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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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FaintlySorcerous said:
Which telepathy? The last time Mari communicated with a summon covertly, she cast a jutsu and it was one way, I believe.
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The thing that lets summons speak to humans and other summons (like snakes) despite different talking body structures.
Since snakes don't use words too talk I'm guessing it must work via telepathy.
And the telepathy must work both ways since snakes don't have ears to hear.

edit:
mari using a jutsu does give an upper range limit idea. unless she just didn't think of the telepathy idea
 
roobee said:
The thing that lets summons speak to humans and other summons (like snakes) despite different talking body structures.
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Summon magic innate racial ability blah blah blah handwave look at the shiny thing way over there!

It works exactly like vocal speech except it's in your mind. The fact that it's in your head is purely narrative fluff; it provides no extra advantages, disadvantages, or capabilities over vocalization except that it's usable by creatures that don't have human mouth structures.
 
We should really try to make a radio type seal. Since we are already have bunch of sound seals and plans for spooky action at a distance shouldn't be that difficult to pull of. Since would be in the STARS line would even help grind veterancy for that.
 
Oneiros said:
We should really try to make a radio type seal. Since we are already have bunch of sound seals and plans for spooky action at a distance shouldn't be that difficult to pull of. Since would be in the STARS line would even help grind veterancy for that.
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I was disappointed when nobody seemed interested in my pitch-shift seal idea. It seems both easy (especially much more so than radio, which the Elemental Nations has no idea of), and effective telepathy is obviously beneficial.

To recap, the idea was you shift the pitch out of hearing range at the input, and shift it back into hearing range at the output.
 
Veedrac said:
To recap, the idea was you shift the pitch out of hearing range at the input, and shift it back into hearing range at the output.
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I'm not sure Hazō has a concept of super/subsonic pitches but it's certainly something he could discover by playing around with progressively more aggressive pitch-shifting within the audible spectrum.
 
Veedrac said:
I was disappointed when nobody seemed interested in my pitch-shift seal idea. It seems both easy (especially much more so than radio, which the Elemental Nations has no idea of), and effective telepathy is obviously beneficial.

To recap, the idea was you shift the pitch out of hearing range at the input, and shift it back into hearing range at the output.
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Definitely not opposed to going that way. Though would prefer that we used chakra as our transmission media since we are next project should be working on ARS. So we'd have more veterancy bonuses as we climb towards STARS.
 
eaglejarl said:
I'm not sure Hazō has a concept of super/subsonic pitches but it's certainly something he could discover by playing around with progressively more aggressive pitch-shifting within the audible spectrum.
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Well, there's a narrative way to introduce him to the subject: Doggos. You could always have Littlewagger comment on one of the chime seals? It's been established in the narrative that the puppies called Hazou "noseblind," and that they're super curious about furless klutzes humans. It's not unreasonable to think they'd start pranking/probing Hazou (or any other human) to see if our senses are equally "blind."

(I'm now low-key convinced that, at the party, the puppies heard from the Porcupines that humans are deaf, and that the puppies just Test This News Immediately... Another Omake for the Omake Pile, I suppose.)
 
Oneiros said:
Definitely not opposed to going that way. Though would prefer that we used chakra as our transmission media since we are next project should be working on ARS. So we'd have more veterancy bonuses as we climb towards STARS.
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Is our Sealing good enough to reach ARS at the moment? Once we Consequences disappear, of course, because with RA left incomplete, a paradigm-breaking seal could be really useful.
 
Oneiros said:
Definitely not opposed to going that way. Though would prefer that we used chakra as our transmission media since we are next project should be working on ARS. So we'd have more veterancy bonuses as we climb towards STARS.
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I think for this sonics are actually the best way to go, since if we use chakra we have to figure out how to deal with the chakra diffusion problem.

Actually, maybe we can use this idea to deal with the chakra diffusion problem in other areas too? If we convert chakra into something that has more range, then it can go further. Either convert it back at the end or make whatever you're converting to something that can do whatever you want.

Problem is, ideally we would have a seal at either end, one to convert chakra into X and another to convert X into chakra. This works fine for most communication, but it may not help so much for stuff like detecting skywalking ninja.
 
Sentient Tree said:
I think for this sonics are actually the best way to go, since if we use chakra we have to figure out how to deal with the chakra diffusion problem.
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Didn't Kagome mention something about Sonic attacks only being effective up to a certain threat level? I vaguely remember him saying something about "Remember when Jiraiya bragged about taking down that sonic clan of ninjas? Well, I was too socially adept to actually say this in front of him, but..."
 
RandomOTP said:
Didn't Kagome mention something about Sonic attacks only being effective up to a certain threat level? I vaguely remember him saying something about "Remember when Jiraiya bragged about taking down that sonic clan of ninjas? Well, I was too socially adept to actually say this in front of him, but..."
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Yes. The context was the damage it could do. It makes sense, since there's only so much atmospheric pressure before the sound wave becomes a shock wave. This isn't relevant for telepathy stuff, but it would matter if you wanted to start using the air as some sort of long-distance energy transfer mechanism.
 
eaglejarl said:
I'm not sure Hazō has a concept of super/subsonic pitches but it's certainly something he could discover by playing around with progressively more aggressive pitch-shifting within the audible spectrum.
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IIRC, the idea did come to mind when Hazō was making the pitch-shifting seals, and that was the plan for him to learn it.

I believe the Inuzuka do have dog whistles in canon, if that helps ground the worldbuilding here. (They also have radio, but w/e.)
 
RandomOTP said:
Well, there's a narrative way to introduce him to the subject: Doggos. You could always have Littlewagger comment on one of the chime seals? It's been established in the narrative that the puppies called Hazou "noseblind,"
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A smell-concentrating seal that stores air contaminants, then releases the whole bunch at once, maybe periodically. Has similarities to both storage and Purifier-type seals. Should not be difficult.
 
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Chapter 473, Part 1: Cold and Dark
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    • Hazō's cane beat a staccato rhythm of panic against the floor as he fled through the corridors to the main room. At any moment now, Orochimaru, a summoner and implicitly a shadow clone user as well, would change his mind and send someone after him, or see through Mari's deception and send someone after Kei. Or he might get impatient and go through the outbuildings at ninja speed, then come straight back. Or he might bump into Kagome-sensei, whose ability to sense danger was as finely-honed as his ability to handle it diplomatically wasn't.

    Or Kei might not be there at all.

    The main room was strangely crowded, with people and beings drifting away slowly after… they'd given the victory speech without him, hadn't they? They'd ignored his Sage-given right as host and stripped him of the opportunity to give an inspirational speech before a new and interdimensional audience. Hazō felt a twitch of irritation. Imagine how differently the evening might have gone if one of them had sought him out instead of abandoning him to Orochimaru's mercies while a lesser candidate took his place.

    Then he heard Orochimaru's imaginary voice in his mind. The boy is otherwise engaged. You may conduct your puerile banner-waving without him.

    No, it would have taken more than proper social behaviour to save Hazō from Leaf's Bogeyman. In the event, it took sacrificing his sister.

    He had to hurry.

    There!

    At the far end, near the podium, Kei stood across from Neji, arms crossed and face fixed in an expression of imperious contempt usually reserved for Kagome-sensei when he refused to acknowledge Ami's greatness for such petty reasons as her being "blatantly up to something" and "tricking you so you only realise after she's gone that she never answered your question" and "using cheating social skills to get past your trap arrays instead of being blown up like a proper trespasser" (not that Kagome-sensei's trap arrays were at their finest these days, when there was a need to accommodate a constant stream of civilians entering and leaving the estate, including children liable to play in areas explicitly marked as off-limits). Neji, for his part, was glaring fiercely, if to little effect.

    Hazō did not have time to break up an inter-clan diplomatic incident. He did not have time for anything. Orochimaru might already be on his way back.

    He opened his mouth to remind the pair that this was one night on which the progressive and the conservative factions were supposed to put their ideological differences aside to celebrate a shared victory.

    "Teleport is clearly unbalanced!" Neji snarled. "You should not be able to affect other people's figures, anywhere, without at least a crippling cost to stop you throwing it around like green confetti on Hashirama Day!"

    "Your failure to anticipate potential counters to your predictable opening strategy is not the fault of the cards," Kei countered smugly. "The number of Teleports in my deck is public knowledge; the odds of drawing one on the first turn are trivial to calculate. If you did not wish to invest in an expensive warrior, only to have it cast into the depths of Snow Country where it is of no use to man or beast, you should have mitigated the potential damage by playing a cheap cultist first, or alternatively your Jashin Avatar, which is immune. In fact, an aggressive opening with a Jashin Avatar in the Fire Country in the middle of the board is a classic means of area denial, and would have inconvenienced me greatly given the warpstone distribution of this game."

    "It's a matter of game balance," Neji insisted doggedly. "In any balanced board game—"

    "Sorry to interrupt," Hazō said, "but Kei, I need you to come with me. There's somewhere we need to be half past now."

    He didn't use any Gōketsu hand signs (Hyūga were notoriously observant even with the Byakugan off, and it would have been a dead giveaway that something was up), but clearly something about his still-shaken countenance spoke louder than words.

    "The Blood God is a beginner trap, Hyūga," Kei added by way of a parting shot. "His tactics appear powerful and straightforward, but require great subtlety to execute without drastically increasing his threat rating, at which point he lacks the defensive cards to endure reprisal. You would fare better with the Plaguemaster or the Prince of Passion."

    "Do you know where Snowflake is?" Hazō asked.

    "Last seen following Noburi in that general direction."

    Hazō tsked. "We don't have time to find her. Dispel her; we can't let her stay here on her own."

    Kei frowned. "Without her consent?"

    Hazō was already moving on. He wouldn't be able to run fast enough on his own. Where was…

    "Akane! I need your help!"

    The World's Best Girlfriend did not hesitate, disengaging from her conversation with Kei (Ruri; Hazō was starting to wonder if that clan name was another of Ami's pranks) with a polite bow.

    "What do you need?"

    "Kei and I have somewhere we need to be now, but I can't run. Will you…" Hazō inwardly winced. There was nothing strange about injured ninja being carried by their teammates, but here and now that didn't make it any less embarrassing. "Will you carry me?"

    Akane promptly turned around, lowering her body slightly to offer him a piggyback ride. "Where to, My Lord?"

    "Central Leaf," Hazō said, "and don't spare the chakra."

    They were out of the door within seconds. Hazō felt a chill as he glanced back, just in case, only to see Hebifaya watching them go with an unreadable alien expression on her serpentine face.

    -o-​

    "So where are we heading, exactly?" Akane asked. "Not that I mind wandering around in the darkness with you, Hazō, but Kei might have other ideas."

    "Quite," Kei said coolly. "When I reinstantiate Snowflake, I would prefer her to be aware of a satisfactory excuse for why I violated her agency without warning."

    Hazō briefly weighed his options and, in the interests of efficiency, decided to open with the big ninjutsu.

    "Orochimaru may or may not be after you in order to kidnap and dissect you. Where do you think we should go first?"

    Akane stumbled. Kei's head whipped around with the speed of a snake.

    "Are you serious?"

    "Would I joke about this?"

    "The Nara compound," Kei concluded after a second's thought. "Even a demigod would hesitate to invade the Nara compound at night, and we need to be able to send messengers to locate potential allies. Shikamaru is the only one guaranteed to be home. Now, explain."

    Hazō put his thoughts in order. Despite the bloodcurdling subject, the familiar pattern of making a list, with categories and subcategories, helped him clear his head a little.

    "Orochimaru is interested in the Iron Nerve—from which he's been deflected for now—and in Snowflake because of her cognitively independent nature. He wants clone assistants capable of having their own independent ideas, and he doesn't think that's possible, but obviously he'll change his mind if he finds out about her."

    Honestly, the idea of Orochimaru generating ideas at a "Shadow Clone Technique x demigod chakra reserves" rate added a whole new level of horror on top of the risk to Kei personally.

    "How did he learn of Snowflake?" Kei asked. "Rather, why now? I did not see him at the party, and besides, she is fully aware of the dangers of drawing his attention to a Frozen Skein user."

    "He was at the party," Hazō admitted. "I never expected him to come, but given the circumstances, I couldn't exactly snub him either."

    "He was at the party," Kei said, in the step-by-step voice of someone figuring something out, "where he spent his time talking to you. During which time he developed a new and pressing interest in myself and my Bloodline Limit."

    Hazō couldn't see Kei's face in the darkness of a village gradually going to sleep, but he could feel a cold wrapping around him that made the winter air feel like a sauna.

    "No!" Hazō exclaimed. "Whatever you're thinking, that is not what happened!"

    "Then what did?" Kei asked heavily.

    "We talked about the Great Seal," Hazō said. "He very nearly got the truth about the Iron Nerve out of me, but Mari saved me in the nick of time with a story about the Iron Nerve recording the Great Seal because it can memorise terrain. Only…"

    He stopped. Kei's relationship with Mari already hung by a thread, but he'd had faith, before, that they would eventually figure things out like a pair of adults who, when all was said and done, loved each other and had few people closer to them in the entire world. Now, his next few words would destroy it forever. There was no coming back from having a loved one sell you out to be kidnapped and torturously killed. Even Akane couldn't forgive something like that.

    Would Akane be able to forgive Mari? Would the others? Hazō himself was still too much in shock to know how he felt about the fact that Mari's fallback option for distracting Orochimaru had been to betray family.

    "Yes, Hazō?" Kei prompted in a voice vibrating with tension.

    Hazō swallowed. "Only then it started to sound like Orochimaru was interested in that for some reason, and Mari had to distract him… and she told him about Snowflake."

    Akane gasped.

    Kei said nothing. Nothing at all.

    "It was all my fault," Hazō added hurriedly. "I was the one who tried to get Orochimaru's attention off everyone else by talking about the Great Seal, and I was the one who didn't misdirect him hard enough, and I was the one who failed to resist when he forced me to tell him the truth."

    Kei said nothing. Even her pseudo-aura had disappeared.

    "She didn't have time to think!" Hazō went on. "Orochimaru was in the middle of making up his mind, and she acted on reflex. I'm sure if she'd had even a second longer, she'd have found another way."

    "Directing Orochimaru's attention to me was the first thought to occur to her," Kei translated. Her voice was utterly lacking in affect, as if she were just reading out a dinner menu.

    "Kei," Akane said, "I'm sure it wasn't like that. I know you and Mari are having difficulties, but that doesn't mean she doesn't love you and care about you. Maybe she panicked, or maybe she has a plan. She'd never deliberately do anything to hurt you."

    "Her behaviour was entirely rational," Kei said, still in a dead voice. "Hazō was in immediate physical danger, whereas I was not. I have a wider circle of allies able to intervene on my behalf, and a less fraught relationship with the Hokage. Furthermore, it would have been reasonable to assume that Ami and/or the Nara have contingencies in place, whereas you do not. My odds of surviving Orochimaru's attention are objectively superior. In terms of solutions which could be implemented immediately and reliably, using me as a tool to ensure Hazō's safety is a more than valid approach."

    "Kei, I'm sure she didn't—"

    "Don't."

    A few seconds passed.

    "When we reach the compound," Kei said quietly, "I will participate in the strategy meeting and put forth every possible effort to ensure a positive resolution to this crisis. Until then… please leave me be."

    Hazō didn't want to interrupt the hollow silence that followed those words. It hung over them, ready to devour any expressions of hope, any attempts at consolation. Hazō didn't know if it was the silence of mourning or the silence of the grave.

    But there was one more important, urgent issue he couldn't leave until the compound.

    "Akane," Hazō said, "when I left Mari, she was leading Orochimaru on a wild goose chase to give us time to run. When he realises Kei was never at the far end of the compound and we left in the meantime, he's going to be furious with Mari. I have no idea how to stop him from hurting her."

    "Do you want to go back?"

    After a second's hesitation, Hazō shook his head, and hated himself for it. "There's every possibility that Orochimaru is following us, and meeting him with no witnesses in the middle of the night is just begging to be kidnapped on principle."

    "If we don't turn back now," Akane said, "there's no chance we can get anyone to him before he finds out she lied to him."

    "We could send a summon," Kei said distantly. "But I do not know what they could say. Claim an urgent summons from the Hokage?"

    Hazō shook his head, then realised she wouldn't be able to see him.

    "Mari tried that, and he just shrugged it off. Besides, it would be coming from our summons, and he'll be on the alert for more misdirection.

    "Damn," he said after a second, "I can't think of anything we can tell him. He shouldn't hurt her because she's an elite jōnin and it would upset Asuma and weaken our position in the war, and he shouldn't hurt her because she's Lady Gōketsu and there would be repercussions, but he already knows both of those things. Hearing them again when he's already angry would just make him feel like we were treating him as an idiot or trying to manipulate him."

    They kept thinking the rest of the way to the Nara compound, and then it was too late.

    -o-​

    To be continued. Voting is closed.
     
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