Conference Call (Multicross)

Pachycephalosaur · Sep 18, 2018

Conference Call
Sufficient Velocity | Archive of Our Own

❖

About this fic:
Can you provide a synopsis?
Four people from across a vast multiverse are connected through a ‘Node’ -- a telepathic hub allowing them to exchange messages in real-time -- and must work together to face the coming challenges.

There’s time-travel, jokes, alternate universes, and a lot of characters.

I read this a while ago, but it’s longer now and I’m lost
I knew this would happen eventually, so I’ve built a safeguard for you. The recap page is the primary summary of this work, so you can catch back up quickly. It also helps to summarize the other… complexities… of this story. Be wary of spoilers if you need to go to the recap.

Do I have to be familiar with (x)?
As a general rule, Conference Call is written with the assumption that any given audience member is unfamiliar with at least three of the settings. I am actively working to ensure all sections of this work can be understood by a reader unfamiliar with any of the source materials. Any information that an unfamiliar reader doesn’t understand is either not strictly plot-critical or will be explained later.

Spoilers are also being avoided to the best of my ability. Most major story beats and twists will remain untouched, as to best maintain the experience of reading the source works for the first time. Part of my mission here is to introduce people to stories I love without ruining those stories for them.

This is not a perfect process, however. Details will be revealed. In general, huge reveals and major story-beats will be avoided. In the case of Homestuck, more effort will be put into hiding the way things are connected.

Story (x) has me curious! Can you explain it?
Sure thing!

Worm is a web-serial about a bullied teenage girl with the power to control bugs, and her conflicts with superpowered foes. The story is very dark and doesn’t hold its punches often, with a unique power system and deep setting. The Parahumans ‘verse is being represented by Kid Win, a teen with the power to invent technology centuries more advanced than conventional technology.

It can be found here.

Naruto is an anime/manga franchise about an orphaned boy who dreams of leading his ninja village. It’s pretty typical for its demographic, but the aesthetic is lovely and the characters are likeable. The Naruto setting is being represented by Ino Yamanaka, the heiress to a clan of mental technique specialists.

The anime is available on Crunchyroll and the manga can be purchased from VIZ.

Homestuck is a webcomic about a few friends and a videogame that destroys the world. It’s comedic, weird, and complex, with a heavy focus on character interaction and dialog. Homestuck is being represented by Roxy Lalonde, a character from a canonical alternate-universe to the main setting that’s featured in the sixth Act.

It can be read here, though recent changes to the website and hosting mean some elements and images have been broken. I would not recommend a first read-through until these issues have been resolved.

Mother of Learning is a web-serial about a young wizard cursed to repeat the same month over and over. Its fantasy setting is deep, with interesting magic, cool monsters, and a load of mystery. Mother of Learning is represented by Zorian Kazinski, a wizard-in-training who was dragged into a timeloop by a strange spell.

It can be read here, though be aware that the story has not yet concluded.

Throughout the story, additional properties will be referenced or included in minor, supporting roles. Information on these stories will be available on-request.

Explain what this is?
Conference Call is an experimental crossover fanwork utilizing multiple settings and viewpoint characters. It's hosted on both Spacebattles and Sufficient Velocity, and utilizes their native 'threadmark' tools for easy reading. Click the 'threadmarks' button in the bottom right for the table of contents.

What’s up with the word count?
The story is nearly twice as long as the automatically generated word count would indicate, because text in spoiler boxes is not counted towards the length of the story. I don’t keep track of the actual count. At the time of writing this intro, it’s between sixty and seventy thousand words.

I heard this story has art and interactive content. Is this true?
Starting from the time of posting Arc 2: Chapter 4, the story is to implementing art, games, and animations. These will be sparse at first, but should hopefully become more common with time.

Where’s the story start?
Right here:

❖

Prelude
Open the Node to see cross-universal dialog!

Node 0903 has opened!

ModThunder: /admin canMessageList = ‘mod’
ModThunder: /inviteFrom Queue

Anonymous user detected
Auto-Pseudonym enabled
********* has been renamed kWin
iYamanaka, rLalonde, zKazinski, kWin invited to node (+5.6%, +35.6%, +3.2%, +8.3%)
Translation Service activated (+8.5%)

ModThunder: 35%?!
ModThunder: /node status 1

Systems Overclocked (Critical)
Core at 101.6% ^
Node Population: 5
User Count: 4
Realm Count: 4
Page 1/6

ModThunder: FUCK.
ModThunder: /admin coreLock .7

Error: Threshold too low!

ModThunder: /admin coreLock .9

5 services locked (-13.8%)
Systems capped at 90% Core usage
For a full list of enabled/disabled features, do '/node services'

ModThunder: Okay, that should work.
ModThunder: /node status 1

Systems stable
Core at 87.8% ~
Node Population: 5
User Count: 4
Realm Count: 4
Page 1/6

ModThunder: You guys don’t know it, but I just averted disaster.
ModThunder: You can thank me later.

Pachycephalosaur · Sep 18, 2018

Arc 1: Chapter 1: An Invitation Extended

[You have been invited to join Node0903. Do you accept?]

Chris felt the thought slide into his mind. Random intrusive thoughts weren’t something he was totally unfamiliar with, especially with his power, but this was clearly different. Whatever it was, it made no effort in disguising that it was a foreign agent reaching into his head. His power at least bothered to try to pass itself off as normal thinking.

His eyes drifted around the classroom, trying to see if any of the other students were being targeted by this effect. He briefly looked over at Carlos near the front of the room, the only other person he knew to be a parahuman in the class. Nothing, no acknowledgement.

The thought was weird, less like something he thought himself and more like an entirely new sense opened up, allowing him to perceive it like he perceived the voice in his head. It was a lot like what he imagined a telepathic message would be like, but it lingered, staying within the purview of his awareness. And it wanted him to 'accept' it.

Yeah, no, he thought.

He raised his hand, and asked to be excused to the restroom. When the privilege was granted, he moved determinedly through the halls, into the first open bathroom stall. He pulled out his PRT phone and immediately dialed for help.

“PRT Console, status?” said a man’s voice.

“Kid Win here, out of costume. I’m at Arcadia and I need a Master/Strange screening immediately. I don’t know the exact nature of the effect, or who is involved, but it’s a brain thing, and it wants me to agree to an ‘invitation.'”

“Kid Win, we’re sending a PRT transport your way. You’ll need to change into your costume before pickup, is this acceptable? What are the chances of a hostile parahuman on the premise?”

He sighed. Really? Changing into costume? At a time like this?

“High. The effect started while I was in class. It’s like a telepathic message, and it’s inviting me to join a ‘Node’. Uh, my identity is also possibly compromised, because the effect targeted me while I was out of costume.”

“Understood. We’re calling in an investigation of potential parahuman activity. A report has been sent to your school. Make your way to your designated changing area, and prepare for pickup at the front gates. Best of luck.”

There was a click on the line. Chris stared down at his phone for what could only have been about twenty seconds (feeling like an eternity, of course) when the intercom system crackled on. “Attention students, we are now under lock-down. This is not a drill.”

The hallways would clear out in a minute or so, then he could get moving.

❖

[You have been invited to join Node0903. Do you accept?]

Ino was sitting at the dinner table with her family when the strange thought hit her.

She examined the strange mental entity for a moment. It was from an outside source, a type of direct contact, and seemingly passive (i.e. not rooting through her memories or anything). That was a good sign that this is either a telepathic connection, or a very dangerous mental boobytrap. The user could clearly already send messages, so what was the point in asking for permission to make contact?

She shrugged off her worries. She was right across the table from her father, the greatest mind-control expert in the world, so she was sure she would be safe.

“Hey Daddy, somebody’s trying to drop a telepathic payload off. I’m going to open it, if that’s okay?”

He looked at her and raised an eyebrow.

“Darling, I know we’ve talked about the dangers of unknown mental effects. Can you pass the thing to me, and let me check it out first?”

“But it’s been delivered to me, shouldn’t I open it? It could be private!” she smiled, knowing very well that her dad would let her get away with just about anything so long as he was watching over her. Realistically, it was probably just another member of her clan, trying to contact her for some reason or another. Not many other people could send telepathic messages, after all.

After a moment’s trepidation, he relented. “Okay, but be careful.”

At first she tried to poke at the package with her chakra, but couldn’t even find its physical location in her brain. That was interesting, because that should only be possible if the mental effect was either super small, or incredibly well-hidden. It has no reason to be hidden if it was just going to announce itself, right?

She directed a thought at the package.

I agree.

[Connection established.]

❖

Roxy looked at the distant clouds of volcanic ash rolling towards her. By any reasonable estimate, her and her friends only had a few minutes until the pyroclastic flow reached them.

Just minutes ago, she was almost four-hundred years in the future, and the universe was being destroyed. Because of said destruction of reality, she was forced to escape into the past to avoid the tragic end of fucking everything.

Of course, they used a one-way time portal, and, due to a number of complex temporal factors and paradox prevention protocols, could only escape to a single deserted island at a point in time where the local volcano decided to violently erupt. Out of the skillet, into the lava.

She looked over at her friend Dirk, who was busy lathing some weird alchemical crystal dowel into a mystic totem. She wasn’t one to judge the esoteric item-crafting systems in most games, but this? This really took the cake.

“Hey, not meaning to rush you or anything, but there’s hot-ass volcano clouds coming this way.”

“Do said hot-ass volcano clouds look like they’re something you can deal with in a timely manner? Because if not, we shouldn’t worry about them and just do what we can to survive. This is our last chance, after all.”

She briefly glanced over at Dirk’s severed head. The other Dirk’s severed head, that is. If she understood it right, they each had started with an ‘extra life’. But before they could even start the game, they lost these lives.

They were about to go all Jumanji into a magical video-game world with only one life apiece. Her friend Jake suggested that they were actually closer to going all Zathura: A Space Adventure, but this really wasn’t the time to humor him or his horrifyingly impressive ability to remember the full name of that movie.

[You have been invited to join Node0903. Do you accept?]

Roxy was startled by this, but only briefly. Was this part of the game? She shrugged it off and agreed. Can’t hurt more than lava.

Sure.

[Connection established.]

❖

“Good morning, brother! Morning, morning, MORNING!”

Zorian groaned as his sister nearly knocked the breath out of him, waking him up from his sleep.

That wasn’t the first time this has happened to him. It wasn’t the second, either. No, that was the third time his sister has thrown her full weight into him as a wake-up call. It was also the third time he had woken up for the first day of school after the summer, and the third time he’d started that day.

The first time it seemed simple enough. He was attending Cyoria’s Royal Academy of Magical Arts, where he died to an unexpected lich attack on the day of the Summer Festival, and woke up a month in the past. He managed to go through the month over again, happy to just have a second chance at living. He got to the end of the month, avoided his own death, and…

Woke up a month in the past. Despite not dying the second time.

He was at a loss for what to do.

[You have been invited to join Node0903. Do you accept?]

And whatever that was, it wasn't good either.

Zorian sat up, and looked around his room. While he was distracted thinking about the previous day, Kirielle had snuck out of his room to take the bathroom to herself. For the third time, thanks to time-travel.

Now not only was he a time traveler that hallucinated strange sentences, but he was a time traveler that hallucinated strange sentences without any access to bathing facilities.

He climbed out of bed, and focused on the situation. The invitation was persistent, not something he could easily ignore. Did this weird message have something to do with the time travel? Unfortunately, there was only way to find out, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to commit to whatever it was.

He needed to talk to somebody, and get to the bottom of this.

❖

Chris sat in a simple cell, awaiting further testing.

He had no way of knowing what was going on the outside: if his identity was compromised, if the culprit has been identified, or even if he was the only target. The weird mental influence still clung in his mind, unchanging. A few hours ago, he had to undergo several brain-scans in an attempt to detect something. He also didn’t know the results of those.

So, left alone in his cell, he was forced to put up with nothing but his own thoughts for company. His attention was constantly tugged between thoughts of the outside world, his power feeding him loads of garbled super-science that he could barely comprehend, and that message. Any time he found himself trying to distract himself from one thing, his mind inevitably wandered to the next.

He was afraid of what could be happening outside his cell, and seemingly in response to the stress, his power was feeding him information to things he could make. But he couldn’t focus on it, because everything else was more important. He’d be halfway through a mental diagram of a laser pistol or something, and suddenly find himself wondering what was going on the outside, or inspecting the message in the back of his head.

It felt taunting. His power was finally working with him, but it was giving him something he couldn’t remember or write down notes on. It was hanging in front of him like a prize, and yet he kept getting dragged back by his learning disorder and that 'invitation'.

His thoughts were slipping between his fingers, out of control. Protocol dictated holding him for twelve hours. He would just have to deal with it until they finally pulled him out.

So he waited.

❖

iYamanaka has joined the Node!
ModThunder: Welcome!
iYamanaka: Uh
iYamanaka: What is this?
ModThunder: This is Node0903, and I’m your host here.
rLalonde has joined the Node!
ModThunder: It’s an inter-cosmological construct, designed to build connections between disparate and conflicting multiversal models.
ModThunder: Together, we can build a more coherent multiverse!
iYamanaka: Whatever you just said makes no sense to me.
rLalonde: thats p sweet but i have to ask
rLalonde: does this or does this not have any bearing on the game
iYamanaka: Game?
iYamanaka: What game?
rLalonde: just by askin that you answered my question
rLalonde: this isnt sburb cosmic bullshit this is just some unrelated cosmic bullshit to go alongside it
rLalonde: like a cosmic bullshit 2 for 1 deal

Ino was taken aback by this. Was this some sort of weird prank?

“Is something wrong, Ino?”

“No, it’s nothing. The mental package wasn’t dangerous, but it was weird.”

His brow furrowed at this. “And does this message make you uncomfortable?” She knew this look on his face. If anybody had sent his little princess something pervy or gross, they would be feeling his full wrath. Considering how closely he worked with the Torture & Interrogation department, that was a fate literally worse than death.

“No, nothing like that!” she defended, “I’m more confused by it than anything.”

ModThunder: So, let me give you two some background. Originally my organization was working on a multiversal unification project, to combine disparate realities with conflicting cosmological structures into a more coherent whole.
ModThunder: We had a system we referred to as the Prime Hub, which would be the framework for this project. We lined up thousands of candidates to connect to as the emissaries from their realities.
rLalonde: and howd this work out for you
ModThunder: I’m getting there. So, we booted up the Prime Hub, but several parts of it began to de-sync from the whole.
ModThunder: We ended up breaking the whole thing down into a series of Nodes, which have more limited processing power, but can be manually calibrated and re-combined to construct the Prime Hub.
rLalonde: okay so
rLalonde: that much i can understand
rLalonde: but why did u make it a chatroom
rLalonde: is psychic aol a thing we really need?

“Do you want me to take a look at it?”

“I… don’t think you could if you wanted. Whatever technique is making it, it’s not done through standard means.”

“In what way?” he seemed genuinely curious at this point, not upset like she was worried he would be.

“It’s hard to explain. It’s probably nothing.” He wouldn’t believe her, she knew, but he wouldn’t press on. He’d just say-

“Alright, but tell me if you need anything.” Yup. They both understood the way this relationship worked, and so long as she wanted privacy, she’d have it.

iYamanaka: Let’s back up a moment.
iYamanaka: My name is Ino Yamanaka.
iYamanaka: We’re from different universes or something, right?
iYamanaka: Will me saying that I’m from Konohagakure mean anything to you?
ModThunder: I can’t say that helps me any. I didn’t get anything other than the translation files.
rLalonde: translation files?
ModThunder: Ino is speaking something closely analogous to what you would call the ‘Japanese’ language. I’m translating as accurately as possible in real-time.
rLalonde: so whatre you gonna do if i start speaking japanese
rLalonde: like if i just drop a kawaii in here
rLalonde: how did you translate that last line
iYamanaka: What the fuck?
ModThunder: I translated it to ‘English’, of course.
ModThunder: That’s not a language that naturally exists on Ino’s world, so it looks completely ridiculous to her.
rLalonde: they had japan but never england?
iYamanaka: We never had a ‘Japan’.
ModThunder: It’s convergent cultural evolution. It’s a factor we looked for when picking our first batch of cosmologies.
ModThunder: The existence of humans was also a favorable factor. Every person to join this Node will be human.
iYamanaka: Wait!
iYamanaka: There will be others?

❖

Roxy was ready for just about anything when she decided to finally buckle down and play the game. She didn’t expect to have a psychic version of Pesterchum installed directly into her brain, but she could at least argue that she was as ready for it as much as she could be.

Well, she could be more ready, but there wasn’t any liquor on hand.

“Roxy, we’re about to enter,” said Dirk, catching her attention away from the distinct lack of booze, “Me, Jane, and you won’t be at our houses when we enter, so we’re going to have to make our way back as a team.”

Right, yeah. SBURB brought the player's whole house into the game and turned it into their own personal hub-world. Since she wasn't in her house at the moment, she’d have to make her way back to it from Jake’s house.

Actually, the house thing might be where Jake’s Zathura line came from. All Roxy could remember from that one was the house being put in space and fourteen shots of vodka.

rLalonde: how many others
rLalonde: thats the real q
ModThunder: There will be two others joining us, should they accept the invitation like you did.
rLalonde: what happens if they deny?
ModThunder: Um.
ModThunder: I beg your pardon?
iYamanaka: What happens if they reject the request?
iYamanaka: Also how do you not understand the question if you’re translating?
ModThunder: You seem to misunderstand.
ModThunder: There is no way to reject the option. If they do not accept immediately, it will simply wait until they're ready.
iYamanaka: Oh no.
rLalonde: whats wrong?
iYamanaka: Roxy, you remember how the invitation felt in your mind, right? How you couldn’t ever really ignore it?
rLalonde: oh
rLalonde: shit
ModThunder: I don’t understand the problem.

Roxy saw the game-supplied alchemy station glow briefly, and a large tree of green crystal shot up from it, and from the tree a grim, skeletal pinata hung from a noose. Now all they had to do was solve the puzzle the game presented to them, and they could enter the game-world.

The puzzle was straightforward. Jake didn’t waste a moment before drawing a pistol and shooting it. There was a blinding wall of energy that flared up around the house, and when it faded, there was nary volcano nor fire in sight - only green fields and red stones dotting the landscape for as far as the eye could see.

❖

Zorian was having an awful train ride.

It was mainly the fault of that weird message in his head, beckoning him to accept an invitation into a ‘Node’. He had no way to get rid of it, and trying to will it away was also failing him.

The thought that whatever it might be couldn't be undone bugged him enough for him to just try to ignore it. He would need to practice ignoring it if it were to remain a long-term fixture. Partway through the ride he started a mental dialog with himself over the thing.

Do I accept it? Is it worth the risk if it means getting a few more answers? He thought, and for much of the ride he continued like this, growing frustrated with the way the 'Node' tantalized him with both potential answers and threatened him with an unknown, until he got fed up with it and vented his frustrations to himself. I wish I could just accept it and get this over with.

[Connection established.]

zKazinski has joined the Node!
iYamanaka: Did you join on purpose, or by accident?
iYamanaka: We’re trying to prove a point to somebody.
rLalonde: weve been trying for hours
zKazinski: What?
zKazinski: What is this?
iYamanaka: Answer the question!
iYamanaka: This is very important!
zKazinski: It was an accident.
iYamanaka: Hell yeah, I knew it!
rLalonde: i know ur probs super pumped to be right about smthn
rLalonde: but some1 accidentally joining an inescapable brain chatroom isnt worth celebrating
rLalonde: im roxy btw
rLalonde: and iyamanaka is ino
zKazinski: Uh.
zKazinski: Zorian.
ModThunder: Okay, so I’ll admit our group might have made a small error in our implementation of the Node system. It's too late to change it now, though.
iYamanaka: I earned the right to be super pumped. I knew exactly what would happen.
rLalonde: no post-release patch?
ModThunder: I don’t understand what you mean. You mean change the system after it’s been implemented?
ModThunder: That would be incredibly difficult!
rLalonde: u must somehow be even worse than the betty-crocker coding team
rLalonde: ever see the the back-end of their codebase?
rLalonde: it would look better if it was typed by a rhesus monkey
rLalonde: u have outdone them

He got off the train in a near-stupor. He had no idea how much of this he had missed, or what they were talking about. The drizzle of the rain around the station didn’t help his mood any, either.

He started making his way to the Royal Academy. Somebody would have answers, whether it be in the Node or in the Academy.

ModThunder: Listen, while I understand your criticism of our methods, comparing our methodology to that of a monkey is just unfair.
zKazinski: Actually, Roxy claimed that your work is two steps down from that of a monkey.
zKazinski: Not that I understand anything else about this conversation.
zKazinski: Or method of conversation.
iYamanaka: Right, let me explain it so you don’t have to spend hours arguing with Thunder like we did.
iYamanaka: So, basically, we’re all from different worlds.
iYamanaka: If you already have different worlds, just think more different from that.
iYamanaka: Like if there’s an afterlife or a uh
iYamanaka: What was that thing, Roxy?
rLalonde: parallel universe
iYamanaka: Right. If there’s any of that stuff, which can normally be reached by your world, we’re not from that. Our universes are closed off from each other, and can only be accessed from the outside.
rLalonde: *multiverses
zKazinski: Why multiverses?
zKazinski: Shouldn’t there be only one multiverse?
rLalonde: cuz we already have universes where im from, and our idea of '''multiverse'''' doesnt follow the same rules as the others
ModThunder: And this is why we use the word ‘cosmological context.'
ModThunder: It’s all the same multiverse, but different regions often have conflicting models. Roxy’s ‘Paradox Space’ model conflicts with the models of all other participants of this node, for instance.

Zorian was far more annoyed than confused at this point. It wasn’t hard to piece together what was happening based on the information available to him, but the trick was figuring out how the Node connected to everything else: the invasion, that strange spell the lich cast on him, and the time travel.

Any explanation would be better than nothing, and most importantly, he would definitely be checking to make sure this was safe.

zKazinski: Okay, so we’re in other 'cosmological contexts.'
zKazinski: Is communicating in this way safe, and does this have anything to do with the time-travel?
iYamanaka: The time travel?
ModThunder: It’s safe.
ModThunder: If you’re a time-traveler, and if that’s rare in your reality, then it’s likely that this trait was factored into picking you for the Node program. We prefer people who are exceptional in some way.
iYamanaka: I’m exceptional?
iYamanaka: More exceptional than the other girls, right?
iYamanaka: Also, Roxy, you need to show me how you changed the color of your name!
ModThunder: I am not in a position to answer that question, we had millions of candidates, I don’t know all of them.
zKazinski: Why is this contingent on time-travel being rare?
zKazinski: Are there places where it’s common?
rLalonde: u have no idea

❖

“Okay, Kid Win, we need you to explain to us exactly what happened.”

“I was sitting in class, when something contacted me. Mentally. I managed to stay calm and report the event to the PRT, before changing into costume and having a PRT van pick me up. The school went into lockdown.”

The PRT officer didn’t move. He turned to face Deputy Director Renick. Renick gave a silent nod of agreement, and looked at Chris.

“Chris, I must inform you that this event coincided with a brief world-wide blackout of precognitive powers. Powers based on predictive models were unaffected, but all powers that can actually predict the future briefly... sputtered out. They’re back online, so we have reason to believe that you should attempt to establish contact."

Renick ignored the look on Chris’s face. In this moment, he was all business, and leaving a Ward alarmed was tiny compared to what everyone else had been going through for the past few hours.

“The intel group Watchdog says it’s not a Master or Stranger effect, and that this might be our only lead on what caused the issue. We understand the risk involved, but we have very few windows where our precognitives can go dark without interfering with any important business, which may happen if you interact with this thing. Precog blackouts happen sometimes, on a smaller scale, so we have systems in place for this. We should be clear for the next 72 hours, if you choose to accept this ‘invitation’.”

“Are you sure it’s not dangerous?” Chris felt the world spinning, and everything was happening too fast. He needed a moment to catch himself.

“No. We’re not. This is an unknown phenomenon with world-shaking implications. The higher ups nearly had a fit when it was found to be related to a Ward, and we're trying to resolve it ASAP. We’re calling it Case 195, and you are either one of many victims of the event, or at the epicenter of it.”

Chris took a deep breath, letting the air fill his lungs and the light-headedness fade with his inhalation. The bad feelings were back within seconds, but in his moment of clarity he had already decided on what to do.

“Alright.”

Chris accepted the strange invitation.

[Connection established.]

kWin has joined the Node!
ModThunder: Oh good, we’re all here now!
ModThunder: Congratulations on being picked to build a more coherent multiverse!
kWin: …
kWin: Okay, I’m going to need an explanation.

Pachycephalosaur · Sep 18, 2018

Arc 1: Chapter 2: Sharing

Shikamaru didn’t look away from the window, watching the rain run down the glass even as he spoke. “Can you only talk to them, or is there more to it?”

“I don’t know! They told me I was picked for this because I’m exceptional, and that I had an important job to do.” She had a smug look on her face, as if being picked for a strange inter-dimensional conspiracy was a good thing.

Shikamaru mumbled something that sounded a lot like ‘They should have kept their mouths shut,' which prompted Choji to almost choke on his chip. Ino gave them a long, sharp look, daring them to say anything else.

tipsyGnostalgic: so my planet was originally a place called earth
Kid_Win: Originally?
Kid_Win: I’m from an Earth too.
tipsyGnostalgic: really????
tipsyGnostalgic: what year?
Kid_Win: 2010
zKazinski: You two shared the same world?
tipsyGnostalgic: probs not
tipsyGnostalgic: 2425
Ino!: WHAT!
Ino!: You two are practically an era apart!

“And what do you think that job will be, anyway?” Shikamaru says, pulling her back into reality.

“That’s the weird part. The Thunder guy keeps being super vague, and it doesn’t seem like he knows much himself.”

Choji hummed at that. “Maybe he’s just lying?” he asked as he thoughtfully licked the salt off another chip. Ino tried not to watch his weirdly intimate chip-eating experience, and instead focused on his point. Thunder could be lying, but what would the point be if he could already reach into the minds of people across entire multiverses? He’d already be super powerful, or at least super good at mind techniques. What could she provide?

Kid_Win: Do you have any useful future technology for us primitives?
Kid_Win: Also, we should discuss some key points in time where our timelines might have diverged.
Kid_Win: Earth Bet and Earth Aleph diverged in the 1980’s.
tipsyGnostalgic: what month is it?
Kid_Win: December.
tipsyGnostalgic: did a baking company release a brainwashing headband in the past few months?
Kid_Win: Uh.
Kid_Win: No?
tipsyGnostalgic: lucky u

Shikamaru took a turn being thoughtful. Not that he needed a turn to do that. “Alright, let’s shelve that issue for now. It’s a drag to worry about the motivations of people we don’t know anything about, agreed?”

Choji and Ino nodded in the affirmative, urging him to continue. When Shikamaru decides to start using longer sentences to get his point across, it’s time to start listening.

“What we need to consider is that these people have their own worlds, and possibly their own techniques. We’ll never fight them, so it won’t hurt them to share their techniques. Likewise, it won’t hurt for you to share your techniques with them.”

Ino gave Shikamaru a long, hard look. The gravity of his suggestion could not be understated. The ninja world wasn’t the kind of place where information was traded lightly. Sharing clan techniques undermined the entire clan and could easily destroy it once the technique’s weaknesses were understood.

“Maybe that’s what Thunder wants, though? Me to share my mental techniques with the others so that he can steal them? There’s not proof the others aren’t just him taking on roles to convince me.”

“Sounds unlikely to me. You’ve already figured out he’s somehow doing this without chakra, so your methods probably aren’t compatible. And even if they are, you can’t defend against mental attacks that don’t use chakra, so why not just steal the knowledge from you?”

They sat for a few more moments, listening to the sound of rain falling and chips crunching, and Ino focused in on the other conversation.

zKazinski: You picked that point out pretty specifically.
zKazinski: It sounds pretty ridiculous, but why shouldn’t that be the case on all ‘Earths’?
tipsyGnostalgic: cuz
tipsyGnostalgic: it never happened on b1 earth
tipsyGnostalgic: im from b2
Kid_Win: You have multiple Earths?
Kid_Win: We know about two, but there are lots of indications of even more existing.
Kid_Win: Earth Bet and Earth Aleph.
Kid_Win: They diverged in 1982, when Scion appeared alongside the first parahumans on Earth Bet.
Ino!: Parahuman?
Kid_Win: People with special powers.
tipsyGnostalgic: wait
tipsyGnostalgic: “kid win”
Ino!: You meant like bloodline abilities?
tipsyGnostalgic: oh my god are you a superhero?
Kid_Win: Yes! I’m a member of the Brockton Bay Wards.

“They’re talking about how two of their worlds compare and contrast. The worlds started out the same, but things changed and now they’re different.”

Shikamaru continued to stare out into the rain, absorbing the information into whatever complex string of thoughts he currently had.

Ino continued to watch the conversation to pass by, and began explaining the parts she understood to Shikamaru.

They started by debating the existence of a city called ‘Brockton Bay’, and had been slowly moving up the timeline starting from the founding of the city until the year 2011, looking for historical deviation. World-wide wars, the invention of ‘nuclear’ weapons, the writing of certain books and the invention of various machines were all being compared.

Roxy thought it was hysterical that Brockton Bay was so historically insignificant that major events could go exactly the same without it, which Kid Win took offense to. Despite an entire additional city being added, the only major deviations to history seemed to start in the late 1800’s, when a company called ‘Betty Crocker’ began moving into the tech industry on Roxy’s world.

Kid Win’s world changed massively in 1982, when the first parahumans appeared. They discussed the impacts of this for a while, before they started talking about the way technology changed in both worlds. That was where they completely lost Ino, and Zorian was interested but struggled to keep up with the jargon. Something about alien and ‘digital reality’ technology versus ‘tinker-tech’?

Shikamaru eventually cut Ino’s attempt at keeping up with their conversation off by introducing a subject that was much more practical. “They have better technology than us. We can use that.”

❖

Roxy was sitting with her friends, looking out over the grassy plains and still talking with the cool superhero in her head when a weird noise like a bike horn caught her attention.

Her, Jane, Jake, and Dirk all looked up to see a horned, gray skinned clown with a massive codpiece. His face was scarred heavily, and he wore smudged face-paint that highlighted the unhinged look in his eyes.

He smiled at them and waved. Jane’s face immediately fell into a scowl.

“Oh, not this guy again.”

The clown began doing a jolly walk towards them. Jane eyed him suspiciously, and her eyes quickly darted to the glowing orb that spawned just before they started the game. Roxy followed her gaze, watching the rapidly pulsing ball. It was floating in the air, glowing with green energy and being a seizure hazard.

Jane explained that it was a revive system right before they entered the game, when it first appeared as part of the tutorial. She warned them to not let the weird clown use it on his friends/victims, because he ended up using hers the first time she entered by throwing two corpses into it. They ended up fusing into a horrific amalgamation before exploding.

Dirk stepped forwards, and drew his sword, daring the clown to approach. The troll stopped, pulled two alien corpses out of his inventory, and held one corpse in each hand before closing his eyes and giving a toothy smile. Dirk charged in with a downwards slash, hoping to keep the troll at bay. In a blink of an eye, the troll dodged and reappeared next to the orb.

Jake drew his pistols and fired several shots, but the troll just body-tanked the shots, letting purple fluid dribble out of the wounds. He tossed the corpses at the ball, and the orb erupted into a flash of blinding lights. When the glow faded, the clown was gone, and the ghostly fusion of two trolls floated in the air before them.

The whole encounter lasted maybe five seconds at most, and they lost a revive.

tipsyGnostalgic: im gonna have 2 go
tipsyGnostalgic: somethins up
Ino!: So you have a special power, Kid?
Kid_Win: Yeah, I’m a tinker, which means that I know how to build super-advanced technology that nobody else can.
Ino!: How is that a special power?
Ino!: Isn't that just being really smart?
Kid_Win: No, the knowledge comes from my power.
Kid_Win: I’m not even good at math, which gives me difficulty when designing stuff.
zKazinski: I’m good with math, so I'll just solve any problem you send me, in exchange for your scientific expertise.
Kid_Win: Deal!
Kid_Win: Honestly, just being able to write down numbers in here so I don't forget them will be a huge help.

Jake looked at the spirit and smiled at it like nothing wrong happened, introducing himself happily. It was a green ghost, with a long spectral tail in place of legs and many features of the two corpses thrown into it.

One of the corpses had four horns, and was wearing 3D glasses. It gave the spirit two horns on one side of the head, and his red and blue glasses were the only thing that retained their original color under the green glow of ectoplasm.

The other corpse had jagged, lightning-bolt shaped horns and fins, along with a dyed streak in his hair. The ghost resulting from the corpse also had one of his distinctive horns, a single fan-like fin branching out from one side of his face, and a light streak in his hair that shined a slightly different shade of green.

Both of them had been dressed like douchebag hipsters, but their combination took all the distinctive features of both without any regards for a cohesive wardrobe. Not that the fish guy had a cohesive wardrobe anyways; the one saving grace was that his ridiculous pin-striped pants were replaced by the ghostly tail.

Kid_Win: So, what's your deal, Ino?
Ino!: I’m a ninja, with the Yamanaka clan.
Ino!: We specialize in mental techniques.
zKazinski: Mundane mental techniques, like brainwashing? Or do you include things like mind control?
Ino!: Mind control, body swapping, telepathy, memory theft.
Ino!: More esoteric things we don't talk about with outsiders.
Kid_Win: All of that at once?
Ino!: Yeah, alongside standard ninja techniques.
zKazinski: Define ‘standard ninja techniques.'
Ino!: Don’t you have ninja?
Kid_Win: Strictly speaking, yes.
Kid_Win: But we don’t tend to lump ‘mind control’ with other things a ninja does.
Ino!: Illusions, elemental powers, walking on walls, enhanced strength, enhanced reflexes.
Kid_Win: You get all that in addition to mind powers?

Roxy and her friends took several long seconds to look at the phantom troll. The troll looked back at them. Dirk broke the silence. “We’re going to need to get to our houses before he does this again.”

“Who did this? Why am I fused with this fucker? And why am I fused with that fucker?” the ghost said, with a slight lisp and an unplaceable accent.

“Some weird juggalo troll threw you.”

The sprite contemplated that for a moment.

“Gamzee. That asshole.” It sounded a bit like ‘ath-hole’. Roxy hid a dumb grin at that. “Is he doing this with all of our leftover bodies? Who’s he gotten so far?”

Jane spoke up. “He did a guy with brown blood and a girl with blue blood. They exploded.”

The ghost laughed uproariously, but his laughter slowed down into a grim chuckle. “Wow, what a goddamn incident that must’ve been. Anyways, it was fucking awful meeting you guys, and if blowing the fuck up is an option, I’m gonna do it now so I can kill this other asshole.” It seemed as if both halves of himself were referring to each other on that point.

There was a several second long pause, where the ghost looked extremely constipated, clenching his fists open and closed. Sparks flew off of his transparent body, but nothing happened.

“Great, I’m stuck sharing my body with a douchebag, and it’s all that clown’s fault.”

❖

Zorian had made his way to his room, and was sitting in the bed, trying to decide if having people thinking he was crazy was worth explaining his problem to someone. Obviously, he could talk to the voices in his head, but that wouldn’t be very conducive to getting the opinions of a non-partial audience, even if they were less annoying than other groups of people.

Obviously, he was going to still talk to them, especially if what sounded like a civilization hundreds of years beyond his own was offering up free technological advancement in exchange for arithmetic.

tipsyGnostalgic: alright im back
zKazinski: Just in time for my turn at talking about my world.
Kid_Win: Roxy, scroll up to Ino’s stuff about her world.
Kid_Win: It’s nothing but ninjas and it’s totally badass.
tipsyGnostalgic: is ‘scroll up’ even a valid term when ur talkin about interacting with mental abstractions???
tipsyGnostalgic: but i caught up b4 respondin
zKazinski: So, I should start with mages, seeing as how that seems to be the main difference between my world and your worlds.
zKazinski: We have an energy we call ‘mana’, which seems to differ from Ino’s ‘chakra’ in several key ways. ‘Chakra’ may have elemental properties, all mana is effectively equivalent for the purposes of spells.
tipsyGnostalgic: wait
tipsyGnostalgic: are you a wizard?
tipsyGnostalgic: like an actual wizard
Kid_Win: Holy shit.
Kid_Win: He’s a wizard.
zKazinski: Can we stay on subject?
tipsyGnostalgic: u single?

What?

tipsyGnostalgic: im just sayin for the record that im 15 and totes eligible if ur around that age
tipsyGnostalgic: *wink*
Ino!: ROXY!
Ino!: STOP!
tipsyGnostalgic: wow i cant flirt with NOBODY
Ino!: Not in my brain, you can’t!

Zorian, also being a teenager and generally socially isolated, tried not to think too hard about how a weird voice in his head was flirting with him. He didn’t need this sort of distraction in his life.

Kid_Win: Do you also have dragons and other fantasy stuff?
zKazinski: We have dragons, but you’re going to have to define ‘other fantasy stuff’.
zKazinski: I hate to break it to you, but I’m not completely aware of all the difference between our worlds.
Kid_Win: Elves?
zKazinski: Never heard of them.
Kid_Win: Giant spiders?
zKazinski: Yes.
Kid_Win: Trolls?
zKazinski: Yes.
tipsyGnostalgic: im just gonna assume your trolls are different from mine
Kid_Win: They don’t have swirly colorful hair and gemstones in their bellies, do they?
Ino!: Okay we must all have very different ideas of trolls.
Ino!: Unless something is being lost in translation?
ModThunder: There is so much being lost in translation right now. I’m translating to ‘ogre’ for you, but that just means that all of you have very different ideas in your heads.
tipsyGnostalgic: we are gettin so off-topic
tipsyGnostalgic: so wizard stuff
tipsyGnostalgic: illusions, summoning, healing, necromancy, fireballs, mindreading, telekinesis, shields, flying, enchanting
tipsyGnostalgic: what of that can ur type of wizards do?
zKazinski: Illusions (considered outdated), medicine, necromancy (illegal), fireballs, mindreading (illegal), telekinesis, shields. Sustained flight is possible but impractical. It’s easier to just teleport.
zKazinski: Creating items that interact with and control mana is an entire field of study.
Ino!: You think illusions are outdated?
Ino!: I’m going to have to train you in proper illusion usage.
zKazinski: Why do an illusion when you can just create the actual effect?
Ino!: Saves chakra/mana, and they force your enemy to spend the same resources reacting to a large number of threats that may or may not be real.
Kid_Win: Can we back up to enchanting stuff?
Ino!: If you have an attack you like, and an illusion identical to that attack, your foe must treat all instances of your ‘attack’ as though it might be real, and spend resources defending against it.
zKazinski: That is rather reasonable, I’ll consider it in the future.
Kid_Win: I need to hear about magic items.
Kid_Win: We mainly use electricity for our technology, but mana-powered stuff may have some useful ideas.
zKazinski: I don’t think it will be useful, considering your world doesn’t have ambient mana to power them.
Kid_Win: You have an ambient power-source?
zKazinski: Yes, but it’s only strong near Dungeons.
Kid_Win: I wish I could have anything that cool.
ModThunder: I have a suggestion.

❖

The PRT was having Kid Win relay everything from the telepathic connection to them.

It seemed ridiculously sudden when they asked him to accept the invitation, but when they started interviewing him, he realized that while he was in quarantine for all those hours, the rest of the PRT was considering every possible option on what to do if the connection was dangerous.

The biggest concern turned out to be that not touching the Node would cause problems. Keeping a hero, even a junior hero, on quarantine when they're experiencing an unknown mental effect was generally a good idea, but when the source of the affliction was unidentified, hidden, and capable of striking capes out of costume, it quickly became worth the risk to gather as much information on the situation as possible by pulling them out of containment, even if they had to go the extra mile for safety.

Case in point: The room he was being interviewed in was actually rigged with gas sprayers in the ceiling. He didn’t notice them at first, but the room had little to contemplate but the door (sealed at the bottom to prevent gas leaks), the table, two chairs and the numerous devices hidden in the ceiling. If he suddenly went psycho, they’d probably just fill the room with knockout gas.

Kid_Win: And what would that be?
ModThunder: Most of the processing power associated with keeping you in the Node is actually just being spent on reaching your realities. Connecting to you is a minor cost compared to the upfront load of reaching between contexts.
ModThunder: If you can free up a bit more processing power on the Node, maybe a percentage point or two, this Node has a function that would allow you to open up a free-floating connection, which can be manifested as a tiny inter-contextual portal.
ModThunder: Not big enough to travel through, but big enough to share energy resources and data.

Even as he relayed information, Chris suspected that Armsmaster was probably using his lie-detection technology to record this conversation from several angles, and that they had some psychological profile of him open while watching this interview take place.

It meant that it he had to hide his reaction of excitement and surprise when he learned he might be placed in charge of the next interdimensional portal. That was the sort of thing that could make a parahuman exceptionally famous, like Professor Haywire's portal.

And a source of exotic energy to do whatever he wanted with? Yes, please.

“Just so you guys know, if this is true and I can actually make a portal to these places, I get exclusive rights to the energy resources.”

zKazinski: And how would we reduce strain on the Node?
ModThunder: Easy, by wearing down the conceptual borders between your realities, we can spend less effort on connecting to them individually and more time connecting to them as a group.
ModThunder: All you have to do is to allow the physical laws of your worlds to intermingle a bit, and we’ll use concepts like ‘the existence of chakra’ to increase coherency.
ModThunder: Right now I have you hard-capped at using 90% of the Node’s processing power. If you use more, services get shut down to compensate.
Kid_Win: So if the only function we have right now is talking, how are we supposed to bring our realities closer together?
Kid_Win: It’s not like I can access chakra just from talking about it.
ModThunder: Easy!
ModThunder: You just-
ModThunder: Uhhh.
ModThunder: That’s the super secret riddle you have to solve together to unlock the true meaning of friendship!
ModThunder: Good luck!

Chris groaned, loudly.

“Thunder just bailed on the conversation without explaining how we can actually do any of the stuff we’re talking about. I think he dug himself into a corner by admitting we could do more if we had resources, but didn’t have the initial investment to start getting more of these resources.”

Renick nodded, and listened into his earpiece for a second.

“Alright, Chris, we’ve gotten enough data to conclude that unless there’s a trigger or a timer, you won’t start behaving erratically if we let you out. You’ll still be spending the next few days in the Wards' area and your lab for monitoring, after which you’ll be cleared to return to school."

Renick stood up from his seat. “This is a privilege you’re being given, not a right. If any problems are found, we’ll be right back here within five minutes, understood?”

tipsyGnostalgic: id just like to note
tipsyGnostalgic: that was totally bullshit
tipsyGnostalgic: welp
tipsyGnostalgic: only one thing to do now
Ino!: Oh no.
Ino!: Not again.
zKazinski: What is she doing?
tipsyGnostalgic: /help

A subject catalogue has been opened in your head! Please use ‘help (subject name)’ to read an entry.

A massive space opened up in Chris’s mind, like a library in his head. He flinched, but Renick had already turned his back to him and missed Chris's sudden reaction to the surge of knowledge. It was an immense flood of unprocessable information, it was not unlike his eyes glazing over a giant spreadsheet of data he couldn't quite read. Except it was mental images and concepts, not datacells that were practically turning his brain to mush.

Kid_Win: Oh, God.
Ino!: This is what she did when we first met, except she did it just to find out how to change her text color.
tipsyGnostalgic: alright
tipsyGnostalgic: were gonna be some hotshit archivists
tipsyGnostalgic: diggin through the ancient records that is the /help function
zKazinski: We should look into utilizing the research functions more effectively.
zKazinski: Let me try something.
zKazinski: /help query ‘help’

Subject catalogue limited to subject ‘help’.

The mental space rapidly shrank, until it was only a few dozen entries on the same subject. Chris managed to follow Renick out of the door without looking too stupid.

Now able to see all the information clearly, Chris could tell that this was all information on effectively using the ‘help’ command. Variations, ways to manipulate the search tools. It implied massive libraries of commands, the majority of them locked off by the limited processing power.

Ino!: Right, give me a turn. I know what we should do!
zKazinski: Let me try a command first.
zKazinski: /helpContent copyTo ‘save’

Contents of help query ‘help’ saved!

zKazinski: Right, now you can go.
Ino!: /help query ‘senses’

No results found!

Ino!: Damn it.

Chris could feel the information change, shifting from a large collection of ideas to an 'empty space'. More importantly, he could instantly recollect what the ‘/help’ menu had contained, just by thinking about it.

zKazinski: Okay, so the ‘copyTo ‘save’’ function is useful.
Kid_Win: What can we use it for?
Ino!: Instantly memorizing information, if we can save messages.
ModThunder: Try /lastMessage.
Ino!: Thanks, Thunder.
Ino!: Hello! Testing!
Ino!: /lastMessage copyTo ‘save’

Contents of last message saved!

Ino!: Nice!
tipsyGnostalgic: so now we can just build a database of useful things?
Kid_Win: 2 * 2 = 4
Kid_Win: /lastMessage copyTo ‘save’

Contents of last message saved!

Kid_Win: 2 * 3 = 6
Kid_Win: /lastMessage copyTo ‘save’

Contents of last message saved!

ModThunder: /alerts ‘copyTo’ disable
tipsyGnostalgic: thanks mt
Ino!: Listen, I can see how that’s useful
Ino!: But you’re filling my brain with MATH, and it’s DISGUSTING.

Chris understood, from the moment that he saw that he could perfectly memorize written information, that he finally had the opportunity to rid himself of his problem once and for all. For years he had struggled with managing math when tinkering, and the solution was right in front of him. It didn’t matter if the others were annoyed with it, because he (reasonably) concluded that they benefited too.

Kid_Win: 2 * 4 = 8
Kid_Win: /lastMessage copyTo ‘save’
Kid_Win: I understand how you feel!
Kid_Win: That’s why I’m doing this now, so we can do whatever math we need on the fly.
Kid_Win: It’s like a calculator in your brain, but better.
Kid_Win: 2 * 5 = 10
Kid_Win: /lastMessage copyTo ‘save’
tipsyGnostalgic: most of us can already do our 2’s instantly
Kid_Win: Well I can’t! Give me some slack!
Kid_Win: 2 * 6 = 12
Kid_Win: /lastMessage copyTo ‘save’
zKazinski: Actually, this could be very useful. Get every number from one to thirty or so in multiplication, division, addition, and all that.
zKazinski: I’ll help you fill out the mathematics.
Kid_Win: 2 * 7 = 14
Kid_Win: /lastMessage copyTo ‘save’
Ino!: Are you going to do all the combinations?
Ino!: What are you going to do when you get to 4 times 2?
Ino!: You already have 2 times 4.
Kid_Win: 2 * 8 = 16
Kid_Win: /lastMessage copyTo ‘save’
Kid_Win: Uh, just make a record anyway?
Ino!: Okay, I can’t stop you, so I’m going to be in charge of this!
Kid_Win: It’ll be useful?
Ino!: We do all numbers up to 100!
Ino!: For Kid Win, that’s 2 times 2 all the way to 2 times 100.
Ino!: Roxy does the 3’s, from 3 times 2 to 3 times 100.
tipsyGnostalgic: alright
tipsyGnostalgic: im down for calculating shit out
tipsyGnostalgic: usin my elite hacker knowhow
Ino!: Zorian does 4’s and I do 5’s, and ModThunder does 6’s.
ModThunder: Wait, what?
Ino!: When we reach whatever our number is times 100, then we go to the next number that nobody’s doing and keep counting.
ModThunder: Even me?
zKazinski: 4 * 2 = 8
zKazinski: /lastMessage copyTo ‘save’
Ino!: If we all do this 20 times, we’ll all have a full multiplication table in our heads.
Ino!: YOU THINK YOU CAN STAY IN OUR HEADS AND NOT PULL YOUR OWN WEIGHT?
ModThunder: Alright!
ModThunder: Fine!

That girl was bossy. Good thing that was exactly what the group needed right now.

❖

Ino spent a good twenty minutes trying to herd everyone into turning this into a perfect math power, because they kept getting distracted. Eventually, they all started working seamlessly, and had the table filled out within an hour. Zorian was keeping watch well enough to point out any time somebody made a mistake.

Afterwards, they agreed to do an addition table tomorrow and a subtraction table the day after, saving the division table for last.

It wasn't that she particularly cared for math - she actually hated it - but that was exactly why this would be useful. She basically had to do each question only once, and then she’d never have to do it again. At some point, Kid Win mentioned using this as a foundation to memorizing entire tables of physics equations and predicting motion in real-time.

And that got her interested, until Zorian pointed out they would have to be able to actually track distance and speed with their eyes to do that. Filled with spite, she loudly announced she’d learn that skill, too. It couldn't be that hard, after all.

Kid_Win: Alright, I’m going to bed.
Kid_Win: I’ve been up for hours doing math and getting interrogated, so I’m exhausted.
Ino!: Goodnight!
tipsyGnostalgic: night
zKazinski: So what’s the plan for what else we can save?
zKazinski: I’m tempted to save some spells.
Ino!: We could try to learn each-other’s languages!
zKazinski: I’m not sure how that could be useful.
tipsyGnostalgic: i could rub it in dirks face that i can watch anime unsubbed
tipsyGnostalgic: im in
zKazinski: Let’s shelve this idea until we can do something more useful.
zKazinski: Math is just about the only universal thing that we can all find a use for.
zKazinski: That and the laws of motion.

In the physical world, she had taken to getting hand-to-hand combat pointers from Choji. He was a hefty guy, but his martial arts skills were the top in her team. While they spared, her sensei and Shikamaru lazily played shogi and the occasional game of Go.

Ino was starting to learn that the Node didn’t really give her much trouble with multitasking, if she put in a bit of effort. It wasn’t hard to hold two different conversations at once, so long as one of those conversations was in the Node. Most people wouldn’t notice how weird that is, but Ino was a Yamanaka, and the Yamanaka got brains in a way others don’t.

For starters, if she was having two conversations at once, then she would need to be able to be think of two different subjects at once. That would mean she was capable of thinking two subjects at once, so long as she was trying to talk about one of them in the Node. If somebody told her to write two essays on different topics, she would be able to write one on paper, and at the same time write the other in the Node.

She couldn’t help but wonder if this was a second mind, and if so, if this second mind was a valid mind for transferring into her enemies. It depended heavily on the difference between having two minds, or one mind doing twice as much. She would have to test it later, when Asuma-sensei wasn’t around to ask questions and when she had time to convince Shikamaru that letting her control his body was easier than him doing it for himself.

Ino!: We could make guides to our skills, so that the others have access to them whenever they want.
Ino!: One of us could study something like medicine, and we’d all benefit from the knowledge.
zKazinski: Medicine is also universally applicable, nice catch.
tipsyGnostalgic: i dunno
tipsyGnostalgic: if your medicine relies on freaky healing potions made of magic shit id love to hear about it
tipsyGnostalgic: but we might not all be able to use it
zKazinski: General anatomy and mundane medicine, then?
Ino!: I’ll ask around for some medic-nin to train me.
tipsyGnostalgic: medic nin
tipsyGnostalgic: u have ninja doctors
tipsyGnostalgic: im glad we can just append ninja to the start of anythin and it be a real job
tipsyGnostalgic: im gonna be a ninja chef
Ino!: It’s a serious profession!
Ino!: And we have those too!
zKazinski: Math, physics, anatomy, and technology. Anything else we need to share?
tipsyGnostalgic: i think thats everything

Choji was moving her through the motions of deflecting strong punches and taking the strikes she can’t block. Nobody hit hard enough as an academy student for her to learn this, but as a full member of Konohagakure’s military, she needed to know how to handle a proper punch.

Her taijutsu practice left bruises (ugly ones!) and she would be using makeup to hide them in the morning, but she wanted to be able to handle herself in a fight. At least, she had to be able to impress others with her ability to fight if she wanted to move forward politically, become a respected ninja, and win the heart of every man in the village.

Ino!: Let’s move onto the next subject, then.
Ino!: So how are we going to get more room in the Node?
zKazinski: ModThunder said we can get more space by sharing things across our worlds, but never clarified what counts.
zKazinski: Mind giving an explanation?
ModThunder: Sure.
ModThunder: When a Node connects to a context, it must reach into it. This connection is fragile and constantly under the stress of breaking.
ModThunder: The Node can protect this connection, but it’s costly, and customized to each context.
ModThunder: But where two contexts are made more similar to one another, some of the methods we use to stabilize the connection in one context start to apply to the other.
ModThunder: If there’s a trick involving the metaphysics behind chakra to keeping the connection protected, and there’s even tiny amounts of chakra in the other worlds, that method applies to those other worlds.
zKazinski: So if we can figure out how to transfer stuff through the existing Node connections, we might be able to free up space?
ModThunder: Maybe!
ModThunder: It depends on what you transfer.
ModThunder: Exotic energies and matter are a nice, tangible unit of physical law.
ModThunder: But things like pocket dimensions that follow the rules of another context are the optimal choice.
Ino!: This is getting more complicated than I expected.

Choji threw a punch. She managed to block it, but the force sent her skidding backwards, digging her shoes into the mud.

Her arms stung, and at that point she called off the training. It was dark, she was tired, and she almost slipped in the wet grass. After a brief stretch, Ino let her team know she was heading home. Choji decided he was going to spend the night with Shikamaru, and Shikamaru made no effort to stop him.

As Ino started on her way home, she focused on the conversation in her head. She didn’t pay attention to her surroundings much, let alone the shadowy figure tailing her.

❖

Roxy, Dirk, Jake, and Jane had set off in search of Jake's First Gate. In total, there were seven Gates per world, each acting simultaneously as the end goal for conquering a region, and a way to travel between the various hub-worlds.

Actually conquering the First Gate would be key to accessing the other three Lands, but getting there was going to be difficult. The Land of Mounds and Xenon was rugged and hilly, and occasionally they would stumble across giant burial mounds that exploded with hordes of the undead when they got too close.

tipsyGnostalgic: can you move the limit up a bit?
tipsyGnostalgic: like up to 95 percent
ModThunder: I’d love to, but no.
ModThunder: Sometimes stuff happens that increases the strain on the connection, and the Node is forced above its cap temporarily.
ModThunder: When the Node is running at over 100% capacity, it starts degrading rapidly.
ModThunder: If something happens that spikes processing costs an additional 10%, the Node will start being damaged again.
Ino!: Again?
ModThunder: Go review the very first things that happened in the Node.
ModThunder: Right at the start.
ModThunder: Roxy’s connection is incredibly costly.
tipsyGnostalgic: oh
tipsyGnostalgic: callie had problems contactin me cuz of void shenanigans
tipsyGnostalgic: its like a storm of void BS
tipsyGnostalgic: ruinin my friendships n fuckin my brain wifi up the ass
tipsyGnostalgic: in a way that ONLY a voidstorm can assfuck
Ino!: Don’t do that.
Ino!: Whatever that was, I don’t want to hear it EVER AGAIN.
zKazinski: I don’t think that should be dignified with a response.
zKazinski: But I do need to hear an explanation of ‘Void’.

In typical videogame fashion, the monsters had health-bars floating over their heads, and they were labeled. A pack of Ribrager Imps were lead by a single Bonehead Ogre, who was using his own severed arm as a club.

Jake was reloading his pistols, which meant it was Roxy’s turn to supply cover-fire. She started taking pot-shots, hoping to distract the imps. The two of them had been taking turns unloading shots on the crowd of monsters.

The issue wasn’t how dangerous these monsters were, but the fact that they lacked soft tissues meant that her team’s arrangement of two gun-wielders, a polearm user, and a sword user was relatively ineffective. That combined with the natural armor of the ogre and the way the imps kept trying to repair the ogre meant that it was an annoyingly tanky fight.

The ogre slammed its arm-club into Jane, and she went flying. Not much damage done, maybe some bruising. Dirk took the momentary distraction of the ogre watching his victim go flying to leap onto its ribcage and start slashing at its other arm.

Jake started aiming at the skull of the ogre, leaving little bulletholes through the bone. Roxy followed up his shots with carefully aimed strikes at the spine. It was doing damage, but she had half a mind to just charge in with her fists.

tipsyGnostalgic: its like
tipsyGnostalgic: my hero title
tipsyGnostalgic: my class in SBURB
zKazinski: That’s the ‘game’ you’re playing, right?
tipsyGnostalgic: yeah
tipsyGnostalgic: im the rogue of void
tipsyGnostalgic: jakes the page of hope
tipsyGnostalgic: janes the maid of life
tipsyGnostalgic: dirks the prince of heart (lmfao)
Ino!: ‘Void’ is a lot different from heart, hope, and life.
Ino!: It sounds like you drew the best option, all brooding and cool.
zKazinski: Do these hero titles give you any powers?
tipsyGnostalgic: yea, but i have to unlock them
tipsyGnostalgic: ill get invisibility and stealth shit

She wished she had stealth shit at this point. Several imps decided to charge the back line, drawing fire away from the ogre. Roxy managed to punch a bullethole through the neck of one imp, causing it to collapse into a pile of bones, and then disintegrate into a pile of collectables.

The rest of the imps were thoroughly pissed, though. They managed to move into close range and started slashing with bony claws. Roxy kept smacking them away with her gun's stock, hoping that Dirk and Jane could take out the ogre quickly enough to give them backup.

And that was when the Spinewrecker Giclops showed up, ripping its way out of the mound in a shower of dirt and stone. The ogre was a measly ten feet, compared to this monster’s fifteen. Its single eyehole looked over the fight, and it decided to charge Jane, who hadn’t quite made her way back to the ogre.

Roxy knew for a fact that Jane had the least action-packed childhood of the three of them, and she doubted she could handle the giclops on her own. She grabbed the nearest of the two imps harassing her, shoving her fingers into its empty eyeholes and ripping its skull from its body. She slammed the skull into the other imp, causing them both to explode into piles of colorful collectables, and started on a dead-sprint towards Jane.

A quick glance saw Dirk severing the ogre’s arm, and in a fluid motion he continued his attack to cut its skull in half, which he did from inside the very skull he was cutting. If he wasn't gay, she'd be all over him.

Ino!: Useful!
Ino!: I could teach you some ninja tricks, if you think it’ll help you out with your stealth stuff!
tipsyGnostalgic: i mean, i use rifles, so i imagine most my stealth will be related to sniping
Ino!: What’s a rifle?
tipsyGnostalgic: oh, you dont have guns
tipsyGnostalgic: do u have crossbows?
tipsyGnostalgic: imagine the trigger from a crossbow on a pipe and that pipe explodes projectiles at people
zKazinski: That’s pretty much exactly what a gun is.
Ino!: So it’s a weapon that shoots explosions at people?
zKazinski: It’s a weapon that uses explosives to shoot shrapnel at people.
Ino!: And why is my world the one that’s not cool enough to have EXPLOSION CROSSBOWS?
tipsyGnostalgic: theyre really loud
tipsyGnostalgic: and youre a ninja
Ino!: That SUCKS.

Roxy rushed up to Jane’s side, firing several shots into the giclops’ eye socket. It looked like the bullets bounced around in its skull rather than dealing damage. She readied for another shot when Jane yanked her out of the way of the giclops’ ground-slam attack.

Roxy quickly stashed her gun into her sylladex inventory, and prepared to take the Spinewrecker hand-to-hand. Jake was keeping the imps at bay with cover-fire, and Jane was wielding the giant green fork she created at Jake’s house.

Jane stabbed at the monster’s leg several times, causing the bone to crack, while Roxy kept it busy by dancing around its attacks and occasionally jumping up on its body to rip out ribs. On some unsaid cue, Jane jumped back to give the Dirk room to slash the damaged leg.

The creature collapsed, and suddenly Roxy, Jane, and Dirk all dog-piled onto it, trying to deal as much damage as possible before it could repair its stump. Jake continued to cover them by shooting at the imps as they tried to rush the group.

After a few seconds of smashing, wrenching, stabbing, and slashing at the behemoth creature, it collapsed into pickups. The imps fled, and the team started picking up the various gems and rewards from the fight. Roxy paid attention to the names of the resources as she gathered them. Collectively, it was called grist, and it was used to power the alchemy systems back at their houses.

From this fight, they had something like 100 Emerald, 40 Amethyst, 25 Iron, 500 Build Grist, and a few random esoteric types like a Zinc and a few Relic. That fight was a common random encounter, and it took all four of them to handle it. 500 Build Grist was nothing. It was the most basic type of material, and they got barely a drop of the stuff.

She just hoped they found a better way of handling grist problems, or they wouldn't even be able to craft enough food for them all.

❖

Zorian had been in the library for about an hour, researching anything related to time travel, and saving anything even vaguely useful to his private channel in the Node. He’d long since accepted that the Node was of alien origin and thus un-researchable, so he didn’t look into it in the library. He still firmly categorized the Node as ‘an issue’, but an understandable issue. It was part of a larger phenomenon, picking ‘exceptional’ people for an unknown purpose.

He at least hoped that the Node was attracted to him for the time-travel. He’d be seriously pissed if he traveled through time and was only considered important because he was Daimen’s brother. Not that he could deny that being the younger brother of a famous mage and explorer would have factored into it.

The last day or so had been especially interesting with the Node. After explaining his situation, Roxy stated that something must be causing the ‘time loop’. Because Zorian went back in time even without dying, dying must not be the cause the of time travel, and as such whatever was causing it would continue to affect him until he did something to prevent it.

Likewise, his classmate Zach’s strange behavior and great magical skill during the first time through the month could be explained by him having been the previous time-traveler. Somehow that status had been transferred to Zorian when the lich used some sort of spell to end the time-loop.

That theory was the best they could put together with the knowledge they had, but Zorian was still trying to work out several problems with it, like where Zach had disappeared to after Zorian became the time-traveler.

Ino!: Hey, Kid Win!
Ino!: Design a gun for me!
Kid_Win: What?
Kid_Win: Why?
Ino!: Well, you’re clearly the best person to ask if all you do is invent stuff all day.
Kid_Win: I mean, I could make a gun for you, but how would I give it to you?
Ino!: You’d send me the instructions.
Kid_Win: Okay, but I don’t know what sorts of tools or materials you have access to.
Kid_Win: And why do you suddenly want a gun?
Ino!: Roxy uses guns, Zorian knows how to use a gun, you use guns.
Kid_Win: I use laser guns.
Ino!: I want a gun, too.
Kid_Win: Sure, but you’ll have to finish up the addition tables.
Ino!: UGH.
Ino!: Fine, I’ll do it, I’ll message you in private.
tipsyGnostalgic: hey kw
Kid_Win: Yeah?
tipsyGnostalgic: why are u still hidin ur real name if theres no way for us to reveal it to anybody?
Kid_Win: I’m under orders to take caution with you guys for a while, until you can prove you’re actually from other universes.

Zorian switched his focus from the main group to one of their latest additions, a private channel. When they discovered that they could create multiple channels with their own rules, they each made a private channel, and Roxy set up a one on one channel for every pair of people.

He had his suspicions as to why she might have done this.

tipsyGnostalgic: heeyyyyy
tipsyGnostalgic: u arent too busy with nothin
tipsyGnostalgic: r u?
zKazinski: Not really, no.
zKazinski: I’m just saving stuff from the library to my Node.
tipsyGnostalgic: coolio
tipsyGnostalgic: im just wanderin what its like being a wizard
tipsyGnostalgic: like is doin’ spells hard?
zKazinski: Yeah, it took a long time for me to even be able to sense my own mana, let alone shape it into spells.
zKazinski: It’s not just about knowledge, it’s also about exercising your mana skills like muscles.
tipsyGnostalgic: hm
tipsyGnostalgic: im sure ur super mana-buff too
tipsyGnostalgic: absolutely mana RIPPED

He still wasn’t sure what to do about this either. He was trying to ignore it for now, but she was nice, if a bit weird. She seemed really impressed by his status as a mage-in-training, and he was tempted to explore why she liked that so much. All he would have to do is get her talking about wizards, which didn't seem particularly hard.

zKazinski: Can I ask why you’re so interested in my career?
zKazinski: It almost sounds like you wish you could be a mage.
tipsyGnostalgic: well
tipsyGnostalgic: let me tell you about my mom
tipsyGnostalgic: back before my earth was destroyed
tipsyGnostalgic: my mom was an author
tipsyGnostalgic: she wrote a book series about wizards
zKazinski: I can see how you would be attached to the concept, then.
tipsyGnostalgic: but the story didnt get all that popular
tipsyGnostalgic: mostly cause of its size n complexity
tipsyGnostalgic: despite this she seemed to get super rich and famous ex nihilo
tipsyGnostalgic: n weird things happened around her
zKazinski: Such as?
tipsyGnostalgic: recorded audio would cut out
tipsyGnostalgic: spooky things would appear in the background of images with her
tipsyGnostalgic: it was rumored she was involved with the occult
tipsyGnostalgic: when the invasion started she fought back n paid with her life
tipsyGnostalgic: considerin i went back in time to play the game
tipsyGnostalgic: shes probably out there right now
tipsyGnostalgic: fightin against the end

He didn’t know what to say about that. He wasn’t much to feel attachment to his family, but he could understand how it might be different if he had never met her.

tipsyGnostalgic: hold up
tipsyGnostalgic: i just got to my house
tipsyGnostalgic: fuck
tipsyGnostalgic: clown
tipsyGnostalgic: ill be right back

zKazinski: Roxy is dealing with a clown situation, so she’ll be back soon.
Kid_Win: A clown situation?
zKazinski: I have no clue either.
ModThunder: I wish I could have just gotten a normal Node.
ModThunder: That girl is so much trouble.
Ino!: Kid Win is helping me design a gun that uses chakra!
Kid_Win: It’s a fascinating energy system, I’m going to love working with it in person.
zKazinski: Assuming we ever get that far.
Ino!: We’ll figure something out.
Kid_Win: Woah.
Kid_Win: Hold up a moment.
Kid_Win: I just found something while playing around with /help.
Kid_Win: There’s a custom command scriptor!
zKazinski: What does that mean?
Kid_Win: We could make our own commands, so long as they only use the functions of other commands.
Ino!: Then why would we use them if they just replicate what other commands do?
Kid_Win: I just wrote something out in my private channel.
Kid_Win: Behold!
Kid_Win: Automation!
Kid_Win: /addition ‘10000’

Opened temporary work channel ‘Math’!
Generating messages…
Messages generated!
Posting messages to ‘Math’...
Messages posted!
Messages copied to ‘save’!
Channel ‘Math’ has closed!

Zorian became aware of a new channel, it filling with thousands of posts over the span of a second, and then instantly closing. He checked his instant recollection abilities to see that it was filled to the brim with math, thousands of addition problems pre-solved and implanted into his mind.

Kid_Win: Boom.
Kid_Win: We can now instantly add any number from 1 to 10000 with any other number in that range!
Kid_Win: I’m working on the subtraction, multiplication, and division versions.
zKazinski: Okay, this is useful.
Kid_Win: It’s even better, because my power is playing nicely with it.
Kid_Win: Which gives me good hopes for tinkering with chakra and mana.
Ino!: Huh.
Ino!: This gives me an idea!
Ino!: There's a command I found when looking for stuff that might work with my clan techniques.
Ino!: It lets you take a 'snapshot' of everything you sense in a moment, and save it.
Ino!: /inputFlow copyTo 'save'

Zorian became aware of a second body, feeling what it feels. It wasn't moving; for all purposes it was trapped in time. Like Ino said, it was a snapshot of a single moment, the sounds she heard stretching out into a single long note and the little aches and pains in her body became much more notable through all the alien-ness of it. He couldn't look around the room she sat in, try as he might, as her eyes pointed at a mirror off in the distance. He could see her reflection, a young girl staring into her own eyes with a smile.

Ino!: Do you think if we just had a command that constantly replaces the snapshot, we could share our senses?
Kid_Win: You know what?
Kid_Win: I'm already on it.

Nicolaos · Sep 19, 2018

Behold the power of scripts

SmileJPG · Sep 19, 2018

Damn, this is cool! I'm looking forward to all the quirky character interaction, and thanks for giving me two more stories to read in Mother of Learning and Homestuck. Can't wait for more!

mackanj01 · Sep 19, 2018

Wow, this is either gonna be really good or the author is gonna burn out and this will crash and burn. Side note, I'm really liking the fact that you decided to go with someone other than Taytay or Amy for the Worm side as fics involving those are far too common.

xThomas · Sep 19, 2018

it’s worth reading for the novelty, but as a story reaching 30 chapters, let us see it’s longevity. Obviously a chat room isn’t worth much, but physical portals are coming-!

Hometruck · Sep 19, 2018

Dude. This is the multi cross I never knew I wanted. It also seems absurdly ambitious, and the author will either stop updating abruptly, -incrementally increasing the world's injustice- or pull it off, and become a legend.

Isn't Zorian's last name Kazinsky, not Kawinsky?

Walloping · Sep 19, 2018

I was surprised and pleased when I saw that the Worm and Naruto PoV characters were both uncommon. I was further pleased by relative munkining of the command line, and the rather intelligent and in-character interactions. I'm eagerly awaiting more OP.

CovertCloud · Sep 19, 2018

This is everything I never knew I wanted. I'm also wondering if I missed each of the 4 summarising their respective worlds. Specifically, has Roxy told the others the function of the game she's playing, or really any details? Did I miss that part? Because I feel like learning that one of your sudden peers is basically on a quest to ascend to godhood and create a new universe from the ashes of an old one would be a startling and reaction worthy revelation.

The kind I really want to read happening. I'm sitting on the edge of my seat.

MrBTXz · Sep 19, 2018

Man this is awesome, sorta disappointed you decided to go with such an early version of Zorian he goes through so much growth both in personality and power and im slightly worried about how you could show that growth without taking the other characters screen time.

But even with those concerns I still am very much looking forward to more of this

Giygas · Sep 19, 2018

Insteresting multicross! My jam!

I don't know about the last guy, but the others are moderately well known by me at least.

And i wonder when Roxy will share with her friends about the mental chat. Kid Win has already done so to his elders, and will probably do so with his friends later. Ino just plain did so at the beginning, and Zorian has apparently no friends(At least according to his image) and thus no problem. But Roxy can still bring her friends in the know! And who knows, maybe her friend's powers might be the solution to the sharing problem?

mizzet · Sep 19, 2018

Giygas said:
Insteresting multicross! My jam!

I don't know about the last guy, but the others are moderately well known by me at least.

And i wonder when Roxy will share with her friends about the mental chat. Kid Win has already done so to his elders, and will probably do so with his friends later. Ino just plain did so at the beginning, and Zorian has apparently no friends(At least according to his image) and thus no problem. But Roxy can still bring her friends in the know! And who knows, maybe her friend's powers might be the solution to the sharing problem?

Zorian does actually have friends. The friend he mainly interacts with is kind of a gossip, his name was Benisek. He just becomes increasingly irrelevant to the story as time goes on. He also occasionally interacts with an older girl called Taivan.

Though he isn't the kind of person who would share somthing overly strange or impossible with others.

Zephyrosis · Sep 19, 2018

I like all the fics in this crossover, I'm definitely enjoying how it's going so far. I really hope this continues, ambitious crossovers like this either end up really, really good or just slowly fizzle away as the author either runs out of ideas or gives up.

goku90504 · Sep 19, 2018

Pachycephalosaur said:
“Maybe that’s what Thunder wants, though? Me to share my mental techniques with the others so that he can steal them? There’s not proof the others aren’t just him taking on roles to convince me.”

not ---> no

Pachycephalosaur said:
They started by debating the existence of a city called ‘Brockton Bay’, and have been slowing moving up the timeline starting from the founding of the city until the year 2011, looking for historical deviation.

slowly
interesting story so far i had a similar idea for naruto ranma harry potter worm though mine involved the 3 TC's plus taylor that and i'm no writer unfortunately

Dermonster · Sep 19, 2018

SmileJPG said:
Damn, this is cool! I'm looking forward to all the quirky character interaction, and thanks for giving me two more stories to read in Mother of Learning and Homestuck. Can't wait for more!

You're starting to read homestuck?

My dude you are in for a ride. If you are the type who can do it, I recommend doing a liveblog (A la Mindareads or WTFisHomestuck). Those are always fun to read.

UndyingRevenge · Sep 19, 2018

MrBTXz said:
Man this is awesome, sorta disappointed you decided to go with such an early version of Zorian he goes through so much growth both in personality and power and im slightly worried about how you could show that growth without taking the other characters screen time.

But even with those concerns I still am very much looking forward to more of this

I had a similar reaction at first but then I thought of how interesting it would be for Zorian to develop in a different direction then the mind mage path he took in cannon. I like the concept where zorian provides a means for the others to test dangerous ideas with. Like if they collectively develop a nuclear jutsu or something along those lines then he’d be the safest person to test out its applicability. Also think about a red robe encounter where Zorian has a tinker tech laser pistol, now that I’d laugh at given how zorian uses a mundane pistol to surprise red rope that one time.

This story is something I really didn’t know I needed until now, i look forward to reading the next chapter. Amazing work thus far.

ijp92 · Sep 21, 2018

Finally a Roxie story!

Adept Arcanist · Sep 22, 2018

Oh, wow! I was a little skeptical at first, but I’m really enjoying this! The Homestucky chat logs and characterization, the way they’re figuring out how to get the most out of the chatroom’s functions... I’ll look forward to the next chapter!

The one thing I hope is that with sense-sharing we’ll get to see a bit more of other characters interacting with the four (especially when the Beta Kids break through to the session in Roxy’s side).

readerboy7 · Sep 22, 2018

One thing that worries me about this crossover is how slow MoL is, in terms of timeframe. Naruto is several months (?) plus a timeskip of 3 years, plus a year from the start to the end IIRC. Worm is several months, plus a two-year timeskip, plus a month or two from the start to the end, when everything goes to hell. I haven't read Homestuck, so I can't compare it. But MoL? approximately 8 years have passed from the start of canon to the current chapter. If nothing diverges (which is unlikely), Zorian spends two weeks dead this month (and will he be able to use the chat while dead?), followed by the next six or so months in a timeskip, before Zach re-arrives. Arc 2 begins in 3 or 4 years, by which two of the other series have finished and the threats have passed.
Don't get me wrong, I like the story so far, and really hope that the author will be able to pull it off. I'm just wondering if he(?) can.

Edit: or we get massive divergences early on, and Zorian's timeline especially is thrown out the window since a lot of it depends on him, but he still needs time to be a better mage with his mana control and learn how to use mind magic and later dimensionalism.

Brill Adrien · Sep 22, 2018

Anyone know of any other Mother of Learning fanfics? I stopped reading about the time Zorian and Zach really start working together and it was so long between updates I decided to let it progress a bit more before rereading.

Zorian's spider buddies under the college town got wiped from the simulation. Zorian and Zach know its a simulation with a finite number of repeats since the badguy has already gotten out of the room/spatial dimension and back to reality. If anyone could give a rough accounting of how much more story there is I would really appreciate it.

Just found this story, never read Homestuck but I have decent knowledge of everything else, really kickass premise and writing/execution!

Ralyx · Sep 22, 2018

I'm really liking this so far, but I have no idea where it's going or where it even can go. Like readerboy7 mentioned, the pacings of all the different plotlines and character developments seem quite drastic after all. Do we have any idea when in the Naruto timeline it is yet?

OhHeyItsThatGuy · Sep 23, 2018

This kinda reminds me of that series on Netflix called Sense8. I really liked the concept of the show, the whole mentally connected, sharing experiences and knowledge, and even being able to bodyjack each other to help each other out.

Probably won't see all of that here, but kinda has that same root feeling of familiarity, I'm definitely liking what I see of this fic so far.

Redrover1760 · Sep 27, 2018

High Quality Content.

Can't wait to see it continue.

Ralyx said:
I'm really liking this so far, but I have no idea where it's going or where it even can go. Like readerboy7 mentioned, the pacings of all the different plotlines and character developments seem quite drastic after all. Do we have any idea when in the Naruto timeline it is yet?

I'll think about it for a bit, but its definitely after the 4th shinobi world war.

Ino recently got out of the Academy, so near the beginning of canon taking place...

Probably before the wave arc.

Pachycephalosaur · Sep 29, 2018

Arc 1: Chapter 3: Caring

Kid_Win: The sense-sharing is based on the ‘save’ system.
Kid_Win: Because each channel has its own save, I didn’t bother making a way to limit who you share your senses with.
Kid_Win: So if you want to share your senses with somebody in private, just do /mindShare in your private channel.
ModThunder: I like how this doesn’t use up processing power to achieve its goal, but I need to clarify something.
ModThunder: Unlike the Blur service with a similar effect, inputFlow doesn’t come with metaphysical filtering.
ModThunder: Basically, the information holds the same properties it would in the original cosmological context.
tipsyGnostalgic: isnt info just info?
tipsyGnostalgic: i dunno what special properties ur attributin to facts
ModThunder: Let’s say that your cosmological context has a word that, by some metaphysical capability intrinsic to the word, causes your death shortly after you learn it.
ModThunder: If you hear the word, not only will you die, but the property of the word that causes your death will be transferred to your allies as well.
ModThunder: But if that information is delivered from outside your context, where the word is safe, it will not hold this property.
ModThunder: If somebody said the killing word to one of your teammates, you would react as though you had learned the word in a world where it doesn’t kill you, and thus be fine.
tipsyGnostalgic: oh
tipsyGnostalgic: huh
Kid_Win: Zorian, if somebody tries to cast Power Word: Kill on you, please stop them.
zKazinski: I have never heard of such a spell.
zKazinski: The words used in spellcasting don’t have any intrinsic power.
zKazinski: What do you mean by ‘Blur’?
ModThunder: Blur was one of the services I disabled. It deals in creating coherency through indistinction.
ModThunder: With it, you could do things like share your powers or senses by becoming more conceptually alike.
zKazinski: As useful as that sounds, I’d prefer to remain as me.
tipsyGnostalgic: so r we gonna do this?
tipsyGnostalgic: im rdy for some people to climb into my brain
tipsyGnostalgic: experience ROXYVISION
Kid_Win: Okay, let's do it then.

Chris held his breath. 'Testing' wasn't really a common phase in the tinker workcycle. He more-or-less threw this together, but he was good enough at code to know that a loop repeating the same simple command didn't have a lot of chance for failure. Frankly, the math command was harder. ModThunder thought this command wouldn't be dangerous, and that was the only reason he was skipping straight to using it.

Kid_Win: Sharing perspective in 3… 2… 1...
Kid_Win: /mindShare on

Zorian, Ino, and Roxy became aware of a second presence, a body other than their own. Zorian and Roxy could for the first time contextualize how different another body felt. They could feel the slight ache in his right wrist, and the way his back was stiffened from leaning over a worktable all day. Ino brushed this all off, already aware of the way another body could feel. They saw he was in a lab, with parts scattered all around him. He was focused on painting the plastic case for his new weapon, and just to test the sense he tapped the paintbrush to his finger, letting the cold paint sit on his skin before wiping it away with a wet-wipe.

Ino!: Hell yeah! Let’s do this!
Ino!: /mindShare on

Roxy, Kid Win, and Zorian all recognized Ino’s senses the moment they became available. With three reference points to work from, Roxy and Zorian both started picking out all the little differences in how the bodies felt, while Kid Win got to experience the world from another’s eyes for the first time. Ino's long hair was a new experience for him, and he couldn't help but notice the way it swayed and lightly tugged her scalp when she turned her head.

tipsyGnostalgic: get rdy to experience my BOMBASTIC body
tipsyGnostalgic: /mindShare on

Now in the swing of things, nobody was particularly surprised when they found Roxy’s body in their awareness. It was becoming easier to just accept the presence, so none of them reacted strongly to suddenly seeing through her eyes. She was in her room, which was filled with stuffed animals and decorated with strange cat-like creatures frozen in resin. There were a few empty bottles laying around, and some strange pieces of technology, but nothing so fancy looking as Kid Win's lab.

zKazinski: /mindShare on
zKazinski: I was really expecting to feel something weird.
zKazinski: Don’t let me forget if it’s on.

With Zorian, everything was in order. At first, there was some discomfort. Not in the form of pain, but in the lack of control. Seeing through another pair of eyes made them want to look around through them, but not being able to control the direction the eyes were pointing was a bit frustrated.

Ino was taking it all in stride while everyone else struggled. After a few minutes of letting them adjust to it, Ino decided to give a rundown on the general etiquette of sharing senses with somebody else. It was something the Yamanaka had instilled into her from the moment she began training with her clan’s techniques, and she felt comfortable giving out the basics.

Ino!: Alright!
Ino!: So the first thing is…
Ino!: DON’T THINK ABOUT EACH OTHER’S PRIVATE PARTS.
Ino!: Don't acknowledge them.
Ino!: Don't even think about them.
Ino!: It’s now officially COMPLETELY taboo and it’ll only make things weird.
tipsyGnostalgic: o my GOD
Kid_Win: I feel like I'm getting The Talk from a preteen.
Ino!: Seriously, I'm not joking.
Ino!: Roxy has a chest, you boys have… your things…
Ino!: And it's going to feel weird, but let's not make this awkward.
Kid_Win: The shutdown command is /mindShare off.
Kid_Win: Use it liberally.
Kid_Win: As cool as you guys are, I'm not ready to take a shower with you.
Ino!: Thanks, KW.
Ino!: Up next: Food!
Ino!: We won't all have the same tastes in the stuff.
Ino!: Don't complain when somebody eats something you don't like, but I want to try food from other worlds without getting fat.
Ino!: I fully intend to live all my food fantasies through you while I stick to my diet.
Kid_Win: Fair.
Ino!: That said, I will complain about your music choices, KW.

Kid Win snorted. He had some Pop channel playing on the radio while he worked. It was crystal clear tinkertech surround sound, and nothing less would be accepted in his workplace, ever. Even if he got distracted dancing in his seat sometimes, tinkering music was mandatory. Roxy had taken to silently bobbing her head to the music he was playing, not minding the weird looks she was getting from Jane and the pink ghost next to her.

Fefetasprite was Roxy’s newest companion, made from two dead alien girls with a shared love of nature, animal puns, and being generally goofy. At first, when the weird clown alien threw their mangled corpses into the kernelsprite, everybody freaked out. Even if her creation wasted a revive, Roxy deemed the resultant companion ‘totes worth it’, and Fefetasprite didn’t seem to mind her situation much either. The others in the Node were still getting used to the sight of her.

tipsyGnostalgic: watch urself
tipsyGnostalgic: au katy perry aint bad
Kid_Win: At least somebody here has taste.
Kid_Win: You also owe us some authentic sushi, Ino.
Kid_Win: I don't set up sense-sharing for free.
Ino!: Konohagakure isn't anywhere near the coast.
Ino!: Our fish isn't that great.
Kid_Win: I don’t care.
Kid_Win: It can’t be worse than ABB money laundering sushi.
zKazinski: What's sushi?
Kid_Win: Don't say what I think you're going to say.
tipsyGnostalgic: raw fish
Kid_Win: That is a vast oversimplification of a culinary art!
Kid_Win: They actually catch a fish and take a bite out before throwing it back in.
tipsyGnostalgic: lmao
zKazinski: I see that your worlds have firmly mastered cooking.
zKazinski: An actual explanation, please?

While Ino and Kid Win launched into an explanation on sushi, Zorian heard somebody knock on his door. He complained about how a girl named Taiven always managed to track him down to go dungeon delving in the previous two iterations of the month, and he was certain that she was appearing for exactly that reason today. He gave death-glare as he opened the door.

“Hey, Roach!”

She held her smile despite the harsh look on his face, and pushed past him to make her own way into the room.

“What do you need, Taiven?”

Ino!: Your language sounds so weird.
Kid_Win: I’d do it.
Kid_Win: If our theory that this a Groundhog Day loop is accurate, then you aren’t in serious danger.
zKazinski: We haven’t strictly proven that it’s a loop.
zKazinski: We just know that an unknown factor is causing the time travel, and that nothing I’ve done in two times through the month has prevented me from going back.
zKazinski: I don’t want to take the risk of doing something that might prevent me from going back.
tipsyGnostalgic: if ur THAT afraid of butterflyin urself out of existence
tipsyGnostalgic: takin pretty much any action might end up causing ur loop to end
tipsyGnostalgic: but u were picked for the node
tipsyGnostalgic: and im sure if ur situation was that delicate that wouldnt have happened
Ino!: Yeah!
ModThunder: It would have been accounted for in our metrics for picking exceptional individuals, so I can say the theory likely holds water.
zKazinski: Wow.
zKazinski: Thanks for staying on my side, Thunder.
tipsyGnostalgic: was that a JOKE?
tipsyGnostalgic: its like i dont even kno you anymore
zKazinski: I’m still going to turn down her offer.
Ino!: Fine, but you have to do it next time through the month.
Ino!: I want to see this dungeon.
zKazinski: Alright, fine.
zKazinski: Just let me spend this month in peace.

Taiven had just finished making her proposition at this point. In short, she was supposed to only take this job as a team of four, and Zorian was her first choice for somebody who was smart enough to handle himself and not jeopardize everything. She spent much of the talk detailing how he would be totally safe because they would both be going only to the highest levels, and because her team would be there to protect him.

The offer still wasn’t worth taking, not when he couldn’t protect himself yet. He decided he might give it a shot next time through the month, but he wasn’t ready for that yet.

After finally kicking her out of the room, he checked on what the others were doing.

Roxy was in her house with her friend and the ghostly creature she had identified as her sprite. They were idly chatting, going through her food supplies and writing down the strange codes associated with the items. Apparently, knowing these codes was enough to recreate the items with alchemical resources. Or whatever passed for alchemy in her world, at least.

Kid Win was still working on his latest project, a floating gun platform which he was tentatively calling the ‘Hyper Cannon’. He didn’t know enough about how it would end up to decide on its name yet. Roxy was at a loss for anything related to mechanical engineering, but whenever he switched over to the computational device to input instructions into his creation, she would immediately start offering advice.

Ino was digging through a huge bin of sharp weapons for star-shaped throwing blades. Apparently, ninja weapons were sold in bargain bins when they started to dull. Keeping dozens of weapons sharp was more effort than it was worth, so most ninja just sold their dull weapons back to stores to be sharpened or melted down. This particular store decided there was a market for people buying those used blades, and Ino embraced it fully.

Ino!: They don’t have to be sharp if you throw them hard enough.

Kid Win said that she wouldn’t be digging through the bargain bin if she hadn’t spent all of her money on a wardrobe expansion. When the resulting argument finally died down, Roxy had taken to doing a wardrobe expansion of her own, using the computerized alchemy system in the game.

She could take any almost any item in her inventory system, which she had described as a piece of matter-digitalization technology, and get a unique serial code from it. This code could be reduced into a series of holes punched into a card. She could then generate two new codes by putting two codes on the same card, or overlapping two cards so only the holes they shared would be read by the system. From this method, any two objects could craft another pair of objects, typically by granting one of the pair many of the properties of the other.

Unfortunately, crafting these items came with some downsides. The items cost more grist the more powerful they were. As if that wasn’t already enough of a problem, Roxy had also found she had a limit to the amount of grist she could carry at once. While there was a shared bank of grist that slowly refilled depleted grist types to her and her teammates, many recipes cost more grist than the game would allow her to carry on her at a time.

So Roxy just spent her resources on different outfits. They made goofy hats, cute dresses, and the bushiest fake moustache that she and Jane could manage. It was totally awesome.

In between Kid Win’s bouts of lament at his lack of access to both Zorian’s and Roxy’s alchemy systems, he was preparing to head out on a patrol. While he was being held out of school for the duration of the quarantine, the PRT didn’t want to risk his absences from school being linked to him not appearing publicly as a Ward.

They decided they’d put him out on a few patrols with a full Protectorate hero and a few other Wards. He slipped his visor on and stepped out of his lab, where his traveling companions were waiting for him. His teammates, Vista and Gallant, were standing in the hallway in front of his lab.

“Hey, KW,” Gallant said, “Miss Militia is waiting for us in the garage, we’ll be taking a van to the Boardwalk and doing a route through there. It should take about an hour or two.”

Kid Win could see Vista looked somewhat annoyed at that. She understood as well as he did that a patrol on the Boardwalk meant that it would be meant more as a public showing than any attempt at actually fighting crime. He knew that Vista dealt with this a lot, because she was twelve and the PRT didn’t want her getting involved in many fights. He suspected that they also wanted to keep him out of trouble during his quarantine.

The patrol was long and boring. Roxy wasn’t doing much, Zorian was in the library reading books in another language, and Ino was sitting in front of her mirror across from the bed, trying on jewelry and idly chatting about the colors.

A few minutes into Kid Win’s route, there was a knock at Ino’s door, and he turned his attention to her.

When she called out that he could come in, her dad made his way into the room. There was a tired look in his eyes; he had been in meetings all day long and only just got home in time for dinner. Ino didn’t know what all the meetings were about, but she knew it must be something big.

“Hey Princess, are you doing alright?”

“I’m doing well!” She gave him a smile.

“You’ve been quiet lately.” That was relative to how quiet she usually was. “Has something happened?”

She went still. Even with her enhanced ability to multitask in regards to the Node, she was still spending lots of time focusing on it to the exclusion of other things.

“Uh, no.” She let the conversation lull for a moment, and immediately began to regret it. The silence was awkward and gave them too much time to think. “There’s nothing to worry about.” She gave a meek smile.

tipsyGnostalgic: hey ino whats goin on
Ino!: My dad is worried for me.

“I see. Is it a boy?”

Ino!: NO.
Ino!: ABORT! ABORT!
Ino!: ANYTHING BUT THIS.
tipsyGnostalgic: whats he askin?

Her expression stayed the same. Probably too 'the same': her eyes unblinking and her smiled becoming pained.

“Don’t be silly, daddy! Sasuke is the only boy for me, and he still hasn’t seen the good thing right in front of him yet.”

Ino!: HE WANTS TO KNOW IF I HAVE A BOYFRIEND!
tipsyGnostalgic: do u????
Ino!: NO!

His face radiated amusement. He probably only believed her on the principle of her being his little angel. “I see. Well, if you do have boy troubles, just let me know and I’ll deal with them for you.” By ‘boy troubles’, he meant any boy she didn’t like looking in her direction in the best case and any boy he didn’t like looking in her direction in the worst case. With that, he turned to leave.

tipsyGnostalgic: then whats the prob?
Ino!: First of all, he knows I'm keeping something from him.
Ino!: Second of all, I don't want to talk to him about BOYS! He's my dad!
zKazinski: You only talk about one boy.
Kid_Win: One boy we haven't met yet.
zKazinski: You talk about him enough that I’m sure your dad already knows about him.
Kid_Win: Anyways, you still need to ask him if he knows anything about sealing for me.
Ino!: Oh, right!

“Hey, daddy? I was wondering if I could learn fuinjutsu.”

He gave a thoughtful ‘hm’.

“Fuinjutsu? That’s unexpected. What has you so curious about sealing? It doesn't seem to fit my little Ino's attitude.”

Think fast, Ino!

“Well, my team is a dedicated live-capture team. Just like you and Choji and Shikamaru’s dads were-”

“Just like we are. Your old man isn’t retired yet.” He always insisted that, but they both knew that he spent more time in administrative positions than actually on the field. Same with the Hokage, and a huge number of the village's other top ninja.

Ino continued through his objections. “- and isn’t fuinjutsu good for catching people? Restraining chakra, holding them prisoner, and stuff like that? And Shikamaru keeps running out of explosive tags.”

He smiled. “I think that is an excellent idea. I’ll find some books on the subject for you. Just don’t let your studies and team get in the way of you and your new boyfriend.” The smiled turned into a grin.

“Dad!”

She threw a pillow at him, but the door was already closed and he was gone.

Ino!: Okay, Kid.
Ino!: He’ll help us.
Ino!: But how am I going to keep this a secret if I can't even go two days without people noticing something’s different?
tipsyGnostalgic: whys it gotta b a secret?
tipsyGnostalgic: i told all my friends
Ino!: Because of ninja things.
Kid_Win: Which ‘ninja things’? You already know what happened when I told the PRT about you guys.
Ino!: I don't know! Ninja things!
Ino!: I'm a genin fresh out of the academy, don’t ask me.
Ino!: But this isn't the sort of thing you share in the ninja world.
Ino!: I told Shikamaru and Choji, and they know how to keep their mouths closed when it matters.
Ino!: But I just met Asuma-sensei!
Ino!: And my dad answers directly to the Hokage!
Kid_Win: You've always talked about the Hokage as though he's this really nice grandfatherly type.
Kid_Win: Why would you hide it from him?
Ino!: Because I’m a Yamanaka!
Ino!: I can't-
Ino!: No, WE can't allow for anybody else to have mental techniques like ours.
Ino!: It would permanently damage our reputation.
Ino!: We get hundreds of clients each year specifically looking for the services of the Yamanaka. We’re the ONLY mind-readers in the world.
Ino!: What would happen if word got out of a non-Yamanaka mind technique user?
Kid_Win: I see.
Kid_Win: Okay, but you could still tell a few trusted people, right?
Ino!: I have done that. My team knows.
Ino!: I’m not stupid.
Ino!: And how do I know it doesn’t get sent straight to the Intelligence division?
Ino!: What did the Parahuman Response Team do when you mentioned your situation?
Kid_Win: Uh.
Kid_Win: They interviewed me for several hours and I’m still in quarantine.
Ino!: Our interrogation department is called the Torture and Interrogation department.
Kid_Win: Okay, I understand your perspective.
tipsyGnostalgic: i get that ur worried
tipsyGnostalgic: n ill totally help u keep it a secret
tipsyGnostalgic: just keep in mind that lettin some other ppl know might not be as bad as u think????
Ino!: Okay.
Ino!: I’ll CONSIDER it.
Ino!: Can we talk about something else?
zKazinski: Yeah, I have an idea that’s worth looking into.
Ino!: What is it?
zKazinski: Thunder, can you go over the differences between our sense sharing command, and the one that is built-in to Blur?
ModThunder: Sure.
ModThunder: Your command is based on /inputFlow, which we used heavily while testing the Prime Hub.
ModThunder: It takes information directly from one context to another, but in that process, the information acts as though it did in the original context.
ModThunder: The '/blur Sensation’ command doesn’t transmit information directly, but it instead wears down the conceptual borders between the user’s senses.
ModThunder: It’s less as though you experienced the information in the other person's context, and more like you experienced it inside the Node.
zKazinski: Could we reduce the strain on the Node by transmitting information with special properties through the Node?
ModThunder: Theoretically you could, but only if that information can be somehow used to optimize the Node’s connection.
tipsyGnostalgic: so we’d have 2 have some super strong info?
ModThunder: Yes, pretty much.
ModThunder: Information that can do something just from viewing or otherwise sensing it.
zKazinski: There are monsters that can do magic with nothing but eye contact, but I’m not risking that.

Roxy looked over to Fefetasprite. The troll-ghost-fusion had taken off her long ghostly jacket, and was examining her shirt.

“Hey Roxy, isn’t it weird that I got Nepeta’s features on one side of my face, and Feferi’s features on the other, but my shirt is sleeveless on both sides? Only Feferi was wearing a sleeveless shirt before we were combined, so I should have one t-shirt sleeve and one strap! It’s pawsitively confounding!”

“Fefeta, you ask all the most important questions. But I gots a question with absolutely worldshakin’ importance for you. Well, the question is of worldshakin’ importance to me. I think for you it’s just gonna be another q.”

“Oh reel-y? Whale, I’m sure I can answer lots of questions for you!”

“Is there any information with like, metaphysical or cosmological significance?”

“Yes, but I’m not suppawsed to just give it out to you! You’ve gotta go out and learn it for yourself. Or, that’s what I’m meant to say as your sprite and guide to the game. As your friend, I want to help you, but you’ll have to ask more specific questions than that.”

“Oh, no, I mean like. Information that has special powers. Like the knowledge itself does stuff.”

Fefetasprite got a huge grin on her face. “Oh, I know the purr-fect thing! Fraymotifs! A Fraymotif is a pattern that commands the powers of the Aspects for a combat ability. When I was Nepeta, me and Equius used to do all sorts of Fraymotifs together, so I know lots of Heart/Void Fraymotifs that you and Dirk could do!”

Kid Win stopped talking with the others in the Node, and started paying attention to what Roxy was doing. He didn’t understand what Roxy’s sprite was going on about, but he recognized the importance in what she was saying.

“Holy shit, really? So we get cool elemental combo-spells n’ shit?”

“They aren’t quite spells, but they’re purrty mystical! You only have to know the Fraymotif and be attuned to the right Aspect to use it! So if you learn Oblivion Waltz, you can share that knowledge with Dirk so that you can use the Fraymotif as a team! I could teach you a whole bunch of Fraymotifs that you can do with Dirk, plus a few you can do with Jane!”

Fefetasprite gave a thoughtful look.

“Come to think of it, I could probably do my Heart/Life Fraymotifs with myself! I’ll try it soon, but first I should probably teach you everything I can. Ready?”

Instead of waiting for a response, Fefetasprite reached out and tapped Roxy on the forehead. A rush of information flowed through her being. She saw, but could not comprehend, Void, twisting emptiness, insignificance, and yielding. She saw, but could not comprehend, Heart, the ways of love, the self, and eternity.

The knowledge combined and shifted inside her mind until it settled in the form of her new Fraymotifs. They were strange, like music, metaphysics, and philosophy combined into a weave of Void and Heart.

The ghostly fish/cat girl was smiling knowingly. “Pretty neat, huh? A lot of Heart/Void stuff is status effects, but there are also some defensive options! We can practice later, after my catnap!”

Kid_Win: Dude.
Kid_Win: What the fuck.
Ino!: Woah.
tipsyGnostalgic: u felt that too?
zKazinski: This is really interesting.
zKazinski: You can just invoke this knowledge to create effects?
tipsyGnostalgic: fefeta says anybody can use them so long as one of them is aligned with heart and one is aligned with void
tipsyGnostalgic: i dont think you guys count ‘cause ur not from my universe
zKazinski: Okay, so we now have something we can use.
zKazinski: That was incredibly weird, but we have something.
ModThunder: I’m going through the diagnostics as we speak.
ModThunder: It seems like ‘Void’ might have some useful properties for piercing through the borders between cosmological contexts.
tipsyGnostalgic: ur damn right it does!!
tipsyGnostalgic: i have the BEST fuckin aspect that ever did get haved
tipsyGnostalgic: u remember the voidstorm?
tipsyGnostalgic: thats me
tipsyGnostalgic: im the voidstorm
tipsyGnostalgic: board up the windows bitches cuz im rollin in
zKazinski: Right, thank you for this analysis of the situation.
tipsyGnostalgic: *wink* *wink* *wonk*
zKazinski: I was talking to Thunder there, not you Roxy.
tipsyGnostalgic: :’(
tipsyGnostalgic: brb cryin

❖

A few hours later, Ino had met with her team, and made their way to a different training ground than usual. Their compatriots in Team Eight were meeting with them for a group training session. Ino suspected that their team leaders only organized the event because they had the hots for each other. It was easy to poke fun at Asuma and his ‘hot new girlfriend’.

They made their way down a winding road through the tall forests, and eventually approached the clearing, where the others waited for them. Team Eight was a tracking and investigation team, comprised of Shino Aburame, Kiba Inuzaka, and Hinata Hyūga. Each of them had abilities that aided in tracking runaways or locating traps. The Inuzaka trained ninja hounds, the Hyūga could see through solid objects, and the Aburame commanded swarms of insects. Their team was lead by Kurenai Yūhi, a master illusionist.

tipsyGnostalgic: so r any of these boys this sasuke boy u like so much?
Ino!: No! Ew! Why would I be interested in dog-boy or bug-boy?
tipsyGnostalgic: i dont get ur taste in men
tipsyGnostalgic: u talk about brooding n mysterious and yet mr sunglasses over there is off the table?
Ino!: That's different.
Ino!: He's not mysterious.
Ino!: He's just weird.
tipsyGnostalgic: not mysterious huh?????
tipsyGnostalgic: tell me one fact about him
Ino!: Uh.
Ino!: He likes bugs?
tipsyGnostalgic: hmmm
tipsyGnostalgic: HMMMMMMMM
tipsyGnostalgic: why tho?
Ino!: I don't know!
Ino!: Bugs are gross!
tipsyGnostalgic: so hes…….. A MYSTERY???
Kid_Win: You walked right into that one, Ino.
Kid_Win: But enough of that.
Kid_Win: You said you’d give us a demonstration of elite ninja fighting today.
Ino!: Right!
Ino!: I have the perfect plan, watch and learn.

“Hey, Kiba! When we do team spars, you're going down!”

The Kiba whipped around to look at her. His face turned into a scowl, and the small dog on his head yipped angrily.

“Oh yeah? I'll have you know Akamaru and me can take down all three of you!”

“Yeah, right! I bet you’re just afraid to admit you'd get beat by a girl!”

Shikamaru looked at Ino with mild curiosity.

Kiba almost literally barked with laughter. “There's no way I'd lose to you!” Ino ‘subtly’ elbowed Shikamaru, and that was all he needed to know his part in her plan. He wouldn’t be happy to be part of any plan that required more than a token non-effort, but he wouldn’t turn down a chance to complain about Ino without repercussions.

“I don't know, Ino. I don't think there's a chance you can win, especially given how much faster boys are.” The bait was set. Ino was still tempted to smack the back of his head, but she restrained herself. The fact that she didn’t do anything didn’t go unnoticed.

Kurenai looked at Asuma. “Asuma, what have you been teaching these kids? They’re young, and should be taught better than this! I know for a fact that you know better.”

Everybody turned towards Kurenai.

“Listen!” They all turned to Asuma, as though they were watching the accusation fly out to hit him. “I never taught him any of that! And I don't agree with him, but there are less women ninja and-”

“Oh, that’s the angle you’re playing? And we aren't as fast, either? Kids, stand back, I think a bit of a demonstration is in order.”

Everybody backed away, standing in off to one side.

Ino!: Enjoy the show!

Kurenai immediately opened with a barrage of shuriken. At least twenty shuriken in a single throw, flying towards one man. He leapt back, dropping his lit cigarette and moving his hands in a weave of strange gestures.

Ino!: These are handseals, they’re a big part of how ninjutsu is performed.
zKazinski: Interesting. Very different from the gestures in spells.
zKazinski: Does ninjutsu require vocalization?

“Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!” yelled Asuma, as he summoned a giant gale of wind that redirected the projectiles back at the woman who threw them.

Ino!: Nope.
zKazinski: So what is he yelling?
Ino!: The name of the technique.
tipsyGnostalgic: im so happy to hear that people do that on ur world
tipsyGnostalgic: UNSPEAKABLY happy

Kurenai responded by dodging. Unlike her, a blast of wind couldn't aim its shots, and avoiding damage was pathetically easy. She began performing her own series of gestures, while Asuma drew two wicked blades that wrapped around his hands like knuckledusters. The blades glowed with a faint blue light, and he charged at her.

She finished her technique and dodged to the left. He swerved to the right, and slashed at the air.

“He can’t hear you right now, so I’m going to tell you kids in Team Ten that Asuma doesn't always know best. You should really consider your enemies as valid threats no matter what their gender is.”

Ino!: Kurenai is a master of illusions.
Kid_Win: Do they only target one person at a time?
Ino!: The fact that we can see what’s really happening is a sign that she wants us to see what’s happening.

Suddenly Asuma whipped around to throw his dagger at where Kurenai was actually standing, forcing her to drop to the ground under the blade. The blade kept going, and passed through a tree near the edge of the clearing.

“Can’t hear you, huh? And I never taught them otherwise.”

She raised an eyebrow, urging him to continue talking. He must have caught what she was so curious about, because he immediately launched into an explanation. “I did a sealless release. I recognized the jutsu you were about to use and decided I might have a chance of dispelling it.”

She threw another volley of shuriken, which he easily dodged. “Good gamble, maybe I should take the kiddie gloves off.”

Ino!: They’re holding back.
zKazinski: How can you tell?
Ino!: Except for the knife throw, this is how hard Asuma fights when he’s training us.
Kid_Win: It’s still really impressive.

Kurenai ran through another series of handseals, and Asuma charged her with the glowing dagger. Suddenly, a dozen of Kurenai were moving in different directions.

Asuma started slashing through the clones. One by one, they began bursting into clouds of smoke, and he was leaping from clone to clone in a wild flurry. Eventually, there was only one left. He looked around confused, like he couldn't see the original Kurenai at all. She strolled up to him and kicked him in the gut, causing him to buckle over.

The light in front of him shimmered briefly, undoing an illusion and revealing that his combat vest had a shuriken embedded in it right where Kurenai kicked. The shuriken had been pushed deep into his vest by the force of the kick, not far enough to break skin, but enough to show that she could have taken him out of the fight in that moment.

Kid_Win: When did she do that?
Ino!: Hm.
Ino!: I bet it was during the second group of shuriken she threw!
Ino!: We didn’t even see any of them hit, and obviously neither did Asuma.

Kiba started whooping and hollering at Kurenai’s victory. The bug-user Shino was completely stoic, and that left the normally shy Hinata as the one on her team to speak up.

“I don’t mean to be a bother, but what were you doing with those daggers, Asuma-sensei?”

He turned and gave her a smile, not particularly bothered by his defeat. “There are my chakra-conductive knives. They’re made from a special metal that conducts the power through them, which enhances the metal and the strength of the attacks. In my case, I use Wind chakra to increase their cutting power.”

Hinata nodded, her curiosity apparently satiated. Ino quickly relayed this new information to everyone.

Kid_Win: We need to figure out how that’s made if I’m ever going to tinker with chakra.
Kid_Win: Wires made of this material could be useful.
tipsyGnostalgic: already tryin to replace electricity with ninja magic?

“Hey Asuma-sensei, if you had a big bunch of chakra conductive wires, could you channel Lightning chakra through them to zap people?” Ino asked as Asuma started making his way to where his thrown dagger had gone.

“I suppose you could. Why?”

Ino!: I just asked Asuma if you could zap people with lightning chakra in wires, and he said yes.
Kid_Win: I can totally use that.
Kid_Win: I’m sold on this chakra stuff.

“It sounds cool.”

“Ha! If you ever start fighting like that, I’d love to see it.” Asuma called back to her as he pulled his knife free from the fifth and final tree in the line of devastation it wrought. Ino looked at the damage, giving the others a moment to soak it in with her.

tipsyGnostalgic: oooohhh wow
tipsyGnostalgic: sharpest fuckin knife ive ever seen
zKazinski: So, let’s discuss that fight and what we learned from it.
tipsyGnostalgic: ninja yell their attack names
zKazinski: I still don’t understand why anybody would do that.
Kid_Win: The handseals, what are up with those?
Ino!: I don’t know the exact science, but it has to do with controlling the way chakra moves through your body.
Ino!: Sometimes, people can get good enough chakra control that they can do techniques without relying on handseals.
Ino!: That’s what Asuma did to dispel the illusion on him.
zKazinski: Similar things can be done with magic.
tipsyGnostalgic: they were sneaky the whole fight
tipsyGnostalgic: even ur sensei dude was trying to trick her into thinking the illusion got him
tipsyGnostalgic: they didnt treat range like most ppl would in a fight either
tipsyGnostalgic: they were movin so fast that melee range and shuriken range werent super distinctive
Ino!: I could tell the difference!
tipsyGnostalgic: id have to see more ninja fights to learn what was goin on
Kid_Win: I saved a few cool moments in a private channel.
Kid_Win: I’ll transfer them over if anybody wants to see.
zKazinski: Speaking of transferring saves.
zKazinski: I know none of you can read the books I’ve been digging through for the past few hours, but I saved some information on spell formula that might be useful.
zKazinski: Well, several books of information.
zKazinski: I think when we can start sharing energy, this will be a crucial guide to using mana for your projects, Kid.
Kid_Win: Mwahahaha!
Kid_Win: My evil scheme comes together!
ModThunder: Perfect time for this subject to come up!
ModThunder: I just finished the optimizations on the Node, which should allow us to open an unanchored Node connection.
Kid_Win: Excellent.
tipsyGnostalgic: is it rly perfect timing if weve been talking about this nonstop for the past few hours?
Ino!: Hell yeah!
tipsyGnostalgic: like u woulda lost a coinflip more often than find a bad time to bring this up
zKazinski: What are you waiting for?
zKazinski: Set it up!
ModThunder: /node status 1

Systems stable
Core at 88.1% ~
Node Population: 5
User Count: 4
Realm Count: 4
Page 1/6

ModThunder: Take a long look at these numbers.
ModThunder: /node setDefaultRules ‘MTPrivateChannel/optimizationsVoidV1’

Default Rules updating…
Done.
Applying rules…
Done.

tipsyGnostalgic: so what did it do?
ModThunder: This.
ModThunder: /node status 1

Systems stable
Core at 82.1% ˇ
Node Population: 5
User Count: 4
Realm Count: 4
Page 1/6

tipsyGnostalgic: nice
ModThunder: Here we go!
ModThunder: /node setConnection {‘Realm1’, ‘Realm2’, ‘Realm3’, ‘Realm4’} point(freeFloating, open)

Opening connections.

Everyone felt a small distortion in the palms of their hands. Kid Win held his hand in front of his face, and uncurled his fingers to reveal a tiny glowing speck. Zorian followed suit, as did Roxy, who leaned in very close to it and squinted at it. Ino pocketed the speck almost immediately to hide it from the others.

Ino heard Kurenai call her and the others for a team battle.

ModThunder: Behold the unanchored Node connection!
Kid_Win: I’m going to submit this for testing right now.
zKazinski: I'm going to message you in a private channel so we can work together with Mana, alright?

As Ino and her team circled up to listen to whatever Shikamaru’s plan was, she passively watched Kid Win place the speck into a tiny glass vial, and hit a button on his desk. He said something into the intercom, and start making his way to the Research division. He could busy himself with that, but she had a fight to win.

As she broke the huddle with her team, she turned to look at the opposing team. Hinata kept darting her eyes over to Kiba, who was yelling at them from across the field. Shikamaru watched them boredly, and Choji just waved at them and wished them good luck. Shino responded by wishing Ino’s team luck in kind.

Sort-of. He actually said “Yes. I would like to see your team also arrive at a state of good fortune,” but Ino couldn’t tell exactly how much of that was a dig at her team and how much was actual well-wishes. 'Arrive at a state of good fortune'? What's that even supposed to mean!

Meanwhile, Zorian had finally started his first class of this iteration of the month.

zKazinski: Still no Zach.
zKazinski: He didn’t show up last time I went through the month, either.
zKazinski: Which adds credence to the theory that I replaced him as the time-looper.
tipsyGnostalgic: so where did he disappear to?

While the teacher reviewed the same content for the third time, Zorian just continued watching Ino prepare for the fight.

The two teams watched each other for several long seconds, waiting for the mark that would start the match. Kurenai yelled 'Go!' and both teams bolted into action. Ino's team had opened the fight under the assumption that Kiba, his dog, and Hinata would start with a charge into melee range, and Shino would stand back, supporting them with swarms of insects and various ranged attacks.

Shikamaru predicted the opening perfectly. As expected, Hinata stood on the left, Kiba in the middle, and Akamaru on the right. In response to this, he put Choji against Hinata, himself against Kiba, and Ino against Akamaru. The matchups were unusual, but that wasn't enough to tip off the other team to anything. Kiba lead the charge with confidence.

zKazinski: That’s what I’m worried about.
tipsyGnostalgic: obvs hes gotta be somewhere
tipsyGnostalgic: or somewhen
zKazinski: Agreed, but I don’t know how I would find him.

As the distance closed, Choji expanded, bloating like a massive balloon. Hinata skidded to a stop as her opponent turned into a giant ball. Her fighting style relied heavily on targeting pressure points, but with Choji swelled up she wouldn’t have been able to reach more than one or two points with maneuvering around his body and breaking formation. Without bothering to build speed, he began rolling towards Kiba, who met his destructive boulder-form head on, slamming into it in with a powerful blow.

Ino was tackled by Akamaru, and she only just managed to push the dog off of her when she heard Shikamaru speak.

“Shadow Possession complete.”

A long black shadow extended out from his body. It passed under Choji, and went directly into Kiba, who was paralyzed by his contact with the bone-chilling shade. Shikamaru took a few steps back, and Kiba was forced to do the same. Akamaru turned his attention on Shikamaru, trying to protect his master.

Ino held her hands out in front of her body, her palms facing outwards and held her index finger and thumbs apart in a wide circle. She gazed through the window between her hands and projected her spiritual energy through it.

“Mind-Body Switch!” Ino called out.

tipsyGnostalgic: HOLD UP ANY N ALL OTHER CONVOS
tipsyGnostalgic: INO
tipsyGnostalgic: WHAT DID U JUST DO???????

Ino's mind was in a void. Other than a general feeling of ‘motion’, she didn’t even have any sensory input. For a few seconds, there was nothing. No cold, no pain, no comfort.

And then she was a dog. It was jarring for everybody involved.

Ino!: I did a mind-transfer into Kiba’s dog.
Ino!: It’s hard to hit moving targets, but I was eye-level with him and he was running away from me.
tipsyGnostalgic: no
tipsyGnostalgic: u do NOT get to skip over the fact that you called your attack
Ino!: I was just telling Shikamaru what I was doing!
Ino!: He’s the team strategist, he needs to know when I use my risky techniques.

Ino then steered Akamaru towards Choji and leaped. Choji rapidly deflated back to Choji-size again, and without the human-boulder in the way, the dog was on a collision course with his master. Ino slipped out of the dog’s mind as Kiba was released by Shikamaru, and the two collided.

Ino came to in her own body, where she was met with the sounds of explosions. Shikamaru adored explosive seals and used them whenever he could. He said he would ‘handle’ Shino’s bugs, and the explosions were a good sign that Shino had started making his move.

Or, more likely, that Shikamaru predicted Shino would start making his move and thus preemptively started blasting the expected location of the swarm. Kiba and Akamaru were in a dog-pile, with a few explosive notes scattered around them. The paper tags fluttered gently in the wind, and they both understood that if they moved, Shikamaru would detonate the (likely dud) explosive seals on the notes.

With Choji now bearing down on Shino and Ino ready to deal with Hinata, the game was as good as won. Ino smiled at Hinata and watched her eyes fade to the strangely beautiful milky-white that they become when her visual powers activated. Veins bulged out in a web-like pattern around her eyes, and she faced Ino.

But instead of engaging, she threw a practice kunai at Shikamaru without even looking at where to aim. Aiming was more of a suggestion with the Hyūga’s famed 360° vision. He tilted his head lazily to the side, dodging the blunted throwing-knife.

She wrapped her hands into a handseal, and the knife boomeranged around to strike him in the back of the head. He went limp. The explosions keeping the bugs at bay ceased, and Shikamaru’s hostage threat was negated. Kiba and Akamaru climbed to their feet and charged Ino. Bugs swarmed Choji, and he was down in seconds.

It was only a few minutes after the fight that both teams were chatting about where they would be having dinner. As usual, Choji got the whole group to the same barbeque place, but this time they would be bringing Team Eight to join them for the meal.

The walk back was dominated by Kiba and Ino arguing over the battle, with Shino providing quips and Shikamaru lazily defending himself and his choices. The whole argument effectively hinged on Shikamaru not suspecting that a Byakugan user would have techniques that target other people’s blindspots.

That devolved into Shikamaru and Shino debating the merits of highly-specific strategies when enemies of unknown capability are involved, and that somehow became Shikamaru trying to defend his overuse of explosives in the fight.

He was doing a good job from a strategy perspective, but completely failed on the ‘economic viability’ end. He had spent most of the team’s funds on that spar, and lost. The more she thought about it, the more annoyed Ino became. She had planned on learning fuinjutsu with Kid Win, but the scribing tools involved were expensive.

When she became a genin, her father had this huge speech about using money wisely and learning to manage money. She was going to be the clan head, after all. He was happy to help her in other things, but she knew she would have to support herself in terms of ninja tools. It had meant less shopping, and buying shuriken out of bargain bins. But now Shikamaru had blown the team funds, she needed supplies, and they hadn’t even won. It was embarrassing, and she desperately wanted to make up for it.

Ino!: That’s it.
Ino!: Tomorrow I’m going to make Asuma take us out on a REAL mission.
Ino!: Like the one Sasuke’s on.
Kid_Win: Good luck convincing Mr. Lazybones to agree to that.
Ino!: Believe me.
Ino!: I'll make sure he will.

Three minutes of nagging later, he caved.

Conference Call (Multicross)

Wanderer of the night; Warden of unseen realms.

Assassin grade weather

Slimes are too cute send help

Zeph

Break the world, see what falls out.

Prince of Time

Perpetual Beginner

Undefined Shadows