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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Sir Stompy said:
Sooooo

1) No scouting actually took place. And we wasted a bunch of necromancy time by not doing any seal research either.

2) We're going in with people who can't easily run away to the Seventh Path if we get in trouble

3) Nobody seems to have realized that we have UGLSPs that can protect us from bad air.

Was the plan not clearly written or something? I'm legit at a loss here.
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1. The first round was explicitly stated to be scouting and was explicitly shown to be only shadow clones. Why do you think Noburi didn't come with?

2. You wanted to do this with no one but Kei and Hazō and Noburi? Or you wanted to make this non-Gōketsu? Whatever, relax and wait for the second half. You'll be glad.

3. Did you read the part where they literally pulled out purifiers and put them on their faces before popping? Had they had another round or two they would have tried Tunnelers' Friends but they started with purifiers.

Did I try to build a trace of narrative tension by using people's names instead of writing "the shadow clone of Kei" or "the copy of Hazō WHO IS A SHADOW CLONE BECAUSE PRIME IS NOT IN DANGER DON'T WORRY" or "Mari ExplorerWhoIsAShadowClone"? Yes. Yes I did. I trusted people to pick up on it.

After the fact I realize that it may not be possible for Kei to create shadow clones who think of themselves as her instead of Snowflake. I'll check with @Velorien on that one, but my presumption is that she wouldn't want to order Snowflake into danger, preferring to do it herself.

Yes, I missed the "hours of scouting happened and Hazō has no clone hours" thing. Whatever I'll change a couple of words and fix that.

I went to sleep at 10pm so I'm guessing I'm still sick. I'm awake now and I'll see if I've got a little writing time before I probably have to go back to sleep.
CommunismWillWin said:
Shouldn't it be Snowflake in that first scene? Or was 'Kei' used just for dramatic purpose there?
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Yes, it was a Kei shadow clone. Hence why when she and everyone else disintegrated, they reappeared and talked about how their shadow clones died.
 
eaglejarl said:
Hazō was hoping to find a seal-based weapon that could dispose of Dr4gons, especially since he had no idea how all the ground-bound Clan Bosses would contribute to a battle against flying enemies. If he didn't manage to come up with something, there was a good chance that the Crusade would fail, all the Clan Bosses in attendance would be eaten, and the Dragons would conquer the Path.
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That's... a good point. Can we provide Skywalkers to the Bosses, if it's a good idea to get them in the air? Should we make a seal that prevents the dragons from flying? Use an explosive PS to make them crash down?
We could just provide the bosses with ranged attacks (explosive PS) and emergency retreat paths (tunneller's friend)
Edit: now that I think about it, would it be possible to stick delayed skyslicer seals to rocks, launching the rocks against the dragons and win in a shower of gory glory?
 
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eaglejarl said:
Maybe it's the tail end of this stupid bout of stupid COVID or maybe I'm just being lazy.
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Laziness doesn't exist, whether it's the neurological virus or something else - if you don't feel like the energy to do it can be summoned your brain and body know themselves best and you both need and deserve a rest.
Thank you for this beautiful chapter and please take good care of yourself
 
eaglejarl said:
I went to sleep at 10pm so I'm guessing I'm still sick. I'm awake now and I'll see if I've got a little writing time before I probably have to go back to sleep.
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[Gestures with the Designated Hivemind Rolled Up Newspaper]

Don't put your health in jeopardy. We can wait if it means you recover more fully. Drink water, take medicine, get rest, and all the other things that you, as a grown adult with full bodily autonomy, are likely already doing.
 
Velorien said:
I'm unclear what you mean. "Safely dispose of" sounds like you mean "analogously to nuclear waste", but I don't see how that's compatible with "material reused".
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I meant "1) what is the normal and safe way to destroy a paper seal of any kind without risking any sealing failures or activations and 2) what would be the normal way to do this with 3D seals made of stone and 3) if a 3D seal made of stone were to be destroyed without triggering or causing a sealing failure what happens to the stone and how does it compare to the stone used to make the 3D seal in the first place."
 
eaglejarl said:
"Didn't seal failures used to be cute and amusing little things like moss over your body or talking porcupines?" Noburi asked. "I remember when seal failures were cute and amusing little things like that. I liked those kinds of failures."

"Those still happen," Hazō said absently, his eyes searching for threats in the glass. "Pretty much every day when you're doing research.
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Sounds conflicting with prep days not requiring infusion
Velorien said:
No. These activities do not require infusion.
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eaglejarl said:
If they're larger than thirty or forty feet then there's no way to know ahead of time how big they're going to be or if they're still propagating.
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interesting that hazou didn't mention stagnation as a reason

eaglejarl said:
"Fuuuck me," said Hazō Prime as the memories of his clone slammed into him.
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whew. if this was prime and they escaped without dying wonder if that would be enough to avoid stagnation. If so maybe we can poison ourselves in a controlled environment to remove stagnation.

eaglejarl said:
Race numero dos. Consequences for failure: Akatsuki, their power swollen beyond stoppable levels, wielding an iron fist to bring the world to 'peace', or whatever Pain thought passed for it. More importantly, he would never see Akane again.
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Wonder why he thinks Akatsuki wouldn't resurrect people. Especially non s-rankers like akane (unless they learn that she knows EM nuke).

eaglejarl said:
"The clones clearly can't handle the air," Hazō said. "Meat people are a lot more durable, so we should be able to withstand it at least long enough to retreat."
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What. This sounds like incautious logic.
 
roobee said:
Sounds conflicting with prep days not requiring infusion
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As I understand, it's successful research rolls that don't complete the seal that cause these. They:
  • Require infusion
  • Don't do what the sealmaster intended to do
  • But also don't cause a "Sealing Failure", which are specifically when an invalid seal is drawn or infused.
    • In the programming metaphor often used these read to me as Syntax Errors vs a valid, but incorrect program
So they do unpredictable, but mostly harmless things.
 
But we usually do more than 1 or 2 prep days (significantly more?) for research. So the pretty much every day sealing failure statement wouldn't make sense if it was only the roll at the end of prep days. Unless by research hazou meant the day of the roll and not the prep days, but that would feel weird.

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Kylinger said:
In the programming metaphor often used these read to me as Syntax Errors vs a valid, but incorrect program
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We could check whether the minor harmless sealing failures are valid but incorrect programs by checking hazou's memory for whether he downloaded them. We know the major sealing failures hazou couldn't download.
 
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roobee said:
But we usually do more than 1 or 2 prep days (significantly more?)
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I'd bet he doesn't usually, actually. It's only on hard seals that he uses prep, and he's researched a lot more easy seals than hard seals. This last cycle we did several genin seals, all with daily no-prep infusions. That's an infusion daily, with some days up to three. Perfectly in line with Hazo's casual "Pretty much every day".

I doubt we are intended to pick too closely at this bit of narrative, but it would be interesting to attempt to download a failure. I suspect it'd either not download, or that re-infusing it would cause an inconsistent and unpredictable minor failure like the first time. I doubt we'll get oodles of usable silly "conjure fast blue hedgehogs" seals.
 
Do we want to offer to adopt Naruto again?
With Asuma wearing the hat and Naruto next-in-line there's a lot less political nessecity to maximising council seats.
This also helps us read him in on necromancy without spilling to Asuma (clan secrets!)

And we're sitting on *three* armour jutsu that would be serious power-ups for Naruto.
PCJ and Ghost Scales are quick to learn and would make Naruto way stronger.

Longer-term, maximum PEA would make Naruto nearly unstoppable. He has the chakra to fuel it, and making his dozens shadow clones go from incredibly fragile to nearly invincible would push him to the very top of S-rank.

---

He might refuse, but I don't think he'd hold it against us.
Our pitch can have 3(4?)parts.
  1. We have Goketsu-only armour jutsu that can force-multiply you like nobody's business.
  2. We value your council, and would like your advice on various matters that are clan secrets. (implied: you can stop us before we do dumb shit)
  3. Jiraiya wanted us to invite you to our family.
  4. We've built our family our of strangers with different traumas, and made it a place of genuine love, connection, and belonging. We'd like to invite you into that.
Worth a try?
 
I suspect he would never accept us being in a position of authority over him, so this would have to go hand in hand with making him Clan Head.
 
We have Word of Kei that Naruto doesn't trust Hazou whatsoever. Naruto is fine with the Goketsu Clan. Naruto is friends with Noburi, Kei, and Akane... Naruto just doesn't trust Hazou with any amount of power/influence.

I doubt Naruto would be willing to be adopted into the Goketsu Clan, much less a Goketsu Clan where Hazou has ultimate authority over Goketsu Ninja.
 
I mean...let's be honest, it doesn't matter what title Hazou has, he has 0 authority over Naruto...or any jonin really.
 
Honestly, I'm fine giving up on naruto. We fucked up and lost his trust, and we have more important things to do than gain his trust back (which will probably be a long and drawn out process). When we revive Jiraiya let's just ask him to put in a good word to Naruto so that he joins our clan and gets to the top of S rank with our jutsu.
 
CaramilkThief said:
Honestly, I'm fine giving up on naruto. We fucked up and lost his trust, and we have more important things to do than gain his trust back (which will probably be a long and drawn out process). When we revive Jiraiya let's just ask him to put in a good word to Naruto so that he joins our clan and gets to the top of S rank with our jutsu.
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Getting Naruto's trust back(or at least being able to include him in clan secrets) and giving him a big edge against other S-rankers him up help us with Necromancy and possible Akatsuki conflict.

IFF we were confident that we can do necromancy without naruto's chakara and without needing to throw down with Akatsuki, then we wouldn't really need him.

1 (chakra for necromancy) probably isn't the only way, but it might be the fastest/easiest.
2 (fight with Akatsuki other Essies) seems very likely in our future.
 
CaramilkThief said:
Honestly, I'm fine giving up on naruto. We fucked up and lost his trust, and we have more important things to do than gain his trust back (which will probably be a long and drawn out process).
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Honestly, the best thing we could do is to keep doing what we're doing: give Naruto space and show a constant and consistent pattern of prosocial activity.

All of our Uplift projects are good for that, I think.
 
Black King said:
We might not even need Naruto for A-Day if we can get some good Primordial Sealing in.
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Little skeptical of this personally as we'd need to construct a 3D seal at the rift and doing so would almost certainly attract unwanted attention.

I am imagining that whoever we bring out of the Rift is going to be basically dead. At the very least, they will exit with zero chakra and therefore not be combat-capable. Maybe we could get in the Rift undetected with a 3D seal but if we have one sitting there when we try to get out, I expect both Akatsuki and Leaf kill teams to be waiting for us. Maybe that would be compatible with bringing Pain out, as the Akatsuki will murder anyone who touches him and that protective umbrella will probably extend to us, but if we grab Jiraiya, Sasori or whoever will go through us and the Leaf team like we're tissue paper.
 
FaintlySorcerous said:
Little skeptical of this personally as we'd need to construct a 3D seal at the rift and doing so would almost certainly attract unwanted attention.
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tbf I was more referring to 3D seals improving upon things like explosions and other 2D seals. A TN 80 Explosion starts threatening all of Akatsuki. A single element 5SB to block the rift is pretty good, etc.
 
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