Right, but a group project would get him involved with his teammates, rather than just having him sequester himself with Kagome for hardcore Sealing research. Group projects can be a therapeutic bonding experience; this one gives us an added benefit of a neat new invention to eventually fly around in.
e: And it's been stated in the past that the difficulty in creating a seal that emulates a technique is the same difficulty in creating any seal. It's just that sealing can do anything, so replicating ninjutsu is an easy target for things to do with them.
Do you have a link to that? I probably I missed it, but I would like to read it myself, just cuz.
We can also compare and contrast Akane's EM to Hazou's EM seals to see if there is any quantifiable differences between the two. We already know that EM, or using chakra to create heat in a sphere, is possible. By testing to see if we can recreate EM in seal form, we can learn how closely we can actually recreate any other technique. EM is also safe enough to allow for small accidents compared to the casino seals accidentally creating a sonic boom or a large flash of light at our location; heat shouldn't be as dangerous since we are already prepared for explosive failures.
If recreating a technique in seal form is really as hard as making a new one, this will also give us the added benefit of seeing just exactly how hard creating brand new, yet still somewhat simple, seals will be. An E-ranked technique should be the simplest to work with, but this knowledge could be extrapolated to D-S rank techniques and how soon we can make comparable seals.
Have to start somewhere if we ever want to make our own custom seals; might as well start with something we know chakra can do already. I'm just keeping it simple for the first baby steps of inventive sealing. I don't want a premature Cthulhu any time soon. Let's see if we can complete a simple E rank seal with the dice we have now. If we can't we can re-evaluate then whether or not we want to continue dumping valuable XP into sealing for minimal rewards in the short to medium term.
Yes, sealing can do anything, but we haven't done anything original with it yet. This should be the most-Kagome approved seal research we can undertake in the meantime.
Op-sec 101 and Other Various Bits of Advice
by me, your friendly neighborhood @Dictator4Hire
How to conceal your most precious possession as a fugitive: your identity.
Whenever you leave the base, put on a henge
Underneath the henge, wear an outfit that covers your whole body, including a mask
Costumes should be fairly nondescript and interchangeable with minimal distinguishing marks so teammates can recognize each other.
Costumes should be rotated fairly often so that "Cat" is never the same person twice (if we want to copy ANBU-style masks to seem somewhat legitimate while we lie our asses off after our henge breaks).
Masks as well as outfits should be worn and discarded (read, obliterated/incinerated) as needed.
Don't wear the same mask for different operations, but you can reuse a mask for an ongoing operation, so long as the mask cannot be found when not safely secured on one's face.
Underneath the masks, wear appearance-altering make-up plus hair dye as a last resort.
Never involve someone in your illicit conspiracies, spy ring(s), conglomerations, etc. whom you cannot bring yourself to kill if absolutely necessary.
We lead lives so dangerous that anyone who interacts with us will be considered complicit in our illegal activities.
If you want someone to lead a long, (relatively) safe life, don't induct them into your illegal organizations.
Betrayal, while heinous, will most likely happen at least once. Better to prepare for it now than get caught out flat-footed in a disastrous scenario.
Contingencies are only your friends if they cover every single foreseeable variable. The devil is in the details; being thorough means you can completely exorcise him before he causes any grief.
Every time we fail to properly crack down on insubordination (which does not always mean kill the perpetrator, calm down), we risk their actions harming a loyal member of our growing network.
Friends don't let former friends hurt our other still friendly friends.
Always be proactive rather than reactive whenever possible.
Either you or your enemy operates on your or their timetable; he who acts first sets the pace of the match.
Be specific in what you are looking for so long as you have the time; don't just settle for the first option that comes along. There are plenty of fish in the sea and choosing the right fish makes the dish taste right.
When you are being specific, list out every single trait you want in your ideal specimen as well as deal-breaker traits that you cannot work with.
Do not fudge the numbers just to settle for what you have available. Try to make another cast in another lake or ocean if you have to.
Opportunities come and go, but mistakes that kill friends last forever; if you can take your time, take all the time you need. Lives are on the line here.
Beware the Sunk Cost Fallacy.
Cutting your loses means that you refuse to gamble any further on a doomed prospect. As magical combat wizards, we have the means to recover from small financial setbacks, but not large, network destroying ones.
Loose lips sink ships; we have to be resolves to seal them, by any means necessary.
Small failures can be learned from and corrected in new endeavors, but if we persist in following through on a doomed prospect we are setting ourselves up for simple failure, at best. At worst, everyone gets killed.
To learn from your mistakes, you have to be alive to do so.
To find out a component's breaking point, you have to compress a sample until it starts groaning under the pressure. The same philosophy applies to how far we can push the various components of any organization we want to build to last.
(To clarify, we do not have to break a person, we just see how far they can reasonably handle steadily increasing workloads without crumbling under the stress. This insures that we do not overwork any teammates or future employees while still being as efficient/profitable as possible. Think of it as exercise: painful in the short term, but worth the effort in the long term.)
Our one true PC is a 13 year old child combat wizard who has magical powers that allow him to punch faces really hard, use the source code of the universe, gamble somewhat reliably, lie his ass off when needed, and listen to voices from another reality in his subconsciousness.
Everything we do is through this one character, and what he doesn't know prevents us from acting as we please in the MfD world. If we want to do anything, Hazou has to have some plausible idea to enact it.
His non-magical education is extremely basic by our standards, so if we want him to do amazing things like optimize his world, we have to have him learn how to even conceive of how to do so.
He has access to (mostly) feudal level technology (and, therefore (presumably) feudal level science). Exact measurements and precise calculations may be a bit beyond him at the moment.
He lives in a realistic world where NPC's don't follow tropes for the sake of following tropes; each have their own agendas and agency.
He does not have to be a hero or a villain if we do not want him to be either; we can choose his destiny for him and make him into whatever we want him to be. This does not apply to our other sorta PC's characters as strictly, but they generally do follow Hazou's advice.
He is a smart kid, but he is still a kid. We can cut him some slack if he messes up occasionally.
Noburi: "Hazou, we are worried about you again. You've been laughing more maniacally than usual lately.
Hazou: "That's because I've finished my ultimate creation: Cthulhu in a Can, for when you really need to send that extra special 'screw you' to an entire small nation."
Noburi: "...you put an elder god in a seal?"
Hazou: "Not really; it's just a seal design that kept going wrong and tentacles came out, so I decided to weaponize it."
Noburi: "...and how do you know its enough to destroy only a small nation?"
Hazou: "You know how Zabuza killed everyone else in Hidden Swamp?"
Noburi: "...yes..?"
Hazou: "And you know how Zabuza was most likely coming after us next?"
Noburi: "I still have nightmares about him."
Hazou: "Well, I threw one of these seals in the general direction of Mist and no one has heard about Zabuza since, so... you're welcome."
Noburi: "Moving on, why didn't Kagome stop you from messing with the monsters that live between realities?"
Appearence-altering make up is a must-have if we need to go somewhere unhenged for some reason, but otherwise it takes too long to put on, and then it will rub/melf off under the clothmask or scarf or what not.
Alternatively just smear face paint over faces under the mask to help break up features?
As for hair, the only one who stands out is Mari. The rest of us already have perfectly ordinary (by EN standards) dark/brown hair. Though if temporary dyes are a thing, going neon pink might be an option, as a distraction.
Appearence-altering make up is a must-have if we need to go somewhere unhenged for some reason, but otherwise it takes too long to put on, and then it will rub/melf off under the clothmask or scarf or what not.
Alternatively just smear face paint over faces under the mask to help break up features?
As for hair, the only one who stands out is Mari. The rest of us already have perfectly ordinary (by EN standards) dark/brown hair. Though if temporary dies are a thing, going neon pink might be an option, as a distraction.
To be fair, while henged, their makeup won't rub or melt, so I think that's worth doing. And yeah, camo-type facepaint would be an acceptable alternative to proper contouring, but something is quite necessary.
1. He can. Resources will help (typical ones like medicine, herbs etc.) but the nature of the damage you've taken means they're not critical.
2. Four weeks for the more lightly injured. He's stuck with twelve.
3. Yes. Concentration issues aside, being just that little bit slower and less agile can be a big deal when it comes to surviving sealcrafting experiments.
They're nominally neutral territory, mostly because they're barren expanses of rock that nobody wants. Inoue-sensei notes that if she were a neighbouring ninja village, she'd be sending ninja to periodically comb the area over for enemy staging posts etc. as a form of punishment duty.
You don't know anything about the current situation in Iron except a couple of rumours, but assuming the hunter-nin moved in not long after you left, they'll probably be done by now, and back to hunting luckless missing-nin in other parts of the world.
We talked about it, but aren't going to do it. Honestly, on the meta level, having the players be in charge of a party rather than an individual (most of the time, anyway) has sometimes been a headache, at least for me personally. Keiko and Mari's ability to critique plans always seems at risk of removing player agency, because a rational quest is meaningless if you're not allowed to make your own mistakes. To say nothing of the fact that your assets include a particularly good jōnin. That's a gamebreaker right there, and has seriously skewed the calibre of challenges your party is able to take on, and their odds of success in countless instances.
Keiko and Mari's ability to critique plans always seems at risk of removing player agency, because a rational quest is meaningless if you're not allowed to make your own mistakes.
I certainly understand this, but at the same time having people to point out the obvious problems we sometimes miss has been such a blessing, and aside from the recent meta-level mishap in planning phase, I have felt little loss of agency for their involvement in our plans. It's felt more like, without them, we might still be back in Iron just because we'd be checking and doublechecking everything (oh thank god for Kagome covering us on the paranoia end of the spectrum too) we do and making updates kind of a drag in the same way they were in the VHitM. S'how I see it, anyway.
Regarding our immediate plans, I think our best bet might be to visit a port city and get a more accurate sea map from those there (and instructions on how to read it) to find a more out of the way island than the major ones shown on that map to hole up in.
You don't know anything about the current situation in Iron except a couple of rumours, but assuming the hunter-nin moved in not long after you left, they'll probably be done by now, and back to hunting luckless missing-nin in other parts of the world.
About what I expected. We will still need to check out the rumors, but Iron is looking more and more attractive to me.
Keiko and Mari's ability to critique plans always seems at risk of removing player agency, because a rational quest is meaningless if you're not allowed to make your own mistakes. To say nothing of the fact that your assets include a particularly good jōnin. That's a gamebreaker right there, and has seriously skewed the calibre of challenges your party is able to take on, and their odds of success in countless instances.
To be fair, Keiko and Mari also have access to info that Hazou, as ninja, should and would know, but players, who are (probably) not ninja can't and don't.
And while we weren't supposed to have a personal Jounin, we were also not supposed to be twice-missing nin. (RIP, Shikigami and Hidden Swamp)
@Velorien, @eaglejarl: I still think Keiko deserves a TYS point. She saw the woman she thinks of as a big sister, and has a crush on, try to kill herself and nearly die, but for her quick thinking in utter panic.
This made me pause to think about whether a 15yo is all that 'little'. After all, I was 15 not too terribly long ago.
Then I actually thought about it, and 15 is entering freshman year of high school here in the US. Like, holy shit, when I see freshman I always worry I'm gonna step on them, they should be at home complaining about doing chores, not murdering people and running for their lives. Then I realized that since he other genin are 13 iirc, they're seventh graders.
And THEN, I realized that in the Narutoverse, the 11-12yo girls I was teaching in the flute section at band camp earlier this month would be most of the way through being manufactured into child soldiers to be thrown into the merciless meat-grinder of shinobi combat.
Yeah, that's about the age where I start considering myself a fully sapient human being. Not an adult by any means but well developed enough that I was capable of thinking about myself and my place in the world, as a moral actor.
Part of why this world is so reprehensible is that the indoctrination starts well before that stage and gets to set the default thought processes and beliefs for the rest of life. That sounds wouldn't be so bad, someone has to set the defaults after all, but the defaults are chosen to perpetuate a problematic status quo and the kids are released into an environment where deviations from the default morality are punished relentlessly.
And now, I'm properly fucking pissed. I'm glad the party already resolved to break this shitstain world and rebuild it better, because if we hadn't I'd have to start pushing for that. Hard.
Immediately: Respond to our teammates using the winning debrief plan. Be really really nice to them. At the moment, it looks like Debrief Plan: Hugs for Everyone will win. Apparently Kei dislikes hugs, so either ask permission before hugging her, or find some other way to convey affection (clear communication no jutsu?).
Get out of Hot Springs. Ask the others where they think looks safest for us right now.
Emphasize the need for a nearby country that has a low ninja presence, make sure to use anti-tracking terrains to our advantage, and Henge. Always Henge.
Find a hamlet and do our "friendly neighbourhood child-assassins" thing that we did in Tea with that other hamlet.
Have Kei as our main public front, with the others mainly resting/researching, and taking it in turns to go with her when they have time (because we shouldn't leave Kei on her own).
When merchants come through town, buy them a round of drinks and pump them for gossip.
Ask them to be on the lookout for more information and promise to give them good trade deals (cheap-ish shipments of ice? chakra beast parts?) in future if they can deliver.
Build a kick-ass Sealing lab.
Stay here long enough to do sealing training/research as Hazou's training/research plans direct.
Make time for Kagome to pursue his own sealing projects.
Discuss our sealing projects with Kagome. Show him our tech tree, and once he's stopped screaming, try to get his opinion on what projects are safe to pursue at the moment. Get his advice on what would be good force-multipliers.
Give Kei some space to calm down for a little while. Later, hold a team meeting to make it clear to Kei how grateful we are that she saved Mari, and how awesome we all think she is, and how absolutely no one thinks any less of her because of her crush including Mari.
Have a team(-sans Kei) meeting beforehand (if we get an oppurtunity to talk for a couple of minutes while she's not around, else ignore this) while we're letting her calm down to plan out how we want this discussion to go (which means going over what we want to tell her to make sure that we're not either forgetting something important or thinking of saying something stupid).
Offer to spend some time with Kei doing something she enjoys to cheer her up.
Have Kagome break the cipher on our 1/3 of the tattoo.
- Keiko and maybe Hazou might be helpful for Kagome doing the crypto thing, which might in turn be a nice distraction and hopefully confidence boost for Kei
- Someone mentioned earlier that it might be infeasible to exclude Keiko from an initial meeting unless she's off to the Summon Realm, so perhaps include an option to chat with everyone individually and make sure we're all on the same page? Probably start with Mari, to ensure we aren't out of line socially.
- I'll start working on a seal shortlist to show Kagome such that he won't immediately kill us
So the chapter ends with us more or less safe in our HS camp after a lot of running around, and with Keiko blurting out a confession. Well then. E: We're actually under the last S of Hotsprings, where river hits the sea. E2: I don't see a full agreement to make the plan just "resettle+talk" so back to long-term mode.
[X] Action Plan: Distract, Defuse, Deescalate
Goals:
Survive
Heal up
Hold onto sanity
Methods:
Remind everyone to keep the priorities straight/"Can we save this till later"?
Clear communiation? Why I never!
Let things calm down a bit.
Settle in for the night, pick watch shifts, get dinner, check perimeter, something normal team can cling to while we adjust to what happened.
Quietly fill in Kagome on basics of what happened: ran into a jounin, had to kill him, had to run. Complicated stuff save for later.
Leave in the morning
Stabilize injuries as best as possible with henged travel in mind
Noburi gets his chakra up via any streams we come across
Keep drama on down low, we can have a nice big breakdown once we arrive at the new place
No really, autopilot is good here. Do the necessary things first. Compartmentalize, etc.
Go to Iron. Why?
Because that's one place where they won't expect missing nin to go
Enough time passed since Big Stuff happened that it shouldn't be crawling with hunters anymore.
Because we have an expert on survival in Iron forest right here with us.
Because we know a healer in Yuni who might be amenable to patch us up and resume Noburi's lessons
for a price, but we have something like 5k and we can get more.
Because there are casinos there which can serve as a source of money, info and perhaps even more seals.
Go to Iron. How?
Run West into Fire, past Rice, get into Iron via Fire/Iron border.
Or something?
On the way to Iron:
Visit several border towns, catch any rumors on hunter-nin activity and general state of the world.
Once in Iron?
Settle down somewhere else in the forest, defer to Kagome here.
Save Sealing shenanigans till we have a proper lab.
Also save shenanigans till we're at least 2 dice better
Once we are fit to do research, see research plans
Visit the clinic in Yuni for that sweet healing, arrange for Nobby to resume his lessons once he's fit for it.
Hashimoto-san, Noburi missed you so. Please take him back under your wing for a bit longer.
Make money by small-time gambling
Buy sealing supplies (we know a good paper shop, Nobby can have that rematch)
Get Kagome to work on salvaged code <- for all y'all telling me to add it, it was there all along!
Keiko and maybe Hazou might be helpful for Kagome doing the crypto thing, which might in turn be a nice distraction and hopefully confidence boost for Kei
Keiko has a month to hang out with Pangolins. Make friends, get relashionship advice. Can't be worse than ours.
Something else?
Once we settle down, full debrief:
Winning debrief plan goes here.
Contingencies:
If someone comes after us, running is preferred to fighting.
Opsec, yeah? Disguises, fake names when we're visiting places, the usual.
Minimize trail while on the road. We've done so much running, we should have a routine by now.
Update can be limited to moving to Iron+Big Talk, if thread/QM prefers, with long-term things to do saved till next time.
_____________________________________________________________
Honami is something like 6 weeks due, last we heared? In about a month or so it would be good to check out the place (from afar) and anonimously deliver some ice. Like, we're still awful, but marginaly less so. Best not to wait till birth. Or maybe arrive early and wait till birth so we can leave a gift while everyone is busy.
Maybe get someting other than ice too. Maybe stick around for a bit to make sure HS ninja really don't go after her.
Eh, we can hash out details next time.
______________For reference: ___________
Once we have a secure place, talk about the mission
Full debrief, then discuss
Hugs for hugs-inclined people
Mad props Kei, for saving the day
Where did it all go wrong
On that note, we gotta learn when to fold it IC (I will say that OOC we got it covered)
Optional personal talks later, if we can manage it without being heavy-handed, as we have always been up to now. Personal preference:
hang out with Noburi for a breath of normality
hang out with Akane, just because
hang out in Keiko's general vicinity, drawing blanks or whatever. Silent support might be best we can do at this point, and she'll know we're there to talk to if she wants to.
If we get to talk about her worth to the team, point out how she just saved Mari (and everyone) not through pangolins, but her own power and Mori savvy. She, Keiko did that.
