9.2 KiB
[D] A mobile Orochimaru
Post:
In thinking about Time Braid (as usual), I was wondering about which option would be more rational for Orochimaru...
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Hiding in laboratories and conducting experiments on kidnapped villagers and ninjas (as in canon)
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- Pro: Can have a stable laboratory environment for detailed investigations
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- Pro: Recruitment of loyal followers is easier with image of established power, rather than of a flighty missing-nin
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- Con: Must constantly be finding new laboratory sites and conducting counter-espionage against major villages' spies
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- Con: Must constantly be prepared to defend or evacuate laboratories, if counter-espionage fails
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- Con: Must keep subordinates, who may backstab you, on their own initiative or when enticed by spies from major villages
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Roaming the Shinobi World and bargaining with minor clans for techniques (as in the Time Braid quote below)
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- Pro: Easier to evade hunter-nin as a lone ninja than to evacuate an entire base
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- Pro: Actually gain new techniques immediately, rather than spending months or years inventing them from scratch
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- Con: High risk of being killed when attacked by hostile clans of ninja with unknown abilities and power levels
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- Con: No permanent facilities for defense or research (unless a clan agrees to harbor him temporarily, risking other parties' wrath)
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- Con: May make enemies (both independent clans and major villages) due to sharing their secret techniques with others
Does one approach seem particularly advantageous, compared to the other? Is there some other approach that I've missed?
"We've come to trade techniques," I said. "For each ninjutsu or genjutsu you're willing to part with, we'll trade you two of the same rank. For each secret skill, such as puppetry or a taijutsu style, we will trade instruction in two of the secret skills we have already mastered. And for a prized clan secret, like your golem creation method, we will trade either the prized secrets of two other clans, or two S-rank ninjutsu."
The Bokura were the fourth clan we visited, and the last before we left Fire Country. After that came a leisurely tour of Earth Country, with side trips to some of the minor powers like Grass and Rain.
About a third of the clans we visited agreed to our deal, and we spent several weeks with each of them. Some were completely paranoid, trading a handful of techniques they'd stolen from outsiders but refusing to part with anything important. Others were more strategic, trading many of their own secrets for those of their major rivals, and we picked up some interesting tricks from them.
Of course, jutsu trading wasn't exactly safe. A third of the clans we contacted tried to kill or capture us instead of just saying no, and that kept us on our toes. Fighting an entire ninja clan is a hair-raising experience, especially when you don't know what special techniques they have or how good their best people are.
We spent nearly a year touring the elemental countries that way, learning and making our presence known while we found out how the seedy side of the ninja world really works.
(Originally part of a post in /r/NarutoFanfiction.)
Comments:
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u/Escapement:
A few points against what they pulled in Time Braid applying to Orochimaru: 1. Getting killed matters a lot more when you are not coming back. Small risks, taken often enough, are really bad - they just have to get lucky once, while you have to get lucky a thousand times. 2. People already know Orochimaru and don't trust him, making his success rate of diplomacy likely much worse. If a couple genin missing nin who's worst act is deserting Konoha show up they probably elicit a different reaction from the Snake Sannin who experimented on humans and did a lot of other nasty shit. 3. Trading for techniques may empower people in a way that turns out to be bad in unobvious ways. This doesn't matter if you're gonna reset a time loop and keep their knowledge while removing everything they've gained from you. You could end up making really bad trades this way - if you If you trade someone the Impure World Resurrection technique in a time loop, it doesn't matter what they do with it because if it's bad enough you go back and redo. Outside of looping, if you trade that technique to someone and they happen to have the corpse of the Sage of Six Paths in their possession and you didn't know about it, ya dun goofed and you just made someone into a new world power - you just accidentally the whole setting. If there's some unexpected synergy, some sort of expert at using synergistic techniques, or whatever, you can EASILY create S-rank competition for yourself.- u/ToaKraka:
> 1\. Getting killed matters a lot more when you are not coming back. He can use his Cursed Seals as Horcruxes, so he may not care as much. > 2\. People already know Orochimaru and don't trust him. I always thought that, before his defection, Orochimaru's global reputation wasn't significantly worse than that of the Sannin in general, even if he was feared in Konoha itself for general creepiness. Certainly, he might be suspected of being a long-term Konoha spy, out to steal everyone else's techniques before returning to Leaf--but would Hiruzen be willing to publicize the fact that he'd failed to stop his favorite student from experimenting on his own civilians? And would unaffiliated clans even take such information as anything but propaganda from the big Villages against the independent clans and "missing"-nin? > 3\. If you trade someone the Impure World Resurrection technique in a time loop... Well, [there do exist S-rank techniques less world-shattering than Edo Tensei](http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Special:BrowseData/Jutsu?Jutsu_rank=S)--even Kakashi's Raikiri and Danzou's Reverse Tetragram Seal are listed as S-rank, and I'm sure Orochimaru would know many more such relatively-innocuous S-rank techniques. In any event, if worse comes to worst, he's already immortal with Fushi Tensei when he defects--he can always just flee off an edge of the map and wait for a few decades (if he doesn't go crazy with Sharingan-lust).
- u/ToaKraka:
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u/redrach:
I think you need to remember a key difference between Orochimaru's research and Sakura's - he was looking specifically for ways to achieve immortality, while Sakura was content with just finding anything that made her stronger (and to whom immortality techniques weren't as big a deal, since she had the time loops anyway). That meant that Sakura didn't have a time constraint and no matter what the village had to offer she'd be gaining something, so she could afford to wander around. Orochimaru's research on the other hand had to be uniquely focused, and largely relied on his own experiments opposed to stuff people already knew. -
u/None:
... I should reread time braid. It’s been nearly a month. I don’t know enough Naruto canon to know the answer to this though. -
u/Solonarv:
...and there went my afternoon. Damn. Well, it was definitely a good read. -
u/FuguofAnotherWorld:
Why should he have to choose? As owner of Sound village Orochimaru can have various strong-ish not-obviously affiliated shinobi wander round the world offering trades of knowledge to the various clans. He's Orochimaru so he'd likely be creepy as all hell about it, sneaking in to malcontent's bedrooms at night to make offers perhaps. Presumably in the time between his exile and canon start he's done a fair bit of this, It's what I'd do if I was a sociopath who sought knowledge more than I valued my subordinates in such a world. The wonders of delegation. -
u/nerdguy1138:
Painfully stupid question. Can you tweak the storage seal to cover a large patch of ground instead? Boom. City of portable holes! Helps with concealment at least. -
u/paladinneph:
a village trading jutsu is absolutely unthinkable, especially S-ranked a village leader should be well aware that this deal is being offered to everyone, which means he has no idea where any jutsu he gives out will end up. considering that shady arms dealer is shady, the odds are good that it will end up in the hands of someone crazy enough to use it in stupid ways. in addition, knowing how a jutsu works often exposes flaws and limitations in it- exposing even lesser-ranked utility jutsu carries the risk that enemy agents will render it useless considering that jutsu is basically information and can be traded endlessly, there's no guarantee that the won't end up with not just one enemy village knowing it, but *all* enemy villages knowing it- suppose we have 5 competing village, they all take the deal, village X gives one, takes two, the rest take X's in addition to another, and give one of theirs. X has potential advantage on two villages, while three have potential advantage on X. note that each village takes the same risk, but the point is they have no control over it- there's no telling who'd be the odd man out, or even if there'd be an odd man out. it's a complete and total gamble with lives on the line.