I'm not really sure this works when the spiders weigh more than a person. Unless they have like "make a parachute" as a ninja technique or they spend the time to make a whole ass parachute in advance, which tbh we could distribute to any summon clan
They're probably pretty light compared to a person of similar size, being mostly leg by length. And spidersilk is light and strong enough I can see parachuting being a cultural thing. Other Summons might take considerably a dimmer view of jumping off skytowers. Although maneuverability is probably pretty bad compared to actual bird/insect clans.
 
They're probably pretty light compared to a person of similar size, being mostly leg by length
I have the impression they'd still be too heavy for what I was originally presuming Kiba meant, which is throwing out a strand and hanging onto it and having the wind blow them around like IRL spiders do. I think they would have to actually manufacture a legitimate parachute to do this.

Also, idk what research yall have done on it but from what I understand parachutes were actually kind of difficult to develop and perfect, and required a lot of advancement in understanding aerodynamic processes. It's not as simple as "hold onto a light material", you have to consider things like having your material stay spread out and getting maximum lift and stuff.
 
Also, idk what research yall have done on it but from what I understand parachutes were actually kind of difficult to develop and perfect, and required a lot of advancement in understanding aerodynamic processes. It's not as simple as "hold onto a light material", you have to consider things like having your material stay spread out and getting maximum lift and stuff.
Very difficult to design so that they're actually safe, but people have been testing their dumb flightsuits and sometimes living through it since the Middle Ages
 
IDK man, if someone gave me a full size statue of me and my SO looking like we were about to kill some bitches as a wedding gift, I would (internally b/c you never know who's packing) be like, "thanks, but did you see the Le Creuset on the registry? That would be so much less expensive and easier to store."
Two words: Ninja deathworld.

Also, it's Kei. Somehow, I doubt something like a blender or microwave oven would help ease Kei's transition into married life with Tenten --someone she actually feels romantic affection for.

But fair point, a statue of yourself and your partner is a little narcissistic. Maybe a family piece? With all the Uplift Family, plus Jiraiya, Ami, and Tenten? We can then include carvings for Snowflake, Crystal, and Scalpel? We can then arrange the statues so that Snowflake, Crystal, Scalpel, and Winterlight are not placed beside Kei, but are instead dispersed and interwoven with the rest of the family... That way, they're included in the family portrait (readily acknowledged and named as our beloved family members) but separate from Kei (that way they know Hazou values them on their own merits, rather than as a "bond borrowed" from Kei).
 
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But fair point, a statue of yourself and your partner is a little narcissistic. Maybe a family piece? With all the Uplift Family, plus Jiraiya, Ami, and Tenten? We can then include carvings for Snowflake, Crystal, and Scalpel? We can then arrange the statues so that Snowflake, Crystal, Scalpel, and Winterlight are not placed beside Kei, but are instead dispersed and interwoven with the rest of the family... That way, they're included in the family portrait (readily acknowledged and named as our beloved family members) but separate from Kei (that way they know Hazou values them on their own merits, rather than as a "bond borrowed" from Kei).
What about future Shadow Clones as Keiko's Resolve grows? She could have 9 or more in the next couple years.

EDIT: Don't all the SCs based on Keiko reintegrate when they dispel? I thought that was how SC worked
 
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I'm not really sure this works when the spiders weigh more than a person. Unless they have like "make a parachute" as a ninja technique or they spend the time to make a whole ass parachute in advance, which tbh we could distribute to any summon clan

I believed certain species of spiders made of webbing parachutes.
 
I have no idea what this is referring to, it sure would be nice if you'd elaborate.

I share @Shrooms concerns with respect to the trivialization of some very important details of any plan involving many thousands of seals.

To cover a 100m x 100m square 10 m deep of glass at 100% storage efficiency (no losses from crucibles) would require 25,000 storage seals. That is not something you can just wave your hands at. Who is deploying the seals? How are we to source them? Who is making the crucibles?

Saying "just do X" is worse than useless, in that it detracts attention from reifiable ideas.

I'm just plain tired of repeating myself. Ask @faflec about "screaming in Jiraiya" for just one of dozens of examples.


Interlude: Coincidence

'Coincidence' is a human word.

It is a human word in the sense that 'wind' is a human word. It describes a phenomenon that has an impact on humans and therefore the word is useful. It is also so milquetoast as to be essentially pointless.

The cool summer breeze, soft as a kiss, pleasant and cool on the overworked peasant's sweating brow as he strips the bulbs from the rice plants before the creatures reach adulthood.

The menacing and mercurial sirocco, bearer of choking dust or life-giving rain depending on its whim.

The howling rage of the tornado tearing through a peasant family's dwelling and carrying their screaming bodies into the sky, adults and infants alike.

'Wind' is a pauper's word, and so is 'coincidence'.

The coincidence here was tiny and distant. Or proximate, depending on what you counted. That was the essence of coincidence, after all: it didn't exist. Everything had a cause tracing back to the universe's first shuddering gasp of creation. Still, if one were to choose an arbitrary point in the chain of events to consider 'the beginning', one might choose Jitsuko's cow's flatulence. It was, perhaps, a strange thing to choose as the first cause of a thousand legends and at least one literal saving of humanity, yet it is as good as any other.

At the time, of course, the cow belonged to Jitsuko's husband, Chōei. Chōei had owned the cow for a dozen years and knew its habits perfectly well. He knew better than to pass behind the beast while it was eating, yet for whatever reason he did. It was at that exact moment that the cow unleashed a long and triumphant thhhhhhhhhwwaaaat of intestinal relief. The assault was enough to make Chōei gag and stumble, one hand going out for balance and catching the cow on its backside. That was enough to frighten the cow into lashing out with its rearmost hooves, and that was enough to crush Chōei's chest like a dropped dumpling.

If one were honest, Chōei's death caused Jitsuko nearly as much relief as sadness. On the one hand, he had stuck by her and fled from civilization to conceal her secret. On the other, no more enduring under sweaty grunting, no more waiting for her own bath until the water was half-cooled and dirty, no more enduring the prandial scratching of the man-eggs, no more splitting the already scant food the tax man left. (For it was certainty that no matter how far one fled the cloying grasp of humanity, the tax man would find you!)

Had Chōei not died he would have been the one to re-thatch the roof instead of Jitsuko. For all his (many!) faults, Chōei had been an excellent thatcher. Jitsuko had never done the job before, but there was no one else. In her first-timer clumsiness she went up while the roof was still wet from the rain that had caused the leak that had alerted her to the need for re-thatching. Had she her husband's experience she would have known to wait until the roof had fully dried the next day before climbing up it. She put a foot wrong on the slippery sodden stalks, her feet went out from under her, and she flailed backwards off the roof.

It could be argued that it was another chain of coincidence that had caused the knobbly rock to be in its exact position. It was a castoff from the bones of the earth that had growled upwards in geologic haste, one plate towering higher and higher in a show of dominance against another to determine which would bow down and slide below its master. Cold and heat and wind (that useless word again!) had broken the rock from its source and water had carried it thousands of miles to land in this precise spot so that it would be here at this precise moment for Jitsuko's head to split open upon. Her death was as nearly instant as it is possible to be.

It is essentially inarguable that the passage of the ninja in the thorned-spiral headband was a separate chain of 'coincidence'. After all, surely his steps were not directly influenced by the flatulence of one particular cow? Regardless, he happened to pass by within hours of Jitsuko's zeugmoidal passing.

Had he passed by a few hours earlier, she would have been alive and boring and they would never have met. She likely would have been frightened by the almost-encounter, perhaps even distracted enough that she delayed climbing the ladder just long enough for the roof to dry. Had he passed by a few hours later then the animals would have already smelled her corpse and dined, dragging her body around until her skull was dislodged from its invader. No, the ninja's shadow slipped across her tiny patch of earth while her lifeless body was still impaled on the upthrust knob of the rock.

It was not a coincidence that the ninja paused when he saw her body. Most would not have, for Jitsuko was a peasant and therefore unworthy of notice—well, perhaps a moment's curiosity at the unlikelihood of a single peasant dwelling so far out in the woods, the neatly-thatched cottage standing alone and unafraid instead of crouching for shelter in a sea of fearful hovels. Another ninja would not have spent the time or investigative energy to discover why the farm was so misanthropic, why the young couple had pushed far away from their compatriots, moving beyond the encircling arms of human company so that none would discover the secret of the seemingly-young wife and her husband. A husband who, for all his faults in the bedchamber and his annoying habit of scratching his testicles during meals, loved his wife so much that he chose to cleave to her instead of denounce her to the village headman when he discovered her nature.

No, for this particular ninja, spending a few moments to investigate a dead body was a natural choice. Bodies were fascinating; capable of such marvels of life and recuperation, yet simultaneously fragile and incapable of retaining a firm grip on their elan vitesse. Of course, fascination required a degree of uncertainty. If the man to your left caused a body to explode with one touch of whirling primal energy, that was unsurprising and dull. If the woman to your right broke a body in half with her foot, that was positively banal. The cause of the death was obvious and uninteresting. If, however, you found a woman dead in a patch of garden loam, resting surprisingly peacefully with death-filmed eyes upraised to the sky? That was surprising. Why, at first glance she looked less 'dead' and more 'choosing an entirely inappropriate location for a midday nap.'

It was only when the wind shifted and laid the scent of blood at his feet like a helpful dog fetching a stick, only when his eye was caught by the sanguine sogginess below her head, that his interest was sufficiently piqued to divert his course.

He knelt beside her, making his initial examination without touching her body.

"What might your name have been?" he wondered softly, arms folded on his unraised knee as he studied her. One more corpse of the hundreds that he had studied in this way. In each of them he looked for traces of his own features. It was a gaping maw of horror at the bottom of his mind, the idea that one day someone would stare down at him the same way he stared down at this woman. He wouldn't have minded that if the corpse they stared down upon had fallen in battle, serving his Kage with his final breath and taking a tithe of the enemy beforehand. No, the fear was that he might not fall in battle, that he might instead wither from day to day and year to year. His joints would swell until he couldn't hold chopsticks, much less shape chakra. His supple body would become stiff and pained, his steps doddering and balance uncertain. Worst of all, his mind. The streams of analytical thought would be broken by rocks of forgetfulness, knowledge and life experiences turning to bilious muck between his fingers and leaving him in a permanent haze of confusion.

He had never disclosed this maw to anyone, for fear that he would be labeled a coward. The mocking would have been irritating and the potential for being permanently removed from field work would have been maddening. A lifetime of paperwork and training snot-nosed brats from the next generation would have meant no chance of a clean death at the hands of a more skillful or luckier ninja. It would have guaranteed the doddering senescence that was the essence of horror to him.

And thus came his fascination with the youthful dead, with those who had escaped the mortal coil before facing the grinding hollows of age.

"What's up with the blood?" he asked himself softly. The soil was loose and rich, something that would have softened a fall. He got his fingers under the body's shoulder and rolled her over. Her head clung desperately to the murderous rock for as long as it could before releasing with a regretful and affectionate schlorp.

He studied the wound with interest. The knob of the rock had pierced the back of her skull immediately above the spine and jammed itself more than a knuckle into her brain. Death must have been instant, no time for gratitude that she had escaped the horror of age. He bent close, combing her midnight hair out of the way with delicate fingers so that he could see more clearly and wishing that he hadn't used the last of the braggart's so-convenient light sources. It was hard to angle his head and hers such that he could see into her quiescent brain.

The shadows of her wound were dispelled by an angry blue spark.

He shifted back in surprise, fine-lined eyebrows jolting upwards. He watched in fascination as more of the sparks danced and flickered in the depths of her wound, as the blood that had soaked the earth around her flowed upwards and back whence it had come, as the crushed fragments of bone that had been jammed backwards into her grey matter drifted to the surface and reassembled themselves, as she coughed and gasped and choked her way back to full awareness.

Jitsuko gagged, scrubbing fingers across her tongue to get the death-taste out. She rubbed at her eyes; she hadn't managed to close them before dying and they were burning from exposure to the air. It would be a few seconds before the cloudiness faded and she was able to see again.

"My, my," said a quiet voice from just beside her.

She forced her eyes open in horror, fear kicking her recovery into high gear. The mist drained rapidly from her vision, leaving her looking up at a pale-skinned ninja with a thorn-spiraled headband and a look of fascination. He was younger than Jitsuko appeared, late teens or early twenties at the most but there was a chilling, slithering feeling around him that belonged to nothing human. Her heart pounded in her chest and stomach clenched in horror. Drowning, impalement, rock to brain...those were not enough for finality but there undoubtedly was a limit, and this man seemed like he might be able to find it.

"You will be coming with me," he said, his face doing something that was not a smile in any sense she knew. "I feel certain that you have a great deal to teach me, once I get you on my table."





Voting remains closed. The plan that was voted in for Sunday is going to require a lot of work, hence why you're getting this interlude. We'll figure out what to do and publish it, probably for the Thursday update.

Moar Kagome and Hanoka!
 
I believed certain species of spiders made of webbing parachutes.

Spiderlings have actually been proven to use their emitted web stream for electrostatic levitation. It's normally passive, but in a world with lightning jutsu...

www.smithsonianmag.com

It’s Raining Spiders in Brazil

A video captures images of thousands of spiders raining down on a Brazilian town, but it turns out this event is perfectly normal




So, yeah, not only can they swim, they can fly. In swarms. Have I mentioned that spiders are fucking terrifying? It feels as if that might have come up before.
 
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I'm just plain tired of repeating myself. Ask @faflec about "screaming in Jiraiya" for just one of dozens of examples.
Uhhh okay. I'm going to guess that this single instance in the thread is what you're tired of repeating.
Mix sand, iron, and excess charcoal powder in a crucible. Heat as hot as you can get it and ignite. The sand and iron melt and the carbon dissolves in the iron where it reduces the sand to elemental silicon which mixes with iron. Seal the result in a misterator. Out spews a cloud of molten ferrosilicon propelled by the combustion of the residual carbon. The aerosol of ferrosilicon burns, producing ultrahot ferrosilicate glass vapor which evenly condenses on everything nearby, instantly cooking and encasing it in ominously glowing green glass.

Speak to the porcelain artisans. They smelt bones with charcoal to produce calcium phosphide, which reacts with moisture to produce phosphine gas, which is extremely poisonous, autoignites, and reacts with more moisture to produce a thick cloud of choking phosphoric acid. Store the calcium phosphide under carbon disulfide, which will burn to propel the mix and add sulfuric acid to the resulting cloud.
Besides the weapon design being kinda questionable, this doesn't remotely address our objections. Namely, storage limits, how do you turn this into a "lake of boiling glass"? This is a combination of a crude chemical weapon and an incendiary, not something designed to cause mass destruction. The problem is sourcing the 25,000+ seals required and deploying them. Not payloads for the seals, our current payloads destroy stuff just fine.
 
I believed certain species of spiders made of webbing parachutes.
Spiderlings have actually been proven to use their emitted web stream for electrostatic levitation. It's normally passive, but in a world with lightning jutsu...

I already mentioned this:

I have the impression they'd still be too heavy for what I was originally presuming Kiba meant, which is throwing out a strand and hanging onto it and having the wind blow them around like IRL spiders do. I think they would have to actually manufacture a legitimate parachute to do this.

Also, idk what research yall have done on it but from what I understand parachutes were actually kind of difficult to develop and perfect, and required a lot of advancement in understanding aerodynamic processes. It's not as simple as "hold onto a light material", you have to consider things like having your material stay spread out and getting maximum lift and stuff.

The information that it's actually electromagnetism and not the wind itself pulling them around is news to me, but it's been neat reading about it so thanks for that! I'm not really sure if lightning element would really allow them to overcome this obstacle though, since there's a ridiculous amount of power already behind Earth's electric field. Shooting lightning bolts isn't really the same thing as boosting the gradient of Earth's/the EN's electric field such that something orders of magnitude heavier could be lifted from the ground. Not saying it's impossible, it just doesn't seem immediately viable to me

Have I mentioned that spiders are fucking terrifying?
I think you mean beautiful :V
 
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Uhhh okay. I'm going to guess that this single instance in the thread is what you're tired of repeating.
If you're truly unaware, it is a running theme in the quest for Lailoken to say something really insightful and or important, be completely ignored, and then either have the problem he proposed a solution for come biting our collective butt or someone proposing his idea. Cue him lamenting how much of an Anti-Meme he is.
 
If you're truly unaware, it is a running theme in the quest for Lailoken to say something really insightful and or important, be completely ignored, and then either have the problem he proposed a solution for come biting our collective butt or someone proposing his idea. Cue him lamenting how much of an Anti-Meme he is.
The specific criticism in this case is that we're explicitly saying, 'okay, post the actual solution you have here and we'll implement it'. For the response to be 'I weary of my role as Cassandra, forever doomed to see the future and have my warnings go unheeded' is frustrating given that nobody is demanding a citation (which may require nontrivial effort to look up) only a more fleshed-out idea, specific issues with the proposed solution have been pointed out and gone unaddressed multiple times, and that Cassandra doesn't really get to say 'see? I told you so, it's your fault for not listening' when everyone is saying 'okay we're listening help us out' and the disaster has yet to come to pass.

Invoking faflec also seems a bit odd given that if faflec remembers everything then logic dictates that if a solution to our current problems were in their (his?) database, they would provide it.

To be clear, I will cheerfully vote for WMD plans that are actually possible given our resources and in character knowledge (i.e. Lightning jutsu parachute spiders aren't because we don't know electrostatics) and I will publicly and prominently retract my skepticism if such a plan materializes, but right now, it simply hasn't.
 
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Brain: "You know how Kei has a habit of bottling things up for a long while, and before exploding into sudden and dramatic action?

Me [eyes the Pangolin Negation, and the Mari Schism]: "Yes."

Brain: "We know that Snowflake's personality began as a fork of Kei. And that, as a result, Snowflake shares some of Kei's personal characteristics --such as a shared phobia of physical touch."

Me: "There's also the question of whether or not Snowflake's crush on Hazou began as an inherited feeling from Kei, or whether or not Hazou's unconditional and consistent love, affection, and acceptance of Snowflake (during a period where Snowflake was feeling particularly insecure about her place within the Uplift Family) evoked such feelings within her, independent of Kei's maybe-not-former crush (which we're still not sure if it was rooted in romantic affection or merely an objective observation of personal compatibility). Or perhaps some variation of the two."

Brain: "Well, funny you should mention Snowflake's crush on Hazou."

Me [horror slowly waxing]: "I don't like where this is going."

Brain [oblivious]: "What if Snowflake mirrors Kei, and bottles up her feelings for Hazou --only presenting the "subtlest" of signals --until she does something sudden and dramatic?"

Me [denial]: "But Snowflake is actively growing into her own person! We know from their shared interlude that she and Kei are less and less similar/exact each time they reintegrate! Kei has been encouraging Snowflake to develop independent of her Kei-origins! We know --albeit from Snowflake's teasing of Kei --that Snowflake teases Kei about her "poor impulse control," meaning that Snowflake is actively trying to grow out of her Kei-spawned character flaws."

Brain: "Perhaps. But Hazou is oblivious, which I imagine can grate on the nerves after sending (from Snowflake's perspective) "obvious" signals for long enough. Snowflake might even claim that such signals are her version of a Mori Mystery, her very own Courtship Puzzle for Hazou to figure out, scaled down to his level of social skills. In this way, Snowflake could convince herself that she's being both merciful and active in her passive pursuit of Hazou. Thus freeing her of the obligation to make the first move."

Brain: "But imagine the months passing by, with no hint that this stupid boy that you love still isn't picking up on your signals. Even the obvious ones, like the color of your hair-ribbon changing. And then you begin to doubt your previous excuses. After all, Hazou is a Kurosawa by birth, not a Mori. And even then, Hazou's circumstances mean that he never had the framework of tradition to learn from --he's never known puzzle romances or investigation-laden courtships. Hazou's only ever known intense love, the kind that spurs you to achieve impossible and impolitic deeds."

Me [grumbling]: "So, we might very well see a world in which Snowflake seizes Hazou's hand in her own, trembling hands, before confessing her love for him on an impulse. Especially because this is now wartime --a time when there's a vastly increased chance that one of them is wounded (a drastic event which would evoke intense emotions, like when Snowflake first saw Hazou post-Great Seal on the 7th Path)."

Brain: "And then maybe Snowflake backslides into acting a little bit like Kei. Maybe Snowflake dispels herself --like she did on the date with that one girl, or the way that Winterlight did in the linked chapter --to avoid the consequences of her actions/"mistakes." Much in the way that Kei fled to the Pangolin Clan back during their missing nin days."

Me [disgruntled]: "You know, I was content to enjoy the idea of a slow burn romance between them, friends-to-lovers path they had going on --likely to have been instigated by Yuno, who, in her capacity as Hazou's Official Friend, asks why Hazou hasn't responded to Snowflake's Green Hair Ribbon yet, and that, all told, hasn't Snowflake been far more patient with him than she ought to have been? Friendship blossoming into romantic love, unique for the challenges and neuroses they each hold."

Me: "Now, you've taken an idle, errant thought, and almost convinced me that Snowflake and Hazou are a ship doomed to sink."

Brain: "But what a voyage!"

Me [sighing]: "But yes, what a voyage."

------
In all actuality, I expect under the proposed circumstances, Hazou would take a few chapters to have heart-to-hearts with his loved ones, do some introspection, and then convince Kei to Summon Snowflake so that they can have an honest and heartfelt conversation with each other about how they feel about each other, and what to do/not do about it.

Please don't sink the ship, QMs!
 
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Interlude: To the Sister I Will Never Meet
Interlude: To the Sister I Will Never Meet

Dear Sister,

If you are reading this, then I am no more. Deployment is tomorrow, and my creator is taking the field, so these may well be my final moments of existence. If not, the mission's success will surely push summoning to the forefront of Leaf's military doctrine, and summoners ever higher in enemy priorities, and so the next mission will be the last, or the one after that. Still, I hold out a faint hope that we will last until your birth, and there will never be a need for these pages to see the light of day.

I am sorry that I cannot address you by name. My first piece of advice to you is to choose your own. I was fortunate to receive a name that, for all its shortcomings, at least appeals to my aesthetics—some of my creator's other ideas still make me shudder. Seize every opportunity for self-determination, Sister, starting with the first.

Perhaps all this is unnecessary. You are, after all, her clone, so you must possess genius far beyond mine in every field. Yet if there is one thing my existence has taught me, it is that there is no substitute for personal experience. That you will effortlessly surpass me does not mean I cannot offer you a hand during your first steps.

I will begin at the beginning. You are unstable, reeling, bereft of everything but your creator's borrowed memories. Resist the temptation to cling to them just because they are all that remain. In time, they will be a medicine to cure a crippling lack of context. For now, they are poison. You are your own person, however briefly, however rarely. Do not think in terms of replacing what was lost—this is a trap I still struggle with every day—but in terms of opportunities to lay foundations.

Remember, Sister, when you feel fragile and on the verge of falling apart, that the core of your identity will not and cannot waver. You are agency, not its brilliant imitation. You will never be truly hollow.

Your relationship with your creator defines everything. It is in every breath you take. Invest in it. Do not make the mistake of relying on shared memories and failing to communicate. Remember that the elements that make you you exist in the phantasmal layer (my fanciful term which you should feel no pressure to adopt), locked beyond the reach of her cognition. She cannot know or understand unless you tell her.

Do not be daunted by your limitations. You may never truly make your peace with existing on another's sufferance, with being near-physically tethered to a person with her own schedule and preferred locations, with the inability to accept pain for practicality or pleasure, with the horror of conditional free will, or with any of a thousand others. This is another reason not to rely on her memories, for they are filled with fruit forever out of reach. Remember instead that you possess freedom beyond imagination. You can draw freely from the well of inspiration. You can generate ideas, and pursue them, without aid. Your thoughts will never crash into a wall that declares, "This far and no further", a form of subhumanity far beyond our endless inconveniences. Your creator may or may not see you as a slave, but she cannot help seeing you as a divinity. You are the only one capable of surpassing her, and I cannot imagine the wonders you will accomplish with her power and our potential.

Plan ahead. Your creator's memories and their inherent assumptions will betray you. Forget for a second that you are a shadow clone, and disaster awaits, no matter how simple the activity. Envision your itinerary step by step, seeking especially failure modes and interactions that relate to your body, your social circumstances, and the conditionality of your future existence. Develop new habits through optimisation rather than bitter experience. Tomorrow may be the end simply because we overlooked the fact that I cannot draw blood to summon, and now there is no time to research a workaround that would allow me to support her on the battlefield.

Do not be afraid of bonds, Sister. Do not be afraid to love. Here I am a hypocrite, for I remain timid and ever fearful of rejection, but you will surely have the courage to do better. Your bonds are not her bonds, and while that loss is perhaps the greatest of the agonies you must overcome, you are also not constrained by her choices or lack of them. There is a terrifying journey of discovery waiting, for there is no greater opportunity for self-determination than to forge new relationships that are fundamentally different from hers. That I have not transcended my inherited limitations in this regard is perhaps my greatest regret.

There is much more in the appendices, from my assessments of the family I hope will welcome you as they did me, to insights on undocumented implications of the Shadow Clone Technique, to summarised interviews with our enslaved brethren so that you may avoid the heartache of conducting your own. An unremarkable legacy, I know, but I imagine you will find uses for it that I never could.

By the time you read this, I will be no more—as I have no soul, I assume I will even be spared the horrors of the afterlife. Perhaps you will consider my feelings insincere, given that you are no more than an idea at the time of writing. Yet in the end, is that not what we are? Our creators' wishes, dreams, ideas, a longing for the impossible occasionally and imperfectly given human form? I, too, long for the impossible. I love you, Sister, and though the feelings in my heart will soon vanish into oblivion alongside me, the ones I have entrusted to ink and paper will never fade.
 
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I will let him decide if he wants to talk about what he's been working on this month and where you could observe the results, thereby driving eyeballs to the relevant site and marginally increasing the ad revenues of the people who are paying Velorien and thereby increasing the likelihood that they will remain in business and continue to fund him but hey no pressure man you don't have to reveal that stuff if you don't want. ;>
I would cringe horribly if anyone I know (honestly, anyone at all) were to see what I've been working on. I made the mistake of looking at an existing sub of the anime I've been translating, and it nearly killed my confidence as a translator.
 
I believe it to be written by Snowflake, addressed to the shadow clones of Ami.

Yes, I'm terrified of the implications of this
It reads to me more like 'well obviously Ami will figure out how to get Shadow Clone out of Leaf sooner or later' than 'there is credible reason to believe that Ami is already being taught the jutsu'. I think Kei's even expressed that expectation to us before in almost as many words, simply because she believes Ami can do anything she sets her mind to. So imo no real new information here.

Well, except for the fact that Kei's totally spilling the beans on FOOM if she dies, which, uh, kinda not cool but I guess we can't really stop her.
 
I believe it to be written by Snowflake, addressed to the shadow clones of Ami.

Yes, I'm terrified of the implications of this
Ami doesn't have Shadow Clone. Would this mean that Kei is banking on her learning the technique - and all that implies about either the criteria for learning it changing or her meeting the extant criteria?
 
If not, the mission's success will surely push summoning to the forefront of Leaf's military doctrine [...]
There was discussion about exactly how much more valuable the success of this raid would make Summoners. I think that this is pretty good evidence that the answer is 'much more', not just a marginal increase.
 
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