plan: The quiet knife stabs the deepest
Word Count: 276
- With the blessings of both Noburi and Yuno:
- Prep with Mari for the most obvious Hagoromo social slights
- Give an optional invitation to all ninja and civilian living on the Goketsu estate to attend
- Provide appropriate dress clothes for those who have none, with matching colors and the Goketsu seal to signify unity and strength
- Let Tsunade be wherever she wants, put her next to Akane if she doesn't specify. Get someone Mari thinks won't annoy her to bring her drinks on demand
- Call political toasts at the reception:
- Call a toast for the two newlyweds, and the good things that their union signifies for Leaf's newest ally, Isan. Leaf is stronger by this union, and the Goketsu are happy to be a part of that.
- Call a toast for Hiashi and Asuma, for being receptive to working with outsiders and letting Yuno pick her husband. Leaf, following the Will of Fire, has a greater willingness to let people choose who they love. This is superior to our previous home Mist, who would've forced a purely political marriage, at the cost of making the union weaker. The fact that Leaf chooses Love makes them stronger.
- Call a toast for the Hagoromo, thanking them for "changing their minds" and "recanting their stance" on the Goketsu to do the wedding. Express that Leaf is stronger when we choose to accept each other as we are as we only have each other to trust, and that clearly the Hagoromo know better than anyone that choosing acceptance is the right path for the Will of Fire. When everyone drinks give Lord Hag that Bond villain stare.
- Other:
- Have Mari begin finding as many pro-LGBTQ+ ninja and civilians in Leaf as she can, make a dossier
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- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Point of note: it was in fact Hiashi who was receptive to working with outsiders and letting Yuno pick her husband. Also, it may be of use for you to review Keiko's wedding for insight on the kind of wedding rituals that Leaf considers normal.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm not entirely sure which part of the wedding ceremony you were referring to, but I'm assuming it was the placement of common-born ninja and civilians, so I changed that part. If anyone else knows something else I missed, let me know.
Tua
鸡肉面条汤
- Location
- شوربة الدجاج المعكرونة
Imagine Hazou dying in the talky chapter because he sat in the wrong spot 😁
Facing Akatsuki? No problem!
Dealing with Zabuza? Easy, just need an extra set of pants.
Deciding where to sit? Incoming death by furniture.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
No, the verb tense is correct.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Apologies, I have absolutely no idea what I was thinking at the time... Incredibly stupid of me.
Why do we need to fight them now? I believe between us and Nara we're in a highly advantageous position, and with Isan coming up I don't think we need to give the Hagoromo even the slightest chance to get back in it. We go to Isan and leave Shikamaru and Mari in change of finishing the job.
If you want a serious answer, I think about 25% of the time I really agree with what you're saying (see above), and most of the rest of the time you make points that I'm not diametrically opposed to. However, you often bring up a topic out of the blue when we're talking about something else, and then don't address people's concerns about it and just move on to the next thing. With Tsunade, for example - you never mentioned what you wanted to do to avoid failure modes, why you thought it would work when she's an S-rank ninja who could just ignore it, and you didn't push it very hard.
I do think you've been on a streak of good advice recently though.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This sort of talk is the reason I went from being totally excited with this arc to basically not engaging with the quest at all
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Because punching the homophobic jackass is therapeutic.
- Location
- NY
We've won this battle already, why are we putting our credibility on the line further in a battle we're likely to lose (jonin) for "therapy"? Secure the Isan marriage, continue the economic chokeout for as long as we have to while making clear to their civvies and affiliates that we have no desire to catch them in the splash zone of a Clan fight and in fact are happy to compensate them for any damage we cause.
Wait, are pressure triggers a new thing in sealing? Who remembers the GLOCK and how much trouble we had with aligning the LBF to act as a triggering mechanism?
Y'know, layer strips of those seals on a bamboo sword to go off in a ten degree cone on impact and you'd have a hell of a weapon. Combine with ablative armor and the Goeketsu might even find themselves with a civilian samurai force capable of facing down genin with proper training and teamwork.
Heck of an axe as well. A team of lumberjacks might spend a full day cutting down a large tree and another day or three pulling the stump to make farmland. With pressure sensible axes a single one could complete both with two swipes and clear acres a day all while being dangerous enough to defend themselves from chakra monsters. Roll the trunks through force walls into storage-scroll sized pieces. Probably still not quite cost-effective, but as a show of prestige Goeketsu civilians making copious use of seals would be a heck of a message, and if you really needed a lot of land cleared fast...
Would the merchant council even have authority to regulate it if the seals we completely operated by civilians and any civilian could casually attain equal access to them by just joining the clan? No (clanless) civilians would be being disadvantaged.
Oh, we also need to make sure to invite the librarian and sit her with Kagome. Never fall to cultivate an information and influence source that potent.
Heck of an axe as well. A team of lumberjacks might spend a full day cutting down a large tree and another day or three pulling the stump to make farmland. With pressure sensible axes a single one could complete both with two swipes and clear acres a day all while being dangerous enough to defend themselves from chakra monsters. Roll the trunks through force walls into storage-scroll sized pieces. Probably still not quite cost-effective, but as a show of prestige Goeketsu civilians making copious use of seals would be a heck of a message, and if you really needed a lot of land cleared fast...
Would the merchant council even have authority to regulate it if the seals we completely operated by civilians and any civilian could casually attain equal access to them by just joining the clan? No (clanless) civilians would be being disadvantaged.
Oh, we also need to make sure to invite the librarian and sit her with Kagome. Never fall to cultivate an information and influence source that potent.
- Location
- NY
Here's the old post I was thinking of.
If the pressure has to be on the same spot as the explosion, then we could still make mortars. Load the shells with delayed release storage seals and start dropping Rocks From Jashin-sama on Hidden Villages we don't like.
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Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
I don't understand. Was I unclear? I want to punch the homophobic jackass because he's a homophobic jackass, because I am a nonviolent person IRL and wish to express upon such a person in a fictional setting the error of their ways. It's socially acceptable to do in-setting, so. Punch the homophobic jackass.
We're not done wrecking their shit -they still have the ban in place, after all, but there's no reason to graciously offer him a fair fight in a contest he is grossly advantaged in. Take his life apart piece by piece while he learns to panic at every shadow.
The issue is, given that he is a jonin, punching the homophobic jackass could very easily turn into the homophobic jackass punches us, hurts our reputation, and regains his position, as opposed to where we are right now, which is the homophobic jackass is rapidly running out of money and options, was humiliated as the museum, and Tsunade just forced him to marry Noburi and Yuno, thus removing his only immediate leverage.
I would be more interested in the fight if you had a surefire way to win when we have one summon and Noburi is still in negotiations (plus we have, imo, more interesting things to move onto and I believe betting on spars or whatever you want to call it is still illegal).
- Location
- NY
The jonin. Who is a jonin for a reason. Remind me, what's our track record with jonin confrontations? Ami: Mari gave her a soup bath. Zabby: Hazo soiled himself, got a concussion, then J-man saved his ass.
So we're likely to lose in a duel, which intrinsically involves some form of credibility or honor. So we're going to lose credibility after we've won a battle because it'll make us feel better?
All I'm going to say is that you're welcome to vote as you'd like, and I'll vote as I like.
- Location
- Bronx