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- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I am 1,000% down for this and including it in almost any plan would be a surefire way to earn my vote.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- Tags
- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard
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- how about no
If Hazou does ever receive such an auspicious award that jacket needs to have lettering on the back that reads: "I tried to treason one too many times and all I got was this stupid jacket".
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Ami's the one who'll give it to him, let's be honest.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You know one thing that we could do to decrease the number of Genin fatalities is the summoner army chakra beast extermination plan. We just launch wave after wave of summons into to an area until literally every chakra beast is dead. We keep genin from having to take dangerous missions, we make civies safer, we create a cover of why we would be out of village and we look badass as fuck doing it
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
...@Velorien, @Paperclipped, @eaglejarl, when is Asuma's birthday? Just out of curiosity.
- Location
- Raleigh, NC
@Paperclipped
If I may ask, does any of the following statements/questions seem reasonable?
1. Having access to a hammer space via a single storage seal would significantly help a genin survive via being unburdened, having hot food, bandages, and misc extra supplies?
2. Having a explosive seal or goo bomb for desperate times would significantly help genin survive?
3. Taijutsu genin would be significantly more effective if equipped with an improved macerator (200 uses since storage seal?)? and can reusably punch monsters from a zone away?
4. Would it be possible to make a macerator variant that could feasibly give a similar boost to non taijutsu genin (such as a flame thrower loadout variant)?
5. If the answer to any of these is HDK, would Kei be able to answer it without much difficulty given her bloodline, inclinations and KEI connection?
If I may ask, does any of the following statements/questions seem reasonable?
1. Having access to a hammer space via a single storage seal would significantly help a genin survive via being unburdened, having hot food, bandages, and misc extra supplies?
2. Having a explosive seal or goo bomb for desperate times would significantly help genin survive?
3. Taijutsu genin would be significantly more effective if equipped with an improved macerator (200 uses since storage seal?)? and can reusably punch monsters from a zone away?
4. Would it be possible to make a macerator variant that could feasibly give a similar boost to non taijutsu genin (such as a flame thrower loadout variant)?
5. If the answer to any of these is HDK, would Kei be able to answer it without much difficulty given her bloodline, inclinations and KEI connection?
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- Location
- Raleigh, NC
Agreed and the bear summoner could help a lot with this despite his age if we can get him to the village. I bet he knows a lot of bears.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
October 18. In 1070, this was the day that Yūdai caused a sealing failure and wrecked the Gōketsu Estate.
Being unburdened: Yes, but probably only the first storage seal.
Having hot food: Negligible, trail rations are sufficient for survival.
Bandages: Yes, but probably only in niche cases.
Misc extra supplies: Yes, but probably only in niche cases.
Hazō doesn't think any of these effects will be "significant", but they would probably exist. He thinks the biggest effect would be removing burdens. Ninja packs are easy to ditch by default, but for genin, the few seconds of extra weight may be the difference between life and death.
An explosive seal for clanless genin that can't afford one would probably be massive, though with diminishing returns on numbers of explosives.
Goo bombs are likewise quite strong.
Again, probably not "significant", but it would expand their toolkit for those unable to buy macerators from anyone producing them.
I don't understand what you mean here. What macerator variant would give a boost to (Melee/Ranged) (Weapons/Ninjutsu) users?
Kei's feedback: None of these effects will likely be paradigm changing, but they could still save lives. Clans have money and don't want the genin they just spent years training up to die, so will generally buy explosives and storage seals for their genin. Seal provisions will disproportionately affect clanless genin. Goo bombs could potentially have the largest impact, as neither clan nor clanless has access to it and it's a very strong seal.
- Location
- Yes.
...Happy Birthday?
That's the Gōketsu way
- Location
- Raleigh, NC
@Velorien
Thank you!
Some follow up questions, if that is ok:
1. Macerators used with rocks seem to be reusable, whereas macerators with burning logs seem to be single use? Is that accurate?
2. Is there any sort of intermediate loadout we could use that would have a flamethrower like effect without damaging the seal? Lava, heated rocks, oil with a down range igniter, boiling oil for instance? The goal is a reusable seal that gives an explosive seal like bonus to genin.
3. Does the entire seal need to be uncovered to operate or could a small hole just be exposed and the rest covered?
4. How feasible/useful would a continuous zoo rush against local chakra monster concentrations be?
The overall intent is a gun or flamethrower like weapon that would significantly increase genin lethality against nonsapient opponents.
From Wikipedia:
"Hot oil was considerably less common than boiling water or heated sand, which were cheap and extremely effective; even "dust from the street" could be used. These would penetrate armour and cause terrible burns.[72] Sand, especially, could work its way through very small gaps in armour.[21] The Phoenicians at the Siege of Tyre (332 BC) dropped burning sand down on the attacking Greeks, which got in behind the armour and burned the flesh.["
Thank you!
Some follow up questions, if that is ok:
1. Macerators used with rocks seem to be reusable, whereas macerators with burning logs seem to be single use? Is that accurate?
2. Is there any sort of intermediate loadout we could use that would have a flamethrower like effect without damaging the seal? Lava, heated rocks, oil with a down range igniter, boiling oil for instance? The goal is a reusable seal that gives an explosive seal like bonus to genin.
3. Does the entire seal need to be uncovered to operate or could a small hole just be exposed and the rest covered?
4. How feasible/useful would a continuous zoo rush against local chakra monster concentrations be?
The overall intent is a gun or flamethrower like weapon that would significantly increase genin lethality against nonsapient opponents.
From Wikipedia:
"Hot oil was considerably less common than boiling water or heated sand, which were cheap and extremely effective; even "dust from the street" could be used. These would penetrate armour and cause terrible burns.[72] Sand, especially, could work its way through very small gaps in armour.[21] The Phoenicians at the Siege of Tyre (332 BC) dropped burning sand down on the attacking Greeks, which got in behind the armour and burned the flesh.["
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This doesn't make sense. The mechanics don't discriminate sapient vs nonsapient.
- Location
- Raleigh, NC
Ok. It was more "ninja might come up with counters in a way beasts would not"
- Location
- Pacific standard
Nah, all three sannin got it from Hiruzen. He deliberately dialed up the pranks/immature energy until they all had their auras activated. God of Shinobi op
Edit: Oh, shit. The hair ruffling!!! Mari has been trying to develop our JA this whole time!
[X]Give Mari the Look next time she ruffles Hazō's hair. Put your conceptual weight into it
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Counters besides dodging? Why bother? It's basically the same dodging hot sand/hot oil/hot water/a fireball. The consequences are the same if you miss your dodge. You get burned.
I guess some ninja can cast MEW or other jutsu like it as a defense. But it would work the same on any macerator payload.
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
For anyone keeping track this is his birthday in the databooks so either this was a horrible coincidence or truly advanced QM trolling.
Chapter 1β: Seeds of Divergence
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter 1β: Seeds of Divergence
Reality crashed down on Hazō like the full weight of a playful Fifi as Shikigami-sensei headed off to give his next painfully inaccurate inspirational speech. This wasn't a dream. This wasn't a Mari genjutsu prank (he'd kept checking until his body, still recovering from a day of flight, was in danger of chakra exhaustion). He was in the Swamp of Death, at the very beginning of his Uplift journey, and the world he knew and loved was hopelessly, helplessly out of his reach.
He couldn't go back. He was sure of it. Even if he managed to destroy the Seventh Path with a sealing failure a second time, even if he was willing to sacrifice all those lives for his own sake, sealing failures never did the same thing twice, and it was even less likely one would do the same thing in reverse. A dimensional seal might do it, because sealing was omnipotent, but it wouldn't be enough to just travel forward again—by the time he was good enough to invent such a seal, he'd have made too many changes for that future to be his own. Homing in on a future that no longer existed... well, it made opening the rift to the afterlife look like an apprentice's first explosive tag.
Kei and Noburi were left in the cave with him, the former staring despondently into the darkness beyond the cave mouth while the latter stowed his gear in a convenient cubby, periodically stealing surreptitious glances at her. What was he going to do about them? These thirteen-year-olds, so much smaller than he remembered, weren't Nara Kei and Gōketsu Noburi. Those two were gone, along with Akane and Mari and Kagome-sensei and everyone he'd ever known and loved (and even if he made it back, he had a terrible feeling Kei was gone forever). These kids were... They were…
They were his siblings by metaphysical extension. Thank you, Snowflake. If he could begin to love and bond with Kei's shadow as she grew into her own, unique identity, then he could do the same for them. Snowflake hadn't replaced Kei, and these two couldn't replace their future selves, but that didn't mean he couldn't learn to love them just the same.
Should he tell them the truth? In the worst-case scenario, they wouldn't believe him, and then that loss of trust would make it harder to steer them through the needle's eye of survival. The sensible thing to do would be to trace the same path, to keep everyone safe at least until Team Uplift's bonds were once again solid enough that he dared test them.
But... he couldn't do it. He couldn't be alone in the world with everything he knew, constantly lying to the faces of everyone he cared about, for as long as it took. Gōketsu Hazō drew his strength from his ideals and his family. He couldn't live on just one of the two anymore.
He'd start with Kei. Noburi was... well, kind of immature at this point in his life, while Kei had been conditioned to bow before the weight of evidence (at least where her self-perception wasn't concerned).
He walked over and sat down next to her by the cave entrance. She didn't react.
"Kei, can I talk to you?"
She gave him a deer-in-the-lamplight stare, which quickly turned into a scowl.
"I do not recall permitting you to address me by my given name, Kurosawa, much less to shorten it. If this is a prelude to some more elaborate act of mockery, I suggest you be more mindful of our circumstances and kindly leave me be."
It was like a stab through the heart from a jagged blade. His Kei was gone. She wasn't coming back. The second he forgot, the second he allowed himself to slip back into comfortable familiarity, all that awaited was the abyss of loss.
"I'm sorry, Mori," Hazō forced out, the shape of the name somehow feeling foreign in his mouth. "I wasn't thinking. I was just distracted after the day we've had."
Kei's expression softened. "Yes, I suppose that is understandable," she conceded. "Forgive my hostility, Kurosawa. My dignity is hardly a pressing issue during our last hours of life."
Oh, right. This was still before Mari's experimental mind surgery, meaning Kei was borderline suicidal.
Was that something Hazō could help with? He'd never been able to truly understand the dark, distorted world Kei lived in, and he couldn't hope to imitate Akane's mysterious efforts to get her to start climbing out of it. On the other hand, he was confident he knew her better than Inoue Mari did right now.
On the third hand (he didn't remember the Shadow Clone Technique, and that was a massive problem that needed solving sooner rather than later, but he wasn't going to let it stop him now), Kei was much more fragile than her emotionless exterior suggested, and if he pushed her the wrong way right now, he knew exactly how far she'd fall.
Did he dare?
He dared. She was his sister (even if she didn't know it yet), at the lowest point of her life, not only without any sort of support network but probably not even aware that support networks were a thing that existed. Hazō wasn't going to start his second life as the kind of man who'd abandon her to her demons just because he was afraid of making things worse.
Seeing the growing anxiety on her face, he realised he'd been staring at her as he pondered. Kei would've known instantly that he was lost in thought, but Mori Keiko was a stranger with a tendency to assume the worst.
"Sorry, Mori," he said again. "Listen, there's something important I need to talk to you about."
Kei didn't look any less anxious.
"What I'm going to tell you is going to sound utterly ridiculous, but I'd like you to listen to the end before making any comments. I have evidence to support all of my claims, and I will present it to you later, but right now I just need you to listen to what I have to say. Can you do that?"
Kei relaxed, but not by much. "Proceed."
Hazō mentally took a deep breath.
"Kei—sorry, Mori, I just came back from three years in the future as a result of a sealing failure. I remember all kinds of important things, but there are three you need to hear right now."
To a stranger, Kei would probably have looked like she was listening attentively, but Hazō could see her restraining her deadpan sarcasm through raw force of will.
"First, you were never picked for a suicide mission. The jōnin are lying. Settling in the Swamp of Death was the plan from the start, and you were chosen because you are a valuable ninja with abilities they felt they couldn't do without. You are not expendable and nobody wanted you dead."
"I am an unremarkable genin, mediocre even by Mori standards," Kei interrupted. "If they were selecting candidates for skill, they would have chosen one of my cousins."
She grimaced.
"Ah, apologies. I promised to listen to this lunacy to the end."
"All right," Hazō conceded. "Who they could get away with kidnapping was also a factor, so the fact that your clan undervalued you helped. But nobody forced them to kidnap a Mori at all, and they chose to kidnap you even though the Mori are an influential clan that have the Mizukage's ear.
"Second, I know the Swamp of Death is a deathtrap, but you and I will survive, and so will No- Wakahisa. We did it once before and the method is foolproof, and you can be sure I'm not lying because I am literally staking my life on this." As long as he didn't somehow mess up and introduce a deviation that made Mari leave them behind. And as long as he'd really travelled back in time and not diagonally into an alternative past that had already diverged in some catastrophic way.
He couldn't read Kei's expression, but radiating scepticism was no longer the thing she was doing.
"Thirdly, and most importantly, your sister loves you and you going missing has done nothing to change that, and in the future I come from, you will see her again so she can tell you for herself."
"..."
Hazō's missing-nin danger sense flared.
"How dare you?!" Kei screeched, suddenly on her feet, hands balled into fists. In the background, Noburi stared at them in alarm.
"What could you possibly know about me and my sister? You may subject me to your twisted mind games, Kurosawa, but if you bring Ami into this again, I swear I will... I will..."
Hazō held up his hands placatingly and thought fast.
"Ami never forgave your parents for rejecting you," he said in rapid-fire. "She calls them Ken and Yuri, like strangers. She took over from them as your guardian and put tons of effort into teaching you socials and did her best to raise you despite being an Academy student herself for most of that time. You consider her a goddess and love her unconditionally and are confident that no romantic partner could ever be good enough for her. She feels the same about you, except she's OK with you having a partner she can vet and whip into shape if she needs to. You feel guilty that she spent so much time on you instead of advancing her career, but she doesn't seem to feel that way at all. You used to have a toy black kitten called Mewramasa, Devourer of Unworthy Souls, which isn't really relevant but I just remembered it and it's something I couldn't possibly know."
Kei stared, mouth slightly open, seemingly paralysed.
"Ami... Ami loves chaos, making it and exploiting it and frankly just it being there, I think. Her three primary values are control, freedom, and fun. She's a lethal cook. She's really good at braiding hair, but you've never let her do it to you. She has multiple personalities, or modes, or whatever, and she switches between them spontaneously, but the one I see most is bouncy and whimsical and always smiling or laughing. She gets headaches and carries a flask of willowbark tea with her. She loves lavender, or maybe just the smell of lavender, and her favourite food is shaved ice. She enjoys puzzles and pranks and is weirdly good at improvising for a Mori. Oh! She gave you a bright pink shuriken with what looks like a badly-drawn sheep on it to make sure you'd come back to her, and later you did the same for Jira- someone you cared about. I don't think you ever gave it back, because I managed to badger you into showing it to me afterwards, but you came back to her anyway."
Kei half-sat down half-fell to the ground. She winced with pain, but didn't move from the awkward lopsided position she'd ended up in.
Hazō waited, giving her time to process.
Finally, as if remembering herself, Kei adjusted to a conventional cross-legged position. Still, when she spoke, she sounded dazed and not quite there, like she was recovering from a partially-resisted banshee wren attack.
"I cannot imagine Ami failing to notice a stalker sufficiently obsessive to gather so much information, nor conceive of a motivation for her to share the information herself. Kurosawa, I... I do not understand. How?"
"I'm a time traveller," Hazō said gently. "Some of these things you told me over the years. Some I picked up on myself, like the Mewramasa thing, which you accidentally let slip while you were distracted. Some I heard from Ami, or figured out by spending time around her."
"Were we on close terms?" Kei asked uncertainly. "I mean... will we be on close terms?"
Suddenly her eyes widened.
"Kurosawa, are we... lovers?"
Hazō shook his head. "No," he said, deciding this wasn't the right time to tell her that the other Kei had at some point had a crush on him. Come to think of it, there was no guarantee that something like that didn't lie in this Kei's future.
He really was in unknown territory here.
From Kei's unsteady body language, he was suddenly afraid she might keel over from the overload (and it wasn't like he could catch her), so he hurriedly added, "Don't worry about the relationship future you and I had. That's only my future. Past. Whatever. I know that you're not my Kei, and we don't have to have that kind of bond if... if you don't want to. My past isn't your future.
"Ke- Mori, you can take your time getting your head around all of this. For now, I just want you to remember three things. This wasn't a suicide mission and nobody thinks you're better off dead. We will survive the Swamp of Death and everything else we face. Your sister loves you and you haven't lost her. Can you do that for me?"
Kei was silent for a while.
"I have one question," she said right as Hazō was about to conclude that the conversation was over and start thinking about how to approach Noburi (who had been giving him a baleful glare in the background for having an intense personal conversation with Kei).
"What's that?" Hazō asked.
"You explained that you, Wakahisa, and I would survive the Swamp of Death. Who else survives?"
"Inoue Mari," Hazō said, and that would be another major problem to figure out. Part of him wanted to share the power of foreknowledge with his most powerful ally at once and have her help chart a course, but the Inoue Mari who had just kidnapped them was a step short of the Heartbreaker, without a journey of redemption or time to develop faith in Hazō's leadership and absorb his Uplift speeches. Worse, it suddenly occurred to him that the catalyst for her redemption was saving Kei from her suicidal depression, and whatever was going on inside Kei right now as a result of his intervention, it wasn't something Mari could or needed to fix. He might really have screwed this one up.
"Four people?" Kei asked in what might have been horror were it not overshadowed by emotional exhaustion (to add to the existing physical kind). "Kurosawa, there are twenty-seven shinobi occupying this camp. I assumed we were all doomed to perish within a matter of days, never permitted a shred of agency beyond the opportunity to be eliminated earlier by refusing Shikigami-sensei's invitation. Now you are suggesting that the likes of me will be granted salvation while all their deaths are inscribed in whalebone?"
In fact, Kei was the reason any of them had been saved (which was another reason he should have thought twice before sabotaging her connection to Mari). But Hazō had nothing he could say to her. At the time, their own survival had been a miracle, and there was no time, among the chaos of their early missing-nin days, to stop and think about the deaths of his classmates and other familiar faces from the Academy, or the friendly chūnin he'd picked up tips from during the journey to Noodle, or indeed Shikigami-sensei, whose cold plotting had not been mutually exclusive with a determination to keep his ninja alive and teach them how to be strong. Being a missing-nin simply didn't leave time to worry about things you couldn't change.
Or that was what Hazō told himself, at least.
"Can you save no one else?" Kei asked quietly. "If the secrets of the future are sufficient to save four, can they not save five? Six? If I, with my limited survival skills that would surely impair any team, remove myself from the list, would it be possible to rescue a greater number of more competent candidates?"
That was when Hazō remembered. In addition to a staggering inability to value her own life (his Kei had thrown herself into Dragonbreath to protect him without a second thought, and he hadn't even begun to process the sheer weight of that), inside this girl was the seed of the woman who'd taken responsibility for hundreds of lives for no better reason than that a mischievous sister and two dead clan heads had dumped them in her lap.
He also remembered that inside Kurosawa Hazō had been the seed of him, and that seed had already matured.
"Mori," he asked with urgency born of excitement, "do you think you'll still be awake in a couple of hours?"
"Sleep was the remotest of possibilities even before our conversation," Kei said sardonically.
"Good," Hazō said, "because I'm going to have a plan for you to optimise."
"What do you intend to do, Kurosawa?"
Hazō grinned an ominous grin he had learned from a woman who no longer existed. The world trembled slightly as he turned to face it, staring down the darkness of the Swamp of Death and daring it to blink first.
"I intend to go pretty damn far."
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- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Does it still qualify as prepared ground even though Hazo is technically no longer a sealmaster?
It feels like it might.
It feels like it might.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Lovers? No. Romantically entangled? Arguably.
- Location
- France
I read the whole chapter before noticing it was a sidestory. I was quite shocked to see the joke continue on April 14th.
More seriously, assuming Hazou has his Sealing stat (and basic calligraphy) then escape is as easy as "get this man a supply of paper". Although in that case Shikigami and Mari might turn out to be bigger threats to his agency than Zabuza is right now
More seriously, assuming Hazou has his Sealing stat (and basic calligraphy) then escape is as easy as "get this man a supply of paper". Although in that case Shikigami and Mari might turn out to be bigger threats to his agency than Zabuza is right now
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Hidden Swamp actually becomes a thing because they're leaning on Hazou's Sealing Stat.I read the whole chapter before noticing it was a sidestory. I was quite shocked to see the joke continue on April 14th.
More seriously, assuming Hazou has his Sealing stat (and basic calligraphy) then escape is as easy as "get this man a supply of paper". Although in that case Shikigami and Mari might turn out to be bigger threats to his agency than Zabuza is right now
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
Normally I'd write reactions to minute details, try a couple puns, nerd out a little... I was too busy picking my jaw up from the floor, repeatedly.
This is just fantastic, you beautiful genius.
This is just fantastic, you beautiful genius.
I don't think he does. In the April Fool's update it said Hazou lost ~10k XP. Which would be all his skills since the SwampI read the whole chapter before noticing it was a sidestory. I was quite shocked to see the joke continue on April 14th.
More seriously, assuming Hazou has his Sealing stat (and basic calligraphy) then escape is as easy as "get this man a supply of paper". Although in that case Shikigami and Mari might turn out to be bigger threats to his agency than Zabuza is right now
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
We lost all our XP and presumably skills. If there's a sealmaster with us, though, then we might have a crack at skywalkers or skytowers.I read the whole chapter before noticing it was a sidestory. I was quite shocked to see the joke continue on April 14th.
More seriously, assuming Hazou has his Sealing stat (and basic calligraphy) then escape is as easy as "get this man a supply of paper". Although in that case Shikigami and Mari might turn out to be bigger threats to his agency than Zabuza is right now