Also, watching
SGDQ and it occurs to me that Hazou is literally
TasBOT.
This is set in the same world and at around the same time as my previous
far future omake. Thanks to
@OliWhail and
@Cariyaga for betaing.
Omake: Literally TasBOT
"I'd like to thank Talkative_Tanuuki and Weldnaut for their wonderful run of Tailed Beast Ball: The Magic Thread." said the announcer. "We'll be starting the Kurosawa block at 3 o'clock. In the meantime feel free to get some refreshments, lounge around a bit, and send in your donations."
Tai took a moment to close her eyes and melt into her seat in the large hall. She enjoyed the speedruns as much as any of the other attendees, but the Kurosawa block was why she had attended every Games Finished Fast for the past four years in person. It was the most dangerous event at GFF but was always so very worth it. Not to mention, the rumour was that this year was going to be something special.
The Kurosawa were almost magical, one of the few bloodlines whose powers still matched the stories of their ancestors. The Hyuuga got to see the flow of pure chakra for a scant few seconds. The Kaguya could shape and alter their bones at the same rate their nails grew. But the Kurosawa could repeat every motion they have ever made perfectly. It never sounded powerful when put like that, but unlike most other bloodlines it worked all the time. It didn't require chakra to use and could help them learn physical tasks at unheard of rates.
It also made the Kurosawa perfect for speedrunning videogames. If they could perform the perfect set of motions once, they could do it over and over again. This was such an unfair advantage that eventually the Kurosawa had to complete in their own segregated brackets, but without that they would dominate the speedrunning community.
Frankly, Tai was glad she didn't have to pit her times against a Kurosawa, but they were still an integral part of the speed-gaming community. So, she was glad the organizers of GFF had decided to give the Kurosawa a block of their own. Over time it had matured into a yearly competition between all the Kurosawa clans to see who could present the best demo and show off their skills for the audience at GFF. That fierce competition usually led to it being one of the most spectacular displays of skill in the week-long event.
Finally, the intercom crackled to life to knock Tai out of her musings. The Kurosawa block was about to start. Two young gamers came out onto the stage. The first showing some sleek muscle and a wicked grin as he playfully twirled an easel in one hand, and the second looking like she was getting tired of her friend's bullshit as she carried a rolled up console and a game cartridge.
"We'd like to welcome Seizo and Akane Koi-Kurosawa for this year's Kurosawa block. They'll be starting off with a run of The Great Frog Sage : Chronicles.", said the announcer as the pair set up.
"Hello everyone and welcome to the Kurosawa block. Before we get started, I'd like to thank everyone for coming out to support Mednin Across Borders. Also, we'll be a bit light on technical details this time around, but some of our experts are recording Sensecasts with full commentary", said Akane as the boot glyphs appeared on the console.
Looking almost bored with the controller in her hand and Seizo behind her, Akane says "As you all have probably guessed, I'm Akane and the git behind me on the couch is my little brother, Seizo. I'll be doing most of the hard work while he sits around snarking at you all. We both run a number of the Great Frog Sage games, but a lot of what we do revolves around breaking the games in progressively more ludicrous ways."
As the game finishes booting, Seizo takes over the commentary "Akane's going to be running The Great Frog Sage : Chronicles. For those of you who don't know this is the second game in the series and the one which first introduced its now iconic mechanics. Joshiro, our hero, can summon frogs that squash enemies, act as platforms, or pull you around the screen. He uses the help of his frog friends to rescue the princess Tsunade from the evil snake demon Osamu"
Tai watches intently as the run continues in this manner, Akane perfectly navigating levels as Seizo talks about the history of the game or the exact tricks being used. Problem is, it's all quite boring. She's already heard this historical commentary on previous runs, and watching a Kurosawa play is unexciting. It's all perfect movements with no risk of failure or the challenge of recovery.
Just as Tai is about to leave for some refreshments the tone of the run changes. Akane moves off the usual speedrun path for Chronicles and takes a detour to what is one of the most difficult levels in videogaming history.
"So, Akane. I've been thinking, I know Chronicles is historically important and all but it's not really my favorite game in the series. Personally I think Great Frog Sage vs. The Six Fold Path is better. It has a cool new villain, the difficulty curve isn't trying to skin players alive, and, most importantly, better graphics."
As he says this, Akane perfectly performs dozens of the tick perfect movements needed to dodge past hundreds of snakes and one weirdly mobile slug.
"Honestly, I don't know why everyone complains about the difficulty curve. Chronicles has always been pretty easy for me", says Akane, to chuckles from the audience.
"Still, I think we should switch games. The audience is probably getting a bit bored of this.", says Seizo before turning to the audience "What do you think? should we switch games?"
Tai thinks the muttering from the audience is inconclusive at best, but the two Kurosawa move on with their demo anyway.
"Fine Seizo, let me set up the new console." says Akane as she starts making weird jittery movements with Joshiro. This goes on for a moment, until suddenly the images on the console flicker and warp.
Seizo takes a moment to explain. "Right now Akane is performing what we call a seal injection attack. The movements she's making exploit a bug in the game's code and let us rewrite contents of the game's scroll. Every time she summons a frog, a portion of the seal is replaced with a new glyph. The exact section of the seal changed as well as the glyph chosen are based on the last two digits of her score, and with enough summons we could rewrite the entire thing.
"But the more technically inclined among you might have noticed a problem here. Chronicles runs on the Ryuta 16, but Six Fold Path ran on the Ryuta Special, a 32 bit console. The console we have here simply cannot run the game we want to play.
"There are ways around this. Instead of converting the scroll for Chronicles into the scroll for Six Fold Path, we're going to turn it into an emulator, a seal that can mimic the function of another seal.
"Yet there are still issues here. Most emulators are limited by the power of the system they're running on. Trying to emulate the Special on the Ryuta 16 would be unplayably slow, and that would be unacceptable at Games finished Fast.
"So we're doing something slightly different, our emulator doesn't try to use the 16 on its own, it also creates a chakra construct. One that can mimic a Ryuta Special at full speed."
Tai blinked. Building a computer out of a chakra construct rendered by other computer has always been theoretically possible, but to do it for something more than a toy example? That had never been done before. And to show it off at a GFF? This was amazing. The Koi-Kurosawa must be breaking new ground to make this even vaguely possible.
Soon, the console's screen flashed black and displayed a loading bar.
"Now, writing the entire emulator by summoning frogs would take far too long. So I've gone ahead and used that technique to create a simple program, that lets me enter data into the system more efficiently. Not to mention this lets Seizo help me input the code for the emulator and the entire seal for Six Fold Path."
On cue, Seizo picks up a second controller and the siblings hands start moving faster than the eye can see. They're pressing buttons and moving joysticks so quickly that Tai can hear a soft buzz as the loading bar ticks ever closer to complete.
Once the pair finish entering the data they need, the console immediately flashes into the boot sequence for the Ryuta Special. But despite this, the glow from behind the console starts getting distracting.
"That's unreasonably bright", Tai mutter to herself as the
telltale green shimmer of chakra leakage becomes visible behind the console. Something was off about this, it was at least as bright as the experimental elemental reactor she once saw. That leaked about 10,000 cd of chakra per second, but they never ran it for long and it was apparently important for research purposes. And the demo's leakage was getting brighter!
A minute or two later the console was at least ten times as bright the reactor. Probably somewhere around 100,000 cd of wastage a second. Now, this was at odds with the 10 cd of chakra that an individual could produce in a day, that money would happily power any of the original consoles for a week, or pay for 3 solid meals. Tai did the maths in her head, if this went on for another 20 minutes it would waste more chakra than this GFF had received in donations.
This was insane. It's an amazing technical achievement, but to gaudily waste power like this, at a charity event, when they could just have donated that cash instead. What The Fuck. Tai was furious.
This sort of tasteless bullshit was everything Tai hated about the bloodline clans. She could stomach them most of the time, but even the clans with useless powers stuck together in a way that put everyone else on the back foot. They threw their weight around to make laws that were better for them, and everyone else be damned. They got the best positions in government and business. Bloodline kids got into the best schools, with administrators fighting over them in a way they never fought over baselines.
By the end of the block Tai was fuming. Those smart asses spend more money to put on a good show than most of us would ever see in our lifetimes, and why? For the good of the clan. Hell, this was probably the first step in GFF becoming a walking advertisement for Kurosawa. Even the finale, getting the entire setup to erupt in self-immolating tentacles was an advertisement and a threat: Our seal-hackers are so good we can control the tentacles, and we're confident enough to do it in public.
This sort of thing had been going on for centuries and it had to stop. It was time for a revolution and, if she had to, Tai would lead the way.
[] Write In: What does Tai do now?
Just an FYI, Tai is about 20 and might not be the most reliable narrator about the state of a world of billions, with hundreds of million bloodline holders. Mind, she's not entirely wrong, just ignoring that large groups are made up of individuals with many different motivations.
Also, 1 cd is about equivalent to $1 in purchasing power and 10,000 cd is about the same as 1 of the chakra points that we spend right now. Yes, their money is batteries, because sealing is weird.
The Koi blew millions on this demo and are still spending less actual chakra than Nobby did on our latest fight and getaway.
