She is away on a mission," Kei said. "Something about chaos answering and necessary escalation. It was quite cryptic."
Hazō's face was practically white now. Could he have been overworking himself? Was there some way Snowflake could help him relax?
"Wait," he said distantly. "Why are you trying to get hold of Ami?"
"Pranking training, duh," Noburi said. "She says I'm a natural who just needs to cast off the remaining shackles of so-called common sense before I can access the true power of pandemonium that is a prankster's birthright."
"Sage's ballsack," Hazō said, shoulders slumping as if the weight of the world was proving too much for them at last. "Is that the reason I woke up the other morning to find that my Earthshaping practice rock had turned into a stone carving of an O'Uzu fertility symbol? Same kind of rock and everything?"
"No," Noburi said innocently, "that was just you using ninjutsu in your sleep. Don't worry, it happens to a lot of teenage boy ninja."
You know," Shikamaru said from the armchair into which he was busy melting, "I hear invariably positive reports about your methodology for assigning daily training. Would you be interested in discussing it at some point?"
Hazō, Snowflake could tell, considered the matter exactly long enough to realise that, with his OPSEC talents, the Nara would have Shadow Clone godhood within the week.
I'm so glad, our little Hazou is growing up. But I am sad that we don't get to see Shikamaru and Hazou working together on a build. Even though I shudder at the thought of a QM-player combined max effort optimized build. What kind of shuttering that is may be left to the imagination.
If Jiraiya or anyone else succeeded, it is very likely that the world would not look like it does right now (note: if they made the relevant seals but there wasn't enough range to be practical, that's functionally equivalent to not succeeding given their intended functionality), so that means he either hasn't tried chakra-based comms (which seems unlikely to me, given that it would be intensely relevant to his interests if possible) or that he couldn't do it (which seems likely, given that what we know of the chakra diffusion problem suggests it would be very very hard to do this).
And remember that Jiraiya is just a particularly poignant example. Sealmastery has been going for a long time and 'better communication technology' has always been very valuable. This ratchets up the odds that some skilled sealmaster would have tried by now, and thus that if it was viable it would have been invented.
(NB: strictly speaking I guess it's not impossible that Leaf has long-range comms but just keeps them so secret we haven't heard of them before, but given the information we have access to (we're a clan head, we're friends with Shikamaru and hear his laments, we did not see such communication in use in places like the lead-up to the Battle of the Gods where Leaf had obtained critical information and was racing to deliver it to Jiraiya, etc.) I think it's pretty unlikely that Leaf has this technology already.
So if it's very unlikely that chakra-based long-distance comms have already been invented, and if it's also very unlikely that nobody ever thought to try, then it becomes very likely that those who tried failed. It's not certainty, but it's a likelihood high enough that I consider the light-based method to be much more likely.
Could you be more specific? I do not see any place in the plan snippet I made that seems unlikely to work, and once we get Hazou to figure out infrared exists (which is the end of the scope of the snippet) it doesn't seem hard to convince Hazou to explore infrared further and discover the unique properties of radio waves. You are right that Hazou could more easily intuit the idea of chakra-based comms, but that doesn't mean much if the option itself is a dead end as I believe.
To put it another way, though, where do you think my plan will fail specifically? What does the world look like at that fail-state and what obstacle makes it impossible for us to wrench things over into a success-state?
This is a good point though, and takes a lot of the wind out of my sails if true. I'll go take a look at how early radios were made, in case the reasons they were short-range were due to problems that wouldn't exist in a sealtech version, but if that's not the case then the outcome where radio seals helps Leaf win WWIV becomes vanishingly unlikely and the pressure to prioritize pursuit of it right now vanishes.
Granted, I'd still want to do it, and I still support trying to parallelize our research, but it would shift from (in my priorities-list) the overwhelmingly primary objective to a secondary-but-don't-neglect-it objective.
Either way though, thank you for bringing that to my attention. I was legitimately under the impression that range was not a problem with early radio.
You're right, and I'm sorry. Being the only person defending what could be the next skywalkers, arguing 1 v many against arguments-I-disagree-with and sheer apathy made me very frustrated, and I started lashing out.
Sorry the support is late, but I very much agree with your analysis. The concept is a pretty simple one, that seems very low hanging fruit. Checking with Kagome about what Has already been tried might be worth a line in a plan, but anything that seems an immediate "can we do this" is likely to be tried already.
While making it a default option is perhaps a bit much, I think it would be fundamentally fine from a balance standpoint. You would still need to spend a fair chunk of XP to get the capstone that pulls everything else up, and you would need to invest moderately to make other things relevant. It doesn't break pyramids in any fundamental way, and preserves the existing XP-balance.
I don't believe this is true. If you built Noburi out to 17.5k XP with a WDB in the mid 60s, he should effortlessly crush Akane's 48 Ath after moving first.
Akane does have an absolutely ridiculous buff stack:
Youthful Fist
Pantokrator's Hammer
Ghost Scales
Flame Aura
Rocket Boots
Banshee Seals
Strobelight Seals
All of which can be put on a single Taijutsu roll. Perhaps the QMs could say that if you want to use so many things in sync effectively, you need stunts or something? Or yeah, limit the stacking of buffs more -- say, that you could only get one type of buff from one source. From a simulation standpoint though, I think it's fine if the result is nerfing Akane's stack.
I think part of why Akane's fine is because it really is stacks above her weight class. Having specialized seals made in house by two sealmasters, are very valuable techniques traded from a summoning clan in exchange for granting them regional hegemony sound like A and S rank advantages, respectively. Plus, all that takes time to set up, so a white room Akane isn't able to hit nearly as hard as an ambush Akane. Which, makes sense, when one considers how strong a fully prepared ambush on an unsuspecting target should be.
I am all for any argument to keep investing in Noburi's med stats. I do think the big determinant will be what becomes of Noburi's natural Chakra growth rate. +5% is nothing. +5 Chakra is very little for anyone else, but huge for Noburi.
Also, is he the only one with that stunt? I know it takes a long time to pay off, and he's the only ninjutsu spec, but considering summons are expensive, shouldn't we be rocking that too?
Also, is he the only one with that stunt? I know it takes a long time to pay off, and he's the only ninjutsu spec, but considering summons are expensive, shouldn't we be rocking that too?
Yes, the Akimichi jutsu is really good and we should've been doing it alongside Noburi. Noburi's ACE timer should be up around the time Kagome's summon training finishes I think (both in April, right?) so I'd say we should get the whole family in on it then, that way if Noburi is going to buy it again the date is synced for everyone.
For those who forget what ACE does, every purchase of it grants +5% chakra capacity and +2 chakra boost, and it can be bought multiple times for +10% and +4, +15% and +6... etc. Takes a year per purchase and it can only be bought up to CR AB times, but it's very worth it.
Main downside is you have to dedicate 3 hours a day 5 days a week to practicing it, basically an extra training block. Not sure if Hazou would be able to right now but once he's done teaching Kagome (and especially after he's done teaching Harumitsu on a regular basis) I think he would.
He already knows the details, he is also the only actual Wakahisa we have and the Toad summoner. So if Asuma fears what happens when he gets abducted, he just has to invest more to keep Nobby alive.
And I just made the argument that we need the technique to see what an actually Noburi Clone looks like. If he turns out to be "normal" that would be enormously helpful.
If there all civilian, no harm done. If there "normal", great more medics at home and an even better Noburi fighter... That isn't actually that great, so I would just stick with the medic part, which invovles a lot of reading, something Shadow clones are very helpful with. With higher medic skills he can just work in the Hospital (even if it's just admin work as civilian-clone). The GM's might even count that as SC training because he is actually doing something.
Asuma really has no reason to not teach him, especially after the Isan mission success and the Zoo Rush successes.
Thanks for the in-depth analysis! Second time replying because SV ate my post and has yet to approve it after 11 hours so it is invisible.
While I have my doubts and disagreements on some of the points raised and their validity (specifically not allowing your jounin-tier taij comparisons to run martial arts and concluding that ninjutsu is stronger at that tier, as well as discounting the possibility that they are more easily buffed than ninjutsu users with various means, alongside our recent discussion on how the numbers as presented are kept up with by mono column taij/MW specs under current rules) - as you well know - I'm going to take your discord suggestion on making techniques Stunts and some other things that can be feasibly improved. Therefore, the below is a revised and simplified suggestion, which avoids many of the pitfalls you've mentioned above.
Basics
Ninjutsu and Genjutsu are double cost Skills that you level directly like any other. They determine the base level while casting all related Techniques. Additionally, every 20 levels in either skill increase the max castable Effect of related techniques by 1. Techniques are no longer Skills with levels. They become Stunts instead, which are paid for using Ninjutsu/Genjutsu skill exp (rather than directly) and upgradeable according to the following scheme, each covering a range of current 20 levels (costs are cumulative):
Stunt 0: 100 XP (Cost of getting a new tool to play with)
Stunt 1: 100 XP (105 for L20 halfcost)
Stunt 2: 400 XP (410 for L40 halfcost)
Stunt 3: 900 XP (915 for L60 halfcost)
Stunt 4: 1600 XP (1620 for L80 halfcost)
The Stunt 0 unlocks casting the technique, while each Stunt level beyond the first grants a +2 to effective Ninjutsu/Genjutsu level while casting the technique, as well as +1 to its maximum castable Effect if applicable.
Ninjutsu 20 is required to learn stunts 2 and most chuunin-tier jutsu (like WDB)
Ninjutsu 40 is required to learn stunts 3 and most jounin-tier jutsu (like Chidori)
Ninjutsu 60 is required to learn stunts 4 and most kage-tier jutsu (short of things like FTG)
Ninjutsu 80 is required to learn stunts 5 and unique kage-tier jutsu (like FTG)
(Optional) : Medical Ninjutsu is removed as a skill, making Medical Ninjutsu checks become Medical Knowledge checks, which would rely on Ninjutsu Skill in much the same way as Sealing relies on Calligraphy.
(Optional) : Elemental Affinity Stunt suggested pricing : 500 exp, doubled for each extra Affinity beyond the first (500/1000/2000/4000). Requires Ninjutsu 20/40/60/80 at minimum. Doubled pricing if refunding half is desirable as in current rules.
Additional Reasoning
Beyond the reasoning which was already provided in the former suggestion (which this one largely conforms to the effects of and reasoning behind), changing techniques into stunts as per Paper's suggestion allows achieving the overhaul in a clean and intuitive way, seamless with how skills currently work in the system. It also unclutters skill pyramids, as techniques are no longer skills - forcing characters to eventually invest in their social and non-combat skills, or at the very least get a more diverse combat skillset, thus making it much harder or perhaps even impossible to reach that big ninjutsu spike Paper has talked about in his analysis (especially since it was done with half-cost skills in the first place).
Overall, this should result in more realistic character builds (all the while making ninjutsu and genjutsu relevant as skills, and more widely prevalent). Further, it removes all the non-breakpoint skill levels that largely did nothing of value - after all, if the next 9 levels add nothing, why have them?
EDIT:
Further analysis indicates that this suggestion would at present cause (at worst) very minor pyramid issues to team Uplift due to techniques ceasing to be skills and the addition of the ninjutsu skill:
Noburi would be entirely unaffected, Hazou would have to either shift a single skill down by 1 level or level one, Akane would have to do the same as Hazou but with 2 skills, as would Keiko but with 3 (3 skills down by a single level each). Its 1 point shifts all the way, and none of the skills affected are significant, except for Kei's Athletics which would have to go to 49 from 50 for a relatively short time.
(Optional) : It has come to my and Paper's attention both that under the current mfd rules, mono-column builds get better and better as exp grows, due to the cost of pulling ahead X levels growing at a far slower relative pace than exp totals. Thus, it is feasible and even relatively cheap for a 30k elite jounin to to pull ahead above their "natural" pyramid peak level by as many as 29 levels in their main skill, while a 6.6k xp chuunin would have to pay twice as much in terms of xp total % to do the same. This results in high exp characters growing increasingly more and more incentivized to mono-column, and thus creates a runaway effect of sorts, which causes 30k exp jounin to relatively easily maintain skills such as Taij 119 (or any capstone they want), while jounin level is narratively supposed to be a 60-80 base.
We've come up with two easy, separate ways of preventing this from happening.
One would be to disallow "pyramid skipping" (meaning all training plans would have to make a valid pyramid at each intermediate step) , which would come at a cost in convenience and create a possibility of an invalid character being passed over due to not fact-checking diligently enough.
The other would be to just add the following rule "The third highest skill column must be greater or equal to the sum of the two highest.", which addresses the issue at no cost in convenience, but makes the (rare) three-column builds a little bit weaker (note that making techniques Stunts as per the main suggestion would make multi-column capstone builds moderately better regardless).
I think it could go either way based on exactly how the Wakahisa chakra system works. If it's surgically created rather than a effect of the Vampiric Dew the clone will have 2 cp. Otherwise he should have 300. We don't know exactly which one it is
The better question isn't the clone's CP, but whether or not it can use a barrel - which I'm assuming it should be able to.
If we have a spare barrel (don't we? At least his older one that wasn't working as well, and his not-barrel version that Kagome made him) then Noburi-clone should be able to use it. Admittedly, that makes his clones less disposable in that they need a fairly rare non-clone item.
The better question isn't the clone's CP, but whether or not it can use a barrel - which I'm assuming it should be able to.
If we have a spare barrel (don't we? At least his older one that wasn't working as well, and his not-barrel version that Kagome made him) then Noburi-clone should be able to use it. Admittedly, that makes his clones less disposable in that they need a fairly rare non-clone item.
Nob clones shouldn't be able to use the barrel, no more than Hazou clones can use the IN. Noburi draws in chakra from the barrel using VD. Without VD he can't manipulate chakra outside his body. No regular ninja can do that.
Nob clones shouldn't be able to use the barrel, no more than Hazou clones can use the IN. Noburi draws in chakra from the barrel using VD. Without VD he can't manipulate chakra outside his body. No regular ninja can do that.
Yes, the Akimichi jutsu is really good and we should've been doing it alongside Noburi. Noburi's ACE timer should be up around the time Kagome's summon training finishes I think (both in April, right?) so I'd say we should get the whole family in on it then, that way if Noburi is going to buy it again the date is synced for everyone.
For those who forget what ACE does, every purchase of it grants +5% chakra capacity and +2 chakra boost, and it can be bought multiple times for +10% and +4, +15% and +6... etc. Takes a year per purchase and it can only be bought up to CR AB times, but it's very worth it.
Main downside is you have to dedicate 3 hours a day 5 days a week to practicing it, basically an extra training block. Not sure if Hazou would be able to right now but once he's done teaching Kagome (and especially after he's done teaching Harumitsu on a regular basis) I think he would.
I had wondered why the Akimichi haven't had a Scroll sooner, since they'd be one of the most effective summoner Clans in the world, on par with the Wakahisa in terms of chakra potential for just popping out an army
Say you have an Akimichi jonin with CR 60, with the ACE alone and raising it since a young age they could have 7 copies of the stunt and 810 CP. On top of that they probably have even more clan secret methods for raising CR. An EJonin Akimichi with CR 70 could have 980 chakra, CR 80 could have 1160...
Wakahisa jonin with CR 60 is still superior though, with a flat 1000 CP for summoning. (600 × (5/3)). Noburi is going to be an excellent Summoner... Mf is gonna get Kisame's rep as the no tailed jinchuriki
Pretty sure this won't help, you have to physically stretch your chakra coils, it's not a mental technique, but purely physical. (That's what I imagine anyways, I could be wrong.) You could have SC do your day to day while you practice though.
Pretty sure this won't help, you have to physically stretch your chakra coils, it's not a mental technique, but purely physical. (That's what I imagine anyways, I could be wrong.) You could have SC do your day to day while you practice though.
How do the Akamichi keep up with it on missions? Surely they don't meditate for 3 hours in enemy territory. Maybe during the night when it's too dark to travel?
How do the Akamichi keep up with it on missions? Surely they don't meditate for 3 hours in enemy territory. Maybe during the night when it's too dark to travel?
As the nara are smart, have knowledge of forbidden lore, and try to prevent extinction. it's probably worth giving nara, or at least shikamaru, shadow clone godhood as soon as possible.
and that's before accounting for the nara goodies we could get as payment.
Hazō yawned and stretched, then poured himself a cup of tea and offered one to his student. "Morning, Harumitsu. How'd you sleep?"
"Well, s-sir. And I had a moderate b-breakfast and did some l-light stretching and have already d-done the 'Attract and B-Banish the Good and B-Bad Types of Fortune Respectively' dance." Harumitsu accepted the tea with a nod, sipped it once for politeness, and then immediately forgot that it was a beverage and instead started using the cup as a fidget toy for twitching fingers.
Hazō laughed. "Good man. I'm going to take a wild stab and guess that you're excited about working with the Sogabe Slide?" The boy had been very politely pestering asking Hazō about it ever since hearing the term. Yesterday, when Hazō had finally announced that he felt his apprentice was ready, Harumitsu had nearly vibrated himself into the Out.
"The Slide, sir? Oh, were we s-supposed to be working on the Slide today? I had forgotten."
Unfortunately, as his apprentice spoke, a tired Hazō had been right in the middle of gulping his tea. (Hey, you try spending twelve hours a day instructing your paranoid and grouchy sealing teacher in the art of traveling through the Out in order to chat with massive spiders. Plus spend four hours doing boring Clan Head stuff. Plus spend eight hours researching the Air Tunnel seal that Hazō had been thinking about using for purposes of improved high-altitude bombardment as a way to end World War Four. Plus spend three hours working with Shikamaru and Kei on the care, feeding, and completion of the aforementioned World War Four. Plus spend fifteen minutes total shoving food in your face throughout the day so you didn't get hangry enough to bite someone's head off. Plus spend at least a couple hours with each of two girlfriends. Shadow Clone was the Best. Technique. Ever. He couldn't help but wonder how other Clan Heads got everything done when they couldn't be in multiple places at the same time.)
Anyway, Hazō was in the middle of a gulp of tea when Harumitsu made his comment, hence why four hundred ryō of seal-quality paper ended up ruined and suitable only for taking notes on.
"S-s-sorry, s-sensei," the apprentice said nervously.
"S'aright. I need to be better controlled with my tea. Anyway, let's do this. Have a seat."
The two settled down next to the giant chunk of granite that was their worktable. Sealing was done outdoors, always. You wanted as many potential paths of egress as possible in case things went wrong. Given that it was February, Hazō had bent enough to have heavy paper shoji screens put up around them to block the wind, and multiple braziers were burning to keep the area warm. Cold-stiffened fingers were not a survival aid when working with seals.
"Okay, so, the Slide is a mapping between the ink pattern and the infusion practice," Hazō explained. "It's used where there is a low-pressure curved segment in your design. First, you aspect your chakra with your intent, and then..." He went along, laying the practice out the way Kagome-sensei had originally taught it to him, ensuring at every step that Harumitsu was familiar with all the jargon and understood the various mental states and required chakra manipulations.
"Got all that?" he asked at last.
Harumitsu paused, thinking. His fingers twitched slightly as he rehearsed some of the memory-aid gestures Hazō had mentioned, and then he nodded. His nervousness was picking up as they got closer to the actual infusion practice, and at such times he preferred not to speak if it wasn't essential.
"Okay, good. Now, we're working with your namesake seal today. Point to where the Slide will operate."
Harumitsu laid the blank for a Harumitsu's Outstanding World-Saving Seal on the carefully-polished surface of the granite worktop and studied it carefully before placing his finger on one segment.
"Good. Now, the color that the seal emits is going to depend on how much you arfangle the Slide. Infuse one seal and activate it, just so we get a baseline. Do it the way you normally would and don't worry about the arfangling for now."
Harumitsu took a breath, let it out slowly, and placed his finger on the seal...
They're going to be running through a couple dozen or so copies of the seal, so let's do all the rolls up front. Harumitsu has been studying Sealing for 161 days now. I don't know what his talent should be but to keep things easy we'll say he's averaged 3 XP / day based on whatever his talent level is and whatever demands have given him unusual positive or negative learning opportunities. That means he's got 483 XP that have been spent on nothing but seal-related skills. The first 250 XP was spent acquiring the Sealsmith stunt, leaving him with 233 XP. He sank 210 of it to get his Sealing up to 14 and put some of the remaining 23 points into buying his Calligraphy from 15 to 16. All in all, pretty impressive for not even six months work!
Harumitsu's Outstanding World-Saving Seal:
Calligraphy TN: 8
Infusion TN: 8 (Most seals are harder to infuse than draw, but HOWS is an exception)
Yesterday, Harumitsu prepped a stack of blanks for this lesson. He was careful and took his time with each one, spending 10 minutes instead of 5 per blank in order to get +AB on the Calligraphy roll. In his case that gets him +2. Starting with a base of 16+2=18 he will only fail if he rolls a -12.
Yikes! That -12 is going to be an issue! Let's see about the infusion rolls. The failed Calligraphy roll means he autofails that one, but on the others he fails only on a -12.
At player direction, Hazō burns an FP to make a Declaration: He notices that the tuning follows the same order as the rainbow. (This isn't the phrasing the players used in the plan—they said "...that light disperses into when it passes through a Prism"—but I'm not certain Hazō has ever seen a prism. Regardless it comes out the same.)
...which promptly flickered to shining purplish life, smooth and easy.
"Nice one," Hazō said, nodding and ignoring the embarrassed pinking of his apprentice's ears. "Now, think about the arfangling on that infusion. Describe it for me."
"The consistency was moderate syrup, and...um..."
"Take your time. Did you notice the localization?"
"N-n-no, s-sensei. I'm s-s-sorry."
"Don't sweat it. First time I tried, I didn't even remember the consistency. Try it again, this time focus on the arfangling. Still with moderate-syrup consistency, but focus on neutral localization." He chuckled and shook his head. "It's funny...it used to feel very strange to talk about chakra infusion with words like 'consistency' and 'localization', given that they aren't even vaguely related to what's happening. I mean, sure, whoever invented sealing had to choose something and I guess that physical descriptors are no worse than anything else. Still, it's weird."
Harumitsu nodded and then, at Hazō's gesture, placed his finger on the seal, breathed out, and infused it. It flickered to life with the hue of summer grass.
"Very nice. Now, keep the consistency the same but make the localization more celestine."
Harumitsu nodded and did as ordered, but the color of the light remained essentially unchanged. He shook in head in annoyance and did it again without waiting to be told; this time the light was more bluish.
They spent the next two hours working their way through the stack of seals. There was one mishap, a minor one that caused them both to speak in gibberish for a few minutes, but it wore off quickly. Granted, it was a little less clear when it wore off of Harumitsu since his fright and embarrassment had turned his stutter into complete muteness.
"Don't worry about it," Hazō said, smiling and resting a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Sit down, meditate a bit, and drink this." He pulled a pot of peppermint tea (the good peppermint tea, not the great peppermint tea that he was saving in case Hidan ever showed up again) and poured a cup for each of them. "That was nothing. Let me tell you about some of the seal mishaps that I've had during research." He sat down on one of the lawn chairs and stretched his legs out towards the nearest brazier.
"Let's see...well, there was the time when I accidentally created talking porcupine constructs. They started sublimating away after about ten minutes but while they were there they packed themselves tightly around me and chattered non-stop. Half of them were telling dumb jokes, the other half varied between reciting epic poetry, talking in languages I didn't understand, and propositioning me for sex."
"P-propositioning you f-f-f-f-f-or—" Frustrated, Harumitsu gave up and gestured his astonishment.
"I know, right? And of course I said no! Get your mind out of the gutter." He shook his head. "Honestly. Kids these days. No respect for their teachers." He raised a hand at the horrified look on Harumitsu's face. "That was a joke. Relax. Drink your tea."
Harumitsu finally calmed down after fifteen minutes of listening to his teacher's reminisces about falling out of the universe, needing to clean conjured moss off of himself, suddenly finding himself neck-deep in the earth, having to cut away the serpent that was suddenly growing out of his arm, and the distraction caused by three days of hearing everyone's words a fraction of a second ahead of when they actually spoke them. At that point they got back to work.
An hour later, Harumitsu could reliably infuse the seal with whatever color he liked. It was at that point when Hazō frowned.
"Your initial infusion was bluish," he said. "This past group you've been focused on localizing the Slide more towards cthonic than celestine, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"Huh. Have you noticed—" He shook his head. "Hang on, I think I'm going to have to do this for myself."
He picked up one of the blanks and started tracing his finger over it and mumbling to himself.
"S-Sensei?" Harumitsu asked after a minute or two. "What are you doing?"
"Learning this seal," Hazō said, not looking away from his object of study. "I never got around to it, but I want to try something."
Hazō passes the test and rolls above the seal's complexity TN. Every three points of success is one shift. Once the number of shifts equals the complexity of the seal, Hazō will have learned the seal.
Hazō has learned the seal. Easily.
"Got it."
Harumitsu's eyes were wide. "You learned the seal in under five minutes?"
Hazō shrugged with faux modesty. "It's what I do," he growled, dropping his voice into the lowest register he could reach. He scowled, attempting to fit the 'world weary veteran' trope, but only for a moment. Afterwards he shrugged. "It's an easy seal and I am actually pretty good at this." He whipped out his brush and started drawing the seals. "Why don't you keep practicing? You've got the localization working fine, so focus on the consistency this time. Keep it in the 'syrup' band, don't try to go vaporous or earthy yet."
"Yes, s-sensei."
Two hours later, Hazō had a fistful of blanks and was ready to try his experiment.
The first seal, done with no particular attention to arfangling, produced a yellowish light. With a bit of focus he could produce light of whatever color he wanted.
"Check this out," he called, waving Harumitsu over from where he had been drawing a new batch of blanks to practice with.
Harumitsu hurried over and Hazō pointed at the seal. "When I go with a very thin consistency, I get blue light. As I thicken it, the color changes." He infused six more seals quickly and then left them sitting there, glowing happily in all the colors of the rainbow.
"Does that look familiar?" he asked.
Harumitsu frowned. "No, sensei? W-what am I looking for?"
"It's the rainbow," Hazō explained. He moved his finger down the line, tapping each seal in order. "It's repeatable. Thin consistency is blue, and as I thicken it the colors always come out in this order. The same order as the rainbow."
"Okay...?"
Hazō pointed at the rightmost seal that throbbed with a menacing red glow, just like the eye of Saulano, the villain of Jiraiya's Icha Icha Paradise: The Perilous Ring of Matrimony. "What if I thicken it even more?"
"Sensei? It's already red."
"Sure, but I haven't thickened it as much as I could, and I haven't experimented with the celestine/cthonic axis at all. What if I keep going? What do you think it will do?"
"Um...are you suggesting we do research, s-sensei? I thought today was lessons?"
That brought Hazō up a little short. Today was in fact a teaching day for Harumitsu and Hazō. (Well, for Hazō TeacherGuy. Hazō Prime was working with Kagome-sensei on summoning, Hazō SkySmasher was working on the Air Tunnel seals that would hopefully result in the destruction of Hidden Rock, and Hazō Hoorah! (the exclamation point was in fact part of the spelling of his name) was working on the Action Relay Seal that he was hoping would allow seals to be activated at a distance.)
"Well, I suppose. It's only one test and then we'll go back to teaching."
Harumitsu seemed like he wanted to say something, possibly something acidic, but he nodded politely. "We'll do the preparations, right?"
"Of course. Hang on while I go micturate and defecate, as per the Gōketsu Kagome Book of Sealing Instruction, rule number 18."
o-o-o-o
"So?" Ino demanded, leaning forward with wide eyes. "What happened then? Did you break the world?"
The chūnin warrior and the heads of Clans Yamanaka and Gōketsu had been left at home tonight. Tonight was simply Akane, Ino, and Hazō in one of the Yamanaka saunas, lounging together in a big people-pile atop the towel-covered benches. The left side of the tiny room was piled high with rocks that had been recently removed from an intense fire, and a splash of grass-infused water across them filled the room with comforting mugginess and the scent of summer.
Ino was sitting up against the wall with Akane's head in her lap, combing her fingers through the other girl's hair. Hazō was lying with his head on Akane's belly and her hand captured in his as he related the story of his experiments.
"Nah," he said, eyes on the ceiling. "Well...mostly not."
"Hazō, don't tease her," Akane said. Her eyes were closed and the lines of pain and guilt were currently absent from her face. Granted, her face was utterly slack, lacking any trace of happiness or contentment, but at least there wasn't pain or guilt.
"Okay, okay," he said, rolling his head to look over at his ladies and smiling. "Have I told you guys lately that you're both beautiful and I'm suuuuper lucky?"
"You have not," Akane said, her lips momentarily twitching into a smile before going loose again.
"You are both beautiful and I'm super lucky."
"No, no," Ino said. "It was better the first time. Say it properly."
"You're both beautiful and I'm suuuuuuper lucky."
"Thank you, sweetie," she said, reaching over and stroking his forehead for a moment. Hazō purred in contentment at the touch and let his eyes sink closed.
"'Sweetie'?" he asked.
"Yeah, it felt weird as I said it. I'm working on finding something."
"May I suggest 'My Most Darling and Handsome Lord of Inspiration and Wit'?"
Both Akane and Ino snorted. Akane's snort made Hazō's head bounce on her belly, which made him laugh in surprise.
"You may not suggest that," Ino said. "I wouldn't call you that even if you were presenting me with a billion ryō business deal while simultaneously performing the most incredible comedy routine ever performed."
"Hrmph. Just for that, I'm not going to tell you what happened."
"Yes you will," Akane said, not opening her eyes. Ino was rubbing her temples, small circles with just the right pressure to drive off stress.
"I might not."
"You will."
"I—"
"Hazō, hush," Ino scolded. "You will and you know it. You can barely keep yourself from talking about your research even when something exciting hasn't happened."
"Hrmph." Hazō opened his eyes just long enough to shoot her a dirty look, then closed them again and took a deep breath of the deliciously steamy air. He absently ran the back of his hand up Akane's calf.
"All right, fine. Since you asked so nicely, I'll tell you what happened."
"Told you."
"Shush! Anyway, we did all the prep rituals and then I infused the seal, but this time I arfangled it even more than when I set it to red light. Really pushed it hard." He paused and let the words hang in the air.
"Well?" Ino demanded.
His pillow shifted under him, so he opened his eyes and turned his head so that he could meet his sweeties' gazes. Akane's eyes were open and she'd propped herself up a little bit so that she could watch his face expectantly. Ino was still on the 'amused' side of the amused/irritated line but rapidly slipping across it. It was time to reveal.
"No color."
They both frowned. "What are you talking about?" Akane asked.
"It didn't glow at all. Instead, it started getting warm."
Four eyes widened. Ino couldn't help but sputter, "What? I mean...why? Argh, I don't even know what I mean. You and your stupid sealing. Knowing you, you kept testing it. What did you find?"
"Are you kidding? When a seal stops working properly and starts getting hot, you run before the failure hits. I grabbed Harumitsu and Substituted out of there so fast my shadow hasn't caught up yet."
Author's Note: HOWS doesn't produce that much light, so when you tune it to the infrared spectrum it doesn't produce much heat either. The infrared HOWS that Hazō just created wouldn't even be sufficient as a handwarmer, let alone to heat a room.
After Hazō TeacherGuy hauled Harumitsu off the field, he notified Hazō Prime who hurried over and entombed the HOWS in a Multiple Earth Wall box in order to contain whatever sealing failure is about to happen. The box is in the woods a mile north of the Gōketsu estate's northern wall.
I think the timeline on this plan doesn't actually work, since the last update ended in the evening and Akane was supposed to leave in the morning. Of course, I didn't realize that until right now and I'm not going to go back and rewrite it all, so we'll assume that Akane's mission got held up for a day because reasons. It is now the evening, Hazō is asleep, and Akane will be gone when he wakes up. I would probably have given this a higher award without the timeline breakage because I enjoyed writing it a lot.
XP AWARD: 3
Brevity XP: 1
"GM had fun" XP: 4
+2 for scene: seal research + teach Harumitsu
+2 polycule polycuteness
Hazō is asleep and will wake up shortly after dawn.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, February 23, 2022, at 12pm London time.
Author's Note: @faflec, could you please add Harumitsu's Outstanding World-Saving Seal to the list? Thanks. I've added it to the Known Seals document but it's good to have it in thread as well.
Was I supposed to update it? I haven't touched it since 2019 since I assumed the seal list was getting transferred to the QM's.
Alright, I'm going to spend a bit going over the thread to make sure all the other seals Hazou learned are on the list. IIRC LBF was learned at some point...
It almost definitely isn't a sealing failure but Hazou won't have known that until he investigates later...
Oh actually this might be fine, HOWS lasts for a month so if it's still producing heat the next day Hazou will probably realize that's just what it does
So we just invented heaters that last a month! Leaf will never be cold again lol
For that matter, these would be really easy to distribute to small towns that lose people to the cold every winter. A once-a-month till'n'fill? Cake, and the seal is easy as balls too
