Ive been rereading chapter 303 and this is the first time I actually became consciously aware that the whole Nara main branch except for Shikamaru died. Just how much Nara institutional knowledge and clan secrets got irretrievably lost right then and there?
Ive been rereading chapter 303 and this is the first time I actually became consciously aware that the whole Nara main branch except for Shikamaru died. Just how much Nara institutional knowledge and clan secrets got irretrievably lost right then and there?
Hazou isn't qualified to teach, and the clan head has more important things to do anyway.
That leaves Kagome. I do not want to be the one to ask him to go into fortified enemy territory and teach sealing, plus he has his current students.
Fortunately, these can solve each other. Asuma will immediately recognize the existential hazard of ordering Kagome into that situation when it's pointed out to him. There's no reason that the instruction of the Hagoromo can't occur with the rest of the class in a neutral training area. In exchange, the Hagoromo can thus be assured that they are receiving exactly the same standard of instruction without being sabotaged.
Ive been rereading chapter 303 and this is the first time I actually became consciously aware that the whole Nara main branch except for Shikamaru died. Just how much Nara institutional knowledge and clan secrets got irretrievably lost right then and there?
An argument can be made that the Hagoromo could believe, or at least claim to believe, that Kagome would sacrifice his civilian students' education in order to spite their candidate's.
An argument can be made that the Hagoromo could believe, or at least claim to believe, that Kagome would sacrifice his civilian students' education in order to spite their candidate's.
Considering the consequences if something goes wrong, I still don't like it. Worse, he has too much on his plate every day already, and the public perception of the clan head himself conducting menial chores of penance doesn't bear thinking about.
...unless... a year of privately building a personal relationship with what must be someone with the potential to be a major figure among the Hagoromo might be useful. Hey, don't second-guess the SSO. If they say they need absolute privacy and sealing needs to be started young enough to be pliable, so they'd better pick their most promising and influential youth that's just the way it has to be...
It's actually even better that we're teaching them sealing. That means the student will become influential in the clan as one of their main sources of income. Which means it will be harder for the Hagoromo to ignore the student once the clan realizs we've corrupted him/her.
Y'know, it occurs to me that another underenfranchised force in Leaf is the minor clans. They clearly have some power and influence due to having clan status, but they don't have a vote. They might well be amenable to uniting behind a notional patron on the council.
Hazou already has a good start with the clan he traded for the adoption slot from. He'd probably be amused by a request from the clan head of the Gouketsu to discuss poetry and tips on cutthroat negotiation.
Kagome-sensei had a book in one hand and a couple of eggs in the other. The eggs were scrambled, mixed with cheese, and wrapped in a piece of bread so it was socially appropriate for him to be shoveling them into his face with his bare hand. The open-mouthed chewing? Less so, but everyone had given up on that at this point.
"Morning, sensei," Hazō said with a yawn. He started browsing through the pile of storage seals on the dining room's credenza to see what he might like for breakfast.
"Mornin'," Kagome-sensei mumbled, losing a few bits of egg in the process. He never looked away from his book.
"What are you reading?" Hm. The egg dish that his teacher was devouring seemed pretty good but there weren't any left. He grabbed a breadbowl with scrambled eggs and vegetables as a second choice, then joined the older man at the table.
"One of Jiraiya-stinker's theory books." He waved the book around vaguely. "This one is on tertiary harmonics."
"Interesting. Speaking of seal theory, I had a question for you."
Suddenly, Hazō had Kagome-sensei's full, undivided, and very nervous attention. "Yes?"
"Remember that rift I told you about, where I rescued Daizen from the afterlife?"
"Yes...? You're not going to do a Hazō, are you?"
"No, I have no interest in replicating a seal failure. That said, has anyone ever intentionally made a dimensional rift? If so, which Path would be the easiest and safest to target?"
"Hm. Don't know that much about the Paths. Not really that interesting, you know? Let's see, there's the Seventh Path. That one seems pretty safe...unless you get eaten by a leopard, I guess. Or appear in the middle of an ocean. Or a mountain. Or in mid-air. Or inside a volcano. Or—"
"Got it. What about the others?"
Kagome-sensei shifted uncomfortably. "There's the...Deva path? That's the one where the good demons live. Something about cream and sugar, I think? Maybe they bathe in it, or drink it or something. I suppose maybe that one would be safe unless you drown in a cream ocean." He paused, thinking. "The Asura path is just the fancy name for the real world—everyone fighting all the time and angry and so on—so you don't need a seal to get there."
"Wait, I thought the Human Path was the real world?"
"Nah. 'Asura' is an old word for 'human'. It's just scribes getting confused and listing the same thing twice."
"...Oh."
"Anyway, the Preta Path is where the gaki come from. Disembodied souls, supposedly...personally I suspect they're just chakra constructs, but it's not my field. They are all hungry, all the time, and they eat different things. The ones that eat the sound of bells or the scent of flowers, no problem. The ones that eat mice, great to have around. The ones that eat your blood right out of your veins without leaving a mark on your skin? Less fine.
"The Animal Path is where the chakra beasts come from. It would be great if we could figure out where the portal is. Or portals, I suppose. If we could shut them down then things would be much safer for everyone." He tipped his head in thought. "Although they do still breed—the animals, not the portals. I assume. Anyway, shutting the portals down would only stop new types from appearing. Anyway, not every type of animal is dangerous so going to the Animal Path might not be so bad. There might be puppies. Or kitties." A quiet yrowl came from the floor beside him; he bent over to stroke Fifi until she once again rumbled her satisfaction at the state of the universe.
"The Naraka Path is the easiest one to get to, of course. All you need to do is die. That's probably where you ended up when you were stupid enough to walk through that stupid portal."
"So the Naraka Path is the afterlife?" Hazō asked.
Kagome-sensei nodded and took another bite from the cooling egg sandwich that he had momentarily forgotten he was holding. He continued speaking while he masticated. "Everyone goes there. You stay a while, losing your memories one at a time as your loved ones die or forget them. Your body slowly fades from existence as your memories evaporate until there's nothing left but an empty mind floating in void, struggling to recall who and what it was and understand why it can't touch or be touched, speak or hear, see or be seen. Only when every trace of you is lost back in the real world will you finally find peace as your soul unravels into nothing."
"That's horrible," Hazō whispered.
Kagome-sensei shrugged. "It's the world. Of course it's horrible." He gestured vaguely in the direction of Leaf with his egg sandwich. "It's why I don't understand all the statues and stuff. It's like they want to keep their heroes alive in people's memories, stretch out the torment. Seems like the sort of thing you do to your villains, not your heroes. Be much kinder to forget them as quickly as possible."
Hazō's eyes were wide and he could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He put his food down and swallowed the lump out of his throat.
"Do you...do you think it might be possible to bring someone back?" he whispered.
Kagome-sensei shrugged. "You said that you did it. Were you lying?"
"No."
"Well, there you go." He gestured with the book. "Why did you think I was reading all this stuff, anyway?"
A weight came off of Hazō's shoulders. "Thank you, sensei."
Kagome-sensei frowned in confusion. "For what?"
"I've been thinking about this for a while. I'd like to see...well, a lot of people. My dad, Jiraiya, Noburi's brother. All of the people that they cared about. It feels like it should be possible given the right seals."
"Anything is possible given the right seals. We'll probably die trying to make them, but it's possible."
"If you sincerely believe you're probably going to die making the effort then why do it?"
Kagome-sensei shrugged. "What else am I doing with my time? I've already trained—am training—half a dozen students, and you'll surpass me soon enough. I'll get a footnote in the history books for that one, which will mean a few more decades of not-death but eh." He chewed another small bite, thinking, then swallowed. "Granted, the footnote will probably be something along the lines of 'Kagome was Hazō's teacher, and if Kagome had not been such a good teacher then maybe the world would still be here' but at least it's something. Oh, and I'll probably get mentioned somewhere for being a missing-nin who joined a clan. Maybe a paragraph in the history of the Gōketsu or something." He shrugged again and took another bite. "I've invented my own seals and not died in the process. I've got a great family and lots of chocolate. No one has tried to kill me in months. It's been a pretty good life. Wouldn't mind keeping it going longer and sharing it with some people." For a moment, sadness flickered across his face and then was gone.
Hazō digested that for a moment. "On a more pleasant topic," he said, making a conscious effort to sound cheerful, "I was thinking about that pressure-sensitive directional explosive you have in your chairs. Could you make armor out of it? The moment someone punched you or a kunai hit the explosive would go off, pushing the attack away so you didn't get hurt."
Kagome-sensei cocked his head. "Hm. Maybe. Depends on how fast the trigger fires. It would need to be really quick, and I doubt it is. I'll check. Good thought." He chewed another bite and swallowed, then grinned. "I guess explosives really do solve all problems."
Hazō laughed.
o-o-o-o
Hazō sat cross-legged in the middle of the training field, eyes closed and breathing slowly. He waited until his body and breath were at peace, then turned his attention inwards.
The pain of Mari's jōnin aura had faded, leaving nothing for him to actively observe, but he searched around nonetheless. He couldn't fight Lord Hagoromo—or any jōnin—until he found an answer to their psychic attack, and apparently that required acquiring a jōnin aura of his own. There was nothing to do but work on it.
He had tasted more auras than most chūnin. Mari, whose soul was apparently fire both destructive and warming. Zabuza's, that was screaming demons eating your flesh. Lord Third's, the grandfatherly oak whose mere disinterest was a gaping wound in your soul. Asuma's aura, of which he had felt only the very edges, was another image of fire. Jiraiya's, again not directed at him, had been a void of screaming lost souls. Orochimaru's was vivisection and horror, a complete disinterest in Hazō as anything more than flesh for study. Ami, whose soul was ice. Mari had described Tsunade's aura as a mountain crushing down on her.
Interestingly, he had even felt something like a proto-aura from Keiko, whose soul was frozen mirrors that drained warmth and hope from the air around her. And when you fought Haru there was sometimes a hint of a raging, bloody-jawed wolf straining at its chains.
'Manifestation of your soul.' 'The purest essence of who you are.' Those were the words Mari had used to describe the jōnin aura. True selves imposed on the world. Compare them with the personalities of their owners. What shaped an aura?
Mari's aura was fire. She was a redhead but surely that wasn't enough. She was a liar, a charmer, a grifter. An excellent fighter but not as good as masters like Zabuza or Jiraiya. How could all of that possibly align with the concept of fire? Fire was not deceptive and it was at most a weapon, not a fighter.
Orochimaru, the biosealer with complete disregard for anything aside from his studies...and perhaps Kabuto. He had instructed Kabuto for years. Did an aura require some sort of human connection?
Tsunade, the woman who cared nothing for obstacles and went through them in the most direct way possible. A mountain made sense...perhaps not the first thing he would have imagined, but it made sense.
Zabuza, the hunter. The Silent Killer who fought from within blinding mist. How did demons connect to that?
Jiraiya, the sealmaster. The Toad Sage. The taijutsu expert and master of jutsu who even other Kage feared. The spymaster. There was no particular focus to Jiraiya, no core principle. He was a paragon for no apparent reason.
Hazō frowned. That was strange. Why had Jiraiya been such a paragon? He'd been a very talented ninja who had lived to his fifties, but was that enough? The Toads had undoubtedly taught him things that weren't available to others. He had undoubtedly had seals that no one else knew. Did that account for his skills?
He shook the distraction away. He was here for a purpose.
Asuma was another fire-soul, but with a different sense. His soul had been more controlled and far less playful than Mari's. He did embody the Will of Fire more than anyone else Hazō knew...was that the secret? Dedicate yourself to something so deeply that it became part of your soul?
For that matter, what even was a soul?
There was another family relationship: Ami and Keiko. Both of them had souls that presented as cold or ice. Could it tie into their Frozen Skein bloodline? It seemed like a safe bet. In that case, what might the Iron Nerve feel like?
Come to think of it, Hazō had also experienced Itachi's aura, very slightly. The soul of a missing-nin with the Sharingan felt like giant red wheels grinding closer, slowly crushing everything in their path into madness and pain. The parallels to the whirling red eyes of the active Sharingan could not be plainer.
Excitement welled up inside Hazō. There was a thread here that could be pulled on. A bloodline was something that a ninja carried at every moment. It shaped their combat style, their mission preferences, sometimes even their thoughts. It would be surprising if it did not impact the feeling of their soul.
The Sarutobi clan had no bloodline, which might be a hint as to why Asuma and Lord Third's souls felt so different. Asuma, fire. Lord Third, an oak.
...No. No, there was a connection. Asuma's aura was that of a campfire, not a wildfire. Something controlled, intended for protection and comfort but capable of being weaponized at need. Lord Third's aura was protection, welcome, and strength. The Third was Asuma's parent and teacher and ruler; how astonishing would it be if there was not a connection?
And then the wildcard. Haru. A clanless genin when Hazō met him, without a bloodline or a Summoning Scroll or a legendary teacher, yet already manifesting traces of an aura. Traces strong enough that it did in fact give him an advantage in combat. What about Haru said 'chained-up wild animal desperate to kill'?
Hazō snorted. What about Haru did not say 'chained-up wild animal desperate to kill'? The boy's defining trait was anger. Anger and hard-learned restraint.
Hazō had a bloodline but no particular emotion that defined him. He was a seal student and a Summoner, but those were new—the Summoner more so than the sealing, but still new. What made Hazō, Hazō? What defined him and set him apart from any other ninja? If every aura was unique then presumably there needed to be something that was unique about you in order to shape it.
His dream of Uplift, certainly. That had been his driving force for two years. What else? There was his love of lists, his experience going beyond the veil of the world when he tried to read absorb the Pangolin Scroll that gave him some scrap of understanding about nature of reality. Of the Paint, a.s h3 haddd start!d thinking of i# at some point.
He pushed those thoughts firmly away.
What else defined and set apart Gōketsu Hazō? His occasional brilliant insights and accompanying all-too-frequent earnest mistakes. His family, old and new. His determination to go pretty damn far for their protection. What sort of aura might embody that? What form did these concepts coalesce to? Or, alternatively, what were some defining moment of his character?
Well, there had been the moment in Asuma's office, when he met Asuma's gaze and refused to back down. Forget the argument itself, dredge up the feeling of determination, that sense that even the Hokage was not allowed to oppose. Might that be his essence? Determination to do the right thing? What would that feel like?
The hair stood up on his arms as the intensity of the moment came back to him. His lips compressed into a fine line as he balanced carefully within that intensity and reached deep into his core to find and sever the chains that held his soul imprisoned.
A minute or so later he gave up and went back to the house for lunch. His soul would have to remain bound for a while longer.
o-o-o-o
"Hey there," the blonde said, seating herself with her usual casual grace. "So, lunch in a public place, huh? I guess we're not brewing evil schemes in defiance of the Hokage's direct orders." She paused to pick a pair of chopsticks from the basket. "Well, I'm not. I never know about you."
"Har de har," Hazō said. "Very funny, Ino. No, this is part of the 'hearts and minds' effort. Mari keeps telling me that I'm too closed off, spending too much time on my own instead of getting out and making friends and allies and trade partners the way a good Clan Head should. In particular, she reminded me that I've been spending all my time with Shikamaru and barely any time with the majority of the Triune."
"'Triune'? That's a new one."
"You like it? My first thought was 'the Three' but that's taken and 'the Three Clans' doesn't really roll off the tongue. I thought 'the Triune' had a certain gravitas and elegance."
She snorted. "Yeah, we need to work on your understanding of gravitas and elegance. Oh, thank you." The last was to the waiter who had done his best to be invisible and inaudible while setting down platters of food. "Ooh, plum jam! Thank you, that's my favorite."
The waiter bowed deeply and retreated.
"Anyway, what's on your brain?"
Hazō sighed. "I guess...I don't know, I'm having a hard time knowing what to do next. When I first became Clan Head it was this current panic, running from one crisis to the next with no time to worry. Clear, simple problems: Build housing. Provide food. Provide blankets. Guard the perimeter. Acquire medicine. That got dealt with and the next set of problems was still fairly straightforward: Create income streams. Ensure people's welfare, not just their survival. That meant education, medical care, and useful work. Still pretty clear-cut things where I could judge progress and there was an obvious criteria for victory.
"Now...now we're in this weird limbo. The immediate things are taken care of and it's all about the long term. Should I be investing in Hot Springs to diversify our income? Or maybe it would be smarter to spend the money on securing the basics. I could maybe buy farmland here in Leaf, because it's within the walls and something we can't be cut off from. Of course, I could get a ton more farmland for the money if I buy outside of Leaf, where it's cheaper but it's also going to require splitting our forces to protect it. Alternatively, I could buy a whole lot of howling wilderness and turn it into profitable farmland."
"That would take a long time."
"Eh, not really. Force Wall saws can take a tree down in a few seconds. Explosives will stump the ground. If I can borrow Keiko for a couple days then her pangolins can roll around, turning over the land to destroy any mites or dangerous roots, and also plowing it. We've got ways to build basic housing very quickly. At a guess, I could crank out a good-sized farm every couple of days. Selling all that would be a great income stream, although it's active income and not passive, and it's based off a finite resource."
"You'd earn money on the land afterwards," she said. "Farmland is profitable if you squeeze hard enough."
"Yeah, that's another thing. We tax people so heavily. I'm not sure it's productive. I think that cutting taxes on the farmers might actually make Leaf wealthier. The farmers would be motivated to work harder if they were going to get to keep more of their produce. Plus, they would be able to eat better so they would be healthier. More of them would survive and so they'd be able to grow more, maybe branch out into other products."
Ino laughed. "Hazō, you're such a dreamer. Everyone knows that bumpies don't work unless they have to. Sure, they'll grow enough to feed themselves and pay their taxes, but that's it. The ones that have the drive to do more than that have already come to Leaf and made a life for themselves." She paused long enough to serve herself some teriyaki chicken. "Besides, we protect them and guide them in the Will of Fire. Without us they would be savages, scratching in the dirt whenever they weren't being eaten by something or other. Surely we're entitled to something for that?"
"Okay, but does it have to be everything? Seriously, I don't know if you've ever seen how the rural farmers live, but they have absolutely nothing. They work hard, every day, just to get by. Mostly because we take almost everything they grow."
She frowned. "Hazō...are you suggesting that we are somehow mistreating them?"
Oops. "No, of course not." Actually, yes, but the last thing he needed right now was to be seen to be questioning Leaf's moral system. "It's right and proper for them to pay taxes. We provide both moral guidance and physical protection. I'm simply speculating that reducing taxes would cause so much growth that we would end up earning more overall."
"Come on Hazō, that doesn't even make sense. You earn less if you cut taxes, not more." She sounded exasperated.
He thought about dropping it but decided on one more push. "It's a thing that I've noticed in sealing, actually. Every seal takes in energy from its surroundings. The design needs to bring that energy in, focus it, smooth it out, and guide it into the pattern. Each of those steps requires chakra to power it, which means there's a sweet spot. If you spend too much effort on perfecting the intake flow then you end up with less energy making it into the seal overall. Release a little bit of control and you end up with more chakra in the seal to work with. Release too much control and it runs wild and your seal blows up." He extended both hands like the pans of a scale, shifting them up and down before bringing them level. "Balance. Just like in taijutsu. Sometimes it's worth it to give a bit of ground in order to take control of the tempo."
"Huh." Pale eyebrows rose and she sat back in her chair. "Interesting thought. I doubt it would work—seal designs do what they're created to do, but people don't."
He shrugged and dumped some boiled green beans onto his plate using the backs of his chopsticks. "I suppose. Anyway. The main thing is that it frustrates me having to deal with all this. I wish Jiraiya were here. He made it look easy."
She tensed up, then visibly forced herself to relax. "Yeah. I wish my parents were here too." She focused on her food very intently for several seconds, her bangs hiding her face.
Hazō sighed sadly and then chuckled. "Granted, he used to poke fun at me a bunch. You know that old legend about the Edo Tensei jutsu that could bring someone back from the dead? I completely fell for it the first time I heard about it. Jiraiya laughed and explained, speaking very slowly like I was an idiot, that it was just propaganda. Still. Wouldn't it be great if it were real?"
"Yeah." She stared at her half-eaten teriyaki, pushing it slowly around her plate before setting her chopsticks down and taking a sip of tea.
"I know it isn't real," Hazō said, letting his voice go casual and distant, "but I wonder if it could be, someday."
Hazō, Deceit: 24 + tag "I've got a script!" + 3 (dice): 30
Ino, Deceit: ? + ?: ?
"What are you doing, Hazō?" she asked sharply. She set her chopsticks down and stared at him intently.
"Hm?" He quickly served himself a pudding bun so that he wouldn't have to meet her eyes. "What are you talking about?"
"You're not very good at being casual. What's all this about Edo Tensei?"
He smothered a grimace. Damnit, why did Ino have to be so perceptive? Okay, would it be better to dismiss the whole topic or take a chance...?
"I think it might be possible to bring them back," he said, throwing caution to the winds and meeting her eyes intently. "Pain brought Akatsuki back, so resurrection is clearly possible. More importantly I brought someone back."
"...You what?"
Quickly, he laid out the details of rescuing Daizen from what Hazō firmly believed to be the afterlife. He kept it vague about who the other ninja had been and was careful to leave out any mention of Hidan or Itachi.
"Look," he said, jumping in quickly before she could voice the disbelief and accusations of idiocy that he could tell were about to spill forth. "I'm not asking you for anything. I'm nowhere near ready to actually attempt this. I probably won't be ready for years. I need to learn a lot more sealing before it could even potentially be possible. I probably need to work with a really good jutsu hacker, and almost certainly a medic. Pain built new bodies for his people and installed their souls into those bodies. I brought someone physically back in their original body—more or less, anyway. That's at least two verified methods of resurrection. Orochimaru apparently has some sort of mechanism—reports from Nagi Island say that he got blown into tiny fragments, yet somehow he's still alive."
"He wasn't blown up, duh," Ino said, rolling her eyes. "A bunch of his construct snakes were blown up. Or the person making the report was confused about what they saw."
Hazō shrugged. "Maybe. Regardless, Pain did it and I did it."
"Pain was a literal demigod," she said sharply. "And you...I don't know what happened because I wasn't there, but it's way more likely that you were dreaming, or drugged, or in a genjutsu. People don't come back from the dead, Hazō." She caught herself. "Well, except for that one time, and Pain had a legendary bloodline derived straight from the Sage."
"Fair." He paused, nibbling on his bun long enough to let the temperature of the conversation cool. "Still," he said once she uncrossed her arms and reached for her chopsticks again, "it's something that interests me and I think I'll spend a little time poking around the edges of it. It probably won't go anywhere, but it will be interesting and I'm sure I'll get some useful seal experience out of it." He grinned. "Who knows? Maybe I'll learn enough to be able to make Summoning Scrolls! Portal to the dead? Ooooh." He wiggled his fingers in a spooky way. "Portal to another Path? We at least know that it can be done. Anyway, this will affect everyone so I thought I would at least keep you in the loop."
She studied him carefully. "Okay," she said at last, still sounding suspicious. "Just don't...I don't know, blow up the world or something."
Hazō clapped a hand to his heart in mock horror. "You wound me! I would never blow up the world...."
"...on purpose," Ino said, laughing. "I've heard it before."
"Curses, foiled again! Pass the chicken."
XP AWARD: 4
Brevity XP: 1
"GM had fun" XP: 4
+1 for scene: Talking with Kagome. (I enjoy writing him.)
+1 for scene: Thinking about aura mechanics. (It allowed reviewing some badass moments and made it easy to close on a joke.)
+2 for scene: Advancing the cause of necromancy so I can bring back Jiraiya, Hiruzen, and Shikaku, some of the QMs' favorite characters.
It is now about 7pm.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, November 11, 2020, at 12pm London time.
Hazō frowned. That was strange. Why had Jiraiya been such a paragon? He'd been a very talented ninja who had lived to his fifties, but was that enough? The Toads had undoubtedly taught him things that weren't available to others. He had undoubtedly had seals that no one else knew. Did that account for his skills?
He shook the distraction away. He was here for a purpose.
Uh, guys? This sounds like a hook to me. What was Jiraiya's secret to his power?
...to be honest it's probably in Naruto's hands, but that doesn't mean one of his hideouts in the EN somewhere might contain hints or backups. This seems like an exciting and profitable adventure hook.
And so the first seeds are sown. Ino may not yet believe that we can do it, but now she's thinking about it, and that's half the battle. And the aura meditation was phenomenal.
Great update, even got some deep lore for the lore crowd.
Good news: afterlife exploration seems pretty feasible through seals. Once we're capable of safely studying the Summon Scrolls, it gives us a path to summoning to other planes. Bad news: we have a timer. The longer we wait to rez someone, the more shredded their soul will be, and the less well known they are the worse the effect is. Hazou's biological father may already be pretty damaged by this point, since he was at best a competent Jonin who died over a decade ago.
Kagome-sensei had a book in one hand and a couple of eggs in the other. The eggs were scrambled, mixed with cheese, and wrapped in a piece of bread so it was socially appropriate for him to be shoveling them into his face with his bare hand. The open-mouthed chewing? Less so, but everyone had given up on that at this point.
I like this. Kagome lived alone, in the wild, for an unknown amount of years. Makes sense he would forget about manners, and not be wholly successful in acclimating back to them. Furthermore, he's a sealmaster and knowledge is something he desires as much as water. Then there's also the element that, since he's in his home, he feels safe enough to have both hands occupied (especially since the main Goketsu house is probably trapped six ways to sunday).
"No, I have no interest in replicating a seal failure. That said, has anyone ever intentionally made a dimensional rift? If so, which Path would be the easiest and safest to target?"
"Hm. Don't know that much about the Paths. Not really that interesting, you know? Let's see, there's the Seventh Path. That one seems pretty safe...unless you get eaten by a leopard, I guess. Or appear in the middle of an ocean. Or a mountain. Or in mid-air. Or inside a volcano. Or—"
Huh, so making a portal to the 7th path would be (relatively) easy, you would just have to be wary about where you portaled to --something you can't exactly control... I think.
"The Animal Path is where the chakra beasts come from. It would be great if we could figure out where the portal is. Or portals, I suppose. If we could shut them down then things would be much safer for everyone." He tipped his head in thought. "Although they do still breed—the animals, not the portals. I assume. Anyway, shutting the portals down would only stop new types from appearing. Anyway, not every type of animal is dangerous so going to the Animal Path might not be so bad. There might be puppies. Or kitties." A quiet yrowl came from the floor beside him; he bent over to stroke Fifi until she once again rumbled her satisfaction at the state of the universe.
Huh, I thought all chakra beasts were just the result of chakra-mutating them (it explained the source of chakra-plants, at least). But if there are portals, then that makes sense, and it makes sense that chakra beasts would carry spores/seeds from the Animal Path with them. And it's not like the two ideas (chakra-mutating and portal-ing) are mutually exclusive. I'm honestly considering seeking out the Animal Path, now...
Kagome-sensei shrugged. "What else am I doing with my time? I've already trained—am training—half a dozen students, and you'll surpass me soon enough. I'll get a footnote in the history books for that one, which will mean a few more decades of not-death but eh." He chewed another small bite, thinking, then swallowed. "Granted, the footnote will probably be something along the lines of 'Kagome was Hazō's teacher, and if Kagome had not been such a good teacher then maybe the world would still be here' but at least it's something. Oh, and I'll probably get mentioned somewhere for being a missing-nin who joined a clan. Maybe a paragraph in the history of the Gōketsu or something." He shrugged again and took another bite. "I've invented my own seals and not died in the process. I've got a great family and lots of chocolate. No one has tried to kill me in months. It's been a pretty good life. Wouldn't mind keeping it going longer and sharing it with some people." For a moment, sadness flickered across his face and then was gone.
And I hope this "unraveling" thing doesn't actually occur. It sounds awful and a fate worse than death. I legitimately got shivers just reading about that.
Kagome-sensei cocked his head. "Hm. Maybe. Depends on how fast the trigger fires. It would need to be really quick, and I doubt it is. I'll check. Good thought." He chewed another bite and swallowed, then grinned. "I guess explosives really do solve all problems."
If the trigger doesn't fire quickly enough, it should (theoretically) be a simple matter to adjust it... right?
And if explosives aren't solving your problems, you're either not using enough of them, or you're not using them creatively enough.
Hazō had a bloodline but no particular emotion that defined him. He was a seal student and a Summoner, but those were new—the Summoner more so than the sealing, but still new. What made Hazō, Hazō? What defined him and set him apart from any other ninja? If every aura was unique then presumably there needed to be something that was unique about you in order to shape it.
His dream of Uplift, certainly. That had been his driving force for two years. What else? There was his love of lists, his experience going beyond the veil of the world when he tried to read absorb the Pangolin Scroll that gave him some scrap of understanding about nature of reality. Of the Paint, a.s h3 haddd start!d thinking of i# at some point.
Compassion. A strong since of morality. A righteous rage for injustice and wrongs. Hazou has our "modern" morality in a deathworld that seeks to smother such things. Beyond our own intervention, he also butted heads with the Yakuza as an academy student to help his mother pay the bills. Compassion. Devotion. Empathy.
His fundamental curiosity and passion for learning. Sealmasters are few in numbers because not many people are drawn to such a field. To be a sealmaster is to pit your curiosity and learning-speed against the fabric of a hungry, volatile universe. Hazou went out, courted a questionably-sane, missing-nin sealmaster and repeatedly put up with his mentor's neurosis for the sake of an education in sealing. Sure, it quickly became a bond of human empathy, familial love, and professional camaraderie, but it began as an intellectual thirst for knowledge. Curiosity. Desperation-to-Understand. Intellectual demands.
I also think it's worth mentioning that, when it was pointed out that Hazou was beginning to dehumanize his own teammates, Hazou-as-a-character immediately began working to get rid of that bad habit and to work on becoming a more thoughtful person. Even Akane (renewed romantic interest) and Mari (see chapter where Hazou went to Mari for advice regarding Akane's proposal) have acknowledged Hazou's growth as a person.
"Hey there," the blonde said, seating herself with her usual casual grace. "So, lunch in a public place, huh? I guess we're not brewing evil schemes in defiance of the Hokage's direct orders." She paused to pick a pair of chopsticks from the basket. "Well, I'm not. I never know about you."
INO (cheerfully): "Hey, this isn't a meeting where you're going to try and sway me into flouting the Hokage's direct orders, is it?"
HAZOU: "Nope, but how do you feel about resurrection?"
INO (without missing a beat): "I think you're a brilliant person who might actually get it done, one day."
HAZOU (caught off guard): "Wait, what?"
INO (continues as if Hazou didn't say anything): "I also think you're a little bit insane, more than a little bit naive, and that you're likely to set the world on fire with a sealing failure."
HAZOU (faux-resigned): "Can... can we go back to the 'brilliant' part?"
INO (smug): "Only if you ask me nicely."
HAZOU (embarrassed): "Yes... mistress."
"Yeah, that's another thing. We tax people so heavily. I'm not sure it's productive. I think that cutting taxes on the farmers might actually make Leaf wealthier. The farmers would be motivated to work harder if they were going to get to keep more of their produce. Plus, they would be able to eat better so they would be healthier. More of them would survive and so they'd be able to grow more, maybe branch out into other products."
Ino laughed. "Hazō, you're such a dreamer. Everyone knows that bumpies don't work unless they have to. Sure, they'll grow enough to feed themselves and pay their taxes, but that's it. The ones that have the drive to do more than that have already come to Leaf and made a life for themselves." She paused long enough to serve herself some teriyaki chicken. "Besides, we protect them and guide them in the Will of Fire. Without us they would be savages, scratching in the dirt whenever they weren't being eaten by something or other. Surely we're entitled to something for that?"
"Huh." Pale eyebrows rose and she sat back in her chair. "Interesting thought. I doubt it would work—seal designs do what they're created to do, but people don't."
WE ACTUALLY CONVINCED HER OF IT!!!
Well, maybe not "convinced her it was a good idea" so much as "convinced her it wasn't an inherently stupid idea and might be worth more thought." Still a win!
Oh, also, thanks EJ! I know it wasn't really included in the action plan, but has been a topic of discussion in the thread. So while you might not've had to include it in the chapter, I'm still thankful that you did!
Honestly, their dynamic makes me laugh so much. I know I've said this about almost every side character in this story, but I hope Ino gets more screen time.
Damn you QMs! [*shakes fist at the sky*] Your character writing is so good I don't know if I have a favorite character anymore!!!
Also: Kagome seems to think there's open portals to the Animal Path. Would be a fun adventure quest to track these down for studying, and it furthers necromancy too. We'd need a way to find some leads though. Maybe it's worth bringing up with Cannai?
