Also, Minatosealing is movable. This matters a lot both for making a "move the rift" seal, and for making combat-deployable seals we can run around with.
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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
-
- Tags
- naruto rational 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
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Tbh I don't really care about this that much personally
Not opposed or anything, just meh on it
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
My opinion here largely depends on what we can do with it. Until we know that, I don't really care either way.
And combining disciplines is not easy.
Oro and Jaraiya both have top-tier Sealing and Hacking, but have not successfully combined the disciplines.
Similarly, Jaraiya spent more than a decade failing to invent 3D sealing. Having the pieces wasn't enough, it required downloading and studying the great seal to learn how to put it together. Cracking minatosealing requires minatos didactic sealchain.
I don't want to sink to much time into forcing these disciplines to combin, vs actually useing the disciplines.
- Location
- UK
To expand on these points, which I believe are misleading:
- Ask a Private Question exists to get answers from staff, but does not serve as a way to dispute rulings, and is not an appropriate avenue to do so. It neither has power to act on disagreements, nor has visibility to surface them.
- Users other than the infracted individual do not have an official means to dispute rulings, as users are expected to go through Arbitration (that thing with the Advocates aka. play lawyers), and that avenue is only available to the infracted user.
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- Location
- Pacific standard
This is what the Akane Seal Bank is
It is said that there are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen. So it is for MfD: there are months where nothing happens, and updates where the trajectory of the narrative is dramatically altered. I'm almost certain the next update will be one of those.
And it's times like these, more than anything else, that make me love this quest. The suspense, the anticipation, the true unpredictability of a story that is simulated, not plotted. There's nothing else quite like it.
So once again, congratulations to the QMs. You are creating something extraordinary.
And it's times like these, more than anything else, that make me love this quest. The suspense, the anticipation, the true unpredictability of a story that is simulated, not plotted. There's nothing else quite like it.
So once again, congratulations to the QMs. You are creating something extraordinary.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
It's also not confirmed that this is how it works. It's Kagome lore, and doesn't particularly sound at-risk for being something unique to an alt-reality like Lupchanzen, but it's still at risk for being something wrapped up in general afterlife mythology stories (like the one we heard in Isan) and so may yet be unreliable in some way. Particularly when it's not clear what mechanism allows or enforces such a thing. Does chakra pass across dimensions to stave off the drain there or something?
Of course, as with the Akane Seal Bank, there's no sense in not hedging our bets.
Marked for Death is one of the few stories I've found that's truly given itself permission to go off the rails. Many ordinary stories follow a relatively curated path they've created for themselves, laying foundations only where they know they'll one day walk. Others often still find themselves constrained by the author, who while unaware of what path their story will follow still prove either unwilling or unable to let the story take on a life of its own and stray too far from their initial vision and inspiration.
And yet, here with Marked for Death, the core principles create a story that charts its own course. The world marches to its own pace, events happen not because the author wants them to happen or because they lack the imagination to consider anything else but because when you lay out the world as it exists it becomes clear that the world's already chosen its own future. And here we stand at the gateway of eons, the fate of a world stretching out into the future, and we can truly say that nothing is sacred here. No character is given plot armor, no happy ending is assured, defeat could strike as swiftly and mercilessly as victory.
My knowledge of literature and media avails me not here. I cannot guess what will come next from simple tropey principles, I dare not even try. I am forced, here among virtually no other stories I have read, to truly set aside all the rules and simply engage with the story as it comes. I sit here and wait, and hope, that when the dust settles the dragons are all dead and we have not paid too great a price in achieving that.
Is there a price too great to ensure the future of reality itself? (Aside from, you know, reality itself and other things of similar magnitude which are beyond our ability to gamble with)
Regardless of the outcome, Hazou has done much to ensure it is favorable. Less than he might have but more than he could reasonably have been expected to. We shall have to content ourselves with this.
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
People who have a more general question or disagreement with how things happen and don't actively single out a specific mod action can also publicly make a thread in Saff Communication.
But yeah, the only avenue to dispute mod rulings that's open to bystanders is to encourage the infracted people to appeal and then give them moral support.
- Location
- France
3D Sealing was impossible, until we found an exemple to study.
Minatosealing is impossible, unless you have examples to study. IIRC we have over a dozen such examples (seals 9+ of the Minato Biju seal chain).
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Thursday, or whenever I have added enough to the current 3096 words to feel like it's at an appropriate stopping point. Which would hopefully be once everything is over, but we'll see. Who knows, maybe there will be a part 3! (Hopefully not.)
For reference, Part 1 was 3.2k words...
So, you are at 3.1k... I'll delude myself into thinking that once you write 100 more we'll get it. Gimme gimme. Pretty please.
(Take all the time you need)
There is.. probably no harm in splitting it up into 3 parts unless it wouldn't flow properly if done in parts... presumably it could even be combined into one huge update once they are all finished.
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- Location
- United States
You mean like if Cannai is about to be hit by a massive attack?
- Location
- Yes.
Or if Cannai got Dragon'd?
- Location
- U.S.
No no, even better. We have to stop the instant before Cannai gets hit, right as Hazo is making the handseals for summoning Cannai after chugging a dangerous amunt of chakra water.
And then we get a preview of the next chapter, where Hazo is dramatically upset about something, but its never made clear what so we still don't know if Cannai is alive or not.
Don't give them ideas!
Though to be fair, Summoners being able to bail out their Bosses is kinda cool but it would probably be unreliable at best considering fights can end in a split second. Maybe if we had some seals that could communicate cross-path but we don't. As is, lets say Tsunade needs to save Katsuyu, she would have to unsummon (and pop all her clones) and then do it manually, which would probably take too long. And that's a Summoner who is actively in the fight and can feasibly react to threats to the Boss's life directly, which offsite ninja like Hazou and Noburi cannot do.
On a separate note, uh... if a human learned Sage Mode and to claim 7th Path territory, would they count as a Clan with the ability to get a Summoning Scroll for Summoners to sign? Just imagine...
Summoning Technique : Jiraiya!
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Aodyssey
The glass will not protecc you
- Location
- Chaldea
I was under the impression the King being referred to was the Monkey King, priveleged for being wedded to Spiderwife. The other quote made me think it's probs the Turtle King tho
Chapter 646: A Ravening of Dragons, Part 2
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Tsunade Number18 was in midair, already en route to her victim, when a burst of memories washed over her as, somewhere ahead, Number14 burst.
The Night Dragon's hide was oily and slick, cut in strange and unsettling angles. It did not exist as far as chakra adhesion was concerned; the plan to latch on and tear chunks off until she got to something important was a non-starter. Also, her seals, including her skywalkers, had guttered out the instant she came near the beast.
Tsunade Number18 was already in midair, dropping fast, on the way to attack the Night Dragon.
She cursed and pulsed her skywalkers, hoping to catch herself so that she could go after something she could hurt. No joy; her skywalkers were no longer working. She was going to hit the Dragon and expend her existence uselessly. For just a moment, despair swept over her.
Her jaw tightened as she pushed it away. She pivoted so she was diving headfirst, stretched her left hand forward, and cocked her right fist back. The world around her had disappeared, the existence of light ontologically forbidden when one looked in the direction of the Night Dragon. Still, she was in mid-leap; she didn't need to see her target to hit it. Hopefully.
Ow. There it was.
The impact was more than enough to pop her, even if the creature's reality-denying flesh had not burned away her fist even through the protective wrappings. It didn't matter, because neither impact nor flesh popped her before she could land her blow.
Decades of practice allowed her to gather the energy of her impact with the monster, channel it, shape it, and blast it down through a tunnel of medical chakra that bore the force deep into the enemy before allowing it to erupt.
Her ephemeral existence ended, the force of the impact bursting her chakra envelope. She popped before ever seeing that her blow had done no more than a bee sting.
o-o-o-o
"Remember, brace yourself," Enma muttered out of the side of his mouth. "That Beauty Dragon is a bitch and a half."
Orochimaru15 ignored the words as the pittance they were. The Monkey King was always a ball of nerves before battle and he always ran his mouth to conceal it. Annoying, but unimportant.
Unfortunately, his battle sister had never been as good about not wasting energy on irrelevancies.
"Watch your own self, fuzzball," Tsunade Number17 shot back from where she stood beside Enma. "Not all of us are reprobate skirt-chasers like you, getting lured away from their post by a pretty face."
At least she did not take her eyes off of the dots that were growing rapidly larger in the distance. Grumpy and too easily drawn into a spat, yet still she knew her business. Honestly, though, her sense of priorities seemed to be slipping. She had devoted three instances of herself to bodyguarding Enma? Why? Simple sentiment for a childhood friend and a teacher long gone? Ugh. For that matter, she had devoted one of her to protect the Dog Boss simply because the Gōketsu boy had asked with dew in his eyes! There were far more important beings to protect at this battle. Four of her was a full twenty percent of her non-Prime existences, and—
He pushed the wandering thoughts away and did not let them show on his face. Prime had assigned him to protect Kumokōgō; as a Clan Lady on her own land she would be the most powerful member of the Crusade and it was critical that nothing harm her. Orochimaru15 would do that job.
Enma snorted. "Yeah, well—"
The Monkey King may or may not have continued speaking, Orochimaru15 couldn't tell. The Dragons were suddenly here, seemingly close enough to touch, with the Beauty Dragon on their left flank, the Flesh Dragon propagating to his right, then the sparkle of reflections that was presumably the Mirror Dragon, and on the right flank was the blindness that was the Night Dragon.
Even braced and ready, knowing exactly what to prepare for, he felt the impact of the Beauty Dragon's incomprehensible form. It was like the time that Sensei had unexpectedly come to his lab and seen his latest experiment before it could be hidden away: the Dragon's presence was everywhere, all around him, inside his lungs and behind his eyeballs. There was a sound to it, soft or maybe loud, sweet as poisoned sugar.
He pushed it back, hard: I am Orochimaru of the Sannin. Begone.
The aura slid around his defenses, pressing them in but not breaking them.
"So beautiful..." muttered the turtle to his left. Kamouragiri was larger than any of Gai's summons that Orochimaru15 had ever seen, at least eleven feet tall when standing on his rear legs as he was now. He held a sword in his hands and even through the masking effect of nonhuman anatomy Orochimaru15 could recognize the movements of a kenjutsu master.
"Steady," said Haiwarai, the Hyena Boss. "Be ready. Our turn to strike comes soon."
"Of course, My Lady," Kamouragiri said as he turned and drove his blade into Haiwarai's throat.
Haiwarai gagged and staggered, her eyes going wide at the pain of the sword and the lightning that had sped Kamouragiri's movements and now lashed up his blade and into her, stunning her for a fraction of a moment. Before she could shake it off, Karaneishin leaped atop her, his needle-spiked beak snapping down to sever her spine between the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae.
The turtle and the crow had been suborned and might attack the Empress next; Orochimaru15 was in motion before the sound of cracking spinal bone had finished. The turtle was not a good target for him, its heavy armor difficult to pierce and its lightning aura giving it uncomfortable speed. Orochimaru wasn't certain of the crow's abilities, but it was likely that Itachi's personal summon had been selected for something other than the pleasing nature of his calligraphy. He would take the crow and leave the turtle for the Tsunades.
Orochimaru14 stunned the human-sized crow with a finger-snake to the throat, flesh-melting venom confirming the kill. Nevertheless, there was nothing like too much confirmation, so Orochimaru15 ducked underneath his clone brother and punched the crow in the chest, rings of chakra rippling out from the point of impact to explode its organs. He would have preferred to do surgical damage in order to recover the body for later study but that was unlikely to be feasible in this particular case. Better to be certain.
Tsunade Number20 had been just as fast off the mark as the Orochimarus; by the time Orochimaru15 started to turn his head back she had jumped up onto Kamouragiri's shoulder and punched one arm through the front of his neck and down into his chest, reaching in all the way to the shoulder. There was a muffled whump from inside the turtle warrior and he paused. His sword fell from nerveless hands, his knees buckled, and Tsunade Number20 casually stepped aside before the turtle's massive carcass measured its length in the dust of Arachnid.
"Showoff," Tsunade grunted at him, chinning towards where the crow's body was dissolving into soup. She shook her arm to get the guts off.
"Pot, kettle," Orochimaru15 replied, pulling a cloth from his pocket and tossing it to her.
"Like I said, brace yourself," Enma said grimly.
"No."
The Empress of Arachnid's mental voice was cold, calm and immovable.
"No more of my allies you have shall," she said. "I Kumokōgō am, Empress of Arachnid, Seventeenth of My Name, Guardian of the Seal. You are NOT WELCOME."
The entirety of Arachnid rose up against the Dragon of Beauty. Cataclysmic winds smashed it to the ground and held it pinned in place as every lightning bolt that had ever burst from the heavens came together, joined into one single pillar of destruction, and ashed the monster's lower half. The earth tore open beneath it, dropping it into a chasm, then slammed back together before grinding in opposite directions. It was exactly like a giant clapping its hands on a bug and then rubbing them back and forth to be sure the bug was dead.
The response was immediate; a stream of warped reality flicked out from the distortion that was the Mirror Dragon. Blades of reflection slammed into Kumokōgō, sending her flying in a geyser of blue arachnid blood.
Arachnid reshaped itself and there was a curved shield of earth in an arc around Kumokōgō. The destruction tore into it, sweeping it away like a Water Jet jutsu sweeps away a sandcastle, even as the Empress frantically reinforced it.
The Dragon varied its attack, keeping the jet of destruction trained on her while firing off a series of reflections that swooped across the battlefield, unearthly blades guided by the will of a monster. The first one carved through an elite pangolin warrior, exploding in her chest and scattering her body in all directions so that the rest of the salvo could pass by. The barrage swooped up, curving around like an eel to clip the wing off a condor sniper and continue on without slowing down. Arachnid jutsu burst into the air, silk balls smashing some of the blades while silk nets and focused jets of poison tried to catch or smash the rest. A few were deflected or entrapped but the rest carved through all the barriers. Warriors struggled to get out of the way, but it was almost impossible to dodge something that was naught but a moving reflection.
Orochimaru16 leaped forward, racing towards the incoming mirrorknives, 15 and 17 following hot on his heels. 15's mind was racing, churning through which of his panoply of jutsu could possibly stop these things.
Orochimaru16 flooded the area with a storm of toxic green sand; two of the remaining nine blades burst but the rest continued on, carving their way through in a trail of screaming emptiness that puffed the sand's creator to nothingness.
Fifteen feet behind 16, Orochimaru15 whirled into a bastardized version of the Revolving Heaven barrier, a thing he had been attempting to steal for twenty years and still could not match. Perhaps the true Hyūga technique could have countered all of these things but his ersatz copy stopped four of seven before being destroyed along with its creator.
It was unlike any of the other thousands of times he had died as a Shadow Clone; it was slow, and every mote of his existence was burning and freezing at the same time as something pried its fingers into his mind and peeled it open. He struggled to dispel himself, aware the whole time that his awareness was being carried along inside the alien blades and that in a moment he was going to feel himself carve through the throat of the massive spider he had been ordered to protect.
"Destruction Barrier Technique!" Orochimaru17 cried out, making handseals with desperate speed.
Five minutes previous to and half a mile away from the quick and bloody fight, another group of Crusaders prepared themselves.
"Here they come," Gamabunta muttered, his dagger held low because he was more focused on ensuring that his pipe was properly lit.
"INDEED! REMEMBER OUR BET, GAMABUNTA!"
"Oy!" Gamabunta said, head jerking up. "I wasn't serious about tha—"
The last word was drowned out as Kamehameha bellowed a war cry and leaped into the air, jets of blue lightning erupting from his back legs to hurl him at the approaching Dragons. He opened his jaws and a lance of blue-white energy ripped at the world.
The blast had been aimed at the Beauty Dragon; the entire Crusade had agreed that everyone needed to focus fire on that one first before it could suborn any of them. Kamehameha was flying straight at the target from perhaps two hundred yards away using a weapon that was not deflected by gravity; there should have been no way to miss. Despite that, space refused to flow straight, and thus the blast came nowhere near any of the Dragons. It effortlessly carved a trench fifty feet deep through the ground, incinerated a pangolin jōnin in passing and almost cut Pantsā's leg off. Fortunately, 'Pantsā of the Adamant Scales' was more than mere bragging. The scales in question held under the river of destruction that was Kamehameha's breath long enough for Pantsā to roll aside, aided by the fact that an appalled Kamehameha snapped his mouth closed to shut off the beam when he saw what was happening.
"MY APOLOGIES, LORD PANTSĀ!"
Pantsā growled and threw himself into the air, catching the glimmer that was the Mirror Dragon by surprise as it passed overhead on its way to eat Kumokōgō. He dragged it to the ground and tore into it with claws that were larger than many trees. His massive tongue lashed out, feeling around until it could pin two pairs of its jaws closed. The flesh of that tongue immediately began to smoke and burn, flames of unreality contending with the Will of a Clan Lord to see who could best assert their surety over existence. Pantsā ignored the pain and crushed the Dragon to the ground, kicking at it with his back legs, smashing at it with his mace-like tail, battering and crushing with all he had.
The twisting cable of reflecting destruction emerging from the Mirror Dragon continued to arc up and over the battlefield, striving to erase Kumokōgō's barrier faster than she could build it.
The Dragon's reflected claws tore furrows in his sides even as its empty wings slashed and sliced, sending thin slices of Pantsā's body jetting out in a fountain of blood and scales and meat. The massive Pangolin Lord, probably the single most heavily armored member of the Crusade after Kamehameha, was too well protected to be instantly sundered the way a mere mountain would have been, yet still he bled freely. Still, Pantsā was a canny fighter; he used his tail and the free end of his tongue to guard his flanks even as he smashed at the Dragon with claws and mass.
The twisting cable of reflecting destruction continued to eat at Kumokōgō's barrier.
Other Crusaders were gathering close, firing attacks at the Dragon's sides. Unfortunately, the Mirror Dragon could be seen only as fragments and angles of reflected earth and reflected Pantsā. The Crusaders needed to guess at what was their target and what was their fellow Clan Lord, and they had to hold back their most potent weapons besides lest the damage splatter on one another.
The twisting cable of reflecting destruction continued to eat at Kumokōgō's barrier.
Cannai was there, a Tsunade on his back as he cratered the Dragon's tail into the dirt with one paw. Crystals and plants coated Cannai's body, his claws sheathed in angled blades as long as a human forearm.
Kumafuwafuwa was on the other side of the Dragon, paws the size of wagons crashing hammer blows into the enormous beast. Cracks spiraled across its surface, rendering it easier to distinguish from Pantsā.
Pantsā grunted in pain as the Dragon smashed his ribs with a wing.
Hyōhakken, Lord of Leopards, pounced on the Dragon with a roar and was batted aside. He flew sixty feet and slammed into the ground, half of his lower jaw being steadily eaten away by sparkling mirrors.
Lutrō of the Otters struck at the Dragon's back leg only to find that it was in fact Pantsā. The Pangolin Boss reflexively kicked out and Lutrō was hurled away, bloody claw marks in his chest.
The twisting cable of reflecting destruction continued to eat at Kumokōgō's barrier.
A wall of water surged across the battlefield as Makōmalika of the Sharks clamped a mouth the size of a small farmhouse onto the Dragon, dagger-shaped teeth ripping and tearing, only to have her teeth break and her blood explode in agony before being casually swatted aside.
Tsunades hammered on the Dragon with punches that would have shattered the earth. Its flesh began to eat the wrappings on her hands, forcing her to retreat to change them lest it eat her pseudoflesh as well.
Cannai got one wing between his teeth and yanked, drawing a scream from the monster. A spurt of foul blood from the wound erased a Tsunade, a massive piece of Cannai's crystal armor, and part of Cannai's shoulder. Despite that, he hung on, shaking his head the other way to tear the wound wider. Cracks spread up the wing and across the body, outlining the creature more clearly for the others to attack. On the other side of the monster, Kumafuwafuwa smashed the other wing into the ground and stood on it, pinning the beast in place so that all of the Crusaders could launch accurate attacks.
For a moment, it seemed like it might work. Orochimaru12 even found himself with a brief flicker of hope. Then the Mirror Dragon shrieked and pulsed, black and green energy lashing out and winding around its tormentors, pulling them in close. Cannai's foreonpaw disappeared into one of the mirrors, becoming just another angle on the surroundings. The powerful dog planted his other three legs and braced himself, refusing to be pulled further into the Dragon's body. Tsunade20 slid down his shoulder and balanced on his leg, raining blows down on the Dragon. Each of those blows could have shattered an old-growth tree at the base, but the monster barely noticed she was there. It drew a claw up its left flank and all of the Crusaders who were reflected in that part of its body were slashed with an eldritch blade.
The twisting cable of reflecting destruction continued to eat at Kumokōgō's barrier.
"Saaaa," Tsunade20 hissed, shoving her medic's chakra into Cannai's leg. There was a moment's resistance, an utter impermeability that suddenly parted like water. Her chakra flashed down his body, sticking right at the surface of the skin under the crystalline armor. She sheathed the entire leg from the ankle down, braced herself, and pushed outwards.
The crystalline armor that was keeping the Dragon's body from erasing Cannai's leg was bonded to his flesh; Cannai could dissolve it—leaving himself vulnerable to the erasing touch of the monster—but he couldn't simply shed it. Tsunade's chakra sliced away the topmost layer of skin, severing his connection to the armor and allowing him to pull his leg out as though slipping free from a cast. She leaped once more to sit astride his shoulders as the Dog Lord backed away, snarling at the Dragon.
Pantsā and Kumafuwafuwa tore themselves free of the monster's embrace; the former must have had the front half of his head pulled in, because that area had been flayed. Kumafuwafuwa's right front leg was bone from the thigh down, all of the meat and even the tiniest stain of blood erased by the devouring essence of mirrored nothing that was their foe.
Hidrodobune did not escape.
As Orochimaru12 watched, the last few inches of the struggling Capybara Boss were pulled out of the world. Suddenly it was easier to tell where the Mirror Dragon was; instead of grass and sky, many of its angles now reflected fragments of Hidrodobune fighting to escape, or being torn asunder, or screaming in agony. Here and there a single facet reflected the parts of Pantsā and Cannai and Kumafuwafuwa that had been left behind in their escape.
The Mirror Dragon rolled up to its feet and shook itself, neck lances rattling as they settled into place. The shattered scales and crazed lines up and down its sides and wings erased themselves and the creature was once more nothing but a disjointed collection of angles showing dirt and grass and Clan Boss in the process of being digested.
Author's Note: Voting remains closed.
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