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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Velorien said:
Added, thanks. I note that Juno's own article describes her as having war and Youth among her other aspects, although she is not the goddess of Youth.
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Given you pointing out that "Gasai" means "my wife" I would presume the significance of picking Juno would be her status as a goddess of marriage more than anything.

Connection to War kinda doesn't matter for Roman gods as much as you might expect because pretty much all the main gods were war gods at some point or another. Even Venus (essentially Roman Aphrodite) had a war Aspect called Venus Victrix

The Youth part is new to me...
 
Shrooms said:
Given you pointing out that "Gasai" means "my wife" I would presume the significance of picking Juno would be her status as a goddess of marriage more than anything.

Connection to War kinda doesn't matter for Roman gods as much as you might expect because pretty much all the main gods were war gods at some point or another. Even Venus (essentially Roman Aphrodite) had a war Aspect called Venus Victrix

The Youth part is new to me...
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I'm not saying the connection to war is so much deliberate as it is appropriate.
 
Shrooms said:
Given you pointing out that "Gasai" means "my wife" I would presume the significance of picking Juno would be her status as a goddess of marriage more than anything.
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NOBURI: "I just need something... some sort of sign that she's the one for me."

Yuno: "I am named Gasai Yuno."

NOBURI (sounding like John Mulaney): "And that's my wife!"
 
Sir Stompy said:
@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped

We got these notes a long time ago. I wanted to ask if they'd be worth an Invokable Aspect for sealing research on explosives and explosive variants.

We're looking at working on RRBs again soon, and they're a (very difficult) explosive variant. Having another Aspect to Invoke there would be useful.
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The notes are a valuable historical artifact and have sentimental value, but they are an early work in the field and everything they contain is common knowledge now. They are primarily a narrative set-piece and were meant as a way for Jiraiya to have bonded with Kagome.
 
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(Non-Canon) Chapter 649: The Message
  • Sidestory

    • "Ready for infusion?" Hazō asked.

    Kagome-sensei nodded grumpily. The man was incredibly unhappy with Hazō's latest idea and it was getting to him in a big way. There had been at least four separate occasions where he had opened his mouth to say something, presumably a rant about safety and lack thereof, but then shaken it off without a word. It was disturbing. Still, he was going along.

    Hazō nodded and turned his attention back to the simple slip of paper in his lap. It was a simple idea: a variation of another one of his original seals, the Light Relay, that would instead slightly change the color of the light going in and out. It was a trivial seal for a sealmaster as skilled as he was. It was also one more thing:

    A marker for himself. For his future self.

    The challenges they faced were too large. Resurrection? The degradation of the Great Seal? Akatsuki, with their desire to resurrect Pain and somehow rule or transform the world in likely unwanted ways?

    He needed help, and his dream last night had given him the answer. In it he had stood in fog, the center of a line of Hazōs that stretched out of sight in both directions. Looking over his shoulder, he recognized the clothes of the ones behind him; they were the clothes he had worn yesterday, the day before, the day before that, in a steady line back as far as he could remember his sartorial choices. So, about a week.

    If the ones behind him were his past selves, what about the ones in front? The fog grew thicker faster, his other selves becoming blurry, their exact positions indistinct. Still, they were there. They were there, and when he called out to them their heads turned in surprise, looking back to him.

    He had jerked awake, the dream shattering before it could progress to anything useful. Still, the basic idea was there: what if he could leave a message for a future self, and a future self could call an answer back?

    This seal was his attempt at that. It wasn't a challenging thing to make – and for that, all the better. Given the stakes he was playing with, he didn't need any extra complications. The first infusion of a new seal was a memorable one, so this infusion would serve as a marker in time, a signpost for his future self to send a message. A message that he promised himself to send to himself once he had the ability, which he promised himself he would develop.

    Of course, he'd wanted to do this ritual with a rune instead, but if it didn't work and immediately give him unending, godlike power, he didn't want to be on the receiving end of whatever punishment Orochimaru meted out for breaking the rule on runic research outside the basement.

    He pushed the thoughts away and focused on the infusion. He needed to remember every detail.

    He took it slow, sweating every tiniest detail even more than he normally did. Finally, the final moment came; he poured in the last drop, twisted his chakra into the final loop, and tied it off. Many things happened at once.

    Futures crashed against one another, million or billions of them vaporizing in an instant.

    Wars raged through Potentialities, possibilities blowing to and fro on the winds of fate and chance as 'perhaps' strove to become 'is'.

    And, least impressively but perhaps most importantly, a packet of unassuming off-white paper appeared in midair and fell atop his lap desk with a faint 'plop'. It landed on the smooth surface and slid until it slipped from there to the ground.

    Hazō blinked. His trained mind flickered across lists and tripped along flowcharts, checking to see whether this should be considered a seal failure. Tentatively, he decided it did not so he bent down and lifted the papers.

    He turned the packet this way and that in his hands, considering. It was good paper, heavy and rich, with even color and thickness. Paper suitable for a sealmaster. It had been tri-folded, the edges sealed with wax to form an envelope. An envelope that bulged and was heavy enough to contain a large number of pages.

    He turned it over and the blood drained from his face at the words written on the front. Written in his own hand, above a wax seal with the Gōketsu family crest pressed into it.

    Bonfire! 50 miles, any direction! Go go go!​

    "Bonfire!" he shouted, shoving the packet into his shirt and Substituting away to where Kagome-sensei waited behind the first barrier. He grabbed the older man, repeated the Gōketsu family escape code, and dragged him away.

    They ran. Two, perhaps three hours of pounding feet that required all his training to lock away the screaming pain from exercising his still-burned back. There was insufficient breath to spare for sharing the details with a steadily more nervous teacher who knew better than to demand answers.

    Finally, Hazō came to a halt. Kagome-sensei slowed beside him, still not speaking. They were no longer at the research facility but Hazō was still the SSO and did not need distraction.

    Hazō produced the packet, broke the wax that sealed it shut, and tipped the contents out into his hand. It was not, as he had expected, loose sheets of the same heavy paper. It was one page that was thin, painfully thin, so thin he needed to handle it with care, and then another packet made from moderately heavy paper with the edges sealed shut and the words READ THE LETTER BEFORE OPENING THIS on the outside. He slid the packet back inside the outer packet for safekeeping and read the loose sheet.

    Dear past self,

    I think Kagome-sensei was with you when you did this, right? Sage, I miss him so much. You lucky asshole, getting to stand there with him and listen as he calls you a stinker and talks about your face-on-fire stupid ideas. Were the others there too? I don't remember, which is an extremely bad sign. Was Kei there or had she already...never mind. No, wait, I talked to her yesterday. I think? Yes, she was in on the planning for this. Wasn't she? Gah, stupid Twinings. Maybe a full Redaction, or Counterredaction? Whatever, not now.

    Finish reading this letter before you show it to anyone else. I honestly have no idea if sharing it is stupid or essential, but make sure you have all the information before you decide.

    Oh, be careful about going back to wherever it was that we infused that seal. It might be sitting there humming to itself perfectly happily or it may have gone critical. Depends on whether the shrillings found this Counterredaction point.

    We did it this time. Cracked time like an egg with our clever little stunt. Kagome-sensei was so pissed. (He was there! Hah! Did I remember that before a moment ago or was that a Counterredaction? I don't know. He's such a kidder.) That said, cracking time like an egg might not be all that much of a good thing. You can't put an egg back together.

    If this works at all then I'm going to be very limited in how much mass I can send. I'm also going to be limited in the number of times I can do this: once. Why only once? Because either sending this message wipes me and my reality from existence (please let it be so!) or it doesn't work at all. Or, worst of all, it works but I—you—am too stupid or too slow to fix everything. Well, and because I'm blowing a hole through the gestalt field and consuming a massive amount of chakronic potential. That probably doesn't mean anything to you. Put it this way: sending this message required literally uncountable versions of us to die, along with everyone in their universe, so that we could concentrate all the chakra in those universes in order to punch a hole through time. And when I say 'punch a hole', I mean that literally. Not just time, either. I had to

    Never mind, that's a tangent. The key point is     Don't do this again. Doing it once is going to cause major problems for every Potentiality in the cosmos. Doing it twice would almost certainly cause a… let's just call it a 'highly energetic event'. And I've seen a couple of runic failures now, so now-me's scale for highly energetic is a lot better than then-me's.

    Sage, I wish I could have done this with a rune, and sent you a whole doom fortress. I'm still better with paper seals though, and that means that this is all you're going to get. The Paths weren't built for nonlinear time, and by doing this, I've permanently altered the structure of the Paths. Want the Paths to keep existing? No more time travel. Ideally, never fail a dimensionalism seal or rune ever again but hey, I know me. You. Whatever.

    Huh...I wonder...I can't be the only Potentiality that thought to do this. Maybe one or more of the others are doing it and that's why the

    Wait, should I say that? What if knowing that is the thing that...no, fuck it. I'm not second guessing myself. We talked about it and agreed that this much should be acceptable. There are limits, and this should be within them.

    It's important that I not shape your actions too much. Why? You'll figure it out. Or maybe you won't and I'm about to spend ten minutes failing to infuse this damn thing. Or maybe they'll finally get through the doors, or I'll lose focus and the scraping will— No, focus. Focus, Hazō! I am myself! I am not you, so shut up! No, I won't write that, shut up shut up shut up!!!

    Shit, I'm wasting so much paper and there isn't much. Okay, focusing.

    I/you decided that I/me would use that seal as a marker to send a message back. Congratufuckinglations, it worked. Don't do it again you shithead. But thank you for doing it once.

    This message includes six sealed packets, nested one inside the next like the disasters that you set in motion you absolute fucking moron. So arrogant, thinking that you could run a mission to a resort without murdering millions, or break pieces off a guardian in a cavern without destroying most of a continent. Hah! Fuck that, it was small potatoes in the end. Killing the bigger guardians, that was the problem. Millions of dead and they're on you, Hazō. You, you absolute fucking shit-for-brains careless asshole, skipping gaily through life without thinking about anyone else or the consequences of anything, of how your stupid clumsy feet—

    Sorry, the scraping is getting loud. It wants me to die, thinks that will throw us into disarray. They (it? we aren't sure) aren't that bright. It's mostly Kei who runs things, when she exists. Anyway, the disasters aren't your fault. Our fault. Well, a little. I contributed, I guess. It's really me more than you, except you are me and your choices made me so it's your fault too! Hah! I'm not alone! I don't carry all of it!

    Sorry.

    There are problems coming. You—I—have done things that caused them, or at least contributed. Skywalkers killed the Third and set off WWIV. And maybe V and VI, depending on how you count and whether you're in a Potentiality where AMITY came into existence/survived the Crush. Killing the Dragons unwove the protections and allowed the Great Escape. Killing the Horned One united the warring factions. Ousting Cannai— Stop. Don't let it get to you, Hazō. Ignore it. Breathe, focus. It can't reach you unless you let it. Focus on the page.

    Wait, I actually wrote that? Damn, hands are writing by themselves again. That can't be good.

    Okay, I'm burning paper. Past-Hazō, there are things you need to know and things you need to do to ensure that me and my family and my friends never existed. Do NOT FAIL ME! Please, make it never have been.

    At the same time, I can't tell you too much. Not all at once. I know, I know, now I'm becoming one of the lore forbidders. Sorry. There are reasons.

    Like I said, there are six envelopes inside this one. Each contains a letter with information / instructions, an event description, and the next envelope in the nesting. DO NOT OPEN THE INNER PACKETS UNTIL THE TRIGGER EVENT HAPPENS. I know it will be tempting, but don't do it. Consider this to operate on seal-research protocols and I'm the SSO. Seriously, DO NOT FUCK ME ON THIS YOU LITTLE... Sorry, my head is getting loud again.

    Instructions: Keep the family with you. Mari, Akane, Noburi, Kei, and Jiraiya. Wait, no. Jiraiya and Akane are dead now for you. Or maybe it was only one of them? One of them got captured, I think. Or maybe that got Redacted so that they died? Or Counterredacted? No, that's stupid, why would we have Counterredacted them dead? Fuck. Never mind. If either or both of them are dead then you'll have to rescue them, and the other four. You must.

    We were thinking about going missing back now for you. Analysis suggests that either path might work and we aren't sure which would be better. Whatever, just ensure the family stays together.

    Thing you need to know: The Dragons weren't trying to destroy the Runic Mount—wait, I still called it the Great Seal back you-now. Whatever. They weren't trying to destroy it, they were trying to keep it from breaking down and releasing all the other Dragons. That's why they rarely left the butte. Don't worry, they still needed to die, it just means the timetable accelerates. If I remember right then it was twelve years from when I originally did this little time-traipsing stunt to when the Mount shattered. You might have ten years, or five, or two. Or six hours, who the fuck knows? The Paths are different now. You-now. The whole point of this is to change things.

    You don't have enough for what's coming, so I've included something to help. I've included rift seals, rift runes, and special stuff I made for containing the Dragons better. I never did finish researching the Runic Mount before it exploded. I think I could probably manage it now, but I don't think you have a chance of pulling it off before it goes critical. Can't give you any more runes though. They're half the reason why this timeline's so fucked I'm willing to kill us all off and try again. Of course, maybe you aren't reading this because the whole enterprise failed. Kagome-sensei would have scolded me so hard and told me what a face-on-fire stupid idea this was.

    No, wait. Not 'would'. Did. Twenty minutes ago, right? He Counterredacted himself after the... Shut up, Hazō! Shut up, shut up, shut up!

    Ugh, my hands are writing by themselves again. There's no time to recopy it.

    Trigger event for next envelope: Completion of reading this letter.

    Hazō swallowed nervously and opened the next packet. Sure enough, there were more sheets of the incredibly thin paper and another envelope.

    He gave the first few sheets a quick glance, just enough to verify that yes, they were seal design notes, before going on to the final page. It was short.

    Trigger event for next envelope:

    1. The date is no earlier (earlier! not later, earlier!) than August 7, 1071 AS (you're still using AS, right? Whatever. The 71st year after Leaf was supposedly founded.) AND
    2. The entire family is standing in the cave with the chakra water that Orochimaru told us about.




    All thanks to @eaglejarl for basically writing this chapter.

    The Gifts of Future Hazō​

    FutureHazō wrote in his crosstime missive that he was mass-limited. He also rambled wildly and included a lot of unnecessary junk, some of which I [NB: @eaglejarl wrote this bit] did not bother to mention in the text. A partial list:

    • A selection of recipes from the Seventh Path, most of which can't be made on the Human Path due to key ingredients not being available
    • (Probably as a gift for Kagome), nine packets of insanely hot ground pepper
    • Rambling diary entries regarding days during which nothing interesting happened
    • Into the Fire, Senju Hashirama's lost book. Only the first two pages, unfortunately
    • Literal laundry lists. Not "wash the laundry" but "wash the green shirt, and the two blue socks, and the red pants"
    • Five stanzas of an attempt at creating a national anthem for the Land of Fire
    • Opining on the Political: One Man's Journey Through Government. It's a title page to a book that maybe could have been fascinating if it had an author's name or, you know, a book
    • Orange pulp in a small paper sachet with a note saying "some of the rune stuff gets stinky"
    • Lunar azimuth tables for different locations throughout the EN on 1073-04-03, 1074-04-02, and 1079-04-01
    • Various seal and rune design notes:
      • Rift Seal 0: makes a chakra construct that attaches to a rift.
        • Difficulty: Jōnin.
      • Rift Seal 1: makes a chakra construct that opens the rift when attached to a rift from both sides.
        • Difficulty: Jōnin.
      • Rift Seal 2: sends a sensor through the rift to collect calibration data for further chain seals.
        • Difficulty: Jōnin.
      • Rift Bioseal 0: connects a human's chakra system to a rift.
        • Difficulty: [Hazō does not know biosealing and therefore cannot judge difficulty]
      • Rift Bioseal 1: rapidly empties a human's chakra system into a rift, hopefully inflating it from only one side.
        • Difficulty: [Hazō does not know biosealing and therefore cannot judge difficulty]
      • Rift Rune 0: stabilizes a rift in the center of the rune. Prevents time-related degradation of the rune.
        • Difficulty: Hazō thinks he could maybe do this rune.
      • Rift Rune 1: stabilizes and inflates a rift in the center of the rune. Keeps the rift open for the rune's duration, approximately 2 years, unless prematurely shut down.
        • Difficulty: Hazō thinks this rune is beyond his capabilities.
      • Rift Seal 3: attaches to an opened rift and anchors it to the seal. If the rift is then closed, moving Rift Seal 3 around moves the anchored rift as well. The notes indicate that the movement should be slow, less than 1 mile/hour, to minimize degradation of the rift.
        • Difficulty: Jiraiya
      • Rift Rune 2: creates a "dimensional anchor".
        • Difficulty: Hazō thinks this rune is beyond his capabilities.
      • Rift Seal 4: permanently closes a rift.
        • Difficulty: Jōnin
      • Rift Rune 3: creates a rift between Rift Rune 3 and a Rift Rune 2 at the approximate corresponding location on Naraka. In theory, it should work in reverse.
        • Difficulty: Hazō thinks this rune is beyond his capabilities.
      • Harumitsu's Outstanding World-Saving Rune: HOWS, but runic scale, requiring far less upkeep.
        • Difficulty: Hazō thinks this rune is well within his capabilities.
      • Dragon Part Containment Rune: minimizes the 'Path-aberration' caused by dead Dragon parts.
        • Difficulty: Hazō thinks he could maybe do this rune.
      • Dragon Containment Rune: creates a physical barrier that Dragons cannot cross (humans, summons, and ninjutsu can cross the barrier like normal; seals and runes cannot).
        • Difficulty: Hazō thinks this rune is beyond his capabilities.

    We will provide information on how much substrate/chakra is required for each rune once we've finished sorting out all the exact TNs. Future!Hazō's notes say that the seal's difficulties or effects will change as a result of the actions he took to send a message back in time – at the very least, the astrological differences will be massive and force Hazō to actually re-research the seal, rather than simply follow the instructions from his future self.

    Hazō is champing at the bit to get back to challenging sealing research – among other reasons for this, because he's now stagnant in sealing. Thankfully, his consequence has cleared as of the end of this update, so this won't hurt his XP total too much.

    Difficulty checks:
    • Light Shift
      • Trivial
    • Reality Eater
      • Hazō formulates this as a storage effect that grabs everything in a radius. This is very likely to fail against living opponents, but could be good (e.g.) for tunneling through solid material.
      • Difficulty: Jōnin
      • (Kagome would be beyond disappointed in Hazō for attempting to replicate a sealing failure)
    • Explosive 2.0:
      • Hazō goes for a minimal improvement on explosives to test the waters.
      • Difficulty: Genin
    • Severing Field
      • Difficulty: Jōnin
    • Crystal Transformation
      • Difficulty: Jiraiya
    • Colored Strobe
      • Difficulty: Chuunin
    • Powered Strobe
      • Difficulty: Jiraiya
      • It seems like pumping up the power input is the main limitation. Unfortunate that these are meant to be combat seals, because Hazō's shiny PS stat gives him a nice answer to power-limited seals.
    • Reverse Dampeners
      • Difficulty: Jiraiya
      • Hazō isn't sure, but suspects that however hard these were going to be, having them affect living things definitely pushed them over the top.
    • Mirror Dragon Seals
      • Difficulty: Jiraiya
      • What did you expect?
    • Chakra Potential Raising Rune
      • Hazō thinks this rune is beyond his capabilities.
    • Chakra Potential Lowering Rune
      • Hazō thinks this rune is beyond his capabilities.

    After completing the series of difficulty checks, Hazō spends a couple days working on the trivial Light Relay. Why? Partly, Hazōpilot would really like to do any sort of sealing research. Partly, to provide an infusion to anchor @eaglejarl's lovely scene above. Unfortunately, the plan carefully avoids doing any real infusion, and rune research is forbidden outside Orochimaru's basement besides (and while it would be fun to write Orochimaru pissed at Hazō, it would only be sweet if it were due to player error), so I decided to have Hazō do the Light Shifter.

    Hazō (Sealing): 51 - 12 (Severe) + ? (help from Kazushi) + 9 = 48
    Hazō (Calligraphy): 50 - 12 (Severe) - 6 = 32

    Hazō (Sealing): 51 - 12 (Severe) + ? (help from Kazushi) - 3 = 36
    Hazō (Calligraphy): 50 - 12 (Severe) - 3 = 35

    Hazō finishes the Light Shift seal in two days, and the final infusion prompts the scene above. Normally, he wouldn't have Kagome hanging out for a research infusion, but the seal is trivial and this is Gōketsu-fucking-Hazō we're talking about.

    In the process of preparing for the "Mirror Dragon" seal, Hazō ventured out to the site of the battle against the Dragons (inasmuch as it can be called a site, rather than a stretch of countryside larger than some daimyos' demesnes) on skywalkers and gathered a scale the size of his forearm with a pair of heavy iron tongs. Those tongs have now joined with the Will of Fire, but the scale rests in an Earthshaped stone vault deep underneath Hazō's office.

    Kei downchecks asking Yuno about becoming the Hyena summoner. As the plan for the conversation with Cannai doesn't specify what to do if Yuno doesn't refuse but is prevented by a sanity checker, I'll skip the Cannai conversation (also I'm very busy this week, and this probably puts the Cannai conversation back in @eaglejarl's hands so that he can enjoy it (if he's not immediately swamped by the magnitude of the plotline he's just created)).

    After extensive debriefing, travel, negotiating, and more, Cannai and the other bosses are back in their home territories. Canabisu and the squad of dogs formerly stuck in Arachnid have returned home, and a new squad of dogs have been left in Arachnid for diplomatic relations and Hazō's reverse-summoning needs. We'll flesh them out when we need to.

    Hazō has transcribed your conversation with Kamehameha and stored it in the Gōketsu Dark Vault (Kagome's room).

    Hazō does not currently have access to infused Instant Darkness Dome seals, and so cannot test their interaction with Nara ninjutsu.

    Hazō and Kei perform the test with Geode Coffin. It appears that Shadow Possession can in fact connect with the shadow of someone inside a Geode Coffin if their shadow falls outside the coffin.

    Reo has been instructed to stop shadowing Gaku around and return to Orochimaru's notes. He clearly feels a little whiplashed, but agrees. Atomu has begun shadowing Gaku around. Gaku comments that Atomu's good at handling people, but he's not very sharp with numbers.

    The Tower provides notes for an as-yet-unspecified amount of OPSEC and static defense seals to Hazō, under the usual condition that if he researches the seals, he must provide a small tithe of said seals back to the Tower. Suggestions regarding said seals are welcome.

    Hazō's Severe Consequence has cleared as of the end of this update.

    XP AWARD: 39 This update covered 13 days.

    Brevity XP: 10 (Brevity XP caps at 10.)

    "GM had fun" XP: 10 I would award more but we're trying to avoid XP inflation and the others will likely be grumpy with me for awarding this much. Still, the time manipulation thing was super fun. I just wish I'd had the juice to get to the rest of it, but nope. As a matter of fact, I am slightly grumpy with @eaglejarl for awarding this much GM-fun XP on the chapter, but I'm not going to take away the XP (no more than I could take away the fun he had writing it).

    Voting is closed, as @Velorien would very much like to have Kei tell Hazō exactly what she thinks about the idea of giving Yuno a summoning scroll solely to slaughter Pangolins.
     
  • Sidestory
    • LET'S GOOOOOOOO
    And if that's not more April Fools (it is still the first of the month for some), then let's hope the most terrible parts of this are just pranks. Pranks we eventually play on ourselves. Because duh. That's what makes it fun.
     
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    Paperclipped said:
    Kei downchecks asking Yuno about becoming the Hyena summoner.
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    Paperclipped said:
    Voting is closed, as @Velorien would very much like to have Kei tell Hazō exactly what she thinks about the idea of giving Yuno a summoning scroll solely to slaughter Pangolins.
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    If she's big mad about this, I hope Hazou tells her that Yuno wouldn't need to slaughter Pangolins if they didn't act like complete assholes.

    All they need to do is not invade Hyena and there is no need for Satsuko to live up to her name - on the Seventh Path at least.
     
    Sir Stompy said:
    @eaglejarl, @Velorien @Paperclipped

    The recent elimination of the Dragons in the Crusade was a completion of a major character goal for us. We've been building towards it for hundreds of chapters and literal IRL years.

    Can we get some FP for it?
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    Thanks for the suggestion, 2 FP have been added to Hazou's sheet.

    RandomOTP said:
    @Paperclipped , @eaglejarl, @Velorien,

    Do we have to repost Hazou/Kei's FOOM XP and the Noburi's Notes XP?
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    SC XP and notes XP from 648 and before should be up to date on the sheets. I don't see any SC XP reported between @eaglejarl's April Fool's chapter and this one, but given that they have the same XP award, you can just link me to the old report. Otherwise, you're welcome to report SC XP and notes XP anytime before Thursday's chapter.
     
    Well, if the concern was that Itachi would detect Hazou's dimensionalism via stray conversation, that fear should now be fully active. But given that Akatsuki ostensibly wants to prevent the end of all reality just as much as Hazou does, what's to say he shouldn't read them in? I bet he could get some serious concessions in exchange for Rift Seals 0 through 3.

    Honestly, the mere existence of this is way above Hazou's ostensible pay grade and he should strongly consider reading in Naruto and the Sannin anyway. The Sannin are Jiraiya's family and the prospect of future reality-breaking threats is something that would align Orochimaru's behavior for the next decade+

    Dragon Containment Rune + HOWS-R provides a neat short-term solution to the matter of the Great Seal. Even future Hazou doesn't think Hazou can fully study it in time, though, which implies that truly high-factor temporal acceleration is not on the table. In that case I think the most realistic path forward is going to require continuous ongoing assistance from S-rank allies. They can provide the XP (via lootboxes), chakra, security and personal/political influence to accelerate Hazou's general power level as quickly as possible. And given how nonspecific Future Hazou was, general Runic and Sealing mastery is by far Hazou's (and possibly, the entire EN's) most versatile tool to contain or overcome those future threats.

    Parting thought: Given the cost in "chakronic potential," only a truly desperate Hazou would have sent back information at all. There are almost certainly potentialities where things went well enough not to warrant this, but they were erased alongside all the others when desperate Hazou fixed the stable time loop in this configuration. So in a way it really is all that specific future Hazou's fault.
     
    It is in the nature of Naruto stories to commit themselves to ever-increasing powerscaling. In Naruto canon, this manifested as bigger orbs of chakra that get hurled at increasingly grandiose foes. In Marked for Death, this manifests as a constant war to make April Fools as epistemically confusing as possible. This year we have quite possibly a double-fakeout-update with potential to combo into a double-fakeout-update-fakeout leading into a third update that shows the first two fakeout updates were true all along. This would be a noted escalation of obfuscation over past single-fakeout-update-fakeouts where the second posting of the chapter is the one that confirmed it as actually canon. We could also, of course, instead be in a regular double-fakeout-update, or even another single-fakeout-update-fakeout, but this is by my accounting the first time we have even brought double-fakeout-update-fakeout onto the table as an option.

    I dare not ask what we will face next year, nor do I dare attempt to calculate when we will reach fakeout-singularity.
     
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