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>>5879060
Today you are preparing for a party. Your friend and teammate, Naoki, wanting to have some youthful experiences and cheer you up after learning that your mother tried to murder you, is preparing for a bonfire.

You’ve never been to any kind of party in your life before and only really understand the concept on a shallow level. It’s an agreed upon place to have fun with other people. You will be there, and you will have fun. How you would have fun you didn’t know, but apparently sake was supposed to help.

It wasn’t that you were shy, not really, but you couldn’t help but feel a dull sense of apprehension in your core as you soak your feet in the (Thankfully currently unheated.) water of the “hot” spring behind the Nakagawa Inn. It was more that you’ve always felt like a perpetual outsider in matters relevant to being a normal kid. You didn’t watch movies, you didn’t listen to music, you didn’t read anything for any reason beyond educational use, the food you made was austere and simple, you dressed in the same type of bland clothes every day. It was sometimes easy to forget that you were a real, flesh-and-blood human being at all, something more than an invisible lens for some empty spirit’s observations.

What would a party even BE for someone like you? You can practically envision it now: Sitting quietly while everyone else has fun around you, lucky if you could even understand what you should be doing in any particular moment, let alone actually performing and being sociable.

You let out a long, drawn-out sigh as you pinch the bridge of your nose, before hunching over to rest your elbows heavily on your knees. And you had all day to sit and wait for it too.

From some point behind you, the whooshing sound of ninjutsu bringing fire to life carries a warm breeze past your cheek and the temperature of the water rises immediately to a pleasant simmer, prompting you to jerk your feet out of those undisciplined currents and transition to a cross-legged position as the steam annoyingly wafts in your face and tempts your resolve.

“Something on your mind, young man?” Asks your jonin leader, Hotaru Nakagawa, presumably watching you from the door leading to the backyard.

>What’s on your mind?

>>5879061
"I dont know what a party is."

>>5879081
Supporting this. Glad to have you back Blue for another thread of “Feeling Blue”.

>>5879061
>>5879081 +1

>>5879081
+1
We probably only know the generals of a party, so balloons and cake probably.

>>5879060
Good to see you're back, brother! I hope things go well for you this year.

>>5879061
>Thinking about how weird it is for people to want warm water.
Good to be back.

Also happy new year!

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>>5879061
>>5879081
>>5879083
>>5879086
>>5879156
>>5879157
>>5879158
“I don’t know what a party is.”

“You know what a party is, Otomo.”

“... Fair. What I mean to say is that I don’t know the details. All I know is ‘show up and have fun.’”

“That’s what a party is.”

You’re beginning to become frustrated. It’s less about not knowing what one is and your opinion that you aren’t the type of person who can have fun successfully. You have a pretty stoic personality. It doesn’t feel like your type of scenario at all. “I want to be able to party well. I don’t know how to do that.”

Hotaru walks up and takes a seat next to you. She soaks her clothed legs in the warm water next to you. Not a problem for her considering the ease at which she can shove water and fire around. “It sounds like you’re concerned about fitting in. I don’t see why, but I won’t argue with you about it. Instead of thinking about why you won’t be able to fit in, why not instead think about what steps you can take to get the scenario you want? Think about it like you would any mission. Define what goals are supposed to be achieved, then rig the necessary preconditions to achieve those goals, or at least have the pieces in place to make it easier. What are your goals?”

“... Have fun, fit in, make my friendships stronger.”

“Think of some games, get some clothes, and strategize how to get closer to your friends.”

“The only game I’m really aware of is ninja tag, but that’s for kids and we’re too advanced for that to be anything other than a more amusing version of training. Now that I think of it, I think the real problem is that I have no real connection to civilian life. All I know is being a ninja. I don’t know how to really function in any other context. I made Masami mad because I don’t know how to enjoy movies.”

Hotaru snorts “Yes, it’s apparent you don’t understand ‘movies’. From what I understand, your upbringing was living in the woods quietly with your mother, such as she was, and you didn’t get to experience actually living life until you joined the academy. So you’re worried that you’re maladapted and out of touch with the type of life normal people live. Is that accurate?”

You’d be lying if you said the crux of your problems didn’t always, ALWAYS lead back to that. “I suppose.”

Hotaru lets the sit for awhile, slowly swishing her legs around in the spring water. “Are you going to die tomorrow?”

“Uh…” That caught you off guard. “No?”

“Then it’s fine. You’re young. You’re still growing. Not done cooking yet. There will always be more experiences. You don’t have to stay the same forever.”

“The idea that I’ll learn more later doesn’t help me now.”

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>>5879615
“No, but in addition to that, there’s no such thing as a normal person, young man. Everybody has idiosyncrasies, strengths and weaknesses. It’s fine to be out of touch. You might see it as being boring, or weird, but in some circumstances others may be able to see you as someone who is able to elegantly avoid the irrelevant distractions of life to focus on the pragmatic realities. There’s a lot to envy about that. And if someone can’t see the good in you and your way, then maybe they’re just incompatible with you in the first place and a friendship was never desirable with them from the outset. It should be fine to simply be who you are.”

“You’re saying I’m supposed to change, but it’s fine to stay the same? Isn’t that a contradiction?”

“Some things can change, some things should change, some things can’t change. A human is a complicated mosaic, you shouldn’t have an all-or-nothing viewpoint about it.”

“Hmm.”

You just sit there for a while longer, taking it all in. A cynical part of you wants to rebel against the advice. Like the steam, it might just be a bit of patronizing hot air. On the other hand, you had no reason to doubt that Hotaru Nakagawa wanted the best for you. If anything, the only thing you had to doubt is whether or not she understood you well enough to give you the advice you needed, rather than the advice that sounded best at the time to her own ears. Who was to say? Maybe these were words directed at her own teenage self, or some kind of mirage of the Otomo that existed only in her mind’s eye, superimposed on top of you like you were a mirror and not a person. Who could say?

Eventually you stand up, dusting yourself off for emphasis despite it being unnecessary. “I’m going to get some new clothes.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m not?”

She stands up as well, also dramatically dusting herself off with a bemused smirk. “One last thing to understand about relationships with other people, young man. You’re not the center of the world, and you can rely on others to cover for you when you would otherwise fail. You’re not the only one interested in having a fun party, everyone else will be working towards that as well. As for your clothes,” She rubs your hair before walking past you, gesturing for you to follow. “For now, I just know better than you. It’s time to have a learning experience. Come.”

>You’re going shopping with your jonin team leader.
>Anything you want to get (Beyond even the scope of just this party, you have money to define your possessions in more detail.) can happen now.
>We’ll jump forward to you being there in the next post.

>What you buying?
>What clothes you getting? One set, or you could redo your entire wardrobe for all I care.
>What games are you thinking about? Other people have ideas as well.
>What’s your party strategy? Not having a strategy is a strategy.

>>5879618
Medical supplies, new mission gear/clothing, sushi to eat with Hotaru, and knuckledusters.
A set of all white clothes; top, bottoms, and shoes.
A gift of junmai daiginjo sake for the party.
Some ingredients to prepare food for the party; Buns stuffed with meat and cheese.

Game: Go fish; tie a small sack of coins/money to a kunai and throw it as far as we can, preferably in a forest. First person to catch it keeps the money, but only if they can hold on to the kunai for 10 seconds.

Strategy, talk as fast as we can to as many people as we can.

>>5879710
A pillow. A really nice, comfortable, soft, huge cotton and silk hawk down feathering stuffed pillow.

>>5879710
I like these, can we also do a vial or jar type necklace that we can seal?

Would be nice to bottle some of the spring water and carry it with us so we have an emergency bit if things ever get really desperate.

>Party Strategy: At some point make absolute sure to apologize to Masami for...whatever we did. (kek)

>>5879618
>Whatever you get, make sure you also get a poncho. A fashionable one. It's warm but easy to shift aside if you get too warm, it's useful against the elements, it obscures your hands and arms if you need to use weapons or jutsu, and it's VERY comfortable.
>Karaoke. It's a game(?) and a strategy!

>>5879859
I like this.

>>5879776
This too.

>>5879618
>Whatever you get, make sure you also get a poncho. A fashionable one. It's warm but easy to shift aside if you get too warm, it's useful against the elements, it obscures your hands and arms if you need to use weapons or jutsu, and it's VERY comfortable.
>Party Strategy: At some point make absolute sure to apologize to Masami for...whatever we did. (kek)
>ask Masami to teach us how to properly experience movies.

>>5879879
I think we can apply our smarts and realise that we didnt like the film and that we in fact just liked Masamai's presence.

We already know this, it was in the last thread. But I dont know if we can say that without putting our foot in our mouth.

>>5880043
An old adage about Knowledge, Wisdom, Tomato, and Fruit Salad comes to mind, Anon.

>>5880222
The smartest people aren't always the most socially knowledgeable.

>Naruto Blue
Yaaaaaaaaay
>>5879615
>Hotaru snorts “Yes, it’s apparent you don’t understand ‘movies’.
lol

It's good to see this back.

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>>5879710
>>5879776
>>5879859
>>5879879
>>5880043
>>5880222
>>5880463
>>5880533
>>5880548
Shopping with Hotaru goes well. As well as it could have gone, which is to say you soberly went store to store buying everything that you had been contemplating getting since your payday.

>You buy medical supplies. Just the basics: Bandages for cuts, occlusive bandages for torso wounds, tourniquets, basic stitches. You have basic comprehension of first aid, but not too the surgical degree Naoki does. It fits in a small, tightly packed medical bag that doesn’t really hinder you.
>You get a full set of white clothes which Hotaru watches you buy. She tries to warn you about how those clothes will get dirty and show a lot of blood, but you insist they’ll look awesome and high class for civilian wear. When you wear them you look like a priest. She winces.
>You’re not old enough to buy sake, and you wouldn’t risk trying in her presence just in case she doesn’t approve of that kind of debauchery. She probably assumes you’re going to drink, but you don’t want to say the quiet part out loud. You resolve to pay Naoki to get a good bottle from wherever he gets it from. Presumably his parents are sponsoring that aspect.
>You get a high grade expensive pillow to reduce the spartan character of your bedroom. It seems undisciplined to you, but you use your logic to deduce that higher quality rest = higher quality training.
>You buy the ingredients to make meatbread. Meatbread kicks ass. Cheese too, because cheese meatbread must be fundamentally superior.
>You mention getting some kind of bottle with sealing jutsu so you can have lots of water on you at any moment within a convenient to carry package. Hotaru says she can make something like that herself, and you can consider it a gift. It’ll take awhile.
>You get a poncho. It’s striped in deep blues and soft purples. It has a nice hood, and is made out of a fancy waxed fabric that manages to remain quite soft while still keeping moisture off of you.
>You bring up getting karaoke setup because you heard those were popular, but Hotaru informs you that bringing karaoke to a bonfire is stupid.
>Lastly, Hotaru gets you a set of civilian clothes. Black shoes, socks, and belt, gray slacks and vest, desaturated purple collared shirt. Hotaru insists that you roll up the sleeves whenever you wear it, and that you shouldn’t sit down on anything at the bonfire without dusting it off first. The vest is a little tight around your waist and you think it looks kind of goofy. Clothes were supposed to be loose and comfortable as far as you were concerned.

When you return, your time is spent on meatbread preparation. You briefly look around for Masami for meatbread help, a wise team-building exercise, but she’s off somewhere. Naoki shows up though and he’s keenly interested in meatbread as a concept.

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>>5880928
He’s a pretty good cook so the two of you manage to wrap up the whole process in a little under an hour with a minimum of confusion. After that he takes your money to get sake and leaves, before informing you that the bonfire is going to be located at a little clearing near the waterfall. Since you know exactly where that is (You used to live there.) you tell him that you’ll be able to find the place easily.

After that, you get a cold shower, get dressed, and kind of just laze around for a while waiting for Masami to come back so you can leave together. When that doesn’t happen, you go by yourself.

There’s no way to help it, you do get lost. Since your experience running out of chakra your mental map of Konoha seems to be frazzled. You still remember what exists, just not how the picture fits together. When you try to remember walking through Konoha you end up with nothing except flashes of recognizable places interspersed with the vague sensation of cool mist and moist stone. You shake it off and try to not think about the obvious implication.

You get there eventually, a little late. It’s sunset, orange glow shining low over the treetops. There’s a fucking HUGE bonfire where your campfire used to be, practically the size of a small tree by itself. Your eyes immediately dart to the spot your shrines used to be, and you’re pleased to note that there’s nothing there and the spot remains undisturbed. Not that there was anything to disturb.

Since you showed up a little late, there are several other people already gathered:

Katsuro is sitting on a log, a smug expression on his face while he tunes a shamisen.

Yuna is sitting next to him waiting patiently for him to start playing. Yuzuki is there as well, flipping a kunai up and down.

Daigo and Junpei are having some kind of heated debate about politics. You don’t tune in for the entire thing, but it seems Daigo is pro-diplomacy with the village’s enemies, at least insofar as that he thinks honorable declarations of hostility should be made before doing anything too overtly aggressive, whereas Junpei believes in merciless alpha strikes with no warning.

Shizuka is with them as well, but she looks like she’s half asleep until you walk past, at which point she abandons them to start hovering near you and the scent of your meatbread.

Masami and Naoki are flanking some blonde guy you don’t know. He’s a little older, maybe about 15 and is smoking a pipe. Judging by the hacking cough he lets loose as you approach, he’s not exactly used to it.

Naoki has a dumb smirk on his face, visible since he’s not wearing a mask. You assume the reactions to that happened before you arrived. Dammit. When he notices you, he makes eye contact and immediately says “Daigo.”

Daigo immediately drops his conversation with Junpei and blows a gout of flame into the bonfire, setting it ablaze in roaring fashion as the last light of the sun slowly dips below the tree line.

>>5880932
Katsuro starts playing the shamisen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNZY-3OVrNM

>What do?

>Bring out the Meatbread and start handing out food. Make sure to credit Naoki for his help.
>Find a moment Masami is alone to go apologize

>>5880967
It’s not our fault Ninja Dogs 2 didn’t live up to its predecessor. Why apologise?

>>5880932
A bit surprised to see Yuzuki here, but I think we’d be conscientious enough to be upset if she was the only one not invited. Distributing food like it’s a military operation could be funny, otherwise I’d like to catch up with some of the people we haven’t talked to in a good while like noodles.

>>5880967
+1

>>5880933
>>5880967
>>5881092
Nice. Start eating and drinking afterwards. Ask Shizuka what she thinks.

>>5880967
Support.

>>5880967
>Support
also support >>5881236

>Yuzuki is here
Oh man, this should be interesting. Maybe Naoki and her will give us a good show.

Just caught up and I have to say, last thread was really well done!
the scene with Juro-sensei breaking down in class, the demon in the rice. Just *nice*

>>5880967
Second

>>5881309
Bet they will fuck one day. Both are intense, properly fucked people and I can see her pushing and poking him until there is a reaction.

>Ask Naoki who this nugai is
>Pair up with our boy to go around distributing food n drinks, get the party vibe going, get on a level with him so we know what to expect, check in with peeps while giving goods to see if they have ideas/plans
Definitely gonna have a heart to heart with Masami, but maybe after a drink or two. No need to jump right at her.

>>5882621
>Otome retarded drunk blundering without any insight into why she’s upset
I don’t think that’s a good idea, probably be funny though

>>5880933
Dance our ninja feet off

>>5882651
Need that liquid courage, that social lubricant. Logic is; sober Otomo has whiffed on social cues multiple times, I'm just hoping there will be some kind of emotional honesty that doesn't get over-analysed to death.

>>5880967
Support

>>5882677
Supporting because funny and also because meta knowledge says Naoki would find it just as entertaining.

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>>5880933
>>5880967
>>5881092
>>5881219
>>5881236
>>5881261
>>5881275
>>5881309
>>5881908
>>5882621
>>5882651
>>5882675
>>5882677
>>5883139
>>5884225
It’s kind of hard not to obsess over Masami and what her deal is these days. Her whims and wills are simultaneously extremely emotive and utterly impenetrable. It was hard to tell why she got mad, sad, or happy, but extremely easy to tell that she was experiencing those emotions. It was something you very much so wanted to get to the bottom of. The only nagging thought you have in your mind is when was the right time and place. Right now? Or later when the atmosphere settles into something more personable?

You march purposefully past everyone in your path while making unceasing eye contact with Masami as you close in, half-hazardly shoving some meatbread to Shizuka to ward her off. You then sigh, realizing that you’re being rude. Turning to Shizuka you state “This is called meatbread. It’s bread with meat inside it, kind of like a steamed pork bun but different.”

“Mehfbrehd!” She confirms, mouth already stuffed.

“It is.”

“Is there enough mehfrbehd to go around?” Asks Daigo, watching his teammate chowing down on of your three colossal mehfbrehd loafs.

“Not at this rate.”

“We’ll future-proof this by portioning out the remainder.” Naoki says, standing up. He grabs a heavy-as-fuck looking boulder from near the tree line and drags it over to where you are, near enough to the bonfire to get some warmth but not so close it will deal heat damage to the meatbread or its container, which you set down on the boulder. The two of you set to slicing the meatbread evenly so that everyone minus Shizuka can get an even serving when they’re ready for it. You’re not exactly armed for this party, but luckily Naoki was always armed with his prosthetic. In more ways than one.

He was dressed way out of character: Jeans and a T-shirt. Nothing else. It made his prosthetic look like a bizarre anachronism, an unnatural mechanism that didn’t belong on the body of this teenaged boy. Since he’s not wearing a mask, you can see more of his expressions, expressions he was poor at hiding. Licking his lips in concentration as he lines up one of his arm’s claws, a feral looking snarl when he slashes into the meatbread to cut it, a cheesy looking grin when he sizes up the slices and judges them to be of symmetric cut and portion size.

The two of you step back while the ants swarm the food. Katsuro has his eyes closed as he plays the shamisen as jauntily as that instrument is capable of, saying “I need to be fed. The music: She is my mistress and she demands the skillful attention of my firm but gentle touch.”

“I’ll feed you.” You respond.

“No.”

“Why?” You ask, confused.

“I… Need… Shizuka.”

“Nerf”

“Yes.”

“Nohg.”

“Okay.” He acquiesces, brow furrowing into a faint look of irritation. “I’m a little disturbed that nobody is taking me seriously even though I’m being really sexy and badass playing this music right now.”

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>>5884529
“It was only ‘sexy and badass’ before you started talking, Katsuro.” Yuna politely informs him, a pleasant smile on her face.

Yuzuki adds “That’s the nice way of telling you to shut up.”

Katsuro deliberately botches a note and transitions into a slower, more romantic song while improvising lyrics. “The pure maidens, they pretend they don’t love me, they damage my heart… Oh, the pure maidens, they’ll be seduced by my art…”

You turn away from that situation shortly before the music briefly cuts out and you hear Katsuro’s yelp of pain, clearly having been made a martyr to the music. Daigo and Junpei are soberly collecting their meatbread. Neither of them seems like the life of the party. You turn your attention back to your own team. They were your people, after all. Naoki is sitting back down on a log, next to blonde guy. Blonde guy is looking kind of nervous, fiddling with his pipe. Masami shoots you a fiery glance of indiscernible motivation before clutching blonde guy’s arm. “This is Akimitsu Kumamoto! He LIKED True Ninken 2!”

“Uh, I’m Akimitsu Kumamoto and I liked True Ninken 2?” The boy supplies, confused. His voice surprisingly soft.

“He’s a civilian! He knows about stuff outside of ninjutsu!”

“I’m a civilian and I know stuff outside of ninjutsu?”

An errant sensation of anger passes through your brain as you quickly ponder how you could probably blast Akimitsu with a water bullet and there wouldn’t be shit he’d be able to do about it. You quickly quash it, though you can’t suppress an involuntary mouth twitch as you attempt to smile nicely. “And where did Akimitsu Kumamoto come from?”

“He’s a, uh, friend of mine from outside the academy. His family caravans goods. They’re friends of my father, I think I once told you that he’s a merchant that handles the import/export of bulk goods. Mostly import.” Naoki clarifies.

Akimitsu Kumamoto pisses you off, he has a smug aura. You bet he reads manga or watches TV or some other dumb civilian bullshit like that. “Hmm.” You say.

“Yeah… Drink?” Naoki says, uncorking a bottle of sake and shaking it lightly. It was the expensive stuff you asked him to buy. “Also, sit down, man.”

>Current state of the party:
>Team Yudai Yoshinaga is on music.
>Team Ichiro Akimichi is on meatbread.
>Team Hotaru Nakagawa is on booze.

>You kind of want to dance but nobody is really doing that yet. Naoki brought his record player for whenever Katsuro decides to stop playing though.
>You can mingle and merge groups at will if you want.
>Drink? (How hard are we going?)
>What do?

>>5884530
>What do?
Talk about Ninken Dogs 2, and how we were actually paying attention but we thought it was trite and poorly written to prove that we have better taste than this Kumamoto whoever, maybe brag we got to watch it with a cute girl while he probably saw it with his family or whatever..
>Drink? (How hard are we going?)
Hell yeah we drink! This is social stuff, we gotta cram to catch up right? We definitely drink way harder and better than Kumamoto.
>You can mingle and merge groups at will if you want.
Find a good opportunity to see how the meatbread is going down with everyone, check in with the other guys for sure, but maybe steer clear of the Yoshinagas, we have enough girl problems.
>You kind of want to dance but nobody is really doing that yet. Naoki brought his record player for whenever Katsuro decides to stop playing though.
Definitely look for the any excuse to dance with Masami, if only to deny The Interloper any of her attention.
In that order.

Just as commentary though, I hope our boy really Will of Fire-s all these connections. All these characters are so heartwarming, and I do mean all (except for Yuzuki, that maniac, but if she can fit in at least as much as Junpei there is hope I guess). It is all the more bittersweet to know there will be loss, but with Will of Fire I know our boy will emerge stronger for it.
Very nice work Blue, big fan.

I think the correct powerplay here is to ignore Misami for the rest of the evening. Do we know any music? I guess we won't know any songs from the Mist, mother didn't seem like the song kind of person. I expect we actually haven't drank before either, if we're being invited to sit and drink with Naoki we should.

>>5884556
We've been ignored for our entire life and we know its absolutely fucked us up. Don't think that's the play mate.

>>5884550
Am I the only one who thinks Naoki is almost as bad as Yuzuki is? Between beating the shit out of the bandits to vent and trying so very hard to keep the Ninja/Civilian worlds apart. He just doesn't want to admit it as much as she seems to revel in it.

>>What do?
Ignore the civilian, for being a civilian who probably takes warm showers and sleeps indoors. Like a weirdo!
Start drinking, try to make sure everyone drinks. Be awkward and plain ask Masami why she is upset, then when that backfires try to hide behind a bottle

>"maybe brag we got to watch it with a cute girl while he probably saw it with his family or whatever."
Oh god please save this for when we're drunk, alongside the inevitable rants about self discipline and how comfort drags you down.

>>5884530
>Drink? (How hard are we going?)
Yes. We maxed stamina for a reason, not this reason but details. Let's fucking do this!

>>5884530
>Drink but pace ourselves. For now.

>We can discuss some of the flaws of the film, but don't get bogged down. Move the conversation to topics we can keep our footing on, Like carving. Or meditation. See if any of his hobbies match up. See where his strengths lie, so we can go for the weaknesses!

>When we get annoyed enough, go and talk to Daigo and Junpei
How's our rival doing? and How's our fellow outdoor enthusiast doing? Their gloom can at least be included.

>Masami shoots you a fiery glance of indiscernible motivation before clutching blonde guy’s arm. “This is Akimitsu Kumamoto! He LIKED True Ninken 2!”
Is- Is Masami trying to make Otomo *jealous*?? How precious, yet utterly annoying!

>>5884530
>Go up to Katsuro and ask where he learned to play and where got that shamizen.
>Drink?
Oh yeah, but stick to a cup or two of sake for now.

>>5884556
Nah the real powerplay would be to strike up a friendship with Akamoto. Not sure if Otomo could push through his annoyance to do it though.

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>>5884550
I'm just building them up so I can kill them all later and hurt you more.
I'm like a farmer, and your friends are my RICE. Cultivate and HARVEST.
I'm mostly joking.
I'm more interested in killing Otomo.
Still joking, I don't want to kill Otomo.
Just his will to live.

>>5884556
You don't really do music, it's not your MO.
This is your first time drinking.

I have a question of my own though: How do you guys feel about rolling for social graces? I've been leaving that up to roleplay and saving actual rolls for more direct challenges/skills, but I'm curious if that's what you guys are into. My personal inclination is to not roll for charisma/talk-no-jutsu because that seems like it should have more to do with what you guys actually do, and on a mechanical level I didn't want there to be a roleplay tax stat or an easy obvious roll that is designed to just solve shit optimally every time.

>>5884570
>Am I the only one who thinks Naoki is almost as bad as Yuzuki is? Between beating the shit out of the bandits to vent and trying so very hard to keep the Ninja/Civilian worlds apart. He just doesn't want to admit it as much as she seems to revel in it.
One of the core things I try and keep in mind for the characters: How does this person square with the fact that they're a child soldier, and more specifically, the fact that they're expected to kill people? They're on a bit of a spectrum from totally committed to totally naive. Most of them have pretty complicated takes on it.
As a game, I'll give you some thoughts on killing and you can match who you think it is.
>"It's my simple duty and I see no place for doubt or mercy in my mental space."
>"I'm not going to deliberately kill anyone, period. If anyone dies because I struck them it'll only be as an incidental byproduct of defending myself or my teammates."
>"I don't like it, but I won't have a choice since it'll be me or them."
>"I act like I'm ready, but I'm not. I'll treat my enemies with dignity if I have to do it and I can only hope I go down with some dignity as well when my time comes."
>"I never thought about it, and I won't think about it."
>"The enemies of the village are barely humans anyway, so who cares?"
>"Anyone who fights me is in the same profession, and therefore they know what they signed up for just as well as I do. There's no good people or bad people here, just the killers and the killed."
>"I really made a mistake when I picked this career, but I had no choice."
Note, this is how they THINK about it, not all of them are mature enough to really have their true feelings pegged perfectly.

>>5884530
>"So, Akimitsu, what made you decide to be a civilian? Did you always prefer the boring mundane life, or do you just hate the idea of being capable of punching trees in half and turning invisible? You do realize that everyone has chakra, yes? And that it can do virtually anything with hard work and study?"
I simply cannot understand the mentality of civilians in Naruto. Imagine having the godlike potential that just having Chakra gives you and squandering it to fucking, become a rice farmer or some shit. FUCK YOU. YOU COULD BE DEVELOPING A RICE SOWING JUTSU. YOU PIECE OF SHIT. AT LEAST USE THE GIFT THAT THE GODS GAVE YOU.

>>5884584
I don't feel like social rolls are good unless they are related to an extrinsic challenge. Like bypassing a language barrier or doing a mimicry impression or something. Stuff that takes a lot of practice or effort to manage.
Actual social interaction, the speaking and the tone, should be allowed by the write ins.

And so far, looks like we aren't giving the civilian a break

>>5884585
I personally like to imagine that most people just don't have enough chakra/talent for it to be really worth bothering with training them. If I had to exposit on this, which I might if you actually talk to Akimitsu about it, I'd probably talk about how outside of villages the only way to get training is to be in a clan, that being in a clan outside a village was really abnormal, that people born in the village probably get some kind of screening, ninja villagers have more chakra than normal (Because of slow, steady, constant ninja breeding and migration.), and that even most people in ninja villages don't really make the grade.
Anyone could probably learn the basics but it would take a decade to turn John Q. Normie into an extremely mediocre genin who would just die in an instant so it's a colossal waste. You pretty much need to be from a clan, have family who are ninja, or be an obvious outlier. Shizuka is the only one in your cohort who has fucking ZERO ninja heritage.
Plus I imagine that being a ninja is a whole social caste and they're loathe to make their techniques common knowledge because it would tank their market value and social standing. Keep in mind that this is a job.
TLDR having the talent to become a ninja is pretty rare in addition to the fact that getting the opportunity to learn in the first place is also rare because these are jealously guarded secrets.
Rock Lee's inability to really use ninjutsu or genjutsu is probably pretty normal for the average person, what made him an outlier was probably more about him managing to find a way regardless.

>>5884602
Talent is bullshit anyways, not even most ninja have the kind of talent that makes you a big player. We can't all be Naruto "The eugenicist's wet dream" Uzumaki, who proved that HARD WORK always beats GOOD GENES (lying fuck)

Rock Lee making it is just proof to me. He went all in on taijutsu because it was what he felt he could actually do, but I think that if he had gone and applied that same autistic hyperfocus on Ninjutsu or Genjutsu that he could have been pretty good in one of those instead.

I mean, I don't know about you, but if I knew that there was a mystical force in me that was theoretically capable of letting me CLONE MYSELF as one of the most basic possible uses, I'd be on that shit. Even if my potential was worthless and I only had the teeniest tiniest amount of chakra, I'd work that motherfucker every day. Clan secrets? Techniques? Don't need 'em - I'll figure it out myself if I have to.

I have nothing but disdain for the people who have access to Basically Magic and decide, nah, I don't have enough Innate Talent so I'm just gonna reject it entirely and never try to get better with it. And disdain for the villages that think their civilians would be better off as completely normal workers instead of superpowered workers. They don't HAVE to make all of them trained killers, but think of the economic benefits of miners that could sense where magnetic ores are, or loggers with insane stamina, etc...just a basic chakra training plan from childhood to adulthood would make a world of difference for the citizenry. Bonus points, your own people are now that much harder for outsiders to kill if they attack. Trade secrets? Sure, have them. But don't deny the usefulness of Chakra for the common man, you kage fucks.

>"It's my simple duty and I see no place for doubt or mercy in my mental space."
>Naoki

>"I'm not going to deliberately kill anyone, period. If anyone dies because I struck them it'll only be as an incidental byproduct of defending myself or my teammates."
>Masami

>"I don't like it, but I won't have a choice since it'll be me or them."
>Daigo

>"I act like I'm ready, but I'm not. I'll treat my enemies with dignity if I have to do it and I can only hope I go down with some dignity as well when my time comes."
>Katsuro

>"I never thought about it, and I won't think about it."
>Shizuka

>"The enemies of the village are barely humans anyway, so who cares?"
>Yuzuki

>"Anyone who fights me is in the same profession, and therefore they know what they signed up for just as well as I do. There's no good people or bad people here, just the killers and the killed."
>Junpei

>"I really made a mistake when I picked this career, but I had no choice."
>Yuna

Is it weird that the two people I had the most difficulty with are Daigo and Masami.
Daigo started as an ass, but also advocated with at least some honour with Junpo who'd just kill.
And Masami... She is protective of her grandfather, which might translate to her team but she's been more worried about her ability to keep up than anything.

>>5884570
>Am I the only one who thinks Naoki is almost as bad as Yuzuki is? Between beating the shit out of the bandits to vent and trying so very hard to keep the Ninja/Civilian worlds apart. He just doesn't want to admit it as much as she seems to revel in it.
Well there's a major difference in not wanting to admit to something/keeping it to yourself and reveling/being a loud bitch about it.
But then the QM just clarified that these different characters have different ideas and opinions about violence.

>>5884584
I don't mind if you want to do rolls, but I vote for bad options anyway sometimes just because they can be more fun but it would be lame if a bad option goes through, but we roll well, so we gracefully make the bad landing.
>>5884612
I'd have swapped Misami and Yuna. Maybe I'm reading Yuna's dad wrong, but he seems okay if a bit intense I don't think he'd force Yuna to be a konouchi meanwhile Misami might have felt just stuck where she was with her grandfather and didn't know what else to do. Plus her little boast that she's got a new friend who knows about stuff outside of Ninjutsu makes me think she's getting sick of Ninjastuff. Naoki and Junpei, I could see either of them fitting eachother's as well.

>>5884620
Maybe.
for Yuna I took a lot from the scene in her Dojo, where her father is fucking intense and has been training her since a very young age, but also that she admitted her sister just being better... Then add in how the father played with Yuzuki and didn't really give Yuna the time of day. Yea, if anyone didn't have a choice I'd think it was her.
I don't think he'd force her, I just don't think she was given an option. Ever. And that objecting to the fathers wishes is equally out of the question.

Hey, new here, spent last night reading up. Fucking great stuff. I'm not gonna glaze too hard, but Blue's writing capability is extremely impressive. I look forward to continuing.

>>5884530
>what do?
Talk a bit about the movie as an icebreaker, but transition into asking Kumamoto about his family's work. Take a bit of an interest, if not genuine, then to keep the air sociable.
It's pretty clear that Masami is trying to make us jealous by cozying up to him, but given Otomo's lackluster track record of identifying peoples intentions versus their expressions, aside from the subconscious nag, I don't know if he'd pick up on that.
Besides, being amicable is almost sure to force Masami to commit harder to try to get a reaction out of us.
>Drink?
Drink, but a normal amount, we asked Naoki to get it after all. I don't think Otomo would, from the get-go, try to outdrink anyone else. Could probably be goaded into it though.

>>5884612
You only got Shizuka and Yuzuki correct.
But some of them are close, you're obviously in the ballpark.

>>5884584
>How do you guys feel about rolling for social graces?
You are the QM, you can make something a roll or not at your whim, so you can allow comedic/low stakes interactions to be roll based while still entirely excluding 'talk-no-jutsu' tactics. That being said, I do enjoy the write-ins, its a fun way to participate, but again you are the QM so if you have good ideas for dialogue you want to write but just want us to determine how it goes then that is also valid IMO.
>"It's my simple duty and I see no place for doubt or mercy in my mental space."
Junpei
>"I'm not going to deliberately kill anyone, period. If anyone dies because I struck them it'll only be as an incidental byproduct of defending myself or my teammates."
Yuna
>"I don't like it, but I won't have a choice since it'll be me or them."
Katsuro
>"I act like I'm ready, but I'm not. I'll treat my enemies with dignity if I have to do it and I can only hope I go down with some dignity as well when my time comes."
Daigo
>"I never thought about it, and I won't think about it."
Shizuka, answered
>"The enemies of the village are barely humans anyway, so who cares?"
Yuzuki, answered
>"Anyone who fights me is in the same profession, and therefore they know what they signed up for just as well as I do. There's no good people or bad people here, just the killers and the killed."
Naoki
>"I really made a mistake when I picked this career, but I had no choice."
Masami

>>5884659
Swap Yuna and Katsuro and you're correct.

>>5884584
so, I go back and forth on this a lot in my own games, and the best rules I've found to use is to treat certain actions differently. For normal conversation/persuasion, go off of our merits and dialogue, but if we want to do something extraordinary that might give us a leg up in the conversation, we can roll for that.
An example would be if we want to intuit someone's intentions, or the truthfulness of a statement.
The problem with this is that, IMO, these rolls need to have risk to them, so they can't just be spammed. That risk being that if we roll low, and we either get no information or bad information, we are locked into playing that out in RP.
Just my two cents.

>>5884530
>Drink? (How hard are we going?)
Start drinking fast and long

>Dance
Ask Naoki to put something "banger" on his record player after Katsuro stops playing and Shizuka to dance

>While tipsy
After dancing, challenge Daigo and everyone else to an arm wrestling contest.

>After the arm wrestling
Bring up the Go fish game.

>>5884530
Drink normally. We don't even know why we're pissed off at this normie, so there's no need to drown ourselves in sake.

There is plenty of reason to show off, though, being possibly the best Ninjutsu user in the class. Summon our sensor sphere and do some Fushigi tricks with it or make it pulse to the music. Maybe make a really big one and have someone shine some light into it for some Disco-Jutsu.

Also, we should find someone who knows something about girls and ask them why seeing Johnny Civilian is pissing us off. This, of course, means asking Katsuro.

>>5884572
+1

>>5884530
That guy is weird...proper weird.
Has Masami summoned a shape-shifting crab or a made a clone or something to make us jealous?

>>5884556
Supporting. Hang with Naoki, he's a bro. maybe talk about music since we don't know much.

What are our long term Jutsu goals you guys think?

>>5887029
Years, maybe a decade.

>>5887029
Water prison for sure.
We are good at hand signs, so we could go for something pretty complex. Maybe some kind of water based spirit sealing/sapping?

>>5887029
Well, we are a ninja water wizard who is connected to the afterlife.
I'd say it'd be thematically appropriate to draw inspiration from the river Sanzu, weeb Styx, and go from there.

>>5887029
Water.

>>5887029
Weather Control.

>>5887029
Waterboarding jutsu

>>5887029
Tsunami to drown Kiri

Seven Water Clones
All using Water Dragon
The Dragons are firing water out to their mouths
Chance of the other person not getting soaked: 0%

>>5887029
>>5887151
We have a spiritual and water connection. Maybe shaping an extremely thin water needle infused with small amounts of afterlife taint so as to pierce/poison their soul.

Something that, for our allies or light targets, is enough to cause the person to experience the strangeness we do, to see spirits and feel unmoored from their physical body.

In real terms this could mean sharing our ability with those who train with us and allowing them to share our perspective by poking a small hole in their soul. in combat terms, we could go farther and turn this into punching a hole into their soul, if not instantly sending them into the afterlife, it'd definitely unsettle and damage them and in the case of poison cause terrible damage/distress.

I figure since we have unique abilities we should try for a unique jitsu.

>>5888019
>experience the strangeness we do, to see spirits and feel unmoored from their physical body

"Local ninja discovers *Psycadelics-no-jutsu* and becomes drug kingpin"
But in all seriousness, yes, There is a lot we can do with that theme.

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>>5884530
>>5884540
>>5884570
>>5884572
>>5884580
>>5884585
>>5884637
>>5884743
>>5884767
>>5885494
Sitting down next to Naoki, you take the sake from him and inspect it. It’s that expensive bottle you had once heard of and asked him to buy, but you’d be lying if you pretended to be a connoisseur. You’ve never tasted sake in your life. Peering at the liquid in the bottle, you see that it’s a somewhat milky liquid. You smell it. Definitely contained alcohol, but it also had a sweet scent. You might even go as far as to say you detected something fruity about it you weren’t acutely aware that sake was made from rice. Before tasting it, you can only assume that it will probably taste like a sweet rice cracker distilled into liquid form.

Bringing the bottle to your lips, you take a sizable sip. You swish it around in your mouth, feeling a bit of mild disappointment in its strength. It tasted about how you expected it to, sweet with a- HOLD ON, what’s this? There’s an fairly overpowering flavor that’s a bit hard to describe. Bitterness, without the taste of bitterness. Like there’s some kind of acid present in the liquid. It wasn’t a flavor you honestly had any legitimate experience with, and describing flavor was hardly in your vocabulary anyway. It was really pungent, made a smoother by the sweetness of the distilled rice but growing more unpleasant the longer you dwelt on it.

You swallow, and can feel the burn of the sake spread through your chest and rise up through your throat with a palpable heat. You can’t help but grimace and let out a light hiss.

“I went ahead and made sure we got some strong stuff.” Naoki comments. “I didn’t expect you would just swish it around in your mouth for ten seconds though, I think you’re supposed to drink it faster than that so you’re only catching the flavor before the burn of the alcohol really sets in.”

You disregard Naoki’s advice on an intellectual basis that he can’t know much more than you do about it, but follow his instructions anyway, taking another large swig of sake and this time swallow it quickly. The flavor is a lot better, you only get the sweet taste and the burn of the alcohol only makes itself known in passing and from the sensation of burning emanating out of your stomach. You wince once again, but take a third large gulp, attempting to really get a taste for this stuff. So far you didn’t really understand the point, wasn’t alcohol supposed to make you happy or something?

“Alright man, maybe we slow down until we see how that works out for you.” Naoki says, taking the bottle from you, passing it to Akimitsu. Akimitsu immediately passes it along to Masami. Masami stares at it like there’s something deeply embarrassing about drinking from it.

You turn to look at Akimistu, affixing him with an assessing, stoic look. “So, you liked True Ninken 2?”

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>>5890050
“Uh, yeah. It was fine.”

“What did you like about it?”

“I don’t know. It was wholesome, I guess?”

“What specifically was wholesome about it?”

“I don’t know. The animation was wholesome.”

“You mean the animation or the character design, or what? Do you know anything about animation?”

“Not really.”

You let that sit for awhile, sniffing at him lightly in a kind of unperturbed defiance. Yeah, Akimitsu didn’t know movies. You feel a numb sensation in your nose and drift into silence as you stare at the bonfire. It seemed a bit sad to you that your life was so overwhelmed with the concept of water. It made you feel like you were lying when you empathize with other elements of nature. Fire was the root metaphor for this village and it seemed like it had nothing to do with you on some kind of spiritual level. How could you have the will of fire if you couldn’t even spiritually align yourself to it on a primal basis? What the fuck were you even thinking about? It’s not like fire was the only element either, you had never been able to imagine what it would be like to be a rock. Just sitting there, immobile. Not able to be moved, steady. Solid. “I want to be a rock.” you say, out loud.

“Yeah. Why?” Akimitsu asks.

“I feel like I’d belong if I were made out of dirt or something. What’s it like being a civilian?”

Akimitsu looks a little confused. He shoots a look at Naoki that you notice, smugly feeling in your gut that you understand that expression without actually contemplating the meaning of it. If you were a rock you wouldn’t have this problem, surely. He answers eventually. “I don’t really understand the question. To me it’s just normal. Since you guys are ninja and you spend all this time in the village, you’re probably more aware of ninja stuff, but outside the walls wandering ninja are pretty rare unless there’s a problem. I guess I see you guys as being in an odd, parallel civilization that doesn’t really have anything to do with us? After all, ninja are the solution to ninja problems, and ninja problems require a ninja solution. You don’t really do anything other than deal with issues insular to the ninja lifestyle. It doesn’t have anything to do with normal people. Every time a ninja gets involved it’s just to counter the moves of other ninja. It’s kind of circular and segregated, and if I’m being honest it can even seem like a real waste.”

Something about Akimitsu’s logic here seems flawed, and you’ll let him know it. “What about bandits, and protection? Without us that’d make your lives more dangerous. How is providing you protection an insular ninja thing? There are more threats than other ninja.”

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>>5890052
“But with ninja protection also comes ninja enemies. For every non-ninja bandit group that you protect us from there are other ninja and missing-nin that get hired by the bandits or even competing merchants who might hire ninja to counteract you. I guess I see ninja as an institution as a net-zero industry that just expands forever to deal with the problems of an expanding ninja industry. No offense. You guys are just on a different planet, and where our lives intersect the good and bad is balanced. Not leaf ninja, obviously, but if all ninjas everywhere stopped taking contracts life would be the same.No good ninja, no bad ninja. It would equal zero like it already does, just with more mundane violence instead of magic ninja violence. Maybe the risks and rewards would be lowered in amplitude.”

Naoki laughs. “It’s nice to know my friend doesn’t respect my job! I never asked.”

Akimitsu shakes his head. “Well, I might be wrong because by that token doing anything is pointless. You could say the same thing about farmers too. If they provide more food, there are more people. If there are more people, you need to produce more food. And you’re left with another circular institution that exists to grow, and through growing, requires more growth. If anything I guess that’s what all cultures and jobs are about, just providing endless supplies to meet endless demands, forever. That’s where we make our money, it’s just that I specifically would prefer things found a stable equilibrium where everything could just be fine the way it is forever without constant change.”

“I, uh…” You try to add something. It’s hard to think because you drank too much. You were a little underprepared for this kind of abyssal reasoning. Akimitsu must be some kind of nihilist. You’d like to put a needle in the balloon of his logic, but in the end it was just a bleak opinion. There’s no way of really proving him wrong, just endlessly chasing an answer to an argument that will never be satisfied with one. You realize that attempting to argue with him about it even though the argument will clearly never end is his criticism of life, and ninja life specifically. It’s ironic. You’d just keep talking forever as things grow more complex, reaching further and further for more anecdotes to shovel into the blaze. A march towards infinity. Maybe the curse of life was to be wrapped up in some kind of infinite march like that, one way or another. And the bleakness or beauty of it was in the eye of the beholder. Maybe in broad strokes, when taken as a whole, the balance of creation and destruction would always be at some spiritual variant of net zero. Happiness for some prides itself in the misery of others. Maybe the Pure Land was just the starting point where the net-zero of life hadn’t been needlessly complicated yet. Or maybe the essence of life was that it was just an errant tangle of strings in a sheet of endless death.

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>>5890054
You blink. Slowly. You rise to go eat some meatbread. You manage to clear the distance and start eating some. Katsuro is there now, taking his turn on the food. “You don’t have anything to worry about with him.” He says, giving your group an assessing glance.

“What?”

“I said, you don’t have anything to worry about with him.”

“I heard what you said, I just don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean he plays for the opposite team.”

“What team?”

“I mean, they’re all on the same team over there.” He says, gesturing towards Naoki, Akimitsu, and Masami. “You’re the only one of that group who’s on mine.”

You can’t help but frown. “I’m definitely on their team. It’s like the one thing I’m pretty sure about.”

He shrugs, “There’s more than one kind of team, dude.”

“Huh?”

“Whatever man. Good meatbread!”

“Yeah, the recipe came to me in a dream. Where’d you learn to play the shamisen?”

“Oh, I just read in a magazine that women like guys who can play music, like, a year ago. Had my parents buy me one as soon as I heard that, and I’m a fast learner when I’m motivated.”

“What does your family do? I never asked.”

“Civilians. We own a corner store. You didn’t know that?”

“No, dude.”

“Yeah. After class I would pretty often just go work at the counter. It’s a small, slow little place so I’d just sit there and read magazines.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me this? I would’ve checked it out.”

He frowns. “You wouldn’t get it, but there’s a stigma about becoming a ninja if you don’t have a parent who’s one, and that’s why I don’t go around yelling about it. A lot of ninja just assume you must have shitty breeding and no talent. My grandma was an Aburame kunoichi though. Retired early and got soft-exiled from the clan when she married my grandpa. It’s a whole thing.”

“Katsuro, you do not seem like Aburame material AT ALL. And I’ve never heard anyone say stuff like that until now, especially not anyone I respect.”

“Only 25%, dude!” He says, laughing. “I’m just saying. Times are changing, but there are plenty of people in the village who are still really stuck in their ways. You got shit for being the son of Kiri-nin too, right? And there’s that Naruto kid who gets shit for, like, NO reason.”

“Who the fuck is Naruto?”

“Dude, he’s some kid who’s starting the academy this following year, I don’t know. I heard about it from Juro-Sensei when I was visiting last week, apparently, he’s controversial from just being alive. By the way, Juro-Sensei is going to quit being a chunin-sensei.”

“He is?”

“Yeah, he doesn’t want to commit to another four years with a new team, not after the Uchiha thing. He can’t do missions anymore either, so he’s probably just going to join one of the slower support teams, like doing classified admin work. That or retire outright.”

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>>5890057
“Huh.” You say. Katsuro was dropping bombs on you left and right. It was getting overwhelming, especially with the sake in your system. You decide to change the subject to more pertinent concerns. “Hey, do you know how to dance?”

“Hmph! Do I know how to dance! Of course I know how to dance, who do you think I am? I’m the full package.”

“Can you teach me? I was going to ask Shizuka because I bet she’d be-”

“She’s dancing with ME, get your own. But I’ll show you the basics. Come here.” He takes your hand, placing it on his waist. He takes your other hand and holds it out to the side a little bit. “Alright, I’m the woman for now, for educational purposes. Dancing solo is just about moving however you want to a rhythm, dancing with a partner requires some actual coordination and knowledge though. Normally you would lead, and you will soon because there’s no way Masami is going to know what she’s doing, but for now you’re just going to do what I tell you…”

Katsuro begins putting you through the paces of ballroom dance. In the background everyone else has assembled around the sake log, with the exception of Yuzuki, who’s watching you. They’re all working on drinking sake and having their own conversations; you’re curious, but you can’t be everywhere at once. As of right now only you and Masami are notably buzzed but that’s rapidly going to begin changing. You have about fifteen or twenty minutes learning how to dance before the music starts and things start popping off. Daigo and Junpei are trying to set up a drinking game of some sort, you just don’t know what because you’re not over there.

>Roll for how well you can learn to dance from Katsuro, and how successful you’ll be at it afterwards! 1d100, or 1d100+10 if you want to burn a Will of Fire on it for some reason.
>Goals for the next post!

Rolled 5 (1d100)

>>5890061
Do a head spin. This can only be good as a drunk.

Rolled 96 (1d100)

>>5890061

Rolled 39 (1d100)

>>5890061
how many fortnite dances can we teach him

Rolled 54 (1d100)

>>5890082
He teach us you mean.

>>5890080
Good job brah.

Time for the second set of rolls.
PERFORMANCE!
>>5890061

>>5890057
>He says, gesturing towards Naoki, Akimitsu, and Masami. “You’re the only one of that group who’s on mine.”
What did he mean by this? They're not all gay, right!?

>>5890329
Masami likes men.
Akitsumi is gay and likes men. These statements are unrelated.
Naoki. . He might apparently be gay. If Katsuro is right with his gaydar.

Katsuro likes women, like us.

>>5890345
Oh, of course.

>>5890356
lol, actually I wonder if Katsuro is just saying that because Naoki wanted to have a guys only party. Though, I think I remember QM saying something like he's interested in someone else when we asked about Masami so maybe that was a hint.
>>5890061
I guess is that first time we've ever danced like this, so we can't bust out some antiquated, traditional kiri dance. I wonder if our sister could dance?

>>5890375
The QM amused me with "If you want to be cynical, Masami would like anyone who pushed past her barriers and Otomo is a teen with his first female friend and hormones" Its technically a true statement without being a Correct one.

But then maybe I am a romanticist

Rolled 91 (1d100)

>>5890061
Surely we got that hydro flow

>>5890505
>>5890080
Missing one more roll but we got a 96 to learn and a 91 to do so. Bam. drop that bitch into a ballroom plunge

Rolled 77 (1d100)

>>5890061

Goals for next post?
Make sure everyone get less sober, dance (do we want to royally step in it by asking Yuna since Masami is angry with us?)

We should tell a ghost story. Or talk about our encounter with the Rice Demon once it gets really dark, then tell a ghost story of the back of it and try to scare the rest of the class. If we’re coherent enough.

>>5892099
Nah, cheer her up with our dancing. Or if that fails, go and watch the drinking game maybe make a bet.

I bet on Junpei, dude's a beast.

>>5892115
That would be revealing our KG, so lets try and keep it away.

>>5892151
But we could, drunkenly, tell the "Ancient Kiri-nin horror story of the the vicious demon-rice fields"

>>5892115
Hell yeah, that would be tight, maybe if we share our struggles others will open up too.
>>5892151
I get that, but it would be very difficult for this to come back to bite us, it is far more of a strength than a weakness, it would take a huge amount of research to get as much of an understanding as we have from our talks with Sarutobi, and even more beyond that to take advantage of it. I think with the comradery we already have it would be more of a strength in the pool for our allies to draw from. As long as it doesn't get back to Orochimaru, but I think we're safe since we're steering clear of main series plot/characters

Will of Fire!!

>>5892262
>Well, there's this story my mother once told me about how Kiri-nin would steal into the Konaha at night and seek out unsuspecting Genin ...

>>5892357
Yah, I agree. Ignore the canon story, ignore the main characters.
It rarely ends up well and usually robs our mc of agency and setting.

>>5892405
...And take them to be sacrificed to blood drinking rice kami.
I just want our peers to laugh at the idea of demon rice while Naoki, Masami and us go into *details* and make it scary. Cause it damn well was.

>>5892151
>That would be revealing our KG, so let’s try and keep it away.
Oh, I forgot about that.

Making a post to touch base.
Been taking it kind of slow, some of you may know from what I said in /qtg/ that I just moved, so there was a road trip period, and now a new apartment buying furniture and getting situated period.
As of right now I have a fucking desk, so I'm a little more settled in. Expect a post, hopefully tonight, so long as I'm not distracted by some kind of BS that one of my roommates introduces into my life. I also honestly don't know how to describe dancing too well because I suck at it myself, so that's causing some writer's block.

>>5894562
My advice is focus on feeling.

Tis the difference between making love and fucking, even if the movements are the same.
Fun but terrible dances are better than formal mastery that you hate.

>>5894562
Congrats on the move.
I wouldn't worry too much about the mechanics off it- like that other anon said, how we're making our partner feel is really the meaningful bit.

File: Masami Rice Field.png (1.3 MB, 1024x1024)

1.3 MB PNG

>>5890061
>>5890075
>>5890080
>>5890082
>>5890095
>>5890375
>>5890505
>>5890561
Katsuro shows you all the steps for basic dance. You have a hard time even understanding why people need to ‘learn’ this. All you’re doing is moving in a pattern. It’s not that hard. Just move in a square, and with rhythm. You don’t step on his feet once.

Because you’re clearly good at this, he starts showing you specific dance moves you can execute. In short order you’ve gone from learning from Katsuro to the two of you simply goofing off as you quickly learn and just begin executing moves at a frenetic pace. Soon people are joining you, more and more people joining in as a circle around the bonfire develops, with people essentially doing whatever they want. Naoki has some kind of dance pop playing, which you don’t necessarily care for beyond its facility in providing a beat.

The flame of the bonfire roars, and the circle spins. Somewhere in the midst of it all it occurs to you that you live in the Village Hidden in the Leaves, in the Land of Fire. And here you were. In a forest, hidden in the leaves, and roaring in a circle with your closest friends and allies. A dim signal somewhere deep in the base of your skull ignites and informs you that there are multiple ways of viewing everything, optimistic, cynical, mature, youthful. All kinds of ways for all kinds of folks. And here in this moment, you’re getting to experience what your predecessors experienced when they were young, before the founding of this village and long after, leading up to you. Perhaps it was a moment like this that inspired the concept of the Will of Fire in the first place, before it was refined into a dusty old philosophy for dusty old men.

You can feel your people besides you now, literally and metaphorically. Living, breathing teammates, and the thump of feet from all the faceless dead men that have pounded this same earth in a frenzy of youth and drink. You can’t see them, but you can feel them adding to the rhythm in your heart and the motion of your feet. It feels less like you’re dancing and more like you’re following a pattern that was established over a hundred years ago and would continue for a hundred or more after you’re gone.

You’re all genin and thus most of you had functionally limitless stamina, especially for an activity like this. That being said, heightened emotions give out before your bodies do, and soon Naoki is changing the music to something far more regulated and chill and everyone starts bleeding off to do their own things once again. Soon it’s just you and Masami remaining.

You extend your hand to her.

She takes it.

The two of you slowly waltz in silence around the bonfire.

You don’t look at her face, and you assume she doesn’t look at yours.

Something tells you that this is a moment that would end with acknowledgment, a moment that would require something to change.

Maybe you just lack courage, or you’re just too young, or too unsure.

File: Yuzuki Yoshinaga.png (1.78 MB, 1024x1024)

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>>5895493
But it would be a moment you’d revisit again in times of dread and deadly danger to give you the willpower to keep going. A moment that would serve to remind you that there was a point to fighting besides mere civic duty and earthly survival. Some moments had enough life in them that they could live on forever and share that life with other moments in the future, when needed.

>+1 Will of Fire, you now have 3.

—

You couldn’t stay like that forever though. At some point the suspension breaks and reality fades back in. What to do, what to do? More sake should solve that.

You awkwardly disentangle yourself from Masami, awkwardly mumbling something about True Ninken 2 being an extremely kickass movie and you’d love to see another one like it again.

A couple of steps towards the sake log and you’re immediately brought back down to sobriety, because it seems you’ve got a problem.

Yuzuki was standing in front of you, holding a bottle. Naoki’s arm was around her wrist, if not in a deathgrip than one close to it.

“I said no. You’re too young, and besides: It’s MINE. And I’m not sharing it with you of all people.” He says, icily. He stares at her with the cold focus of a person who’s readying themselves to use a shovel to take the head of a snake.

“What, you’re afraid letting me have son would make you a degenerate or something? Look around you, we’re already beyond that. The only way I’m letting go of this bottle is if I drink my share or a shatter it over your head.” She says. A playful tone to her voice that belies how serious those words were.

The knuckles on Naoki’s wooden hand weren’t capable of turning white with fury, but if they were, they wood (Heh.).

Maintaining some seriousness for a moment, Yuzuki was an unstoppable force, and Naoki was not only an immovable object but also obviously drunk. Things would get bad in a short order without an intervention.

>>5895496
>Naoki, just let her have some. Who cares? I bought some of it myself, you can say it’s from my portion. It’s not worth fighting over.
>Yuzuki, you’re lucky you were even invited at all after what you pulled at the restaurant. Let it go or we’re going to make you go home. I don’t care how tough you are, if we decide you can’t be here you’re not going to be here.
>We’re all friends here, we can settle this some other way. Some kind of game, perhaps? (What game?)
>Screw it, you two clearly have some beef no matter what. Instead of some fucked up brawl, let’s just settle it with a fight in a more organized manner than just having an uncontrolled scuffle. Get it out of your system.
>Write in.

>1d100 or 1d100+10 with WoF.
>Not necessarily a roll to determine diplomacy, but I roll for your reaction speed if something bad happens. (Frankly I already know what’s going to happen for each of those options based on the inscrutable nature of their mental states.) It’s a roll to control whatever fallout results, if it does. If you roll really well you might get to pivot to a different resolution, if you just pass you’ll get to at least explain how you’ll react in advance, and if you fail you’ll just get to stand around stupefied as a total clusterfuck unfolds.

Rolled 83 (1d100)

>>5895499
>>Screw it, you two clearly have some beef no matter what. Instead of some fucked up brawl, let’s just settle it with a fight in a more organized manner than just having an uncontrolled scuffle. Get it out of your system.

Rolled 36 (1d100)

>We’re all friends here, we can settle this some other way. Some kind of game, perhaps?
As much as I'd like for them to fight it out, I don't trust Naoki to keep his cool while smashed, and I don't trust our strength to be able to stop him should we need to intervene.

Rolled 34 (1d100)

>>5895499
>Screw it, you two clearly have some beef no matter what. Instead of some fucked up brawl, let’s just settle it with a fight in a more organized manner than just having an uncontrolled scuffle. Get it out of your system.
>Write in.
As soon as we can disengage, ask Yuna to narc on her little sister to her dad, I agree with >>5895525 in terms of things getting out of hand quickly, and it would be best to have some kind of authority to make a call on this. We've had a good night all in all, I think calling it isn't a bad idea.

Rolled 10 (1d100)

>>5895499
>Screw it, you two clearly have beef.

Yeah, Nah. I'm not ruining the party over this. Team loyalties exist and we're meant to be a big friend group so it's better if we allow them to have a PROPER duel where we can all watch. Turns it into two individuals settling shit, rather than shredding the social tapestry.

And also, fuck you Brat, grow up or get slapped up.

>>5895560
>>5895559
Her team is her sister and Katsuro, we can call em over to help break things up.

Though, again, I think it'd do her some good to get the shit kicked out of her. Not that I think it'd snap her out of it, just that she might think twice before threatening violence again.
Because Ninja live in a very physical world.

>>5895567
Yeah I'm not super confident who's ass will be getting kicked, and I have a feeling that Daddy Yoshinaga will be 'chill' as long as there is no lasting damage done. I'm also not confident in the restraint two psychopathic and half drunk superpowered child soldiers will show, especially with the referees also being drunk superpowered child soldiers.

Rolled 19 (1d100)

>>5895499
>We’re all friends here, we can settle this some other way. Some kind of game, perhaps? (What game?)
Go Fish.

>>5895499

>Write-In: Use your water jutsu proficiency to slide the sake out of the bottle and over to you as a sensor orb, Keep it rotating around you.

Followed up with:
>>Screw it, you two clearly have some beef no matter what. Instead of some fucked up brawl, let’s just settle it with a fight in a more organized manner than just having an uncontrolled scuffle. Get it out of your system. (No weapons and it's first blood or yield, any blood gets drawn it gets called right there.)

Also:
>Some moments had enough life in them that they could live on forever and share that life with other moments in the future, when needed.
Absolutely beautiful writing, Blue. Bravo.

>>5895499

>Write-In: Use your water jutsu proficiency to slide the sake out of the bottle and over to you as a sensor orb, Keep it rotating around you.
I second this notion.

>>5895499
>Screw it, you two clearly have some beef no matter what. Instead of some fucked up brawl, let’s just settle it with a fight in a more organized manner than just having an uncontrolled scuffle. Get it out of your system.
Yuzuki is going to keep pushing things until it goes *very* wrong, better in a setting where there are no other people trying to kill us and we have a large amount of people able to interfere before anyone gets mauled, killed or maimed. Which we should definitely do

Also
>I don't know how to write dancing
>Writes a fantastic scene where people dance.
>Blue,jpg
At this point I'm starting to hope that you've never touch alcohol either.

>>5895499
I'll back these>>5895833

>>5895499
>We’re all friends here, we can settle this some other way. Some kind of game, perhaps? Shogi’s a classic, right?
>Or, if we can’t at the very least ACT like friends, we can always just say NO ONE gets any more sake… (demonstrate our water spikes technique on the nearest unattended cup)
I don’t want to risk a fight while Naoki’s drunk and Yuzuki isn’t. I have no idea where the power gap is right now but more importantly, Naoki’s style and ideals are all about precise application of force, which don’t exactly mesh well with alcohol - especially if his temper is a factor. I’d rather he lose face than risk him lose something worse if Yuzuka’s skills (or rolls?) somehow aren’t up to par.

Besides, her dad would probably never forgive us, regardless of who he decides to blame.

>>5900229
He's a bit tipsy at worst
But if you're worried about the fight being unfair then give Yuzuki a drink too. Then it's fair.

File: They Watch You.png (2.43 MB, 1024x1024)

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>>5895499
>>5895520
>>5895559
>>5895560
>>5895824
>>5895833
>>5896329
>>5899781
>>5900229
If a pin dropped, you would have been able to hear it. That pin drop would cause something to break, but it seems that’s going to happen one way or another so you may as well do it yourself. You could apply some direction.

“Screw it, you two clearly have some beef no matter what. Instead of some fucked up brawl, let’s just settle it with a fight in a more organized manner than just having an uncontrolled scuffle. Get it out of your system.” You say, bluntly.

You additionally form the Inu seal to try to manipulate the alcohol in the sake bottle to take that out of the equation, but there’s no jutsu you can use to directly control it other than water spike. Still, you manage to shake it slightly. You’d need to learn a specific jutsu to control water in a generic fashion.

Naoki’s eyes dart to you because he sees you subtly forming the seal. The second he does, the sake bottle falls, shatterin- NO. A jolt penetrates through your spine, instinctual will to not allow that to happen. Tora Inu Mi, you form some of the water in the sake into a water spear, stabbing through the neck of the bottle and into the ground, preventing it from breaking. Junpei begins collecting it, calmly.

“Oops.” Yuzuki says, smiling. “Well, you wanted me to let go of it, right? Can’t do that with you holding my wrist.”

Naoki comes close to hitting her. Real close. He gets a look in his eye when he’s about to do something violent; the emotion drains from his face and he tenses up, kind of like a cat getting ready to annihilate a rodent. It’s a face he was wearing right now. It was a focused, blank look. With a tenseness to it.

And she was close to hitting him too, or perhaps stabbing him: You didn’t know her that well, but it dawns on you that this was the same Yuzuki from watching her spar with Yuna when you were all younger. She fought with a kind of metronomic rhythm, something she probably learned to do from timing all her attacks to the swing of her kusarigama’s chain for so long. You realize that she was probably going to do something the moment the bottle shattered, that would have been the first beat, the start signal to whatever her initial moves would be. You also notice that her other hand has remained suspiciously close to her kunai pouch this entire time. Though she didn’t have her kusarigama with her, she was the only one here who showed up strapped. Violence was inevitable.

You haven’t offered an alternative to violence, but you have offered a way to mitigate the fallout.

Naoki lets go of her wrist. She retracts it close to her body, rubbing sensation back into it because its blood flow was clearly restricted. Naoki lets out a long, drawn out sigh.

“Alright. Let’s settle this. Ground rules: Don’t cut me or stab me. In exchange, I won’t break any of your bones.” He says.

File: Naoki Figurine.png (1018 KB, 1024x1024)

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>>5900835
“Whatever. Your only chance to win was when you had a grip on my wrist. You’re too slow to touch me now, may as well be lurching around like a fat bastard.”

“Erm… There’s a reservoir away from everything. You can sort it out there.” You begin, rubbing your temples as you attempt to physically channel lucidity into your impaired cognition. “And you’ll need a referee to make sure things don’t get out of hand. It should be Daigo.”

It was basic logic if you think about it. You and Masami, no. Not fair because you’re on Naoki’s team. Ditto for Katsuro and Yuna, except from the other side. So that left Daigo, Junpei, and Shizuka. For the purposes of doing this, Daigo was the only real option. You liked Shizuka, but she wasn’t exactly a stable influence. Same for Junpei, he was too cold. Daigo used to be more of a dickhead, but you’ve since realized he was a pretty good dude on the inside. Well-rounded, competent, and could act in a reliable manner. He’s your man for this.

“Yes. *hic* I’ll do it.” Daigo says, standing up from the log, holding a bottle of sake that you hadn’t noticed previously, already making you doubt your choices. You weren’t doing flawless either, but there’s a threshold you hadn’t crossed quite yet. “We’ve all seen Juro-Sensei step in. I know when far’s too far.”

You may have made some kind of catastrophic mistake, but...

Part of you just wants to mentally throw in the towel. At some point the weight of the world wasn’t on your shoulders. This was the best plan you had. You did your best. Fuck it. They were going to fight senselessly right here, right now, and now they're not. You take the bottle from Daigo and drain it. There wasn’t too much left.

“Oh! Uh…” Akimitsu starts, slow on the uptake no doubt due to his inferior civilian perceptive abilities and inability to dance as well as you can. “I’ll stay here and tend the bonfire. I don’t really want to, uh, see that.”

—

Otomo is getting drunk. You are Naoki Fuma, and you’re trailing behind Yuzuki while your party moves towards the spot you’re going to fight.

Yuzuki needs to be crushed. Immediately.

This was the kind of red flag behavior that needed to be nipped in the bud or else the social fabric of the… Well, it was hard to think rationally right now, but surely it couldn’t be allowed to continue. There’s a line. And a line-stepper.

Yuzuki is a line-stepper and shit-stirrer. A barely domesticated wolf pup hitting adolescence and pushing to find her limits and what she can get away with.

Not having it.

NOT having it.

Your world was peaceful at home, dangerous at work. That’s fine. That’s the balance you want. Happy here, focused there.

You were not just going to sit around and let some little girl brat pick on you like you’re a helpless rube who couldn’t snap her in half like a dry branch.

But you also weren’t stupid. Not anymore.

>>5900836
As you approach the little reservoir lake, you focus intently as she just keeps walking on over the water as if it’s not there. Bad news. You had just barely gotten the hang of that, and being intoxicated was going to do you no favors here. Chances are you fall in, especially if things get frantic. Part of you wants to strike now, and strike HARD before she can put more of this bullshit obstacle between the two of you. Not to mention that she was good at lightning release and no doubt you being soaked would sign your death warrant. She’s already stacking the deck against you, and you hadn’t even started yet.

Come on Naoki. Have some integrity.

A deep breath through the nose.

Deep breath out the mouth.

Assets and liabilities. That’s a term you heard your dad use.

Your assets: You’re definitely stronger than her if you managed to get a good strike in. Matter of fact, it was ridiculous to assume you could possibly need more than one solid blow. She was 10. Small. Fragile. Her entire fighting style, whether she wanted to believe it or not, was just a huge, elaborate cope for how weak and frail she was. You examine her body: Underdeveloped. Skinny. Cloaking herself in baggier clothing to look bigger like a hiker trying to puff up to intimidate a bear. A panicked defense. Deliberately projected strength that screamed WEAK to a trained eye. Insecurity of form, insecurity of mind. Even more so than her body, her weak mind was an exploitable target, if you could just bait her. She didn’t have her kusarigama either, sporting just her ninjutsu and kunai.

Your liabilities: She was faster than you, she was already standing in a difficult spot, she had lightning jutsu, she’s sober, and she was probably going to throw kunai at you. You can already hear it now: “HURR DURR I SAID I WOULDN’T STAB YOU AND I WON’T AS LONG AS YOU DODGE.”

A tight frown settles on your face as you plant your feet firmly in the sand of the shore, staring at her where she lurks out on the water. She lightly twirls on her feet as she turns to meet your eyes, a crooked grin on her face. She was for sure going to throw kunai at you, if not now, then later. You could already tell just based on her foul little demon personality. The fact that she knew you well enough to use it against you.

File: Duel at Midnight.png (1.86 MB, 1024x1024)

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>>5900838
Your heart rate increases as flashes of your childhood flow through your eyes: Bleeding out scared and alone in a field, shrieking for your mom, shrieking for ANYONE to save you as you panicked, dying in the dirt, the dull static numb of your missing arm radiating through your body, through your heart, into your brain, the creeping death, the loss of consciousness, the sensation of grim certainty when you realize that you’re going to die alone, forsaken and pathetic. The prescient knowledge of how your parents would find you there, curled up, rotting, dead in a pool of mud, blood, piss and shit. Filthy. Dead. Dry eyes, pale, staring at nothing. Your life amounting to nothing more than an explosion of devastation to torment your family. The sad, senselessness of it.

And all because you were stupid.

‘I’m scared of shuriken.’ you would say.

The pitying looks as they stare at your arm and realize how much of a broken child you really are.

The recognition of how bizarre and stupid your life must have been to squander all of your potential on the lunatic idiocy of trying to catch your own shuriken and failing. Something neither a normal villager or a ninja would ever do.

Caught between two whole worlds of inexplicable failure.

She was targeting you for a reason. She was going to enjoy this, this little dominance game. It rankled your pride and pissed you off. Your wooden fist tightens involuntarily. There’s no way you would be embarrassed here. Logically speaking you may have already lost, but the blood in your veins commands your victory. You had to have a win here. At all costs.

It wasn’t just your pride as a ninja, or a boy being pestered by a little girl. It was the fact that she was deliberately trying to make you feel helpless like that again. You’ve spent your entire life making sure you never had to feel like that again. To know for an absolute fact that you have become strong enough to protect yourself from that kind of fate, and, more recently, to protect your friends.

The moon was full.

Visibility was good.

You stare her down as she hovers there, standing on a bed of stars reflected off the night sky.

Your teammates and comrades gather on the edge of the woods like carrion birds.

The hate and anger that comes from this girl, who should be your friend, deliberately stabbing at you when she’s in the list of the top 10 people who absolutely should not be doing that.

At best she was selfish and just wanted to fight without considering what it meant to you. At worst, she knew what she was doing and doing it anyway.

The grief of senseless betrayal.

A tenuous grasp on victory.

>>5900840
NAOKI FUMA
>Ninjutsu: 1.5
>Taijutsu: 3.5
>Specialist Jutsu: 1
>Intelligence: 2.5
>Strength: 4
>Speed: 2.5
>Stamina: 2.5
>Hand Seals: 1
Total: 18.5

Chakra: Wind
>Spiritual Techniques
Breakthrough (Wind Bullet)
Clone
Transformation

>Physical Techniques
Prosthetic Arm Maneuvers
Hidden Leaf Style
Shinobi Movement

>Special Techniques
Genjutsu Disruption
Chakra Adhesion
Medical Jutsu
Puppetry

>You'll have to do something. 1d100, or 1d100+10 WoF. You have 3. (I realize you're playing as a different character, but he's your teammate so as far as I'm concerned, you're one unit.)

>Just rush her. You probably won’t sink if your purity of focus is absolute. A straightforward plan will help you maintain purity of focus.
>Stay right here and get ready to react. Focus on defense and observing her patterns so you can find a better plan.
>Bait her into getting impatient and approaching with some taunts.
>Do something fancy with the air bullet jutsu. You could probably use it to deflect kunai, disturb the water, or maneuver in unexpected ways be using to it shove yourself midair.
>Launch your hand at her for a grab.
>Disengage, enter into stealth in the woods, watch and wait. You’re a fucking ninja.
>Write in (Incorporating a general plan of attack and defense would work. Anticipating her moves correctly and using a good strategy will make things easier.)

Posting more themes because I like doing this. Everyone's current mental state, if you like.

>Naoki
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKRkAEjjhpE
>Yuzuki
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GCNUeTFSbA
>Daigo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-W1j2NKtgY
>Otomo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw1ZC6sZjIY
>Katsuro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNFzfwLM72c
>Junpei
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbCueSw7lUw
>Masami
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV_3Dpw-BRY
>Yuna
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnIhRpIT7nc
>Shizuka
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhjk5x54bsE
>Akimitsu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNskfWXxrlA

>>5900849
She will cope if we hit her from the shadows.

>Bait her into attacking early and with impatience. Be visious

Rolled 63 (1d100)

>>5900849
And cause I forgot, mah roll.

Rolled 35 (1d100)

>>5900840
>"Why are you like this?"
>Stay right here and get ready to react. Focus on defense and observing her patterns so you can find a better plan.

>>5901033
Fuck you dice.

>>5901033
She also fights on a rythem. She will attack on the first signal and then we can measure her meter and rhyme

Rolled 88 (1d100)

>>5900849
>Play to your strengths and try to bait her into doing something stupid.

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Rolled 56 + 10 (1d100 + 10)

>>5900849
I'm going for a nuts on the table approach, gentlemen.

>Detach your arm and point it at her.
>"I know what you're planning. Keep your Kunai as a crutch if you have to. Nobody will blame you for having to cheat to beat me."
>Have the arm hit her with (pic related) and drop it into the sand.

Serves double duty as rage bait and also an attack on pride. The Downside is that we're out an arm. The Upside is that she is prideful enough that she'll probably nerf herself due to not wanting there to be any questions she's "better"

WOF because I want Naoki to win so fucking bad bros.

>>5900849
>Write in (Incorporating a general plan of attack and defense would work. Anticipating her moves correctly and using a good strategy will make things easier.)
Use Puppetry to distract her while you get closer to punch her in her stupid face

>>5900852
Katsuro best boy
Junpei is a slow build up, but worth it.
Shizuka was the biggest surprise and goes to show why she is best girl

Rolled 36 (1d100)

>>5901149

>>5901068
Welp. 88 is a beat stick.

But I do maintain >>5900861 that we should bait her with nasty words and seek to watch for her timers, then disrupt them
Once she gets in close, dominate with locks and grapples where strength is the deciding factor.

>>5901068
This

>>5900849
>Stay right here and get ready to react. Focus on defense and observing her patterns so you can find a better plan.
>Do NOT take cover in the woods, trees are as much a lightning rod as anything.
>Stay out of the water at all costs.
I get the feeling channeling lightning through her kusarigama is probably also a cover for a lack of stamina. Lightning may be one of, if not THE most destructive elemental nature release, but it’s probably also the most demanding. At range her speed won’t be anything Naoki can’t cope with and it’s not like she’s gonna bust out Lightning Javelin all day unless she wants to end up like Otomo did.

Just gotta hold our ground against our biggest life’s trauma, no big deal.

>>5901627
She's gonna throw a shuriken at us isn't she...

>>5903209
Undoubtable. If she knows our history and our trauma, she'll use it against us.

>>5903209
Not at all.
She's gonna throw all of them at us.

>>5903315
Probably after faking us out a few times, so we don't really expect it anymore

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>>5900849
>>5900861
>>5900898
>>5901068
>>5901120
>>5901149
>>5901627
It’s hard to play to your strengths in this setting. Usually, it would just be a consideration of getting within arm’s reach as fast as possible. From there, you were reasonably confident that you’d be victorious.

Provided you could get within arm’s reach. Which for now, you can’t. She stands menacingly on the water, watching you. Her posture was unassuming, as if she wasn’t currently in a duel at all. But it wasn’t a civilian stance: She radiated palpable confidence, just analyzing you.

You probably radiated palpable confidence as well, just analyzing her. You had once been taught that patience in such a situation was a virtue, and as such you had impressed it upon yourself that, if you do anything at all, you should do with a sure calmness of heart. Instinct was an ally and an enemy. It could drive a decision faster than the mind could think, but it would drive mistaken action just as surely.

You lightly begin moving along the shore, slowly circling her position. It would look leisurely if not for the fact that you were purposefully managing your footing so that there isn’t an instant of time that would cause you to be caught flat-footed by some kind of ranged attack.

As such, you’re moving with a kind of stilted sidle.

“What’s wrong, Naoki?” She says. “You seemed so sure of yourself earlier. Scared of water?”

“No. I learned that trick you’re using right now, I’m just wary that you’ll use the water as a medium for some kind of electric cheat.” You lie. The problem wasn’t the lightning, it was being water-logged due to your own insecurity in remaining standing on it. The lightning was merely a modifier on top of how bad that would be.

“Wary, he says!” She announces to an invisible audience. Well, there was one. “And this is supposed to be the guy who lords around like he’s some untouchable badass! Why don’t you grow some balls and come at me?”

You snort. “Rich talk from the girl hiding over there. You know you can’t win without some stupid trick, so you’re-”

There it is, you think, reflexively throwing your head back with a jolt, narrowly avoiding the kunai that she sent sailing for your face. You think to say something about the fact that she’s already trying to stab you, but the time for banter wasn’t back yet.

You had a long familiarity with wire, due to the chakra wire being so central to your condition. There was a wire attached to the kunai. You didn’t have time to inspect it or check it out, but there would be electricity humming down in it in an instant. You were close enough that a nudge of chakra could probably send it into your newly convulsive body.

Instinct could drive a mistaken action, surely.

You grab it with your wooden hand, the sharp, razor edge of it scoring your wooden fingers as you yank it as forcefully as you possibly can: If it wasn’t in her hand, she couldn’t send lightning down it.

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>>5906440
It pays off. In the darkness you can’t see well enough to determine how she was hanging onto it. You were hoping it would be wrapped around her wrist so she would have gotten it slit open, but alas, it simply goes slack.

“You know what your problem is, Yuzuki? You’re too used to everything being easy. Just a little bit of natural talent and it goes to your head. But look at you now! Finally faced with an opponent you’re worried about and you start playing it safe like a weakling.”

She’s finally starting to get mad. “You’re the one who won’t come out here and fight me!”

“Yeah, I’m reacting to the strategy you chose. It’s your choice, not mine.” You say. You can’t help but wonder how vastly easier Otomo or Masami would have it dealing with this situation. The crabs would get Yuzuki no problem, and Otomo would probably be blasting her with accurate death beams from a cloud of fog by now.

You won’t sight while Yuzuki is looking at you, but you do allow yourself to release a long, slow breath. If only it were so easy. Your ability to use proper jutsu was stilted by how long it took you to get functioning use out of your wooden hand. You couldn’t help but feel like you were gravely paying for the mistake of letting that whole tactical spectrum of ninjutsu slide by the wayside.

Yuzuki looked pissed off. She was mentally weak. Her face was turning red.

“Alright, asshole.” She says, finally. “You want it, you got it.”

She begins rushing towards you at a sprint. Faster than you. She’s holding four kunai, two in each hand woven between her fingers, which meant she was either going to throw them at you as a barrage or she was going to attempt another trick with the wires.

There was no chance she was going to just let you smack her like a baseball as she ran up close. She’d do something agile and unexpected for sure, and you’d have to react. Her inexperience would mean her instinct would fail her. She would make a mistake and all you had to do was be ready to seize the opportunity to capitalize on it.

>>5906442
>When she gets close, just beat her up, no fuss no muss. Let your trained nerves do the planning for you.
>You’re still holding the limp wire attached to a kunai. Start swinging it around: It would keep her from closing in as easily and you could use it to tangle up any more wires she deploys. Although there is a risk she finds a way to send lightning down it and punish you for your cute little trick.
>Fall back into the trees. If there’s wood between you she’d have to get around it to strike, and at a closer distance than if you stayed on the shore where the space was open. Drawback being that you’d have a harder time noticing any wire traps in the thicker foliage.
>Use the clone technique and have them fan out. It’ll suit as a distraction while you try and close the inevitable gap she’ll try to be darting in and out of.
>She doesn’t know you can use wind jutsu. Wait for her to be complacent that she has a good strike on you, when she lunges knock her off course with your wind bullet and then capitalize while she’s imbalanced.
>Write in.
>1d100 or 1d100+10 WoF. Not every plan is created equally.

Rolled 56 + 10 (1d100 + 10)

>>5906443
If this would be outside of his Chakra limits, please let me know. But I think.

>Fire a wind bullet at your feet, sending up a shower of sand, summon two clones while you're obscured. Two clones rush her while you sit back and keep her busy with wind bullets and still holding the kunai.

The trick to this will be that the one in the bag preparing a wind bullet and holding the kunai is a clone, while the real Naoki is rushing in to just slam her with a gut punch. Very good misdirect, especially if we fake a sloppy approach on the clones. WOF because I still really want Naoki to win this.

>>5906451
It's a good idea in principle, but your clone jutsu is illusionary. You need to make them out of something tangible or they're not swinging kunai around. Or use a fuckload more chakra in the case of a proper shadow clone. Neither of which Naoki can do.
You're rolling with the basic version.
Also, your chakra reserves are fine. Your entire team at this point is fine on chakra reserves. Masami and Otomo need to worry about it because they have big enough jutsu that can eat it. Naoki just has really basic tools, so it's unlikely he could possibly spam Breakthrough enough times to run out. It just isn't demanding enough unless he was locked in a fight using it over and over again for like 10 minutes straight.

The design of the plan is logical though. If you want to run with a permutation of that I can definitely write it for you.

>>5906452
A permutation would be totally fine. Just leaving the kunai at the feet is all good, I just want her to not be concerned about shadow jobbers and leap over them or use some weak attack on them opening herself up for a counter punch from hell.

Rolled 47 + 10 (1d100 + 10)

>>5906443
I like this >>5906451 But we are better served by having one of the clones retreat into the trees. Just visible enough to see. not visible enough to make it obvious we want her to see.

Have the clone go in for a toss, and we go in for a slam in the gut. Fuck it, will of fire.

>>5906465
I like this idea a ton actually, please amend for the one hanging back to just book it at a trackabke speed for the trees.

Rolled 85 + 10 (1d100 + 10)

>>5906443
>When she gets close, just beat her up, no fuss no muss. Let your trained nerves do the planning for you.
Naoki is great in strength.

>>5906443
>>5906473
+1 Stab her with her own kunai in the wooden hand. Throwing knives is for grown ninjas.

Rolled 75 (1d100)

>>5906443
>Write in.
Use puppetry.

>>5906529
Could you elaborate mate? That's a bit short.

>>5906451
I like where your minds at mate, shooting at her probably wouldn't do much of anything but making her react to us might give us an oppertunity to close in.
>+1

>>5906480
>>5906473

We are better served by distracting her then beating the shit out of her. Not just trusting our instincts.
That 95 is good though

>>5906534
I recommend supporting another plan derived from that one.

>>5906555
What plan based on that one? the clones are corporeal so the plan, as I understand things is: "cause an explosion in the sand to blind/confuse her and go from there"

>>5906555
Our boy can plan 3 steps ahead while ultra instinct mode does cool ninja shit

>>5906609
He clones are illusionary, not corporeal.

The derivative plan is >>5906465 misdirect her with the shrapnel of the ground shot, then two illusions, one who attacks with us while the other retreats. Try and dupe her into thinking ee are falling back and thusly ignore our clones. One of which is actually us, and can abuse this foolish dismissal

Ayy blue, ya still alive?

>>5913848
Naah mate, he seems dead as a ginger's doornail.
Shame that.

Bluewari Da

>>5913848
>>5915181
>>5915789
Yuh, I'm alive. Life's getting ahead of me, not enough time in my days. I keep being genuinely shocked that another week has slid by without notice. I have way too much shit happening right now and the wrong personality type to make it work smoothly.
I'll get your post out tonight, right now my roommate's girlfriend has insisted upon a movie night and I can't be going apeshit on the keyboard by myself in the background like an asocial gremlin.

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>>5906443
>>5906451
>>5906465
>>5906473
>>5906480
>>5906529
>WoF Spent. You have 2.

Here she comes. Yuzuki had given in to impatience, but that didn’t mean she would be dysfunctional. Even if she were angry she’s still not the kind of person to just rush in without a high level of confidence in her plan.

That meant you couldn’t just blast through this problem like a brutal thug either.

You leap back and away from Yuzuki, quickly forming the hand signs for the wind bullet before blowing a sharp gust of wind out of your mouth and into the dry sand near your feet. By the time you land there’s a mist of particulates disguising your location, which gives you all the time you need to use the clone jutsu.

Two Naoki’s pop into existence near you. They all face you with a stoic, yet faintly pissed glare, as if waiting for orders and very annoyed that you’re taking so long. Of course, they wouldn’t ever receive orders because they’re literally phantasm’s of your own mind. After that brief moment of hesitation they coordinate themselves and they’re launching into action.

An epiphany strikes you as your clones jump into action: It would be ‘very’ easy to give away which clones are fake if you’re not careful. If a clone moved through the sand cloud you just created it would be spotted instantly by an intelligent person due to the fact that it wouldn’t disturb the air, passing through the cloud like a phantom, untouched.

By the same token, if your real body moved through the cloud or even touched it you would also be outed instantly for the exact same reason.

Lastly, there’s a mental problem so common amongst shinobi and humans in general that you’re taught to exploit it early on in the academy: People prefer symmetry. Usually, if one clone goes left and the other goes right, then the one who goes down the center is real. All things being equal, the non-clone is usually going to be either the one that is the most directly aggressive or the least. Very seldomly is the real body the one that’s standing just out of arm’s reach menacingly trying to distract an opponent by offering an easy target.

Not only do attackers tend to prefer being the obvious outlier no matter what, but the average defender in this scenario tends to attack the obvious outlier first as well. In a fast-paced combat encounter most people couldn’t be like you and have a quite long mental process happen in a split second; they simply reacted, and the wrong instinct at the wrong time could be as lethal as a knife to the heart.

One Naoki clone jumps directly up and over the cloud, menacingly holding a kunai.

The other darts left around the cloud, circling like a wolf.

You do the same but from the right, catching sight of Yuzuki. She sees you too. All three of you. But of course, she’s going to take out the outlier first.

File: Lightning Death Cage.png (2.05 MB, 1024x1024)

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>>5916449
With her left hand she spears two kunai up and into False Naoki’s chest, obliterating him into a puff of smoke instantly. The millisecond he’s gone she’s pulling on the strings attached to said kunai, savagely ripping them back down and swinging them in a wide arc towards your face, most likely crackling invisibly with a powerful electric current.

Of course, Yuzuki had a problem. Two Naokis were rushing at her simultaneously, so she had to split her attention between both of you. She handles this problem by sending out her other handful of kunai behind her before yanking them back into an arc as well, pirouetting in the sand like a dancer in the spotlight, now discharging so much lightning chakra down through her wires that they’re glowing a molten red and sending jolts of static into the nearby sand and water.

The strategy was clear. She expected you to back off, let her make some space.

The first thing you think of doing is lassoing her with the strung kunai you stole from her earlier: Since she was focused on her technique you could probably wrap it around one of her limbs even as you dart out of range of her area of effect.

In your imagination comes a whisper though. A memory of blood and cut sinew, of spewing death into parched soil. You don’t think grabbing her with a razor thin wire would necessarily do MAJOR harm, but it would definitely cut her.

And anyway… You didn’t want to cut her.

Newfound sensation of mercy in your heart, you decide to end this thing immediately, here and now.

You slam your foot into the ground, pinning the wire of your stolen kunai into the sand. Yuzuki’s eyes flash towards you, since you’ve confirmed which one is real. A sinister gleam passes along her face as she smiles at you, like a drooling fox about to tear into the hide of a rabbit.

With twin snaps of her wrist she redirects the kunai towards you, not directly at you, but around you, surrounding you on all sides. You feel your hair stand on end as she says “Lightning Death Cage.”

The palpable potential energy practically boiling around you as the electricity charts a course from one end of the death cage to the other, using your heart and brain as a medium to do so.

>>5916450
You toss the stolen kunai directly into the air just in time for a catastrophic explosion of noise and light to take your sight and sound and all your other senses. The lightning flows through the extra wire and straight through it to the ground and your feet, an intense heat surging through the rubber of your shoe sole as it palpably melts and the sand beneath your toes immediately sears, blazing-hot into fulgurite.

Yuzuki’s eyes, blinded by her own jutsu, fail to perceive you before her flesh does.

You grab her by the collar of her shirt with your wooden arm (To minimize the amount she’d be able to zap you.) as you wind up your other arm for a tremendous blow.

She does indeed try to send electricity into your wooden arm. Some of it flows into your stump and hurts, causing convulsions in your muscles all the way to your pectoral, but both of you realize with mirrored triumph and horror that it wasn’t going to be nearly enough to stop you.

>Put her in the hospital. Reason: Brain damage. Full force, smash her fucking face in.
>Hit her in the stomach, hard, but not major internal bleeding hard. Teach her a lesson but don’t be too brutal about it.
>Just give her a solid smack to the face, not even enough to knock her unconscious (But definitely enough to slam her ass into the sand.)
>Let her go. It was beyond clear she was dead to rights, no reason to seal the deal on it. You aren’t an animal, and she needs to be shown the way.
>Write in.

Nice it's back!

>>5916451
>Hit her in the stomach, hard, but not major internal bleeding hard. Teach her a lesson but don’t be too brutal about it.
If we're too light she's going to resent it and probably kick our ass the moment we turn our back to her.

>>5916451
>Hit her in the stomach, hard, but not major internal bleeding hard. Teach her a lesson but don’t be too brutal about it.
>Follow up with a headlock using your wooden arm to constrict bloodflow to her brain and knock her out with minimal additional damage.
First second will involve a struggle. Within the next four, reasoning will falter, confusion sets in alongside panic. By seven seconds, she's out. All you have to do is stop the flow from the carotid.

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If it wasn't for the fact she'd go feral with rage I'd vote for doing Pic Related as a funny bit.

>Gut Punch and explain her flaw in strategy as you watch her get up.

If you fight for selfish reasons then you'll do moves for selfish reasons instead of because they're the best move. She wanted to beat us by impressing us when she should have been worried about beating us period.

>>5916451
>Put her in the hospital. Reason: Brain damage. Full force, smash her fucking face in.

>>5916451
>>Hit her in the stomach, hard, but not major internal bleeding hard. Teach her a lesson but don’t be too brutal about it.

>>5916451
>Let her go. It was beyond clear she was dead to rights, no reason to seal the deal on it. You aren’t an animal, and she needs to be shown the way.
All this hesitation and tactica has sobered us. She's just a kid, after all.
Get some distance, but then, >>5916478 gloat.

>>5916451
>Hit her in the stomach, hard.

>>5916451
>Put her in the hospital. Reason: Brain damage. Full force, smash her fucking face in.

>>5916451
>Hit her in the stomach, hard, but not major internal bleeding hard. Teach her a lesson but don’t be too brutal about it.

We live! We die! We live again!

>>5916592
My man you do that and she will take our other arm.
You go easy on her she *will* see that as weakness, and weakness is an invitation. You wanna teach her anything you gotta earn her respect first and the only language this creature speaks is violence.

>>5916592
"Just a Kid" does not excuse her actions. It's time she learned consequences. When she attacks ninjas she should be closest with, because she is a spoiled prodigy who hasn't been taught limits, you have an obligation to correct her.

And the teacher at this moment is pain.

>>5916668
>>5916676
I was mainly saying this to balance out the others wanting to gaara this tween
I know she's a massive bitch but I'm shocked that not only does everyone else choose violence but I'm having to defend mercy

>>5916758
I mean... This *is* Naoki we're talking about here. This is pretty far from unexpected from him, and yea you're gonna have to defend mercy when its damn near guaranteed to lead directly to several knives in our back, gut, legs, arms and probably face.
But no braining her, that's just unnecessary

>>5916451
>Put her in the hospital. Reason: Brain damage. Full force, smash her fucking face in.
It'll be more dramatic this way.

>>5916451
>Hit her in the stomach, hard, but not major internal bleeding hard. Teach her a lesson but don’t be too brutal about it.

>>5916758
on the flip side of that coin, she did just use something called LIGHTNING DEATH CAGE on someone who is supposed to be her friend/colleague. This is AFTER already assaulting him by stabbing his prosthetic, which she knows he is sensitive about.

A gut check, after all that is getting off easy. Us not going any further IS the mercy.

>>5916451
>Hit her in the stomach, hard, but not major internal bleeding hard. Teach her a lesson but don’t be too brutal about it.

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>>5916451
>>5916453
>>5916463
>>5916525
>>5916584
>>5916592
>>5916600
>>5916663
>>5916665
>>5916861
>>5917241
>>5917698
You do hesitate. For a moment ‘What if Akimitsu is watching after all?’ and ‘What would Otomo do?’ pass through consciousness. Masami probably wouldn’t like it either. Hell, you can’t think of anyone who would actually COMMEND smashing this bitch, at least, not without a prolonged speech about the worthiness of a righteous ass-beating to show someone the error of their ways. And if those were the only thoughts in your mind you’d probably just let her with some light banter and love-tap.

But the last thought on your mind is what stops you. ‘What would Naoki do?’

Yuzuki stabbed my hand. Yuzuki needs to learn a lesson. Yuzuki could have killed me with Lightning Death Cage. And, you think with a snarl parting your mouth, normally concealed by a mask, you just didn’t fucking like her. She was an evil little runt, she’d probably stab you or something if you showed any tolerance.

You’d aim slightly low from her ribs since you implied you wouldn’t break any bones.

Savagery overtakes your brain, an electrified impulse of stern fury. With a muted thud (Weaker and more hollow than your normal sparring partners who actually have some mass.) your fist drives into her stomach as hard as you can without needing to fear whether or not she’d be able to recover without medical care. She was a strong girl though, and you let that fact be your guide. You hit her. You hit her hard.

Straight into the upper intestine, angled upwards to aggravate her lungs as much as possible.

Effective. She immediately goes limp, the urge to curl up in the fetal position thwarted by gravity and the newfound lack of strength in her limbs. A weak gag, an aborted and unsuccessful gasp for air, emanates from her throat. You let her go and she crumples in the sand, head lolling against your charred shoe before you viciously use it to propel her the fuck off of you.

You honestly can’t even remember why you were fighting anymore. It takes you a bit of thought. Oh yeah.

You regard Yuzuki, a reptilian hate dissolving into a more human disgust. “You’re a mean cunt, aren’t you?”

—

You are Otomo Mizutani, and you just watched your friend die before clearing the light from your eyes, rushing forward, tripping because of the booze in your system, looking up, seeing that he’s fine, and then watching him strike down a little girl like and then cast her aside like some kind of executioner. I quandary to be sure!

Well, why were you here? This was a best case scenario. Naoki is the type to bear a grudge, and Yuzuki was getting to be a little shit. You guys were ninja. There should be a basic sense that you owe it to yourselves to be professional. Where that wasn’t a possibility, at least an outright duel was better than a prolonged spat between overgrown children…

Oh yeah, you were technically children. Yuzuki was definitely children.

How about that?

File: It's a Light in the Dark.png (1.88 MB, 1024x1024)

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>>5920123
You get up quickly. It’s not hard because Masami helps by yanking you by the back of your neck. You don’t need to look to know it’s her and not someone else.

“Thanks.” You say, the two of you jogging towards the scene. As you arrive, Yuna is already there, perched over her sister like a vulture while Naoki lurks nearby, motionless like a statue until he catches sight of you in his periphery.

“Two out of three of us have slain demons, so Masami’s next. Assuming hers is exactly between hulking monstrosity and this little shit, I’m not sure I like her odds.”

You look to Masami to try and get a bead on her take on all this. Stupefied! You probably were too, coming awake from a dream and needing to form some kind of coherent perspective.

It’s not that you approve or disapprove. It’s more that you feel like you’ve encountered an iconic moment of a sort, something that defines a person. Not a big moment, just a little moment. The moment between moments that defines who you are, as a man and a ninja. Were you some kind of warrior? Did you approve of solving things with violence, even between friends? Would you join Naoki in bravado and banter, taking him up on his tacit offer to join him in victory?

Or was this some kind of cold reality? Were you the person to take this in with a solemn nod, and refer to it as a sad necessity? For the good of the village, maintaining a sense of uniform morality, a moment where the law of your cohort settles into place, an iron lock securing an iron chain that says ‘Talk shit, get hit.’ is the way? To grow older, and become stern men who wave a hands of approval to the little brutalities that constitute your bloodstained little impure world? To accept that this is the way it’s been, has been, and will be forevermore?

A microcosm that represents an endless wheel of revenge through means of force, turning ever onward, subsuming kids, adults, communities, villages, nations, and the world itself.

Or… You could just look beyond. Back through the looming woods over yonder to the bonfire you’ve built and the friends you’ve made out there somewhere in the darkness. Let this moment pass in silence, to die wedged between the things in life that are actually worth focusing on.

Masami is gauging your face now too. You have nothing to say other than “Well. Alright. Let’s get back to the bonfire.”

“Hmph. Alright.” Naoki says, immediately turning back to trudge with you back into the light. Masami scampers behind the two of you, swimming in your wake. You remember that her perception of herself as that kind of person is a real source of doubt for her. Just another little peek behind the curtain, another quiet moment lost in time.

You turn back to let the memory sink in for sure.

>>5920125
Naoki had hit her HARD. She can’t get up. Yuna cradles her head softly, whispering something you can’t hear. Katsuro is there now as well, rubbing the girls pink hair. He makes eye contact with you, and the two of you experience a moment of quiet empathy. From you, he feels something like a blunt sorrow and weariness with the world, from him you get the impression he knows of and understands your position, but that he can handle it from here. He’s a good guy. Always has been. You turn away before you can catalog the tears running down Yuzuki’s cheek.

—

The rest of your night wasn’t quite as fun after that. Team Yudai ultimately didn’t come back, which casted a damper on things. The whole scenario really fucked up the buzz, if you were being honest. Without Katsuro and Yuna acting as a lighthouse guiding the mood, you realize that the mood of your ensemble has a less social edge to it.

You try to probe Akimitsu for a bit, but it seems he’s clammed up, only really sharing that him and Naoki met during training and they go way back.

But the story of every night had to come to a close somewhere so that the story of another could begin.

>Not every stretch of time is eventful. You pass another month or so doing small jobs and training.
>What do you do with your free time? You haven’t been as invested in your miniatures recently, but maybe you’re ready to focus on something else for fun or for experience?
>Hotaru tells you that you need to work out some team-based strategy to form the backbone of your tactics. Some kind of Plan A maneuver, formation, or combo of abilities that you can have worked out in advance and have down by instinct. Each of you will gain a .5 to a stat relevant to this and this will be your default planned opener for a scenario where shit goes south fast and you all need to react immediately without wasting thought and time on verbal coordination.

>>5920127
>Hotaru tells you that you need to work out some team-based strategy to form the backbone of your tactics. Some kind of Plan A maneuver, formation, or combo of abilities that you can have worked out in advance and have down by instinct. Each of you will gain a .5 to a stat relevant to this and this will be your default planned opener for a scenario where shit goes south fast and you all need to react immediately without wasting thought and time on verbal coordination.
I think our go-to should be pretty adaptable, open to improv but putting us on a good footing. So key points would be putting us in good position to play our strengths while not overextending or committing hard any particular direction. Right off the bat, I think our mist and Masami's summons would show our hand and leave us open to being countered too easily, but I think getting Naoki close enough to leverage his Taijutsu would be smart. Maybe Masami runs interference, potentially with shadow clones to flush the target(s) and we can take some reaction shots to keep them occupied while Naoki closes distance?

>>5920127
>>5920185
+1 for the fighting techniques.
I think we should work on our intelligence and physical strength?
We could do some of the usual odd jobs for ninjas too I suppose.

As for fun, how about learning how to cook more or watching movies (and not just ninja dogs. There's gotta be a bigger selection than that).

>>5920127
>Expand our collection of films watched. Assess our likes and dislikes.

>Have a formation ready. Otomo is in back ready to quick fire a chakra bullet/sense orb to call out enemy positions, naoki is getting up close and personal or throwing something to create distraction/cover for the others and Masami is running interference/summoning reenforcements.

By having two options drilled in, it can increase our versatility without disrupting our efficacy.

>>5920957
>Expand our collection of films watched.
Hell yes, do research with Naoki and maybe once we get a clue invite Masami to watch something together ourboy enjoys. Gonna have the most built team there is.

But two options kinda negates the reliability of the plan, and again I think summons would be too much off the bat. I think we should totally develop some synergies (minicrab swarm+mist, Megacrab + Naoki hammer-anvil combo) but the summon should be reserved until we want to commit like that. I think it would be a good idea to develop 2 different openers based on those variations depending on how/where/what we encounter.

>>5920127
>Hotaru tells you that you need to work out some team-based strategy to form the backbone of your tactics. Some kind of Plan A maneuver, formation, or combo of abilities that you can have worked out in advance and have down by instinct. Each of you will gain a .5 to a stat relevant to this and this will be your default planned opener for a scenario where shit goes south fast and you all need to react immediately without wasting thought and time on verbal coordination.

>>5920127
Learn Water Bubble. (A sphere of water is placed over an enemies head, drowning them.)

+1 on focusing learning to work better as a team.

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>>5920127
>>5920185
>>5920669
>>5920957
>>5921164
>>5921815
>>5923449
You spend the next month back in the swing of things, which is to say, doing a job. Still D-ranks, but you’re getting out of the zone where you’re simply doing odd jobs. Even within D-rank there’s a hierarchy of missions that go from “tutorial” missions to things that actually matter.

Hell, you actually suspect that a lot of the easier D-rank missions are genuinely planted and funded by the village council specifically to ease new shinobi in and give them some money while extending their education. For that reason, it’s extremely gratifying when Hotaru is no longer sending you out to find that stupid goddamn cat.

You’re more than likely on short term escort or investigation duty these days; walking people to somewhat nearby locations like Kenji, investigating issues going on with someone’s field to see if petty foul play is lowering their yield, things like that. Low speed, but at least respectable.

During these jobs Hotaru has made a point of not going with you anymore so that she can randomly ambush you with bizarre scenarios. Every once in a while water clones transformed to look like generic enemy shinobi or bandits would burst out of an alley or forest with a surprise attack or some kind of unexpected jutsu, and your team was expected to cope and take out the clones as fast as possible.

It was never too difficult, but Hotaru explains that it was necessary training to reduce the amount of time you spend flatfooted and surprised in case something happens, as pretty much every conflict in your line of work is going to revolve around being on the giving or receiving end of a surprise assault out of nowhere.

You’re clearly deficient compared with the others. Naoki jumps into action immediately every time, getting his dukes up and immediately focusses on whatever the problem is, whether that be deflecting attacks or bull-rushing the center of danger. Masami was also pretty much good to go in a surprise attack; her modus operandi being that she immediately jumps into Naoki’s shadow so she can let him cover for her while she draws her blood for a summoning contract and keeps an eye out for what her best course of action is.

You, on the other hand, have a bad, BAD habit of standing around pondering the situation. Apparently, unless you’re in direct, imminent danger you have a tendency to stand there impassively analyzing the situation until you formulate a plan. This, as often as not, leads to Naoki or Masami having to spend a critical second or two preventing you from getting hit until it occurs to you to do something. And unfortunately, in a fast-paced scenario it often takes you too long to know what to do.

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>>5924069
When speaking with Hotaru about it, she dispenses her wisdom: “Every person has a unique character to their outlook and thoughts. Maybe you could call it the orientation of a ninja’s soul? Some souls are better suited to certain scenarios, but every soul DOES have a situation where it’s the best possible driving force for a person to have. If a person feels paranoia in their bones, they’ll react to ambushes easier than someone whose soul is full of love and trust. When it comes to your soul, well, I can’t tell you what you should be doing. Only that you’ll improve when you identify your strengths and learn to apply them more broadly to cover for your weaknesses.”

“I understand. But that might take too long.” You say.

“If you weren’t fit to be a ninja, young man, you wouldn’t have graduated from the academy. Come... I’ll show you a jutsu. The Inu sign is the water sign, it forms the basis of many water jutsu. Perhaps the most basic expression of which is to move water…” She says, showing you the way to controlling water directly.

>You learn to Control Water, something of a proto-jutsu that can form the basis of more advanced techniques or simple tasks that don’t require a specialized jutsu. The principles of this jutsu were easy to pick up because they are already known to you through use of other jutsu.
>This jutsu gives you general telekinetic control over water, but it’s not as strong or precise as a jutsu designed with a more specific purpose.

—

You ponder Hotaru’s advice on the soul while you watch movies. What is the nature of a soul? What is the nature of YOUR soul? Not in the tacky descriptive sense of adjectives and labels, but in the real deep compulsion of your very nature. Maybe you were born for no reason, but there was something in you that colored everything you did. A deeper axiom of life that colored the flow of the thoughts in your mind, the actions in your body, and the direction of your attentions.

You liked a movie when it had a soul. Some kind of theme, obvious, implied, or buried. The idea of a movie that had something going for it beyond consumerist appeal, something beyond rote entertainment. You liked movies that meditated on a topic.

‘Birthday Party for Aiko’ is probably your favorite movie. It’s about an old civilian man whose wife has been murdered by criminals, and his grim, melancholy life after that. Despite the fact that he’s not strong and can’t do anything about it, he eventually resolves to take revenge by working hard and saving enough money to hire a shinobi to kill the criminals for him. His plans are ruined when his fields are burnt down by the same men who killed his wife, and in a mad rage he stabs the leader in the side with a scythe before being mercilessly beaten down by the armed men. As the old man lays dying by that bloodied scythe he catches a glimpse of sunset and his wife watching him as he passes on.

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>>5924072
You really love that movie. You can’t pin down what it’s about. But you can feel what it’s meditating on in the pit of your stomach, a visceral thing swirling around in your stomach that you could know but not identify. The idea that life goes on so long as you allow it, and it ends when you won’t. A morally neutral choice: Let your life end here and now at its natural conclusion, or live on in the hopes of finding new life. To be judged impartially in that decision, no moral questions about cowardice or forgiveness. It was okay to live, or it was okay to die. Either choice presented as an emanation into new life regardless. Move on from heartbreak and revenge so as to achieve rebirth in this realm, or move on from life itself to achieve rebirth in another.

Or maybe you were wrong, and you just-

“Is that the boring, stupid movie again?” Masami asks you, standing in the doorway to your bedroom. She did that a lot these days.

“It’s not stupid, it’s just not written for stupid people.” You retort, reciting the words you knew on instinct to say, but not reflecting their playful spirit in your somber tone. Staring at her. While you’re bantering you’re still in an existential fugue, trying to look into Masami and beyond her. If she were a movie, what would it be about? What was the character of Masami’s soul?

“You said it, not me: It’s not stupid but it IS boring.” She says. Your piercing, analytic gaze seems to affect her then. Her face begins to turn red. “Um… Anyway…” she says, leaving hurriedly to go do, who knows, something. Whatever it was Masamis do.

You imagine that Masami didn’t really think much of herself, and so she was envious and scared of other people. That she was driven by a fundamental angst that she couldn’t define. An angst that felt like an unspoken, vulnerable truth that couldn’t be revealed without grave threat of personal harm to her, the desire to be good enough, the sneaking suspicion that you could NEVER be good enough. That baked in knowledge that anyone who could see what a weak, insubstantial thing you really are, they could never love you. And the pained hope, the secret longing for a moment where you can experience a sacred light from another person who could look upon you and see you without judgment. To recoil from being seen and to avoid it on a primal level, but still desperately hope to feel an echo of a god’s love and mercy from another fallen creature.

You stand and shut the door.

Your shrine, your now well-used television set. Small bathroom. Small mirror.

You contemplate Otomo Mizutani. He stares into your eyes and you stare into his.

His eyes are pools of water, swirling. A great ocean that gently breaks ships, passing broken pieces this way and that way, touching them all over with the calm caress of the tide, endlessly pulling and tugging down and in, down and in, ever deeper.

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>>5924075
You had the eyes of someone who wanted to know what he was looking at. Contemplative, obsessive eyes that wanted to be omniscient, inward and outward. Eyes that were blind to all matter because they looked upon nothing, no matter in this material world, only spirit. A god’s eyes, the eyes of a spirit, the eyes of a dead boy.

Or maybe just the eyes of a stupid, pretentious teenager, you think. Otomo smiles back at you as if you’ve shared a subtle joke. It’s okay to not be omniscient, sometimes it’s okay to just look at what was in front of you, to become part of the spirit of a moment rather than watch upon it, like an outsider or a ghost.

You look at this boy and hardly know who he is. He clearly has two natures, Otomo the Self and Otomo the Other. What’s the color of this soul here? You look beyond Otomo and see, behind him like a blue halo in the bathroom mirror, the blue light of the white wall, the blue light spread forth by the white bulb, and the blue light of a blue soul, the blur of Otomo’s body, a figure standing before this, out of focus, blue light in his eyes the same color as his illuminated blue shadow, the form, a distorted image, forgotten and irrelevant as both of you project your thought outwards at the other and reflecting it back in a recursive loop of knowledge and desire.

If you couldn’t have love for anyone else, at least you could feel love for Otomo.

You’ll go see what Masami was doing.

—

Soon, your strategy for reacting to contact begins to settle. Naoki leaps to run interference immediately, but maintains a defensive attitude, holding his ground and moving to protect the two of you until he’s sure the time is pregnant for a move.

Masami leaps into a nearby defensive position that will allow her to leave Naoki to himself to distract the obvious danger while she keeps an eye on both of you and your rear for signs that she needs to intervene.

And you, go to a defensive position similarly close to but adjacent to Masami, with similar but more focused intent.

Naoki holds the line and tanks, Masami gets into cover and looks for large weaknesses to cover with backup, and you take in the situation as a whole to develop a strategy, whipping up a sensing water sphere and feeling its information, scanning the battlefield for targets more astutely taken out with a quick water bullet.

Three directions of mutual support.

It’s a defensive triangle of a strategy. A reactive, defensive tactic that gives you breathing room to respond to the threat after withstanding and deliberately assessing it. In that manner, Hotaru officially tells you that you're the team leader because you’re the one who forms the clearest picture of the situation and it's your voice the others need to listen for.

At first that’s intimidating. But eventually you think about what your soul is supposed to do and that intimidation goes away.

>You gain .5 intelligence
>Naoki gains .5 taijutsu
>Masami gains .5 intelligence

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>>5924076
You’re in the inn’s kitchen. The three of you are eating omelets that Masami made under Naoki’s strict instructions. They’re okay. You’re not a gourmand, so long as it’s edible.

Hotaru enters the kitchen, scanning the three of you with her eyes briefly before dramatically unfurling a scroll and placing it down on the table. “We have our first C-rank mission.”

Naoki figuratively teleports to her side to read it for himself, a radiating excitement coming off of him in palpable waves. Masami pokes at her omelet like she feels queasy.

Naoki coughs, clearing his throat. “We have been chosen to escort the Kumamoto caravan on its journey north to where it will come to a village near the Valley of the End, by our border with the Land of Sound. Our mission has dual purposes, to defend the caravan as ordered, and to use the exercise as an excuse to take a look into ‘the Lords of Fire’, a bandit group that’s taking root in the area and the reason the Kumamoto hired us in the first place. We are to escort the caravan to its destination, and upon arrival we are to destroy the Lords of Fire, or, failing that, return with sufficient information to aid in their destruction.”

“That last point was deliberately added for you youngsters.” Hotaru points out. “Normally, failure isn’t explicitly written in terms of your orders like that. That’s your mercy clause if you can’t handle it, but it wouldn’t exist if this weren’t your first.”

“Joy.” Masami says, unenthusiastically. “Akimitsu said his caravan was lingering in town for a while for a reason. I didn’t think it would be our problem.”

“It’s not just your problem. If a job is mediated for a month, that means it's part of some greater scheme beyond our knowledge. This mission may be straightforward, but the missions dependent on its success or failure may not be. Regardless, we leave the day after tomorrow. I trust you to bring what you need.”

>You’re going on your first legit mission. What do you bring, and what are you prepared for?
>Anything you need to do before you go?

>>5924077
>Bring some water-soluble poisons, maps of the area, an emergency survival kit, and make sure the Caravan has whatever it might need for on-the-spot repairs. Be prepared for traps or ambushes along the road, particularly anything that would damage the caravan. Plot out a primary AND a secondary path to the destination, in case the primary path becomes too dangerous. Mark your map with points of potential interest, especially any areas that you would personally use if you were going to ambush someone on the road.

Also, page 10 alert!

>>5924077
I mostly support >>5924086

but we also need to ask about what information they have on the Lords of Fire, frequency of attack, weapon damage left behind, suspected minimum sizes.
There must be some information if they have a name and a general area.

Also yes, we are utterly pretentious, and I love it.
Meditate in a mirror Otomo. Then go and give Masami a hug.

Because we're probably about to enter our "oh god I just killed someone" arc.

Also, Establish "destroyed".
I assume it's the leader is captive or dead and their base is destroyed and the membership scattered to the winds. Or dead.

But it might just be "no longer active in the area"

>>5924077
>>5924163
+1

>>5924163
>Because we're probably about to enter our "oh god I just killed someone" arc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHo7npmGcHU

>>5924163
"They're a buncha bandits, which we don't like much. And they're over there" and I'd guess "destroyed" translates to "no longer operating in a bandit capacity"
Cause its kinda our job to find that information out, but yea, talking to the caravaneers who hired us about the problem they want protection against ain't a bad idea.

>>5924086
Love the map and route, makes perfect sense... But do we know bugger all about poisons? Because that might end up more trouble then anything otherwise.

>>5924077
Beyond what Anon said I'd argue: Food. Foods a useful thing to have. Especially if we're also going to have to track down and attack said bandits. The general assortment of kunai and the like we'd be expected to bring and hm... Water. lots of water. All of our nonsense requires water, so we might have to carry it with us.

Lords of Fire. That's a fancy name for a bunch of random asshats, that made the village delay things for a month.

What if instead of random asshats these guys are some flavour of nobility, the remnants (or start) of an uprising etc?

>>5924290
Imagine going to ninja school and not learning jack shit about poisons.

>>5924086
>>5924163
Support + big ol gourd of watar

>>5924290
>>5924375
>>5924200
Gents, I also want to make one more check before we depart on the mission.

Adding to >>5924163
>Check in with Katsuro what the damage is and how everyone's shaken out.

A month has passed, we should be able to get a read on the situation without destabalising everything.

>>5924077
>Maps of the area, an emergency survival kit, water

>>5924444
Agreed, curious to see if that humbling had the proper effect or if it made her even worse.

>>5924086
>>5924163
>>5924290
>>5924444
Support

>>5924736
+1

How far do we get in the Chunin Exams tourney section you guys think? We need to shore up our offense a little more if we wanna get to those high brackets with the real freaks though

>>5925024
>Chunin Exams
That’s awhile from now so we have time but how intense would it be gara won’t be in it etc

>>5924086
>>5924163
>>5924200
>>5924290
>>5924730
>>5924375
>>5924444
>>5924734
>>5924736
We're deep as fuck into page 10, so expect the next post to be in a little bit and in a different thread. The post is almost done and I just need to proofread it and add some editing (Had to cut it short because it was getting long too.), but since we're about to be bumped off the board just wanted to let you guys know in case I can't link it to you.

>>5925024
>>5925279
You'll be doing the chunin exams in the Village Hidden in the Sand, FYI.
They don't do things the exact same.

>>5925306
New thread >>5925330