ClawClawBite
Mad Engineering!
- Location
- Seattle, WA
There had been discussion of talking to sensai before spending xp, so I was waiting till after that before I figured out if I wanted to suggest a counter plan.
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
I think the lack of input stemmed from the voting overhaul being discussed.
At least that's why I shut mouth.
- Location
- Somewhere, probably Earth
How about a Millenia-old demon who needs some Uchiha eyes to get free and wants to develop us some sharingan so it can steal them?
- Location
- Canada
On voting, we talked about how we should hold off and discusses and then never set a time when we should start, in the future we should discuss for the first few days and then vote in... the last day or two?
Also, there was really only one good choice here, so there wasn't a whole lot to talk about.
Also, there was really only one good choice here, so there wasn't a whole lot to talk about.
- Location
- Texas
Yeah it's been the whole Christmas thing for me, plus I don't entirely understand the combat system so I'm content letting people that know what they are doing choose. Also, Merry Christmas everyone!
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oh, I'm sorry, you thought it was a coincidence that the one non-Leaf, non-S-rank ninja with a Sharingan bloodline just happened to find themselves virtually defenceless in an isolated corner of a country they'd normally be mad to enter?
Uhm. Goddammit. Does our bloodline have a Mangekyou equivalent? Because i feel there is copious amounts of trauma heading our way. Might as well profit from it.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Although I haven't spoken to Velorien about this, I'm going to rule on it anyway:
HOLY CRAP NO IT DOESNT!!!!1!!1!!!
Personally, I'd like to remove all the bullshit from the Sharingan; leave it so that it lets you see at super speed, see tons of details, copy jutsu, and that's *it*. (Well, maybe see chakra too. I'd be okay with that, although it's one thing I don't remember if the canon version lets you do.) No creating chakra-mecha, flame that burns for a week and can't be extinguished, random torrture genjutsu, foldspace, super weaving or any of the other crap that Kishimoto pulled out of his butt. Still, I should probably talk to my co-author about that first.
- Location
- Somewhere, probably Earth
The original sharingan is also viable as a method for using genjutsu which gave the entire clan a scary amount of aptitude for genjutsu and some kekkei-genkai specific genjutsu (the whole reason Itachi was scary was because he could trap people in complex, heavily disorienting genjutsu just with eye-contact, leaving them easy targets to kill, while the sharingan protected him from being placed in genjutsu in return)
- Location
- Australia
Keep in Mind Itachi is the kid who straight out cut off Orchis arm and made him run the fuck away at age 13, he is bullshit in all sorts of ways so using him as a standard for the Sharrigan is bad because he is probably amazing talented at using that as well.
- Location
- Somewhere, probably Earth
Actually, there's a strong chance the only reason he pulled that off is because he's a straight genjutsu Uchiha. If I remember correctly, that happened WHILE Orochifucker was locked in a genjutsu, unless I'm remembering the wrong thing.
I do not really agree. About the Mangekyo Sharingan, not the fact that our bloodline doesn't have an equivalent, mind. I wasn't serious about that part.
I do not consider the Mangekyo Sharingan as used by Itachi to be bullshit. It is in the same class as other super-techniques, like the Sage or Bijuu modes or the Eight Gates. Great power, with a clear and crippling drawback. It just uses the Sharingan instead of nature chakra, a Bijuu or the power inherent in a person.
Honestly, the whole Uchiha thing only got completely out of hand once Kishimoto introduced the fact that everyone of importance had an entire stack of fully developed Sharingans and Senju clones in their basement that they could use to spam their secret ultimate techniques, which you have neatly avoided by making organ transplants as hard as they are supposed to be.
Also Obito and Shisui. There was no real point in giving Shisui that strange super-genjutsu, and Obitos entire storyline is so unlikely that it should be impossible in a rational world not driven by plot, so discarding those two should be fine.
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- Location
- Australia
He trapped orchi in a genjusu then cut of his arm to stop him from breaking out of it this leads to????????? When you think about it for any length of time, so I avoid it and assume he was being sarcastic with a bit off " oh you wanted to break out? Let me help you with that"
I mean more in general using itachi as an example runs into the issue that blinded and 3 quarters dead itachi was still an S rank shinobi which raises question about him in his prime probably the next Minato in terms of ability to dominate the battlefield, also keep in mind all his genjutsu talent seems to be his natural talent and not sharrigan casting as he never makes the necessary eye contact a lot of the time.
I vaguely recall having read a fanfic where itachi doesn't get that terminal illness yet actually had the ambition of "test his capacity" iirc it ended with him staring at nagatos dead body and then getting on a ship to go find more S rank people to kill in the rest of the world, gotta find that again.
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redzonejoe
Vaguely Pastafarian
- Location
- Canada
Oh, sorry about not voting. I guess I was too on-the-fence and hadn't decided by the time the vote closed. That's my excuse anyways.
Chapter 4: Blood in the Water
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Blood in the water!"
That might have been the first time Hazō had heard Inoue-sensei swear while sober. The diminutive redhead stared in awe at the collection of dagger-like claws and teeth that the genin had dumped unceremoniously (well, exhaustedly) at her feet.
"You're telling me you personally stripped these from an alligator. Just so we're clear, that's one of those giant killer alligators that can swallow kids like you whole, right? And not, say, some stray lizard that happened to be crawling by?"
The genin nodded. Trying to get useful materials out of the alligator in a hurry had not been easy, especially with the awareness that the sun was setting and they could be minutes away from death at the proboscises of a pack of venom gliders. But this reaction almost made the experience worthwhile.
"And you three killed it all by yourselves, on your first trip out?"
The genin nodded again.
"Well," Inoue-sensei took a step forward into Hazō's personal space, "come on, details. You can't leave a girl hanging after presenting her with trophies like that!"
Hazō exchanged brief glances with the other two. They'd taken some time and effort to craft their report after Wakahisa had brought up the idea that the jōnin wouldn't be too impressed with a tale of desperate improvised tactics and a ninja nearly getting eaten.
"I played the role of bait within a controlled environment in order to lure the alligator from concealment. As soon as Mori located and identified the target from her vantage point, the three of us exploited our terrain advantage to disable it with a combined kunai barrage, and then Wakahisa finished it off with the Water Whip Technique before it had a chance to recover. Making the judgement call that bringing the alligator back with us was not viable, we harvested its most immediately useful parts and retreated."
"Nice job. Mako would be so proud of you," Inoue-sensei reached out to ruffle Hazō's hair. Hazō reflexively tried to dodge, but when the three-year-running female jōnin CQC champion wants your hair ruffled, your hair gets ruffled.
"Who is Mako, Inoue-sensei?" Mori asked.
"Little Hazō's jōnin instructor," Inoue-sensei explained. "She and I go way back—"
She blinked.
"Went way back."
Her bouncy demeanour deflated a little.
"All right, kids. Seeing how close you've cut it time-wise, you must have plenty else to report. Get to it."
"A pity you didn't bring back the spiderbear thing too. Ichimaru would have had a field day dissecting it. That eel sure is a beauty, though. Anyway, you'll have to summarise all this again at tonight's general meeting, but I'm going to ask you to leave out the part about the shelter, OK? I'll make sure the rest of Command knows about it myself. Actually, that goes for your apex predator theories too. We don't want any overreactions."
So there was a "Command" now? Hazō filed this thought away for later reflection.
Inoue-sensei turned away. "Shirogane! Get this stuff to materials storage for me!"
The genin shuffled their feet, waiting to be dismissed.
"Oh, right, you guys are still here."
"Inoue-sensei," Hazō asked, "how did the other teams do?"
Inoue-sensei gave a proud smile. "Not as well as my little Hazō, that's for sure."
Hazō began to reflexively squirm in embarrassment, and only managed to catch himself in time as he realised this would only make him look more like a kid.
"Team Yamaguchi were on scouting duty. They've managed to bring back some very detailed maps of the area, and they found a type of smokeless wood that practically had Shikigami doing a little jig. They came back without any injuries to speak of, and we think we managed to flush the toxins out of their systems before any permanent damage was done. Team Shinra, on scouting and hunting duty, weren't so lucky. It wasn't until they were stopped by the sentry on their way back that they realised there were only two of them. Even now, they can't remember losing Misaka."
Suddenly, the inside of the cave felt a lot colder.
"On the plus side," Inoue-sensei continued as if nothing was wrong, "Team Uchida completed their mission of scouting out the village with only one major encounter—a run-in with parasitic slimes which they survived unscathed. They report a community of a few hundred rice farmers, with the main body of the village surrounded by a heavy-duty palisade with watch towers and traps scattered over a wide area, presumably for the wildlife. You'll hear the full report tonight. In the meantime..."
Inoue-sensei's expression faded to neutral. She studied the genin's faces slowly and with an uncomfortable level of intensity, as if trying to see through the ninjutsu disguises they weren't using.
"Wakahisa, Hazō, you're relieved. Go play cards or something until the general meeting. Mori, you're coming with me."
The two boys watched as Mori meekly, and somewhat anxiously, followed Inoue-sensei into the depths of the cave.
"So, uh, any idea what that was about?" Wakahisa asked the second they were out of earshot.
Hazō considered Inoue-sensei. Mist knew her as a top-class genjutsu specialist with a preference for infiltration and seduction missions (even though every single one involved having to dye long, red hair) and an improbable gift for close quarters combat. To this list Hazō could add limitless energy, a cast-iron liver, complete obliviousness to personal boundaries and a disturbing fondness for gossip. Quite frankly, though Inoue-sensei wasn't a bad person as such, he wouldn't want to see anyone left alone with her, much less a helpless innocent like Mori. However, if the alternative was getting in Inoue-sensei's way himself...
"I think we'd better leave it," he told Wakahisa. "Do not meddle in the affairs of genjutsu users, for they are creative, and don't mind breaking their toys.
"She told me that once, after I pointed out a couple of issues with her stance."
Wakahisa bit his lip, and did not press the issue.
"...while you were staring down the throat of that eel like it had swallowed your house keys!"
"Well, maybe if you'd maintained line of sight like you were supposed to, instead of playing with dead fish, I wouldn't have ended up -"
The voices bouncing off the walls and ceiling of the small chamber Team Kurosawa had been assigned for sleeping quarters cut off instantly as Mori walked in. Her movements were slow and slightly sluggish. She hadn't been at the general meeting (although Inoue-sensei had been), or at dinner afterwards.
The boys watched their teammate as if she were an exploding tag with the delay counting down.
"Uh, Mori?" Wakahisa finally asked as he settled back down onto his bedroll. "What did Inoue-sensei want with you?"
"That is private," Mori said flatly.
Then, without any further comment, she leaned over and began to sort through her pack in preparation for bed.
A few minutes later, after everyone had settled down to sleep, they heard her voice in the darkness. "I apologise. That was not meant to sound so harsh. I do not always know what I will sound like when I speak."
A pause.
"Inoue-sensei said to tell you that if... if you ever feel like you are breaking, go speak to her. She can help."
The next couple of days went by peacefully. Team Kurosawa was alternating between guard duty and downtime, with Hazō fitting training in between bursts of rapid reproduction of swamp maps. Shikigami-sensei (who'd had his own mix of congratulations and "how the hell could you be so suicidally stupid" to offer), had taken to the idea like a 600 kg ravenous killing machine to water, though he'd asked Hazō to mark their location with a hazard symbol instead of a cave symbol in case of interception. He'd also saluted Hazō's decision to invest his limited training time in learning water walking from Mori, and advised them to spend some of the rest on grasping the basic principles of hunting, with input from the more experienced jōnin to show them the ropes, the snares and the kunai traps.
Meanwhile, the cave hideout was beginning to take shape, with Earth Element digging and Water Element draining coming together to create something that increasingly resembled a living environment. One of the chūnin had even managed to extract the pulsing chakra bladders from the luminous green things genin teams were fishing up, each bladder generating several days' worth of sinister green light before being ruined by decay.
But nothing peaceful lasts forever.
"All right, you three," Shikigami-sensei announced, "time for you to get off your asses. As you know, Team Ueda is still in intensive care, and Hotaru says we're running low on basic medical supplies. Seeing as our real medic's dead, we're not about to go harvesting medicinal plants from the swamp, which means somebody has to go get what we need from the village. That somebody is you. Sneak in and steal them, or disguise yourselves and go trade, and either way, don't screw up."
"Why us?" Hazō asked. "Given how badly things could go wrong, isn't this a chūnin job?"
"It would be if we could spare the chūnin," Shikigami-sensei said. "But we can't spare them today, and Hotaru needs the stuff on this list yesterday. You've shown good judgement and survival skills, and I'm trusting you to pull this off without getting anyone killed or attracting attention. Don't be afraid to retreat if you're forced to—but above all, don't let me down.
"Maehara's Acting Quartermaster after what happened to Shinagawa, and he has orders to give you the supplies you need—conditional on you convincing me that you have a good use for them. So I'll give you twenty minutes to discuss, and then I'll hear you out.
"What's your plan?"
[] Sneak in like ninja and take what you need
[] Infiltrate like ninja and trade for what you need
Write-ins accepted.
Voting closes on Saturday the 26th, 9 am Pacific Standard Time
That might have been the first time Hazō had heard Inoue-sensei swear while sober. The diminutive redhead stared in awe at the collection of dagger-like claws and teeth that the genin had dumped unceremoniously (well, exhaustedly) at her feet.
"You're telling me you personally stripped these from an alligator. Just so we're clear, that's one of those giant killer alligators that can swallow kids like you whole, right? And not, say, some stray lizard that happened to be crawling by?"
The genin nodded. Trying to get useful materials out of the alligator in a hurry had not been easy, especially with the awareness that the sun was setting and they could be minutes away from death at the proboscises of a pack of venom gliders. But this reaction almost made the experience worthwhile.
"And you three killed it all by yourselves, on your first trip out?"
The genin nodded again.
"Well," Inoue-sensei took a step forward into Hazō's personal space, "come on, details. You can't leave a girl hanging after presenting her with trophies like that!"
Hazō exchanged brief glances with the other two. They'd taken some time and effort to craft their report after Wakahisa had brought up the idea that the jōnin wouldn't be too impressed with a tale of desperate improvised tactics and a ninja nearly getting eaten.
"I played the role of bait within a controlled environment in order to lure the alligator from concealment. As soon as Mori located and identified the target from her vantage point, the three of us exploited our terrain advantage to disable it with a combined kunai barrage, and then Wakahisa finished it off with the Water Whip Technique before it had a chance to recover. Making the judgement call that bringing the alligator back with us was not viable, we harvested its most immediately useful parts and retreated."
"Nice job. Mako would be so proud of you," Inoue-sensei reached out to ruffle Hazō's hair. Hazō reflexively tried to dodge, but when the three-year-running female jōnin CQC champion wants your hair ruffled, your hair gets ruffled.
"Who is Mako, Inoue-sensei?" Mori asked.
"Little Hazō's jōnin instructor," Inoue-sensei explained. "She and I go way back—"
She blinked.
"Went way back."
Her bouncy demeanour deflated a little.
"All right, kids. Seeing how close you've cut it time-wise, you must have plenty else to report. Get to it."
-o-
"A pity you didn't bring back the spiderbear thing too. Ichimaru would have had a field day dissecting it. That eel sure is a beauty, though. Anyway, you'll have to summarise all this again at tonight's general meeting, but I'm going to ask you to leave out the part about the shelter, OK? I'll make sure the rest of Command knows about it myself. Actually, that goes for your apex predator theories too. We don't want any overreactions."
So there was a "Command" now? Hazō filed this thought away for later reflection.
Inoue-sensei turned away. "Shirogane! Get this stuff to materials storage for me!"
The genin shuffled their feet, waiting to be dismissed.
"Oh, right, you guys are still here."
"Inoue-sensei," Hazō asked, "how did the other teams do?"
Inoue-sensei gave a proud smile. "Not as well as my little Hazō, that's for sure."
Hazō began to reflexively squirm in embarrassment, and only managed to catch himself in time as he realised this would only make him look more like a kid.
"Team Yamaguchi were on scouting duty. They've managed to bring back some very detailed maps of the area, and they found a type of smokeless wood that practically had Shikigami doing a little jig. They came back without any injuries to speak of, and we think we managed to flush the toxins out of their systems before any permanent damage was done. Team Shinra, on scouting and hunting duty, weren't so lucky. It wasn't until they were stopped by the sentry on their way back that they realised there were only two of them. Even now, they can't remember losing Misaka."
Suddenly, the inside of the cave felt a lot colder.
"On the plus side," Inoue-sensei continued as if nothing was wrong, "Team Uchida completed their mission of scouting out the village with only one major encounter—a run-in with parasitic slimes which they survived unscathed. They report a community of a few hundred rice farmers, with the main body of the village surrounded by a heavy-duty palisade with watch towers and traps scattered over a wide area, presumably for the wildlife. You'll hear the full report tonight. In the meantime..."
Inoue-sensei's expression faded to neutral. She studied the genin's faces slowly and with an uncomfortable level of intensity, as if trying to see through the ninjutsu disguises they weren't using.
"Wakahisa, Hazō, you're relieved. Go play cards or something until the general meeting. Mori, you're coming with me."
The two boys watched as Mori meekly, and somewhat anxiously, followed Inoue-sensei into the depths of the cave.
"So, uh, any idea what that was about?" Wakahisa asked the second they were out of earshot.
Hazō considered Inoue-sensei. Mist knew her as a top-class genjutsu specialist with a preference for infiltration and seduction missions (even though every single one involved having to dye long, red hair) and an improbable gift for close quarters combat. To this list Hazō could add limitless energy, a cast-iron liver, complete obliviousness to personal boundaries and a disturbing fondness for gossip. Quite frankly, though Inoue-sensei wasn't a bad person as such, he wouldn't want to see anyone left alone with her, much less a helpless innocent like Mori. However, if the alternative was getting in Inoue-sensei's way himself...
"I think we'd better leave it," he told Wakahisa. "Do not meddle in the affairs of genjutsu users, for they are creative, and don't mind breaking their toys.
"She told me that once, after I pointed out a couple of issues with her stance."
Wakahisa bit his lip, and did not press the issue.
-o-
"...while you were staring down the throat of that eel like it had swallowed your house keys!"
"Well, maybe if you'd maintained line of sight like you were supposed to, instead of playing with dead fish, I wouldn't have ended up -"
The voices bouncing off the walls and ceiling of the small chamber Team Kurosawa had been assigned for sleeping quarters cut off instantly as Mori walked in. Her movements were slow and slightly sluggish. She hadn't been at the general meeting (although Inoue-sensei had been), or at dinner afterwards.
The boys watched their teammate as if she were an exploding tag with the delay counting down.
"Uh, Mori?" Wakahisa finally asked as he settled back down onto his bedroll. "What did Inoue-sensei want with you?"
"That is private," Mori said flatly.
Then, without any further comment, she leaned over and began to sort through her pack in preparation for bed.
A few minutes later, after everyone had settled down to sleep, they heard her voice in the darkness. "I apologise. That was not meant to sound so harsh. I do not always know what I will sound like when I speak."
A pause.
"Inoue-sensei said to tell you that if... if you ever feel like you are breaking, go speak to her. She can help."
-o-
The next couple of days went by peacefully. Team Kurosawa was alternating between guard duty and downtime, with Hazō fitting training in between bursts of rapid reproduction of swamp maps. Shikigami-sensei (who'd had his own mix of congratulations and "how the hell could you be so suicidally stupid" to offer), had taken to the idea like a 600 kg ravenous killing machine to water, though he'd asked Hazō to mark their location with a hazard symbol instead of a cave symbol in case of interception. He'd also saluted Hazō's decision to invest his limited training time in learning water walking from Mori, and advised them to spend some of the rest on grasping the basic principles of hunting, with input from the more experienced jōnin to show them the ropes, the snares and the kunai traps.
Meanwhile, the cave hideout was beginning to take shape, with Earth Element digging and Water Element draining coming together to create something that increasingly resembled a living environment. One of the chūnin had even managed to extract the pulsing chakra bladders from the luminous green things genin teams were fishing up, each bladder generating several days' worth of sinister green light before being ruined by decay.
But nothing peaceful lasts forever.
"All right, you three," Shikigami-sensei announced, "time for you to get off your asses. As you know, Team Ueda is still in intensive care, and Hotaru says we're running low on basic medical supplies. Seeing as our real medic's dead, we're not about to go harvesting medicinal plants from the swamp, which means somebody has to go get what we need from the village. That somebody is you. Sneak in and steal them, or disguise yourselves and go trade, and either way, don't screw up."
"Why us?" Hazō asked. "Given how badly things could go wrong, isn't this a chūnin job?"
"It would be if we could spare the chūnin," Shikigami-sensei said. "But we can't spare them today, and Hotaru needs the stuff on this list yesterday. You've shown good judgement and survival skills, and I'm trusting you to pull this off without getting anyone killed or attracting attention. Don't be afraid to retreat if you're forced to—but above all, don't let me down.
"Maehara's Acting Quartermaster after what happened to Shinagawa, and he has orders to give you the supplies you need—conditional on you convincing me that you have a good use for them. So I'll give you twenty minutes to discuss, and then I'll hear you out.
"What's your plan?"
[] Sneak in like ninja and take what you need
[] Infiltrate like ninja and trade for what you need
Write-ins accepted.
Voting closes on Saturday the 26th, 9 am Pacific Standard Time
Last edited by a moderator:
- Location
- Somewhere, probably Earth
Taking anything will require knowing what we need, as will trading.
The better solution is to go in and figure out who the healers are. Then we take the information on what plants in the swamp are useful from them. Hopefully, they'll have information like that written down somewhere. Hazo can trace out the books, recreate them in a day or two, and make as many copies as necessary after replacing the originals.
So that's my plan. Instead of just acquiring healing supplies, acquire local knowledge of the plants and remedies used.
- Location
- Yes.
@eaglejarl @Velorien @Jackercracks @AugSphere Does this mean we can copy books and other images perfectly, given the right tools? Also, will our teammates ever gain their own XP to grow, or will they be stuck as genin scrubs forever?
- Location
- Yes.
@Silver719 We do know what we need, Shikigami gave us a list of herbs/stuff. You do have a point in that we should try and copy books for info but we have to remember these are civilians (hopefully) who would freak at the idea of going into the death swamp. It's likely that the town doesn't really go into-into the swamp and their herbs are collected from safe areas/traded, not taken from death swampland.
Do you guys think the mods will give us information from the "general meeting" before we make a decision? Or is it not exactly useful?
Do you guys think the mods will give us information from the "general meeting" before we make a decision? Or is it not exactly useful?
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yes. However, while we've ruled that your required secondary superpowers prevent you from dying of RSI, copying complex images will take time, and books moreso (days of non-stop 16-hour work, depending on the length of the book).
They get the same XP as you, but they decide how to allocate it themselves. This being the holiday season, character sheets etc. may be slow to receive appropriate updates as some of us are away from our home computers.
So, I don't want to sound whiny or ungrateful, but...
Did we vote for this or even propose it? The consensus seemed to me to be that we give as accurate and as detailed a report as we can, or did I miss something? Falsifying a report like that seems like a Big Deal that can 1) come back to bite us if the deception is ever exposed and 2) give the jounin who plan and allocate missions an inaccurate idea of our capabilities.