- Pronouns
- He/Him
Exactly my stance, glad we agree.
True, and as we are not dead, he does not want us dead.
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
Exactly my stance, glad we agree.
True, and as we are not dead, he does not want us dead.
- Location
- The state of Paranoia
The difference between Asuma and Orochimaru is that if Asuma randomly kills us he'll face negative consequences. Even when he had good reason to kill us he decided not to after our allies showed him how bad those consequences could be (ticking off a lot of his biggest supporters). Orochimaru on the other hand? If he randomly decides to kill us he'll at worst lose some budget. Which he will probably then get back once he takes the time to walk over to the Tower and 'politely ask' for more.
That being said, I guess I wouldn't mind asking Ami about him, or maybe even Tsunade. As long as it's nothing that will bring us to Orochimaru's attention.
That being said, I guess I wouldn't mind asking Ami about him, or maybe even Tsunade. As long as it's nothing that will bring us to Orochimaru's attention.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
The difference here is mostly in the framing, no?
This problem(the "Orochimaru Problem") is real and does exist. Orochimaru will continue doing Orochimaru things regardless of everything else happening.
Now, we can either prepare adequately for when our paths eventually cross again, or work towards making sure that when this does happen that it happens in a manner optimal to our goals, or we can do neither and just chill out and hope for the best.
Personally, I would be more comfortable with a few chapters worth of "Orochimaru: The Expositioning (As Done By Character-in-the-know)" and with a pile of rare science materials that he might value sitting in a box under our bed, than not.
Interlude: Honoka's School Days
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Interlude: Honoka's School Days
"All right, students, today's focus is wall-walking, so the obstacle course has been adjusted appropriately. Who would like to go first?" Tanaka-sensei asked.
"Me! Mememememe!!! Pick me, sensei!"
Tanaka frowned at the obstreperous girl. "Don't be ridiculous, Yamamoto. First-years aren't capable of wall-walking. You are here to watch, quietly, not to participate. Would anyone else like to try?"
"I will, I guess," Hibi said, raising a hand. The ten-year-old clanless ninja shrugged one shoulder and looked annoyed. "My dad says I should volunteer more, so whatever."
"Very well. We're working an abbreviated course today, so there are six stations, six flags, and a maximum of six minutes to run the course. The focus is on wall-walking, but you may bring and use whatever gear you like if you think you might need alternate methods. The table there has climbing claws, a grapnel, and so on.
"You'll start with the slanted plum blossom piles for a warmup. Obviously, if you slip off you'll need to start over from the beginning.
"From there, proceed to the climbing pit and retrieve the flag from the bottom. Be careful about your entry and exit, as spilling dirt will complicate the climb out.
"Next is the rope pole. Try to walk up it, using the rope only for balance and assistance. After you grab the flag you may jump or slide down if you wish, although I recommend walking if you're able.
"After the pole is the mud trench. You haven't learned water walking yet so you'll definitely get dirty, but chakra repulsion will reduce the amount you sink in and save you valuable time. You must remain completely within the bounds of the trench for the entire traversal—when you fall in you may not step out in order to reset your position, you must climb up on top using chakra repulsion or else slog through it the hard way. You are, of course, free to start over and try again but the timer keeps running." He paused and smiled. "Oh, chakra repulsion is also an excellent way to get the mud off your feet afterwards."
Hibi glared up at the teacher who continued as though blithely unaware of what he'd said.
"After the trench is the parallel bars. Climb the ladder there, cross to the center of the bars in order to retrieve the flag, then complete the traverse and down the opposite ladder. The fastest route would be to use wall-walking to run across a single bar, although you may use both if you wish, or swing underneath.
"The final obstacle is the warp wall. We're using the 11' setting today, so you may use any of the handholds above that point.
"After you get the flag from the top of the warp wall, return here and lay the timer down in order to mark the end of your run. Any final questions?"
"Nah."
"Then off you go!"
The instructor flipped the sandtimer over and Hibi lunged off the starting line. He raced to the first plum blossom pile and leaped on. The pole was a foot high and the top was cut on a modest angle that would have been possible, although tricky, to stand on even without chakra adhesion. He balanced for a moment, then leaped to the next pole. This one was cut at forty-five degrees and Hibi's adhesion wasn't perfect; he wobbled and saved himself only by crouching down and grabbing onto the pole with both hands. He caught his balance, carefully straightened up, and leaped to the next pole, landing in a crouch with both hands and both feet on the surface. He took care to keep his outward expression calm and focused; a mudfoot did not dare show weakness. Still, he was cringing on the inside. That was a terrible performance and his father was going to be furious.
He pushed the thought out of his mind and focused on working his way across all twelve poles. Chakra adhesion gave him an advantage on clinging to the poles but he wasn't quite skilled enough to manage it on the angle like that, so he ended up having to use his hands and take a moment to balance between jumps.
The final pole had a silk flag tied to it—yellow background with the green symbol of Leaf on the front. Hibi collected the flag and tucked it into the back of his belt as he was running to the climbing pit. Mentally, he noted that it had taken him forty-seven seconds to cross the piles. He was going to need to buffer as much time as possible, as the mud trench was going to be a killer.
The pit was square, eight feet on a side and ten feet deep. He hopped in and bounced between the north and south walls in order to control his descent. He tore massive rents in the loose-packed dirt and clay and the spillage buried the flag. Honestly, how was anyone supposed to do this challenge? It was just clay, it wasn't strong enough to support a person! Even with perfect chakra adhesion it wouldn't be possible! Whatever.
He dug the flag up and braced himself into the northwest angle of the pit's walls. Chakra adhesion locked his feet to the wall...and promptly tore plugs out of it, which didn't help at all. Eh, whatever. He had chimneyed up enough angles that this wasn't much of a challenge even without adhesion. He was back on the surface in fifty-six seconds, the second flag tucked in his belt. That wouldn't do at all. He needed to buffer a lot more time.
The so-called 'rope pole' was really just a square log twenty feet tall with a thick climbing rope hanging down and another yellow-and-green Leaf flag at the top. This one was a breeze; the surfaces were wide and flat, perfect for chakra adhesion. He went up it in a smooth lumberjack climb—clamp the feet to opposite sides of the pole, reach up and anchor the hands, pull up, anchor the feet, repeat. He was up and down again in twenty seconds flat.
The mud trench was bad. This one was here, as far as he could tell, specifically for the sake of the clan kids. It was a way to teach them humility by literally turning them into mudfeet. It was always tremendously satisfying to watch their expressions as they flailed and slogged.
The instructor, insulting as he had been, was right: Chakra repulsion did prevent Hibi from sinking as deeply into the mud. It still took him one minute and fifty-two precious seconds to slog from one end to the next, but he did it. At least, he hoped it was only one minute fifty-two. Was he keeping the pace correctly with his mental count? Well, nothing to do but go as fast as he could.
By the time he got out of the trench he was low on chakra and gasping for breath. He opted to leopard-crawl across the top of the parallel bars in order to conserve both. It was a coward's way out but it was more energy-efficient and he was going to need everything he had to make the warp wall.
Hibi reached the base of the warp wall with five flags in his belt and the instructor hadn't called time yet. He took a moment to breathe, his chest still heaving from the exertion of the mud trench. Only one moment; there weren't enough of them left.
He took a final deep breath and launched himself at the wall, focusing on technique: Keep as much of the foot as possible in contact with the wall. Chakra repulsion from the downhill foot, adhesion from the uphill foot. Run up as far as possible, than launch yourself upwards and catch the handhold.
He missed the first time and had to slide down for another attempt. On the second try he managed to get two fingers over the lip of the handhold and from there it was easy. He grabbed the flag, reached the instructor's table, and toppled the timer with at least ten seconds worth of sand still in it. Tanaka-sensei gave him a pleased nod.
"Well done, Hibi. Go replace the flags, then wait with the other students. Who would like to go next?"
"Me! Please, sensei! Please, me! I can do it, I promise! Pick memememememe!!!"
"Anyone?"
Yamamoto's hand waved frantically and Tanaka carefully ignored it.
"I'll go, sensei," Iju said.
"Excellent! All right, let's run down the directions one more time..."
o-o-o-o
"Well done, Iju. Five minutes and thirty seconds, a very good time. All right, go reset the flags. Who would like to go next?"
"Me! Please, sensei! Pick me! Pick me!"
o-o-o-o
"Good job, Kakimoto. Four minutes and fifty seconds. Reset the flags, please. Who's next?"
"Memememememe!!!"
"Quiet, Yamamoto. Who's next?"
o-o-o-o
"Six minutes and forty-seven seconds. I'm afraid you have failed, Fujihara. Reset the flags, please."
"Please, sensei! Please can I go, pretty pretty please?!"
"Yamamoto! Stop disrupting the class! One demerit!"
Hyūga raised her hand politely.
"Yes, Lady Hanabi?"
"May I respectfully request that you allow her to try, sensei? Sometimes the easiest way to learn is to fail, and it would at least prevent her from earning more demerits with this execrable behavior."
"Please, sensei?!" Yamamoto begged. She even went so far as to clasp her hands in entreaty.
Tanaka frowned. "Have you even learned to use chakra adhesion yet?" The girl was a first year. Wait...hadn't that crazy Gōketsu senior been teaching her? Ka-something? Kagome, that was it. He hadn't really been teaching a first-year how to wall-walk...right? That could kill her.
She shifted nervously. "I'm sure I can do the course, sensei." She rummaged in one of several belt pouches and pulled out a crumpled scrap of paper. "I have a note?"
Tanaka took the note and opened it up.
I authorize Honoka to use chakra on the Leaf obstacle course. I am
Tanaka studied the note and then studied the urchin girl with the big, sad, hopeful eyes.
"Are you certain you want to do this, girl?" he asked. "Attempting to wall-walk could easily kill you if you aren't ready."
She nodded solemnly. "I promise I can do the course, sensei."
He sighed and nodded. "Very well." He folded the note and put it carefully in his pocket. The Gōketsu had shown themselves to be bizarrely talented in various ways, not the least of which was inventing the most important seal of this decade. If their senior sealmaster thought the girl was safe...perhaps she really was that much of a prodigy, and the Academy had simply missed it? It did happen sometimes, that a child who was on the verge of failing out only needed to be helped over a single conceptual hurdle and then everything would snap into place.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!"
"Don't thank me yet, child." He crouched down so he was at her level and put a hand on her shoulder. "You remember the instructions?"
She nodded.
"Verbally, please."
"Yes, sensei. I remember the directions."
"You understand that what you're about to do is dangerous, and could kill you?"
"Yes, sensei."
He rubbed his jaw for a moment, studying her carefully, and stood up. "Very well. Go on three...two...one...now!" He flipped the timer.
She took off, racing across the grass towards the plum blossom piles...and stopping. Right at the edge of the piles she reached into one of her belt pouches and pulled out a storage seal. Somehow, the first-year girl who shouldn't even be looking at seals was able to unseal a giant mattress, lay it across the piles, and scramble across it in the space of five or six seconds.
Tanaka's jaw fell open.
Yamamoto ran from the piles to the pit and jumped in. Moments later, a ladder appeared sticking up out of the pit. The girl scampered up it and ran for the rope pole. She paused, running her hands over the base of the pole carefully, and then...ran away from it?
A massive explosion split the pole, dropping the top half on the green. Yamamoto scavenged the flag and ran off to the mud trench as the first bit of laughter forced its way out of Tanaka's mouth.
She was still running to the trench when she started throwing things. They weren't knives or kunai...some sort of disks, probably, although they were too small to see well at this distance. Whatever they were, they obviously had storage seals on them because logs started raining down into the trench. Her aim was terrible; the vast majority of the wood landed outside the trench and some of the seals didn't even open. Regardless, she was throwing the things by the fistful, in a display of profligate wealth of which only a clan child should have been capable. By the time she got to the edge of the trench there were already a dozen logs floating in it, providing hopscotch footholds down its length. She paused at the end of the trench and threw more disks. Her timing was even worse; most of them came nowhere near where they needed to be.
Tanaka watched as Yamamoto realized that her brilliant run was turning into a joke because she couldn't manage the timings better. He expected that she would get angry, perhaps even give up. Instead, she reached into a pocket and pulled out something that Tanaka really hoped was a six-inch stick but truly feared was actually a six-inch thick stack of storage seals.
She ran back about thirty feet, then lobbed the stick (or stack) up in a slow arc. It wasn't quite to the top of the arc when the explosive went off. Dozens, perhaps scores, of storage seals were destroyed and entire cords of firewood rained down over the trench. Mud splashed everywhere, and Yamamoto was able to run from one end to the other across what was effectively a corduroy road.
By now he was struggling to keep the laughter contained.
The task got harder when she used a pruning hook to cut the flag down from the parallel bars without ever bothering to leave the ground.
When she blew up the warp wall and came back to the finish covered in mud and dirt and splinters, her face glowing with happiness, he couldn't manage to control the laughter anymore.
@Velorien said:
Upon consideration, voting is open, and closes on Wednesday 25th of November, 12 p.m. London time.
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Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
*nods*
Brilliant. This is the subtlest assassination attempt I have ever seen!
Good job, Kagome.
- Location
- Raleigh, NC
Can we please focus on lowering the cost of basic seals so this becomes standard leaf tactics?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Kagome's already taking care of that by teaching sealing to multiple students, which is itself pretty unusual for a sealmaster as far as I can tell. His current three are "ready to make explosives" and if that's coming from Kagome, they're pretty competent already.
Oh, speaking of sealing, we need to meet with Lord Hag and figure out who we're teaching. I say one of his daughters.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[x] Action Plan: Splinter Plan, MMKII Authority and Uplift
Words: 289
(done with @MMKII's permission)
Words: 289
(done with @MMKII's permission)
- Spend three adoption slots to adopt Atomu, Reo, and Mai
- Precautions
- Doublecheck with Mari: are any of them morally problematic?
- Precautions
- Have a big celebratory party in their honor, as well as for all of the other ninja working on the estate.
- These adoptions were selected based on the extraordinary and exemplary service of these individuals. We will be working to get more slots so that no one is left waiting too long.
- We understand that the lack of a clan name a stressful situation for some of them, but rest assured that we are working on it.
- You are valued. You are important. Every one of you.
- Expectation management: it might take a couple of years, but hopefully only a handful in a worst-case scenario.
- Tangent: We'll have to have more communal dinners like this. It's nice seeing everyone.
- Go mingle with everyone in smaller groups. Check in on how everyone's doing and what they're all up to.
- Uplift (sanity checked with Keiko, Mari, Gaku, Ino, etc)
- Implement Jutsu Bounty
- Do we need to ask Asuma for permission?
- What if we framed it as a mission?
- Reward for being able to cast MEW (witnessed/confirmed by a Goketsu ninja)
- Gaku sets amount that's noteworthy, but not enough to bankrupt us
- Mari/Ino: is there a way to outwardly confirm a successful cast of a personal, internal jutsu like YSJ? Further, how can we get the wider Leaf ninja population to at least learn it?
- Do we need to ask Asuma for permission?
- Medical Training Scholarships
- Offer to provide lodging/food for any ninja who is training to become a medic nin.
- Provide a lump sum reward (large amount) once they graduate.
- Implement Jutsu Bounty
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- Location
- The state of Paranoia
Whoever we teach needs to be young so it's easier to corrupt them into being decent human beings. Something something sealing needs to be started at an early age so the snoblethorps don't haptimuck you.
Edit:
[x] Action Plan: Splinter Plan, MMKII Authority and Uplift
This looks like an excellent plan. One question, does combat jutsus mean stuff like the escape jutsu and MEW? To me combat jutsu means means stuff like water whip and flame aura, so I'm just asking to clarify that we're not paying for people to learn how to explode each other better.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
He has a 25 year old daughter and a Hazou-age daughter I think, could do the younger one
[x] Action Plan: Splinter Plan, MMKII Authority and Uplift
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- Location
- The state of Paranoia
That works.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
@RandomOTP
- Spend three adoption slots to adopt Atomu, Reo, and Mai
- Apologize for taking so long, the adoption slots thing is a nightmare, and acquiring them is nontrivial.
- Precautions
- Doublecheck with Mari: are any of them morally problematic?
- Have a big celebratory party in their honor, as well as for all of the other ninja working on the estate.
- These adoptions were selected based on the extraordinary and exemplary service of these individuals. We will be working to get more slots so that no one is left waiting too long.
- You understand that the lack of a clan name a stressful situation for some of them, but rest assured that you are working on it.
- You are valued. You are important. Every one of you.
- Expectation management: it might take a couple of years, but hopefully only a handful in a worst-case scenario.
- Tangent: We'll have to have more weekly communal dinners like this. It's nice seeing everyone.
- Go mingle with everyone in smaller groups. Check in on how everyone's doing and what they're all up to.
- Uplift (sanity checked with Keiko, Mari, Gaku, etc)
- Implement Jutsu Bounty System.
- Including (not restricted to): Yamanaka Stability Jutsu, Fertilization jutsu, MEW, and Escape Jutsu.
- A month's wages for every degree of competency displayed (meta: jutsu level), up to six months' wages.
- Bounties on Medical jutsu and the Yamanaka Stability Jutsu are doubled
- Bounties on combat jutsu are halved.
- Medical Training Scholarships
- Pay for room, board, and food for any ninja who is training to become a medic nin.
- Further, give them a monthly stipend equal to a moderately successful clan chunnin.
- Once they graduate, they receive a lump sum, equivalent to six month's pay.
- Implement Jutsu Bounty System.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
You're right, combat means water whip and the like, whereas the noncombat one means MEW, Yamanaka Stability Jutsu, Escape Jutsu, Soil Fertility Jutsu, and more utility-oriented stuff.
Basically trying to shamelessly get more sane ninja and up Leaf's medic nin numbers. I also think that more people knowing things like the Escape Jutsu will help with casualty rates, and more people knowing MEW and Soil Fertilization will help with our other Uplift Plans.
(Like, for example, every Fire Country hamlet to have a wall, preventing Chakra Beasts from razing it to the ground. More ninja with MEW means it becomes more and more feasible.)
(Edit: Added Shrooms' optimization suggestions!)
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
[x] Action Plan: Splinter Plan, MMKII Authority and Uplift
Finally! (Make sure Tsunade doesn't think we're trying to curry favor too much)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oh yeah, BTW-how does Orochimaru stack up against some of the more powerful tailed beast hosts (what's the name again?)
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
IIRC, people reported that Orochimaru was killed, but that they also saw reports of a snake slithering away? So, presumably, Orochimaru was killed/crushed, but had a contingency plan to sufficiently heal back, or outright rez himself... Though I suspect Orochimaru's immortality is more "dodge damage/heal" than "die and come back."
